An interesting article by Karl W. Gilberson in the latest Books & Culture expounds the oft-stated charge that evangelicals are wary of, if not hostile toward, science. Gilberson is the author of four books on science and religion, the most recent of which is Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution (HarperOne). Funny how incongruent those beliefs seem like to the average Christian, huh?
In his review of a new science anthology, in a piece entitled No Science, Please, Gilberson concludes:
Two centuries after evidence began to mount up that the earth is ancient, Christian bookstores feature titles arguing that all this science is wrong. A hundred and fifty years after Darwin, many evangelicals continue to reject evolution, even as data from the genome project establishes the near certainty of Darwin’s central idea of common ancestry. Young Earth creationists reject definitive evidence for the big bang theory.
Many evangelical scientists have encountered great hostility when they have tried to help their fellow Christians come to terms with controversial scientific ideas. Richard Colling has been on the hot seat at Olivet Nazarene University for over a year because some powerful fundamentalists don’t like his acceptance of evolution. Darrel Falk encountered similar problems in the 1990s. Howard Van Till fought this battle for years at Calvin College and finally left his faith tradition altogether. And so it goes. (I have experienced a bit of this myself since the publication of Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution.) The sad truth is that science writers in the evangelical world are discouraged from plying their craft. Those of us who teach at Christian colleges write with the knowledge that our books may get us fired.
The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing has only one contribution by an identifiable evangelical, Russell Stannard, and he is British. This is disappointing but is not, I think, the result of any untoward editorial selection process. America has a population of evangelicals larger than any country in Europe. There are more than 200 evangelical schools with science divisions. And yet we don’t have a single science writer with the stature to get included in this volume. Shame on us. (emphasis mine)
And all this time I thought the enemy was radical atheists. Could it be the Church is the problem?
Believing in evolution does not demand one disbelieves in God. Of course, many believe in evolution as a substitute for belief in God. Still, it is quite possible to believe the universe was created, and that that Creator employed a mechanism like evolution. Yes, Man is unique among the animals, and science, society, and Scripture all bear that out. As hard as it is for some to swallow, biological evolution and the Bible can coexist.
Nevertheless, I was surprised by the level of “hostility” Gilberson describes as existing between evangelical scientists and the Church. Is it true that “science writers in the evangelical world are discouraged from plying their craft”? Is Young Earth Creatonism that central to the Faith? Is the idea that men and monkeys share a common ancestor completely heretical? Call me dense, but I’ve never been that threatened by the belief that the earth is millions of years old and I’m a bit of a gorilla…
I take the opposite view. Is Darwinism so central to the pursuit of science that Evangelicals in the scientific community are shut out?
At Iowa State University, a well-regarded physicist was denied tenure (i.e. eliminated from Academia) by a “scientific” witch-hunt led by, get this, a religious studies professor.
His heresy? Proposing testable theories of Intelligent Design. Now, how a religious studies professor (and, yes, atheist) has any standing over someone in the physics department, I’ll never know.
So yeah, there is a big, big problem with the lack of evangelicals with any “standing” in the scientific community. But it isn’t the Church’s fault. It is the fault of exclusive, and anti-religious (to the point of being religiously anti-scientific) clique of the “scientific” community.
And that’s the way they like it.
The problem with freely passing on the myth of man descending from monkeys is that it is:
a) unproven
b) untestable
c) untenable
d) ahistorical
e) “sciencey” but not legitimate science
Darwinism may be the feel-good story of the scientific century, but, the longer it drags its shabby self through the new millennia, the stupider it seems.
The fact that it has become a litmus test for being allowed into the right clubs for scientific funding (which is really all the peer review system is) is a joke, and, at heart, an assault on reason.
I have no problem with a scientific controversy over the origins of man, but there is nothing scientific about the exclusion of ancient creation myths in favor of “modern” creation myths.
Future generations will judge our society to be one populated by barbarians because of at least two reasons: our portrayal of infanticide as a societal virtue and our thuggish adherence to an unverified story about magic soup and transforming monkeys.
