More Than One Christian View

Many parents and pastors are wondering what to tell their children about creation and evolution. While Sunday school classes often cover Genesis 1 around kindergarten (with kids coloring pictures of what God created on each day), most curricula do not address science again before kids leave for college. Yet issues of creation and evolution can be addressed in age-appropriate ways throughout Sunday school. Elementary school children already learn about idol worship from other Old Testament stories, so teachers have an opportunity to contrast Genesis 1 with the idol-rich creation stories of other cultures. Middle school students can be given basic tools for considering creation and evolution such as the contrast between the “how” questions answered by their science lessons in school and the “who” and “why” questions answered in Scripture. Middle and high school students can find role models by reading the testimonies of scientist Christians.

Youth need to be encouraged to discuss their questions and doubts, while affirming core beliefs. When asked why they left the faith, scientists often mention that the church was not open to their questions and told them to “just believe.” Churches can demonstrate openness to questions by teaching youth about multiple Christian views on an issue. Students need to hear that some Christians accept the science of evolution and others do not, and have a conversation about the reasons why. Too many young people have struggled when they felt they had to choose between clear scientific evidence and the beliefs they grew up with. Even when parents and leaders are unsure about evolution, they can help students by saying, “While I have concerns about evolution, I’ve heard that some Christians accept the science of evolution while still believing in the God of the Bible.”

Difficult issues like origins cannot be addressed in a single event. People need time to ponder the issues, and spaces to talk it through. One church did a six-week sermon series, with parallel curricula for all ages in Sunday school, so that families could work through it together. Another church did a sermon series and discussion group for adults for four weeks, to prepare parents before a four-week series for the youth group. Other churches encourage small groups to read a book on science and faith and discuss a chapter a week. (Since all authors have their favorite view, I recommend discussing at least two books from different authors to learn about multiple Christian positions.)

More Than Evolution

In our science-saturated culture, evolution is not the only science topic the church should be considering, and not even the most important. With church members encountering the latest medical advances as patients and family members, a discussion on bioethics would be very relevant. Since young people are usually the first to use hot new gadgets, they should be considering the appropriate Christian use of technology . As the issue of climate change becomes more pressing every year, churches need to talk about it, and not avoid it because it is so political. The Evangelical Environmental Network offers many resources for churches, emphasizing ways that creation care benefits the poor and the unborn. One group of churches, with the help of Calvin College, joined together to clean up the local creek that drains the watershed in which the parishioners live, work, and worship. Many of the congregants were not even aware of the size of the watershed or the pollution level in their own creek. This was a hands-on opportunity for all ages, directly caring for their own corner of God’s green Earth.

More Than Controversy

With so many issues to discuss, Christians can easily get the feeling that science is always attacking the faith. It is essential to balance such conversations with positive responses to God’s creation. After all, the primary response to the natural world in the Bible is to praise the God who made it. The first time I led an adult Sunday school class on creation and evolution, I was amazed how much the participants appreciated simply ending each session with a Psalm reading or creation hymn. Thoughtful frowns turned into relaxed smiles as the group remembered our unity in Christ and the centrality of God as the Creator.

Creation themes can be incorporated throughout worship. One church asked the congregation to submit their favorite creation photos at the end of the summer (from backyard flowers to National Parks), then wove the images into a worship service with creation songs and readings from the Psalms. In addition to flowers and mountains, modern science has revealed incredible glories that can inspire our praise and reflection. Several contemporary Christian musicians have begun to artfully incorporate the wonders of the natural world into their music; Chris Rice sings of “cratered moon and Saturn’s rings,” and Third Day praises the “God of wonders beyond our galaxy.” In one church, an elder brought in modern science when leading the congregation in prayer with these words: “Creator God, out of nothing you created all that is. You hurled the galaxies through time and space. . . . The universe is your hourglass, the continental drift your minute hand, the Grand Canyon your second hand. You are infinite.”

Preachers can incorporate science in the same way they make references to movies, current events, or best-selling books in sermons. To notice these connections, take some time to encounter science: read the science section of the New York Times, visit a local science museum, or ask scientists in the congregation about their work. A visit to a planetarium might give a new appreciation for the vastness of the universe, which could illuminate a sermon on the vastness of God’s forgiveness in Psalm 103:11–12. Pastor John Van Sloten learned about the neural networks in the brain and incorporated it into a sermon on the vine and the branches of John 15.

Preachers are understandably concerned about avoiding scientific errors when preaching, but this should not prevent engagement with science. Some pastors do their own research to get the details right because they enjoy digging into a science topic. Other pastors bring in a scientist (live or by video) so that they do not have to explain the technical material themselves. Others play to their strengths by choosing topics with fewer technical details, such as the Christian motivation for doing science or exposition of Bible passages relevant for scientific questions. Many of the questions Christians have are really about biblical interpretation and Christian theology, areas where the pastor is an expert. Minor technical errors made in good faith are forgivable, but a sermon that argues that mainstream science is wrong on some point can be devastating for the faith life of teenagers who are learning the correct science in school.

Beyond Sunday morning worship and preaching, science can show up in many areas of church life. During a youth camping trip or church picnic, include a nature walk concluded with praise. After a winter evening worship service, invite a local amateur astronomer to set up a telescope in the parking lot to show people the moon and planets. Convert a vacant lot near church into a community garden, so kids can experience firsthand how God provides food from the Earth.

More Than Programs

In all these activities, remember that views on science are “caught” more than “taught.” Congregants will naturally pick up on the attitude of the pastor or ministry leader, whether skeptical of science or celebrating science as the study of God’s creation. Visitors will pick up on this too, so these attitudes are part of being a church that welcomes and ministers to scientist Christians . Recently I was invited to speak at a church on the expansion of the universe and the possibility of a multiverse. Several enthusiastic young people in attendance had clearly caught the love of science from the church leaders who planned the event. One girl came up afterward with her dad, both of them marveling at God’s creation. They were amazed not just with the particular things I had discussed, but with the way in which God has embedded wonders at every level of understanding. Everyone can marvel at the starry skies, school kids can learn about the planets and asteroids, and scientists with PhDs can study dark matter and string theory. No matter how deep we look, we keep discovering more and more ways that creation declares the glory of God.

For Further Reading

For more resources on a full range of science topics, visit the The Ministry Theorem collection at http://ministrytheorem.calvinseminary.edu/. You will find sample sermons, curricula for children and adults, worship resources, essays by a dozen scientist Christians, and much more.

"Homeschooling has broadened so much, and now includes many Christian groups who have never adopted Young Earth Creationism," said homeschool pioneer Susan Wise Bauer, a history professor at Virginia's College of William and Mary. "Also, there are a lot of younger evangelicals who have come to a different way of understanding Genesis, while still holding [on to their] evangelical roots."

Textbook providers are beginning to respond to the increasing demand for integrated science materials, and organizations like Test of Faith and the American Scientific Affiliation have responded to the needs of homeschooling parents by helping to create new resources and evaluate existing ones. The BioLogos Evolution and Christian Faith grant program is supporting projects to develop homeschooling resources, at Bryan College and at Wheaton College.

Read the full story at Christianity Today. 

Despite this usage, most of us know that randomness has something to do with probability, and that it often implies a lack of conscious intentionality. But what do mathematicians and scientists mean when they say something is random? Can a random process lead to an ordered, even predictable outcome? Is there evidence that God makes use of random processes to fulfill his creative purposes?

These are big questions, and we won’t address them all today. But I think randomness is an important topic to cover for two reasons: 1) it is integral to many processes in biology (and math, physics, chemistry, etc.), and 2) it is commonly misunderstood to be incompatible with Christianity.

As I said above, most of us know that randomness has something to do with probability. If you pick a card “at random” from a shuffled deck, you have a small probability of drawing an ace (4 out of 52, or a 7.7% chance). If you flip a coin, you have an equal probability of getting heads or tails.

Randomness also seems to imply a lack of intentionality or purposefulness. After all, you might hope for an ace when you draw a card, but you can’t choose one on purpose. You might call heads when you flip a coin, but you can’t know beforehand what the outcome will be. Thus the outcome is indeterminate, but is it purposeless? Not necessarily. Indeterminacy simply means the result cannot be predicted from the outset.

It should be noted that indeterminacy does not imply that God does not have foreknowledge of future events. Christians ought not to be uncomfortable with the idea of God interacting with his creation through chance. We often describe a seemingly-random (i.e. unplanned by us) sequence of events as being “providential,” or planned by God.

In biology, it is very hard or impossible to calculate precise probabilities for most processes, so when we say a process is random, we typically mean it is extremely unpredictable. Eventually we will discuss randomness within biological evolution, but first we must consider some simpler processes, like the self-assembly of a virus.

Viruses are remarkably efficient entities. Coiled tightly within a protein-based shell is a small amount of DNA needed for self-replication. The shell, called a capsid, is made of many repeating protein subunits and is therefore highly symmetrical (see figure). Important biomedical insights have certainly been gleaned from structural studies of viruses, but viruses also teach us about the emergence of order from non-order.

The virus life cycle has four main steps: 1) enter a host cell, 2) hijack the cell’s replication and translation machinery to make many copies of itself, 3) assemble into many virus particles, and 4) exit the cell to invade another host.

When I first learned about this process, I found it very hard to believe it just “happens.” The idea that a bunch of molecules bumping into each other inside a crowded cell could spontaneously assembly into a fully-functional virus seemed a bit far-fetched. Many viral capsids have over 100 protein subunits that must interact with each other in just the right way, or it won’t work. Surely there must be something driving this process, right?

There is! Random motion. I had to see it to believe it. I distinctly remember sitting in class during my first year of graduate school when the professor demonstrated self-assembly of a virus using a 3D model as shown in the following video. In less than 30 seconds, you can watch a jumbled heap of proteins become a beautifully ordered structure.

As the narrator explains, sub-assemblies form and break apart en route to the most stable structure, the full capsid. As the sub-assemblies begin to form, further associations with free subunits become more favorable and as a result occur rapidly, while the final steps may take considerably longer. While the subunits in the model are rigid, in reality the proteins take on multiple conformations, allowing the capsid to “breathe.”

Amazing as it is, the system we just considered—one virus capsid in a jar—is pretty simple. One wonders how self-assembly can happen in a crowded cell, where there are countless other molecules diffusing around, potentially getting in the way. We can’t directly see how it happens in a cell, but we can reconstitute the process in a test tube using different combinations of constituent molecules.

Consider two viruses, where each protein subunit in one virus is the mirror image of the corresponding subunit in the other. Putting the two viruses together by hand would be pretty tricky, because the constituent parts look so similar. But random motion can do the job in short order:

From this model, we can see clearly, in real-time, how distinct complex structures can arise from their parts randomly interacting with one another. Many large viruses also use special scaffolding proteins to assist in the assembly process, and some even use their own genomes as a scaffold. In addition, two closely-related viruses that happen to infect the same cell can exchange parts to create a new virus. This is one way viruses can evolve quickly to evade the host’s immune system.

Here we have seen how viruses demonstrate a principle inherent in God’s world—that order can emerge out of chaos from random processes. In my next post, we will look at some other biological processes that make use of—rather, depend on—randomness. This will set the stage for us to see that such processes can not only assemble a structure within seconds or minutes, but also generate complex, information-bearing molecules over billions of years. Even though the freedom inherent in nature sometimes produces unintelligently-designed structures (like viruses, which can kill us), we see that God has made, and continues to oversee by his providence, a good creation that, at least in part, is capable of creating itself.

Next weekend, we’ll continue this series about randomness and God’s divine will. Up next: how God created the body to heal itself, and how can random mutations can be both harmful and benign.

Writer David R. Wheeler writes that, “For homeschooling parents who want to teach their children that the earth is only a few thousand years old, the theory of evolution is a lie, and dinosaurs coexisted with humans, there is no shortage of materials. … This staunch rejection of modern science tends to characterize today's leading homeschool textbooks.”

