We could argue endlessly about such things, and not pointlessly; my point here is simply to be clear about terminology. In recent years, however, some proponents of TE have endorsed alternative labels for their position s. The most prominent example is Francis Collins, the geneticist who started BioLogos.
I recommend his book of that title to anyone who wants an authoritative analysis of both biblical and scientific aspects of the origins controversy. The main ideas are clearly presented in his web lectures. I will have more to say about Murphy, a very important voice, in a subsequent post. Because the term is broad and a bit hazy, more should be said about it.
Unlike ID, however, theology is openly discussed—and competing theologies of God, nature, and humanity are openly advocated, not left implicit. This column presents one type of TE, a type favored by many evangelical scientists and scholars.
For example, the people I will discuss all accept as far as I can tell the Incarnation and Resurrection—that is, they are Trinitarian Christians who believe that Jesus was fully divine and fully human and that the disciples went to the right tomb, only to find it empty, before encountering the risen Christ in diverse places. They also believe in creation ex nihilo , the classical view illustrated at the start of this column that God brought the universe into existence out of nothing. There are other types of TE, some of which are not in my opinion sufficiently biblical, or even sufficiently Christian, to be part of this series.
Let knowledge, not ignorance, be our guide. This reflects not only modern scientific knowledge, but also more importantly modern biblical scholarship. Peter Enns and some other evangelical scholars have recently stressed this point, initiating a firestorm in the evangelical academic community that, so far, has confirmed my view that evangelicals in general are just not ready to deal with this , even though it is consistent with the classical notion of accommodation.
My own comments about the magnitude of the problem, written before the firestorm started, can be found here. Commonality obviously lies in the attitude, not the topic. See above. In principle, scientific theories neither support nor threaten the Bible.
This is meant to echo what we said about the Framework View. It is not necessarily true that all TEs accept the Framework View or something like it, but many do. Again, this sounds like the Framework View—or, at least, it should. Belief in God the creator is consistent with science, and even supported by some aspects of science; but, it is not a substitute for scientific explanations.
Thus, the Bible contains ancient science—science that would be factually erroneous if we took it at face value as part of what God intended to teach us. Each, when true to its own authentic capabilities, provides us with valid insights into the nature of reality from different perspectives. It is the task of individuals and communities of individuals to integrate these two types of insights to obtain an adequate and coherent view of reality.
Everyone reading this column originated in the union of two cells, one from each parent. Everyone reading this is also created in the image of God. Each of these two sentences is true, but the truths they proclaim are of a different order. The first neither implies nor negates the second.
You can see where this is going: for TEs, the truth in their view that we are descended from other primates neither implies nor negates the truth that we are created in the image of God.
Rios quite properly stresses the work of two important British scientists from the last century, quantum chemist Charles A.
Coulson and his friend, brain theorist Donald M. MacKay , one of the most prolific and thoughtful Christian thinkers of his generation. Physicist-theologian John Polkinghorne can also be understood as a proponent of Complementarity, though I would not characterize his position solely in those terms.
His overall vision captures the essence of Complementarity: theology complements the limited picture of reality given to us by science; it goes beyond science, providing a larger metaphysical framework within which both nature and the science of nature are more intelligible see below for more. Many of his books are conceptually deep, discouraging casual readers, but they are also eloquent and very creative, making the hard work of reading them time well spent.
There simply is no good substitute for diving into them yourself. A theology of nature starts from the assumption that God exists and then seeks to understand the whole of nature in light of this. Polkinghorne does this in many of his books see the review linked above for some specific examples. Many Christian authors since the patristic period have done this, often citing the first chapter of Romans, though some of the most important have had doubts about the value of the whole enterprise; two prominent examples would be Blaise Pascal see the article by George Murphy here and John Henry Newman.
This example, along with countless others points to scientific belief that the Bible is an unreliable source, one that specific scientific information should not be taken from.
