There would not be a philosophy (note I didn't use the term science) called ID if the education of our children wasn't at stake. Science is not insular, no matter what the ideals are. The belief that men are not in the image of God is profoundly offensive to Christianity. Making evolution compatible with it requires a rather thorough understanding of science and of what has been alleged and what has been proved. As as inculcation, 6th grade science textbooks often introduce evolution. I don't see evolutionary biologists coming from the 6th grade. The primary purpose of putting it there is to sew seeds of doubt. Much like Luther, evolutionists may believe it is good thing they are doing. Like the Reformation, there are plenty of people on the sidelines itching at the bit to manipulate whatever they can to pry people away from the faith. Advanced science such as evolution requires a different understanding than one has when they are 12. Science at that age (and for too many as adults) is often considered inalienable truth. As you probably know, later in the sciences you recognize that science is an explanation only as valuable as what it can imitate and manipulate. This is not to demean science, just to offer some perspective.Readers have probably caught on by now that I consider the theory of evolution to be the best current theory we have concerning biological origins of species on this planet (one tries to be careful and avoid phrases like "believe in evolution"), but it struck me this gets to some of the discomfort that many Christian parents have with allowing schools to present evolution to their children in science class.
Leave aside, for a moment, the question of what the history of life on earth actually is. Clearly, someone who believes that science can demonstrate that God created the world and all life on it via a miraculous event has less room to lose his faith in God than someone who believes that life on earth developed via a natural process -- but that God created the universe and the laws of order that allow it to be a welcoming place for life on earth. The more direct you think the evidence of God's hand in the universe is, the less room you have to doubt God's existence. (Now, if God had given us all "Child of God" birthmarks, we'd really be set...)
This leads some people, especially those who have little intellectual interest in science, to wonder: Why exactly should we be investigating these things anyway? We know God created the universe. We know that He intended each one of us since before the creation of the world. Sure he _could_ have used evolution. But since evolution is never going to impinge on our daily lives, and we only have to read the papers to see that many biologists use evolution to justify their atheism -- why should we teach our children about evolution? It seems like all danger and no upside.
Now, I don't deny there's a certain danger involved. And no one ever went to hell for not "believing" in evolution -- while quite a few people have gone to hell for refusing to believe in God. So I have no problem with people who have no interest in evolution. What does make me grumpy is when other Christians, because they like the idea of God's existence being readily demonstable in the scientific realm, seem willing to pile onto a biological theory they don't necessarily understand (and which may not be true) simply to thumb their nose at the specter of atheistic materialist scientists. But there is a danger inherent in ID. When we stake our faith on the back end of a bacterium, and say that we know there is a God because the flagellum is irreducibly complex, we build the house of our faith upon sand. There is a very good chance that the flagellum is not irreducibly complex, and if we have told countless people that God is to be found in the gaps, then when those gaps disappear so will God.
This is not to say that some scientists are not atheists, and that they draw on evolution as an explanation for why they "don't need God." However, evolution is no more capable of proving that we have no "need" for God than the theory that the earth rests on the back of a giant turtle, which is standing on another turtle, which is standing on another turtle and so on, could prove that there was no need for God to create the heavens and the earth. We know that the universe is a temporally finite. And we know that every effect in the material universe has a cause. And thus we must in the end either admit that some outside, eternal, uncaused force created the world -- else simply throw up up our hands and say, "The universe just is. I accept that it exists, but I'd rather believe that it exists 'just because' than that God created it."
The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy tells us: "The universe is an incredibly big place. So big, in fact, that most people choose to live in a smaller one of their own construction." Materialists, no matter how highly degreed, live in just such a smaller place. We as Christians, however, do not have to. There's no need for us to hide from evolution, because even if turtles descended from more primitive turtle-ancestors, who descended from amphibians, who descended from fish, who descended in turn from something else -- we know that the turtles do not in fact go all the way down.
Thank you for commenting. As far as utilitarianism, I should confess that I don't hold it for evolution alone. To the detriment of science, I think we are introducing complex topics into the curriculum at way too young of an age. Unfortunately, the trend I see in education is to make students a Jack of All Trades and a Master of None.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to Evolution's role in education, I have mixed emotions. Personally, I don't have a significant interest in the topic. I think if we are going to teach it that it needs to be taught thoroughly. My greatest fear is that when we introduce a topic, we dumb it down. I don't know your familiarity with survey courses. They have been in vogue at universities for awhile, but they have come under considerable criticism, because they are so vacuous.
Indeed, most general science intro level text books (and many bio 101, chem 101, physics 101 type books as well) are simply terrible committee written driven, which simplify to the extent of being both dull and wrong. No argument from me there.
ReplyDeleteThe great difficulty for many parents (whether they homeschool or are simply trying to do their due dilligence on what is being taught to their children) is that it's hard to be an expert in everything, and so invariably they end up have to judge textbooks in fields in which they are not experts -- a doubly hard tastk.
Genuinely good thoughts.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I noticed that you adapted the beginning of "A Brief History of Time" in a clever way. It's a point that Dr. Hawking doesn't want to face, it seems.
