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Thank God for Darwin and Evolution

Posted on: Saturday, 11 February 2006, 15:00 CST

By Patty Fisher, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

Feb. 11--Tomorrow is Darwin Day, and I plan to observe it by thanking God for evolution. Without it, we'd all be living in caves.

The debate over Charles Darwin's theories pits scientists against fundamentalist Christians, who take the Bible's version of creation literally and equate evolution with atheism.

Where does that leave Christians like me, who have no trouble reconciling evolution with faith? Frustrated, and out of the game.

That's why I welcome Darwin Day. I hope it evolves into an international movement showcasing the common ground between science and religion in the 21st century.

Darwin and the courts

In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the last state law forbidding the teaching of evolution. Since then, federal courts have consistently rejected attempts to teach creationist theology in science classes. Meanwhile, scientists have mapped the human genome and found genetic links to monkeys and other species. They have unearthed evidence of Homo sapiens dating back half a million years.

And yet, according to numerous polls, roughly half of Americans reject the notion that humans evolved from lower forms of life, preferring to believe the account in the first chapter of Genesis. Most favor adding creationism to the school curriculum.

And we wonder why our children are falling behind in science.

President Bush wants to double the amount we spend on basic research in the physical sciences. That's great. But he also favors teaching "intelligent design" -- an updated form of creationism -- in biology classes. In other words, he wants to promote science, but only science that fits in with certain religious beliefs.

It's no surprise that the Darwin Day phenomenon got its start in Silicon Valley. Robert Stephens, a retired SRI International biologist, formed a non-profit organization six years ago to promote it.

When the Rev. Richard Foster of the Episcopal Lutheran Campus Ministry at Stanford University heard about the movement, he was eager to get involved.

"The way we see it, the creation stories in Genesis were the statements of faith of an ancient people," he said. "They were not science."

The Rev. Scotty McLennan, dean for religious life at Stanford, preached his Darwin sermon last month, after a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled that intelligent design has no place in science classes.

Finding God in the gaps

Proponents of intelligent design don't deny that life evolved over billions of years. But they point to certain gaps in our understanding of evolution -- how, for example, something as complex as the human eye could evolve through natural selection alone -- as proof of a higher power's intervention.

McLennan doesn't buy it. In fact, his position is that intelligent design demeans God. It relegates God to the position of explainer of things science can't explain, a position that gets smaller and smaller as science uncovers more and more answers.

For the other side of the debate, I went to Pastor Dave Sefton of Jubilee Christian Center in San Jose.

"Man did not evolve up through the animal kingdom," he said. "To take God out of what we teach our children is in violation of what God tells us to do."

In Silicon Valley, however, even a fundamentalist has to leave some room for Darwin.

"There may have been prehistoric manlike creatures before Adam and Eve," Sefton said. "There are different theories about the universe, but they are just a smoke screen to get us away from what's really important, which is that God loves us."

Perhaps. And perhaps intelligent design is just a smoke screen to undermine scientific inquiry. On Darwin Day, let the smoke clear and the debate flourish.

Contact Patty Fisher at pfisher@mercurynews.com or (650) 688-7510.

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Copyright (c) 2006, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

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Source: San Jose Mercury News

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