The Bible was not meant to teach science. It is a book (actually a compilation of many books) of God’s revelation to his people. The Bible was written by humans, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It was written in a way so that its audience could understand. In a pre-scientific world, it would have made no sense to explain the creation of the world in contemporary scientific terms.

Yes, one may believe in God and accept evolution if one understands that God is the maker of the universe. I do not see a conflict in this.

The universe is not the result of chance. It was created by a loving God over a period of time. The Book of Genesis describes this in terms of days. But who knows the mind of God? How long is a day to God, who lives in a realm in which time does not exist?

Some of the basic stories of Scripture are essential to our Judeo-Christian culture. The stories of creation, Abraham, Moses and the Exodus, Israel, Jesus, and the early Christian Church helped to shape our people more than any other stories. It doesn’t make sense for public education to ignore these stories. However, in a pluralistic society, freedom of religion must be respected. A teacher needs to remember this when she or he teaches the lessons. An instructor cannot in any way require or insist that a student believe the stories as an article of faith.

Should religious objections to fundamental principles of biology be discussed in public school science classes? Which religious creation stories should be taught in public schools? Can one believe in God and accept evolution?

Supporters of the Tennessee House bill requiring public school teachers to help students analyze and critique the strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories, especially in the areas of biological evolution and the chemical origins of life, claim that the bill only encourages critical thinking and does not promote any religious doctrine.  On the surface that defense of the bill is as disarming as it is disingenuous.  Who can object to critical thinking in a science class, or for that matter in any effort to understand anything? 

The disingenuous part is that critical thinking is part and parcel of the scientific method and does not need the Tennessee House to make it so.  And while the bill may not specifically promote creationism its intent is to advance the argument that religious stories about human beginnings are science and therefore worthy of equal consideration as a subject in science class.  Of course it is not any creation narrative from any sacred text or religious tradition but the one found in Genesis.

If Genesis is a literal account of creation and human beginnings rather than a valuable story out of the Western religious tradition about the human condition, then one must ask which creation story is fact for there are two different traditions.  In the first one man and woman are created at the same time in the image of God.  In the second story the man is created from dust and before vegetation, animals and the woman.  The woman is created from a rib of the man “for it is not good that man should be alone.”  In the first story the emphasis is on humanity’s stewardship of creation and the couple is told to “be fruitful and multiply.”  The second story is a morality tale about temptation, disobedience and consequences, and how they account for the way things are.

The Genesis stories of how things began are beautiful narratives, filled with majesty, power and poetic beauty.  This was all any human culture had for thousands of years, stories about how things began, the only way a people could answer the question about where they came from.  Then something happened that changed everything.  That was the development of science as a reliable way of understanding what the universe is made of, known as facts, and how things work which we call theories.  Of course science cannot tell us what the meaning of life is or its purpose.  The domain of religion is offering wisdom about the why of things.  The domain of science is offering knowledge about what the material world is and how it operates.

The Tennessee Scopes Trial of 1925 illustrated the pitfalls of confusing science and religion.  Evolution and Genesis speak to two different domains using different languages.  They are not in competition.  Yet they both share something important.  Science and religion at their best teach us humility.  Only when we close our minds and our hearts will they fail to stretch the horizons or our being.

Should religious objections to fundamental principles of biology be discussed in public school science classes? Which religious creation stories should be taught in public schools? Can one believe in God and accept evolution?

We should not fear the truth of science nor doubt the revelation of scripture. There is no conflict between evolution and faith, no contradiction between Darwin’s Origin of the Species and the Bible’s origin of creation.  One provides answers to the how and when, the other gives us purpose and meaning, answering the “who.” Both point to the wonder of the world, the beauty of life, and the immense complexity and yet incredible harmony of the universe.  Religion and science are not sworn enemies.

The sad reality is that there are many people inside and outside the church who have a terrible misconception about science and faith in general, and about evolution and scripture in particular.  It causes them to believe that one must choose between the two.  There are those who want to take people away from real science and put on some sort of bogus discussion about intelligent design or creationism.  Well, I believe God created.  But I also believe that scientists can help us understand that creation, as long as they are not hindered by non-scientific ideologies or theologies.

