What is a miracle?

Time and again we read of miracles in the Gospel and in the Old Testament and indeed, we observe them in the life of the Church through the centuries; miracles of healing, miracles of the renewal of a human life by the power of God. And at times people ask – we all ask ourselves – What is a miracle?

Is it a moment when God overpowers His own creation, breaks its own laws, destroys something which He has willed Himself? That would be an act of magic, an act of overpowering whatever is unwilling to obey, of overpowering what is weak in comparison to Him Who is strong.

A miracle is something completely different, a miracle is a moment when harmony destroyed by human sin is restored. It may be a moment, it may be the beginning of a whole life: a harmony between God and man, a harmony between the created world and its Creator. It is a restoration of what should always be; not a miracle in the sense of something unheard of, unnatural, perhaps contrary to the nature of things, but rather a moment when God enters into His creation and is received. And because He is received, He can act freely.

(Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh: On Miracles,  17 August 1986)

God’s Existence: Not Dependent on Disproving Evolution

Visualization of the Internet

As I’ve mentioned before one of the benefits of blogging is that one does occasionally have opportunity to enter into discourse with someone who holds to idea or beliefs radically different from one’s own or even antithetical to one’s own.  From these exchanges it is possible to learn new ideas and information or to get insight into the mind of people with whom one disagrees.   Of course on the Internet there are  abundance partisan polemics and “ditto heads” who read nothing other than what they already believe and who have no interest in engaging debate to increase mutual understanding or to change opinions.  It always reminds me of the adage I once heard about Bible reading:  if you read only those passages which you like or with which you agree then you really you just go to the bible to find your own thoughts rather than to hear what the Lord of the universe might be saying to you. 

In one exchange on evolution with people whose worldview is almost exclusively scientific and atheistic and who were concerned about the views of religious fundamentalists being foisted on scientists and biological research, I offered the following thoughts (which I base in the notions that truth is truth, and all truth is also Christian truth):

Perhaps the attitude needed by scientists is “whether or not God exists, what do we know and what can we know about human origins and evolution?” If evolution is true, it will be true whether or not there is a God. Evolution is not dependent on God’s existence for its verification.

Conversely for believers, the existence of God is not dependent on the certainty or impossibility of evolution.

Of course, these ideas work if one is not an absolute biblical literalist.  If one places on the bible the condition that the

Dinosaur fossil skull

bible is valuable only if Genesis 1-3 is literally true, then one certainly places a limit on the revelation of God.  Additionally one puts one’s faith at the mercy of science which then tends to lead to one opposing some scientific research because it might challenge or question one’s beliefs.   If someone wants to be a biblical literalist regarding Genesis 1-3 and to claim it is science, it would seem more reasonable to then encourage scientific research to see if it affirms the bible.  But when one’s faith is then challenged by the findings or direction of scientific research, why oppose science since one made “scientific truth” the very foundation for one’s faith? 

If God exists, He exists whether or not evolution is true.   The existence of God is not dependent on the discoveries of science.  However a literal reading of Scriptures might make one’s faith in God dependent on scientific research.  It is not science’s fault if its findings do not confirm your faith.

It is important for believers to realize the Bible itself does not advocate absolute literalism in interpreting itself.  Take a look at St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans 5:14 -  “Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.”   Notice that St. Paul calls Adam “a type” of Christ.  St. Paul sees the significance of Adam not in deciding the literalness of the story but in how Adam is a type of Christ.  Adam can only be fully understood in and because of Christ.  God intended for us as readers of the story to get beyond the literalness of the story to its true importance and meaning.   We understand best who Jesus is when we understand that Adam is a model or foreshadowing of Christ’s coming.  The plan of God being unveiled in Genesis 2 cannot be understood apart from Christ.   The story of Adam is thus not just about the origins of humankind.  For Christ, the “new Adam” reveals true humanity and humanity’s true origins.    St. Paul is not very interested in Genesis as the scientific explanation of the origins of humanity.  For St. Paul the Genesis 2 story’s significance is only understood in Christ.   To read Genesis 2 apart from Christ or to read it as science is to misread it altogether.  That is the argument and thinking of St. Paul.   (You can see more ideas about “type” in 1 Corinthians 10:6-11 and Hebrews 8:5). 

