How Evolutionary Science Reveals God's Character with Kathryn Applegate

On January 16, 2010

Before You Read ...

Dear reader,

A new poll shows that for young adults in particular, belief in God is plummeting. From research, we know a primary driver behind a loss of faith among young people is the church’s rejection of science. To put it bluntly: Young people aren’t leaving the faith because of science, they’re leaving because they’ve been told to choose between science and God. That’s why BioLogos exists—to show that science and faith can work hand-in-hand. And although the challenge is clearly daunting, our work is having an impact!

As a nonprofit, we rely on the generosity of grassroots donors like you to reach those who are being told, “It’s God or evolution!” or “It’s God or vaccines!” or “It’s God or science!” In this urgent moment, we need your help to continue to produce resources such as this.

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Video Transcription

I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with uncertainty and, as a scientist, you get pretty used to the idea of levels of uncertainty within scientific data, but for many people, it’s scary not to have a black and white answer. We want so desperately to fit God in a little box of this is who he is, this is how he works, and this is who I am and here’s how I fit into this picture. And I think what science is uncovering is way more rich and has all the subtlety of a beautiful painting that is hard to encapsulate in a sound bite.

God speaks through the Bible and through all sorts of other things, too, that comport with the Bible. So for science, I think, science is another way of studying what God does and, we’re progressively having revealed to us how he has created, how he continues to create. That it wasn’t just Godmade it at the beginning and stepped away. I think God is active and involved, and we see that in the continuous creation through the means of evolution.

So, that’s really exciting and a way to better understand who God is and the character of what he’s about. He’s infinitely creative, infinitely good, and we see that in great diversity of life on Earth. Looking at Genesis only for scientific details is a bit like trying to look at the notes on a page of a symphony and without hearing it, you miss all the richness and glory to do so. Not that the notes aren’t important, not that the science isn’t important, but that isn’t the primary purpose of why we have those texts.