Many Christian, Jewish and Unitarian congregations around the world are celebrating Evolution Weekend this year, marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin (12 February 1809) and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work On the Origin of Species in 1859.
It’s an important step for a wing of the church that is often under resourced in comparison to the Creation Science network. There are books, magazines, museums and DVDs available for people who want to link the concept of intelligent design with 7 Day creation or young earth theories. However, there are very few resources, that I’ve seen at least, that creatively and intelligently present the case for intelligent design integrated with theories of evolution.
I was a Creation Science fan, for a few months, in my final year at high school. I read the literature and watched the movies and was taken in, until talking with a Christian physics teacher. My hat goes off to you Bob Carr, wherever you are, for helping me think through a framework that avoided a dichotomy between science and faith. I enrolled in a course in anthropology in my first year at university, keen to explore the origins of humanity alongside the development of human culture around the world. It became clear fairly quickly that the fundamentalist framework I’d been operating in would have to be replaced by a more robust but more ambiguous paradigm for faith. But it took years to really work that out.
Working with young people, and people my own age, I’ve found there are still a few missing links (excuse the pun) in the resources. Most people I’ve talked to are still mentally referring to the simplistic theories of evolution from the 1960s and 1970s, unaware of more complex approaches that hold more credibility. We need to hear the stories of people who have integrated their understanding of the universe with a spirituality that takes seriously God’s ongoing involvement with an emerging expanding universe. And we need approaches that help us relate humbly and graciously to people who operate within a fundamentalist package, whether that be atheist or theist in its foundations.
Brian McLaren’s novella, The Story We Find Ourselves In, I found to be a useful narrative. See also my notes from a seminar led by Peter Harrison on Columbus Galileo Darwin and Dawkins. But I’d be interested in hearing about other resources people have found helpful.
Evolution Weekend
Here’s the PR blurb…
Evolution Weekend, 12th – 15th February, is an opportunity for serious discussion and reflection on the relationship between religion and science. One important goal is to elevate the quality of the discussion on this critical topic – to move beyond sound bites. A second critical goal is to demonstrate that religious people from many faiths and locations understand that evolution is sound science and poses no problems for their faith. Finally, as with The Clergy Letter itself, which has now been signed by more than 11,000 members of the Christian clergy in the United States, Evolution Weekend makes it clear that those claiming that people must choose between religion and science are creating a false dichotomy. Congregations involved in the project will use sermons, discussion groups, meaningful conversations and seminars to show that religion and science are not adversaries.
The eight Australian congregations who have registered their involvement in the project are The Uniting Church of St James, Canberra, North Belconnen Uniting Church, Charnwood, ACT, Ecofaith Worshipping Community, Bellingen, NSW, Emanuel Synagogue, Sydney, Spirit of Life Fellowship, Sydney, Caloundra Uniting Church, Sunshine Coast QLD, and West End Uniting Church, Brisbane.
Christian Clergy Letter
Leaders from Christian, Jewish and Unitarian churches have signed a letter organized by Michael Zimmerman, Dean at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Butler University.
Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture. While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible – the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark – convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts.
We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as one theory among others is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God’s loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.
Really interesting. And good to see some Sydney involvement. I met my own ‘Bob Carr’ last year. Alistair Riddell was a science teacher in Hamilton who helped me see beyond my creationist convictions way back. It was nice to be able to tell him how formational a simple conversation with a school kid had been.
Let’s be honest. Natural selection does not need any supernatural help. God didn’t create us. The Bible is simply myth, no doubt based on some original fact but embellished over the eons & similar to the stories of King Arthur. The mystery is how life originally arose. Fundamentalists say God created life in the first place but in 50 years time I am certain that science will have shown that God played no part in this either. How about the origin of the universe? The Large Haldron Collider is in the process of solving this one too. God is running out of places to hide.
The authors of the Christian Clergy Letter have totally misunderstood Darwinism. By talking about “God given faculty of reason” & “God’s gifts of the human mind” misses the point that our brains along with our reason got that way by natural selection not by any will or design of any Creator. To suggest that there is no basic conflict between religion and science is to reject reality. They cannot co-exist. Why can’t people accept that we are lucky to be alive but there is no hereafter, heaven or hell? In accepting the obvious, it takes a huge burden off us & we can then really appreciate life & all it has to offer. We can be kind & loving because they are good qualities rather than believing in being rewarded in some non existant post life.
Hi all, respectfully I am absolutely horrified that any proclaiming Christian can embrace something other than the Word of God as their Authority, When anyone lets someone in error be an authority to them then error is going to be learnt, Evolution is not a new theory of how Humanity etc came to be, Charles Darwin just gave it some respectability in the western world, Christians aren’t against science, in fact without the Bible we couldn’t know anything. We have ‘laws of logic’, we can only account for them though because we have the bible, laws of logic stem from Gods very character, we only know about His character because of His revelation to us through His Word. we have ‘uniformity of nature’ (laws of nature), we can only account for uniformity of nature because of the bible (Gen 8:22). We also have ‘absolute morality’, once again only justified because of the bible. All of these are required for intelligibility, they are only accounted for through the Word of God, so without The Bible we could not “know” anything, we would be reduced to foolishness, which is exactly what anything we (humans) propose instead of Gods Word, i.e. evolution. (for further reading on this please read “Ultimate proof of creation” by Dr Jason Lisle). In addition, I personally consider anyone claiming to believe in God but reject His word to be living in contradiction, so when a minister or pastor or clergy of any sort try to live in both camps they are really in opposition to the bible because Jesus Himself said there is no neutral, you are either for God or against, you either gather or you scatter, you can’t serve two masters. So if you think you can be neutral you have automatically taken a position against the bible which means you are not actually neutral. Also there is no interpretation of Genesis or any other part of the Bible which can accommodate evolution, you have to reject Genesis to accept evolution so once again there is no neutrality. When anyone in the Church accepts “mans” opinions and ideas over and above of Gods Word then there will always be error in the Church and people will not have a reason to believe in God, and no clergy, minister or pastor who accepts evolution can rationally explain the reason why Jesus died on the cross. Thanks and I hope I haven’t been disrespectful to anyone with this short post, because the bible in Genesis says we are ALL made in the image of God.