Since Shamgar once again deigns himself learned and wise enough to declare Creationism as the singular evolutionary truth, I am again compelled to respond. While there is nothing inherently wrong in beholding Creation theory as a valid hypothesis, excluding other theories out of hand does nothing but create a tension that is superficial, artificial, and contrived.
This artificial tension rests on the cornerstone that modern evolutionary science and religious dogma are mutually exclusive. The disagreement here concerns two conflicting views of the nature of truth and reality, on where one ought to look for authoritative truth about the world. One way to summerize this subtle and complex debate is to look at it in the context of Galileo's famous description of scripture and nature as being two different texts revealing God and His works... providing truth about the universe.
Galileo insisted that science should always take precedence over scripture (or more broadly metaphysical insight) in all matters that were susceptible to scientific inquiry. His reasoning was that the meaning of scripture was open to interpretation by humans, and therefore vulnerable to error. Science, on the other hand, dealt directly with nature which, he said, is its own interpreter. The Book of Nature, Galileo said, is written in mathematics, for which there is always an unarguably correct interpretation. In other words, in a very real sense, nature was constructed of numbers, and therefore subject to final and definitive understanding by mathematics-based science.
The tension of evolution is thus redacted to a philosophical perch and the false assumption that evolutionary science erodes religious authority. The silent and underlying core problem is that there is no place for moral values in a purely mathematical world. Morality, in a religious view, ought to be at the core of inquiry and understanding, not tacked on somehow at the periphery and as an afterthought. In this view, the universe operates according to moral, as well as mathematical precepts. This is precisely what Shamgar fails to comprehend with his absolutist viewpoint.
What science does is to build models of nature and examine those. To mistake the models for the reality of nature as God has made it, is to mistake the map for the territory. Science cannot force necessity on God, and presume that its models are the only valid explanations for the workings of the world. In turn, the scripture of God cannot be interpretated as the literal description of what He has wrought.
If someone reads Genesis and parses it literally, then you can't accept evolution. The Book of Genesis was clearly intended as a magnificent hymm to the Sabbath. The Sabbath is even bigger than God... not even God can create the universe without being finished by Friday evening. It's not that the world was really created in any set of six days. It was created in six days so that God could rest on the Sabbath. Genesis I is a divine message for the sanctity of the Sabbath. That's what the person who wrote it meant. Evolution helps you to see that Genesis I should have been read metaphorically all along. Since at least the beginning of the last century, the church has read Genesis I more metaphorically and more accurately. Why? Because the argument for evolution had too much evidence, so they had to find another way to view the Bible. Once you do that, you don't get locked into a fight between the fundamental and literal interpretation.
The Biblical writers told magnificent stories. Before the Enlightment, people always knew the difference between literal fact and metaphorical fiction, but they also had a far greater capacity to take a story seriously and accept it programmatically. After the Enlightenment, we took these stories too literally and thus created our own problems.
The basic problem endemic to religions is in deciding what is metaphorical and what is literal in their sacred texts. That is the central problem that makes fundamentalism so dangerous: the fundamentalists take literally what was intended metaphorically, or they take as permanently relevant what was temporarily valid.
The tension in this debate also revolves around the notion that science will one day have all the answers and that when that day comes... religion will become obsolete. I find this to be complete nonsense. First, science will never have all the answers, nature is much smarter than we are. Second, science is not designed to address the spiritual needs filled by religion. Humans are spiritual creatures, who search for Gods to become better than they are. To the atheist, this God may be nature and its mysteries, or the belief that there is a rational explanation to everything.
Science is a language, a narrative that describes the world we live in. It is an evolving process, constantly corrected by new knowledge. It is limited by its very structure, based as it is on empirical validation. There are certain questions and issues that simply don't belong to science, at least not science as we understand it nowadays. Questions of moral choices, of emotional loss, even events that cannot be quantitatively tested or observed methodically. Equations cannot replace someone's need for faith in the divine. This is precisely the general perception, that science is a replacement for religion. That is not what science is about.
Believers should accept the fact that one does not need religion to be a moral person. On the other hand, one should always have the choice to believe, as long as this belief does not infringe on the freedom of others not to. Unfortunately, religious dogma often has a blinding effect, rendering the faithful unable to understand and respect the other, or to listen and learn from science. Until the blinds are lifted and difference is not perceived as threat, the artificial schism embraced by the Shamgar's of the world will remain.
My apologies for the length of this post, but the subject demands a certain body of substance and clarity of articulation.
Shalom,
Tashah
