Evolution can be Religion's Friend

June 2010

Jaw, jaw: Can you spot the design defect?

Can one believe in evolution and God? Some people of faith and some scientists agree: "No." They are wrong. The theory of evolution says that organisms are related by descent from common ancestors. Over time, organisms change and diversify as they adapt to different environments. Species that share a recent common ancestor are more similar to each other than species whose last common ancestor is more remote. Thus, humans and chimpanzees are, in configuration and genetic make-up, more similar to each other than they are to baboons, elephants or kangaroos.

If humans came about by evolution, then the Bible isn't wrong when it says that humans were created in the image of God.

Science has many other theories besides evolution. The heliocentric theory says that the earth revolves around the sun rather than vice versa. The atomic theory says that all matter is made up of atoms. And astronomy teaches us that the galaxies expand in space and that stars and planets form over time. Scientists agree that the evolutionary origin of plants and animals is a scientific conclusion beyond reasonable doubt. They place it beside such established notions as the roundness of the earth, its revolution around the sun and the atomic composition of matter. That evolution has occurred is, in ordinary language, a fact, not just a theory.

Many Biblical scholars have rejected a literal interpretation of the Bible as untenable because it contains mutually incompatible statements, if they are taken as scientific. The beginning of Genesis presents two different creation stories. Extending through chapter one and the first verses of chapter two is the six-day narrative, in which God creates human beings — both "male and female" — in His own image on the sixth day, after creating light, earth, firmament, fish, fowl and cattle.

In Genesis 2:4, a different narrative starts: God first creates a male human, then plants a garden and creates the animals and only then proceeds to take a rib from the man to make a woman. Which one of the two narratives is correct and which one is in error? Neither contradicts the other, if we understand the two narratives as conveying the same message, that the world was created by God and that humans are His creatures.

There are numerous inconsistencies and contradictions in the Bible. For example, in the description of the return from Egypt to the promised land by the chosen people of Israel, not to mention erroneous factual statements about the sun circling the earth and the like. Is the Bible "wrong"?

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The Church of England

Cosmos

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Peter Joyce

May 28th, 2010
9:05 PM

I have got tired of hearing the old "argument" that science and religion are not incompatible because they concern themselves with different realms. Religion used to pretend to BE science until it was proved useless at that job. Science has offered us a wealth of information about the "how". If religion has recently confined itself to the "why" (or, as this writer has it, the connection between man and God), what meaningful answer has it ever offered to that question? Religion is like a loved but useless and lazy adolescent, drifting from job to job and making excuses for being sacked.

Steve Meikle

May 28th, 2010
8:05 PM

"That evolution has occurred is, in ordinary language, a fact, not just a theory." Micro evolution is the fact, macro evolution is the theory. Does this author have the consistency and the guts to simply reject the meaningless notion of God outright, which is all the notion of God can be if macroevolution is true? Or does he have the wisdom to reject macroevolution if God exists. And better still does he have the integrity to go look at the evidence as the creation scientists have done?

Steve Meikle

May 28th, 2010
8:05 PM

This piece is indeed sloppy thinking. For a start it confuses evolution (a theory stemming from a philosophic outlook) with science. And other commentators have already noted the "what kind of God would make this creation as it is" question which reflects on God's nature. If he cursed creation because of man's sin that is one thing, but for God to purposely create in this manner is to make him a devil. That is to say it defines science in such a way that it would befriend heresy, not faith This article is in fact merely a species of the "Non Overlapping Magisteria" whereby Dawkins et al want to relegate belief in God into some kind of irrelevant burbling as long as they stay in their corners and do not bother the real truth seekers, ie the scientists. That is to say the terms are loaded, the thinking dishonest

Marc

May 28th, 2010
4:05 PM

This article reminds me of when Laplace was asked by Napoleon as to what role God played in the running of the cosmos and his reply of "Je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothese". It seems fairly self evident that a deity that would use evolution as the mechanism for creation does not involve itself in our lives, so what use is a religion based on this deity?

Terry Fitz

May 28th, 2010
3:05 PM

A scientist of the 21st century investigating the nature of Man in the context of the universe is very much like a dog sniffing at a Toyota. Both will gain some information, some of it relevant, some of it not. But it would be an arrogant dog, indeed, who would claim to be able to explain the Toyota to his fellow dogs. At least dogs have the grace and good sense to refrain from overstating their expertise. Shakespeare had it right. "There is more things in heaven and earth, Horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

George Beinhorn

May 28th, 2010
3:05 PM

Religion will receive the respect that is now granted to science when it becomes scientific in its method. That is, not tested by blind faith but by experience. The East is far ahead of the West in this regard. There, prayer and meditation are considered the laboratory tools of religious practice, and direct, personal experience the proof. The great master of yoga, Paramhansa Yogananda, said, "At the inner end of the human nervous system, the mind, interiorized, communes with God." A difficult, arduous experiment, and not one the blind believers or detached thought-twiddling atheists are likely to repeat anytime soon. The clearest presentation of the eastern view for westerners that I know of is J. Donald Walters's "Out of the Laybrinth: For Those Who Want to Believe, But Can't".

Jonn Mero

May 28th, 2010
2:05 PM

Science is as useful for religion as a big lump of lead is for a drowning man. And religion is just human folly wrapped in dogma.

Rick Bayan

May 28th, 2010
2:05 PM

If we believe in God as creator, we have to acknowledge that he created viruses, predators, plagues and earthquakes, along with a lot of good stuff. In other words, we have to conclude that God is essentially amoral. This (rather than evolution) is the greatest challenge to the Judeo-Christian faiths, and hardly anyone talks about it.

Jonn Mero

May 28th, 2010
2:05 PM

Ayala, the latest quisling in the scientific fraternity. But when you have no integrity it is easy to sell it for £1000000!

Gregory James

May 28th, 2010
2:05 PM

This is a silly (non) argument. The question isn't "Can one believe in evolution and God?" Of course one can. Many do. But the real question is whether one can hold belief in a deity AND hold a scientific understanding of the universe in one's head at the same time while being logically consistent. One can't.

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