The two happen to be related, but that is another story for another time.
xpaul, WOW! You thought of things I never would have (well, except for the infanticide issue). Very interesting!
Mike, I was going to weigh in on the last part of your post, particularly this question: Is the idea that men and monkeys share a common ancestor completely heretical? I don’t know about “heretical,” but I do think this one point is something we can know from Scripture since God is very clear about the process of creating Man. He spoke the other animals into being and created Man out of the dust of the earth (substance He had earlier spoken into being) and breathed His breath into us. Further, He said each of the animals was made “after its kind” and that Man was made in His image. So, yeah, I think there is a fundamental difference in how an evolutionist and a creationist look at Man. I’ve even come to the conclusion that the evolutionary view of Man is to blame for Man’s low view of … well, Man.
Here’s the other thing, the one I don’t see why many more Christians don’t adopt as a workable theory: If God could create a full-grown man when He created Adam, why couldn’t He create a full-grown mountain? Of course evolutionists, thinking the earth itself needed a process to develop into the Earth, would have to conclude this took a set number of (billions of) years. But why couldn’t God speak a mountain into existence, with rock strata and fossils in place, just as Adam had a fully adult body though he never was breast fed or potty trained or went through puberty? Why is it such an unimaginable thing that the earth was also fully developed upon creation?
Perhaps God did take the world through a lengthy process to complete creation. He could have. But no one knows! When He spoke creation into being each “day” may have been the blink of His eye or billions of years or a thousand years or twenty-four of our now hours. We don’t know.
Science can say what the world looks like, but to assume it is so because it looks that way to men today is to rule out the possibility of an omnipotent God who can do what He so chooses.
Is that “unscientific” of me? I don’t think so. I have a theory that is as good as any evolutionary theory. Better, actually, because I don’t ignore the second law of thermodynamics in the process, my theory is based on authority outside of myself, it names the Cause, and addresses purpose and personality and what happens after all this is gone. Evolution can’t do any of that.
Becky
Xd, no question that secular universities are militant toward evangelical scientists, really anyone who even hints at an ID hypothesis. Several weeks ago, we watched Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (in fact, you can watch it online if you’re a Netflix member). Despite its occasional propagandist feel, it was really effective. Have you watched it? The entire basis of Expelled was to highlight credible scientists who have been ostracized by the scientific community for daring to flirt with Intelligent Design. So I’m in agreement with you about that.
The point of this post is to highlight the reverse, that Christian scientists who embrace some form of evolution are possibly ostracized from evangelical circles. If that’s true, it’s worth considering whether or not the absence of respected evangelical voices in the science community isn’t, in fact, due to the pressures they get from the Church, not the University. It’s hard for us Christians to effectively whine about exclusion from the country club, if a similar exclusion is happening on our own seminary campuses.
Thanks for the comments!
Becky, great thoughts.
Some of the biblical evidence for evolution — and again, I’m not necessarily claiming to hold this belief — would be: The correct sequential ordering of creation events — matter, heavenly bodies, land, air and water masses, vegetation, animals, then humans. This sequence jives with evolutionary timelines. According to Scripture, life also starts in the ocean. Also, Gen 1:24 says, “Then God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth the living creatures…'” Notice: The creatures are “brought forth” from the earth. How does one bring a hare from sod? Either way, animals and man do share this “earthy” origin, inasmuch as men were also made “from the dust of the earth.” Furthermore, notice that man, though formed from the earth, was not a living being UNTIL God breathed the breath of life into him. Well, then what was man before God breathed into him, an animal?
Archeology does create some problems for believers. Cavemen, for instance, really existed. There’s too much fossil evidence to believe otherwise. So where do they fit in the biblical narrative? Were they soulless hominids, pre-humans? Or was Neanderthal as fully human as Adam and Eve? If so, where does neanderthal fit in the biblical record? Pre-Eden or post-Eden?