But since evolution is never going to impinge on our daily lives, and we only have to read the papers to see that many biologists use evolution to justify their atheism -- why should we teach our children about evolution? It seems like all danger and no upside
ReplyDeleteTwo reasons. One you'll like as a religious person, and one which I consider important even though I'm not.
1. If you teach your children about evolution, and explain how it doesn't disprove God, then you have countered the argument that evolutionary atheists are going to make. Whereas if you do not teach about evolution, they are left open to being bamboozled by something they have no exposure to and no way to crtiically evaluate.
2. The idea that evolution does not affect our daily lives is wrong. That would be like saying because you do not use the statistical formulas you may have learned in university on a daily basis, an understanding of statistics is not important. It is important, because it allows you to evaluate all of the surveys and polls and such that we're told about in the news every day. Similarly, many of the current (and future) events of the day will require an understanding of evolution to deal with. For example, bird flu, biotechnology, genetic engineering, etc. Without a solid understanding of evolution, it is very difficult for a person to read about what is going on in the world today and make informed decisions about what to think of it all. Even non-biological areas are borrowing concepts (by analogy) from evolution, and without an understanding of how biological evolution works, you have no means to determine whether the analogies are correct or not.
The danger and the downside is in not teaching evolution correctly (which would refute the arguments of the atheists) and thoroughly (which would avoid the dangers posed by survey courses or teaching a dumbed-down version to grade 6es). While not teaching it at all would give the child neither correct nor incorrect information, it's the least thorough teaching possible, and that has a dangerous downside.
Look at the history of Evolution, where it came from, and what has followed in its wake, and that'll be enough to cause you to doubt the truth of it.
ReplyDeleteWhere it came from: Enlightenment naturalists who read the ancient Greek and Hindu evolutionists.
What followed in its wake: apostasy, atheism, naturalism, eugenics, two world wars, both socialism & fascism.
Most of the great 20th century dictators were Darwinists. Why? Because the upshot of Darwinism is, 1. might is right, the will of the strongest is the law, 2. man has no spiritual soul, he is a beast that can be enslaved and reprogrammed into the ideal "citizen".
Think for a moment how much the devil has profited from Darwinism. Darwinism has taught countless millions to believe, not that they were made in God's image, but that they were made in the image of an ape; not that they are a little lower than the angels, as the scriptures teach, but they are a little higher than the ape, as Darwin teaches. That's countless millions who are going to hell because they have no faith.
Darwinism is seriously destructive of faith, and I myself would renounce my faith if I thought it were true. I say this as someone who grew up agnostic and accepting what I was taught at school. I first tried to reconcile Darwinism and Catholicism, like many do, but then I saw that they were incompatible and there was no reason to reconcile the Catholic Faith with a 19th century philosophy that has caused so much apostasy and death. It is ridiculous to hope for eternal life and the resurrection of the body from a God who would make man through a billion year cycle of death and "survival of the fittest". If that is God we have no hope of eternal life. The scriptures are very clear that death came into the world through sin. The notion that death is in God, or that God has always willed the death of creatures, is a Hindu concept, not Catholic. If Darwinism were true I would in fact become a Hindu, because that's where it logically leads to.
All the Darwinist and Darwinist compromisers sneer at the idea that God made man "through a miracle". Apparently, dust turning into a giraffe over a billion years is less miraculous that dust turning into a giraffe in an instant; I don't know why this is, but perhaps the concept of a billion years bamboozles the mind a bit. But let us be serious and ask: do you believe in the resurrection of the dead on the last day? Do you believe, as the Church teaches, that all the billions of men that have died will be resurrected in their bodies on the last day? On that day, God will form billions of bodies in an instant (He won't wait billions of years for the dust to turn itself into human form). So if you believe in the resurrection of the dead, and you believe St. John the Baptist when he said that God could turn the rocks into children of Abraham, then why is it so difficult for you to believe in creation? Why do you put so much faith in the dust to create life, and so little in God?
So if you believe in the resurrection of the dead, and you believe St. John the Baptist when he said that God could turn the rocks into children of Abraham, then why is it so difficult for you to believe in creation? Why do you put so much faith in the dust to create life, and so little in God?
ReplyDeleteThe reason for thinking evolution to be an accurate account of the biological history of species on this earth is not because we do not believe that could is capable of creating ex nihilo. Obviously, we know at Catholics that God holds the very world in existence through the active force of His will. A slow evolution of a species is no less God's work than its instant creation, because either way the only reason the world exists from moment to moment is that God wills it.
Rather, the reason why many Catholics (including John Paul II and Benedict XVI) have found the findings of modern biology convincing is that simple fact that they fit the evidence which we find in God's creation, available to the reason which God has given us.
Why do we find the similarities between the DNA of different species that we do? Why do we find the fossils that we do? Why do we observe the population dynamics among creatures that we do?
All of these incline us to think that God worked out his plan in a certain way in this world, a way which can be predictably described by biological science in a way no more or less Godly than the way in which we predict the behavior of chemical interactions or the movement of the laws of motion.