Teilhard de Chardin, the great French theologian who was also a scientist, “Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow.”  He chose, as a scientist and a Christian, to see God’s hand at work through evolution.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, while reading a book on physics in prison shortly before he died in Nazi Germany, wrote; “It has again brought hom to me quite clearly how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge.  We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know.”  To find God in what we know is to trust that the more we come to understand how nature works, how biology works, how chemistry works, how genetics works, how evolution works, the more we will understand God.

Will all of that reveal all that there is to know of God?  Of course not.  That’s why we have scripture. Things that we will never learn from science are found here, just as things we can never learn from scripture can be found in science.  And when read together, not in competition or in conflict, but in harmony, creation and evolution, faith and science, will teach us more about God than we will ever learn alone.

So let us embrace both.  And maybe God rested on the 7th day not because God was finished but because God has just begun.

Should religious objections to fundamental principles of biology be discussed in public school science classes? Which religious creation stories should be taught in public schools? Can one believe in God and accept evolution?

It is a most curious thing for such a bill to be introduced into our legislature and causes me to question, “Who is driving this bill?” Does it indeed have a religious intent?

I personally have no objections to looking at both the scientific theories of the beginning of life as well as the creation stories of all other faiths as long as it promotes critical thinking in the classroom and all of the information that we have at our disposal, regarding our beginnings, are objectively presented and discussed. The danger is when only one view is promoted and presented as fact, when after all, all we have are theories and our stories.

I do believe that one can believe in God and the evolving of life…holding together Darwin’s, Evolution of the Species, a strictly scientific theory and our creation faith stories.

As a woman of the Christian faith, I believe our own biblical account of beginnings puts forth also an “evolving creation-in-process” with a Divine power behind it.

Should religious objections to fundamental principles of biology be discussed in public school science classes? Which religious creation stories should be taught in public schools? Can one believe in God and accept evolution?

Contemporary Catholic theology, hopefully learning from past overreactions and misjudgments, sees no conflict between faith and science. However the discoveries of science do demand change in the way we interpret Scripture and picture the most fundamental reality. We can envision an evolving cosmos, God as involved in the very processes of evolution.  Understanding Genesis 1-11 as theological poetry, not a science textbook, leaves us free to teach the best of scientific knowledge at any given time. Because of the intricacy and mysteriousness of reality, scientists are more likely to be believers than in the past. Moreover our dynamic understanding of reality seems to be more harmonious with the deepest insights of the Christian mystical tradition, that God is ever near creation, even within creation, drawing it into greater union with its Creator.

Should religious objections to fundamental principles of biology be discussed in public school science classes?  Which religious creation stories should be taught in public schools?

In answer to the first question: discussed, perhaps (probably unavoidable in fielding questions from students).  But taught, no.  Which takes me to the second question: no religious creation text ought to be taught in a public school science/biology class.  As multiple courts have already ruled, creationism is religious doctrine and as such is illegal to teach in a public school.  If religious texts are taught in public schools it should be in elective religion classes (see my previous post on 3/24/11, “Education, Not Evangelization”).

That said, the complaints of the Tennessee Science Teachers Association (TSTA) and other critics are unfounded and paranoid.  The bill that was passed in the Tennessee House last week (HB 368) says that “teachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught” (emphasis added).  How could the TSTA possibly have problems with this language?  After all, the existing scientific theories being taught in high school biology classes everywhere (including Tennessee) are evolutionary, not creationist.  The bill is neither doing away with Darwinian evolution nor introducing Judeo-Christian (or Muslim or Hindu) creationism.  In fact, the bill states further that, “This section only protects the teaching of scientific information, and shall not be construed to promote any religious or non-religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs or non-beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or non-religion” (emphasis added).  “Non-religious doctrine” would also include the Intelligent Design (ID) movement.  Critics of ID often wrongly accuse ID of being a backdoor attempt to introduce creationism, a “religious doctrine.”  But not all ID advocates are religious whereas all creation advocates are.