In dialoguing with Darwinists, I’ve always felt that conceding biological evolution can be an effective strategy. Why? Because an evolutionist still has to answer for the ultimate source of those first virgin atoms that — somehow — popped into existence. Okay, so we all came from a single-celled organism. But where did that organism come from? And the space it inhabits? The Big Bang is still the Big Mystery for the honest atheist. Because of this, I often bypass the mine of evolutionary dialogue and cut straight to the heart: How did everything begin?
Furthermore, even if I concede man descended from monkeys, there are huge existential thirsts that still have not evolved. Does knowing one came from an orangutan help them love their wife more, feel at peace with the universe, or resolve where they will go when they die? In other words, I think we can get a bit too tripped up arguing a scientific theory that is massively complex.
Anyway, sorry for rambling, Becky. But toss that in the (primordial) stew. Blessings!
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that a belief in evolution, per se, is something that the Church should be excommunicating (in effect) its scientists over. I’m fine with a scientific debate over origins, and, in fact, in every case where I’ve seen free debate allowed, anti-Darwinian theories tend to win the day.
I’d be really surprised if Evangelical suppression of Christian Darwinists is terribly widespread. That’s not to say that Christian Darwinists aren’t having their consciences pricked, either, though. That is as it should be.
Debate is not oppression and disagreement is not persecution (this goes both ways. It is easy to feel persecuted when others disagree with deeply held tenets)
. I see nothing wrong with Christians who question Darwinists (regardless of the Darwinists’ faith) on issues of origins.
Here is the issue: I know of no scientist at a Christian college or university who was denied tenure because of his belief in Darwinian evolution. I know a list a mile long of competent, even brilliant non-Darwinists who have been denied tenure because of their reasonable critiques.
I would argue, in fact, that a Christian school has every right to demand adherence to certain scientific principles (though, to my knowledge, they do not), but a secular university has none, as its foundation is not orthodoxy, but openness and the pursuit of truth wherever it may lead.
It is worth noting that of the “Evangelicals” mentioned above, Colling is still employed at Nazarene, and only had his courseload altered temporarily by the school to avoid a circus. Falk is still a highly regarded professor at Point Loma, and Howard Van Till quit Christ (which is to say, by biblical definition, never was a Christian in the first place. Van Till believed in his scientific view to the exclusion of Christ. That contradicts the thesis of the essay, that Christians are hobbling other Christians from pursuing the truth.)
This “persecution and suppression” is in stark, stark contrast to the lives that have been upended by the ruthless orthodoxy of the secular university. Laughed at, ridiculed, spurned, denigrated, threatened and fired: if you really want to find a good persecutor, you need to go somewhere as deeply religious (and anti-Christian) as the American University.
Here’s an interesting personal tidbit: the person most responsible for helping me to understand the quality and depth of the myth of Darwinism is none other than H.P. Lovecraft. His great imagination and literary accomplishments both demonstrate the depth and succubine nature of Darwinism, while also unwittingly making it clear that the myth is, at heart, just that: rootless and wandering, shapeshifting and fundamentally untrue.
The more I fell in love with Lovecraft’s lonely and vivid landscape at the terminus of evolution, the more I realized how very little substance lies at the foundation of the untestable, unobservable “Theory of Evolution” and the correlating “Descent of Man.”
[Incidentally, Martin Luther’s defense of creation vs. evolutionary heresy (and yeah, that’s what he called it) may be informative here:
“It is not true, as several heretics and other vulgar persons allege, that God created everything in the beginning, and then let nature take its own independent course, so that all things now spring into being of their own power; thereby they put God on a level with a shoemaker or a tailor. This not only contradicts scripture, but it runs counter to experience.’
“Just as no creature was able to contribute towards its own creation at the beginning, so it has not been able to work towards its preservation and the perpetuation of its kind. Thus, as we human beings did not create ourselves, so we can do nothing to keep ourselves alive for a single moment by our own power.”
