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Christ Episcopal Church
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Riverton, New Jersey |
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Faith and Science: big questions, short
answers. Recently, one of our high school
students e-mailed me with a request.
His advanced placement European History teacher asked his students to
get feedback from local members of the clergy for his class, and so he asked
for my opinion. I have printed my
responses below. The questions concern
two of the major issues of the so-called ‘culture wars’ of the last several
decades. I generally have not weighed
in on these debates, because my own tendency in keeping with my Anglican
heritage is to seek the middle ground, acknowledging that which is best from
competing points of view. In keeping
with the context, the answers are short and broad brush, but I am sure that
in the months and years ahead, we’ll have the opportunity to discuss them, and other important issues of our
times in greater depth. 1.
What is your basic stance on evolution? I think that the predominance of
evidence suggests that the earth was created sometime after an astronomic
event called the ‘big bang’, and that over the course of billions of years,
life evolved. The minds that God has
given us, when confronted with the archeological evidence can only conclude
that some process along the lines of natural selection enabled the increasing
complexity of life on earth. While
scripture offers a six day creation narrative, I am also aware that for the
infinite being of God “one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand
years are like one day” (2 Peter 3:8), and that those ‘days’ could consist
of a billion years, since God knows no time.
One of the major arguments against
evolution is that it is contrary to the second law of thermodynamics, which
states in part that systems or processes left to themselves invariably tend
to move from order to disorder. The
French theologian Pierre Teilhard deChardin offers an interesting Christian
explanation in favor of evolution from this vantage point. He states that God is actually behind the
increasing complexity of life, because all creation is being drawn to God’s
perfection, contravening from a biological perspective the disorder called
for in the second law. He writes of
our having “a personal God: a God who not only creates but animates and
gives totality to a universe which he gathers to himself by means of all
those forces which we group together under the name of evolution” (Toward
the future, p. 127). 2.
Should science or religion determine what is truth? Which of these two thought systems should
determine governments’ policies? Truth is an absolute and only God
is absolute. God is sovereign over
both, and thus both science and faith offer means to uncover truth but in
different realms. The Bible is a poor
biology textbook, and there is very little in the way of ethics that one
finds in the pure sciences. One can
find truths in both, and errors in both.
Genesis 2 states that a man has one less rib than a woman, for
example. Astronomy told us that Pluto
was a planet. Well it was, until this
summer. Any government would be
foolish to blindly accept one or another without using the God given reason
to determine a proper course of action. A central premise of American
government, “that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable
rights”, was a religious tenet, not a scientific one. Hitler used the now discredited science of
eugenics (a ‘science’ which had its largest number of adherents in the US!)
to justify the murder of the handicapped and other ‘undesirables’ such as
gypsies and Jews in order to breed a new master race. Religion without science (and reason) gave
us the Taliban in My sense is that our government
runs according to the utilitarian maxim, ‘the greatest good for the greatest
number’, with our Constitution guaranteeing the rights of individuals and
minorities, so that the remainder isn’t oppressed in the process of providing
the good. Biology and faith can agree
that what is good for human beings includes: nutritious food, sufficient
clothing, and decent shelter. Religion
adds that ‘one does not live by bread alone…’ (Deuteronomy 8:3, Matthew 4:4),
that good includes intangibles like ‘liberty and the pursuit of happiness’,
and that fully healthy humans need to be loved and to have a purpose greater
than themselves to be truly happy. So I would say science and
religion both have a part to play in good government, and might even prove to
be an additional check and balance as we seek within our constitutional
framework to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for
the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of
Liberty”. See you in church?! |