The Bible does suggest one evolutionary change in a physical trait, the trait of longevity. Throughout the Bible, the life spans at the beginning were around years and sexual maturity ranged from decreased, for it was a miracle for Sarah and Abraham to have a son, and she was only 89 years old.
Evolutionists state that creationists have only one source from which they are arguing from, and their arguments are a way of covering up what they do not know or understand about the scientific world. The real theory of creationism is based and centered on faith, faith in God and what God has provided. The evolutionists take a different stand on this topic of life. Today this would be referred to as self-organization with the aid of catalysts. The experiments done by Miller and Urey support the statement that the earth was awaiting for its beginning on its own time.
Organic molecules, proteins, plant life, and animal life evolved along with way. Fossil evidence was discovered that showed life started immediately on a cooled earth. Fossils show a variety of species and show species evolving into other species intermediate or transitional species. For example in the western United States, scientists were able to trace the modern single-hoofed horse to a dog-sized creature, Eohippus , which ran around on its five toes. Also, according to animal and human development, all organisms start out life in the same form, eventually specializing into their specific species.
For example, the human develops similar to a reptile with a few modifications that make the human species unique: yolk sac to fish eggs to having a tail to a 3- chambered heart like a reptile to a 4 -chambered heart to reptilian double jaw joint to skin folds gill slits to covering of hair to having human characteristics.
One argument against fossil evidence is the idea that fossil dating could be inaccurate. Fossil dating is done using Carbon 14, but for it to be of value, the amount of C must have always been a constant.
If the intensity of radiation specifically cosmic radiation differed in any way, then the C dating system would be flawed. Scientists discovered fossils throughout the various layers of the earth according to the time period the organisms corresponded with. The bottom layers contained species associated with the beginning of the earth, while the top layers contain more recent and advanced species, especially mammals.
Evolutionists feel that these findings strongly argue for evolution. They feel that if God had created the earth and everything on it, all fossil remains would be mixed together. Creationists argue that the reason for the fossils being distributed the way they are is because of the Great Flood.
Most of the time creationists avoid this topic because of the lack of evidence they have against it. The controversy continues whether gradual evolution took place, and if it did occur, why was it not evident in fossil records. Another theory that some scientists are using to explain the beginning of the earth is the Big Bang Theory. Space, time, matter, and energy existed only after the Big Bang. The reasoning for this theory is based on our knowledge of how the universe is based on the analysis of electromagnetic radiation, providing data that shows the universe is expanding.
Two astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson detected cosmic microwave background radiation in the ground, which is later the primeval light and heat from the Big Bang. This heat and light provide the formula for the start of life. This theory has been controversial among the scientific community as well as the religious community, but it was substantial enough to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Another puzzling question that is brought up among evolutionists when debating with creationists is, what about the dinosaurs?
There is no place in the bible that talks about the dinosaur age, when these huge reptilian creatures roamed the earth without human interference and then suddenly disappeared. Paleontologists and archeologists estimate the dinosaurs to have lived around 65 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period.
There are a number of speculations for their extinction: the climate became too extreme one way or the other, the animals fed on newly evolved poisonous plants, new species evolved and ate the eggs of the dinosaurs, or an asteroid or comet fell to the earth, destroying everything on the earth. These large scale extinctions are due a companion star coming close to the sun, disrupting the orbits and causing comets and asteroids to hit the earth.
Yet, another approach to the creation of the earth relates to how we view time. In the Bible, each day is assigned a new creation, but is time today the same as it was at the time of Creation?
Some scientists believe that each day of Creation is related to a geological time period. This is indeed so. Take, above all, the question of racial issues and relationships. In the middle of the nineteenth century in the South, biblical literalism was very popular because it was thought to justify slavery Noll Even though one can read the Christian message as being strongly against slavery — the Sermon on the Mount hardly recommends making people into the property of others — the Bible elsewhere seems to endorse slavery.
