The February, 2026, issue of the Pacific Union Recorder features an article by Alberto Valenzuela entitled, “Honoring God Through Science and Scripture,” the thesis of which is that Darwinism honors God and should never be opposed.
Mr. Valenzuela is not a scientist; he has a bachelor’s degree in theology from Southern Adventist University, and a master’s in church history from Loma Linda University. His current position is Associate Director of Communication & Community Engagement for the Pacific Union, and editor of the Recorder.
The article begins with affirmations that are true, such as that God’s book of nature and the Scriptures are different “books” yielding truth, wisdom, and knowledge. Ellen White often referred to the two books as both teaching us about God; it was a recurring theme in her writings.
Mr. Valenzuela also points out that the supposed conflict between science and religion is of relatively recent origin. Far from conflicting with religion, true science is a product of religion. Science first became a professional vocation and an institution in the Protestant Christian West—not in classical civilization, not in medieval Christendom, not in the Orient, and not in Islam. I have noted elsewhere that the pioneers of almost all scientific disciplines were Christians.
But, sadly, Mr. Valenzuela soon goes off the rails:
“Evolution, as scientists describe it, is the process by which life changes over time. It explains biological diversity through mechanisms like natural selection and genetic mutation. It doesn’t attempt to explain why life exists or who initiated it—that is a question of purpose and meaning, which belongs to theology and philosophy. Evolution is a scientific explanation of how life has developed, not why it exists.”
Describing the Darwinian theory innocuously as “change over time” does not alter the fact that it attempts a comprehensive explanation of origins that shuts out a divine Creator. Darwinian “science” absolutely does “attempt to explain why life exists or who initiated it”; it maintains, quite militantly, that life evolved from chemicals through a natural process called abiogenesis, hence that no one initiated life.
Yes, the origin of life belongs to theology and philosophy, not science, and the Bible speaks clearly that God created life. But Darwinian “science” attempts to poach on theology’s territory by maintaining that life initiated itself entirely through natural processes. The entire point of the (failed and discredited) field of abiogenesis, or origin-of-life studies, is to prove that life could have come into being without God. Obviously, Christians are not at liberty to allow atheism masquerading as science to claim jurisdiction over the subject of origins, which Scripture claims as its own territory (See, Genesis 1 through 7).
Mr. Valenzuela next appeals to authority, but exceedingly strange authority for a Seventh-day Adventist:
“Many devout Christians, including Pope John Paul II, have affirmed that the theory of evolution does not conflict with belief in God. In his message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1996, he said: ‘New findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than a hypothesis.’ He reminded believers that acknowledging biological processes doesn’t negate God’s creative hand.”
Apparently, Mr. Valenzuela’s Jesuit handlers did not adequately train him on what is persuasive authority within Adventism before sending him off to work at the Pacific Union. (I believe I am joking but, honestly, who can be sure?) Pope John Paul II, though a courageous and decent man, was not a scientist and was responding to what his advisors told him to say. Another explanation is that Roman Catholicism has always been a syncretistic blend of Christianity and pagan Greek philosophy, and evolution is a pagan Greek theory of origins.
Mr. Valenzuela continues:
“In the same way that gravity doesn’t undermine God’s sovereignty, neither does evolution. To say that God used natural processes to bring about His purposes is not to limit Him but to admire His wisdom.”
First, the issue is not God’s sovereignty but His honesty: God states that He created life, including all the plants and animals, and man, in six literal days, and rested on the seventh day. (Gen. 2:2-3; Ex. 20:11). If God did it over hundreds of millions of years, He lied. Second, Scripture is quite clear that God did not use natural processes but created ex nihilo, out of nothing. (Psalm 33:9, 148:5; Heb. 11:3) Third, I cannot admire the “wisdom” of a God who could have created a very good creation in six days, and told us that He did exactly that, but chose instead to create over the course of hundreds of millions of years using animal predation, the survival of the fittest, disease, death, nature red in tooth and claw, etc. There is no wisdom there, and nothing to admire.