A faith in God ultimately finds its justification in God, not in science.  We hope in God.  We look for ultimate meaning in God.  We understand creation (even the vastness of the universe) as being in God and thus on the grand scale of things only a small part of all that exists.   Science studies this small part of existence.   Faith is what puts this existence into the greater context of God’s own being.

The Freedom to love vs. The Bondage of Self-love

Creation of Adam and Eve

The Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book has a prayer which speaks about “bondage of self.”  We really can be so self centered - paying so much attention to what “I” want –  as to be enslaved to the self.  Such bondage cuts us off not only from the rest of humanity but from our own humanity.  We are after all created as social, relational beings.  To be so self-centered, so narcissistically captivated by self-love, is to lose our connection to humanity – our own as well as that of all or any other human beings.  Self-love is no love at all.  True love always involves another – someone else who becomes the focus of our altruistic concern and affection.   Constantly paying attention to our own needs and wants is not exercising our freedom, but enslaving ourselves in that bondage of self.   Here is the prayer to be freed from bondage of self:

 God, I offer myself to You – to build with me and to do with me as You will. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Your will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Your Power, Your Love, and Your Way of life. May I do Your will always!

Biblical Scholar N.T.Wright in his The Resurrection of the Son of God  comments on 1 Corinthians 13:8-13 in which St. Paul says:

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part;  but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.  When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.  For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.  And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Wright comments:

The point of I Corinthians 13:8-13 is that the church must be working in the present on the things that will last into God’s future. Faith, hope and love will do this; prophecy, tongues and knowledge, so highly prized in Corinth, will not. They are merely signposts to the future; when you arrive, you no longer need signposts. Love, however, is not just a signpost. It is a foretaste of the ultimate reality. Love is not merely the Christian duty; it is the Christian destiny.  

The Christian destiny is to love by which we also overcome that self-love which is a sign of the world fallen in sin.  Jesus said who ever commits sin is a slave to sin (John 8:34).   The way to freedom is to love others, not to indulge the self.  

 

Which virtue is most important?

:

Cloud of Witnesses in the 20th Century

St. Makarios of Egypt said

Where outward ascetic practice is concerned, which virtue is the most important? 

The answer to this is that the virtues are linked one to the other, and follow as it were a sacred sequence, one depending on the other. For instance,

prayer is linked to love,

love to joy,

joy to gentleness,

gentleness to humility,

humility to service,

service to hope,

hope to faith,

faith to obedience,

and obedience to simplicity.

Similarly, the vices are linked one to another:

hatred to anger,

anger to pride,

pride to self-esteem,

self-esteem to unbelief,

unbelief to hardheartedness,

 hardheartedness to negligence,

negligence to sluggishness,

sluggishness to apathy,

apathy to listlessness,

listlessness to lack of endurance,

lack of endurance to self-indulgence,

and so on with all the other vices.

                                                                                                           

Please Your Neighbor Not Yourself

We who are strong ought to bear with the scruples of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification. For even Christ did not please Himself… (Romans 15:1-2)

Fr. Charles Joanides in his book  Attending to Your Marriage offers the following paraphrased version of a story from the desert fathers to illustrate the importance of and the possibility of people living together in harmony.  He uses the story in reference to married couples working together, but the story from the monastic tradition talks about the values and virtues any Christians need to live together in concord. 

One day, two brothers were sitting together, and one of the two offered the following observation: 

“Brother, it occurs to me that we have never had an argument.”

            “Yes,” stated the other, “this is true.”

            “Well, I would like to conduct and experiment.”

            “What kind of experiment?”

            “Let’s have an argument.”

            “Very well, but how will we do this?”

The monk offering the suggestion paused and then stated, “I have an idea. Here’s a brick. I will put the brick between us and I will say that it is mine, and you will argue that it is yours. We will then continue arguing until one of us succeeds in winning the argument. Any questions?”

“No brother, I don’t think so,” stated the second brother with some trepidation.

The second brother responds, “No brother, I believe it’s mine.”

The first brother retorts, “I distinctly remember it being my brick.”

The second brother responds, “No brother, I think it belongs to me.”

The first brother retorts with more conviction, “I believe you’re wrong. It’s my brick.”

