Tough Assignment: Teaching Evolution To Fundamentalists

Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette ^ | 03 December 2004 | SHARON BEGLEY

[PatrickHenry]

Professional danger comes in many flavors, and while Richard Colling doesn't jump into forest fires or test experimental jets for a living, he does do the academic's equivalent: He teaches biology and evolution at a fundamentalist Christian college.

At Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Ill., he says, "as soon as you mention evolution in anything louder than a whisper, you have people who aren't very happy." And within the larger conservative-Christian community, he adds, "I've been called some interesting names."

But those experiences haven't stopped Prof. Colling -- who received a Ph.D. in microbiology, chairs the biology department at Olivet Nazarene and is himself a devout conservative Christian -- from coming out swinging. In his new book, "Random Designer," he writes: "It pains me to suggest that my religious brothers are telling falsehoods" when they say evolutionary theory is "in crisis" and claim that there is widespread skepticism about it among scientists. "Such statements are blatantly untrue," he argues; "evolution has stood the test of time and considerable scrutiny."

His is hardly the standard scientific defense of Darwin, however. His central claim is that both the origin of life from a primordial goo of nonliving chemicals, and the evolution of species according to the processes of random mutation and natural selection, are "fully compatible with the available scientific evidence and also contemporary religious beliefs." In addition, as he bluntly told me, "denying science makes us [Conservative Christians] look stupid."

Prof. Colling is one of a small number of conservative Christian scholars who are trying to convince biblical literalists that Darwin's theory of evolution is no more the work of the devil than is Newton's theory of gravity. They haven't picked an easy time to enter the fray. Evolution is under assault from Georgia to Pennsylvania and from Kansas to Wisconsin, with schools ordering science teachers to raise questions about its validity and, in some cases, teach "intelligent design," which asserts that only a supernatural tinkerer could have produced such coups as the human eye. According to a Gallup poll released last month, only one-third of Americans regard Darwin's theory of evolution as well supported by empirical evidence; 45% believe God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago.

Usually, the defense of evolution comes from scientists and those trying to maintain the separation of church and state. But Prof. Colling has another motivation. "People should not feel they have to deny reality in order to experience their faith," he says. He therefore offers a rendering of evolution fully compatible with faith, including his own. The Church of the Nazarene, which runs his university, "believes in the biblical account of creation," explains its manual. "We oppose a godless interpretation of the evolutionary hypothesis."

It's a small opening, but Prof. Colling took it. He finds a place for God in evolution by positing a "random designer" who harnesses the laws of nature he created. "What the designer designed is the random-design process," or Darwinian evolution, Prof. Colling says. "God devised these natural laws, and uses evolution to accomplish his goals." God is not in there with a divine screwdriver and spare parts every time a new species or a wondrous biological structure appears.

Unlike those who see evolution as an assault on faith, Prof. Colling finds it strengthens his own. "A God who can harness the laws of randomness and chaos, and create beauty and wonder and all of these marvelous structures, is a lot more creative than fundamentalists give him credit for," he told me. Creating the laws of physics and chemistry that, over the eons, coaxed life from nonliving molecules is something he finds just as awe inspiring as the idea that God instantly and supernaturally created life from nonlife.

Prof. Colling reserves some of his sharpest barbs for intelligent design, the idea that the intricate structures and processes in the living world -- from exquisitely engineered flagella that propel bacteria to the marvels of the human immune system -- can't be the work of random chance and natural selection. Intelligent-design advocates look at these sophisticated components of living things, can't imagine how evolution could have produced them, and conclude that only God could have.

That makes Prof. Colling see red. "When Christians insert God into the gaps that science cannot explain -- in this case how wondrous structures and forms of life came to be -- they set themselves up for failure and even ridicule," he told me. "Soon -- and it's already happening with the flagellum -- science is going to come along and explain" how a seemingly miraculous bit of biological engineering in fact could have evolved by Darwinian mechanisms. And that will leave intelligent design backed into an ever-shrinking corner.

It won't be easy to persuade conservative Christians of this; at least half of them believe that the six-day creation story of Genesis is the literal truth. But Prof. Colling intends to try.

[rwfromkansas]

For the record, I did not mean we can use Genesis to date the Earth. That would be silly, though unfortunately many creationists use some silly magic by saying those six days then talked about all these humans without skipping any time. It must be obvious that a large portion of Scripture was written to reflect time eons after the creation, not just a few thousand years.