But homeschooling evangelicals who embrace modern science are becoming more vocal about it, writes Wheeler, regardless of the “inevitable criticism” that comes with making that choice.

So where can these parents go to find textbooks that are both scientifically sound, yet still allow for God as the author of creation?

 Wheeler notes that one publisher in Grand Rapids is attempting to fill the gap, and also cites BioLogos’ Evolution and Christian Faith grants program as a promising source of materials that can help reframe the conversation for Christian parents.

Read the full article here!

Understanding John Polkinghorne: Theology of Nature

John Polkinghorne’s interest in natural theology is important, but what really sets him apart from most others is that he combines it with an equally strong interest in theology of nature, which is not the same thing. Where natural theology involves, “metaquestions about the pattern and structure of the physical world,” theology of nature involves, “metaquestions about how its historical process is to be understood.” Rather than “looking to the physical world for hints of God’s existence,” we look “to God’s existence as an aid for understanding why things have developed in the physical world in the manner that they have.” (Belief in God in an Age of Science, p. 13)

On this front, Polkinghorne advances a strongly Christocentric theology of creation, stressing Jürgen Moltmann’s notion of The Crucified God . In the context of Polkinghorne’s theology of nature, the point is that the Creator is the crucified and resurrected second person of the Trinity. Since I devoted a column to this before, I won’t say more here, except to alert readers to the singular importance this particular idea has for him—especially when facing the problem of suffering. “The insight of the Crucified God lies at the very heart of my own Christian belief, indeed of the possibility of such belief in the face of the way the world is.” (Belief in God in an Age of Science, p. 44)

Situating John Polkinghorne: The Resurrection of Jesus

Many Christians today see science as posing dangerous threats to their faith, challenging their understanding of the Bible and undermining core tenets such as the bodily Resurrection of Jesus, the historical basis on which the Christian faith stands or falls. “Evolution” is often identified as the problem, but the real danger is unbridled naturalism. A commitment to naturalistic methods, known as “methodological naturalism,” (MN) has been an integral part of science and medicine since the ancient Greeks. Those methods have been highly successful at producing a coherent, often very convincing picture of nature and the history of nature.

Advocates of Intelligent Design and some other Christians reject MN, but many Christians who work in the sciences and related fields (such as engineering, medicine, or the history and philosophy science) support MN as a properly grounded and properly limited way of understanding reality. In their view, a robust Christian faith is consistent with a commitment to MN, provided that the limits of scientific inquiry are not simply equated with the limits of rationally grounded belief. Polkinghorne fits squarely in this category.

To understand more clearly where Polkinghorne lies on the larger landscape of science and religion, let’s consider his approach to the Resurrection. Many contemporary thinkers, including some theologians and clergy, believe that “science” has somehow made it impossible to believe in the Resurrection, the deity of Jesus, and even belief in the transcendent God of the Bible.

A prime example is John Shelby Spong, a retired Episcopalian bishop whose books have sold more than one million copies. Spong sees the bodily Resurrection as a figment of the disciples’ imaginations, a vestige of a theism that now we must throw away like a threadbare suit of clothes. For Spong, Christians today need to go "beyond theism" throwing out the baby of divine transcendence—the fundamental truth of monotheism—along with the bath water of the credulity and mythology of the pre-modern authors of the Bible and the ecumenical creeds. Spong’s message is that “Christianity must change or die,” and all in the name of “science.”

As Spong likes to say, his work is very controversial, and not just among rank-and-file Christians. Scholars have also railed against him. “I have been attacked in books from the religious right by such people as Alistair MacGrath [whose surname is actually spelled McGrath], N.T. Wright, and Luke Timothy Johnson,” he complains (Why Christianity Must Change or Die, p. xvi).

I understand (with much sadness) that we live in a highly polarized age. Nevertheless, it’s difficult for me to grant much credibility to an author who identifies McGrath, Wright, and Johnson as representatives of the “religious right.” Indeed, if anyone here is distorting the news it is Spong, not they. As the (late) great Catholic biblical scholar Raymond Brown once observed, “I do not think that a single NT [New Testament] author would recognize Spong’s Jesus as the figure being proclaimed or written about.” (Birth of the Messiah, note 321 on p. 704)

Matthias Grünewald, The Resurrection (a wing of the
Isenheim Altarpiece, ca. 1515), Unterlinden Museum,
Colmar, France

Polkinghorne certainly understands science far more than Spong does, and his conclusions about the implications of science for Christian beliefs are markedly different. With respect to the Resurrection, he is basically on the same page with his friend Wright, whose profound book, The Resurrection of the Son of God, he cites with appreciation. Belief in the Resurrection is well supported by the evidence, and the Resurrection, itself, is “the pivot on which the claim of a unique and transcendent significance for Jesus must turn.” Considering authors like Spong (although he does not explicitly name him), he adds, “it would be a serious apologetic mistake if Christian theology thought that operating in the context of science should somehow discourage it from laying proper emphasis on the essential centrality of Christ’s Resurrection, however counterintuitive that belief may seem in the light of mundane expectation.” (Theology in the Context of Science, pp. 135-6)

Amen.

Looking Ahead

This is the Easter season, and I’ll return in a couple of weeks to begin examining Polkinghorne’s approach to the Resurrection more fully, using excerpts from the chapter on “Motivated Belief” from his recent book, Theology in the Context of Science.

References

Raymond E. Brown, Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. (1992).

John Polkinghorne, Belief in God in an Age of Science (1998).

John Polkinghorne, Theology in the Context of Science (2009). My review for First Things online is here.

John Shelby Spong, Why Christianity Must Change or Die (1998).

Read his moving speech here.

If we want to talk about God, creation, and science, where should we start? It’s easy to begin with conflict. We can claim that the rise of modern science is the root of cultural decline. We can dive right into some of the contentious questions about how the Bible and science relate to each other. We can adopt a posture of defensiveness about what Christians believe and the ways in which some people think science threatens our beliefs.

But this is not a good place to start. The place to start is the place where all good Christian theology must start: with God.

“In the beginning, God….” These are the first words of the Bible. “I believe in God….” These are the first words of the Apostle’s Creed. If we want to develop wisdom and understanding about the relation between God and creation, then we need to start with the source of everything: God.

But how do we know anything about God? And how can we say anything about God? As we go about our daily lives, we can’t converse with God in exactly the same way that we might talk with our families, friends or neighbors. We can’t touch or smell God like a patch of green grass or taste Him like an apple. We can’t see him like an image on our TV screens. In theological terms, there is a sense in which God is “hidden” to our human senses. Many great Christian thinkers, such as Martin Luther, spent a good part of their lives reflecting on the “hiddenness” of God.

It may surprise you to hear God described as “hidden.” Those of us who have been in the Church for a while often are much more familiar with talk of how God has revealed Himself to us. We seem to gravitate towards detailed and systematic explanations of what we think we can know about God. God has, of course, revealed Himself to us – or else there would be very little point in trying to speak about Him. In scripture, in the proclamation of the Church, in the created world, and most importantly, in Jesus Christ, God has made Himself known. So why start with how God is “hidden?”

The very fact that God cannot be directly perceived by our ordinary human senses tells us something important about God and creation. God is “hidden” because He is “other.” God is not a patch of grass, and a patch of grass is not God. God is not an apple, and an apple is not God. God is not a television image or painting or statute, and a television image, painting or statute is not God. God is not a human being, and human beings are not God. God is not matter, the stuff of the created world, and matter is not God.

In theological terms, God is transcendent. “God” and “creation” are not the same thing. This is a basic idea that distinguishes Christian understandings of God from many other philosophies and religions. In fact, this emphasis on God’s transcendence is one important difference between the Hebrew and Christian theologies of creation and the prevailing ideas in the ancient near eastern world of the Biblical writers. It also distinguishes Christian thinking about God and creation from some of the important ideas that are common today.

In many ancient near eastern creation myths, the material creation was derived from the body of a god. In the Babylonian Enuma Elish, for example, the female god Tiamat is killed by another god, Marduk, and the two halves of Tiamat’s corpse become the earth and the skies. In Egyptian mythology, many of the gods were related to material entities. Ra, for example, was the god of the Sun, Nut was god of the sky, and Geb was god of the earth. These stories reflect an ontology in which there is no sharp distinction between the gods and the material world. The Biblical literature, in contrast, separates the nature and being of the creator-God from the nature and being of His creation.

In contemporary popular Western culture, two of the most common ideas about God and creation really are very old notions dressed up in new clothes.

One is a thought you might hearon TV talk shows, in self-help books, or in popular music or movies: that “everything is one” or that “God is in everything and everyone.” This usually sounds like “pantheism” — the notion that God and the world around us really are essentially the same thing. In American popular culture, this often boils down to God becoming the same thing as our own individual selves. How often have you heard a line like this in a song or TV show or movie: “what you’ve been looking for has been right inside yourself all along” or “the most important thing is to find out who you are?”

The truth of God’s transcendence means that the real basis for a meaningful and good life lies outside of our selves. We are part of creation, and therefore we are not God. We must look outside ourselves to find the source of life. Before we become too critical here, we need to preview for a moment another important theme in Christian theology: that God is also immanent. It is true that creation is an interconnected system and that God is always present throughout all of creation. It is also true that in our created humanity we are made for an intimate connection with God. It is right to look into ourselves as we seek God. As Augustine described in his Confessions, an honest search of the self should reveal a nature that is not self-sufficient, that is not meant to be alone, that longs for relationship with a beauty and harmony and love that the individual self cannot sustain. Augustine called this a “God-shaped void” at the heart of every person.

Yet we also need to be clear that, while the search may begin within our selves, it must not stop there. God is “other,” so we must continue beyond ourselves, in fact beyond everything we think we see, in order to find Him. And the paradox here is that we can only find the true meaning and purpose of our own selves by going beyond ourselves and finding the God who is other than us and who made us.

The other idea often expressed in our popular culture is that “matter is all there is.” Unfortunately, for some people this idea has become the standard for supposedly “scientific” thinking about the world. But this is not a “scientific” idea at all – it is a metaphysical statement (“metaphysical” just means “beyond the physical”) with roots going back to the ancient Greek Stoics. For many educated people in Western culture, if something cannot be verified with the human senses, it is not “real,” or at least it is not worthy of consideration as a matter of “fact” or “reason.”

There are many reasons why this way of thinking about what counts as truth or knowledge has become so influential. Our modern intellectual, political and social systems were shaped by the period from the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries known as the “Enlightenment.” Even modern Christianity has been tinged in significant ways by Enlightenment thought.

The Enlightenment, of course, was not all bad. It gave us some great gifts, including the contemporary scientific method and the political frameworks, such as the U.S. Constitution, that support the freedoms we now take for granted.

But like many exciting moments in history, the Enlightenment produced some unbalanced perspectives. The ways in which human beings can know things in addition to observation of the tangible world around us were lost. The sorts of intuitions and experiences that human beings throughout history had understood to reach beyond reason were discredited. The thought that a transcendent God might have broken into history to reveal anything about Himself was mostly set aside.

Christian theology has always asserted that because God is transcendent, human observation and human reason are neither the starting point nor the ending point for true knowledge, wisdom and understanding. If matter is not all there is, then our search for truth cannot be limited to the material world alone. In fact, the beginning of knowledge and wisdom is the realization that God is beyond and other than the created world. Again, a word of balance is in order. Human observation and reason do matter, precisely because God created us as part of a world that is in important ways orderly and knowable. The great Christian thinker Anselm said that knowledge is the act of “faith seeking understanding.” “Understanding” – the sometimes difficult process of bringing all our resources, including reason, to bear on the search for truth – depends on and follows “faith.”

God’s transcendence means that the physical world does not represent the limits of what is true and real. Indeed, the physical world is not the beginning or end of what is true and real. The “beginning and end,” the “alpha and omega,” is the God who is beyond all our thoughts and imaginings.

