Why are so many Christian scientists evolutionists?

I posted a reply to Vance's question "What if Adam had not eaten" on the link he provided.

Here was my reply, which addresses also the same issues Steve and others are discussing. Doug may wish to follow the lonks to my sites, and read how I as a Fundamentalist, deal with the evidence of evolution quite uniquely from any other author in Christianity today.
I'm posting as anonymous, because I can't remember my Blogger account info, lol, but I'll link to my site if you care to follow up on my comment.

The question "What if Adam had not eaten" raises an ancient debate called The Hypothetical Question, proposed by several theologians and scholars in the church's history, but was undeveloped and formally rjected by the Church in the 13th and 14th centuries.

The question was best propposed by Duns Scotus, the father of Scotism.

Scotus proposed that the Incarnation was so great a good, that Christ would have incarnated anyway, regarless of whther he sinned or not.

This raises a related question, what would the world have looked like had Adam chosen not to sin?

I have been working on that question for over 12 years, and have written non-scholarly dissertations on the subjects in the form of theories which address the problem of free-will, determinism, and creationism.

This question goes to the heart of a serious problem of Christian apologetics today, cultic adherence to Thomistic theology.

Today's atheist/and or reductionist (higher critical) movements have trumped modern traditional apologetics because the fundamentals of Christian doctrines have not been questioned accurately to keep pace with the advance of modern epistemology and scientific understanding.

Some examples are theodicies and creation theories.

The theodicies have generally been reductionist in nature, or they never question the fundamental questions of whether or not theological emphasis in doctrinal development (the primacy of certain unchallengeable Christian propositions) are legitiamte or not, meaning are the presupposittions of the essential theological traditions themselves correctly stated from the outset?

For example, in all Christian theological traditions (fundamentalist, whether Protestant or Catholic) the primacy of the Cross event is formally unquestionable. In Catholic theology from the time of Aquinas, to Reformed Theology in Calvin's Institutes, The Hypothetical Question was rejected as heresy and made off limits for further dicussion and development.

Thomism won, the Scotist school lost the debate, the Church chose to theologicall view the Cross as a divinely decreed event in infra and later supralapsarian terms.

Cathlolicism and Arminianism chose to view the Cross (Redemptive Theology) in terms of foreknowledge, hence infralapsarian, while Calvinism and Reformed Theology tends towards determinism and supralapsarianism.

This makes the Cross event primary to God's plan, from either view, from the one view as a matter of foreknowing Adam's sin, and from the other as a matter of God's predestined choice.

In the supralpasarian view, Adam had to sin.

In the Catholic/Protestant Arminian view, Adam had to sin because God foresaw his free choice, and decided that He would send Jesus to the Cross based on that sin event, God choses that scenario as opposed to perhaps choosing to not create at all.

The supralapsarian view creates an ethical dillema for Christianity (for God) as being the author of evil, and has not provided a good apologetic yet that satisfies the sensibilities of philosophers to date.

The infralapsarian view creates a contradiction between the proposition of God's Foreknowledge, and His Immutability, and they have not provided a good apologetic to date for that either.

Thus, the tradiontional Christian view of seeing the Cross as primary to God's plan (whatever view you take) in all forms of Christianity, has created for us today a nearly insurmountable problem of solving the epistemological and has apologetic problem in the modern era, because, I assert, the tradition itself is FLAWED.

They chose the wrong theological tradition to follow.

What if Adam had obeyed?

There is no theology in Christianity describing that scenario, is there?

Why?

And beyond, why, let's jump to What If?

What would that answer solve?

It would solve the two fundamental theological, philosophical , and scientific problems facing the Church today, in apologetics anyway, of Free-Will, Creationism, and the "Bultmann Problem", the issue which he stated was central to all problems in Christian theology, The "Offense of the Cross."

Answering this question, if it's possible, may open up a new field of Christian apologetics, and solve the serious problems for Creationism within Christianity as well.

I have detailed some discussion on my two answers to this problem, which are admittedly not complete yet, even after 12 years, but I think I have done some very good thinking on the problems, and provided a basis from which real scholars can take my lead and develop professional theology to fill in the gaps in my expertise.

You can read my papers on these issues at the following links:

http://sonnycraig.webs.com/libertyandfreewill.htm

http://presuppositionalcreationism.webs.com/

These are extremely comp;ex subjects, even for professionals, and I only ask that you read through the material first, and allow time to digest more the IMPLICATIONS of my thoughts, more than the consturction of my apologetic. I'm a seminal thinker, but not formally trained in writing scholarly theology, so professionals may be tempted to bail before they grasp my suppositions accurately.