Seeing his brother becoming distressed, the second monk says, “Yes, I think you are correct. It is your brick.”

After some silence, the first brother observes, “No brother, let it be ours-to God’s glory.”

These precious stories may sometimes seem simplistic, but they are anything but simple. In this case, these two precious souls who were coexisting in relative harmony and peace find this exercise impossible to complete. The reason why is related to their mutual struggle to live Christ-like existences. To be more specific, their chosen lifestyle compelled them to consider their neighbor’s needs as much, and more, than their own needs.

                                                                 

Evolution from Creation to New Creation (3)

This is part 3 and the conclusion of my blog which began with Evolution from Creation to New Creation (1), and then continued in Evolution from Creation to New Creation (2).       These three blogs are all my own ruminations upon the book by Ted Peters and Martinez Hewlett EVOLUTION FROM CREATION TO NEW CREATION: CONFLICT, CONVERSATION AND CONVERGENCE.

Peters and Hewlett examine the various responses that believers have and can take to evolution from the viewpoint of biblical creationists, to intelligent design adherents, to theistic evolutionists.   They pose Five Questions for which they feel Theistic Evolutionists must be willing to give account in order to have a believable, credible and defensible position of arguing that science and theology are compatible (pp 117-118).   Their five questions summarized are these:

1)     Can theology accept “that it has taken life 3.8 billion years to develop on a 4.5-billion-year-old planet”?

2)   “Can theology accept that contingency, randomness, and chance characterize the process of speciation”…?

3)    “Can theological anthropology incorporate the evidence that biological continuity between human life and all other forms of life exists … “?

4)    How does God act in time?

5)    Can theological affirmations of divine love and omnipotence by reconciled with the fact that animals suffer because of predators, disease and disaster, and the fact that 98 percent of all species have perished?

For believers to present a credible scientific understanding of creation they must be willing to address head on the violence in nature which so troubled Darwin: “to see violence, suffering, and death as merely natural and hence value-neutral—represents a failure of theological nerve.  … From the theological point of view, we simply cannot let science alone define what is natural or, worse, redefine violence, suffering, and death as value neutral.”  If God is all powerful and all good how can one explain the violence and suffering which is obvious in nature, and not just in sinful human beings?    If God could intervene and change the world, why doesn’t He?   Is violence natural and inherent in creation, or do we have free will which enables us to aspire to something greater than our biologically determined selves? 

There is no doubt in the Orthodox tradition at least that many saints were greatly troubled by these questions, and they wept for a creation that had been so distorted by the sinfulness of humanity.   The condition of the world at times seems so hellish that it is hard to imagine that God can see any good in it at all.  And yet He does.  Certainly Christianity sees the answer to these questions and the purpose of the world itself being found in the “bigger picture” which is beyond the limits of space and time.   There is a logic to the universe which is not a human logic and so we cannot grasp the entire purpose nor see the entire picture.  We are limited by space and time.   And through the dense shroud which suffering imposes on our ability to see, we still perceive glimpses of beauty, order and design in the universe.   We long for the entire picture to be revealed, but that requires us to move into dimensions which are not yet ours to perceive.  Peters and Hewlett write:

 

Darwinius

“Each moment God imparts openness to the future that releases the present from bondage to past causes.  God’s creative activity is never ceasing; each moment the entire physical universe is given its existence in such a way that it is open toward what comes next.  This ceaseless future-giving by God explains why the laws of nature cannot grip nature in rigid determinism.” 

 

Biology would say we live within the limits imposed upon us by genetic determinism.  We are made in the image of our ancestors whose genes determine our current behavior.  Christian theology would deny genetic pre-determinism and says, yes we bear the genetic traits passed down to us through the billions of year that life has been evolving on this planet.  However we have been endowed by our Creation with His image and likeness which means we can aspire to something greater than our biological limitations.  We have not only a past but also a future, all of which are part of God’s plan even if that is hidden from our understanding.

“Once we apprehend that God intends a future, our task is to discern as best we can the direction of divine purpose and employ that as an ethical guide.  When we invoke the apocalyptic symbol of the New Jerusalem, where ‘crying and pain will be no more,’ then this will inspire and guide the decisions we make today that will affect our progeny tomorrow.”  

