Letters From Timothy

And so it happened.

-Genesis 1:15

Fundamentalism today in America is often a barrier that hinders scientific progress. A particularly relevant example of this is how children in American schools are at risk of being denied a real science education and instead fed wishful thinking. “Intelligent Design” is an excellent modern example of Christian thinking missing the point. True science is a beautiful thing to behold, and it is not necessary to replace it with primitive ideas accepted and written by a people far less advanced than ourselves.
The process of evolution is a scientific theory first advanced in a comprehensive form by Charles Darwin, himself once a clergy-in-training. When his groundbreaking thesis, On the Origin of Species, was published in 1859, it caused quite a stir in the Victorian English community. Darwin theorized that a mechanism that he dubbed “natural selection” was responsible for the vast diversity of life on Earth. The mechanism thus described was simply this: in a population of some species, random variation in physical traits occur in individuals. The individuals with traits most favorable for survival and, ultimately, reproduction, tend to produce more offspring. In this way, a trait possessed by a single individual could eventually be found in an entire population. A “species” is simply a somewhat arbitrary distinction between populations with certain traits. Therefore, after a great amount of time, a population could become an entirely different species. Darwin, and many scientists afterwards, hypothesized that this trend could be extrapolated back into the past. Darwin believed that at the dawn of life, there were only a handful of distinct species. Modern scientists believe that life began with a single organism.

The problem with this scientific explanation of species is that it appears to conflict with the Bible’s description of the origin of species. God created the animals, the plants, and man with is own hands—not through a series of random mutations that spread throughout populations. God created the animals, the plants, and man in only two days—not millions and millions of years. Therefore, evolution has been rejected by fundamentalism.The variety of responses evolution has induced is a bit staggering. Some reject the premise that the earth is, in fact, millions and millions of years old. The age of the earth, however, is backed up by mountains of evidence, ranging from carbon dating to fossils. The idea of “New Earth Creationism” as it is sometimes referred to, calls these techniques flawed and has even suggested that the evidence for the age of the earth was planted by Satan, intending to mislead mankind. Other ideas maintain that evolution is “only a theory” and should not be taught as fact. This latter criticism underlies a fundamental misconception of what the term “theory” detonates in science. In many disciplines, a “theory” is only an idea or set of ideas that have not been proven. In science, this is called a “hypothesis.” In contrast, a “theory” is the highest designation of verisimilitude that a set of ideas can receive in science. Science cannot “prove” anything. Science can only tell us what is most likely, given the evidence. A “theory” in science is backed by an enormous amount of evidence, to the point that it is accepted as truth. Consider the theory of gravity. We certainly notice gravity everyday, and take it for granted that it exists. Yet, it is called a “theory.” A scientific “theory” is similar to a mathematical theory. The Pythagorean theorem, which students learn today in geometry, is taken as a fact, rather than an idea that needs to be “proven.”

The most popular and widely-discussed opposition to evolution that fundamentalism has produced is its own “theory,” which it calls “Intelligent Design.” Intelligent Design maintains that evolution cannot accurately describe the amount of variation found in life. The approach mainly consists of noting examples of extreme complexity which it argues could not have arisen “purely by chance.” This criticism was actually very common in Darwin’s time. Scientists and proponents of evolution have countered that complexity can be explained as a series of small changes that worked together and found cohesiveness through natural selection. Conversely, there are numerous examples in nature of appendages in animals that seem poor workmanship for a hands-on designer. Consider the panda bear, who’s sorry thumb (just a piece of bone) is nowhere near as functional as your thumb.

Fundamentalist challenges to science are not a phenomenon unique to our century. When Nicolas Copernicus, in the early 16^th century, concluding from his observations that the earth rotated around the sun, and not the sun around the earth, he created a religious uproar and was censored by the Church. The reason for this outrage and censorship was because the Bible seemed to clearly indicate that the sun revolved around the earth. Nowadays, however, it is commonly accepted as fact, even in modern fundamentalism, that the earth revolves around the sun. It is interesting, then, that evolution is still considered suspect.

I need not detail here all the challenges to evolution and all the evidence for evolution. I accept evolution as fact, and find that it does not contradict in the least my religious convictions. I personally believe that the creation story of Genesis is highly allegorical; that is, it symbolizes, rather than describes, the creation of Earth. What is a ‘day’ to God, who is so high above us that he creates worlds, rather than inhabiting them? When Genesis describes God forming us from clay, could it not mean that God metaphorically fashioned us out of the raw materials he sowed in the earth, namely water, carbon, and various chemicals? But even besides all of this, I personally find the idea that we were created, not by the simple fashioning of fingers, but as the result of millions and millions of years of life to be vastly more beautiful and poetic and Godly. The Creator God to me is the God who designed the universe so perfectly that it was able to create life out of necessity. It seems limiting to our all-powerful God that he should so crudely sculpt the masterwork of Earth.

-Timothy