Between God and Darwin

More generally, modern science seems to tell us the world is an enormous machine kept going by energy from the Sun, and that we are nothing but animals struggling to survive. To this way of thinking, God is unnecessary or irrelevant. Many religious believers argue such an assessment comes from a distorted and incomplete understanding of life, an understanding that itself depends on faith. Their solution is to reject the scientific method.

Unfortunately for such attempts at a hook-line-and-sinker rejection of science, the evidence for evolutionary change is now overwhelming. Radioactive dating shows the world is billions of years old; we know that extinctions have occurred on a vast scale; we know from molecular biology that all living things have at least some aspect of common genetic heritage.

But attempts to destroy science in order to preserve God are unnecessary. Long ago, Aristotle recognized that any happening is likely to have more than one cause. For example, a painting is caused by the distribution of chemicals on canvas, but it is just as much "caused" by the painter who had a plan for his work of art. We can describe the painting either in purely chemical (scientific) terms, or as an artistic (spiritual) event: two very different but noncontradictory explanations for the same thing.

God's work in creation and evolution might be described the same way. Reason tells me evolution has taken place in the way Darwin described it, while my faith tells me God ruled and controlled the process. Indeed, the Bible suggests that the correct approach involves both God and science. In the New Testament we read, "through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." (Hebrews 11:3) - not much different from the assumptions of modern physics. Biology and religion might not be as far apart as Kansas creationists assume, either.

Science and God, evolution and creation, aren't dueling alternatives. They're complements. The God of the Bible might well be a miracle-worker on occasion, but normally He is to be seen at work through natural processes.

It is God the Creator who gives meaning to blind mechanisms of science. God's spirit and God's science should both be taught in our schools.

*R.J. Berry, a former president of the British organization Christians in Science, is a professor of genetics at University College, in London. This essay will appear in 'God for the 21st Century,' a forthcoming book about the confluence of science and religion, to be published by the John Templeton Foundation.

(c) Copyright 1999. The Christian Science Publishing Society

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