So what is the scriptural problem with evolution? The problem is that evolutionary thinking is, and always has been, motivated by non biblical claims about God. I have discussed this in this blog, but the best place to find these claims is in the evolution literature, both before and after Darwin. Simply put, evolutionary thought is motivated and justified by various claims about how God would create the world. God wouldn’t create all of the many lowly creatures—that is beneath him. God wouldn’t create evil or inefficiency—that would be against his nature. God wouldn’t create particular patterns—that would be capricious. And so forth. In all about a dozen theological and philosophical arguments, that mandate evolution, arose in the Enlightenment years before Darwin. And they were and remain today tremendously influential. They are the reason that evolutionists today insist evolution is a fact, not merely a theory. Evolution is, at bottom, a religious idea developed in polite Christian settings. Today’s atheists, like a conforming teenager who thinks he is in rebellion, rehearse these same arguments as if demonstrating a religious skepticism.
Cornelius Hunter: Creation v Evolution - the real story (blog post)
4 comments:
The next problem is whether bad friends make for a bad argument? (Which of course applies on all "sides"). We often judge issues by who is for or who is against, which sometimes serves us well, but it also can get us into trouble. Evangelicals reject something because they reject the liberal (say) set of values, personalities, or even arguments; but that does not address what the values, personalities, and arguments would look like from within their own faith community. In the public space it is hard to escape associations; in our serious consideration of issues I think it is important to be clear about where we ourselves are coming from in our own terms.
I don't particularly take sides in terms of which Christian group favours or dislikes evolution; from my perspective I'm still waiting to be convinced that it's a valid scientific theory...
I believe in evolution for the same reason I believe in germs, atoms and so on - it's the best explanation for the quite large amount of data at hand. Believing in an evolutionary process for creation makes no difference to my faith in a Creator God. It does mean that I do not take the Bible literally, but then, parts of it are so clearly not intended to be taken literally (apocalyptic literature, poetry etc) that that doesn't upset me.
If evidence arises that contradicts the theory of evolution I would happily abandon belief in it. I cannot imagine any evidence that could actually disprove God's existence - and therefore my belief in Him is faith.
Fair enough, Anna. My suspicion is that in a 100 years time, people will look back and ask, Why did they believe in such a kookie theory?
But I could be wrong.
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