Grantees will benefit from in-person interaction through a series of summer workshops in 2013, 2014, and 2015. These meetings will not only foster a broader knowledge base, but will build a sustained network of scholars and church leaders, both young and seasoned, who are serious about addressing the concerns of the church about evolution. Also in 2015, in connection with the third summer workshop, BioLogos will host a large conference open to scientists, scholars, and church leaders from around the world.

ECF History

In January 2012, BioLogos was awarded a multi-million dollar grant from the John Templeton Foundation to fund the work of scholars and church leaders on evolution and Christian faith. In spring 2012 we worked hard to get the word out. You may have seen announcements on the BioLogos website, in our newsletters, on the Books & Culture, Leadership Journal, or First Things websites, on your professional society’s listserv, or perhaps on your friend’s blog.

The response was overwhelming: we received 225 letters of intent for a total request of $21 million—about seven times the amount we had to offer. We needed to invite the most promising applicants to submit a full proposal, but recognizing the projects with highest potential would require broad expertise. From the beginning, we envisioned that a panel of scientists, pastors, and scholars would oversee the application and review process as well as play key advisory roles throughout the project. A team of eight highly qualified individuals came on board in the early months of the project. They reviewed each proposal and together recommended that BioLogos invite 86 applicants to submit full applications.

The deadline for submissions was October 1, 2012. As in the previous round, the ECF panel evaluated each proposal. In addition, we asked 55 other experts to participate, so that each proposal received 3-4 scores. Criteria for the decision included significance of topic, project design, creativity and innovation, long-term impact potential, feasibility, and budget.

The panel then met together November 29-30, 2012, to make the final funding decisions. In the end, they recommended that BioLogos give 37 awards, ranging from $23,000 to $300,000. BioLogos staff notified applicants of their awards on December 14, 2013.

The Grantees

As part of our objective to create a network of scholars and leaders, we awarded grants to organizations across the U.S. and the world. Thirty of the 37 grantees are domestic; seven are international, hailing from Canada, France, Great Britain, Netherlands, and Spain.

Two-thirds of the accepted projects will be led by teams—some with three or more Project Leaders. We expect that the teamwork and time spent together at our summer workshops will be the start of a long-lasting network of people dedicated to helping the church think carefully about origins.

Applicants chose to apply under one of three program tracks: interdisciplinary scholarship (Track 1), intra-disciplinary scholarship (Track 2), and translational projects (Track 3). Track 1 projects focus on both the collaboration between individuals in different disciplines and the development of projects at the interface of different content areas. Track 2 projects focus on work done within a specific discipline. Track 3 focuses on projects that encourage Christians, especially those within more conservative traditions, to engage in meaningful and productive dialogue to reduce tensions between mainstream science and the Christian faith. The numbers of grantees in Tracks 1, 2, and 3 are 6, 8, and 23, respectively.

Many of the scholarly projects tackle questions about Adam and Eve, the Fall, human identity, and Original Sin—some of the most critical interpretive issues for evangelical theology.  Some examples: 

• Theologian Oliver Crisp of Fuller Seminary will take an analytic theology approach to ask to what extent a theological account of the origin of human sin depends upon the evolution of modern humans from one and only one ancestral pair—especially if that pair does not appear to correspond to what we would think of as modern human beings. 

• Pastor Michael Gulker and philosopher James Smith, leading a large team from The Colossian Forum, ask a related question: if humanity emerged from non-human primates—as genetic, biological, and archaeological evidence seems to suggest—then what are the implications for Christian theology’s traditional account of origins, including both the origin of humanity and the origin of sin? 

• Biologist Dennis Venema of Trinity Western University and New Testament scholar Scot McKnight of Northern Seminary will write a book on the evidence for evolution and population genetics, with informed theological reflection on how these issues interact with orthodox Christianity.

• Biologist David Wilcox of Eastern University will develop an updated model of human identity which reflects the complex recent scientific advances in genetics and paleoanthropology and yet is sensitive to theological concerns.  

These are just a few of the scholarly awards; check out the Grantees page for full descriptions of all Track 1 and Track 2 projects.

All projects have translational potential, but Track 3 projects are designed to meet the needs of a particular constituency within the evangelical church. These projects run the gamut from ethics to education to media production to ministry resources.  Some examples include:

• Theologian Lee Camp of Lipscomb University will produce “The Questions in Monkey Town,” an episode of Tokens, a live variety show that features musical performances, comedic sketches, brief interpretive monologues, and dialog with authors and scholars. The episode will be performed and filmed on the site of the famous Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee.

• Chaplain Joshua Hayashi and Educator Diane Sweeney of the Punahou School in Hawaii will lead a team to produce multimedia curricula aimed at helping high school students connect with their biology curricula and, at the same time, deepen their Christian faith.

• Physics teacher and pastor Benoît Hébert of Science et Foi Chrétienne in France will lead an international, multi-denominational team of French speaking Evangelical scientists, pastors and church leaders to produce a large number of resources on evolutionary creation.

• Pastor Seung-Hwan Kim of Grace Truth Community Church, a Southern Baptist church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will produce teaching and preaching materials about evolution for church leaders.

• President Gregory Wolfe and Director of Resource Development for IMAGE will gather artists and writers of faith whose work explores the dialogue between evolutionary science and faith practice, convening a conversation between them and scientists, theologians, and church leaders in private and public conferences.

Again, this is just a taste of the diversity of Track 3 projects. Read more about each project on the Grantees page. You can look forward to an incredible variety of resources coming out of the ECF program, many of which will be featured right here on the BioLogos Forum.

I am a Christian who has always been drawn to the biological sciences. So much so that I majored in genetics in college and spent 18 years in the field of paternity/forensics and conservation genetics. In 2003, I was given the opportunity to teach Advanced Placement (AP) Biology at a local Christian high school, and in 2009, I left the field of genetics behind to pursue youth ministry at my church full time. From 2009-2012 I attended Bethel Theological Seminary, earning an M.A. in theology, while concurrently teaching AP Biology.

One of the reasons I agreed to teach at this particular Christian school was because they allowed the teaching of mainstream evolution in an open way in their biology courses. Because my course was an AP course, the school also needed to comply with the textbook requirements, meaning I would be teaching from a secular biology book. This teaching environment presented some of the most powerfully engaging teaching moments I have experienced with teenagers, and it was from these initial teaching experiences that I began to feel God’s call for me to enter into full-time youth ministry.

Within a few weeks of my first year of teaching AP Biology in a Christian school, one thing became clear: The students were entering my class with a presupposition towards Young Earth Creationism (YEC) as taught by our Bible department. I had been informed that among the teaching staff, the Bible Department believed in a Young Earth cosmology while the Science Department in an Old Earth cosmology. This caused me some concern, being new to Christian education. I quickly came to the realization that there were actually different ways of looking at the world (i.e. worldviews) within the Christian worldview. I had only attended secular schools growing up, and so this dichotomy within one teaching institution disturbed me on a few levels.

First, I had the sense that it was not healthy to have conflicting views that appear to place the Bible and science in conflict with each other. Second, and more detrimental in my opinion, I wondered if these opposing views could cause students to eventually abandon their faith in God and the truths of the Bible if they were continually flipping between biblical and scientific truths, as though these truths opposed each other? According to an article published by the BarnaGroup, “One of the reasons young adults feel disconnected from church or from faith is the tension they feel between Christianity [i.e. Theology] and science…the research shows that many science-minded young Christians are struggling to find ways of staying faithful to their beliefs and to their professional calling in science-related industries.” (Six Reasons Young Christians Leave Church, September 28, 2011). My new teaching position suddenly felt more like a ministry than when I had first agreed to this job.

Redeeming Conversations: Seeking The Truth

The first challenge for me at the beginning of each school year is to clarify the students’ understanding of evolution as it has been taught in their Bible and pre-requisite science courses. Invariably, they come back with the same answer: “Evolution is a lie,” to which I respond with, “Which aspects of evolution are you talking about?” After some debate and discussion, the students typically agree with microevolution, while rejecting the notion of macroevolution. These initial discussions typically end with the students’ astonishment that I treat evolution in a serious, non-mocking way, and yet am an adult with a strong Christian faith.

Ultimately, these conversations expose the fact that they had been taught to distrust science and trust the Word of God. I whole-heartedly agree that we must trust the Bible, but I also believe it is important for my students to understand that they can have faith in the Bible as God’s inspired Word, but must be careful with how they interpret the Bible and which interpretations they adhere to. One of my past students is currently working on his PhD in neuroscience at Ohio State and recently shared his experience from my class:

I wanted to let you know that in AP Biology you really challenged my view of creation and evolution. Being raised in a Christian family, school and church my entire life, I had always been taught the literal six-day account of Genesis (especially at [our school] where they didn't allow any discussion or thinking on the topic). I still remember in AP Bio when you said that you believed in evolution AND you were a Christian. It was completely unexpected! I ended up writing my college essay about the topic and it has since been a topic that I am greatly interested in. Specifically why culture (secular and Christian) has created the mindset of ‘Creation vs. Evolution’ rather than God could have created the world through evolution.

I share this quote to show the benefit of dealing openly and honestly with science and theology in the classroom. I believe this quote also reveals the underlying tension that is so real in the lives of so many Christians today, as pointed out in the Barna Group quote above. Having been taught a specific interpretation of the Genesis creation account (i.e. Literal Six-Day Creation), coupled with emphasizing the idea that biblical truth trumps scientific truth, a burden has been placed on teachers in Christian schools that goes beyond teaching the curriculum to pass a Bible or biology course alone.

I am firmly convinced that we must educate our young Christians, whether they attend Christian or public schools, to do theology, philosophy, and science well. As Christian parents, God calls us first and foremost to begin this education in our homes, but this should also be encouraged in the local church, through discipleship relationships, and/or in formal educational settings (e.g. Christian schools and Christian colleges). My hope is that as we continue to seek truth in theology and the sciences, we can learn to dialogue in redemptive, God-honoring ways. Maybe it is too much to hope for in the current cultural climate in America, but for my part, I will continue to attempt to encourage my students away from the creation/evolution debate, and towards a more accurate biblical hermeneutic, and less defensive stance towards the sciences.

In this video Conversation, Joel Hunter articulates the importance of raising a child that can garner knowledge from a variety of sources and to be able to study science with integrity—that is, to be able to pursue the truth to where it leads. Hunter alludes to the danger of letting one’s intellectual inquiry of science be governed by fear instead of by faith that one will ultimately be led to our Creator.

Hunter points out that the directive mankind is given in Genesis 2:15—that we would cultivate the earth and keep it—does not have an expiration date. That is, an attentiveness to God’s creation and its natural processes is something to which all Christians should aspire.

When we honor God’s mandate and begin more deliberately studying and preserving our natural environment, Hunter asserts, we will be attending to broader moral expectations. For example, development of green energy sources will translate into good stewardship and reducing pollution will help us better care for the vulnerable by protecting the environmental health of children. These are just two instances where venerating God’s command will allow us to be obedient in other ways.

“Christians must be good at science so we can carry out the moral mandates we’ve been given by God,” says Hunter.

Editor's note: first posted July 21, 2010. If you'd like to see other great posts like this, go to the BioLogos Navigator topic Education.

