The evolution question: Where is God in creation?
There are many answers to the question—Where is God in creation?—perhaps as many as there are people who ask it. And who doesn’t? It’s driven people to search the heavens, explore our Earth and plumb their souls.
It’s also been the cause, of course, of fierce debate and even strife in our life together. Most recently, clashes errupted in decisions about how and what we will teach youngsters in science classrooms in public schools.
The Lutheran hopes this trio of articles from ELCA members, each with expertise in both science and theology, will be helpful to readers.
First you’ll find an opinion from Mark Hollabaugh and, following, responses by Allen R. Utke and Patrick Russell (this page). We also welcome yours by email.
Next, meet John E. Jones, the judge who ruled in a history-making case on this subject in 2005—the editors.
• ELCA Alliance for Faith, Science and Technology
Editor's note: This article is a response to Mark Hollabaugh's article.
As
a boy I sang “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know” and “Twinkle, Twinkle,
Little Star, How I Wonder What You Are”—and meant both. They kept
resonating as I became both a physicist and Lutheran pastor. Living in
both worlds I find no conflict between them, only mutual reinforcement
to my faith and my God-given curiosity.
For
children, religion and science are both about knowing and
wondering—there is no distinction. As adults we inherit a historical
division between religion and science as ways of knowing, and,
unfortunately, we pass this division to our children in churches and
schools. The intelligent design movement exploits this division to
introduce what Mark Hollabaugh calls bad science and bad theology into the science classroom, as at Dover, Pa.
Hollabaugh
describes ID supporters as opposed to evolution on religious grounds,
turning to ID in a rear-guard action against Darwinian evolution, which
they (mis)understand as the leading edge of a materialistic, godless
worldview.
This was certainly the case a generation earlier when
so-called “creation science” advocates pressed a literal reading of the
biblical creation account in opposition to the scientific picture of an
evolving universe.
These efforts were struck down in the courts, and in the Dover case Judge John E. Jones (see "'Not science': Judge John E. Jones") concluded from courtroom testimony that the current ID movement is largely repackaged creationism.
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© 2013 Augsburg Fortress, Publishers
