God-Directed Evolution

God-Directed Evolution, or GDE is a disparaging term used referring to the belief that God uses evolutionary processes in creating and sustaining the world. The term is used exclusively by people who do not believe it.

Colin Byrnes describes it as follows in his By One Man (p.5):

Non-theistic evolution attempts to explain how humans evolved upwards from lower simple animal organisms entirely by natural means and without appealing to any involvement from God.

God-directed evolution is slightly different. While there is little or no practical distinction on the mechanism, God-directed evolution asserts that God was somehow the hidden instigator behind the whole evolutionary process, and that God’s “mechanism” of creation was evolution.

While conceding that "GDE believers consider the evolutionary process itself as a method of creation that testifies to the glory of God," Byrnes claims that "GDE proponents" "seem very reluctant to clarify to what extent God was involved and how He directed the evolutionary process."

He uses the term to cover "all views which assert that certain ancestors of humans on the earth today evolved from lower animals as part of God’s creative method, including Theistic Evolution (TE) and Evolutionary Creation (EC)".