Showing Christian schoolteachers that one can be a believer who embraces the Bible as God’s inspired Word and evolution as His creative process has always been a mission of BioLogy by the Sea, the accomplishment of which is never guaranteed. During the first few days, several participants expressed doubt that their faith could be compatible with evolutionary creation. However, as the week came to a close, some of those who had previously denied compatibility seemed to be much more considerate of the notion—if not fully accepting of the idea altogether. If you’ve ever doubted evolution yourself, then you know that such acceptance is no small feat. There are numerous theological and philosophical barriers that must be dealt with, and to think that this could occur in the span of just one week is pretty amazing. Then again, the program had some pretty amazing guest speakers and activities—the most significant of which occurred throughout the week: prayer and worship to the One we all serve, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

While these times served to glorify God and nurture participants’ souls, the week was also filled with activities designed to nurture participants’ minds through the study of biblical passages and biological content. In addition to graduate level courses and accompanying labs in either biodiversity or developmental biology, participants went on field trips to the intertidal zone, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the La Brea Tar Pits, and the Gaslamp Quarter. Furthermore, presentations given by Dr. Gregg Davidson, professor of geology and geological engineering from the University of Mississippi, and Dr. Mary Schweitzer, paleontologist and associate professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences from North Carolina State University, offered key insights into their fields and demonstrated how the tenants of both are based on evidence rather than conjecture.

In short, this year’s BioLogy by the Sea offered another comprehensive look at what it means to be a Christian who accepts the conclusions of mainstream science—not at the expense of our faith in God or His Word, but in light of it. We can only hope that these teachers, who spent an entire week of their summer break with us, left with not only a greater sense of oneness as the body of Christ, but also found new ways to engage their students in matters of science and faith—another facet of the program’s mission. After all, the first step in protecting the next generation from the faith crisis that many seem to experience after they learn about evolution from a secular perspective is showing that it need not be an either-or situation. It’s also an important part of ensuring that Christian young people can rise to the forefront of global scientific research.

These facts persist in the face of educational guidelines in most states that mandate the teaching of evolution, court decisions that have declared the teaching of creationism as unconstitutional and having “no scientific merit or educational value as science [because it] is simply not science” (McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, 1982), thousands of scientific papers and books that document evidence for evolution, direct observations of evolution, and countless endorsements of evolution (and rejections of creationism) by professional scientific organizations. Decades of costly science education reform have not reformed popular acceptance of evolution: most of the public continues to see religion and mainstream science as diametrically opposed, and when presented with that choice, most will choose the supernatural over science, even when it means rejecting the foundations of modern biology. Why?

Many factors – for example, the media and religion -- influence people’s beliefs about the evolution and creationism, as well as their acceptance of science. One of these influences is education. What are students taught about evolution and creationism?

Evolution and Creationism in High School Biology Courses

Students have widely variable introductions to evolution in their high school biology courses. Although most states have educational guidelines that mandate the teaching of evolution, only about 70% of students entering college report that their high school biology courses included evolution (in some form) and not creationism. Although educational guidelines provide important support for teachers wanting to teach evolution, these guidelines are irrelevant to many biology teachers and administrators.

Approximately 20% of students are taught neither creationism nor evolution in their high school biology courses (Moore, 2007). Another “cautious 60%” of biology teachers want to avoid controversy, and neither advocate evolution nor explicitly endorse nonscientific alternatives (Berkman and Plutzer, 2011). Even when teachers do teach evolution, they often cover the topic in a trivial or disparaging way (Bandoli, 2008, and references therein), thereby perpetuating a cycle of ignorance reinforced by popular opinion (Berkman and Plutzer, 2011). When these students arrive on college campuses, they are predisposed to remain skeptical of evolution, for their perceptions and prior knowledge strongly influence their learning. This is especially important for evolution, for many students view evolution as negative and undesirable (Brem, Ranney, and Schindel, 2003) and sense an “overlap of some ideas that the theory [of evolution] advocates with other social, epistemological, and religious beliefs” (Hakoyem and BouJaode, 2008).

The Creationists Down the Hall

Most Americans reject evolution, and most biologists have grown accustomed to headlines such as “Four in 10 Americans Believe in Strict Creationism” (Gallup, 2010) and “In U.S., 46% Hold Creationist View of Human Origins” (Gallup, 2012). However, most biologists are less familiar with the fact that creationism is thriving among undergraduate biology majors (Verhey, 2005; also see above), biology graduate students (Gregory and Ellis, 2009), and former students who have become biology teachers (Berkman, Pacheco, and Plutzer, 2008; Moore, 2007, and references therein).

Despite their training, many biology teachers are creationists. Indeed, fully one-sixth of biology teachers are young-Earth creationists (Berkman, Pacheco, and Plutzer, 2008), and a presentation of young-Earth creationism as legitimate science would presumably confuse students about the basic tenets of science in general, and of evolution in particular. Because teachers’ personal views about a subject affect their teaching of the subject (Carlesen, 1991; Grossman, 1989), and because teachers with strong religious convictions accept evolution less often than their less-religious peers (Trani, 2004), it is not surprising that many of today’s biology teachers explicitly teach creationism in their biology courses. Although few biology teachers in public schools teach creationism without mentioning evolution, 20-25% of today’s biology teachers teach evolution and creationism in their courses (Moore, 2007, and references therein). Although a handful of creationism-based biology teachers are confronted for their malpractice (e.g., Rodney LeVake; see Moore, 2004), most are tolerated — and sometimes even encouraged — to teach creationism, possibly because of pressure from the public and administrators to ignore evolution and/or teach creationism (Cavanagh, 2005, Verango and Toppo, 2005). As Don Aguillard, the lead plaintiff in Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) noted in 1999 (Moore, 1999), “Creationism is alive and well among biology teachers.”

When Biology Teachers Teach Creationism, What Do They Teach?

When biology teachers teach creationism, they usually present only a particular version of the Judeo-Christian creation story. Moreover, these stories are often presented as a scientific alternative to evolution (Moore, 2008), despite the fact that creation science has “no scientific or educational value as science [because it] is simply not science” (McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, 1982). Relatively few biology teachers who teach creationism present it as religious idea, philosophical idea, or as part of a survey of several religions (Moore, 2008). They do not “teach the controversy,” in other words, but present the relationship between modern evolutionary biology and their faith as one of self-evident conflict, assuming (and teaching) that their version of creationism is the only true alternative.

Does It Matter When Biology Teachers Teach Creationism?

Yes—high school biology courses have a strong and lingering impact on students’ views of evolution and creationism (Moore and Cotner, 2009). Students who were taught creationism in high school know significantly less about evolution when they enter college than do students who were taught evolution in high school. Similarly, students who claimed that most of their knowledge of evolution came from non-school sources (e.g., the media, church) knew less about evolution than did students who claimed that their primary source of knowledge about evolution was their high school biology class (Moore, Cotner, and Bates, 2009).

Solving the Problem?

Several studies have claimed that additional evolution-related training will help improve the teaching of evolution in high schools. We are not nearly as optimistic. Although workshops and short-courses presumably help and encourage teachers willing to consider teaching evolution, focused instruction about evolution often does not affect students’ or teachers’ acceptance of evolution (Alters and Nelson, 2002; Chinsamy and Plaganyi, 2008). Moreover, these workshops will not reach creationism-based biology teachers who are dedicated to substituting their religious beliefs for science in their classes.

In our experience, these teachers rarely attend such workshops, even if they are paid to do so, and even then their acceptance of evolution is unaffected. After all, these teachers have access to and know the evidence for evolution – it’s widely available, including in the textbooks that they adopt and use in their classes – and they are not convinced by that evidence. We know of no evidence that the availability of such solely science-focused workshops, seminars, and other forms of evolution-related education will significantly affect what creationism-based biology teachers teach. Since the impediments to better teaching of evolution are primarily the philosophical and religious views of biology teachers, programs that do not address the more personal, “non-science” issues of science educators directly and effectively are likely to have little impact on what students learn in high-school biology classrooms. Instead, if further fact-based instruction in evolution is part of the answer, it is likely to be most effective with young children, who are developmentally primed to seek explanations for natural phenomena. However, evolution instruction is essentially absent prior to high-school biology; by high school, a student’s teleological demands have likely been met by supernatural explanations, creating a cycle of adults who know little about evolution and teach creationism-flavored biology.

Creationism has long been popular among biology teachers (Moore, 2007), and there is no evidence that improved state educational standards, proclamations by professional organizations, and decades of science education reform have made much difference. As John Scopes commented almost 50 years ago, “I don’t think the world changes very rapidly” (Anonymous, 1966).

View Literature Cited

Parents, youth leaders, teachers—all of us—need to encourage young people to have a passion for God’s world and God’s Word. We should help them learn to distinguish between primary issues of the faith, and secondary issues that Christians may in good conscience disagree on. And we must equip them to think critically and biblically through the many different issues of science and faith so that they can be effective citizens and witnesses in today’s society. Today I’d like to introduce a new resource for the Church in that equipping mission for today’s Christian young people; but first, let me give a bit of my own story.

Prepared for the conflict

My amazing parents homeschooled me through eighth grade. I loved the freedom to explore things that I enjoyed; the challenge of tackling subjects well beyond my “official” grade level; and the joy of forming deep relationships with my parents and brothers. We used many high-quality science texts, but in my memory, all of the resources on origins available to us promoted an often-combative Creation Science perspective.

In ninth grade, I went to public high school armed and ready for the fight I had been trained to expect. When my biology teacher taught evolution and required us to write an essay, I hi-jacked the essay topic and turned it into an apologetic for six-day creation. Because I was in “conflict mode,” I was not ready to consider the arguments for evolution, or the possibility that Christians could actually accept it. I stayed on guard for the next three years until I headed off to the less hostile territory of Wheaton College.

As a student in Wheaton’s explicitly Christian environment, I felt a new safety to explore different biblically faithful positions that Christians hold, while at the same time maintaining my commitment to my faith. I majored in English and Secondary Education, and as one of my science requirements I took a class called “Issues in Biology.” My professor’s Christian faith shone through her teaching, and her words have stayed with me to this day: “Jesus is not going to be standing at the gateway of heaven,” she said, “holding a clipboard in his hand and asking, ‘Did you believe in six-day creation? Did you believe in evolution?’ He’s going to be asking the one question that matters: ‘Did you believe in ME?’” Yes! I thought. I agree. My professor then proceeded to surprise me: she was the first person to clearly articulate for me how someone could both believe the Bible and accept evolution. I realized that this— alongside many others—was a secondary issue, and that whatever my position on origins might be, I could have fellowship with Christians who held different positions.

But this particular biology professor had more to say than, “we can all just get along.” I remember her bemoaning a phenomenon that she had observed as a teacher: Christian students, raised in a strict Young Earth Creationist background which only portrayed the weaknesses in evolution, would often lose their faith when confronted with evolutionary theory in its full strength. Having only ever heard one perspective, they hadn’t learned to think critically through different viewpoints. Furthermore, they identified their faith so strongly with Young Earth Creationism, that when science seemed to contradict their understanding of origins, they felt they had to jettison not only their Creationism, but the whole of their Christian faith.

During my training as a high school teacher, I learned another way to understand what was happening in the minds (and lives) of these students using Piaget’s theory of cognitive equilibrium. In simplified form, the theory says that students have a mental construct of how they see the world (called a schema by Piaget); with this schema, they are happy and peaceful—in a state of equilibrium. When they encounter new information, however, they get pushed into an uncomfortable state of disequilibrium. In order to return to equilibrium, they must either assimilate the new information into their existing worldview, or they must accommodate their worldview to fit the new information. Resilient learners and a robust faith can handle such challenges.

But the faith of the students my professor described was different— strong, but brittle; it did not have the resilience that comes through testing. Indeed, in 1644, John Milton described such untested conviction like this: “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for...” (from Areopagitica: A speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England). To use Piaget’s terms again, evolution threw these students into a disequilibrium from which they could not recover; they could not assimilate evolution into their Creationist worldview, and they could not or would not accommodate their worldview to fit the scientific evidence—so they floundered.

Training for resilience

In my own roles as a teacher and youth leader, I strive to introduce young people to new ideas that will stretch them—even cause them to lose their equilibrium at first. Too much new information conflicting with students’ pre-existing ideas will mean that they cannot assimilate the new information or accommodate to it. Too little new information will mean that they are not being challenged. Both extremes mean that the student is not learning. What I aim to do is to push them into disequilibrium, but also then provide them with the tools to assimilate/accommodate for themselves, and reach equilibrium again—with a deeper, enriched, and more nuanced worldview.

