My author friend Jay Lake blogged about a Newsweek poll that says 48% of the public reject the “scientific theory of evolution.” (He has more on evolution here.) He blames Republicans.
But I think at least a portion of the blame lies with the secularists who insist on making the theory of evolution anti-God, at least as it is taught in public schools. And many people, if forced to choose between their belief in God and their belief in a scientific theory, will choose God. (That’s not necessarily an irrational choice. The theory of evolution can’t send you to Hell for not believing in it.)
What do I mean by the theory of evolution being anti-God? What I’m referring to is the insistence that three factors (natural selection, random mutation, and genetic drift) — and only those three factors — explain the existence of the human species. What about God? He can’t even be mentioned in the biology textbooks, not even as a footnote.
Note that I’m not talking including the Biblical account of the creation. I’m not even talking about including the theory of intelligent design, which claims scientific proof that evolution alone cannot account for the development and diversification of life on Earth.
What I’m talking about is merely the acknowledgement of the possibility that God had a hand in things.
To put it another way: imagine that there are four pennies lying on the ground. Two of them are showing heads; the other two are showing tails.
Now, if the coins were flipped randomly, the probability that there would be two heads, two tails, is 38%. It is, in fact, the most probable outcome. Thus the state of the pennies can be easily explained as the result of random chance.
However, the fact that it can be explained as the result of random chance does not rule out the possibility that someone deliberately placed the pennies so there would be two heads, two tails.
The proponents of evolution, though, are doing the equivalent of claiming that the pennies must have been randomly tossed — at least when it comes to teaching evolution in public schools.
Is it any wonder that many people who believe in God, and who basically only have contact with the theory of evolution in the context of what is being taught in the public schools, think the theory is anti-God?
Of course, there have been people who opposed the theory of evolution on religious grounds ever since Charles Darwin first proposed it. But the proponents of evolution also deserve blame for promoting the idea that God and the theory of evolution are in opposition.
What’s my personal view on evolution? That there’s a good deal of evidence for it, but there are some things for which it is currently an unsatisfactory explanation. In any case, I do not believe evolution to be incompatible with my religious beliefs.