Remember, when the escaped slave came to Saint Paul, the apostle told him to return to his master and to obey him. Remnants of this kind of thinking persisted in Creationist circles well into the twentieth century. Price, for instance, was quite convinced that blacks are degenerate whites.
By the time of Genesis Flood , however, the civil rights movement was in full flower, and Whitcomb and Morris trod very carefully. They explained in detail that the Bible gives no justification for treating blacks as inferior. The story of the son and grandson of Noah being banished to a dark-skinned future was not part of their reading of the Holy Scriptures.
Literalism may be the unvarnished word of God, but literalism is as open to interpretation as scholarly readings of Plato or Aristotle. Second, as noted above, both for internal and external reasons, Creationists realized that they needed to tread carefully in outright opposition to evolution of all kinds. We find in fact then that although Creationists were and are adamantly opposed to unified common descent and to the idea of natural change being adequate for all the forms we see today, from early on they were accepting huge amounts of what can only truly be called evolution!
This said, Creationists were convinced that this change occurs much more rapidly than most conventional evolutionists would allow. Macroevolution is what makes reptiles reptiles, and mammals mammals. This cannot be a natural process but required miracles during the days of Creation.
Third, and perhaps most significant of all, never think that Creationism is purely an epistemological matter — a matter of facts and their understanding. Moral claims have always been absolutely fundamental. Nearly all Creationists in the Christian camp are what is known theologically as premillennialists, believing that Jesus will come soon and reign over the world before the Last Judgement.
They are opposed to postmillennialists who think that Jesus will come later, and amillennialists who are inclined to think that perhaps we are already living in a Jesus-dominated era.
Postmillennialists put a premium on our getting things ready for Jesus — hence, we should engage in social action and the like. Premillennialists think there is nothing we ourselves can do to better the world, so we had best get ourselves and others in a state ready for Jesus. This means individual behavior and conversion of others. For premillennialists therefore, and this includes almost all Creationists, the great moral drives are to things like family sanctity which today encompasses anti-abortion , sexual orthodoxy especially anti-homosexuality , biblically sanctioned punishments very pro-capital punishment , strong support for Israel because of claims in Revelation about the Jews returning to Israel before End Times , and so forth.
It is absolutely vital to see how this moral agenda is an integral part of American Creationism, as much as Floods and Arks. Ruse discusses these matters in much detail. Genesis Flood enjoyed massive popularity among the faithful, and led to a thriving Creation Science Movement, where Morris particularly and his coworkers and believers — notably Duane T.
Particularly effective was their challenging of evolutionists to debate, where they would employ every rhetorical trick in the book, reducing the scientists to fury and impotence, with bold statements provocatively made most often by Gish about the supposed nature of the universe Gilkey ; Ruse ed.
This all culminated eventually in a court case in Arkansas. By the end of the s, Creationists were passing around draft bills, intended for state legislatures, that would allow — insist on — the teaching of Creationism in state-supported public schools. In the biology classes of such schools, that is. By this time it was realized that, thanks to Supreme Court rulings on the First Amendment to the Constitution that which prohibits the establishment of state religion , it was not possible to exclude the teaching of evolution from such schools.
The trick was to get Creationism — something that prima facie rides straight through the separation of church and state — into such schools. The idea of Creation Science is to do this.
The claim is that, although the science parallels Genesis, as a matter of scientific fact, it stands alone as good science. In , these drafts found a taker in Arkansas, where such a bill was passed and signed into law — as it happens, by a legislature and governor that thought little of what they were doing until the consequences were drawn to their attention. William Clinton was governor from to , and again from to his winning of the presidency, in The law was passed during the interregnum.
The theologian Langdon Gilkey, the geneticist Francisco Ayala, the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, and as the philosophical representative Michael Ruse appeared as expert witnesses, arguing that Creationism has no place in state supported biology classes.
Hardly surprisingly, evolution won. The judge ruled firmly that Creation Science is not science, it is religion, and as such has no place in public classrooms.
