pilgrimNprogress said:
hello all-
here I am, and I am trying to understand why some of you can believe in theistic evolution, as there are many problems in the theory. I am open to reasons on how you can put evolution and the bible together, so go ahead and enlighten me :-D
First, theistic evolution is not a theory. The theory is the theory of evolution, and that theory does not come in different varieties. It is the same whether one is Christian, Hindu or Agnostic, whether one is theist or atheist or Buddhist.
When we speak of theistic evolution we are not referring to a special variety of the theory of evolution, but to how TEs integrate the theory of evolution into their broader world view, which includes a deity--and for Christians, specifically the God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth and witnessed to by the Holy Scriptures and by created nature itself.
When you say there are problems in the theory, I am not sure if you are speaking about problems with the science of evolution, or problems with taking a theistic perspective on evolution.
If it is the first, then I expect you have learned a lot about the strawman cartoon version of evolution that is wide-spread in creationist literature. This literature does NOT tell you what the scientists say about evolution and the evidence for it. The "problems" it raises are pseudo-problems which do disprove the creationist parody of evolution, but don't touch on the actual theory of evolution at all.
So if that is where your hesitancy comes from, the first recommendation I can give you is to unlearn everything you think you know about evolution and start from scratch learning about evolution from reputable scientific sources.
As for the second possibility, there are three points to be made.
1. Are "natural" and "divine" mutually exclusive? In other words, is the ONLY way God relates to nature through miracles, or does God also create and sustain the whole realm of natural processes and accomplish his will as often (or even more often) within natural process as by overriding natural process with super-natural miracles?
This is an important question, because many people, both Christian and non-Christian fall into the habit of speaking of natural process as if it is the opposite to divine action. The correct opposition is natural/super-natural, not natural/divine. God can and does operate through both natural and supernatural means, so no matter how often and how completely science describes a natural process, it never excludes God. The inclusion or exclusion of God is a matter of personal philosophy, not a scientific conclusion.
2. Is it imperative that the creation accounts in Genesis be construed as historical fact in all details? This question is important because, clearly, the biblical and the scientific account of when structures of the universe (eg earth, sun, stars) and when various life forms appeared are at odds with each other. The biblical account says the earth existed before the sun and stars. The scientific account says many stars existed before the sun and the sun existed before the earth. The biblical account says herbs and fruit trees existed before sea creatures and the scientific account says the reverse. The biblical account says birds and whales existed before terrestrial animals and the scientific account says the reverse.
So, if the biblical account must be historical fact, one cannot accept both the biblical account and the scientific account and theistic evolution is a pipe dream.
The only way they can be reconciled is if the biblical account is true, but not historical. In short, the biblical account was never intended to be a chronology of creation, but a pictorial representation of the truths of creation written for a people that had no capacity to deal with the concepts of modern science. (By capacity, I do not mean lack of intelligence, but lack of the knowledge base that goes into evolution.)
3. And this leads to a final philosophical question. Does all truth have to be fact? Or can something be true mystically, mythically, metaphorically, etc., without being demonstable fact? In the period known as the Enlightenment during which science came to be a major way of knowing, many people did adopt the position that only fact is true. Only what can be demonstrated empirically is true. Even many Christians adopted this positivist philosophy. If only fact is true, and if Christian beliefs about God and creation are true, it follows that the Genesis accounts must be fact in order to be true.
But prior to the Enlightenment, it was not common to think that only empirically demonstrable fact was true. It was more common to think of many things, especially things of the spirit, as true, even if there was no empirical evidece that they are true. If truth is broader than fact, if fact does not set the bounds on what can be true, then it is not necessary for the Genesis accounts to be factual in order to be true. They can be true mystically, mythically, metaphorically instead of being true factually and historically.
It is this way of understanding truth that makes it possible to reconcile the empirical facts of science in regard to evolution with the biblical accounts of creation. What TEs are doing is recovering a way of thinking about truth that the secular world (and with them many Christians) rejected during the Enlightenment. We are re-examining scripture according to norms of truth that were familiar to medieval and ancient peoples, but which are not common in modern secularized society. We should note too, that many non-theists are increasingly aware that the positivist ideas that limit truth to demonstrable fact do not satisfy. This is why, in our post-modern society, you get this immense longing for spirituality whether or not it is linked to theism.
This is a good time to be a Christian, because the world is longing for the gospel. It is not a good time to restrict our vision of truth to empirical fact. We need to reclaim the larger vision of truth that is open to many kinds of truth. In that vision, both the empirical facts of evolution and the truths of the biblical accounts of creation have their place without conflicting with each other.
