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There's More to Life Than Science

Posted on: Monday, 20 February 2006, 09:00 CST

By Marc and Tom

Q: I just read your response to J.Z. in Cary, N.C. In it, you mentioned the "emergence of homo sapiens." This thrilled me to read because I get the impression you don't deny an "evolution of biological forms," to liberally paraphrase a statement by Pope John Paul II. However, I would like to know if I'm taking liberties with your response, or if there is room for us scientists to accept the evidence about evolution (because in science we don't "believe"), while also exercising our faith? I get upset listening to people go on about evolution and creation, saying we have to "believe" in one or the other.

I'm never going to "believe" in evolution, but I do accept the endless good science that has been used in explaining it. Are we not able to use our brains to see the evidence that's been left for us in DNA, embryology, vestigial structures, homology and fossil stratification, and use these tools to derive intelligent explanations from data, not faith, without displeasing God?

I don't have a problem believing things about God and accepting things that have been strongly supported by data in the study of evolutionary processes. Is this outlook spiritually mature/ immature, ignorant, overly optimistic, demonstrative of denial, or any other host of explanations that pushes me away from God? - R., Michigan

A: The problem with the debate over intelligent design and evolution and creationism is that people don't understand that there are three ways we come to know the truth of things. We know the truth through the discoveries of science, we know the truth through the revelations of faith, and we know the truth through philosophical reasoning.

There's no doubt in our minds that science has taught us evolution is more than a plausible thesis. It's the truth, as science understands it now. Of course, evolution is still described by scientists as a theory, but it's the most plausible scientific theory we have to date. Therefore, while we honor, respect and believe in this theory, we remain open to whatever else science may discover about the stunning complexity of life.

Secondly, we inherit a truth from Scripture that teaches us that however life emerged and developed, it remains a sacred creation of God and as such deserves respect and awe, and imposes upon us a guardianship to keep clean and safe what God has entrusted to us.

The third way we know the truth is through the use of unaided human reason, and this way urges us to consider the purposefulness of life, then to rationally (not religiously) conclude that such purpose implies a purposer, a designer, a telos. If we found a watch, we wouldn't be merely entitled to infer that a watchmaker had created it; we would be rationally required to admit that such a purposeful object had to be made by a watchmaker.

Random chance simply is an illogical source for a watch, and by analogy, random chance is simply an irrational choice to explain the complexity and purposefulness of life. Rationally, we can know that God made the world, the same way we can know that a watchmaker made the watch. This does not mean that evolution plays no role in perfecting the world, it simply means that it is irrational to believe that we are here by chance.

As Einstein said, "God does not play dice with the universe." For science to move from what to why is a violation of its natural limits, and for religion to intrude on the work of science is also a category mistake. Philosophical thinking offers a solution to the problem, that though neither scientific nor religious, is still profoundly true.

Send questions to The God Squad, Telecare, 1200 Glenn Curtiss Blvd., Uniondale, NY 11553; post them on the God Squad Web site: www.askthegodsquad.com; or email them to: godsquad@telecaretv.org.

Source: Buffalo News

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