Can You Believe in God and Evolution?

TIME ^ | Sunday, Aug. 07, 2005 | DAVID VAN BIEMA

[Skylab]

Can You Believe in God and Evolution?

Four experts with very different views weigh in on the underlying question.

By COMPILED BY DAVID VAN BIEMA

>FRANCIS COLLINS

Director, National Human Genome Research Institute

I see no conflict in what the Bible tells me about God and what science tells me about nature. Like St. Augustine in A.D. 400, I do not find the wording of Genesis 1 and 2 to suggest a scientific textbook but a powerful and poetic description of God's intentions in creating the universe. The mechanism of creation is left unspecified. If God, who is all powerful and who is not limited by space and time, chose to use the mechanism of evolution to create you and me, who are we to say that wasn't an absolutely elegant plan? And if God has now given us the intelligence and the opportunity to discover his methods, that is something to celebrate.

I lead the Human Genome Project, which has now revealed all of the 3 billion letters of our own DNA instruction book. I am also a Christian. For me scientific discovery is also an occasion of worship.

Nearly all working biologists accept that the principles of variation and natural selection explain how multiple species evolved from a common ancestor over very long periods of time. I find no compelling examples that this process is insufficient to explain the rich variety of life forms present on this planet. While no one could claim yet to have ferreted out every detail of how evolution works, I do not see any significant "gaps" in the progressive development of life's complex structures that would require divine intervention. In any case, efforts to insert God into the gaps of contemporary human understanding of nature have not fared well in the past, and we should be careful not to do that now.

Science's tools will never prove or disprove God's existence. For me the fundamental answers about the meaning of life come not from science but from a consideration of the origins of our uniquely human sense of right and wrong, and from the historical record of Christ's life on Earth.

>STEVEN PINKER

Psychology professor, Harvard University

It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings.

Our own bodies are riddled with quirks that no competent engineer would have planned but that disclose a history of trial-and-error tinkering: a retina installed backward, a seminal duct that hooks over the ureter like a garden hose snagged on a tree, goose bumps that uselessly try to warm us by fluffing up long-gone fur.

The moral design of nature is as bungled as its engineering design. What twisted sadist would have invented a parasite that blinds millions of people or a gene that covers babies with excruciating blisters? To adapt a Yiddish expression about God: If an intelligent designer lived on Earth, people would break his windows.

The theory of natural selection explains life as we find it, with all its quirks and tragedies. We can prove mathematically that it is capable of producing adaptive life forms and track it in computer simulations, lab experiments and real ecosystems. It doesn't pretend to solve one mystery (the origin of complex life) by slipping in another (the origin of a complex designer).

Many people who accept evolution still feel that a belief in God is necessary to give life meaning and to justify morality. But that is exactly backward. In practice, religion has given us stonings, inquisitions and 9/11. Morality comes from a commitment to treat others as we wish to be treated, which follows from the realization that none of us is the sole occupant of the universe. Like physical evolution, it does not require a white-coated technician in the sky.

>MICHAEL BEHE

Biochemistry professor, Lehigh University; Senior fellow, Discovery Institute

Sure, it's possible to believe in both God and evolution. I'm a Roman Catholic, and Catholics have always understood that God could make life any way he wanted to. If he wanted to make it by the playing out of natural law, then who were we to object? We were taught in parochial school that Darwin's theory was the best guess at how God could have made life.

I'm still not against Darwinian evolution on theological grounds. I'm against it on scientific grounds. I think God could have made life using apparently random mutation and natural selection. But my reading of the scientific evidence is that he did not do it that way, that there was a more active guiding. I think that we are all descended from some single cell in the distant past but that that cell and later parts of life were intentionally produced as the result of intelligent activity. As a Christian, I say that intelligence is very likely to be God.

Several Christian positions are theologically consistent with the theory of mutation and selection. Some people believe that God is guiding the process from moment to moment. Others think he set up the universe from the Big Bang to unfold like a computer program. Others take scientific positions that are indistinguishable from those atheist materialists might take but say that their nonscientific intuitions or philosophical considerations or the existence of the mind lead them to deduce that there is a God.

