Is Evolution a Threat to Religious Belief?

Is Evolution a Threat to Religious Belief?

I read the above article by Eugene Volokh earlier today, and found his commentary on the evolutionism/creationism debate to be the ordinary and expected polarizing viewpoint purporting science and religion as coexistive. Though his belabored point came across to me, I am highly doubtful that most would understand the real problem here: the fact that there really is no debate between evolutionism and creationism at all. He concludes with:

"Yet scientific popularizers and educators have to deal with the fact that in our society, many people are still religious, and still accept descriptive religion (at least ostensibly). If the popularizers and educators describe science as taking no stand on the existence or influence of God, and as leaving such questions to others, I think they’ll have great success; and, whether they want to or not, they will indeed further undermine descriptive religion. But if they insist, in my view unnecessarily, that the standard scientific theory does take a stand that God is not influencing the world -- and that accepting evolution as the best scientific hypothesis while seeing God’s hand in its operation is an inferior conclusion that is worthy of scientific criticism -- then they will encounter much more resistance."

Though he may not be doing so on purpose, he's really just polarizing the two issues--forcing science into a box he's created with his strawman arguement with regards to the "scientific standard" that evolutionary theory posits. For more on that, please read his article. I did comment directly on the Huffington Post site, however, the response itself--though slightly contingent on his article--is basically self-sufficient; and so here it is:

First of all, the “standard scientific theory” with regards to evolutionary theory is not as stated above; rather, evolutionary theory is simply the frequency of change in alleles—in a given population—from one generation to the next.

You’ve touched on an all too common misunderstanding of evolutionary theory—and science in general, for that matter: that somehow, not dealing with god (and in this case, we are clearly discussing the god of the Abrahamic religions) is synonymous to denying god as a potential mover or designer, and essentially, that god “had no part in this process.” Simply put, given the empirical nature of science, metaphysical things, as such, have no place in scientific theories.

Science deals with the corporeal world and demonstrates said theories by virtue of testability, repeatability and verifiability. “God”—a word, a concept, an idea, a symbol of belief, etc.—cannot be introduced into scientific theory because scientific theory is bound by methodology (cf., scientific method). And what is “scientific theory”? Well, it’s certainly not an opinion or a hypothesis; a scientific theory is simply a collection of correlating facts.

Is creationism a “theory” then? Using our scientific terminology it cannot be—given, the only “evidence” of creationism lies in the Bible. And let’s try not to forget that a) the Bible is not a scientific text, b) the Bible never claims to be a scientific text, and c) the “creationism” referenced here began as a movement in the late nineteen-hundreds, following Darwin’s Origin of the Species. Instead of addressing problems with Darwin’s theory (of natural selection—now considered a mechanism of modern evolutionary synthesis), this movement immediately constructed a red herring by ignoring the premises and jumping at the seemingly abject conclusion—that there is no intelligent designer. Either way, we are talking about apples and oranges here, folks.

Remember people, you can believe in the god of the Abrahamic religions, while accepting modern evolutionary synthesis. You can believe in “intelligent design.” However, you cannot be a “creationist” as referenced in the above article, and accept modern evolutionary synthesis, since this movement of creationism—commonly referred to Young Earth or New Land Creationism—was a knee-jerk reaction to early Darwinian evolutionary theory.

I encourage all interested parties to take a detailed look at reputable references like Wikipedia or TalkOrigins, before perpetuating these detrimental misapplications of evolutionary theory.