Chaos theory and quantum mechanics have caused us to realize that there are relationships in the universe which we do not understand and apparently cannot ever know: not because we lack the instrumentation but because it cannot be known.  The world is far more complicated and interrelated than is commonly imagined.   There are patterns in nature  and paradigms in logic which we have not yet discovered – both micro- and macro-.  There also are interrelationships which because of the limits of space and time and of our own one-sidedness,  the tiny place we occupy in the vast universe, we can never see.  Thus the logic as to why things happen the way they do remain obscure to us in our limited knowledge and vision.

According to these modern theories even the flapping of a butterfly in the rain forest can affect the weather – there is so much that we cannot know or understand about the universe we occupy.  If it is true that the tiniest of events (the micro) can alter the macro events of the world, it means that God does not have to do spectacular interventions in world history to affect its course.   He too can gently nudge His creation by doing the smallest of things.  All He has to do is be patient and let time take its course in working out His will.  So the vastness of both space and time are not wasted, but rather are the very canvasses upon which God gently and with the greatest regard for the free will of His creatures influences the design which He is creating.

The Meek: The Avenger of the Abused

In commenting on Psalm132, St. John Chrysostom offered the following words about the virtue of gentleness. He is talking about Moses who the bible describes as the gentlest/meekest man on earth (Numbers 12:3).

“… let us demonstrate that he was the gentlest of men, even if from them some think he was severe, irascible and tough. So how shall we demonstrate it? If first we distinguish and define what on earth is gentleness and what harshness. … that person is gentle who is able to bear faults against himself, who avenges the wronged and turns avenger of the abused, just as at any rate the one who is not like that, who is slow to act, sluggish, not better than a corpse, is not gentle or moderate. Ignoring the wronged, not grieving on behalf of the wronged or fuming over the abused is a mark not of virtue but of vice – not of gentleness, to be sure, but of torpor.

And so this very thing demonstrates his gentleness, and the fact that he was so ardent as to spring into action in cases where he saw others being wronged, unable to contain his irritation in defence of the righteous. At any rate, when he personally was abused, he neither took vengeance nor demanded retribution, but without fail continued faithful to his sound values. … After all, you know that we are more affected by our own welfare than by others. This man, by contrast, when others were abused, took vengeance no less for their sufferings, whereas faults committed against him he passed over with great patience; he was able to deal with both extremes, displaying hatred for villains in the former case and longsuffering in the latter. But, tell me, what should he have done? Ignore the injury committed and the evil befalling the people? That was not the mark of a popular leader, however, nor of someone patient and forbearing, but of a sluggish and desperate person.”

I think there can be little doubt that when it comes to clergy sexual abuse of church members that Chrysostom would have sided with the victims while defending the honor of the priesthood in general.  Chrysostom would have seen it as virtuous to rise up and “fume” over the abused.  There is no virtue in his mind in silently tolerating the abuse of others.  This is not anti-clericalism, but truly defending the priesthood – it means something special to be part of the clergy and if one’s life is not honorable, morally sound, an example of faith, then one does not belong in the clergy.  Scandalous and abusive behavior in the Church cannot be tolerated among the clergy for that is true anti-clericalism.

It is the role of the clergy to defend the oppressed.   The Lord Jesus claimed of Himself:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

(Luke 4:18-19, NRSV)

Evolution from Creation to New Creation (2)

This is part two of my blog Evolution from Creation to New Creation.   It is the continuation of Evolution from Creation to New Creation (1).       The previous blog, this one and the next are all my own ruminations upon the book by Ted Peters and Martinez Hewlett EVOLUTION FROM CREATION TO NEW CREATION: CONFLICT, CONVERSATION AND CONVERGENCE.  

Peters and Hewlett do not think evolutionary theory is inherently atheistic.  However, Darwin in his research became increasingly troubled by the claims of theistic Christianity about an omniscient and loving Creator God.  “Darwin… observed in the natural world: laws by which the predator devoured the prey and a history in which 98 percent of all species had become extinct before the modern era.  Such waste, Darwin thought, could not be reconciled with a God of purpose or design or compassion.  Without positively advocating atheism, Darwin could not ascribe the creation of this biological world to a divine designer.”     Darwin wrote: 

“There seems to me too much misery in the world.  I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae  [insects whose larvae are usually internal parasites of other insect larvae] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.” 