I used to be part of that last group. I just think now that the science is not nearly as strong as they think.

>ALBERT MOHLER

President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Given the human tendency toward inconsistency, there are people who will say they hold both positions. But you cannot coherently affirm the Christian-truth claim and the dominant model of evolutionary theory at the same time.

Personally, I am a young-Earth creationist. I believe the Bible is adequately clear about how God created the world, and that its most natural reading points to a six-day creation that included not just the animal and plant species but the earth itself. But there have always been Evangelicals who asserted that it might have taken longer. What they should not be asserting is the idea of God's having set the rules for evolution and then stepped back. And even less so, the model held by much of the scientific academy: of evolution as the result of a random process of mutation and selection.

For one thing, there's the issue of human "descent." Evangelicals must absolutely affirm the special creation of humans in God's image, with no physical evolution from any nonhuman species. Just as important, the Bible clearly teaches that God is involved in every aspect and moment in the life of His creation and the universe. That rules out the image of a kind of divine watchmaker.

I think it's interesting that many of evolution's most ardent academic defenders have moved away from the old claim that evolution is God's means to bring life into being in its various forms. More of them are saying that a truly informed belief in evolution entails a stance that the material world is all there is and that the natural must be explained in purely natural terms. They're saying that anyone who truly feels this way must exclude God from the story. I think their self-analysis is correct. I just couldn't disagree more with their premise.

[AlGone2001]

"No. He created the light and then created day and night. The night was without light. Only later did he create the sun. Are you saying that even without the sun the day would still be light?"

No. I don't know where you got that. But He did nothing on the earth on the first day and created the light. That begs one to ask why.

Gen 1:5

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.


It was the fourth day when He created the sun:

GENISIS 1

14And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

17And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

19And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

.......................

It sure seems obvious that the light of the first three days was not the same source as the light of the third day forward.

[NCLaw441]

Not only could He have created evolution, he could have designed the human body with "flaws" so that man would not think he was perfect.

[WildTurkey]

It sure seems obvious that the light of the first three days was not the same source as the light of the third day forward.

But why would he create the plants before creating the sun?

[WildTurkey]

But why would he create the plants before creating the sun?

Never mind. I can answer my own question. It was sort of like when he created the animals after he saw how lonely Adam was.

[AlGone2001]

You seem to profess to be a "wise" man. Hmmmm.

I have some wisdom, but I don't claim to be more "intelligent" than anyone else.

The point is that if we search out the Bible and see how it prophesied about a coming savior with unparalleled accuracy, we can believe the rest of His word, too.

The bible says in one place, "can the clay tell the potter, I don't need you?

Search the Bible, find out the numerous times we are told about a man who would die for our sins (1000+ years before His birth), and it's easy to believe the rest.

Isaiah 53 is an awesome demonstration of God's planning.

With His ability, I've learned to major on the majors, and minor on the minors. I think that's wisdom.

God's more impressed with whether I bear the fruit of the Spirit than anything else. It is our fruit that He will judge, not our intelligence or our talents.

[NCLaw441]

I am cool with there still being Apes and Monkeys, but where are all the other transitional animals?? What about the mid-size giraffes, for example? Or the ape-men that led to man? Given the millions of years that evolution allegedly took, there should be many more fossilized remains of such animals, and a fair number should still exist today.

[WildTurkey]

God's more impressed with whether I bear the fruit of the Spirit than anything else.

As long as you are saved, it doesn't matter to God how evil you were ...

[WildTurkey]

http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/afar.html

[NCLaw441]

You said: Makes any further discussion a waste of time. I have neither the time nor the inclination to "convert" anyone; nor to be "converted".

Whoa, not so fast. Don't we have an obligation to try and convert others, at least in the Christian faith?

[roaddog727]

Absolutely.

They are not mutually exclusive.

[Sender]

I don't know if mankind evolved gradually or was zapped into instant existance. No one knows, really. And if I learned that we evolved from some lesser life form, I would not change my admiration for God's creation one bit.

The sticking point I have with most scientific evolutionists is their scoffing at the possibility of a divine creator. Why must science insist on the absence of God? Why is any belief in creation labeled as ignorant mythology? Why are religious people stereotyped as weak minds by the scientists?