The House-approved bill now on its way to the Tennessee Senate does not allow teachers to introduce as science ideas from non-religious or religious origins apart from the existing state-approved curriculum.  Instead it affords teachers protections to proceed without fear of reprisals if they point out weaknesses in the Darwinian platform while still teaching Darwinian evolution.  If you have a problem with this, what is it about academic freedom you don’t understand?  Evolution continues to be taught, and only evolution.  The bill protects teachers who choose to question not scientific but philosophical conclusions or premises in the science already taught, for Darwinian evolution accepts Naturalism, which is not a scientific but a philosophical viewpoint.  And philosophy is fair game in the science classroom.  Thus the bill, as I understand it, is permitting teachers to separate science from scientism.  If this is not allowable then I maintain indoctrination is happening in our science classrooms, not teaching that cultivates thinking.

The issue here actually strikes at our culture’s assessment of what passes for knowledge.  Science welcomes inquiry and critique because science knows its conclusions are backed by firm empirical evidence.  A scientist who can thus prove his theses can take on any challenge confidently because the data supports his conclusions.  But scientism is a philosophical position making claims about what science hasn’t proven but wants to pass along as proven knowledge anyway.  The biology teachers who help their students recognize the difference are promoting true critical thinking skills without compromising anything scientifically.  I respectfully ask those members of TSTA who are criticizing this bill: what is there to be afraid of if you are standing confidently on empirically verifiable science?

Can one believe in God and accept evolution?

It depends on what one means by evolution.  It is really crucial we define our terms here. Evolution simply means “change over time.”  Obviously there is change within existing species over time.  This is sometimes called microevolution and accounts for observable adaptations within existing species.  This understanding of evolution is uncontroversial to evangelical Christians.  Macroevolution—change from species to species—is controversial.  It issues from a Darwinian construct which is built on two main naturalistic pillars: the first being the universal common descent of all living species, and the second being that natural selection acting on random mutation is sufficient to produce all the complexity and diversity of life that we see (see Richard Dawkins’ “Blind Watchmaker Thesis”).  As a believer in the triune God who was there “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4) and left a lot of clues to His existence and presence—indeed, visited us in the person of His son—I accept microevolution but not macroevolution.  There are many scientists who question macroevolution on good scientific grounds but are not Christians.  It’s not only religious people who have problems with macroevolution.  There is no doctrine of origins that everyone accepts.

What if we split the difference and embrace what is called “theistic evolution”— God created but through natural selection?  The problem here for those of evangelical conviction is this: where is the good evidence for a mindless material process producing intelligence and complexity and diversity such that it makes sense to merge it with the creation-and-design worldview of the Bible (holding to which does not, by the way, necessitate fundamentalist interpretations like young earth theory)?  Does it make rational sense for a Christian to try to blend or balance a purposeless process (Darwinian evolution) with a purposeful God?  I find theistic evolution self-refuting because it is intrinsically contradictory.  Natural selection does not require a creator; the creator does not require natural selection.  The late Madalyn Murray O’Hair, founder of American Atheists, used to complain that agnostics were “atheists without guts.”  Similarly, proponents of theistic evolution have bought into the fallacy that rejecting Darwinism equates to intellectual suicide.  It does not, no more than rejecting theism equates to O’Hair’s brand of angry atheism.  The pursuit of truth, which complements the interests of good science, good philosophy, and good theology, seeks to account for “the reality that is” according to the most plausible explanations.

Should religious objections to fundamental principles of biology be discussed in public school science classes?

I believe this a valid subject to discuss in the context of studying world religions and theology.  Science class should be dedicated for the study of science.  Emphasis should be made in science of what is a fact and what is a “theory.”

Which religious creation stories should be taught in public schools?

Again, in the context of studying different religions, it would be appropriate to review creation stories and beliefs of different faiths. School is about education and learning. Expanding the knowledge base of students and opening their horizons. It is not about indoctrinating them into a belief system. That is the function of worship centers.

Can one believe in God and accept evolution?

The simple answer to that is: YES!  If you believe in the Creator, then it does not really matter what the method of creation is. It is up to Him.God can create the universe through a big bang or by a word. He can create mankind any way He chooses.