While this has been my strategy to personally help train up resilient young Christians in classrooms and youth groups, last year, Dr. Ruth Bancewicz (the Test of FAITH Project Leader, contributor to this blog, and fellow member of City Church Cambridge) brought me on board to work on another exciting project. Since then, I have been able to use my passion to provoke young people to think more deeply in my role as author of the Test of FAITH homeschool material.

As it was when I was a homeschooled student myself, the vast majority of homeschool science resources available today focus on the issue of origins, and from a Young Earth Creationist perspective. We have developed the Test of FAITH homeschool course to allow young people to learn about the different perspectives that Christians hold on a wide range of issues. In fact, let me emphasize that less than one-third of this material is about origins! For my part, I have loved the opportunity to delve into other issues of science and faith while developing this course; we think students will also appreciate seeing how a biblical worldview engages with such diverse topics as cosmology, the environment, neurology and the soul, free will and determinism, and bioethics.

Both the broad range of issues addressed in the Test of FAITH curriculum and the approach this curriculum takes to those topics will benefit students in several specific ways:

• Learning about different viewpoints will encourage homeschoolers to think critically through ideas and their consequences.
• Coming in contact with a variety of views will cause students to question why they believe what they believe, and will give them th tools to emerge from that questioning with an even deeper faith in God.
• Showing that Christians can disagree on various secondary issues, yet still remain committed, Bible-based believers, will help diffuse the acrimony that often surrounds science-faith issues.

I still have many questions, and I feel that my journey in understanding how science relates to my faith has just begun. However, Test of FAITH has been a significant marker on my own path, and I hope it will be a milestone for many homeschoolers around the globe, as well.

Science and Christianity: An Introductory Course for Homeschoolers is available for free download at www.testoffaith.com/homeschool. The 3-8 week course is designed for use with the award-winning documentary Test of FAITH: Does science threaten belief in God?

Ten free Test of FAITH DVD’s are available to homeschooling Biologos supporters! Contact abigail@testoffaith.com to reserve your copy.

What are the best ways to spark productive conversations about science and faith? Certainly there are books, articles, blogs (like this one), and podcasts. Or we can host major events with a prominent speaker or panel. These are all good things, to be sure. But there are particular advantages to using film. Unlike books, articles, blogs, or podcasts, videos engage with both sight and sound. A single DVD is much less expensive than a dozen copies of a book for a group to read through together. A film is portable, flexible, quick, and easy to use. Participants don't need to prepare between sessions, nor do they require internet access. And you don't need to find a big-name speaker or organize a large-scale event.

Test of Faith

Unlike years ago, there are now high-quality and stimulating science-faith documentaries that are well-suited for engaging groups and stimulating conversations. The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, based in Cambridge, UK, has put together an award-winning documentary, Test of Faith: Does Science Threaten Belief in God? This 2009 film is divided into three distinct 30-minute sessions, which can be further divided if desired. A wide range of topics are considered, including the age and origin of the universe, the possibility of other universes, evolution, care for the environment, the brain, free will, and bioethics. The trailer can be seen above. This film is a good choice if you are not looking to focus primarily on issues around biological evolution. It is also particularly well-suited for groups that include both skeptics and Christians, as one could imagine it being shown on a public television station such as PBS or BBC. Faraday now has quite a range of supporting materials around the film, including bonus footage, a rich website, a leader’s guide, a study guide for participants, and a book with autobiographical contributions from scientist-believers, Test of Faith: Spiritual Journeys with Scientists. Contributors to the film and book include Francis Collins, Alister McGrath, Ard Louis, Jennifer Wiseman, Bill Newsome, John Polkinghorne, Alasdair Coles, Rosalind Picard, and John Bryant.

From the Dust

Just this year, BioLogos partnered with Highway Media to produce a new documentary, From the Dust: Conversations in Creation. This film is just over an hour long, and is divided into four sections of similar length: “Faith and Science,” “Divinely Inspired,” “The Conversation,” and “Truly Human.” Some early clips from the film (prior to the final round of editing) and additional footage can be found in the multimedia resources section of the BioLogos website, and the trailer is above. From the Dust has a firm focus on Genesis, creation, and evolution, probably the area of the most significant tension in our society today related to science and faith. Unlike Test of Faith, there is no narrative voice in From the Dust, and contrasting views are held in tension. It also focuses on theology more than science, so From the Dust may be a better choice than Test of Faith for some groups of Christians. While the Test of Faith film has a very modern and logical structure to it, From the Dust has more of a personal and emotional feel, and you feel that the people in the film are talking with you more than just talking to you. You see the cost that divisive positions on creation and evolution can have on Christians, even in the college classroom. While the film has a strong leaning towards evolutionary creationism and features N. T. Wright, John Walton, John Polkinghorne, Alister McGrath, Peter Enns, Jeff Schloss and Rick Colling, there are also significant contrasting voices from Answers in Genesis and Canopy Ministries. In my opinion, From the Dust is a good choice for many churches, small group Bible studies, or Christian student groups (e.g., InterVarsity, Navigators) to use. There are fewer supporting materials around From the Dust, due both to its new release and also its more inductive approach than that of the Faraday project. In addition to bonus footage, there is a website, a list of sample discussion questions, and a group study guide that I developed.

Next Steps

As you decide which film to use for starting conversations and how to use it, there are several things to consider. Will you show the whole film at once, or will you spread it out over several sessions? Will you provide additional structure or just have an open discussion after each viewing? How many days do you have available? How much time at each session? What are the worldviews of your audience? What is their level of biblical, theological, and scientific knowledge? How big is the group, and what is their age? What is their willingness to do homework and their level of interest in the topic? Is this a new group specifically convened to explore science and faith issues together, or is this a preexisting group that has been doing other things together and has varying levels of commitment to this new topic? What sort of expertise does the leader of the group have, or are there multiple leaders? All of these can affect the group dynamic and may influence the choices you make.

The groups I have worked with have been Christian students from secular colleges, Christian faculty and staff from secular colleges, a small group Bible study, and a general audience. I have found that Test of Faith worked well over three weeks with my Bible study group and with the faculty and staff group, though in these exclusively Christian groups I needed to add a bit of scripture, song or prayer in those settings (as is also recommended in the Faraday materials). The film was particularly good for a 30-minute screening at the general audience event, which also featured a panel for Q&A afterwards. It could likely be used in a college classroom, too, even at a secular institution. I had been considering strategies for using Test of Faith at my church as well, until I found From the Dust.

As I began thinking about ways to use From the Dust while it was still in the final editing stages, I screened it in two parts to three of the four audiences mentioned above (not the general audience). I asked several dozen undergraduates from local InterVarsity groups to give me their responses to the film and to tell me what questions it makes them want to explore more. I did the same with the Christian faculty and staff, and with my home Bible study group. Then I assembled a six-week curriculum (plus an opening session on setting expectations and sharing my vision), primarily aimed at Christian undergraduates. My students this summer loved it so much that we followed it with three-weeks on Test of Faith! Now I keep getting asked when I’ll do it next. But I am hoping that others, even my own students, will want to lead discussion groups like this. You don’t have to be an expert to start a conversation, and sometimes being a leader is the best way to learn.

While many Christian colleges actively seek to help their students engage issues of faith and science constructively, few secular colleges are active in promoting the conversation. So what is a student to do? They may find it difficult to find a visible role model or mentor that they admire or respect both spiritually and intellectually. Christian faculty at secular colleges and universities often do not feel safe publicly revealing their faith (due to a real or imagined hostile campus climate) or feel ill-equipped to tackle intimidating and controversial topics.

I was fortunate as an undergraduate to find professors in my field that shared my faith. Though we never talked about faith and science topics explicitly, their very presence encouraged me to consider being a Christian professor in chemistry. I grew spiritually in college, largely due to the community I found in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. My beliefs were challenged on occasion, but I did not really engage issues like evolution. Like Dennis Venema, I was initially attracted to Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box and the Intelligent Design movement. But as I learned more biology as a graduate student and postdoc, I no longer found this position tenable. I was delighted to find Darrel Falk’s Coming to Peace with Science and Ken Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God. They offered perspectives I had not previously heard, and rejected neither the scientific evidence nor the key tenets of the Christian faith. I was fortunate also to hear Francis Collins give several talks on science and faith. Now I knew someone universally acknowledged as an outstanding scientist that was open about his faith, and I agreed wholeheartedly with his approach.

Now, as a professor, how can I encourage my students to authentic engagement and dialogue on issues like this? Following the example of the Veritas Forum, I can call on a common search for truth. But first it requires understanding what is so special about college students.

College students are often living away from home, are exposed to lots of new ideas in a rigorous environment (including, for many, evolutionary biology and philosophy--taught by professors who are assumed to be greater intellectual authorities than any high school teachers), and are seeking direction for their future careers. In short, it is a time of intense exploration and change for many young people. On residential college campuses, students can experience an unparalleled sense of community, engaging in deep conversations in the dining halls and dormitories. More than any other place, colleges and universities are concentrated locations of our world’s future leaders. Charles Malik, Lebanese philosopher, diplomat, and co-author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has said, "The university is a clear-cut fulcrum with which to move the world. Change the university and you change the world." Sadly, the message most students in American universities hear today is one of incompatibility between science and faith.

This is not only a concern for Christian students, but for their non-believing peers as well. If agnostic students think it is inconsistent to embrace both science and Christianity, they are very unlikely to be spiritually curious. If science and faith are viewed as mutually exclusive perspectives, it will be hard for students (and even harder for faculty!) to be credible witnesses for the Christian faith on campuses, not to mention being faith-filled scientists. It is because of my love for God, for truth, and for students that I seek to promote harmony between faith and science, Jesus and genes. And sometimes my students’ lives are changed dramatically.

So what practical steps can we take to foster the kind of conversations that need to be had in the university, and what resources are available to help that project along? While there are many available books on the subject, as well as many on-line resources, I am particularly excited about the new From the Dust documentary and the materials BioLogos is providing to accompany them, especially when students can explore then in a supportive group setting. To facilitate exactly that kind of open dialogue, I was invited to develop a study guide to accompany the film, and to try it out in my own college community.

I liked using From the Dust as the centerpiece of the group study plan, as it is visually, theologically and emotionally stimulating. It also takes the Bible seriously and is aimed at starting conversations, rather than ending them with dogmatic answers to challenging questions. I also knew that even though From the Dust is only an hour long, it is packed with potential discussion topics and is probably best viewed over the course of a few sessions instead of all at once. Since I was focused mainly on a Christian audience, I decided to have the students read from Genesis before we started the film, read it again halfway through the film, and read it a third time after we’d finished the film. To deepen the discussion further, and to give students something to think about each week between our sessions, I added six scholarly yet accessible articles that are freely available online from BioLogos, the Faraday Institute, or the American Scientific Affiliation.

My students, several of whom I did not know prior to our science & faith study, were from both Protestant and Catholic backgrounds. Many had not deeply engaged the intersection of science and faith previously, but were dissatisfied with what they had been taught at church or at Christian primary or secondary schools. While individual responses at each session varied, the group was overwhelmingly positive about the content and the process of our study together. Many of the questions we discussed were difficult and emotional, and having the space to wrestle with the ideas together in a supportive group was incredibly helpful.

Tomorrow, I’ll give some more concrete details on how the Study Guide can be used in college and other settings, and also highlight another new film-based resource: The Faraday Institute’s Test of Faith project.

My walk in the scientific/evangelical world – Who am I?