In this whole matter was decided decisively in the same way, by the Supreme Court, in a similar case involving Louisiana. See Ruse ed. Of course, in real life nothing is ever that simple, and Arkansas was certainly not the end of matters. One of the key issues in the trial was less theological or scientific, but philosophical. Paradoxically, the ACLU had significant doubts about using a philosophical witness and only decided at the last minute to bring Michael Ruse to the stand.
The Creationists had started to refer to the ideas of the eminent, Austrian-born, British-residing philosopher Karl Popper As is well known, Popper claimed that for something to be genuinely scientific it has to be falsifiable. By this, Popper meant that genuine science puts itself up to check against the real world.
If the predictions of the science hold true, then it lives to fight another day. If the predictions fail, then the science must be rejected — or at least revised. The Creationists seized on this and argued that they had the best authority to reject evolution, or at least to judge it no more of a science than Creationism. To his credit, Popper revised his thinking on Darwinian evolutionary theory and grew to see and admit that it was a genuine scientific theory; see Popper Part of the testimony in Arkansas was designed to refute this argument, and it was shown that in fact evolution does indeed make falsifiable claims.
As we have already seen, natural selection is no tautology. If one could show that organisms did not exhibit differential reproduction — to take the example given above, that all proto-humans had the same number of offspring — then selection theory would certainly be false. Likewise, if one could show that human and dinosaur remains truly did occur in the same time strata of the fossil record, one would have powerful proof against the thinking of modern evolutionists.
This argument succeeded in court — the judge accepted that evolutionary thinking is falsifiable. Conversely, he accepted that Creation Science is never truly open to check.
On-the-spot, ad hoc hypotheses proliferate as soon as any of its claims are challenged. It is not falsifiable and hence not genuine science. They argued that in fact there is no hard and fast rule for distinguishing science from other forms of human activity, and that hence in this sense the Creationists might have a point Ruse ed.
Not that people like Laudan were themselves Creationists. They thought Creationism false. Their objection was rather to trying to find some way of making evolution and not Creationism into a genuine science. Defenders of the anti-Creationism strategy taken in Arkansas argued, with reason and law, that the United States Constitution does not bar the teaching of false science.
It bars the teaching of non-science, especially non-science which is religion by another name. Hence, if the objections of people like Laudan were taken seriously, the Creationists might have a case to make for the balanced treatment of evolution and Creationism. Popperian falsifiability may be a somewhat rough and ready way of separating science and religion, but it is good enough for the job at hand, and in law that is what counts.
Evolutionists were successful in court. As we shall see, the task of leadership then got passed to younger people, especially the biochemist Michael Behe and the philosopher-mathematician William Dembski. For better or for worse, one sees the heavy hand of Thomas Kuhn here, and his claim in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that the change from one paradigm to another is akin to a political revolution, not ultimately fueled by logic but more by extra-scientific factors, like emotions and simple preferences.
In the Arkansas trial, Kuhn was as oft mentioned by the prosecutors as was Popper. The former is the scientific stance of trying to explain by laws and by refusing to introduce miracles. A methodological naturalist would insist on explaining all phenomena, however strange, in natural terms. Elijah setting fire to the water-drenched sacrifice, for instance, would be explained in terms of lightning striking or some such thing.
The latter is the philosophical stance that insists that there is nothing beyond the natural — no God, no supernatural, no nothing. According to naturalism, what is ultimately real is nature, which consists of the fundamental particles that make up what we call matter and energy, together with the natural laws that govern how those particles behave.
Johnson thinks of himself as a theistic realist, and hence as such in opposition to metaphysical realism. Hence, the evolutionist is the methodological realist, is the metaphysical realist, is the opponent of the theistic realist — and as far as Johnson is concerned, the genuine theistic realist is one who takes a pretty literalistic reading of the Bible. So ultimately, it is all less a matter of science and more a matter of attitudes and philosophy.
