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The paper reviews four contemporary books addressing the relationship between science and religion, particularly in the context of evolution. It features Karl Giberson's "Saving Darwin," Kenneth Miller's "Only a Theory," Michael Dowd's "Thank God for Evolution," and Denis Lamoureux's works. The author evaluates each book's contributions to understanding the evolutionary debate among evangelical readers, focusing on their hermeneutical implications and overall helpfulness.
Zygon, 2008
Zygon skeptical reader will conclude that Davies, for all his brilliance in cosmology, never gets much further than banging into intractable metaphysical problems. He concedes: "Confused, I certainly am" (p. 204). So much for the subtitle with its promised answer to the why question.
Books at a Glance, 2018
Denis Lamoureux, a Canadian Evangelical who occupies an extraordinary teaching role at St. Joseph's College in the University of Alberta, is convinced that he has the remedy for the growing number of university students who defect from the Christian faith when they encounter the overwhelming evidence for evolution. He insists that it is necessary to relieve young people from the unwarranted conflict between Christian faith and evolutionary science with which their churches, pastors, Sunday-school teachers, Christian school teachers, and their own parents have burdened them. What is the solution he proposes to relieve this conflict? This Associate Professor of Science and Religion is a passionate apologist for his cause; he believes that Christian young people, from their formative years through high school, are not being taught fairly the range of views concerning origins. As he sees it, one view, "the literalism and scientific concordism of young earth creation," has been forced upon young people (p. 180). So, he is convinced and endeavors to convince others that to preserve the Christian faith of university students it is necessary to make it safe for Christians to embrace evolution as factually right, even indubitably true. Thus, he wrote Evolution: Scripture and Nature Say Yes! To meet Denis Lamoureux is to encounter a man exuberant and passionate about this cause. Hence, the bold title. Does he really believe that both Scripture and nature affirm that evolution took place? It is an audacious and provocative title that poses a daunting if not impossible task. Who can demonstrate that both Scripture and the corporeal realm advocate evolution? Such is a massive endeavor for one even with his credentials and impressive resumé. Lamoureux admits the title overreaches with provocation. Summary of the Book Lamoureux presents his experience as paradigmatic concerning most young people among North American Evangelicals who are trapped between two antithetical belief systems concerning origins: "either atheistic evolution or creation in six days." The first two chapters recount his own journey that reflects his dichotomous thinking when he entered college. Convinced that he was inadequately taught, he found himself without any capability to defend his faith when confronted with contrary beliefs. So, as a college freshman he began to forsake his Christian rearing, abandoning belief in the Genesis account of creation, no longer attending church, and vehemently defending evolution. By the close of the first year he spurned the God of Christianity. While in dentistry school he became an agnostic and then an atheist. Upon graduation and serving as a military dentist, Lamoureux plunged into godless living and debauchery until, while serving as a UN peacekeeper in Cyprus, he repented and returned to the Christian faith.
Evolution and Theology, or Theology of Evolution in the USA, 2017
The impact of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution on religious thinking is beyond dispute. Darwin published his most important work on general biological evolution (On the Origins of Species) in 1859, and in 1871 he applied this theory to the origin of man (The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex). From the beginning, most Christian churches rejected Darwin's view, but most scientists accepted it as the most convincing explanation of the mechanisms of life. A new chapter in this controversy was opened by Richard Dawkins in 2006 with the publication of The God Delusion, in which he not only vigorously defended Darwin's theory but also rejected any religious dimension of biological reality. An interesting alternative to Dawkins's theory was elaborated by John F. Haught in his trilogy: God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (2000); Making Sense of Evolution: Darwin, God, and The Drama of Life (2010); and Resting on the Future: Catholic Theology for an Unfinished Universe (2015), in which he elaborated a theology of evolution where-in he reconciled the theory of evolution with Christian-Catholic theology. The aim of this essay is to ask to what extent this attempt is successful. A few introductory remarks The relationship between evolution and theology is a case study of a larger problem regarding the relationship between science and religion, or, rather, between science and faith. Some scientists and theologians think that these two fields of human activities are completely distinct. For many, though, the answer is more complicated, and Accepted, unedited articles published online and citable. The final edited and typeset version of record will appear in future
It is undoubtable that Darwins theory of evolution was revolutionary. Darwin to held that everything developed from primitive beginnings through natural processes. It was a child of the enlightenment. The essentialist thought of the Greeks, combined with the Christian story of creation prevented people from thinking of origins in such a non-miraculous manner. Evolution, raises questions of considerable philosophical interest and this affected the Christian belief system. This paper examines the implication of Darwins theory on the Christian faith.
