As a scientist, deeply committed to the scientific method, I have always sought to maintain an informed critical view of those theories that may have a bearing on my work. Implications for psychology of evolutionary theory are one concern of this kind. But before proceeding further, I believe it is helpful to first remind ourselves that we are concerned here with two hypotheses: the first is the idea that all species adapt to their environment over time (often termed microevolution); the second is the belief that one species can turn into another (often termed macroevolution).

Microevolution refers to the observable adaptation of populations through changes in gene frequencies, as described by Charles Darwin (1859) and later developed through population genetics by figures such as Ronald A. Fisher (1930) and Theodosius Dobzhansky (1937). This first hypothesis has been well supported by scientific research.

But the same cannot be claimed for the second evolutionary hypothesis, which appears to have assumed something of the nature of a religious belief in our global society. Whilst there is clear evidence in support of the microevolution hypothesis, the same cannot be said for macroevolution. Critics of macroevolution argue that while microevolution is strongly supported by empirical evidence, the extrapolation of these small-scale changes to macroevolutionary claims about the origin of entirely new body plans and major taxonomic groups remains insufficiently demonstrated. Proponents of this criticism, including Michael J. Behe (1996), contend that complex biological systems present challenges not fully resolved by standard evolutionary mechanisms, while some have pointed to debates over the interpretation of the fossil record, including discussions surrounding punctuated equilibrium proposed by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould (1972).

Despite this lack of definitive scientific evidence, most evolutionary biologists believe macroevolution to be an established scientific fact. If they are wrong, as the lack of definitive evidence suggests, it will not be the first time that science has proved itself fallible. Amongst the many scientific viewpoints to have been discredited, perhaps the most influential have been the geocentric model (dominant from antiquity until the 16th–17th centuries), which held that Earth was the centre of the cosmos and was displaced by heliocentrism. Another was phlogiston theory (c. 1700–1790s), which explained combustion as the release of a substance called phlogiston, a belief that was overturned by oxygen chemistry. A further example is that of caloric theory (late 18th century–mid-19th century), which treated heat as a material fluid and was replaced by thermodynamics and kinetic theory. Then there was miasma theory (dominant in medicine until the late 19th century), which attributed disease to “bad air” and was superseded by germ theory. There was also the luminiferous ether hypothesis (widely accepted in 19th-century physics), which posited a medium through which light propagated and was abandoned following experiments and the development of relativity. Yet another discounted view was that of spontaneous generation (accepted by many naturalists until the 19th century), which claimed that living organisms could arise from non-living matter and was refuted by experimental microbiology. Most recently we have seen how the belief that continental drift was impossible (widely held from the 1910s to the 1960s), was replaced by plate tectonics after overwhelming geophysical evidence accumulated. Cases such as these illustrate that scientific consensus can change when new evidence provides a better explanation of observations.

Of course, macroevolution is not the only explanation of how humanity came into being. Among Christian scientists who have argued for the creation hypothesis and challenged macroevolution, several figures have been particularly influential. Mention has already been made of biochemist Michael J. Behe (1996), who contended that certain cellular systems exhibit “irreducible complexity,” arguing that structures such as the bacterial flagellum and blood-clotting cascade require multiple interacting components and are therefore difficult to explain through a gradual Darwinian process alone. Plant geneticist John C. Sanford (2005) advanced the concept of “genetic entropy,” proposing that the accumulation of slightly deleterious mutations leads to a long-term deterioration of genomes rather than the emergence of novel complex biological information. Palaeontologist Kurt P. Wise (2002), a Harvard-trained scientist and young-earth creationist, argued that both Biblical interpretation and selected scientific evidence support special creation and that observed biological variation occurs within created “kinds” rather than through large-scale macroevolutionary transformation. Collectively, these researchers have maintained that the origin of biological complexity, the limits of natural selection and mutation, and the interpretation of the fossil and genetic records provide evidence consistent with creation and raise questions about the sufficiency of macroevolutionary mechanisms, although their conclusions currently remain outside the mainstream scientific consensus.

From a Christian creationist perspective, humanity originated through the direct, intentional act of God rather than through an evolutionary process, a view grounded in passages such as Genesis 1:26–27 (“Let us make mankind in our image”), Genesis 2:7 (God forming Adam from the dust of the ground), Exodus 20:11 (creation in six days), Romans 5:12–19 (the historical Adam as the source of sin), and 1 Corinthians 15:21–22, 45 (Adam–Christ typology). Modern advocates of this position include the creation scientists John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris, whose influential 1961 work The Genesis Flood argued that the geological record is better explained by a global Flood than by deep-time evolutionary geology, and Kurt P. Wise, who has argued since the late twentieth century that Biblical authority requires accepting special creation and rejecting common ancestry despite the claims of evolutionary biology.

Creationists typically contend that the complexity and information content of living organisms, the discontinuity between major biological kinds, the theological necessity of a historical Adam and Eve, and the doctrine of humanity being uniquely created in the imago Dei (image of God) are incompatible with a naturalistic evolutionary account. Consequently, they maintain that humans were specially created by God and reject the evolutionary explanation that humanity arose through descent from earlier hominins over millions of years.

Based on what is known, we might conclude that an evolutionary perspective in psychology, the idea that broad, species-wide psychological traits can be explained as direct products of Darwinian natural selection acting on “psychological modules” over deep evolutionary time, carries significant dangers when it is embraced without rigorous empirical support, because it can lead researchers to construct just-so stories that reflect cultural biases rather than testable scientific hypotheses. Prominent scholars such as Stephen Jay Gould (1978, 1997) and Massimo Pigliucci (2010) have explicitly warned that simplistic evolutionary narratives in psychology risk unfalsifiability, confirmation bias, and the reification of speculative adaptationist claims that lack reliable data. Gould and Richard Lewontin’s seminal critique of adaptationism emphasised the hazards of inferring function without rigorous evidence (1979), and later critics like Dermot Lynott & Keith J. Holyoak (2014) stressed that many “evolutionary psychology” explanations rest on weak empirical foundations and ignore cultural and developmental dynamics, leading the field away from robust, mechanistic science. Embracing macro-evolutionist explanations in psychology without credible, interdisciplinary support thus risks undermining the authority of psychological science by privileging narrative plausibility over empirical rigour.

Christian psychology asserts the role of God as Creator of all and completely rejects notions of macro-evolution (the idea of one species becoming another) given that these are neither supported by credible scientific evidence, nor in agreement with the Biblical creationist view. In contrast, micro-evolution, the capacity of species to adjust and adapt to their environment, has been well documented, is amply supported by empirical observation, and provides a helpful perspective on understanding changes in experience and behaviour as psychological adjustments to environmental challenges and change.