Thank you for asking what I think is the most important question in Christian theology today, I am very impressed you were insightful enough to ask it.

Sonny Craig

Hi Pete,

I have also struggled with your question of why at least portions of the Church seem to be continually out of sync with reality. This post captures my thinking on the topic: http://meditations-on-an-eyeball.blogspot.com/2...

-- VanceH (Different Vance than the one the commented earlier...)

<abbr>VanceH´s last blog post..What if Adam had not eaten?</abbr>

Pete. Welcome. ! Your voice of reason is indeed my heart's cry too. I have so much locked up inside me, and I too have trouble following a pastor who is wrong on many "earthly" issues.
But that's just the point, isn't it? I mean, why SHOULD a pastor have any authority about science, or things of the world? It was only because the catholic church got so burned about Galileo and Copernicus that they finally created a division at the Vatican that, although run by clergy, those particular clergy have fused their theology to science, as it used to be during the enlightenment. In that time, it was not at all uncommon to be an accomplished theologian AND a scientist. Those days have disappeared with our specialty-laden cultures, where everyone has to concentrate in one thing in order to make a decent living and keep up with the vast explosion of knowledge happening daily.
Anyway, to me, it all boils down to the main reason I go to church. I used to go in order to be taught by supposedly more "spiritual" men. But now I go to WORSHIP. That's what God wants from us, and that's what I aim to give Him. I believe so strongly in personal revelation, that I really don't need to be taught all that much by men. The basic principles of God's word were taught to me "here a little and there a little" and I have synthesized a theology that works for me. It took a long time for me to get independent-minded enough where I could say that, but I am more and more realizing I can ONLY rely on God for my understanding. He put it there to begin with, why shouldn't I believe He will continue to enlarge my understanding?
The net result, far from wanting to NOT fellowship, is that I want to fellowship MORE now than before. In the past, my fellowship was shallow and centered on what the pastor or elders said. Now it is based on how the hearts of my friends at church beat, and how I can resonate with their spirits. I try to shoulder some of their burdens, but it is much easier now. I am not church-centric anymore. I like to think I am worship-centric.

I'm not a scientist, I am an engineer. But my number one hobby is science learning of all kinds, and I may return to school to pursue a career in it, though probably in physics. Evolution isn't openly discussed in my church all that often but when it is, and indeed, written into our statement of faith is a direct denial of anything approaching common descent. I am completly silent on the issue, indeed I am totally in the closet except to the leadership for reasons I won't discuss now. I'm no martyr, and wish no judgment, so I would just as well stay silent on it, but it has been expressed to both me and my wife that it would be better that we stay silent on it. It bothers me a great deal, I often feel like a second class citizen, and what burns me is that it was the simple mistake of learning enough to recognize reality. I wish very much for there to be an outpouring of conservative scientists, and especially theologians to come out making strong stands on evolution, otherwise known as reality. Otherwise, who are we? We claim to have the truth and yet on the very things that are empirically verifiable we are so incredibly wrong. And now many will respond that creation and the gospel are not one and the same, and they certainly are not. But with all do respect to Alex Fear, I think things are very different in the UK, over here the idea that Christ's resurrection and human descent are incompatible is ALIVE and well, for my in-laws, in my church, on an old private web-forum I used to participate on of Calvinist Baptist preachers, for Ken Ham and for our guest commenter on the last thread Ecir Nodnarb.

When I first came to accept common descent, that fact alone didn't produce all that much doubt in me about Christianity, though I must admit I live with a lot of doubt now do to other reasons. But not so much the reality of evolution that has me puzzled as our response to it. Aren't we the ones who God talks to? Don't we have the inspired written writings from God? So why then are we always being dragged hundreds of years behind the rest of the world when it comes to recognizing the world for what it is; whether it be heliocentric, the age of the earth, or evolution. It makes me think that God is NOT talking to us. How can I listen to a preacher convinced God speaks to him daily about this and that ministry opportunity and at the same time he is assured through the same "voice" that his understanding of creation is correct?

Correct, AMW, which makes the ratio in the scientific community even more striking (MUCH less that 1:100).

We can make some generalizations for the believing Christians in the scientific community in a general way by making some simple assumptions. Even if we took a very conservative number for the percentage of Christians who are scientists in the relevant fields, say 5%, we still have an overwhelming majority of those Christian scientists accepting evolution, since less than half of one percent of the whole community reject it.

From eyballing that graph, by the way, I'd say that in the States there's about one skeptic to every adherent of evolution. In the UK it looks more like one skeptic to every 3.5 adherents.