Studia Philosophiae Christianae, 2020
Despite many arduous attempts to reconcile the separation between theology and science, the common ground where these two areas of intellectual inquiry could converge has not been fully identified yet. The purpose of this paper is to use evolutionary theology as the new and unique framework in which science and theology are indeed brought into coherent alignment. The major step in this effort is to acknowledge that theology can no longer dialogue with science but must assume science and its method as its conceptual foundation. This approach successfully does away with any tensions that may arise between the two disciplines and establishes a firm ground on which neither of them will turn into ideology. Moreover, it enables the dialogue with contemporary scientific atheism on solid grounds and the restoration of the credibility of theology in the secularist culture of the day.
Playing the game of bridge while using the rules of chess obviously posits a logical impossibility. The two games fundamentally differ from each other. Such a scenario seems ludicrous even to contemplate; however, since the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, Christians subscribing to the doctrine of the inerrancy of Holy Scripture have played such a game in trying to comprehend the biblical account of creation (theology = bridge) in the light of Darwin's theory of natural selection and speciation (science = chess). Christian theologians, scientists, and lay people who have played the game are the losers. The reason for their loss: the rules of the game for doing theology are not complementary with the rules of scientific inquiry. Yet, in the sincere attempt to engage and respond to the challenges posed by the theory of evolution by natural selection, Christians have repeatedly in the last 145 years tried to play "bridge" using the rules of "chess." William Dembski of Baylor University, one of the staunchest advocates of this approach, has reinstated a very old argument along these lines known as Intelligent Design; in Darwin's day William Paley's Natural Theology, published in 1802, offers much of the same argument with his famous line that a "watch must have had a maker."' The premise of the arguments is that somehow science helps to understand theology. In Unapologetic Apologetics, Dembski writes: The basic concepts with which science has operated these last several hundred years are no longer adequate, certainly not in an information age, certainly not in an age where design is empirically detectable. Science faces a crisis of basic concepts. The way out of Larry Witham, By Design (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003), 41. Witham extensively traces the "Design movement" throughout the 20th century, giving further historical background when necessary. 1 this crisis is to expand science to include design. To reinstate design within science is to liberate science, freeing it from restrictions that were always and now have become intolerable.' Dembski's assertion likely falls on deaf ears within most of today's scientific community because, as John Greene convincingly demonstrates in his intriguing analysis entitled The Death of Adam, the conviction that the world has a concerned, intimate designer has increasingly waned since the time of Descartes. Greene portrays the Reverend John Ray as the first modern creationist to counter the then new Cartesian worldview, which he characterizes as a theistic, atomic hypothesis which eventually leads to a mechanical and then mutable world. Greene writes: Ray's main concern was with the second heresy, namely, the atomic hypothesis of Democritus and Epicurus, according to which the universe and all of its productions had resulted from chance collisions of atoms moving at random in empty space. In its ancient, atheistic form this doctrine had been amply refuted many times, said Ray, but of late a theistic version of the same hypothesis had been advanced by Descartes and his followers on the Continent. These writers explicitly rejected the idea that mankind could understand the final causes, or purposes, for which things had been made and undertook `to solve all the Phoenomena of Nature, and to give an account of the Production and Efformation of the Universe, and all the corporeal Beings therein, both celestial and terrestrial, as well animate as inanimate, not excluding Animals themselves, by a slight Hypothesis of matter so and so divided and mov'd.'3 The latter portion of this quotation comes from the 1690 publication of Ray's work itself, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation. Greene claims that throughout Ray seeks to reaffirm the Christian doctrine of the creation. Comparing Dembski's work with Ray's nearly 400 years earlier leads to the conclusion that little has changed substantively in the argument; obviously Dembski advances the argument for design using modem scientific data, but the theme remains the same. An important element that has lured the Christian church into playing the wrong game