First, a little history. While I was working towards my doctorate in Bioengineering at the University of Washington, my husband and I attended a Presbyterian church in Seattle. Young and newly married, we chose to help in Sunday School, and found our niche teaching second graders there for almost 10 years. During that time I was very involved in the scientific world and surrounded by a university community that had a real appreciation for science. Wrapped up as I was in the lab, focusing on my dissertation, and living in a climate of serious inquiry and study, I was unaware of any significant disconnections between science and faith. Science was actively integrated with faith from the pulpit of our church, and in turn, we always loved to bring little bits of science into our lessons—even to the point of using sediment deposits in the Black Sea as evidence of a regionally-based ‘flood’ event thousands of years ago during our lessons about Noah’s ark. No one complained.

As I loved research, I continued to work in a lab at UW once I finished my PhD. But I also had two babies while completing my dissertation, and eventually found it challenging to balance work and family. When my husband was relocated to San Diego, I took that difficult uprooting as an opportunity to step back from labwork and spend more time with preschoolers. Leaving life at a fast-paced urban research university for the relaxed and resort-like coastal suburbs of San Diego County was another kind of culture shock, compounded by the fact that we found looking for a new church to be particularly hard. After some consultation with friends of friends, we stepped out of our Mainstream Protestant comfort zone and visited a Calvary Chapel.

There was certainly an adjustment period (eventually we stopped doing a double-take every time we saw the board shorts and flip-flops on Sunday morning – even on the stage!), but over time we were able to plug into a dynamic evangelical community. We found the vibrant, Christ-centered church to be a great place to make deep and lasting connections with the people, both through small groups and by serving in Children’s Ministry. Making a personally quite revolutionary decision to fully step away from the busy life of a researcher, I found a new calling when I took on a part time job leading the church’s 2nd and 3rd Grade program.

A surprising disconnect in the faith community

I now find myself spending my weekends with over a hundred kids and volunteers, and it has been a great adventure. However, it has also been through this ministry that I discovered first hand the uncomfortable disconnect between science and the evangelical church. At first it was just a few throw-away comments from fellow believers in church: dismissal of museum exhibits, eye-rolling at the ancient geology of the Grand Canyon, etc. Of course, I had heard rumors of such thinking, but I was a little surprised to find it to be so common in the Evangelical community. Many people I knew were rejecting large swathes of science outright. Sometimes I give out prizes to the kids in my class—trinkets and other insignificant plastic things that kids love—and some of the items I had in our “prize box” were “dino eggs with dino facts.” To my amazement, these items brought on complaints from parents because of their reference to the age of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago.

Meanwhile, my husband—an environmental engineer with a background in Geology—was serving at the church with older kids. In his class he often heard that favorite question from Christian kids, “How do the dinosaurs fit into the creation story?” But the only answer he’d ever heard in response was the explanation that dinosaurs were obviously on the ark, and somehow became extinct after the flood. He is the most easy-going person ever, but he was taken aback by this wholesale dismissal of geologic history and by the lack of a more nuanced discussion of Scripture. At that point we began to ask around, and learned that, yes, this is a common way of thinking in evangelical circles.

These attitudes about science and the Bible seemed especially prevalent among the many home schooling families in our community. More than half of my church coworkers homeschool or send their kids to Christian schools. Several of these wonderful folks were homeschooled themselves, and very few attended secular universities. Many of the children and families that I minister to each week are also homeschooling families, and for the first time I became troubled by what they were learning about science and the natural world. I attended public school and secular universities both for undergraduate and graduate studies, and (after much thought and discussion) we chose to send our own kids to public schools, not least because we want them to have great training in science and math. While we are fortunate enough to live in a community with challenging public schools well equipped to prepare kids in those areas, I want the same for homeschooled kids, as well. All Christian young people should be able to both excel in science and grow in their understanding of the God of Scripture, whether they’re taught in institutional settings or at home. I only wish I could better trust available homeschooling science curriculum materials to achieve that end.

Is there cause for concern? Does it really matter?

One can correctly argue that Jesus’ incarnation and resurrection are the central beliefs and values of the Christian faith. In the end, does it matter what we teach our kids about origins or the age of the Universe? What harm is there in these black and white beliefs held by good people doing good things?

I believe that it does matter, for several reasons:

1. We have generation of Christian young people who are not trained in scientific principles that will allow them to meaningfully contribute to fields such as cosmology, geology, biology, etc. Our universities especially need an evangelical presence!
2. Thoughtful, scientifically-minded people—both young and old—will be pushed AWAY from the evangelical community. I know that I could not attend a church that dismisses scientific evidence in order to fit nature’s narrative into preconceived ideas, or one where scientists are actively mocked.
3. The faith of homeschooled and other Christian kids can be challenged when they have their first college classes on geology, evolutionary biology, etc. Many will reach a point where they think they have to choose between their faith and what the scientific world tells them about the created order.
4. Simply, evangelicals are in danger of looking a bit ridiculous to reasonable and educated people when they appear so fearful of science, making it easier for non-Christians to dismiss the gospel message.

Exploratory Efforts –Communicating God’s Revelation in Nature

Despite these experiences and concerns, my overall impression of the evangelical community’s perspective on science is that in most areas, everything is fine. But it seems that sensitivity around a few points—particularly origins, the age of the earth and climate change—limits open discussion even of more general scientific issues, and as wonderful as they are, our pastoral staff rarely invokes natural wonders to illustrate doctrine, whether speaking to adults or kids.

As a Christian, a scientist and an educator, I particularly want the kids I work with to know that it is good to wonder about the world around us and say “God Did It – But How?” More than that, I want them to know that they do not have to be afraid of the answers to those questions. So I ask myself, “Is there anything I can do?” As it turns out, I’ve concluded that there are ways that I (like any of us) can help, even if the efforts are incrementally small at first. Our church hosts a tremendous summer camp that teaches kids Bible stories and worship, but also gives children a chance to choose an “elective” and learn more about subjects like art, music, cooking, a sport, or science. Each summer more than 1,000 kids attend this outreach at our church campus, and I was privileged this past summer to be able to “coach” science and write up a fun science curriculum that dovetailed with the various Bible stories the kids were hearing.

The practice of science became a wonderful avenue for sharing God’s love and the Salvation Story whether I pulled ideas for experiments directly from the Bible (such as creating, testing and optimizing sling shots like David) or used the stories more allegorically; extracting DNA from strawberries (always a hit with kids) illustrated our uniqueness in God’s eyes, while creating a solar music box demonstrated the beauty of living in God’s light vs. hiding in the darkness. I found that this was an excellent place in which to bring young Christians (and non-Christians) into an understanding and appreciation of basic scientific principles in conjunction with communicating spiritual truth. My hope is that those lessons will open their eyes to further inquiry as they grow up and move on through junior high, high school, and—for some—beyond.

In the end, I was inspired to write out a preliminary curriculum, combining scriptural lessons with science experiments. This effort led me to co-author Wonders In Our World: Insights From God's Two Books, a book that further explains the complementarities of God’s Two Books – the book of nature and Scripture. While materials like these can be used in church settings such as the summer camp at our Calvary Chapel, my hope is that they will become a resource for Christian families all year long—especially for those homeschoolers I love so much. A full curriculum may still be a ways off (perhaps I’ll have more to share about that in a future post), but in the meantime, I’m honored to be able to draw on both Scripture and science to share my joy in Christ and his creation.

Keeping History Safe

In the cold morning air with the sun not yet over the ridge, the place to begin preparation for summiting Mount Darwin is to ponder the reasonableness of miracles. Many Totalizers would like to ban miracles from university consideration and inquiry. Trouble is: human history is awash with credible people reporting miracles.

Modern academic tradition tends to try and maintain order. For historians it behooves us professionally to avoid accounts of alleged spiritual events. We find comfort in a little logical gymnastics that keeps history safe for us to wander in, a deceptively formulaic avoidance method that helps us avoid what people are telling us about extraordinary events in the past.

David Hume popularly articulated this logical gymnastics in an essay titled “Of Miracles” that was eventually printed in Enquires Concerning Human Understanding (1748). “I flatter myself,” Hume triumphantly proclaimed, “that I have discovered an argument . . . which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures.”

His everlasting check on superstition begins with a circular argument that because miracles can’t happen, a reasonable person should not even listen to reports of them. Hume taught that though the normal job of a historian was to listen to the testimony that comes down to us from the past, there is a point at which you can close your ears. Hume knew that historical testimony can get wild, so he came up with a way to domesticate the wildness, a way to make history a zoo rather than allow it to be a jungle. His “Of Miracles” has been tremendously influential in the discipline of human history over the last two hundred and fifty years, not because his ideas are strong, but because his ideas are useful. Get rid of “superstitious delusions,” and the discipline of history can be turned from a safari into a form of home economics. Hume’s domestication of history is seductively simple. Instead of following the Aristotelian tradition of linking the credibility of hard-to-believe testimony to the credibility of the testifier, Hume recommended disregarding the testifier and focusing only on the testimony. This effectively removed the persuasive power from hard-to-believe testimony. Miracles need the credibility of an eyewitness in order to have persuasive power. Hume cut the power source from the unwanted testimony.

Essentially, Hume adopted the modeling technique that Darwin later used and is best seen in Global Positioning System (GPS) units. Hume recommended gathering testimony from the past and every region to create a general model of what humans generally experience. Using this mass of information, one should generalize standards of common experience. Now if anyone reports a miracle, the alleged event can’t be true because it does not conform to the generalized standards of common experience. (Of course, Hume had already refused to allow that any reports of miracles could be used even to generalize common experience.) It’s tricky. Its logic is circular. But it works to weed out awkward, quirky information. It is as if a domineering GPS unit created a sphere to serve as an abstraction for the earth, then insisted that the earth can’t have wobbling poles and flattening in the upper latitudes because the sphere in the GPS shows it can’t be true. Given a useful and trustworthy GPS, don’t listen to a scientist who might tell you something different than what the GPS tells you.

The circularity of this argument has been noted ever since Hume first proposed it, but Hume was a good writer and said what a lot of people wanted to hear. Miracles are impossible so miracle reports can’t be true. Don’t even listen to reports of them.

Balancing Likelihoods

Also embedded in Hume’s essay is the awkward “rule of logic,” most often called “Balancing Likelihoods.” By combining math and logic in an odd way, Hume’s “Of Miracles “ offered another way for historians to avoid thinking about miracles. Balancing Likelihoods has many names but is probably best stated by David Hackett Fischer, in his Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought, as “the rule of probability:”

“[A]ll inferences from empirical evidence are probabilistic. It is not, therefore, sufficient to demonstrate merely that A was possibly the case. A historian must determine, as best he can, the probability of A in relation to the probability of alternatives. In the same fashion he cannot disprove A by demonstrating that not-A was possible, but only by demonstrating that not-A was more probable than A. This is the rule of probability.”

This seems to be practical but is impossible. Balancing Likelihoods, in the way described by Fischer, cannot be used by historians in any normal practice. It is a talisman to keep history mentally safe from the wildness that is reported to exist. Logicians, especially mathematicians, have long criticized intellectual constructions like this. The “probability” that Fischer writes about is seemingly mathematical, but the math is simply implied to give a sense of strength to human feelings.

Before Hume wrote “Of Miracles” probabilistic logic had been advancing rapidly and there was a great hope that mathematical analogies would strengthen human thinking—even Christian apologetics. “Pascal’s Wager,” the most famous mathematical apologetic from the seventeenth century, equated eternal salvation with mathematical infinity and then applied it to a gambling formula. Antoine Arnauld, in The Port-Royal Logic (1662), and John Locke, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) and Discourse on Miracles (1706), carried probabilistic math and logic into the handling of reported miracles. A half-century later, however, Hume reacted against Arnauld and Locke’s teachings that mathematical analogies could help in the discussion of the credibility of miracles. Hume insisted that to handle a reported miracle, a historian had to create two separate ratios, pro and con, for believability. The ratios were then to be weighed against each other. This is Fischer’s “rule of probability” quoted above. In the language of Hume’s era, this was proclaimed as the “calculus of good sense.”

