An Interesting Endorsement

One person with a doctorate in religion and science and two well-reviewed academic books on science and creation doctrine observed:

Nonetheless, I would say that Mike Gene has come closer than any other human being (and far, far closer than any of the famous TEs) to convincing me that it just *might* be possible to reconcile pure neo-Darwinism with orthodox Christian theology.  Whereas all the other TEs come up with arguments that to my mind are just sophistry concealing blatant contradictions or muddy thinking, Mike has a radically different approach.  So if someone wants an argument that just might be able to justify baptizing Darwin, Mike’s your guy.

Shadow to Light

I’ve been having a growing desire to discuss metaphysical and theological issues that don’t fit the overall theme of this blog. So if you are interested in discussions related to the Christian faith, feel free to join me over at my other blog, Shadow to Light. I’ll kick it off with a slightly altered version of an essay I posted here.

It Doesn’t Matter

Let’s get metaphysical.

There are two main obstacles in reconciling Darwinian evolution and orthodox Christianity:

1. Darwinian evolution entails that chance plays a central part of our history, as random variations provide the material for selection to cull. So deeply ingrained is the role of chance that the late Stephen Jay Gould was fond of saying that if the tape of life was replayed from the beginning, an entirely different reality would exist, a reality that would not include us. This is simply because we could not count on all the various coincidences and accidents to play out again exactly as they played out in our history.

2. Darwinian evolution entails that death and suffering played a central part of our coming into existence. It is the “struggle for survival”, involving predation and disease, that has been a core part of our evolutionary history.

Orthodox Christianity views human life as an inevitable part of Creation and death/disease as a consequence of the Fall.

How shall we reconcile these?