Evolution and Creationism are different world pictures, and it is conceptually, socially, pedagogically, and with good luck in the future legally wrong to treat them differently.
Theistic Realism is the only genuine form of Christianity. But does any of this really follow? The evolutionist would claim not. Metaphysical naturalism, having been defined as something which precludes theism, has been set up as a philosophy with a religion-like status.
It necessarily perpetuates the conflict between religion and science. But as Johnson himself notes, many people think that they can be methodological naturalists and theists. Methodological naturalism is not a religion equivalent. Is this possible, at least in a consistent way with intellectual integrity? To sort out this debate, let us agree to what is surely the case that if you are a methodological naturalist, today you are going to accept evolution and conversely to think that evolution supports your cause.
Today, methodological naturalism and evolution are a package deal. Take one, and you take the other. Reject one, and you reject the other. You cannot accept Genesis literally and evolution. That is a fact. In other words, there can be no accommodation between Creationism and evolution. However, what if you think that theologically speaking there is much to be said for a nice shade of grey? What if you think that much of the Bible, although true, should be interpreted in a metaphorical manner?
What if you think you can be an evolutionist, and yet take in the essential heart of the Bible? What price consistency and methodological naturalism then? It speaks of the world as a meaningful creation of God however caused and of a foreground drama which takes place within this world. And clearly at once we are plunged into the first of the big problems, namely that of miracles — those of Jesus himself the turning of water into wine at the marriage at Cana , his return to life on the third day, and especially if you are a Catholic such ongoing miracles as transubstantiation and those associated, in response to prayer, with the intervention of saints.
There are a number of options here for the would-be methodological naturalist. You might simply say that such miracles occurred, that they did involve violations of law, but that they are outside your science.
They are simply exceptions to the rule. End of argument. A little abrupt, but not flatly inconsistent with calling yourself a theist. You say normally God works through law but, for our salvation, miracles outside law were necessary.
Or you might say that miracles occur but that they are compatible with science, or at least not incompatible. Jesus was in a trance and the cure for cancer after the prayers to Saint Bernadette was according to rare, unknown, but genuine laws.
This position is less abrupt, although you might worry whether this strategy is truly Christian, in letter or in spirit. It seems a little bit of a cheat to say that the Jesus taken down from the cross was truly not dead, and the marriage at Cana starts to sound like outright fraud.
Of course, you can start stripping away at more and more miracles, downgrading them to regular occurrences blown up and magnified by the Apostles, but in the end this rather defeats the whole purpose. The third option is simply to refuse to get into the battle at all. Miracles are just not the sorts of things which conflict with or confirm natural laws. Traditional Christians have always argued this in some respects.
Take the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. The turning of the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Christ is simply not something open to empirical check.
You cannot disconfirm religion or prove science by doing an analysis of the host. Likewise even with the resurrection of Jesus. After the Crucifixion, his mortal body was irrelevant. The point was that the disciples felt Jesus in their hearts, and were thus emboldened to go forth and preach the gospel. Does one simply go to Lourdes in hope of a lucky lottery ticket to health or for the comfort that one knows one will get, even if there is no physical cure?
In the words of the philosophers, it is a category mistake to put miracles and laws in the same set. Hume , is the starting place for these discussions. Although somewhat dated, Flew and MacIntyre is still invaluable. Paradoxically, both of these then-atheist authors came to see the light and returned to the Christianity of their childhoods! What has Johnson to say to all of this? What Johnson does say is more in the way of sneer or dismissal than argument.
At this point, the evolutionist will probably throw up his or her hands in despair. In actual fact, many significant theologians of our age think that, with respect to miracles, science and religion have no conflict Barth ; Gilkey They would add that faith without difficulty and opposition is not true faith, either.
Such thinkers, often conservative theologically, are inspired by Martin Buber to find God in the center of personal relationships, I-Thou, rather in science, I-It. For them there is something degrading in the thought of Jesus as a miracle man, a sort of fugitive from the Ed Sullivan Show. What happened with the five thousand? Some hokey-pokey over a few loaves and fishes? What they deny, here or elsewhere, is the need to search for exception to law.