Lorraine Daston, in Classical Probability in the Enlightenment (1988), offers an excellent study of Hume and the many eighteenth-century mathematicians who wanted to help bring rigorous quantitative thinking to what today would be called the humanities. Daston writes that by the 1840s, mathematicians realized that “the ‘calculus of good sense’ had become antithetical to good sense,” and that today most of what these early probabilists were trying to do is considered “patently absurd.”

In 1901, one of America’s preeminent philosopher-mathematician-logicians, Charles Sanders Peirce, wrote three essays attacking the way historians had adopted Hume’s bad logic: “A Preliminary Chapter, Toward an Examination of Hume’s Argument Against Miracles, in its Logic and in its History,” “Hume’s Arguments Against Miracles, and the Idea of Natural Law,” and “On the Logic of Drawing History from Ancient Documents especially from Testimonies.” Peirce showed that historians are in error when they talk of judging testimony by balancing probabilities because “in a scientific sense, there are no ‘probabilities’ to be judged.”

Probability, Peirce wrote, “is the ratio of the frequency of occurrence of a specific event to a generic event.” A testimony “is neither a specific event, nor a generic event, but an individual event.” Peirce further pointed out that what people were justifying by claiming Balancing Likelihoods was really simply relating “what they prefer to do” to what they don’t prefer. “Likelihood is merely a reflection of our preconceived ideas.”

Historians like me who teach in universities about the reasonable credibility of Jesus’ resurrection need to be students of Peirce not Hume on the subject of assessing the credibility of reports that come down to us from ancient history. Dealing wisely with reports of events verging on the incredible is just part of the normal job of being grounded in the social study of our complex human past.

“Come to history as a doubter,” Richard Marius advises in a historical methods manual. “Skepticism is one of the historian’s finest qualities. Historians don’t trust their sources. . . . Nothing is quite so destructive to a historian’s reputation as to present conclusions that prove gullibility.”

But Marius is wrong. In practice, historians have to trust more than doubt. In practice, historians, especially ancient historians, can’t rely on doubting. Historians have to be close listeners, discerning listeners, wise listeners, who sometimes have to make harmonies and stretch for belief.

There are several different kinds of arguments that people bring along these lines; I want to talk about just one. So first… the Heidelberg catechism, one of the forms of unity of the church I go to (the Christian Reformed Church), says

Providence is the almighty and ever-present power of God, by which he upholds as with his hand heaven and Earth and all creatures and so rules them, that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty. All things, in fact, come to us not by chance, but from his fatherly hand.

And part of the way it comes to us—not by chance, but from his fatherly hand—part of the way God has designed our world, is that there is a great deal of regularity and dependability in our world. Of course, if it were not for this regularity and dependability, we couldn’t do the things that we actually do. I mean, for example, if I just wanted to walk off the stage—if, for example, all the sudden those stairs over there suddenly turned into a ladder going up—well, that would make it really difficult.

If you are trying to build a house, for example, you have this hammer, but all the sudden the hammer turns in to a goose or a pigeon. Again, that would make things really difficult…or if the nail turned into a worm…or if you get in the car and turn the key and the car turns into a camel, things would be really hard, much harder than they are. This regularity and dependability in our world is an essential condition of our being able to live in the world in which we actually do.

If the world were irregular enough, we would not even be able to live in it, but there are also, according to classical Christianity here (the Heidelberg catechism, for example) there are also special divine actions; sometimes God does things specially. There are miracles in Scripture: the parting of the Red Sea, for example, Jesus walking on water, Jesus changing water into wine. There are miraculous healings: Jesus rising from the dead, Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, and so on. And according to classical Christians, many of them, perhaps most of them, are special divine actions. God, for example, responds to prayers. He works in the hearts and minds of his children to effect sanctification. There is, what Calvin called, the internal testimony or witness of the Holy Spirit, and there is what Thomas Aquinas called the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit. So, these things are all special actions on the part of God. God constantly causes events in the world. Ok, so far fair enough—what is the problem?

Many theologians seem to think there is a science-religion problem here. I don’t think any of the theologians of Biola think this, (I don’t know, but I doubt it) but many theologians do. For example, Rudolf Bultmann says, “The historical method,” which of course he thinks that is the method we should use, “includes the presupposition that history is a unity in the sense of a closed continuum of effects in which individual events are connected by the succession of cause and effect. This continuum, furthermore, cannot be rent by the interference of supernatural, transcendent powers.”

That’s what he says. Alright, there is this continuum that cannot be rent by the interference of supernatural (that would be God) or transcendent powers. So, it is a little bit like the laws of the Medes and Persians. You probably remember Daniel. Daniel was a favorite of King Darius, and well, the other courtiers became jealous of Daniel (they didn’t like it that the king liked him so well). So, they came to the king and said, “Oh king, live forever, we think it would be a great idea if you passed an edict to the effect that you alone can be worshipped. Everybody has to worship you and nothing else.” Well the king thought that over for a minute, and that sounded pretty good to him so he said, “I guess that it is a pretty good idea.” So he made this edict; he made this declaration: “Only King Darius is to be worshipped—no one else, nothing else.”

These courtiers knew that Daniel worshipped God, and they thought probably Daniel would keep right on worshipping God despite this edict. So they were watching Daniel, and he was, in fact, worshipping God. So they came to the king. Now the penalty for worshipping something else was to be thrown into the lion’s den and they said, “Well, king live forever, looks like Daniel has been violating this edict. You have got to throw him in the lion’s den.”

Well, the king didn’t want to do this because he really liked Daniel. He thought this was a miserable way to proceed, and he didn’t want to do it, but then they said to him, “O king live forever, and remember a law of the Medes and Persians cannot be abrogated, even by the king himself.” So once it’s put in place, not even the king himself can change it or abrogate it or go against it.

That is sort of the suggestion that you get here from Bultmann. Bultmann thinks, “Maybe God created the world and set it up in a certain way, but once he did that, not even he can interfere in it”—he uses that word interference—“not even he can do anything in it. He just has to keep hands off.” It is like the law of the Medes and the Persians.

Another theologian who agrees is John Macquarrie, who says,

The way of understanding miracle (and that would be one kind of special divine action) that appeals to breaks in the natural order and to supernatural intervention belongs to the mythological outlook, and cannot commend itself in a post-mythological climate of thought. The traditional conception of miracle is irreconcilable with our modern understanding of both science and history. Science proceeds on the assumption that whatever events occur in the world, can be accounted for in terms of other events that also belong within the world, and if on some occasion, we are unable to give a complete account of some happening, the scientific conviction is that further research will bring to light further factors in the situation that will turn out to be just as imminent and this worldly as the factors already known.

Ok again, no room there for special action. And the third thinker here, Langdon Gilkey (still another theologian), says something similar, but I will pass. I will not read that one in the interest of saving a little bit of time, but these three theologians, plus many others want to assert that there is something wrong with the idea of God acting in the world, acting in the world in a way that goes beyond creation and sustaining, or creation and holding things in existence. So they think, “Ok, God created the world; God sustains it in existence”…that is ok with them, but anything beyond that, God performing any miracles, raising Jesus from the dead, or for that matter working in somebody’s heart and mind in a special way, that, they say, is a real problem. The question is, what is the problem?

Well, the next little bit here…according to the Christian and theistic idea, God is a person; he has knowledge, loves, and hates. He has aims and ends. He acts on the basis of his knowledge to achieve his ends. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and wholly good. Thirdly (noted above by the Heidelberg catechism), God has created the world. Fourth is God conserves and sustains and maintains in being this world he created, but fifth, at least sometimes, God acts in a way going beyond creation and conservation in miracles, but also in his providential guiding of history, his working in the hearts of people, his internal instigation of the Holy Spirit, and so on, and it is with that fifth category that these people have a problem. It is God’s special action in the world—action beyond conservation and creation—and miracles would be an example.

So we might think of these theologians as endorsing what we could call hands off theology. God has got to keep his hands off. God could create the world. God conserves the world, sustains it in being, but he can’t do anything else—that is as far as he could go. It is hands off theology, and Bultmann, even in this context, even talks about interfering. I mean if God did something in the world that would be interfering, which, when you think about it, is a sort of strange thing to say—I mean if God created the world, he is the omnipotent, omniscient, holy, good creator of the world—when you accuse someone of interfering, you are saying they are doing something they should not be doing, right?

So Bultmann thinks if God did something in the world that would be interfering, and he should be ashamed of himself. Ok, now why is this a problem? Their suggestion is that somehow it is contrary to science. It is contrary to science the suggestion that God acts specially in the world. I didn’t read that bit, but Gilkey says, "The causal nexus in space and time which the enlightenment science and philosophy introduced into the western mind is also assumed by modern theologians and scholars. Since they participate in the modern world of science, both intellectually and existentially, they can scarcely do anything else.”

From a presentation sponsored by Biola University’s Center for Christian Thought, and delivered February 12, 2012 at EV Free Church, Fullerton, CA. Used by permission.

Suppose a man falls among thieves, or wild beasts; is shipwrecked at sea by a sudden gale; is killed by a falling house or tree. Suppose another man wandering through the desert finds help in his straits; having been tossed by the waves, reaches harbor; miraculously escapes death by a finger’s breadth. Carnal reason ascribes all such happenings, whether prosperous or adverse, to fortune. But anyone who has been taught by Christ’s lips that all the hairs if his head are numbered [Matt. 10:30] will look further afield for a cause, and will consider that all events are governed by God’s secret plan.

In this passage, Calvin presents belief in “fortune” as evidence of carnal reasoning, and statements like this one have contributed to a widely-held notion that modern scientific understandings of the role that randomness plays in nature is inconsistent with belief in divine providence. In other words, if “randomness” equals blind and capricious “fortune,” then how can God be said to be working all things to his ends?

But Calvin could not have known of the very different understanding of randomness held by today’s scholars. Physical scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians have not yet agreed on a single unambiguous definition of the term “randomness,” but among these scientists, the term consistently refers to a family of related concepts focusing on unpredictability of the outcomes of single events and the absence of pattern in sequences of outcomes. I like this statement by John Polkinghorne, “Chance doesn't mean meaningless randomness, but historical contingency. This happens rather than that, and that's the way that novelty, new things, come about.” In Polkinghorne’s view, chance is an agent of creativity and can be perceived as being purposeful.

In fact, there are abundant examples of phenomena in nature in which randomness plays a role one could understand as being purposeful. For example, osmosis is a marvelous mechanism that enables all 10 trillion cells in our bodies to be nourished – it depends on the random motion of molecules. The human immune system is able to defend the body against attacks from millions of different microorganisms using a relatively small number of building blocks and random combinations of these to fashion defenses specific to each adversary. We never take a breath and find it to be all nitrogen or carbon dioxide – random motion of molecules keeps oxygen close to uniformly distributed throughout the atmosphere.

In 2007, a British statistician, David Bartholomew published God, Chance, and Purpose in which he argues that God “can have it both ways”—that he can use low level randomness to accomplish divine purposes while simultaneously maintaining order at a higher level. Of course, we cannot prove that God ordained these random processes to achieve divine purposes in the world. But to a person of faith, such an interpretation in both consistent with the observations we make in science and with the Scriptural notion of God’s providential care for the world.