Darwin’s doubts and troubled soul are the result of his own sensitive nature and in fact are common to any thinking believer.   There are aspects of life in this world which are incredibly harsh and very difficult to reconcile with ideas of a merciful, loving, all knowing and all powerful God.  His words are not coming from a heart that hates God, but from one that is deeply troubled by the reality he sees around himself and yet wants to reconcile with a faith in God.    He obviously could not rationalize away the ravages of death and suffering which he could observe in the natural world.   

I can say from experience, having at one point in my life considered myself an atheist, that his thoughts and doubts are very rational.    They reflect very strongly pleas and lamentations one can read in our Scriptures in the Psalms:  Where is God, why is He silent?  Why does evil prosper and the innocent suffer?     Focusing on these questions certainly causes one to doubt that God is anything like what the Church proclaims.  On the other side of the equation however – in a universe without God – there is just as much suffering, pain, violence, but without a God the suffering and sorrow of the world lacks any true purpose or meaning and there is nothing ultimate for or in which to hope.   For believers, God offers the hope that there is some greater meaning and purpose to the suffering and sorrow that we experience in our daily lives.  For the believer we each experience but one piece of the puzzle which is life in this universe and we do not yet see the whole picture:  the tapestry is still being woven, God is still telling the story which He began when He first spoke creation into existence.  In the end the universe is proven not to be purely random, irrational, meaningless and hopeless, for the final chapter in which the entire story of the universe is revealed is found in the words, or the Word, proceeding from the mouth of the Creator. 

As Peters and Hewlett describe evolution it is not in the writings of Darwin that we find an absolute embrace of atheism.   The equating of evolution with atheism has been promoted by neo-Darwinists who embrace a particular materialistic and even nihilistic ideological philosophy which they termed as a “naturalistic fallacy.”   It is this neo-Darwinian synthesis which completely emphasizes chance and denies purpose toward some goal in evolution.  However, as Peters and Hewlett note, some  evolutionary biologists in promoting ideas such as the “selfish gene” are really arguing that “Nature is nihilistic  on every matter except genetic survival.”  Peters and Hewlett argue that these scientists suddenly move away from absolute adherence to the scientific method and promote as science something which is a philosophical assumption and bias – an idea based on faith not on scientific proof.

When challenged that his theory would lead to further atheism, Darwin himself reminded his contemporaries:  “… remember that the greatest discovery ever made by man, namely, the law of the attraction of gravity, was also attacked by Leibnitz, ‘as subversive of natural, and inferentially of revealed, religion.’”    Darwin simply pointed out what had become true in Western Europe – an increased conflict between science and religion with religionists being always quick to reject every scientific truth as a threat to religion.   True science is no threat to true religion as both seek the truth about the universe, and the bottom line is there is not a scientific truth which is not Christian, because truth is truth.

In the next blog in this series I will look at what Peters and Hewlett describe as the five questions theistic scientists must be able and willing to answer in order to show that science and religion are not necessarily in opposition to one another. 

Evolution from Creation to New Creation (3).

Giving to the poor = Lending to God

St. John Chrysostom is well known for using commerce imagery when talking about giving charity to the poor.  Generally he saw money given to charity as an investment the Christian makes in this world, but he collects it back with interest in the Kingdom of God.   Chrysostom famously said to give to the poor is to put God in debt to you for it is God who will pay you back all money you gave to the poor – with the caveat that the repayment occurs not in this world but in the world to come.    The more you give to the poor in this world, the more that awaits you in the Kingdom; you are thus providing for your own eternity.    God relies on the Christian people to be His bankers for the poor – to provide for their needs through charity which in reality is for you to make a loan to God which God repays in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Charity is thus not giving away anything but rather lending to God; God will repay the loan with interest as a reward in His Kingdom.   Giving to charity puts God in your debt – not a bad position to be in according to St. John when Judgment Day comes around.   His imagery relies on Christ’s words in Matthew 25:31-46 in which Christ says whatever we have done to the least of Christ’s brothers and sisters, we have done to Him.  Chrysostom said in his commentary on the Pslams:

“So when you see that gold is lovely, and you are reluctant to throw it way, think of the sowers, think of the investors, think of the merchants, who begin with outlay and expenditure, each of them entrusting this to insecure ventures; waves and hollows of the ground, after all, and debtors’ receipts are all insecure.  Investors frequently sustain a loss of their capital, you recall, whereas the one who tills the heavens has none of these risks to fear, but has grounds for confidence about capital and interest – if, that is, we should call this sort of thing interest and not something far more significant than capital.  Capital, after all, is money, whereas heaven’s interest is the kingdom.  Do you see the kind of investment involved, bearing an interest far in excess of the capital?  While it is an investment redeemed in the future, in the present life you will enjoy great freedom: you will have relief from scheming, you will put paid to the envy of calumniators and plotters, you will live your whole life at ease, not stressed by concern for possessions but borne up by hopes for future goods.”   (St. John Chrysostom, comments on Psalm 112)

Evolution from Creation to New Creation (1)

This is the continuation of my blog series which began with Journey into the Unknown:  Science and Religion, and then continued in Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? (1).   The immediately preceding blog to this blog was    Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? (2).    

In this blog I will be looking at ideas presented by Ted Peters and Martinez Hewlett in their book EVOLUTION FROM CREATION TO NEW CREATION: CONFLICT, CONVERSATION AND CONVERGENCE.   My goal is not to do a book report or critique of their ideas but rather to comment on how their ideas have influenced my own thinking on the relationship between science and religion especially in relationship to arguments surrounding creation and evolution.   As a believer in God, there are some difficult questions which evolution raises.   Like these authors my position is probably best described as one of theistic science.  I do not think I have to choose between science or religion as I think they are describing creation in very different terms.   For example a chemist, a biologist and a poet might each describe a rose in totally different terms, not once acknowledging what the others wrote, and yet what each said might be perfectly true.   We can describe a human purely in terms of his/her chemical composition – humans are largely composed of the four elements oxygen, carbon hydrogen, and nitrogen (by mass these 4 elements make up almost 97% of a human).  Yet, for many of us no matter how scientifically accurate and factually true that description is, it would come nowhere close to describing what it means to be human. 

One of the main contentions of Peters and Hewlett is that most of the problems which evolution presents to Christianity are really not because of science but because of philosophical ideology masquerading as science.

“The problem in the evolution controversy is not biological science per se.  Rather, the philosophical or ideological inferences labeled ‘Darwinian’ that go far beyond the biological science are responsible for generating most of the controversy that evolutionary theory has precipitated.    …  To observe descent with modification in biological history and then to draw from this justification for social values and moral philosophy is a fallacious move.  We call it the ‘naturalistic fallacy.’”

Peters and Hewlett argue that some atheists and some scientists are trying to make a religion out of evolution.  (Which is an interesting twist on the atheistic argument that believers are trying to make science out of creationism).   The task for Christians in their opinion is to “to discriminate between evolution as a scientific research program and evolution as a religious ideology.”   This is very similar to what Intelligent Design adherents advocate, though Peters and Hewlett argue for an approach different from ID and certainly distance themselves completely from biblical creationism.  They both accept the tenets of evolution as being true.   They accept the evidence for speciation (Examples of speciation can be found at:  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html)

“Is Darwinism merely an ideology that parades as a science?  No.  … Darwinian evolutionary biology qualifies as solid science because it generates progressive research – that is, hypotheses based upon its assumptions lead eventually to new knowledge about the natural world.” 

The problem for Peters and Hewlett is that many have hijacked the principles of scientific evolution for ideological purposes.

“If evolution would come to us in limited form as a scientific theory about biological origins, it could be calmly debated and readily absorbed into Christian theology.  But that’s not how it came packaged.  It came packaged as naturalistic philosophy, as a set of social values, as an arrogantly revolutionary way of life.”

If evolution is allowed to remain a true science and not be co-opted by philosophical ideologues, then Peters and Hewlett say that in evolution,“Scientists have been reading the Book of Nature and writing a book review to be read by students in our school systems.”

They see no reason for Christians to fear true science.  They conclude their book with this reminder:

“In the early editions of ORIGIN OF SPECIES, Darwin opened with a quotation from Francis Bacon admonishing us to read ‘the book of God’s word’ and also ‘the book of God’s works.’”

Next:  Evolution from Creation to New Creation (2).