When I read these debates, I often wonder why the divide? The two are not mutually exclusive.
Anyone who is reasonably informed and capable of rational thinking would have to agree. And most of us in that state of mind recognize that the line in the sand was drawn by folks who are convinced that the strict literal interpretation of the Bible (usually a particular English translation of Protestant canon) defines ultimate reality, regardless of all evidence to the contrary. Those same folks tend to be of the same mindset as the ones who prosecuted John Scopes for teaching evolution in 1925. That marks a particular way of drawing a line in the sand, one that, despite nearly a century of progress in discovering vast stores of natural evidence to support Darwin's core principles, continues to attack education through legal maneuvers, politics and propaganda. One of the sad consequences of this is that Christian fundamentalism tends to instill in people a desire to teach, and as a result a substantial number of American science teachers believe that God does suspend the laws of nature as it pleases Him. Around 12% of them deny not only biology and paleontology, but also geology, clinging to the Young Earth model proposed by Irish cleric James Ussher in the face of overwhelming physical evidence to the contrary.
I believe in God and that He created life *through* evolution.
Even orthodox congregations have been able to reconcile their religions with the evidence of science. On several occasions before the Reformation, clerics, scientists and philosophers affiliated with these churches have expressed a logic which does not evade the evidence, but which accepts it as part of a larger mystery, one that requires introspection and adjustment of one's personal interpretation of divine purpose and methods. Further, in periods of great respect for learning they have reasoned that scientific discovery is akin to divine revelation, and must be respected with the same truth as scripture: that anything to the contrary was a rejection of God's creation and therefore a form of denial displeasing to Him and contrary to their ends of holding God--and all of His creation--sacred. The Anabaptist movement, particularly as it spread throughout the US during westward expansion, distanced itself from orthodoxy and reinvented Christianity under the banner of strict literal interpretation of some particular translation of Protestant canon. It took root in the South and affiliated itself with slavery and Ku Klux Klan, then with eugenics, segregation, prohibition, anti-suffragism, the John Birch Society, the followers of Joe McCarthy and George Wallace, and from there rooted in the Republican Party first through inroads made by Billy Graham with Richard Nixon, then under the political activism of Jerry Falwell, establishing itself in various incarnations under Ronald Reagan, and thereafter, the Bushes, as the Religious Right, Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, launching media campaigns in print and broadcast -- from the book
God's Own Party to televangelism and AM talk radio to FOX News. Consequently their candidates continue to advocate overturning Roe v. Wade, they shut down stem cell research, brought strident claims against climate science, and have launched countless attacks against the teaching of evolution, in the courts, in the state legislatures, on the school boards and in the textbook selection committees. With this infrastructure in place, it was relatively easy for them to topple selected Democrats and liberals through fabricated sound bites and footage, as in the Swift Boat hoax, and similar attacks on others. The Shirley Sherrod hoax epitomizes the relative ease of character assassination through manipulation of sound bites.
This is the machinery behind the fundamentalist denial of evolution.
Many ppl who believe in God believe in evolution and that it is more than a "theory." Plenty of hard data to support the theory of evolution. To me, this brings a possible uniting at least on some fronts between people who believe in God and who don't. Between faith and science, even.
Unfortunately the orthodox churches have been weakened by scandal and the anti-papism of the well-oiled evangelists, otherwise those churches might stand taller in their opposition to the machine and its tactics. If that were to happen, we might see more of them advertising what you're saying here. At least several of them have made an effort to formally support your position.
I believe in evidence of evolution and I'm hard pressed to say that I have ever read an explanation that sounds um...convincing? When it comes to explaining the "missing link" ...the bridge between the theory of evolution and the book of Genesis. Doesn't mean I lose my faith in the book, but I wish there was something tangible to read that at least explains things.
Putting aside the first thought that comes to mind about the quest for a perfect link between apes and humans -- which I personally thought was knocked out of the park by the discovery of
Australopithecus afarensis ("Lucy") and then clear into the next ballpark and over its fence with
Ardipithecus ramidus ("Ardi") -- putting that aside, the astonishing discovery for any person who might read Genesis literally, is what Darwin called the "succession" of life forms seen in the fossil record. That is, the most primitive forms occur first, then there are innovation upon innovation upon these earliest forms, from which a tree of forms of similar types emerges, eon after eon, culminating in the modern era, with forms now extinct (such as
Homo erectus) which provide evidence of some intermediate evolutionary stage preceding the emergence of the modern form.
Disregarding all connections to Darwin's theory -- if we look only at the successive modification of forms, arriving at the modern ones, we are left with the question: how else do you explain it? Certainly not by writing it off as a relic of the Flood. That leaves a gaping hole to be filled, one that Darwin filled quite elegantly, and with little more than hands-on experience and years of study during his remarkable life. If I were king for a day, I would pay incentives to everyone who reads and comprehends
Origin of Species.
