What they say. . .

This camp, comprised mostly of liberal Christians and Jews, is growing in numbers as recent findings about evolution are bringing scientists to their knees in wonder. A number of them, such as Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, are well-established scientists who started out agnostic (at best) but have been overwhelmed by the evidence for design and purpose in the universe. While it’s not uncommon for people these days to value both scientific reason and religious faith, Theistic Evolutionists are actively exploring how one illuminates the other. They are the intellectual heirs of Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, who spearheaded the scientific revolution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and understand themselves to be using their God-given intelligence to decipher the glory of God revealed in nature. Most of them see the exquisite attunement of the cosmos that enabled life to spontaneously emerge as a miraculous event that proves God’s influence in creation. For Theistic Evolutionists, scientific reasoning is a way to deepen faith, and their faith gives greater meaning to the exercise of reason.

What it means. . .

When the mainstream media does go looking for alternatives to the simple polarity of Neo-Darwinism versus Intelligent Design, it often turns to the Theistic Evolutionists for a more comprehensive view. By holding faith in a mythic, omnipotent God in one hand and a profound belief in scientific rationality in the other, these thinkers are not so much creating a new synthesis as upholding the best in traditional science and traditional religion. Many of them are working to reconcile a miracle-making God with the rationalist logic of science. And a few go so far as to use the latest in science, such as complexity, quantum, and string theories, to try to explain biblical miracles. But ultimately, when conflicts arise between the inexplicably miraculous—such as Christ’s resurrection—and the purely rational, they bow their heads to a God whose ways we may never be able to fully understand.

“Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but they look out at the same universe. Both . . . are worthy of respect.”

Freeman Dyson