Valerie Schultz: Darwin's science works to prove existence of God, not refute it
| Wednesday, Feb 25 2009 05:17 PM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 01:21 PM
In a cosmic coincidence, Feb. 12, 2009, marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin as well as that of Abraham Lincoln: the father of evolutionary theory and the father of evolutionary humanity shared a birthday. Darwin pioneered the study of biological evolution, while Lincoln encouraged his fellow Americans to heed the “better angels” of their nature, in a plea for the cultural evolution that came of the Civil War. We celebrate this year two giants of history.
But it is Darwin under a columnist’s microscope today. Darwin pondered and organized his evolutionary ideas at length before finally publishing “On the Origin of Species” in 1859. For 20 years, Darwin took copious notes and made sketches in a series of small notebooks, making him an early ancestor of today’s bloggers. He knew that his work was controversial and would most likely banish him to the outskirts of his respectable, 19th-century, God-fearing society. But he also knew that by hesitating, he ran the risk of another scientist beating him to publication. His groundbreaking conclusion, based on his observations of tortoises, lizards and birds in the Galapagos Islands, was that a species will change over time in the interest of survival in “the struggle for existence.” Even we humans, Darwin deduced, continue to evolve to accommodate our survival.
The trouble was that this seemed to conflict with the accepted biblical stories of creation.
The negative reaction of the religious powers, while expected, puzzled Darwin. In general, he found that people had no argument with the evolutionary laws of physics or astronomy. It was only biology that gave folks pause: Whole systems of planets can evolve, but not butterflies. “The smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by a special act,” Darwin mused.
Darwin’s work still polarizes Americans. School districts still wrestle with textbooks that offend either religious people or scientific people, by emphasizing either evolution or creationism. As sometimes happens, people of strong religious beliefs can interpret scientific discoveries as threats to the truth of their creed. The question is: Can one be a theist and an evolutionist?
Those who believe in a strictly literal interpretation of the Bible would say no. And if your faith is rooted in the books of the Old Testament as hard scientific fact, you do have a problem. For example, the Bible counts the age of the earth in thousands of years, while the evidence of researchers in astronomy, geology, and paleontology, to name a few -ologies, indicates that the earth is actually billions of years old. You can, of course, accuse all scientists of nefarious and atheistic motives that cause them to lie about their data. Or can you perhaps use your God-given mind to learn something new?
It is similarly problematic to believe in the discipline of science without acknowledging, or at least entertaining, the existence of God. Something cannot be created from nothing, and no matter how far back into the primordial ooze that evolutionists track our beginnings, at some point there had to be that initial creative spark, such that our human minds cannot fathom.
Wouldn’t there have to be an unseen creator of something from nothing, in order to set into motion any global or microscopic process of life?
Because of this unknowable spark, it seems to me that science and faith need not threaten each other’s authenticity. In reconciling the natural sciences with belief in an eternal, divine creator, a believer appreciates that the hand of God, for whom “nothing is impossible,” is present in molecules, in DNA, in the leap of frogs. Rather than an attack on faith, Darwin’s biological findings map the unfolding wonder of creation.
“Everything in the Bible is true,” goes a popular saying, “and some of it actually happened.” The Bible makes a confusing science textbook, but a revelatory spiritual guidebook. Our very understanding of what it means to be a human being with an immortal soul evolves throughout the creation story of the Garden of Eden.
Those who would pigeonhole our concept of the Creator in a simplistic mythology do the grand mystery of God a disservice. It is hard to imagine a God who would have us turn our backs on the growth of knowledge through time, especially now that we have eaten of that tree. Knowledge is power, but whether it is used for good or evil is the choice of the user.
Darwin had the science right. But God is in the details.