Therefore, anybody who says the Earth is only 6-10 thousand years old based on the Bible is a fool.

I was saying I believe there is enough strictness and not enough figurative language in the creation account to allow for an evolutionary type of change since the animals were created as they were according to the account.

[js1138]

Anybody notice a whole new cast of screen names, all reading the same lines that the previous cast delivered so eloquently.

[_Jim]

Evolution is the religion of those who would elevate man above God.

Then engineering is the same thing; and YOU are using products resulting from that process ...

No?

Is not using God's Laws (Nature and her varied and many properties) to do our *own bidding* tanatamount to roughly the same thing?

[_Jim]

You could share the DNA because we all were created by God, who started with some common DNA.

On what day were the animals that inherit the earth (as my Cocktiel loudly calls for attention!) created and what day was it that man was created to inherit the same earth?

[PatrickHenry]

But, I need something that shows there can't be other explanations. Transitional fossils etc. still could have other explanations.

Any one thing can have another explanation. But not everything. When evidence has been gathered for generations, and it all fits into and supports the theory of evolution (it was, after all, devised by Darwin to account for the evidence he knew about), and when even new, independent lines of evidence (genetics, and later DNA, things Darwin didn't know about), which could have contradicted the theory, but which also fit into and support the theory, and no evidence contradicts the theory, then you'd have to admit that evolution is a theory that is on very strong ground. There is no other scientific explanation that can deal with all this evidence. It could all be a miracle, but that's not a testable idea, so it's outside the domain of science.

[_Jim]

This stuff is just jibberjabber. It's laughable nonsense. The "DNA evidence" is a joke. It's like phrenology

I suspect that those with 'knowledge' in the early sciences (who said that matter was made of the four elements: Earth, Wind, Fire and Water) said that about early matter being made of smaller particles (e. g. electrons protons and neutrons) once upon a time;

Now look where we are ...

[loboinok]

So you admit evolution is closest possible lie to the truth. Yet you believe something extravagantly far from evolution, which you said "lies closest to the truth." So clearly, your beliefs are bigger, less-believable frauds than evolution, which is almost the truth.



You did not ask me what I believe.If you had,I would have told you, I believe that Almighty God created the universe and all that is in it.That science as part of that creation,was given by God to aid the finite mind of man to better grasp the infinate mind of God.That since the "fall" the earth and all in it (including science) has been corrupted.So, instead of beginning at the beginning,science starts somewhere in the middle and works its way backward and then attempts to advance from there.I don't reject science per se.I reject the aspects of science that exclude God or places itself above God.
This can go on and on, but the fact is, the truth is the truth.A army of Christians can't change it and a army of scientists can't change it.

"Almost the truth" is like "almost pregnant"

[_Jim]

"Almost the truth" is like "almost pregnant"

How tall am I?

You could answer that with an answer which was 'close' by simply choosing the height figure for an average adult male living here in America and it would be 'almost the truth' ...

Now to the point: When is the 'almost the truth' literally the only truth you've got (and it is nowhere close to "almost pregnant")?

Ans: In most fields of science.

I can measure current in a circuit and with the best calibrated meter I have come only within +-.02%. I could almost never ever count every electron however, so, I would have to settle for 'almost the truth' as the truth in this case.

[VadeRetro]

Anybody notice a whole new cast of screen names, all reading the same lines that the previous cast delivered so eloquently.

Yep. Funny, so many of us having the same erie, irrational thought at the same time.

[loboinok]

How tall am I?
You could answer that with an answer which was 'close' by simply choosing the height figure for an average adult male living here in America and it would be 'almost the truth' ...

Now to the point: When is the 'almost the truth' literally the only truth you've got (and it is nowhere close to "almost pregnant")?

Ans: In most fields of science.

I can measure current in a circuit and with the best calibrated meter I have come only within +-.02%. I could almost never ever count every electron however, so, I would have to settle for 'almost the truth' as the truth in this case.


6'1" 195lbs Brn Hr Brn eyes ;)

Your ans; in most fields of science. Is your answer.
The truth I accept is based on scripture.Any truth outside of that is a lie,conjecture or opinion unless supported by scripture.

[ovrtaxt]

Thanks for the link. I'll check that out.

