Undeception

The poll in my sidebar asking Christians how important they considered the faith/science debate to be ran for four months as of yesterday. In that time, 99 votes were cast. Today as I close it out, I add my own as the last vote.

I voted Critical. No surprise there.

What I do find surprising is that one of two choices that received almost no attention early on, Worse than unimportant, finished just a few votes behind one of the early contenders, Important, but not critical. Sure, it received a clear minority of votes, but given my blog’s audience, most of whom are at least vaguely aware of the debate’s importance, this is disturbing to me.

These people are asking why I should be wasting my time distracting Christians from what they really should be doing; none of them came on to the blog as requested to explain what exactly they thought I should be focusing on. Was it just a matter of, “Please, I’m uncomfortable with this topic — can we move on to something else already?” Perhaps, but I’m guessing that the evangelicals who would vote “Worse than unimportant” would genuinely feel that the debate is a distraction from what they consider to be one of the most important things on the evangelical’s to-do list: evangelism.

In an interesting coincidence, today is also the day Karl Giberson posted an essay entitled “Evolution Matters” that tells why he thinks it’s something we can’t ignore.

Most parishioners probably think evolution is false, but mainly they just don’t need to think about evolution at all. Why should a pastor engage a topic that seems irrelevant when it will certainly lead to controversy?

Despite these perspectives I think evolution is far more important than most Christians appreciate. The reason why it may seem like a back burner topic is that the people with the questions have left the church and taken their questions elsewhere. If they, and their questions were still in the church then their voices would be heard and the issue would seem more pressing.

The distinct possibility of apostasy seen in so many cases following a convincing encounter with mainstream science is a concern of mine that I have repeatedly emphasized. Giberson elaborates on the E. O. Wilson example:

Wilson was raised a Southern Baptist and was quite devout as a child. But he was taught that his faith and evolution were incompatible. He went off to study biology at the University of Alabama and learned, to his surprise, that the evidence for evolution was compelling and, like virtually all serious biologists, he accepted it. This, of course, meant he had to reject the Christian faith of his childhood.

What I want to highlight is that those who view the evolution/creation debate as less important than evangelism are missing the forest for the trees: sure, you might get more people to “make a decision,” but what is it that you’re telling them they’re making a decision for? Surely the Christian life exists for more than replication: that’s more a characteristic of cancer than of a healthy organism, more like the Borg than the Federation. But more importantly, if you convince people that our faith in God is but a consequence of being right about certain important matters of history recorded in the Bible, then their becoming convinced at some later point that the mainline evangelical view is wrong on matters such as creation is surely going to rock the world of anyone you convert. Isn’t it best to teach them to put their faith in God alone and view theology as a fallible understanding of Him and His ways?

I am persuaded that those grounded in their faith, by which I mean those having experienced God through profound life experiences, not those cocksure of the infallibility of their theology, are less likely to reject God than those who have done as the creationists urge and hung the whole shebang on the reliability of their sources for theology, i.e. preachers, Sunday School teachers, and high-profile evangelicals who decry evolution as a mere “creation story for atheists” (Kirk Cameron).

But neither do I want to abandon my fellow believers to their fastidiously maintained blissful ignorance; this blog exists in large part as an attempt to provide an example of someone who seeks critical evaluation as an expression of faith rather than avoiding honest inquiry to preserve faith. I am convinced this can be done. I am of course aware that these are unlikely even to read my blog, but I also hope to encourage others like me to engage those threatened by critical inquiry of all sorts, including that which has wholly overthrown creationism.

Related posts:

1. Review: Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution by Denis O. Lamoureux My rating: 4 of 5 stars I have long maintained that we cannot hope...
2. A new, definitive introduction to the Adam/evolution problem in Christian theology If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: devout evangelicals will never be able to come to terms with evolution as long...
3. Human interpretations of Scripture and nature This is long for a “quote of the day,” but it’s so well stated that I couldn’t resist. It’s from an article by Kenton Sparks,...
4. Would he be having a happy birthday? Two days shy of four months ago I posted a poll that asked Christians how important the faith/science debate is. I was going to wait...
5. Evolution and the fall of the Fall I just finally got around to reading the post from BioLogos from May 31, “BioLogos and the June 2011 ‘Christianity Today’ Cover Story“. Within it,...

February 15th, 2010

Tags: creationism, evangelicalism, evangelism, evolution, fundamentalism, Inerrancy, intelligent design