Considerations like these led the John Templeton Foundation to provide a generous grant of $1.69 million to support a new research initiative on the theme of Randomness and Divine providence. Beginning this past summer, the program has the purpose of providing support for solid theoretical exploration of the kinds of ideas and possibilities expressed above—involving theology, philosophy, natural science, mathematics, and statistics. The grant will support individual scholars and teams of scholars who are willing to devote a significant amount of time between March of 2013 and June of 2015 to such work, and the project’s request for proposals suggests the following as questions researchers might pursue:

• How might God work providentially through indeterminate processes? Can recent advances in understanding the nature of randomness offered by algorithmic information theory, physics, biology, and other sciences provide insight into this question?
• Can we bring clarity to the concept of "randomness"? Philosophers and scientists have tried on occasion to give precise definitions of when a process is random, but more work needs to be done on the question. How do (or should) conceptions of randomness vary across academic disciplines?
• What are some possible implications of randomness for hiding or unfolding divine creativity and purpose in the world? Could God use randomness to (1) generate creativity, (2) hide divine actions, or (3) unfold information? Why might God do so?
• How might we identify and come to understand a significant collection of nondeterministic processes in which agents could intentionally employ randomness to bring about purposeful results?
• How might we mathematically and physically model random processes in ways that help us understand how divine providence could be exercised in a "chance-governed" world?
• How do "laws and orders" in nature interplay with "chance and randomness" in bringing about results that can be interpreted as aspects of divine providence?
• Might randomness be evidence of limitations in human knowledge but nothing more? Or might it be evidence of ontological indeterminism? Might this be tested?
• What implications does randomness have for aspects of God’s relationship with the physical world such as God’s relationship to time and God’s role in causation? How might randomness be reconciled with God’s foreknowledge?
• How might an understanding of providence based on an extended Molinism and/or open theology incorporate randomness? For example, could an extended Molinism provide a plausible account of the relationship between quantum mechanics and divine providence?
• What are some theodical implications of randomness, particularly for the issue of natural evil?
• How have the theological traditions of Augustine, Maimonides, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin addressed chance and fortune? In what ways might they incorporate ontological randomness?
• How do or could religions other than the Judeo/Christian tradition understand and incorporate randomness?
• How is the concept of randomness understood by advocates of secularism, naturalism, and new atheism? What are the strengths and weaknesses of these usages?
• How might an understanding of randomness in the world alter our conceptions of divinity, especially our understanding of divine providence?

Despite the range of issues mentioned above, research is by no means restricted only to these topics. In fact, the structure of the program is designed to foster collaboration and build community between scholars, with the end of expanding the range and integration of their work: two conferences will be held to bring scholars together with each other and then with members of the public—one at Calvin College in 2013 and the other at Fuller Theological Seminary in 2015. To get more information and to learn how to submit a proposal, see the project website; then join us in exploring the truth that all creation glorifies God—even randomness!

Framing the Problem

I have to ask God to give me patience to not hate the men who cause me and my dad to argue about origins. I think that if they could just realize that science is not out to destroy God then maybe they would give it a chance.

Rachel spoke these words as she reflected on her relationship with her father and the strain she felt about her own acceptance of evolution. Rachel had grown up as a pastor’s kid firmly entrenched in Young Earth Creationism. When she enrolled in a Zoology course at a Christian college as a Pre-Med major, it was the first time she had encountered the notion that a person could accept evolution and remain a vibrant Christian – her professor was a testament to that reality. Through her experiences at the university, Rachel eventually came to accept cosmological, geological, and biological evolution as valid in understanding the long history of the universe and life on Earth. However, her acceptance of evolution was an extended journey marked by conflict resolution and apprehension.

Rachel’s account of her struggle with evolution resonates with the stories told by many participants in a qualitative research case study designed to explore how Christian biology-related majors at a mid-Western Christian liberal arts university reconciled evolution and their personal religious beliefs. Their individual stories and the common themes that emerged from research data are the focus of this three-part series.

This first part of the series provides a backdrop for the reader to see this crucible of conflict from the participants’ perspectives – using their words to convey the struggle and anxiety of encountering evolution in juxtaposition to their faith. The second part of the article explores the participants’ negotiation of their perceived conflict between evolution and their personal faith. The third and final part of the series discusses the factors in the participants coming to an acceptance of evolution and addresses the question, “What, then, are the ramifications for college educators and those who seek to mentor young people in reconciling science and faith?”

The 15 participants in the case study were senior biology-related majors (biology, biology-chemistry, or biological science education) and recent graduates (within the last two years) who majored in a biology-related science, and had completed an upper-level biology course on evolution entitled Origins. While a diversity of approaches exists in addressing evolution issues at Christian universities, no aspect of the study site suggested that it was atypical of higher education institutions committed to the teaching of evolution in non-opposition to religious belief. Or to put it positively, the college is typical of other Christian institutions where evolution is taught as being compatible with faith.

Parental Influence

Data were collected for the study from December 2006 to August 2007, utilizing a dual interview design. The first interview investigated the participants’ worldview using Fowler’s (1981) structural-developmental theory of “stages of faith” which describe the cognitive rationale and affective response in shaping one’s world. The second interview was conducted approximately a week following the first interview and explored participants’ perceived conflicts between evolution and personal religious beliefs. Additional data came in the form of the Evolution Attitudes Survey (Ingram & Nelson, 2006); descriptive field notes of the Origins course in Spring 2007; a “scholarly paper” that participants wrote in the Origins class that integrated course content with their own worldview; and participant feedback on interview transcripts and researcher-written descriptive personal portraits that described their views of creationism and evolution. The data was coded, and through multiple readings and refinement of codes, patterns evident within the data suggested common themes in the experiences of the students.

This article series is not a formal presentation of the study (see Winslow, 2008 and Winslow, Staver, & Scharmann, 2011), but seeks to tell a story from the participants’ perspectives to help the reader better understand their experiences in reconciling science and faith.

Participants’ Views of Creationism and Evolution

Table 1 summarizes participants’ childhood beliefs, including the sources for those beliefs, and their views on creationism and evolution at the time of the study. As the data show, most of the participants were raised during childhood to believe in Young Earth Creationism.

Many participants reported that their strong creationist and anti-evolution beliefs were due to their parents’ influence during childhood. Eight participants voiced that one or both parents expressed a strong belief in creationism throughout the participants’ childhood and expected participants to hold similar beliefs. For example, Nicole stated, “My family was . . . very much of the Genesis is the golden rule. God created the earth in seven days. That’s how it happened, no questions asked. If you asked questions, . . . you were thinking too hard about it.”

Asked about where she acquired her negative view of evolution before enrolling at the study site university, Rachel recalled hearing her parents’ conversations, such as, “Darwin is a tool of the devil and . . . he’s led so many people astray from God and that’s just terrible and don’t get sucked into that because it’s the devil working through him.” Rachel added, “I’d be kinda listening in” and soon enough, she found herself saying to her high school friends, “Oh yeah, I can’t believe these evolutionist liberals.” She added, “Those two words always went together – liberal and evolutionist!”

Other participants remarked that they simply assimilated creationist beliefs from what they heard in church. Six participants perceived that their parents believed in creationism, but primarily because creationism was part of the participants’ upbringing in the church. In other words, parents’ expression of their belief in creationism was less pronounced than in the other eight cases. For example, Ashley noted,

"I’m pretty safe in saying from the time I was born until high school senior year, the first chapter of Genesis was literal. That’s just how I was raised. . . . Nothing was ever questioned." Ashley clarified, “Not that they [my parents] said everything in the Bible is word for word true, . . . but no one ever said the opposite, that it wasn’t literal. So I just assumed that it was.”

Other factors, such as church, friends, siblings, and spouses were construed by participants as relatively moderate influences in their lives. For example, when participants expressed apprehension in their encounters with evolution, not a single participant expressed anxiety about the response of their church or pastor. Instead, most were worried about the reaction of their parents.

For many participants, the anti-evolution sentiments they heard in childhood continued while learning evolution at the study site university. Several participants asserted that their parents expressed displeasure that their daughter or son was learning evolution at a Christian university. For example, Jennifer stated that whenever her parents spoke of “evolution stuff,” they would pejoratively append, “and that’s not right.” In high school, Jennifer thought of evolution as “kind of a theory. . . . It was just something . . . good for the scientists, but that’s not what happened.” She recalled in her junior AP Biology class that the teacher announced, “Well, I teach evolution as a theory, not as a scientific explanation.” Jennifer laughed as she recounted, “My mom was real happy that I was having her for my teacher.” However, when Jennifer took the Origins course at the study site university, she began to share her new ideas about evolution with her parents. She recalled they became increasingly “apprehensive about things.” Jennifer could tell by their body language and, as she described,

[the] kind of looks they give me whenever I’m like, “Well, what about this [evidence for evolution]?” Because I get real kind of built up about things like this . . . and I’m like, “But this is what I learned in college” [shouting as she says this] and I bring my papers home and I’m like, “Look at this” [pounding the table] and they’re like a little skeptical. . . . You kind of see it in their eyes and they furrow their brow and stuff like that.

Jennifer enjoyed a strong relationship with her parents and despite the pressure she encountered from her parents regarding evolution, she said, “I’ve come to respect their opinions about certain things a lot more. At the same time, I’ve come to realize that maybe they’re not always right in every single thing. . . . It’s okay for me to think differently than them.” As reflected in the last column of Table 1, Jennifer was among the thirteen participants who—at the time of the study—affirmed that God created through evolution in contrast to their childhood beliefs.

Two noticeable exceptions are Ashley and David. David espoused a traditional, Young Earth Creationist view. Ashley’s views were a hybrid model of Old Earth Creationism and Evolutionary Creationism perspectives. Having come from a strong creationist background, Ashley adapted her views while in college to assert that God specially intervened to create an initial line of ten thousand species through which evolution took over to result in the diversity of life on earth. Item 1 in the Evolution Attitudes Survey stated, “Over billions of years all plants and animals on Earth descended from a common ancestor.” David strongly disagreed and Ashley disagreed with this statement. Nine participants agreed and four participants were undecided.

Most participants also accepted human evolution as evidenced from their interview statements, scholarly papers, and survey data. Five items in the Evolution Attitudes Survey dealt directly with human evolution. Marking “strongly disagree” or “disagree” on these statements would indicate an acceptance of human evolution. Fourteen participants demonstrated an acceptance of human evolution from their survey results. David was the lone exception. Eight participants either “strongly disagreed” or “disagreed” on all five items while the remaining participants marked disagree with only one or two “undecideds” on the five survey items.

The results from the survey show a clear trend in 14 participants’ acceptance of human evolution despite a relatively mixed response to Item 1, which said, “Over billions of years all plants and animals on Earth descended from a common ancestor.” For instance, Ashley disagreed with evolution from a common ancestor, but she disagreed with every statement that rejected human evolution. Similarly, all four participants who were undecided on evolution from a common ancestor indicated by their survey responses that they accepted human evolution.

Participants saw ample evidence for human evolution in the Origins course both in textbook and lecture materials. Accepting human evolution may require less scientific inference in the minds of the participants than the linking of all living things to a single ancestor billions of years ago. Many participants expressed that human evolution was part of the larger story of evolution. When asked if humans evolved, Gail said, “For evolution to make sense in my head, we have to have had a common ancestor. If I understand evolution correctly, there has to be some ultimate beginning, which would be a link for all of us.”

The transition from Young Earth Creationism to Evolutionary Creationism for most of the participants was not an easy one. As we’ll see in the next part of this article, that journey was marked by apprehension and a process of conflict resolution.

References

Fowler, J. W. (1981). Stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning. San Francisco: HarperCollins.
Ingram, E. L., & Nelson, C. E. (2006). Relationship between achievement and students’ acceptance of evolution or creation in an upper-level evolution course. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 43(1), 7-24.
Winslow, M. W. (2008). Evolution and personal religious belief: Christian biology-related majors' search for reconciliation at a Christian university. Retrieved from ProQuest Digital Dissertations. (AAT 3310836). Available at the Kansas State Research Exchange Web site: http://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/handle/2097/710.
Winslow, M. W., Staver, J. R., & Scharmann, L. C. (2011). Evolution and personal religious belief: Christian university biology-related majors' search for reconciliation. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 48(9), 1026-1049.
]]> Tue, 28 Aug 12 05:37:57 -0700 Mark Winslow