The Vatican embraces Charles Darwin's theory of evolution as fully compatible with Christianity. The Church of England honors its former member. (His parish, in which he was active during his early life, pictured above)
And we are thus reminded that evolution is not really a challenge against God or Christianity even, it's a challenge to Biblical Revelation. In doing research about the Founding Fathers' beliefs I ran across the same point: people like Jefferson and Tom Paine were viewed as infidels even though they were theists. What they challenged is Biblical literalism.
Now of course for many people, the absolute truth of the Bible is the heart of religion. Undermine one, and you've undermined the other.
But not for everyone -- including the Vatican. The most interesting debate, then, would not be between an atheistic scientistic and clergyman. It would be between passionate Christians, one who puts a literal reading of the Bible at the heart of his faith, and one who doesn't. It would be between Pope Benedict XI and James Dobson.
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I think that I'm pretty close in thinking to Nathan. However, I do think that macro-evolution is a phenomenon that exists and shapes living beings. I think that we have the great ability to think and reason, and science, upon which evolutionary theory is based, is our way of codifying that process.
Being raised Christian I do believe in God, but I can't take the Bible as a literal book, I suppose. Why would God give us this amazing faculty of thought and reason, then fill our universe with all this evidence from which we use our thought and reason to deduce something completely different than what is actually true? Just as some sort of test? I don't buy it.
I see that part of the Bible as our way of understanding the world given our faculties at the time, but given our constant increase in technological prowess, we have progressively gained the ability to observe more and more about the world and universe we inhabit. With these new observations, we then use our God-given powers of reason to deduce new theories about the structure of the world and the way it came to be.
I honestly don't see this process or its results as inherently incompatible with having faith.
What you have said is simply not true. Here is the Catholic Church's view on the Bible:
81 "Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit."
102 Through all the words of Sacred Scripture, God speaks only one single Word, his one Utterance in whom he expresses himself completely:64
You recall that one and the same Word of God extends throughout Scripture, that it is one and the same Utterance that resounds in the mouths of all the sacred writers, since he who was in the beginning God with God has no need of separate syllables; for he is not subject to time.65
103 For this reason, the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord's Body. She never ceases to present to the faithful the bread of life, taken from the one table of God's Word and Christ's Body.66
104 In Sacred Scripture, the Church constantly finds her nourishment and her strength, for she welcomes it not as a human word, "but as what it really is, the word of God".67 "In the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children, and talks with them."68
105 God is the author of Sacred Scripture. "The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit."69
"For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself."70
106 God inspired the human authors of the sacred books. "To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more."71
107 The inspired books teach the truth. "Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures."72
For Nathan and C. Okoye,
I refer you to an awesome book by Russell Humphreys, PhD, called 'Starlight and Time' or at least the DVD. The more we learn of Modern Physics, the more the true science lines up with what we discover of the physical world.
Romans 1:20-25
Link: http://tinyurl.com/starlightandtime
Happy reading my friends!! -TDG
For Nathan and C. Okoye,
Had science analyzed the wine at Cana (John 2), a process of planting, grooming, pruning, vine dressing, blossoming, pollination, fruit-maturation, harvesting, pressing, and fermintation would issues. The entire process would have been estimated in years rather than the few minutes declared by John's gospel.
Had the best scientific and theologic scholars been asked why the a man was born blind (John 9), various congenital maladies, genetic or improper diet of the mother would be proposed. Yet John's gospel records Jesus' answer: "this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life."
So you ask, "Why would God create "false" history? IE God creates the universe mid-stream around 10,000 years ago in 7 literal days - but fills the sky with evidence that the universe is much older? That doesn't satisfy me. I would welcome being shown the error of my thinking."
You slave yourself to the limits of natural science with admittedly paltry access to all that is to be known of our universe. I invite you to bow to a God worth serving, who acts at his own good pleasure and loves us so fiercely as to entertain us with such mysteries as can only be revealed by faith. He anxiously awaits the building of bigger and more powerful telescopes so that we might enjoy his handiwork and stand in awe and praise of him. To do otherwise, to bow to a lesser god is the ultimate error of both thinking and being.
Take a risk. Open your mind AND heart. He made both for his good pleasure.
BK
B.S. in both biology and chemistry, minor in physics
M.Div. in systematic theology
Postgraduate studies in theology and psychology
Chaplain, Major, USAF
Paine and Jefferson were Deists, not theists. Paine was a Strong Deist, Jefferson was noticeable Agnostic-Deist. They were rationalists.
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