Can You Believe in God and Evolution?

Many Christians do NOT have a disconnect....

Sunday, Aug. 07, 2005
Can You Believe in God and Evolution?
By Steven Pinker

FRANCIS COLLINS

Director, National Human Genome Research Institute

I see no conflict in what the Bible tells me about God and what science tells me about nature. Like St. Augustine in A.D. 400, I do not find the wording of Genesis 1 and 2 to suggest a scientific textbook but a powerful and poetic description of God's intentions in creating the universe. The mechanism of creation is left unspecified.

If God, who is all powerful and who is not limited by space and time, chose to use the mechanism of evolution to create you and me, who are we to say that wasn't an absolutely elegant plan? And if God has now given us the intelligence and the opportunity to discover his methods, that is something to celebrate.

I lead the Human Genome Project, which has now revealed all of the 3 billion letters of our own DNA instruction book. I am also a Christian. For me scientific discovery is also an occasion of worship.

Nearly all working biologists accept that the principles of variation and natural selection explain how multiple species evolved from a common ancestor over very long periods of time. I find no compelling examples that this process is insufficient to explain the rich variety of life forms present on this planet. While no one could claim yet to have ferreted out every detail of how evolution works, I do not see any significant "gaps" in the progressive development of life's complex structures that would require divine intervention. In any case, efforts to insert God into the gaps of contemporary human understanding of nature have not fared well in the past, and we should be careful not to do that now.

Science's tools will never prove or disprove God's existence. For me the fundamental answers about the meaning of life come not from science but from a consideration of the origins of our uniquely human sense of right and wrong, and from the historical record of Christ's life on Earth.


It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings.

Our own bodies are riddled with quirks that no competent engineer would have planned but that disclose a history of trial-and-error tinkering: a retina installed backward, a seminal duct that hooks over the ureter like a garden hose snagged on a tree, goose bumps that uselessly try to warm us by fluffing up long-gone fur.

The moral design of nature is as bungled as its engineering design. What twisted sadist would have invented a parasite that blinds millions of people or a gene that covers babies with excruciating blisters? To adapt a Yiddish expression about God: If an intelligent designer lived on Earth, people would break his windows.

The theory of natural selection explains life as we find it, with all its quirks and tragedies. We can prove mathematically that it is capable of producing adaptive life forms and track it in computer simulations, lab experiments and real ecosystems. It doesn't pretend to solve one mystery (the origin of complex life) by slipping in another (the origin of a complex designer).

Many people who accept evolution still feel that a belief in God is necessary to give life meaning and to justify morality. But that is exactly backward. In practice, religion has given us stonings, inquisitions and 9/11. Morality comes from a commitment to treat others as we wish to be treated, which follows from the realization that none of us is the sole occupant of the universe. Like physical evolution, it does not require a white-coated technician in the sky.

MICHAEL BEHE

Biochemistry professor, Lehigh University; Senior fellow, Discovery Institute

Sure, it's possible to believe in both God and evolution. I'm a Roman Catholic, and Catholics have always understood that God could make life any way he wanted to. If he wanted to make it by the playing out of natural law, then who were we to object? We were taught in parochial school that Darwin's theory was the best guess at how God could have made life.

I'm still not against Darwinian evolution on theological grounds. I'm against it on scientific grounds. I think God could have made life using apparently random mutation and natural selection. But my reading of the scientific evidence is that he did not do it that way, that there was a more active guiding. I think that we are all descended from some single cell in the distant past but that that cell and later parts of life were intentionally produced as the result of intelligent activity. As a Christian, I say that intelligence is very likely to be God.

Several Christian positions are theologically consistent with the theory of mutation and selection. Some people believe that God is guiding the process from moment to moment. Others think he set up the universe from the Big Bang to unfold like a computer program. Others take scientific positions that are indistinguishable from those atheist materialists might take but say that their nonscientific intuitions or philosophical considerations or the existence of the mind lead them to deduce that there is a God.

I used to be part of that last group. I just think now that the science is not nearly as strong as they think.

ALBERT MOHLER

President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Given the human tendency toward inconsistency, there are people who will say they hold both positions. But you cannot coherently affirm the Christian-truth claim and the dominant model of evolutionary theory at the same time.

Personally, I am a young-Earth creationist. I believe the Bible is adequately clear about how God created the world, and that its most natural reading points to a six-day creation that included not just the animal and plant species but the earth itself. But there have always been Evangelicals who asserted that it might have taken longer. What they should not be asserting is the idea of God's having set the rules for evolution and then stepped back. And even less so, the model held by much of the scientific academy: of evolution as the result of a random process of mutation and selection.

For one thing, there's the issue of human "descent." Evangelicals must absolutely affirm the special creation of humans in God's image, with no physical evolution from any nonhuman species. Just as important, the Bible clearly teaches that God is involved in every aspect and moment in the life of His creation and the universe. That rules out the image of a kind of divine watchmaker.

