“In the Beginning when God created...”  Gen.  1:1

“…for God so loved the world . . .”John 3:16

 

“Of God and Darwin:

Can We Believe In God and Trust in Science”

 

 

What better place to start than “in the beginning.”   “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth it was void and chaos. Then the All Powerful and Creative God transformed the chaos into a work of art: Creation.  God’s creation was and is the heavens and the earth and all the creatures of the earth.  The crowning achievement of God’s creation was the human creature.  God pronounced all of creation: “good.”

Now in this beautiful and poetic story all of creation takes place in six days.  But how long is a “day?”  We define a day as 24 hour periods of time.  However, the Hebrew word, “yum” which is commonly translated as “day,” could also be translated as “age” or “eon.” But it doesn’t matter what the word means.  Creation could have been a six day project or a six billion year project.

 The language of story is the language of the imagination.  This language reaches far beyond the literal truth to a deeper meaning.  This is not a lesson in history.  Nor is this a text book to explain geology, astronomy or biology.  This is something more.  This is the language of the theologian.

 

What is a theologian?  In my book a theologian is one who seeks truth and finds that truth in God. The language and the tools of the theologian are faith.  And the way I see it, we are all theologians.

Theologians are seekers of truth.  But scientists are also seekers of truth.  So let me tell you about one scientist who findings have been both embraced and condemned by theologians.

Charles Darwin was born 200 years ago on February 12.  Although Darwin was never ordained, he studied at Christ College at Cambridge with the intention of becoming a priest in the Church of England. He was a life-long member of the Church of England, but he never won any perfect attendance awards.  The fact that he kept any relationship with the church was likely to please his devout wife.  Later in life he described himself as an Agnostic. There is a story that on his death bed he made a profession of the Christian faith.  But the story is highly unlikely.

After his divinity studies, Darwin switched to science. In 1831 he graduated from the Cambridge as a naturalist.  Shortly after he graduated in 1831. he set out on HMS Beagle on a 5 year voyage to chart distant lands.  While the Beagle was charting, Darwin was studying animals and geology.  I read that at the beginning of the voyage, he was one who took Holy Scripture in a very literal way.  I would interpret this to mean the he believed in a 6 day creation that likely happened a few thousand years ago. But this view changed as he pondered his finding over the course of the voyage.  For example he was in Chile right after an earthquake and observed layers of sea mussels, far inland, as the quake exposed ancient layers of rock.  Could the ocean have moved over a long period of time?    Later he observed a variety of species unique species in the geologically new Galapagos Islands. He was impressed with the fact that the same species of an animal would be different from island to island.   Now, I am not a scientist and I’m not delivering a research paper.  But as I understand the gist of history here, these observations led Darwin to begin to think that the earth was much older than 6000 years and that through a process of natural selection, all species on earth had evolved from lower life forms. 

Darwin wasn’t one to rush into things.  He went home. Thought about his observations, studied his samples and consulted with colleagues.  Then 18 years later in 1858 he published his finding in a book: “On the Origin of Species” The book was well received by many in his own time.  But also condemned by others.

Darwin died in 1882.  By the 1930’s –50 years after his death -- his findings had become the foundation that undergirds all of modern biology, geology and other sciences.  Without an understanding of evolution, biology and geology make little sense.

.          I mentioned earlier that Darwin was born on February 12, two hundred years ago.  That would have been 1809.  One of the great footnotes of history  is that Abraham Lincoln was also born on the same day.   When I was growing up in South Georgia, both men were considered “enemies of the people.”   Time and the judgment of history and morality have since given Lincoln a pardon. However, Darwin is still considered an enemy of the people – at least an enemy of conservative Christian people.

          Why the animosity toward Darwin?

The problem as I see it is that some people try to combine matters of faith and matters of science.  Theologians seek the truth.  They find that truth through faith.  Faith can not be analyzed in a test tube, examined under a microscope, or proven in a research study.  Faith is Faith.  Faith is the evidence of the unseen as the Apostle Paul puts it.  But if faith could be proven through scientific research, it would not be faith.

But some insist that every word of scripture is literal truth.  If the work of a scientist, like Darwin, contradicts their understanding of scripture—then Darwin has to be wrong. 

The Christian right looks at the story of creation in the first chapter of Genesis.  They note that the story says that God created the world in six days.  They conclude that these “days” are 24 hour days.   If Darwin said that creation took longer than six days, then Darwin is wrong.

