I like the debate that is going on about evolution, or really, the proper roles of science and religion.
Let me break this down, to try and make my points clearer.
On the side of religion, you have faith, and faith is a necessary and critical part of religion. Faith is believing and acting without a sure knowledge. We who are Christians come to the Christian way of life without knowing who Christ is and without understanding God’s plan for us, but we put our trust in Diety. I think that’s true for the new believer and the life-long Christian.
On the side of science, you have observation and knowledge, the exact opposite of faith. In fact, in many ways, science is the anti-faith. In other ways, science is simply faith that God is logical and therefore his universe is logical and therefore logic can be used to understand His universe. Regardless, the operation of science is such that faith is excluded, by definition.
Science is interested in rocks and corpses and math and mechanics. Religion is interested in light and happiness and salvation and the supernatural. Science is dead. Religion is alive.
There are some aspects of the Christian religion that are non-negotiable. To me, one of those aspects is the fact that God created the world, Adam caused the world to fall, and God redeemed the world. These are important to my understanding of my life and what I am supposed to do everyday and how I am supposed to treat people around me.
If I didn’t believe and act according to my belief in those things, I would be much worse off and a worse person. If I viewed my fellow creatures as accidents of evolution and not as divine creations of a loving God in a temporary fallen state, then I believe I would be less kind and generous and loving towards others. Indeed, I believe practical observations of history bears this out.
What a person believes has a huge impact on how they act. This is important.
In fact, society and civilization isn’t possible without a good set of beliefs and the vast majority of the people acting according to those beliefs. Should our fundamental belief, as a nation, that we are creations of God and that Christ hung on the cross and atoned for our sins and errors, and that he offers the gift of life and salvation to all who are willing to become humble and a servant of their brothers be challenged, well, I shudder to think what our society might look like. We are already viewing the results of this belief disappearing throughout our nation and the world, and it is simply terrifying.
The absolute, positive rights that the Founding Fathers described didn’t come from experiments in a laboratory. They came from faith. Without that faith, those rights would seemingly disappear.
Now, that has barely anything to do with science. I wouldn’t want to test those beliefs scientifically because there is far too much at stake–human life and salvation, just like we are unwilling to experiment by killing people or injuring them or torturing them.
What of evolution? I believe (see—there’s that word again!) that evolution, no matter what its origins truly are, is really a mask for something much more sinister.
In the beginning, evolution was just a theory, something that any sensible believer wouldn’t allow to creep in, even minutely, in their beliefs or doctrines. Theories, on the grand scale of things, are just ideas, candidate explanations, speculation, toys really, compared to beliefs and doctrines of churches. Evolution wasn’t going to challenge anyone’s belief that God created and redeemed the world anymore than explaining the motions of the stars with a heliocentric model would.
Sure, we could look at rocks and fossils and come to the conclusions that Darwin came to. But that doesn’t mean our conclusions were correct. In fact, science has a wonderful track record of being wrong, all the time, about everything. The only sure thing in science is that today’s theories will be considered primitive and absurd tomorrow.
But over time, some very evil people with the intent of destroying religion began to wield evolution and elevate it above its status as a theory into a belief. Today, many people claim a belief in evolution, the same way a Christian believes that Christ is our Savior.
When people who understand the difference between theories and beliefs, and who keep their beliefs elevated over the theories of the day tried to explain why evolution isn’t something you can or should believe in, they are attacked, savagely, by those who are trying to destroy religion. But the fact remains: There is no religion, no hope, nor salvation in evolution. Evolution cannot bring a spark of light to your life, or bring a smile to your face, or even a passing moment of joy.
Ben Stein explains it plainly in his movie as well. And you see it in how people respond to Ben Stein’s movie. And how people get upset or dismissive or even mock when I say things like, “I believe that God created the earth in 6 days, and rested on the 7th.” They believe religion is the less important thing, and that science is the more important thing.
They are wrong, of course.
In Christian terms, they believe in man, not God. They put their faith and hope and trust in man’s intellect, not Christ’s salvation. They are the blind following the blind, or worse, leading the blind. They have eyes but will not see, ears but will not hear. They are invited to the feast but refuse to come because they think they have more important things to do. Their seeds fall in rocky soil, where they cannot take root and die in the heat, or on the wayside, where they are trampled under foot.
Folks, don’t mix science and religion. There is no hope in science, there is no salvation there. At best, it is a fun game we play that happens to be interesting and explain a lot about the universe around us. At worst, it can be perverted until right becomes wrong and wrong becomes right. Likewise, there is no science in religion, and there can’t be nor should there ever be.
Evolution, along with all other scientific theories, should contain a warning label: “Warning: This is a theory, not a path to happiness.”
