Citizen Columns
Question
What is your faith group's view on evolution and intelligent design?
Answer
Evolution and intelligent design are surely compatible. Despite the polarizing ideological debates, it is possible to see an orderly progression in the development of the natural world and also see God's hand in creating and sustaining it. There are plenty of thoughtful Orthodox Christians who take this view, including a paleontologist friend of mine who spent decades in university researching, writing and teaching about the fossil record of evolution.
The debate has extremists on both sides. On the one hand there are people who insist on reading Genesis as science and feel compelled to defend God against evolution and the mountains of scientific evidence in its favour. At the other extreme are evolutionist zealots who can see no spiritual dimension at all in the forces of nature that produce the world we inhabit.
Christians should have no fear of any truth, scientific or otherwise, all of which is part of the revelation of the God who is Truth. Indeed, the Bible speaks more about truth than it does about creation. For example, Saint Paul says, "We cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth" (2 Cor 13:8). Why should the pursuit of scientific truth about evolution be excluded from this?
But the Bible is not a book about scientific truth. It is a book about theological truth: the meaning of creation, human life and our communion with God. It is interested in looking below the surface, in seeing God's presence everywhere and in every one and in praising Him. Or as a famous saying of Jesus from outside the New Testament put it, "Raise the stone and you will find me; cut the wood and there I am."
Father John Jillions
|