Alex,

I'd forgotten you live in the UK. From what I understand it's a very different dynamic on your side of the pond, and evolution is pretty well accepted in most circles. In the US there's a lot of skepticism among conservative Christians, and there are a lot of conservative Christians. A poll came out about 2 years back showing that among 34 countries, the U.S. was exceeded by only Turkey in rejecting evolution. (You can find an article on it here and a graph of the data here. Note that the UK ranks 6th in acceptance of evolution.)

As a result of these dynamics in the States, you can stir up quite a bit of suspicion in a number of places if you acknowledge acceptance of evolutionary theory.

@AMW,

I think it's the opposite where I'm from, young earth creationists, genesis literalists or however you want to refer to them are usually the quiet one for fear of being seen as ignorant in these matters.

However the churches I've attended in my time, the pastor would rarely discuss evolution or creationism because it's just not as relevant to people and they don't want to cause division.. however I've been in a bible study setting open to the whole church where a pastor explained creationism and different thoeries on the age of the earth, but encouraged everyone to study and make their own minds up.

I really feel it is down to individual Christians to study and make their own minds up. Like I said on the previous post, it's not something that is going to change a persons behavior and it's not essential to living out faith.

@Doug,

Funny thing is, to me, the 'multiverse' (which in itself is funny because it's practically ripped out of comic books) is not exclusive of a God or gods, neither is Christian belief incompatible with a multiverse but you have to really ask how and why..

Indeed Richard Dawkins himself has been forced to admit that there could be a God or supreme being in or outside of the multiverses, (though he is adamant it would not be a God in the sense we recognise).

It's the same argument as existence of aliens. It's not incompatible with faith. My guess is that we will discover life on other planets, but I'm conservative that it will not be to the level of human intelligence, it will be more like the early travellers discovering new lands and seas filled with fantastic beasts. Of course it wouldn't bother me if we did discover other alien races that have our intelligence or higher.. in fact going out on a limb there are those amongst the 'truth is out there' crowd who believe that all our religious revelations and miracles were the work of alien visitors with advanced technology.. angels, demons..

If I understand the multiverse right though- a new one is created for each and every possible event that could happen, is this correct or am I reading too many comics? It seems less plausible than a God, or even a higher race of intelligent alien life!

<abbr>Alex Fear´s last blog post..[Educashun] Real-life Monopoly Game Mod</abbr>

Although this thread is mostly about evolution, the question is also about scientists. I found an interesting article today in New Scientist Online. You can read the whole article at http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026852....

However, the gist of it is that science has backed itself into a corner about the existence of God, and that we are left with only two valid choices. Either believe in god or believe in a "multiverse" (the universe is made of an infinite number of universes, and we exist in one of them because it is the only one that will support life as we know it).

The multiverse idea allows creation without a creator, (read it and you will see the logic to that) Naturally, it appeals to those who don't want to believe in God. But an interesting quote in which the author states that "evil" would not be perpetrated by scientists as a "ridiculous claim". Well, is it really? I mean, if someone doesn't have a "god" to tell them what evil is, then how can ascientist really claim to be able to divorce God from their lives and still maintain some kind of moral behavior?


"Pitting the multiverse against religion presents a false dichotomy. Science never boils down to a choice between two alternative explanations. It is always plausible that both are wrong and a third or fourth or fifth will turn out to be correct.

Science never boils down to a straight choice between two explanations
What might a third option look like here? Physicist John Wheeler once offered a suggestion: maybe we should approach cosmic fine-tuning not as a problem but as a clue. Perhaps it is evidence that we somehow endow the universe with certain features by the mere act of observation. It's an idea that Stephen Hawking has been thinking about, too. Hawking advocates what he calls top-down cosmology, in which observers are creating the universe and its entire history right now. If we in some sense create the universe, it is not surprising that the universe is well suited to us.

That's speculative, but at least it's science."

My final comment: Is it really science, as he claims. To me it sounds like philosophy bordering on a religion!

Alex,

James Kidder is an evangelical paleontologist who won't talk about evolution at his church because of the emotional response he expects. I'm not in the natural sciences, but I wouldn't casually bring up evolution at my church for the same reason. That's just a sample size of two, I know.

I think there is something to what you're saying, though. Evolution is counterintuitive; it's not something you can give compelling, mind-changing evidence for in a sound-bite or in a one-off example. Like Linux vs. Windows, it takes some time to educate your audience and explain your side of things. At the end of that time, your audience may not agree with you, but they probably wouldn't think you're a heathen, either. I have enough faith in my fellow evangelicals that I would talk about evolution if I were given, say, 3 - 5 weeks in a Sunday School class to lay out a full case.

Many believing scientists are members of evangelical churches where, were their views known, they would likely no longer be welcome.