[grey_whiskers]

I'd have more confidence in the people pushing evolution if they wouldn't make the implied claim that the theory of evolution is somehow as valid or demonstrable as the fact of gravity.

Why not? It is.

Not to the lay person.
Gravity can be intuitively understood (or experienced!)
from everyday life...
Think falling down a flight of stairs, or dropping your pencil.

Evolutionary theory cannot be so easily demonstrated.
Although practicing the breeding part can be quite
entertaining!

[grey_whiskers]

Not all early paleontologists accepted that dinosaurs were slow-moving, cold-blooded critters (more creationist misinformation).

OTOH, Bill Watterson--the creator of Calvin and Hobbes wrote in one of his books that he first drew the dinosaurs in Calvin's fantasies based on his childhood recollections of scientific descriptions of dinosaurs.
He was pretty surprised to find out that the accepted description of dinosaurs had drastically changed by the time he grew up and started the strip.
I suspect the difficulty elucidated by the poster you are here responding to, is the apparent contradiction between the ex cathedra pronouncements of evolution as absolute, unquestioned fact, and the revisions in consensus among scientists over time. Another such revision (in the popular mind) can be seen by looking at the section of Disney's Fantasia based upon Stravinski's The Rites of Spring in which the death of the dinosaurs was portrayed as due to rising global temperatures and drought, as opposed to (say) impact of earth by an Iridium-rich meteor...

Recall most lay people don't get as far as peer-review journals, or even Dawkins or Gould. Disney or Time Magazine is as far as they get.

[grey_whiskers]

Actually, that would be a pretty ridiculous argument. The MSM also wholeheartedly supports the eating of food and the breathing of air - I guess if you eat or breathe, you must not be a true conservative.

OTOH, there was another crevo thread within the last week in which one of the posters stated that 'Hitler was a Creationist' and quoted Mein Kampf to demonstrate that Hitler believed in Intelligent Design.

So by implication if you advocate intelligent design, by that logic, you'd be a Nazi.

Full Disclosure: Hitler also developed the concept of the Volkswagen (~= "people's car) as well as pushing for the German equivalent of the US Interstates (autobahn), long before the US Interstate system was started in the 1950's... So if you are driving your Tuareg down I-95, you're a Nazi...

Cheers!

[D Edmund Joaquin]

they set themselves up for failure and even ridicule

Well y'all should know by now we could care less

[grey_whiskers]

If interpretation of Scripture flies in the face of the physical evidence, Scripture must be reinterpreted in light of that evidence.

Not necessarily.

[Opening yet another can of worms...]

Miracles by definition 'fly in the face of evidence';
but they claim ab initio as it were, to be exceptions, directly resultant from extra-natural activity.

If miracles are claimed to be "how things normally work", or (sometimes) when something with an everyday explanation, of which the viewer is ignorant, is asserted to be a miracle, then the red flags should go up.

[grey_whiskers]

Who is Big Jule?

[js1138]

Hitler also developed the concept of the Volkswagen...

And millions of jews refused to buy them for many decades.

The same Nazis who worshipped Hitler tried to discredit Relativity because Einstein was Jewish.

The truth of a scientific idea is unaffected by the ethnicity or morality of the person who discovers it, and it is unaffected by the good or evil use to which it may be put.

[Junior]

That they have some knowledge and understanding of what it is you are talking about but have rejected it for the truth.

You wouldn't know it from the blatant falsehoods they post about the theory.

[grey_whiskers]

"Almost the truth" is like "almost pregnant"

Sorry to act like I'm channeling Clinton here, but it ain't necessarily so.

"Almost pregnant" could result from such things as:

1) Amazingly, actually pulling out in time (if he'd gone for one more thrust, she'd have got knocked up).
2) Premature ejaculation. 3) A statement clinically describing the condition, resulting from what will later prove to be a successful fertilization, but describing the interval of time before the sperm have actually fertilized the egg...

Off-topic humor and (hey, this is Free Republic!) anti-French joke:

Three Frenchmen were practicing their English, and the subject arose that one of their wives was just not getting pregnant, no matter how hard they tried.

The first Frenchman said: "She's impenetrable."

No, no, the second Frenchie said. "She's impregnable!"

"Mais, no, je connais" cried the third, triumphantly.
"She's INCONCEIVABLE!"

Which brings us back to 'almost pregnant.'