Darwin is not Our Enemy

I am going to tread on dangerous ground by saying I am not against the theory of evolution. This is one of those areas that are really sensitive with homeschoolers and American evangelical Christians, many of whom are quite adamant about a literal, scientific approach to interpreting the Bible. Often I try to keep quiet when such subjects come up, in an effort to avoid a heated debate. However, whether one believes evolution to be true or not, I think it behooves our children to understand both sides of the debate because, like it or not, sooner or later they will have to wrestle with data that will contradict everything they've learned in school.

I believe our God is bigger than evolution, Big Bang, and everything else scientists can throw at us, because everything human can discover is merely something God has long created. Granted, sometimes scientists get it wrong, but we have to keep an open mind and examine their proofs and accept that perhaps this is the best explanation we have to date.

I took the boys to a Darwin exhibit at UC Berkeley--yes, I did. They had a wonderful time. Chee-Chee recalled every little thing he saw: the finches, the albatross, the beetles, the preserved iguana, and the giant tortoise shells. He also loved the dinosaur skeletons and prehistoric fossils at the Life Sciences building. Natural history is such an exciting subject for children if only we will allow them to see, hear, and test everything. It's a shame that few Christians get into this field because there is a void and a negative bias in our curriculum.

I wish there were more scientists like Frances Collins who can demonstrate to the world that no matter what scientific theory we have about the history of living things, we still need to put our trust in God.* I wish Christians would stop treating Darwin as a public enemy and displaying those silly car decals. I wish "Christian" science textbooks would stop sounding so defensive and just get on with actual data. I wish this debate will finally become irrelevent as in Europe.** I wish this post will not turn some people off, but it probably will.



* For an honest presentation of the subject, read The Language of God by Frances Collins. If you are intrigued after that, read Coming to Peace with Science by Darrel Falk. Both are written by evangelical Christians.

** Read C. S. Lewis and you'll find that he implicitly embraces the theory of evolution. Read also Alister McGrath, especially Dawkin's God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life, a rebuttle to the evolutionist atheist. You'll find that McGrath does not take issue with the theory of evolution, but the problem of trying to argue an atheistic position from evolution.