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According to theistic evolution, were human beings created originally good?

Many prominent theistic evolutionists repudiate the idea that human beings were created good and then fell into sin through a voluntary act of disobedience.

Karl Giberson in Saving Darwin directly rejects the idea that “sin originates in a free act of the first humans” and that “God gave humans free will and they used it to contaminate the entire creation.” [Saving Darwin, p. 12] Giberson basically argues that since human beings were created through Darwinian evolution, sin was there in human beings to begin with: “Selfishness… drives the evolutionary process. Unselfish creatures died, and their unselfish genes perished with them. Selfish creatures, who attended to their own needs for food, power, and sex, flourished and passed on these genes to their offspring. After many generations selfishness was so fully programmed in our genomes that it was a significant part of what we now call human nature.” Although Giberson does employ the term “fall” in his book, it is clear that he merely means that humans continue to be sinful, just like they were from the beginning. There was no actual “fall” in his view, as he confirmed at an appearance at Biola University in 2009. Notably, the foreword to Giberson’s Saving Darwin was written by prominent fellow theistic evolutionist Francis Collins.

John G. West

Senior Fellow, Managing Director, and Vice President of Discovery Institute
Dr. John G. West is Vice President of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and Managing Director of the Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. Formerly the Chair of the Department of Political Science and Geography at Seattle Pacific University, West is an award-winning author and documentary filmmaker who has written or edited 12 books, including Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science, The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society, and Walt Disney and Live Action: The Disney Studio’s Live-Action Features of the 1950s and 60s. His documentary films include Fire-Maker, Revolutionary, The War on Humans, and (most recently) Human Zoos. West holds a PhD in Government from Claremont Graduate University, and he has been interviewed by media outlets such as CNN, Fox News, Reuters, Time magazine, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post.