If God is much smarter than we are, and I believe that He is, then He knows a thing or two about science. Everything He has made, from lowly bugs to the human population, from bacteria to bioengineering is a masterpiece IMHO. Stuff like this doesn't just happen. You can leave a pound of flour and sugar out all night and what are the odds that in the morning you'll have a cake?

Science and the Creator are one and the same. Learning is good. Belief is good. One does not preclude the other.

[x]

The better question would be "Do you have to take the creation account in Genesis literally to believe in God?" And the answer is "No, you don't have to."

Pinker's belief that one doesn't need God to be moral isn't wholly convincing. I can believe that "I'm not the only person on earth" and still tolerate and perform a lot of reprehensible acts. The ideal of mankind can be as much an impetus to horrible crimes as the belief in God.

[SolarisRocks]

How does one test for God?

[exDemMom]

Almost half of the grad students entering the Ph. D. program with me did not qualify for the degree.

Ditto here, when I got my Ph.D. in biochem/mol. biology. Of 8 students in my year, one dropped to a MS, one disappeared, and two still had not graduated when I did, in the 8th year. Did I mention that getting the PhD took forever?

[The Coopster]

How do you know that a God day from the book of Genesis is equivalent to a Man day?

[exDemMom]

When did the little oily spheres begin to replicate due to internal forces? When did the little oily spheres begin to evolve to suit a changing environment?

Goodness, just because I propose a plausible explanation, you now think I was there to observe it? True, my b-day was yesterday, but, still, I'm not THAT old!

Keep in mind that everything about my plausible explanation (aka hypothesis) is based on a thorough understanding of the chemistry of living organisms. If some molecules were conglomerating (due purely to their physical properties; no life involved) inside the micelles, and the conglomerate got too big and bulky, the micelles would spontaneously break apart and form smaller micelles.

It is really hard for me to get from crystals or little oily spheres to DNA in the short span of years allowed by the Geological and Paleontological records of the planet.

The oily spheres would not be a precursor to DNA; they would be cell membranes, organelle membranes, and nuclear membranes, which are all oily "spheres" (cells take on many shapes and are not usually spherical). These spheres, or micelles, form spontaneously in water.

The DNA would have more in common with the crystals. Crystals form from the spontaneous formation of identical atoms or molecules into an ordered structure. This happens because the identical atoms or molecules all have the same shape, which causes them to fit together a certain way. DNA is made of countless tiny molecules that have similar flat shapes that stack on each other like plates because, physically, that is the only way they CAN stack. It is not a matter of there not being enough time in the universe for DNA to spontaneously appear--rather, it is the case that the molecules that stack upon each other to form DNA strands are simple little molecules formed of a handful of elements that, because of their chemical properties, can only combine in certain ways.

[exDemMom]

You might either want to rephrase this, or abandon it altogether since not only is it circular, but it is demonstrably false.
Photosynthesis alone would falsify your premise.

Again: Every chemical process occurring within a living system proceeds according to physical law and can occur in the absence of a living system.

Please explain how this statement is circular and demonstrably false. Please explain how photosynthesis falsifies this statement. Please explain how living organisms can exist in a physical environment while avoiding the constraints of physical law. Feel free to be as technical in your explanations as you want--I won't have any trouble understanding.

[Mike Darancette]

Happy belated birthday.

There are so many things I wish I knew and this topic is one of them.

[exDemMom]

Thank you.

[WillMalven]

What is it about theses idiot atheists that they so like to set themselves up to be knocked down so easily?

Pinker, a Hahvahd Professor of Psychology says:

"Many people who accept evolution still feel that a belief in God is necessary to give life meaning and to justify morality. But that is exactly backward. In practice, religion has given us stonings, inquisitions and 9/11"

Talk about leading with your chin:

Hey Pinker, I'll see you stonings, inquisitions and 9/11 caused by religious zealots, and raise you 20,000,000 deaths in Stalin's atheist utopia and 30,000,000 deaths in Mao's atheist utopia.

What an effing idiot...this is what passes for intellect at Harvard?