Or is it because they don't see the need to bring it up at church or study groups?

I work in IT, I have trouble explaining the specific details of my job, how I go about investigating issues and so on because it flies over people's heads.. so I just stick to saying I work in IT.

The most technical I get with people over coffee in church groups is why they're computer is running so slow. I tell them they should be using Linux instead, but if I try to explain the merits of why it's a superior operating system, they probably won't understand.. also they don't know how to open up xorg.conf to tweak their display settings, they just want to switch it on and surf the internet.

I imagine this is the difficulty that Christian scientists have with their Christian friends, and no doubt atheist scientists have with their atheist friends who don't have Masters in Biology.

However, atheists don't feel pressure to prove they're not idiots who believe in some skygod.

@Doug Moody -
Doug,

Many believing scientists are members of evangelical churches where, were their views known, they would likely no longer be welcome. So thousands of such scientists have been living in a no man's land of knowing what they know on the one hand, while offering their tacit support to the special creationist views of their pastors or elders. This is all very lamentable, and one more reason to add to Steve's original post, "Why the debate over creationism matters." As Vance notes, many are beginning to "come out of the closet." No doubt, many experience painful consequences to their candidness. It is my hope and prayer that we shall soon have a healthy avalanche of scientists, conservative theologians, and evangelical leaders clearly stating their acceptance of what truly informed believers can no longer deny!

Doug, I agree with your sentiments, but luckily, there are many who are speaking up loud an clear. Remember, most scientists who are not Christian are not speaking out against religious belief of any kind when they discuss evolution. Most really do speak of science in a religion-neutral manner. And for the Richard Dawkins of the world, you have a Francis Collins (former head of the Genome Project and vocal Christian) and many others who have written books explaining why both folks like Dawkins AND folks like Hamm have it wrong.

I guess what baffles me is that whenever I hear YEC proponents talk about "scientists", it is almost spat out as an expletive, as though you are automatically an atheist just because you are a scientist. But of course, if they find a "scientist" who agrees with their view, then they use his name and as many quotes by him or her to support their claims.
That's why I had to ask about the claims of the scientists who believe in evolution and how many of them are also christians. It seems that if they are indeed christians, then their voices collectively ought to be brought forward in witness of that fact, rather than hiding their beliefs under a bushel-basket.
Indeed, it seems that the atheists also lay claim to the notion that scientists share their atheistic views, because I certainly don't hear a deafening roar of disapproval or christian-flavored responses from these scientists when the atheists make their godless claims.
So, why the silence?

@Doug Moody - As Vance noted, this is a spinoff of my last post. I mentioned sources like those you asked for. And I am indeed talking specifically about "those who are actively engaged in the *relevant* fields of science: biology, genetics, etc."

Do you mean someone who buys into the purely mechanistic notion of evolution happening by chance, or do you mean someone who believes evolution was the mechanism God used to bring all this into existence over a long time period

I mean someone who read the scientific evidence and conclude that God used natural processes to bring us about and didn't have to step in here and there to tweak the process.

I am adding these clarifications to the OP. Thanks, guys!

Doug, the number of scientists who are also Christian and who support evolution can be generally determined by the citations in the original post cited. The scientists referred to should mean those who are actively engaged in the *relevant* fields of science: biology, genetics, etc.

As for what is meant by "evolution", I think what is meant is that life (including humans) evolved from earlier forms of life by the processes generally described in the current theory. Obviously, if these scientists are Christian, then they believe that this process is part of God's creation and His creative process.

What is most telling is that I have very often challenged creationists to name even 10 actively working scientists in these relevant fields who do not accept that all life on this planet has evolved over billions of years, including very "macro" changes. This should be easy, with nearly 500,000 such scientists in the US alone. This challenge has never been met. When you consider that even the leading lights of the ID movement, like Behe, accept the concept of such evolutionary development (albeit with God as the "designer" of this process).

I am not convinced by the premise of your posting that "so many" christian scientists are, indeed, stating that they believe in evolution. Personally, I would like some citations t oback this up. After I read a few of those, then I can give you a more informed opinion. But, first prove your hypothesis that "many" are weighing in on this issue. Also, clarify what you mean by "Christian Scientists". Do you mean well-known scientists who are christian in philosophy and practice, or well-known christians who happen to also be interested in science?
Finally, please define what you mean by "evolutionists". Do you mean someone who buys into the purely mechanistic notion of evolution happening by chance, or do you mean someone who believes evolution was the mechanism God used to bring all this into existence over a long time period?
Sorry to require more parsing, but your question is too front-end loaded to answer intelligently. Thanks.