Information For Teachers

Information for teachers

Science, religion and evolution

Peter M. J. Hess, PhD

October 2006

Teachers, just when you thought it was safe to swim in the waters of biology, the dorsal fin of the newest version of creationism ― “intelligent design” (ID) ― comes slicing through the surf. What is a science teacher to do when confronted by ID? What is at stake, religiously and scientifically? How should a teacher approach the supposed conflict between the Bible and evolution?

What is a science teacher to do when confronted by challenges to evolution? Are science and religion necessarily in conflict? Let’s begin with some definitions:

• Science tries to explain the natural world by testing explanations against the natural world. The important thing about science is testing, not just accepting an explanation based on authority or personal preference.

• Religion can be defined as “a system of activities and beliefs directed toward that which is perceived to be of sacred value and transforming power.” (James Livingston).

On this view, science and religion need not contradict one another. It is only when either one claims authority outside its sphere of competence ― when science tries to explain away the object of religion, or when biblical literalism claims to explain the objects of science ― that we have a problem.

What’s at stake? The Integrity of science and religion

“Creation” and “evolution” when applied to the universe and to the biological world are not in conflict. Let me propose an analogy: is a ball spherical, or does it have a color? The question is absurd because it is based on a category mistake. Color and shape are not mutually exclusive, but complementary categories. Likewise, creation and evolution are not exclusive categories. It is entirely possible both to believe (1) that the universe was created, and (2) that galactic and stellar and planetary and biological evolution took place as physics and chemistry and biology describe, in the framework of approximately 13.7 billion years.

“Creation” is a metaphysical or philosophical category. It is the belief that the universe is not self-subsistent, that it depends for its existence upon something or some being outside itself. It makes no claims as to how or when “creation” took place, or even whether creation was even an “act” or an event; it is even compatible with the notion of an oscillating universe. Such an assertion is a philosophical claim, compatible with the theological doctrines of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and other monotheistic religions. A contrary metaphysical assertion would be that the universe is uncreated, or self-subsistent.

A doctrine of creation ― when stripped of pseudo-scientific baggage such as “creation science” or “intelligent design” ― makes no assertions about the way in which the universe developed. Likewise, the theory of evolution makes no metaphysical claims, and thus cannot contradict a doctrine of creation. It simply offers an explanation for the development of terrestrial life from common ancestry.

Evolution refers to cumulative changes in groups of living things through time ― “descent with modification.” It is the concept that living things have diverged in form from common ancestors, owing in large part to differential reproduction of genotypes (natural selection). Evidence from genetics, population biology, comparative anatomy, and the fossil record corroborates the evolution of complex structures and relationships. So-called “intelligent design” creationism offers no testable explanation for the existence of complex structures, and therefore has no scientific foundation.

What about the Bible and evolution?

Have students or parents confronted you with the claim that evolution is contrary to what the Bible teaches? The supposed “conflict” between the Bible and evolution revolves as much around ignorance about what the Bible teaches as it does around how science works. True, the Bible reflects a specific pre-scientific world-view ― that of the Hebrew people ― but every ancient text presumes a world view (the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic Greek cosmology is an example of another out-dated world view.) Biblical literalists are in the odd position of rejecting or reinterpreting certain elements of the pre-scientific Hebrew world view, while defending others. For example, literalists reject the flat earth implied by the Bible, but insist on a global flood deep enough to cover the tallest mountains. Many reject a geocentric cosmos while at the same time insisting on a literal six-day creation.

From the earliest days of the Church, Christian exegetes have argued that there are multiple layers to scriptural meaning. When the apparent literal meaning is contradicted by experience (or in our day, by empirical science), one must seek an allegorical, or a moral, or even a mystical interpretation of a scriptural passage. Contrary to what biblical literalists argue, the Bible was not intended by its authors to teach us about science. Quoting Cardinal Baronius, Galileo quipped in 1613 that the bible “is intended to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” It does not teach us that the earth is flat, nor that a global flood once covered Mt. Everest, nor that we inhabit a geocentric cosmos, nor that the world was created as we now observe it in six solar days. Rather, the Bible is a record of one particular people’s developing moral relationship with God, and enshrines timeless ideals about the integrity of creation and the human responsibility within that creation. Part of that responsibility is using the gift of our human rationality to discover the exciting story of how life has developed on earth.

References: James C. Livingston, The Anatomy of the Sacred (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1998).

Eugenie C. Scott, Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).

© Dr Peter Hess, 2006

Dr Peter Hess has kindly given us permission to reproduce this article on our wiki. Dr Hess is Faith Project Director for the National Center for Science Education, Inc. in the United States. He is a Christian.

Appendum

Dr Hess has been particularly viciously and offensively smeared over this article by trainee Baptist pastor and young earth creationist David Anderson of Grace Community Church in Belper, Derbyshire. Anderson claimed on 31st January 2007 that Dr Hess was peddling “atheistic propaganda”. See http://bcse-revealed.blogspot.com. Dr Hess has a degree in theology from Oxford University and we remind you that he is a practising Christian.

He states that his article cannot even "remotely be construed as atheistic".

Dr Hess comments “I fail to see how it can remotely be construed as misleading teachers. In fact, I explicitly say that "the Bible is a record of one particular people’s developing moral relationship with God." I am only correcting ID's and YEC's poor biblical scholarship, not attacking their genuine religious belief.“

“I agree with David Anderson that the myth of the flat earth is a recent creation, with the novelist Washington Irving bearing the heaviest guilt for propagating this falsehood. Only two Christian thinkers of note in 2,000 years questioned the sphericity of the earth (Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes). However, Christian "terrestrial spherism" is a legacy not of the Bible, but of Greek thought.”

“I quite disagree with Anderson's view of the biblical worldview (perhaps because my Oxford degree was in theology, not in maths). Competent Old Testament/Hebrew Bible scholars conclude on the basis of the few cosmological references in the Bible that the OT worldview was essentially that of a flat earth. There are a few incidental passages that might be interpreted otherwise, but even the Job 26:7 verse quoted by Anderson is countered a few lines later by the reference to the "pillars of heaven" (v.11).”

“In any case, the question mattered little to a pre-scientific, nomadic people with aspirations to independence, who were periodically ground between the giant geopolitical millstones of Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia. It is no surprise that their worldview would be circumscribed by their limited geographical experience. I stand by my claim that the Old Testament implies a non-spherical earth.”

Dr Hess has also commented on trainee pastor David Anderson personally to us “I must admit that not having been exposed to creationists as much as the rest of you, I entered this engagement with the (admittedly naive) view that since they proclaim themselves to be Christians, they would be honest, fair, compassionate, and self-critical.”

Here are two links which go into the biblical basis for a flat earth as well as geocentrism:

The Flat-Earth Bible, by Robert J. Schadewald. Reprinted from The Bulletin of the Tychonian Society #44 (July 1987) (http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm)

The Scriptural Basis for a Geocentric Cosmology (http://hypertextbook.com/eworld/geocentric.shtml)