Popular YouTuber (and professor) Sean McDowell asks, “What is the evidence for and against evolution? Is it a secondary issue Christians should move beyond or is more at stake?”

His guests are Douglas Axe from Biologic Institute, an intelligent design advocate. and Sy Garte, an evolutionary creationist.

“Beyond Evolution”

Garte is the author of the forthcoming Beyond Evolution: How New Discoveries in the Science of Life Point to God (Tyndale 2025). From the publisher:

A flash point for much of the science vs. faith divide has been Darwinian evolution. Sharing the same mistaken belief that science contradicts the Bible, many scientists and Christians have concluded that the worlds of science and religion are at odds. But according to biologist Sy Garte, PhD, evolution is irrelevant to the harmony of faith and science. And revolutionary new developments in biology are providing stronger evidence than ever before of a purposeful creator God. In this book, Dr. Garte combines the latest research with a biblical worldview as he explains.

Axe is the author of Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed (Harper One 2016). From the publisher:

Throughout his distinguished and unconventional career, engineer-turned-molecular-biologist Douglas Axe has been asking the questions that much of the scientific community would rather silence. Now, he presents his conclusions in this brave and pioneering book. Axe argues that the key to understanding our origin is the “design intuition” — the innate belief held by all humans that tasks we would need knowledge to accomplish can only be accomplished by someone who has that knowledge. For the ingenious task of inventing life, this knower can only be God.

Starting with the hallowed halls of academic science, Axe dismantles the widespread belief that Darwin’s theory of evolution is indisputably true, showing instead that a gaping hole has been at its center from the beginning. He then explains in plain English the science that proves our design intuition scientifically valid.

Commenters on this discussion have said things like:

Thank you for the good conversation. As a high school science teacher in a public school and a Christian, I have been trying to make sense of the ‘story of life’ from the work on how bacteria communicate and coordinate, how Michael Levin demonstrates changes in morphology that do not require changes in DNA, and how specific structures and functions do seem to distinguish a lineage (i.e. collagen in animals, chitin in arthropods), to the universally shared information processing and coding, and the fossil records, etc. Life is just amazing and complicated. I really appreciate hearing such knowledgeable scientists expressing their own uncertainty and sense-making strategies. 

A Paradigm Shift Is Already Underway

Traditional Darwinian evolution is under fire from many quarters in biology now. There are many sources of non-Darwinian evolution, including horizontal gene transfer, devolution, and epigenetic change. See “What the Fossils Told Us in Their Own Words.”

As all these concepts percolate through the system, the use of “Evolution!” as a simple answer to philosophical and religious questions declines. Increasingly, it is fair to ask, when someone offers “Evolution!” as an explanation for some feature of life, “What sort of evolution do you mean?”

There are still popular commentators out there who honestly believe that Darwinian evolution explains how you vote, shop, and tip at restaurants.

Image source: Discovery Institute Press.

Christian Responses May Need to Evolve

But the real history of life — including the human genome, for example — is much more complex. And for some sense of why this sort of simplistic thinking doesn’t cut it any more, read David Klinghoffer’s Plato’s Revenge: The New Science of the Immaterial Genome (Discovery Institute Press 2025). It looks at the work of Richard Sternberg in re-evaluating genetics’ role in the formation of life. From the publisher:

First there was the genetic revolution — the discovery that physical structures in the cell, including DNA and RNA, shape every organism. Now, says evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg, we are overdue for another and more profound revolution. Recent findings reveal that genetic and even epigenetic sources alone cannot account for the rich dynamism of life — not even close. Some other informational source is required.

The idea was anticipated 2,400 years ago in Plato’s Timaeus, and periodically revisited in the ensuing centuries. Sidelined by scientific materialism, it is now reasserting itself on the strength of cutting-edge molecular biology, higher mathematics, and common-sense reasoning. In Plato’s Revenge, science writer David Klinghoffer takes Sternberg’s profound explorations and weaves them into a lively and accessible account of a most remarkable realization: At every moment, we owe our lives to a genome that is more than matter, and to an informational source that is immaterial, transcomputational, and beyond space and time.

The times, they are a-changin’ and it may be that Christian responses to evolution claims need to adapt. Put another way: People can be atheists and dismiss Darwin all the same. So Christian evangelists and apologists need to reckon with that.

Cross-posted at Mind Matters News.