Philosophy in Review, 2009
Often fascinating, often frustrating, this is a hefty-and unfortunately unindexed-anthology on evolution and religion, distinguished by its emphasis on process thought, the philosophical-cum-theological approach to metaphysics based on the writings of Whitehead. As Cobb, himself a pioneer of process theology, explains, the purpose of the book (and of the conference on which it was based) is 'to introduce a Whiteheadian voice into the present discussion of evolution and religion' and to indicate 'the way in which a theistic evolutionary theory can be coherently developed from a Whiteheadian point of view' (17-18). Not all of the contributors are invested, or even particularly interested, in process thought, but the volume is editorially shaped in such a way as to present 'one long argument' (to borrow Darwin's phrase) for the importance of process thought for understanding evolution, scientifically as well as theologically. Cobb challenges what he takes to be three dubious claims: that contemporary evolutionary theory is scientifically adequate, that the metaphysics presupposed in contemporary scientific practice is philosophically adequate, and that both of these are theologically adequate for 'a revised formulation of theology' (311)-that is, a formulation along the Whiteheadian lines he favors. In so doing, he is seeking to integrate science and theology in a way that may require revisions not only to theology but also to science; he is thus rejecting, in the familiar typology offered by Ian Barbour, the alternative positions on which science and theology are regarded as in conflict, as independent, and as in dialogue. On none of these points, too, are all the contributors in agreement with Cobb, as he acknowledges, but it is fair to judge the volume's success in terms of the success of his ambitious project. In reacting against contemporary evolutionary theory, Cobb's argument finds a foil in what he calls neo-Darwinism, here represented in person by Francisco Ayala. A student of Dobzhansky and a formidable scientist in his own right, Ayala is also a former Dominican priest with a doctoral degree in theology; he favors the independence position in Barbour's typology. His main contribution to this collection is 'From Paley to Darwin: Design to Natural Selection', but he also furnishes four subsidiary essays on various subjects. In all, about a generous seventh of the book is Ayala's, although anyone wanting to understand his views will probably be better served by reading his Darwin's Gift to Science and Religion (2007). He devotes a few salient pages to the term 'neo-Darwinism', observing that it 'has little currency among evolutionary biologists' and seems to be 'mostly confined to the writings of philosophers and theologians' (53). As if to prove him right, neo-Darwinism turns out to be the philosophical and theological bogey of the volume. David Ray Griffin, for example, identi
Academia Letters, 2021
Peter Hitchens, younger brother of the late Christopher, says in the notorious London Daily Mail that the implication of evolution "is plainly atheistical, and if its truth could be proved, then the truth of atheism could be proved. I believe that is its purpose, and that it is silly to pretend otherwise." Pat Robertson claims that "the evolutionists worship atheism." Richard Dawkins tells us that he lost his faith in God when he learned about evolution, the claim that evolution is intrinsically atheistical is used repeatedly by advocates of creationism, including that bizarre oxymoron, "scientific creationism", and the Discovery Institute's Wedge Document describes it as part of a malignant materialism that debunks traditional views of both God and man. Discovery Institute fellows also coached Ann Coulter, who went on to tell us that evolution is itself a discredited religion, related to the mental disorders of liberalism and godlessness. Yet from the very outset there have been believers who actively welcomed evolution. Asa Gray, the botanist to whom Darwin dedicated his own book Forms of Flowers, saw evolution as the natural process through which God worked. Charles Kingsley, the Christian social reformer and historian now best remembered for The Water Babies, wrote appreciatively to Darwin, on previewing The Origin of Species, that a Deity who created "primal forms capable of self development" was "a loftier thought" than one who had created each kind separately. In our own time, we have evolution theology and Evolution Sunday. Ken Miller, a committed Catholic, is prominent as molecular biologist, textbook writer, and legal witness on behalf of evolution, while Dennis Venema's postings on the website of BioLogos, an organization dedicated to the acceptance of science from a Christian perspective, are model expositions of evolutionary science. Against this background, it may be helpful to look at the religious views of Charles Darwin himself, and also those of Alfred Russel Wallace, the two independent originators of the
