Science and Christianity (Part 7)

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) published “On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life,” in 1859. It was a watershed moment in scientific history. Darwin’s impact is still very much with us today.

Darwin’s father and grandfather were physicians. His grandfather Erasmus Darwin was an adamant deist who believed in the nonintervention of God in nature and human affairs. Darwin grew up studying biology in this environment. He later opted to study theology but abandoned that and returned to biology.

One of his professors secured a position for him on a naturalist expedition aboard the HMS Beagle from 1831-1836. Darwin began formulating his ideas of evolution through natural selection shortly after returning. By the mid-1840s, he had written up many of his ideas, although they were not published. Darwin struggled with illness and several other obstacles throughout his life, and it wasn’t until 1859 that he published his revolutionary findings.

I showed in my last post that many of the elements that fed into Darwin’s model had been around for years before his publication. But it was Darwin who brought them into a coherent model. Three essential features of the model included:

• Origin of all life from one source.
• Evolution of one species into another by natural selection.
• Expansive eons of time.

All of this was directly contrary to the Church's traditional understanding at the time.

• Each species was created as it now is.
• God involved himself in the natural world and created the species, especially humanity.
• The earth was maybe 6,000 years old.

Darwin’s theory was not the first to raise a direct challenge to traditional Christianity, nor would it be the last. Galileo’s insights were very unsettling; later, quantum physics and Einstein’s theory of relativity would send shock waves. Still, when we look at the focal point of friction between science and Christianity, it often centers on the issues of origins and creation. We also must remember that the Church's understanding of its own story was fractured at this time.

The two significant challenges for me are about the participation of God in the natural world and why a loving God would create a world with such violence and destruction. For others, Darwin’s model raises issues about the authority and reliability of scripture. There is also the issue of evolution as a model for scientific research versus Darwinism as an ideology for interpreting all physical and metaphysical issues. Many Christian scientists have little problem embracing the former without the latter.

I want to start my reflections by first asking what the Genesis 1 creation story actually says.

[Index]

Comments

[Denis Hancock]

Excellent points. I especially appreciate your distinction between Darwin's theory and the Darwinist ideology that has grown around it. I find that somewhat analogous to the distinction between Science and Technology.

[La Bona]

Here is a related entry ...

Did God actually created man from scratch?

According to Intelligent Design Guru: If we are indeed created by God from scratch, then we are actually a very lousy design … a FLAWED creation, so to speak!

If you have any comment, please email it me at [email protected] or just leave it at http://divinetalk.blogspot.com/

[will spotts]

The distinction between these two is very important.

Current evolutionary theory is accepted popularly without an honest understanding of the actual science involved. It is accepted in a warm fuzzy, progressophile manner. (Meaning evolution is used as a metaphor for all kinds of changes -- most of which are social and contrived, not evolutionary at all.)

[Michael Kruse]

If you have an answer to La Bona's question post it here too. I want to know the answer as well.