Xd, great points about the “ruthless orthodoxy of the secular university.” Once again, I am not suggesting there isn’t a vast secular opposition toward Christian scientists, but that I was personally surprised to learn that Christian universities may be just as intolerant of different Creationist views. I know that the Young Earth (YE) creationsists and the Old Earthers (OE), have drawn some pretty stark lines in their debates, some going so far as claiming the OE camp is drifting toward heresy. What Gilberson’s review does (for me, at least) is to suggest that the YE view may have come to be considered the more “orthodox” view, and the criterion by which Christian scientists are now judged. If so, the Christian scientist who is seeking to integrate scientific findings with a biblical worldview may be stuck between a rock (the secular university) and a hard place (the Church). Thanks for the comments, Xd!
A-ha! But what if the YE view is, scientifically, the most tenable? Understand that I am not saying that it is, necessarily, but I’m also saying that it isn’t the dismissable joke that the world would like you to believe.
Allow me to put it another way:
What if the prevailing “scientific” understanding in the secular university is that the human body consists of four humors: black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm. This is the prevailing notion, and verifiable through experience, peer review and autopsies. Divide a man into his observable qualities and, indeed, you can separate his fluids into four basic substances.
The only acceptable debate, then, is within the constraints of the view of the four humors. Is it yellow bile or phlegm? Is consumption linked to an excess of bile or a drought of blood?
The only problem is that those idiot Christians babble on and on about some religious quackery known as “germs.” They have, based on their arcane studies of a long-dicredited book called the Bible, formulated a crazy belief that “God” has built man from amazingly complex, often invisible structures…out of nothing.
Should the Christian who has a truth that others cannot see, then, attempt to harmonize “humor” theory with modern medical understanding? Should he develop a Christian method of bloodletting to satisfy both the incorrect view with the more perfect view?
If a YE view is more satisfactory in answering scientific questions of origin and cultural development, why shouldn’t Christian institutions gravitate toward such a view?
Honestly, I can go either way on this, as I don’t believe that there is ever any such thing as “settled science.” (or if there is, it is something unscientific: dogma.) Therefore, I agree with you that Christians at Christian institutions should be free to pursue various theories without first passing religious “tests.” I just don’t think that such an environment exists in any widespread way, and then when such conflict does occur, it isn’t a case of suppression, but of genuine difference of approach.
The “evolution-friendly” Christian professors mentioned above have been allowed their pursuits in a Christian environment, and Colling’s work has been published by InterVarsity (I think InterVarsity, at least). The same can not be said about Creation-friendly professors at the secular universities, if they even are allowed to exist at all.
I totally agree with you that Christian professors should not be persecuted for their scientific inquiry by the colleges that employ them. I just don’t agree that such persecution exists in any systemic or widespread fashion.
Of course, in the immortal words of the great philosopher Charles Barkley, I could be wrong.
But I doubt it!
mike, awesome post. best in a long time. i love the cognitive courage to actually go out and say something significant. though “the biblical evidence for evolution” may not be necessary for it to exist (it’s not a science book); your argument for it can be confusing since, according to photosynthesis, vegetation needs the sun however “the greater light to rule the day” (NRSV) was “made” after vegetation. i’m looking forward to your next post that says Adam and Eve never existed but their enduring myth represents a greater truth of creationism and a symbolic pillar of god’s sovereignty… *cue the ominous organ in the background as the credits roll*. i love it mike. keep it up.
matty, I’m known around these parts for my “cognitive courage.” As opposed to any other kind of courage. God did create light (Gen. 1:3) before vegetation (Gen. 1:11). So if there was light, it does answer the photosynthesis problem. Even though the details are unclear, it fits sequentially. But if you’re waiting for me to say Adam and Eve never existed, forget it. Why? Jesus, referenced them as real figures, not myths. Unless of course, Jesus is a myth. But to go there, I’d have to deny history and archeology. But, in that case, you can “cue the ominous organ.”