Mr. Valenzuela continues:
“Science, at its core, is a method of inquiry. It is a way of understanding the natural world through observation, experimentation, and evidence. When scientists speak of ‘theories,’ they mean robust frameworks supported by data—not mere guesses. Theories like gravity, germ theory, atomic theory, and evolution are foundational, not speculative.
This is an attempt to put Darwinism on the same footing as those other theories, which are well established. But Darwinism is not like those other theories. The world was created only once, and has only one natural history. Hence, the study of origins is confounded by the inability to observe those origins, much less to engage in repeated observations of repeated experiments, each experiment changing but one variable. All historical science is to some extent hampered by non-observability, non-repeating phenomena, the complexity of historical phenomena, and the inability to isolate any one of the innumerable variables in their complex interactions.
Moreover, Darwinian origins science is not open to the hypothesis of a Creator God. The hypothesis of design is deemed out of bounds, notwithstanding that we have little difficulty discerning what is designed from what is not. For example, no one doubts that New Hampshire’s Old Man of the Mountain, although it resembled in profile a human head, was not designed, whereas Mount Rushmore was designed. Yet Darwinian “science” insists on an a priori decision in favor of philosophical naturalism, dismissing out of hand all criteria for detecting design. It demands the conclusion that nothing we see in nature was designed, regardless the evidence; the appearance of design must be treated as an illusion. Hence, Darwinian science is not science at all, but apologetics on behalf of atheism as a truth claim.
As atheistic apologetics, it has the same epistemological validity as creationism. The creationist makes a faith decision that God created the world (and, for SDAs, that God created it in six days, sin came in and deranged the creation, humans engaged in amalgamation, and God destroyed the world in a global flood that lasted a year, buried myriad plants and animals that are now fossils, and re-formed the crust of the earth), then the creationist lines up and organizes the evidence to support that faith decision. Darwinian science does the same thing: decides that God (if there is a God) had no role in the creation, that all plants and animals evolved by natural selection of genetic copying errors over the course of hundreds of millions of years, then the Darwinist lines up and organizes the evidence to support that faith decision.
Mr. Valenzuela continues:
“As the Apostle Paul said in Romans 1:20, ‘Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made’ (NIV). Science seeks to understand ‘what has been made.’ Religion seeks to understand the One who made it.”
No, Darwinian “science” does not “seek to understand what has been made,” it argues that it was not made but happened by chance through natural processes. Paul’s point is that people can learn something about the Creator, His omnipotence and divinity, by observing the creation, but Darwinian “science” directly opposes Paul by arguing that the creation was not created by God, hence there is nothing to learn about God by observing it.
Yes, religion seeks to understand God, the One who made all that has been made. Scripture tells us that all things were made through Jesus Christ (John 1:1-3; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:15-17). What then are we to understand about Christ and His character if he “created” over the course of hundreds of millions of years using animal predation, the survival of the fittest, disease, and death? Is that consistent with the loving Saviour shown us in the gospels?
Mr. Valenzuela goes on in this vein throughout the rest of the article, trying to convince his readers that there is no real conflict between Darwinian origins “science” (which, again, amounts to atheistic apologetics) and the Seventh-day Adventist religion. But that is not true; it is an obvious and demeaning lie. There is a huge conflict between the theory that everything created itself over the course of six hundred million years, and the Biblical teaching that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day. Many have tried to resolve that contradiction, but it cannot be resolved. The conflict is, and must be, permanent, at least as much as anything in this world is permanent. The compromise positions—theistic evolution, progressive creation or creation over long ages—are full of contradictions and, in the end, satisfy no one.
I hasten to add that Mr. Valenzuela is not advocating for a compromise position such long-ages creationism. To the contrary, Mr. Valenzuela, like Janet Kellogg Ray, whose book I reviewed here and here, has concluded that Christians must yield, totally, entirely, and without quibble, to the truth claims of Darwinian “science,” and be content with whatever of Biblical religion “science” deigns to leave intact. Which isn’t much.