There are those who call themselves theists, who think that one can be a methodological naturalist, where today this would imply evolution Ruse Johnson has not argued against them. Let us move on now from the more philosophical sorts of issues. Building on the more critical approach of Johnson, who is taken to have cleared the foundations as it were, there is a group of people who are trying to offer an alternative to evolution.
These are people who think that a full understanding of the organic world demands the invocation of some force beyond nature, a force which is purposeful or at least purpose creating. For the moment, continue to defer questions about the relationship between Intelligent Design Theory and more traditional forms of Creationism. There are two parts to this approach: an empirical and a philosophical. Let us take them in turn, beginning with he who has most fully articulated the empirical case for a designer, the already-mentioned, Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe.
Now turn to the world of biology, and in particular turn to the micro-world of the cell and of mechanisms that we find at that level. Take bacteria which use a flagellum, driven by a kind of rotary motor, to move around.
Every part is incredibly complex, and so are the various parts, combined. Near the surface of the cell, just as needed is a thickening, so that the filament can be connected to the rotor drive. All, way too complex to have come into being in a gradual fashion. Only a one-step process will do, and this one-step process must involve some sort of designing cause. Behe is careful not to identify this designer with the Christian God, but the implication is that it is a force from without the normal course of nature.
Irreducible complexity spells design. Irreducible complexity is supposedly something which could not have come through unbroken law meaning law that has no special divine guidance , and especially not through the agency of natural selection.
Critics claim that Behe shows a misunderstanding of the very nature and workings of natural selection. No one is denying that in natural processes there may well be parts which, if removed, would lead at once to the non-functioning of the systems in which they occur. The point however is not whether the parts now in place could not be removed without collapse, but whether they could have been put in place by natural selection. Consider an arched bridge, made from cut stone, without cement, held in place only by the force of the stones against each other.
Does the exhibition identify the gaps in the scientific understanding of the origin of humans, gaps that can suggest that God played a role? It is the unresolved questions about nature that mark the fertile areas for new research, propelling the sciences forward -- including those related to human origin studies. Science, as a particular way of knowing, restricts itself to offering natural explanations for the natural world.
Supporting materials being developed for the exhibition by the BSIC will help visitors discover resources from various religious traditions that explore religious views on the relation of God and nature. Religious traditions vary in their response to evolution.
For example, Asian religious worldviews do not assume an all-powerful creator God and often see the world religiously as interconnected and dynamic. They tend, therefore, to engage scientific accounts of evolution with little difficulty. However, for Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions, the affirmation of a creator God in relation to the world has a central place.
At the same time, some of these persons are committed to the view that there are a few specific acts of divine creative intervention: namely, at the very beginning of the universe, at the origin of life, and at the origin of humankind. However, as previously noted, others in the monotheistic traditions hold that God creates entirely by means of evolutionary processes without any intervention, even in the case of humans.
There are many though, who adopt a separation approach to science and religion. For these individuals there is no need to raise religious questions in light of the science of human origins. Skip to main content. Connie Bertka and Dr. Science and Religion Visitors to the David H. What is science? What is religion?
What is the difference between science and religion? How are science and religion similar? How can science and religion be related? Evolution and Creationism The National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution has a responsibility due to its charter to provide the public with an opportunity to explore for themselves the most recent scientific understandings of the natural world, including human origins.
What is Intelligent Design and does the exhibit address it? How do people incorporate evolution into their religious worldview? Chickens, chimpanzees, and you - what do they have in common? Grandparents are unique to humans How strong are we? Humans are handy! Humans: the running ape Our big hungry brain! Our eyes say it! The early human tool kit The short-haired human! What does gut got to do with it? Why do paleoanthropologists love Lucy?
Why do we have wisdom teeth? Ryan Jamie L.
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