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Science + Tech
Science and Faith at Odds?
by
Alister McGrath
It is important to note that the evangelical debates over Darwinism cannot be separated from broader cultural agendas, especially in the United States. Science is not simply an intellectual movement; it is a competitor for cultural attention and authority, at times proposing itself as an alternative to religion. One characteristic feature of the “new atheism,” found in writings such as Dawkins’ recent work and Daniel Dennett’s
Breaking the Spell
(2006) is that science has displaced religion as a cultural and intellectual authority, demonstrating its superiority in both respects. This means that some evangelicals see the controversy over Darwinism as part of a broader “Culture War” between secularism and Christianity.
It is a mark of the polarization that has developed within evangelicalism in recent years that some are now suggesting that a rejection of biological evolution is an essential characteristic of true evangelicalism. This is historically incorrect, in that evangelical hostility towards Darwinism only became significant in the 1920s, partly as a result of the rise of fundamentalism. For the first fifty years of Darwinism’s existence, evangelical hostility was muted, with more accommodationist approaches tending to prevail.
Let’s take a closer look at how evangelical concerns with Darwinism first emerged in the late nineteenth century. The most important of these can be set out like this.
Darwinism offered an account of the origins of species that appeared to many to be incompatible with a literal interpretation of the opening chapters of the book of Genesis. Evangelical concerns about the natural sciences are closely linked with issues of biblical interpretation.
Darwin’s theory seemed to undermine arguments for the existence of God that appealed to evidence of design in the natural world. The most famous of these, as Darwin himself acknowledged, was the form of natural theology developed by the celebrated English apologist William Paley (1743-1805).
The special place of humanity in the natural world was called into question by the theory of evolution. Darwin himself realized that this was a very sensitive matter, and held back from explicitly engaging with this question until
The Descent of Man
(1871).
The traditional notion of providence seemed to be contradicted by Darwin’s theory that evolution took place through random variations in the forms of living creatures.
For some evangelicals, the cumulative force of these concerns was enough to make Darwinism unacceptable. Yet most evangelical writers, both in Great Britain and the United States, held back from any dismissal of Darwinism. Each of these four concerns could be addressed in some way. To illustrate this point, let’s consider the attitude toward Darwinism of perhaps the most influential American evangelical writer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century — Benjamin B. Warfield (1851-1921). Warfield served as professor of theology at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1887 to 1921 and is widely revered within conservative evangelical circles for his theories of biblical inerrancy and inspiration.
How did Warfield approach Darwin’s theory of evolution? He developed a sophisticated analysis of contemporary Darwinism, making two points which deserve to continue to be central to evangelical reflection on this question. First, Warfield drew the distinction between Darwinism as a scientific theory and as a grander, reductionist account of reality. No evangelical could tolerate Darwinism if it was interpreted as “supplying a complete account of the origin and state of the universe.”
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This, for Warfield, was “tantamount to atheism.” Here, he echoed earlier concerns about Darwinism expressed by his older Princeton colleague, Charles Hodge (1797-1878). Warfield insisted that Darwinism was to be seen as a “working hypothesis” or a “conjecture as to the method of creation,” which should be judged on the basis of its empirical adequacy.
Second, Warfield emphasized that the natural sciences were prone to speculation. A clear distinction had to be made between the empirical facts of nature and extravagant interpretations of these, especially when these involved inferring speculative metaphysical conclusions. It is at this point that we find Warfield making one of his most important criticisms of Darwinism — its rejection of any concept of purpose within nature (an idea often referred to using the term “teleology”). For Warfield, this represented metaphysical speculation on Darwin’s part, rather than rigorous scientific observation. One of Warfield’s most pointed criticisms of Darwin is that he sought to replace any notion of purpose or teleology in the biological world with those of natural selection and random variation. For Warfield, this suggested that Darwin had an anti-theistic agenda, however subtly it may have been stated. There is, he argued, no reason why the concept of a natural developmental process should be held to entail atheism. Rather, it can be interpreted and even subsumed within a Reformed view of divine providence, which holds that God creates a world with the capacity for development and is sovereign over that subsequent process of development.
Warfield developed this point further in his analysis of the concept of divine creation. For Warfield, the term “creation” refers to God’s primal act of bringing everything into being from nothing (ex nihilo).
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It describes God’s initial creation of the universe, with the potential for further development under God’s sovereign providential guidance. To express this developmental aspect of things, Warfield introduced the notion of “mediate creation,” by which he meant something intermediate between natural processes and divine providence. “Mediate creation” thus refers to the direct action of God on material entities, in which God brings about novelty — that is, something that was not originally present in the primary act of creation itself. Warfield does not hold that “naturalistic evolution” and “divine creation” are identical; he does, however, insist that they are consistent with each other, provided both are interpreted correctly. Any conflict between the actual facts revealed in nature (as opposed to extravagant scientific speculation about nature) and the biblical texts should lead the responsible exegete, not to reject a scientific account of nature nor to doubt the truth of Scripture, but to seek a better interpretation of Scripture in the light of these facts.
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Comments
Stanley McKeown
Do you belive that ' the dead believers will be recurrected' and with the 'believers' will fly up into the sky to meet Jesus/Immanuel/Son of God/Son of Man/Saviour etc. (or whatever title you confer) and that the 'unbelievers' will be left behind.
Yes or no.
Simple scientific question.
Simple christian question.
Simple religious question.
Comments are now closed
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