Christ as the Creator is gone, because there is no creator in Darwinian theory. Christ as the second Adam is gone, because there was no first Adam. Christ as redeemer is gone, because there was no perfect creation and subsequent fall into sin from which we need redemption; there was only a spectacular rise: we started as dead chemicals, then became alive, evolved from single-celled creatures to fish, to amphibians, to reptiles, to mammals, to simians, and finally to human beings. This is story of astonishing progress. Where is the Fall? From what do we need redemption?
And, of course, the Sabbath is gone, because there was no creation in six days, with God resting on the seventh day and making it holy as a remembrance. In the Darwinian narrative, there was but a slow evolution over the course of hundreds of millions of years. If Gen. 2:1-3 and Ex. 20:11 have been falsified by science, why would we keep the Sabbath? What purpose is there for a Seventh-day Adventist Church as a separate denomination?
We don’t have Ellen White, either, because she repeatedly committed in writing to the Bible’s narrative of origins; if it is false and Darwinism true, she is a fraud and a charlatan, certainly not a prophetess:
“I was then carried back to the creation and was shown that the first week, in which God performed the work of creation in six days and rested on the seventh day, was just like every other week. The great God in his days of creation and day of rest, measured off the first cycle as a sample for successive weeks till the close of time. . . . On the seventh day of the first week God rested from his work, and then blessed the day of his rest, and set it apart for the use of man. The weekly cycle of seven literal days, six for labor, and the seventh for rest, which has been preserved and brought down through Bible history, originated in the great facts of the first seven days.” Spiritual Gifts (Battle Creek, MI: Steam Press of the Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1864), vol. 3, pp. 90-92.
Geology has been thought to contradict the literal interpretation of the Mosaic record of the creation. Millions of years, it is claimed, were required for the evolution of the earth from chaos; and in order to accommodate the Bible to this supposed revelation of science, the days of creation are assumed to have been vast, indefinite periods, covering thousands or even millions of years. Such a conclusion is wholly uncalled for. The Bible record is in harmony with itself and with the teaching of nature. Education, p. 128.
God created man in His own image. Here is no mystery. There is no ground for the supposition that man was evolved by slow degrees of development from the lower forms of animal or vegetable life. Such teaching lowers the great work of the Creator to the level of man’s narrow, earthly conceptions. Men are so intent upon excluding God from the sovereignty of the universe that they degrade man and defraud him of the dignity of his origin. Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 45.
Clearly, in Mr. Valenzuela’s new world in which Seventh-day Adventists must not oppose or contradict Darwinian “science,” Ellen White must be defenestrated.
We will also need to jettison the Three Angels Messages, because they relate in part to the Sabbath truth: The first angel commands us to acknowledge and worship the Creator God, the second warns us to exit the churches that are confused or compromised about doctrines such as the creation and the Sabbath, and the third warns us to avoid the mark of the beast, which we believe is enforced Sunday worship in place of the Sabbath that is a memorial to a six-day creation.
If we yield to the truth claims of Darwinian “science,” the whole doctrinal structure of Seventh-day Adventism implodes. There is no reason for our denomination to exist or, indeed, for Christianity to exist. Christianity is based upon the idea of a good creation, a fall into sin, the need for a Redeemer to bridge the gap the Fall created, and the belief that Jesus Christ is that Redeemer. Darwinism denies and falsifies that entire doctrinal cluster.
And yet we have a paid employee of the Pacific Union Conference—paid out of the tithe—arguing that we must make peace with Darwinian “science” and live amongst the ruins of Bible Christianity as best can. New plan: Let’s fire Mr. Valenzuela and encourage him to find employment outside of Adventism.
A tangential observation: People often justify the Adventist organizational structure, in which local churches are nothing and conferences have all the power, leading to horrific abuses such as the current situation in Michigan, on the basis that it must be this way to ensure doctrinal conformity. But here we have a union conference using tithe money and the tithe-supported union periodical to tear down and destroy Seventh-day Adventist doctrine! Explain to me, again, why we need such a lopsided, tyrannical organizational structure.
“O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called." 1 Tim. 6:20