Sermon Study Guide Week of Sunday, February 19, 2006

Questions from the Street

Do Religion and Science Have to Be Enemies?

Do you think people can believe in Genesis 1-2 and also believe that God used the process of evolution to create all that is? Why or why not?

Albert Einstein said, “Science without religion is blind; religion without science is lame”. What do you think this means?

 What do you know about “creationism” and intelligent design”?

Creationists believe the universe is about 6000 years old and geologists believe it is billions of years old. What do you think?

In December 2005, Judge John Jones ruled that a Pennsylvania school district cannot teach, in science classes, intelligent design as an alternative to the theory of evolution because intelligent design is a religious view and not a scientific theory. Do you agree or disagree with this decision and why?

The Rev. Nancy Murphy who teaches at Fuller Theological Seminary says, “The intelligent design movement has the unfortunate effect of promoting the view that science and Christian teaching are incompatible. I leave it to the scientists to get into the details of why ID fails scientifically. The more significant failure is its misunderstanding of divine action (believing that God cannot be at work through natural processes).” What do you think of this critique?

A Vatican Cardinal, Cardinal Paul Poupard, said in November 2005 that Christians should listen to what secular modern science has to offer and warned that religion risks turning into fundamentalism if it ignores scientific reason. (Boston Globe, November 4, 2005) What do you think of this statement?

How would you respond to the argument that Intelligent Design or Creationism should be taught in public school science classrooms?

What do you think the most important insights are in the two creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2?

Nancey Murphy on religion and science…..

Nature’s God

With advanced degrees in theology and the philosophy of science, Nancey Murphy has specialized in the relationship between Christian thought and scientific knowledge.  Her book

Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (1990) won the American Academy of

Religion award for excellence and a Templeton Prize as an outstanding book in science and theology.  Her other books include Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism (1996)  and (with George F. R. Ellis)  On the Moral Nature of the Universe:  Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics (1996).  Ordained in the Church of the Brethren, Murphy has taught at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena since 1989.

One hundred and fifty years after Darwin, his theory of evolution remains contested in American Christianity and in American public life. How do you assess this fact, and how would you respond to parents or educators who want creationism also taught in their schools?

When I first discovered that there are still Christians who reject evolutionary theory (having grown up in the Catholic school system, I did not encounter this as a child), I thought of it as a harmless expression of ignorance.  More recently, though, I’ve come to see it as tragic.  Vast numbers of young people are taught that evolution and Christianity can’t both be true.  They get  good science education in college, recognize the truth of the evolutionary picture, and then believe that they have to reject their faith. 

Another change in perspective for me was to recognize that antievolutionism is not always a product of ignorance, but can be a response to the ways evolutionary theory is taken to sponsor various forms of immorality, social disintegration and so forth.  The “immorality” that current antievolutionists have in mind is a rejection of “traditional” family values. I’m not familiar with the arguments, but I believe that they involve claiming that if evolutionary theory is true, then we are nothing but animals.

In addressing parents who want creationism taught in the schools, I would first try to disabuse them of the idea that evolutionary theory is bad science, and then attempt the more subtle task of explaining the differences between a scientific account of origins and a theological account.  On this point, the distinction between science and theology we discussed earlier is valid.  Science tells us about series of physical events and the laws that explain why one thing happened rather than another.  The doctrine or creation explains why the whole process takes place at all.  In addition, it tells us what God’s purposes are for it and that it is essentially good.  The details in the two creation stories are clues about the proper ordering of human life, such as our relation to the other animals.

The “intelligent design” movement, which points to organisms allegedly so complex they could not have arisen through the process of natural selection, has been part of the recent attack on Darwinism.  How do you assess ID?  Does it offer a significant critique of evolutionary theory? Does it have any significant theological implications?               The intelligent-design movement has the unfortunate effect of promoting the view that science and Christian teaching are incompatible.  I leave it to the scientists to get into the details of why ID fails scientifically.  The more significant failure is its misunderstanding of divine action.

Christians have traditionally understood God to act in at least two ways:  by performing special acts (special providence, signs, miracles) and by constantly upholding all natural processes. The ID movement assumes that God works only in the first way. Therefore, to show that God has acted, the ID movement believes one has to identity an event in which no natural process is involved.  This is their point in trying to argue that particular events in the evolutionary process cannot be explained scientifically.

What are your goals in teaching people preparing for ministry, who are not going to be professional theologians engaged with science?  What do you most want seminarians to know about the relation of religion and science?        Many of my students will be teachers and pastors in conservative Protestant churches, so I think it is important for them to know that they gain nothing and lose much by putting faith and science in opposition.  I also want them to appreciate the way scientific knowledge amplifies our understanding of creation, and thereby our wonder and reverence for God.

This point has to be qualified, of course, by recognizing that the natural world is a source of pain as well as beauty.  So reflections on nature must always include the problem of suffering.

After the tsunami last year I read accounts reflecting on the likely responses to the event by adherents of different faiths.  I was startled to see that all of the responses were anthropomorphic—that is, they asked, “Why would God do this to us?”  None reflected an appreciation of the fact that plain old natural processes were the cause.

The debate on intelligent design                CREATOR GOD

                 by Daivd C. Steinmetz (David teaches the history of Christianity at Duke Divinity School)

Nonfundamentalists are similarly skeptical of the idea that the biblical story of creation is a scientific account that should be read as literally as possible.  As long ago as the third century the great biblical scholar Origen raised substantial doubts about whether a literal reading of the story made good theological sense.  In his view, readers should distinguish between stories that are both true and factual (like the story of the crucifixion of Jesus) and those that are true but not factual (like the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son).

Was there actually a good Samaritan who helped a Jew wounded by thieves, or a prodigal son who wasted his father’s substance in riotous living?  Who knows, and even more important, who ultimately cares?  The power of the stories is independent of the question of whether they actually happened in space and time.

The same is true for the account of creation.  Origen could not believe that light and darkness existed before there were sun, moon and stars.  Or that the invisible and transcendent God took a daily stroll in the Garden of Eden to enjoy the evening breezes, like a squire surveying his estates.  Or that the Maker of heaven and earth could not locate Adam and Eve when they hid from him, and had to ask them to show themselves.

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