What’s the Connection between Faith And Science?
"Didn't evolution put God out of a job? Why rely on religion in an age of science and knowledge?"
as anti-God evangelist Richard Dawkins, who boldly declares, "Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun."15 He also says, "It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)."16
Charles Darwin, and the evolutionary theory that flowed from his work, doesn't even try to answer the question of where life came from. His book is called The Origin of Species--referring to the successive origins of each new species as it gradually grew out of other previous, more primitive, ones.
A. Concession #1:
Darwin was right at least in this: living things do change and adapt over time--everyone agrees that's true to some degree. That is, virtually no one denies that microevolution occurs--meaning the adaptations that happen over time within the assorted species.
B. Concession #2:
We do not have an answer for everything (they don't).
C. Assertion #1
The question of whether examples of microevolution really provide evidence for Darwin's grand scheme of macroevolution--species gradually growing into other species, all beginning with one common ancestor--requires a leap of faith.
D. Assertion #2
With Similarities between two species may mean common descent, but in reality it could be the work of a common designer.
I. What evolution cannot explain.
A. The origin of matter.
Where did the stuff come from. The existence of matter was obviously implied, but never really explained.
One day a group of scientists got together and decided that humankind had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him. The scientist walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer need you. We're to the point where we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't you just go on and mind your own business?" God listened very patiently to the man. After the scientist was done talking, God said, "Very well, how about this? Let's say we have a people-making contest," to which the scientist replied, "Okay, we can handle that!" "But," God added, "we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam." The scientist said, "Sure, no problem," and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt. God looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!"
B. The origin of the first life on the planet.
The second prerequisite for Darwin's Origin of the Species model to get started, as mentioned earlier, is the origin of the original species--the very first life on the planet--which purportedly then evolved into all the varieties of living beings. But Darwin never even gave serious treatment to the question of how that first life began.
Many other scientists over the decades have proposed a variety of theories about the original inception of life--from sheer chance, to the (later disproved) inherent attraction between the building blocks of living matter, to life "riding in on the backs of crystals," to a theory known as panspermia, which says that life was planted here by beings from outer space.
BUT MOST EVOLUTIONISTS SIMPLE ACCEPT THE FACT THAT LIFE IS AND DO NOT OFFER AN EXPLANATION FOR WHY OR HOW IT BEGAN.
C. The development of life on the planet.
Evolution argues that life slowly evolves and changes. It emerges slowly. Scientists reject the idea because according to their understanding of the the earth's history, life suddenly appears.
Mathematician William Dembski, writing with Sean McDowell, discusses the fossil record and sums up the evidence like this: The first life form emerges suddenly. According to standard dating, this first emergence of life was around 4 billion years ago. For the first 500 million years, the earth was too hot and turbulent for any life form to exist. And then, shortly after the earth was cool enough, certain types of bacteria appear suddenly and abundantly.31
D. The complexity in even the simplest forms of life.
Overwhelming odds against those coming together by chance.
Biochemist Michael Denton, in his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, poses the problem like this: "Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality, the smallest element of which--a functional protein or gene--is complex beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man?"
Consider what you'd need for a protein molecule to form by chance. First, you need the right bonds between the amino acids. Second, amino acids come in right-handed and left-handed versions, and you've got to get only left-handed ones. Third, the amino acids must link up in a specified sequence, like letters in a sentence. Run the odds of these things falling into place on their own and you find that the probabilities of forming a rather short functional protein at random would be one chance in a hundred thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. That's a ten with 125 zeroes after it! And that would only be one protein molecule--a minimally complex cell would need between three hundred and five hundred protein molecules. . . . To suggest chance against those odds is really to invoke a naturalistic miracle.33
II. Acknowledge there are Differing Christian Views
A. Young Earth
1. The Earth is young and not much more that 6-8 thousands years old.
2. All basic types of organisms were directly created by God during the creation week of Genesis 1--2.
3. The curse of Genesis 3:14-19 profoundly affected every aspect of the natural economy.
4. The flood of Noah was a historical event, global in extent and effect.
Other distinctive aspects of the recent creation position (e.g., a historical Adam and Eve, directly created by God as the original parents of humankind) follow from these cardinal claims.42
B. Progressive Creationism (also called Old Earth Creationism).
Presumably God is capable of creating everything we see either by means of miracles in just a few days (even no time at all!) or by guiding purely natural processes over a long period of time. But I don't think the biblical or scientific evidence we have suggests that he used either of these means exclusively. Instead, it seems to me that God used some combination of supernatural intervention and providential guidance to construct the universe.43
C. Theistic Evolution (also described as Fully Gifted Creation):
I believe that the entire universe (everything that is not God) is a creation that has being only because God has given it being, from nothing, and that God continues to sustain it in being from moment to moment.
III. Don't fight the battle among ourselves.
Should every Christian feel comfortable with all three? Not at all--I don't feel comfortable with all of them! But can I accept my brothers and sisters in Christ who hold to them? Absolutely!
Romans 14: the church was arguing not about theory on how life began, but on eating meat sacrificied to meaningless idols.
Rom 14:13
13 Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way.
Rom 14:19
19 Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.
* Some would say we have no need for faith since science especially evolution has proven faith unnecessary.
* Evolution can explain the origin of matter or the first cause.
* Therefore believing in Creationism (whether old earth, young earth or even theistic evolution, requires no more faith that believing in random chance.)
IV. What about the Fossil Record?
Even Darwin himself recognized that the record did not support his thesis, and he even conceded that the lack of transitional examples was one of the greatest objections to his model--but he was confident that further research would eventually fill in the gaps. If he had been right, then surely all the searching and digging over the 150 years since he first published The Origin of Species would have yielded countless transitional fossils. Yet to this day there is a complete lack of solid, undisputed examples.
What does the fossil record actually show?
Revealed during what is known as the Cambrian era is what has sometimes been referred to as a biological Big Bang, during which an astonishing array of new, fully formed life-forms rapidly appeared.
Then these new species exhibited what scientists refer to as stasis--the absence of evolutionary change. This "event" is commonly called the Cambrian Explosion--and it has befuddled evolutionists to the point where they've entertained, embraced, and then retreated from a variety of theories to try to explain in naturalistic terms how new life forms can appear so quickly.
In light of all this, we can stand back and gently ask, "Might this not be evidence that a divine Creator somehow made and placed these creatures on our planet, just as the book that claims to be the Word of that Creator so clearly explains?"
God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. . . . And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them.
V. Tips for talking:
1. Try not to overreact to what your friends say they believe. A strong commitment to the teachings of evolution, for instance, can mean different things to different people. As always, ask questions and really listen to their answers. Do they believe just in microevolution (adaptations within the various species) or in macroevolution, too?
2. If your friends do believe in the full Darwinian view (macroevolution), it's still important to find out if, in their minds, that excludes God. If not, then it's probably better to focus your energy on helping them to see that this God, regardless of how he got it done, must be incredibly wise, powerful, and creative--to cause the universe and life in all its complexity.
3. If your friends say that evolution rules out the existence of God, ask them to explain why--and while they're at it, ask them how the universe got started on its own, how life began independently, and how the information in DNA came into existence without any intelligence behind it. If they can answer those questions, they're ahead of the scientific community as a whole!
