I want to thank everyone who commented on my original post, both on my regular blog and on my Livejournal mirror. Several commenters raised issues that I wanted to respond to in detail.
First, there is the issue of whether the theory of evolution is “silent” on the question of God, as Jay Lake suggested in his comment:
Insofar as I know, evolutionary theory is silent on the question of God. That falls under First Causes, which is a whole nother branch of science usually included in cosmology.
True, evolutionary theory is silent on the question of First Causes. But it is not silent on the issue of whether God might have interfered with evolution in order to direct the development of some species, including humans.
By definition, what drives evolution is natural selection, random genetic mutation, and genetic drift. If, for example, humans selectively breed horses (or other forms of life), that is not natural selection, it’s artifical selection. If humans make changes to the fruit fly genome, that’s not that’s not random genetic mutation, that’s genetic engineering.
By definition, intentional changes to direct the development of a species are not evolution.
So to claim that humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor is to deny that there was anything intentional about that development.
I will concede that does not contradict the existence of a “watchmaker” type of deity who set the initial conditions of the universe and is merely watching it play out, as Matthew Rotundo suggested in his comment:
But I disagree with your premise, that evolution is taught as “anti-God.” As I’ve argued in the past, the existence of randomness does not preclude the existence of a Supreme Being. One could argue that God created the universe to be random. After all, if I can set up a random situation, certainly an omnipotent Being could, too.
But it certainly contradicts the existence of the type of God who intentionally created human beings — which I think is the type of God that most Americans believe in.
What I was trying to explain with my example about the pennies was that even if the theory of evolution is sufficient to explain the origin of the species, mere sufficiency does not exclude other possibilities. (The theory of random coin flipping may be sufficient to explain the pattern of pennies, but cannot not rule out the intentional coin placer.)
Since we have absolute proof that it is possible to interfere with natural evolution — human beings have done so for thousands of years — the most that the theory of evolution can claim is that it is sufficient to explain how any particular species developed.
Just because evolution could explain how the horse developed to its current size doesn’t mean there wasn’t intelligence directing the process by breeding horses capable of being ridden. Just because evolution could explain the development of St. Bernards and chihuahuas doesn’t mean humans weren’t involved. (Yes, I know they aren’t separate species, but as James Maxey points out, a far-future paleontologist could certainly make that mistake from a fossil record.)
But the theory of evolution is taught as the one and only explanation for the origin of humans. We’re not talking about Creationists saying that “any hole in the theory is evidence of God,” as joycemocha put it in her comment. This is Evolutionists denying the existence of a hole that definitely exists.
I’m not denying that proponents of “Creation Science” and “Intelligent Design” have politicized the issue of the teaching of evolution. But proponents of evolution have done so, too, by refusing to acknowledge the limitations of the theory.
So, what’s my policy prescription? Public school textbooks that teach the theory of evolution should include a caveat along the lines of: “The theory of evolution only explains the development of species in the absence of intervention by intelligent beings.”