My bro recently pointed to an excellent site "exploring the interface between evolutionary science and Christian theology."
Thank goodness for someone who's able to deal with the false either/or of Christianity or evolution. I have many students for whom this is a stumbling block that in my humble, scientifically un-learned opinion, need not be.
The road to faith is challenging enough without creating false challenges to it. I hope and pray that more of this kind of thinking might emerge and take center stage in evangelical Christianity...
3 comments:
I have to agree. As a UNC student with some KJV-thumping Southern Baptist schooling in my background now doing research in plant evolution, I have some sympathy for both extremes of this issue. The acrimony and mistrust run deep on all sides; 200 years of history can't be ignored.
In fact in general, the way the discussion is usually framed, and the assumptions implicit in the framing, is sufficient to preclude any real conversation. The loud voices (say, Richard Dawkins on one hand and Ken Hamm on the other) in the present are the extreme ones, and tend to villify as wafflers those willing to engage alternate viewpoints.
Even if evangelical attitudes towards evolution change, though, the faith v. science match can't be called quite yet. As Christians we still explicitly invoke a miracle as the focal point of our faith. But perhaps students coming of age would have one less reason to walk out on Christianity if we didn't see reasoned thinking and Genesis as locked in a fight to the death.
I'm as scientifically un-learned as anyone and with that in mind I'll stop short of making any absolute statements, but...I don't think it's honest to say there's no tension AT ALL between Genesis and Evolution.
I agree that Genesis should not be read as a science textbook. I think some parts of the creation account are not literal (such as the exact ordering of creation, and the six 24-hour days) but when it gets to Adam and Eve I have to pause.
As far as I can tell, there are two possible positions on Adam for the "there's no tension" crowd. The first is that Adam was a real individual who was created through evolution but whose ancestors "don't count" as humans (pretty rough on Adam's parents, just missing the cut like that). The second position is that Adam is not a single person, but an allegory for Man(kind). I think that's a stretch too. There's so much specificity in the text. We're told that Adam lived 930 years. He and Eve had Seth when he was 130 (if I remember rightly). Seth had a son named Enos. Then there are the mentions of Adam outside of Genesis, which I won't go into...
All I'm saying is that you don't have to be a hardcore young-earth literalist to see evolution as problematic.
thanks to both of you guys for your thoughts.
i'm sympathetic to both of you. andrew, i appreciate your perspective and grayson i certainly agree that there are some challenges to the creation story (especially with adam) and evolution.
I think my desire is for a greater, more thoughtful synthesis where it is possible and even probable that one exists. i feel like young-earthers plant the flag at some really speculative parts of genesis and decide to fight their battles there rather than at adam, which i think is a worthwhile conversation. i've heard evangelicals who take the bible seriously offer up many differing thoughts on what to do with adam.
it seems that the question of origins is still the key to the overall system. but again, i'm fairly un-learned in these things and just don't want to press students who are in process with this stuff to make a forced, non-essential decision to either believe in Christ or believe in Darwin. I don't think that it's quite as straight-forward as all that.
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