Zygon®, 2018
This article uses Christopher Southgate's work and engagement with other scholars on the topic of evolutionary theodicy as a case study in the dialogue of science and Christian theology. A typology is outlined of ways in which the voices of science and the Christian tradition may be related in a science-theology dialogue, and examples of each position on the typology are given from the literature on evolution and natural evil. The main focus is on Southgate's evolutionary theodicy and the alternative proposal by Neil Messer. By bringing these two accounts into dialogue, some key methodological issues are brought into focus, enabling some conclusions to be drawn about the range and limits of fruitful methodological possibilities for dialogues between science and Christian theology.
2015
Evolutionary creation offers a conservative Christian approach to evolution. It explores biblical faith and evolutionary science through a Two Divine Books model and proposes a complementary relationship between Scripture and science. The Book of God’s Words discloses the spiritual character of the world, while the Book of God’s Works reveals the divine creative process. This view of origins recognizes that the Bible features an ancient conceptualization of nature, and consequently rejects concordism (or scientific concordism). It understands bibli-cal revelation in the light of the Incarnation and suggests that Scripture was ac-commodated for an ancient Near Eastern mindset. Evolutionary creation holds a traditional notion of natural revelation. The reflection of intelligent design extends to the process of evolution, rejecting the God-of-the-gaps creative method, and declaring the faithfulness of the Creator’s evolutionary mechanisms. Evolutionary creation claims that the Father, ...
Historical Papers, 2000
Understanding Religion and Science : Introducing the Debate
Evangelical Quarterly
Andrews University Seminary Studies, 2003
During the last 150 years, evolutionary theory has become the standard theoretical explanation for the origins of life and the center of a new cosmology that other sciences dogmatically assume when developing research methods and interpretations of reality. Christian theology, as a scientific enterprise, is no exception to this rule. Evolution dismisses divine creation as nonscientific myth. To avoid this charge, theologians have proposed various versions of theistic evolution and harmonization. Thus, the challenge theologians must contend with is whether the only choices available to them are mythological faith or scientific truth. Further, it is necessary to consider whether a belief in creation necessarily entails a sacrifice of the intellect. The creation-evolution debate, including the theological attempt at harmonization, generally takes place at the level of conclusion without taking into account the nature of the processes through which theologians and scientists arrive at t...
Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 2013
Synthese, 2011
The distinguished theologian, David Ray Griffin, has advanced a set of thirteen theses intended to characterize (what he calls) "Neo-Darwinism" and which he contrasts with "Intelligent Design". Griffin maintains that Neo-Darwinism is "atheistic" in forgoing a creator but suggests that, by adopting a more modest scientific naturalism and embracing a more naturalistic theology, it is possible to find "a third way" that reconciles religion and science. The considerations adduced here suggest that Griffin has promised more than he can deliver. On his account, God is in laws of nature; therefore, any influence He exerts is natural rather than supernatural. But if the differences God makes are not empirically detectable, then Griffin's account is just as objectionable as a theory of supernatural intervention. And Griffin has not shown that evolution as distinct from his idiosyncratic sense of Neo-Darwinism is incompatible with theism.
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