John Stackhouse unpacks the nonsense of the ‘creation verus evolution’ debate. With all the noise about it many people are unaware that evangelicals might not be anti-science.
There are only two respects, then, in which “creation versus evolution” makes sense: first, when certain Christians insist that “creation” must mean “creation science” and thus rule out any divine use of evolution; and, second, when certain evolutionists insist that “evolution” must mean only what Darwin thought it meant, namely naturalistic or atheistic evolution. For then, of course, “creation versus evolution” really amounts to “theism versus atheism.” Put this way, however, we should recognize that we are dealing now with a religious and philosophical issue, not a scientific one. Science cannot, in the nature of the case, rule out God as somehow supervising evolutionary processes.
To be sure, science might conclude that “we have no need of the hypothesis” that God created the world (Laplace). We should be honest enough and knowledgeable enough to recognize, even as scientific laypersons (among which I am, of course, to be numbered) that science is a long way from proving that we don’t need such a hypothesis—whether regarding the origin of the universe (the “something from nothing” problem); or the immensely improbable cosmological “fine tuning” necessary for life on Earth; or the currently inexplicable arising of multicellular organisms; or the persistent problem (noted by Darwin himself) of the absence of “transitional forms” in the fossil record (the many “missing links”); and so on.
He looks at four different beliefs held by Protestants that don’t find evolution incompatable with faith. He then looks at four ways to took at the ‘versus’ debates, so discussion doesn’t become needless rhetoric.
Published 1 year, 5 months ago
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Do you subscribe to The Current podcast? I highly recommend it. This week they interviewed Richard Dawkins, who wrote The God Delusion. Great episode, I highly recommend it for further insight into this subject.
I think the important thing to remember in this whole debate is the pursuit of science is the pursuit of provable knowledge. Evolution is as good as it gets (for now), and there’s little room for God in there, so why get Him involved?
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
I haven’t paid attention to the current athiest/believer debates because I think some of it is social/political reaction.
While I fully appreciate there are athiest scientists that have ‘brought’ their belief system into what should remain a scientific debate, I tend to fall into the last two categories of Protestant believers Stackhouse mentions.
My lack of interest in Dawking et al might not be reasonable since I haven’t paid attention, I see Richard Dawkins as a Kenneth Ham counterpoint.:^)
Didn’t we as a society go through this kind of public back and forth with Madeline Murray O’Hare?
Hi,
I agree that Stackhouse’s post is bang-on. (I stated the same thing in my post at http://evanevodialogue.blogspot.com/2007/06/excellent-post-on-creation-and.html). One of my first posts on my blog in May also addressed the Creation vs. Evolution false dichotomy. See: http://evanevodialogue.blogspot.com/2007/05/do-you-think-it-is-farther-to-vancouver.html
One clarification on Tyler’s statement above. Science is not the pursuit of “provable” knowledge since science can not actually “prove” anything. It can merely state what is likely true (very likely; almost certain) based on the evidence. But I think this is what he mean’t anyways based on his qualification that “Evolution is as good as it gets (for now)” .. which I absolutely agree with.
Steve: Link fixed - BD
It’s a good point. Thanks for resurfacing it.
Since evolutionary theory does not actually rule out God, there is plenty of room for believers to believe in both. It’s important to realize that there’s a big different between not including God and actually postulating his non-existence.
This is really no different from any other scientific theory, in this respect. None of Newton’s or Einstein’s theories include God either. Why get so bent out of shape when Darwin’s theory follows precisely the same principle?
This is how all of science works…starting from a state of minimum assumptions, then postulating as little as possible to reach an empirically testable explanation. God has not been included because His presence is not empirically testable (so far), and thus wouldn’t provide additional predictive power to theories.
The fact is that it just isn’t scientifically USEFUL to explicitly include nor exclude God from any given theory. Either way, it adds no predictive power to the theory, so why bother making a statement either way? It just doesn’t help, in a scientific sense.