I think it's interesting that many of evolution's most ardent academic defenders have moved away from the old claim that evolution is God's means to bring life into being in its various forms. More of them are saying that a truly informed belief in evolution entails a stance that the material world is all there is and that the natural must be explained in purely natural terms. They're saying that anyone who truly feels this way must exclude God from the story. I think their self-analysis is correct. I just couldn't disagree more with their premise.

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1090921,00.html

 

Fyi.......................

 

There is not much to debate Margot.

When a Christian states that they believe in evolution, and has a solid well laid our arguement to back it up and show his beliefs ... atheism is suddenly dumbstruck.

Whatever will atheism be without evolution to shove down Christianities throat?

My guess?

The homosexual rights movement will become fanatic in atheist circles.

 

Neither Evolution nor Science seem to be the foundation of Atheism to me... I am not sure I understand your remark...

"I see no conflict in what the Bible tells me about God and what science tells me about nature. Like St. Augustine in A.D. 400, I do not find the wording of Genesis 1 and 2 to suggest a scientific textbook but a powerful and poetic description of God's intentions in creating the universe. The mechanism of creation is left unspecified.

If God, who is all powerful and who is not limited by space and time, chose to use the mechanism of evolution to create you and me, who are we to say that wasn't an absolutely elegant plan? And if God has now given us the intelligence and the opportunity to discover his methods, that is something to celebrate"

 

Most Christians don't consider evolution to be truth and many actually condemn the few that do as evil and false christians....

 

You have a very narrow view of Christians.. Are you saying that only fundamentalists and literalists are REAL Christians?

 

It is hard to believe that everything was just a series of coincidences.
And it is also hard to believe that some sort of celestial power has been alive forever.

Evolution has been proven. God has not been proven. At this point I will not count out "God". Anything is possible.

 

Like the entire Catholic Church ... Hmmm, well, be interesting to see how you define MOST CHristians.

 

Most of the mainstream Christian churches agree..

Science isn't a threat to faith... unless one is uneducated.

 

Well if you believe in God, it's obvious that you don't care if anything actually makes sense or not before you make it a belief of yours, so knock yourself out. You can believe in God, evolution, and leprachauns for that matter. If reality doesn't matter to you, it's ALL fair game.

 

Behe is an idiot. He's been shown that he is wrong time and time again and yet sticks to his irreducible complexity argument. Hey, he reminds me of many on here.


To ACCEPT evolution and believe in the Christian god one must ignore much of the bible, Christian history, etc and cherry pick the hell out of it.

 

Good post.

 

Yes, you can simultaneously believe in god and accept modern science.

 

Of course you can..

I see no conflict in what the Bible tells me about God and what science tells me about nature.

Like St. Augustine in A.D. 400, I do not find the wording of Genesis 1 and 2 to suggest a scientific textbook but a powerful and poetic description of God's intentions in creating the universe. The mechanism of creation is left unspecified.

If God, who is all powerful and who is not limited by space and time, chose to use the mechanism of evolution to create you and me, who are we to say that wasn't an absolutely elegant plan?

And if God has now given us the intelligence and the opportunity to discover his methods, that is something to celebrate.

 

you believe in god and at the same time accept modern science because you are afraid to say you don't believe in god
because if you do you will go to hell.

you accept modern science because you have to exist in today's society.
you are afraid to say that you don't believe in modern science because you are afraid to be labeled as an academic idiot.

if you believe in god then believe in god.
if you believe in modern science then believe in modern science

but...but to say you do believe to both at the same time......
is a grand hipocrisy.

polscie.

 

very lousy.
that is you, and your belief.

polscie

 

I take it that you reject science and medicine.

 

I reject your lousy suggestion that one can put his belief
to both god and evolution at the same time.

believing to both god and evolution is a display of grand hipocrisy.

polscie

 

Only if YOU think you can limit God to a children's story told to primitive people.

 

Glad you finally figured out what the bible is meant for

 

Well, I think yes and no.

Surat Nas: "What is the matter with you, that ye place not your hope for kindness and long-suffering in Allah —
Seeing that it is He that created you in diverse stages?"

The general theory is somewhat described in this verse from the Quran. Though this depends on how you interpret it (the bold part).

In Islam evolution and creation are linked in a way. It doesn't support the theory we evolved from apes, but supports the theory that animals evolve, just that it is the will of Allah (God) who evolves the animals.

If God created all living things, he can change his creations as he pleases.

That's just my thoughts.

 

But God created not in stages. The Bible is clear. Thus allah is wrong. And you are wrong. There is no room for evolution in the Bible or for the Christian.

Quantrill

 

I suppose that catholicism isn't christianism. Because they abandoned the creationism in side of evolution.

Only evangelists and other extremist chritians believe in creationism.

 

Catholics, lutherans and many others don't agree with you

And God created Universe in stages. Learn to read your sacred book.

 

I do read my Book. And I am quite willing to prove what I am saying by the Book.

Much of Catholicism and Protestantism has fallen away into apostacy. Thus they no longer believe the Book. We who do believe the Book, continue to reject what the Book rejects.

So, be careful when you say I should read the Book. In actuality, it is those who believe in evolution and claim to do so as 'christians', who do not believe the Book.

Quantrill