The Christian right also adds up the various tables of genealogy found in scripture.  They conclude that these genealogies add up to about 6000 years.  If scientist insist that the earth is million of years old, then science is wrong.  Now I should point out here that many biblical scholars believe the genealogies and stories in Genesis are not literal history.  These stories are Faith History.  These are stories of God reaching down to a human race that is not always willing to reach up to God.  As such there is far more to these stories than a literal reading gives.

 What the Christian right says is that these biblical scholars are wrong and any scientist who says the earth is millions of year old is also wrong.  They insists that all the signs in the earth that point to a planet that is millions of years old, were in fact caused by the great flood in the story of Noah.   The proponents of this view call it, “Creationism.”

For a while the proponents of this view were insisting that “Creationism” or “Creation Science” should be given equal billing as evolution and be taught as a science in our public schools.  In 1987 after the United States Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law requiring “balanced treatment” between evolution and creations, the supporters of creationism shifted tactics.

          About ten years ago, Foundation for Thought and Ethics, a conservative Christian publisher produced a new text book, Of Pandas and People.  This new book taught a position called Intelligent Design.   The publisher insists the book isn’t creationism.  But many people who have studied the book say it is the old “Creationism” or Creation Science, packaged under a new name.  The only difference is that God isn’t mentioned.   Instead the book uses this new label, “Intelligent Design.”

          I have no problem with how a person chooses to interpret the first Chapter of Genesis.  But I have a problem when one person wants to impose their religious views on others and call it science.  It is wrong to use our pubic schools as spring boards for religious indoctrination or to try sneaking this indoctrination into our school under the guise of a “science”

           Is there another way of understanding the process of creation besides the views to religious right?  Yes, there is.  Some folks of faith, and here I include myself, find no problem with the basic teachings of Darwin.  In fact Christians who study medicine, nursing, scientific research or even take Biology 101 at a Christian College can not escape evolution as an integral part of their studies.  In this line of thinking we say that God is so big and so vast that God could have created the earth over eons of time and used evolution as the process of creation. 

One of our hymns puts it this way:

You moved on the waters,

You called to deep

Then you coaxed up the mountains from the valleys of sleep.

And over the eons you called to each thing,

Awake from your slumber and rise on your wings.

          So far we have been talking about the religious right which worships the literal words of scripture, while ignoring their deeper meaning and insisting that their views should be taught as science.   But it is also true that some scientist can be just as dogmatic and literalistic as some Christian fundamentalists.  Some scientists worship science and have no room for God.

          The late Carl Sagan was a good spokesperson for this view.  The way he saw things there were two ways to account for all life.  One is the hypothesis that the universe has always existed.  The other is that God has always existed.

          “The universe,” Sagan argues, “is infinitely old and therefore requires no Creator.” {Borsco’s Brain, page 336}   He says that originally it was set in motion by the Big Bang.  By the way he capitalizes “Big Bang”, much the same way we capitalize the word God.  Sagan argues that since the Big Bang, the universe has been “oscillating” through a series of events.

          To those who would believe in God, he raises the question, “where did God come from” It’s a good question.  It’s one I can not answer.  But neither can he explain who threw the switch and caused the Big Bang. 

          I’m not a scientist, so I’ve never tried to explain the “Big Bang.”  But every once in a while I take a stab at trying to explain God.  I say that God is eternal.  But then I realize I can’t explain where eternity came from.

          However, I do from time to time go outside at night and peer up at the vastness of the universe.  Astronomers say there are a hundred billion galaxies up there with a hundred billion stars in each galaxy.   I haven’t counted them all.  But I’ll take their word for it.   The way I see things, there is power and order behind all that is up there in the sky and that power and order is God.

          And at time I think about the human body--the miracle of birth and the miracle of life and the way that all our organs and nerves and systems function together.  I marvel at science and medical technology for all they have discovered about our bodies.  The way is see things there is order and reason to our bodies and I believe God is that order and reason.  

          Why do I believe all this?  Well---I guess it is just more reasonable, to believe, than not to believe--isn’t it?

          But some would say that it is unreasonable to believe in God.  And the more I think about it, the more I believe they are right.  Belief is not a matter of reason.  Belief is a matter of faith.

We began with the story of God creating.  So let’s end there too. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. This story is not about biology, geology or history.  The Bible is about matters of faith.  But there is one more chapter to this story and that is the story of Jesus.  For you see, our God is not only the God who creates.  Our God is the God who loves, “God loved the world so much that he sent his son . . .”

And that, my friends, is not a matter of science.  That is a matter of faith.

 

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