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A Critique of the Pacific Union Recorder's Defense of Theistic Evolution

By • February 13, 2026

By Michael Peabody –

“Honoring God Through Science and Scripture” by Alberto Valenzuela, published in the February 2026 issue of the Pacific Union Recorder, reads like a peace treaty. It opens with a lab scene and a chapel scene, then promises you can keep both without friction. It argues that science and Scripture are “two lenses” on one reality, and that conflict comes from confusion, bad teaching, or unnecessary extremes. In practice, the piece does more than soothe nerves. It gives readers a method. It claims to teach you how to classify Bible claims as “theological” so they do not collide with modern origin stories taught as science.

The Recorder article treats evolution as a valid scientific account of “how life has developed,” while placing “why” and ultimate purpose in theology.

Criticizes “creationism” being taught as science and warns that it confuses theology with biology.
Cites Christian authorities who affirm evolution as compatible with belief in God, including a reference to Pope John Paul II’s comments about evolution being “more than a hypothesis.”
Uses transitional fossils like Tiktaalik as evidence, and pushes back on “gaps” arguments in a way that fits an evolution-friendly framework.

Why bother critiquing an opinion piece from a religious magazine? Because it is not a private reflection – it represents the views of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, at least in the Pacific Union Conference and is distributed to 76,000 homes of church members. It is a published guide aimed at families, students, and teachers. It tells readers what counts as knowledge and what should be kept in a separate compartment called “faith.” When an article tries to shape how your children will read Genesis, you should test it.

The tone can disarm you. The piece sounds pastoral and careful. Yet it quietly shifts the reader away from a literal six day creation by reframing the disagreement as mostly about misunderstanding. That framing can move convictions without ever stating the trade.

WHY IT DESERVES A HARD TEST

Valenzuela uses the language of Scripture while nudging readers toward interpretive habits that soften Scripture’s clear claims. That matters because Genesis is not presented as a mood. It opens with an act: Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Exodus ties the weekly rhythm to a historical act: Exodus 20:11, “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.”

If those words refer to reality, then the question is not whether you can keep everyone calm. The question is whether you will treat the text as a record of God’s acts, or as flexible language that can be stretched to fit an outside timeline.

The slogan about Scripture and science as “two lenses” sounds wise until you ask what happens when the images differ. Lenses are judged by what they resolve. If one lens shows six days, evening and morning, and a completed creation week, while the other lens requires ages of death and mutation, you do not get harmony by calling both “truth.” You get two incompatible accounts of what happened.

The article avoids that clash by staying at the level of tone. It praises compatibility. It does not do the hard work of showing how a literal reading of Genesis can survive the chronology required by common descent and deep time.

THE “HOW VS WHY” MOVE IS NOT NEUTRAL

The piece leans on a familiar split: evolution answers “how,” faith answers “why.” That sounds like truce language. It also dodges the timeline. Origins claims are not only about purpose. They are about sequence and causation. A deep time story builds death into the engine long before humans. That presses directly on Paul’s logic about sin and death: Romans 5:12, “by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.”

Paul also ties death and resurrection to Adam and Christ: 1 Corinthians 15:21, “by man came death,” and “by man came also the resurrection of the dead.” If death is a creative tool long before sin, those lines do not vanish, but their force changes.

The article gestures toward respected voices who accept evolution, including a pope, as if that should settle your nerves. That is argument by social proof. It is also a concession that the modern world gets to set the terms and the church is allowed to negotiate for a corner.

A biblical approach does not begin with, “What will sound credible?” It begins with, “What has God said?” Psalm 33 does not sound tentative: Psalm 33:9, “For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.” That is not the language of a process that needs ages to find its way.

THE PIECE PRIVATIZES FAITH WHILE CALLING IT BALANCE

The essay urges science to stay empirical and faith to be nurtured in family and church. That can sound reasonable. It can also teach a quiet retreat: public institutions describe reality, and believers keep “meaning” at home.

Christianity is not built for that arrangement. John opens with a claim about reality itself: John 1:3, “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” If creation is true, it is true outside the sanctuary too.

JESUS TREATS CREATION AS HISTORY, NOT A SYMBOL

A literal six day creation view is not a quirky side hobby. It is tied to how Jesus and the apostles treat the early chapters of Genesis. Jesus grounds His teaching on marriage in creation, and he anchors it to the beginning: Mark 10:6, “From the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.” That reading treats “beginning” as beginning.

The article’s method, by contrast, trains you to treat Genesis as a theological frame that can float above an unrelated scientific history. That is a different way of reading.

The article flirts with design language as a bridge. The danger is that this produces a “designer” without a Genesis. You can talk about “design” in a way that never requires you to say, “In six days.” It becomes religion that fits the room because it never makes a concrete claim about time, sequence, or God’s speech.

Traditional creationism does not need that soft substitute. Psalm 33 already gives you the core: Psalm 33:9, “he spake, and it was done.”

The article invokes transitional fossils, then treats that as a rebuttal to “gaps.” Even if you grant every classification claim for the sake of argument, that does not settle the six day question. The dispute is not only, “Do any specimens exist that can be placed between categories?” The dispute is the whole storyline required to make that placement equal common ancestry over deep time, and the dating assumptions that drive it.

Naming a fossil does not prove the entire narrative the article wants you to accept. It proves only that a specimen exists and has been interpreted.

CONCLUSION

The article wants peace so badly that it treats a contradiction like a misunderstanding. It offers a truce that asks the Bible to stop making public claims about history. It tells Christians they can keep Genesis as meaning while the secular account of origins runs the world. That is not balance. That is surrender with polite language.

If you believe in a literal six day creation, you should say so without hedges and without borrowing credibility from people who disagree with you. Genesis reads like a record of God’s acts. Exodus treats the creation week as the basis for the Sabbath. Jesus speaks of creation “from the beginning.” Paul ties death to sin and life to Christ. Those are not decorative verses. They are load bearing.

A Christian who holds to traditional creationism does not need to fear honest investigation. You can honor careful observation while refusing to edit Scripture until it cannot offend a dominant worldview. You can study nature with gratitude and still say, with Psalm 33:9, “he spake, and it was done.”

For an alternative view, Check out “The Pacific Union Recorder Promoting Darwinian Evolution” also published 2/13/2026 by Sean Pitman, MD at EducateTruth.com. He includes a comprehensive scientific rebuttal to the arguments made in the Recorder article.

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