Evolution is generally rejected by long-age proponents but, again, it tends to be ill-defined by them. To draw a distinction against Darwinism but in favour of evolution is false. It’s a very misleading strawman argument. Surely Darwinism is only one variant of evolution theory; punctuated equilibrium is another. Evolution is not natural selection or “change over time”, nor is there evidence that matter contains inherent properties which allows change beyond kind to unfold naturally. Not only are there are no fossils of intermediate stages, but also the Cambrian Era cannot be regarded as an explosion of new creation-it was an explosion of death! So what exactly is the definition of “evolution” which conforms with an age of billions of years for the Universe?
It is disappointing that the ID writers themselves tend not to define clearly what they mean by the term “evolution” and instead leave it open to interpretation. Conceding evolution via common descent, as compatible with Intelligent Design, only plays into the hands of zealots of Naturalism who have not been slow to seize this concession and hurl it back in rebuttal. William Dembski, in his book Intelligent Design, states (p.252) that “Intelligent Design … can accommodate any degree of evolutionary change”. So what does he mean by the term “evolution”? Identifying Darwinism as the problem, while allowing evolution to remain ill-defined and elastic, has undermined the potential effectiveness of the ID movement.
Several prominent ID writers clearly distance themselves from the idea of the Universe being less than 10,000 years old. The presuppositions involved in the long ages view go largely unquestioned by these researchers, and this contrasts greatly with their otherwise rigorous analytical approach. They expect atheists and creationists to refrain from using selective argumentation, yet seem highly selective themselves. Dembski not only leaves the term “evolution” loosely defined but also (p.248) wrongly accuses creationists of treating the opening chapters of Genesis as a scientific text. They don’t believe that God is teaching empirical science per se in Genesis, and he misrepresents their position. In reality, most non-Catholic creation researchers treat Genesis primarily as historical revelation, and so does Catholic Tradition. Let us not forget a crucial point in our neo-pagan times: the more remote in time we think of Creation, the more irrelevant does God seem to modern man. If Creation took place in the not-so-distant past, then Christ’s Second Coming is likely to occur in the not-so-distant future; not when our Sun supposedly balloons up into a Red Giant millions of years from now.
Because of reluctance to address in detail the question of the age of the Universe, Progressive Creation proponents of eons of time are driven, ironically, to rely upon evolutionist reasoning for origin of the fossil record. Whether the vast museum of death buried in the rocks came before or after the sin of Adam remains a profound conceptual problem for them. So, in their view, was it a “good” Creation or not?