You can have your science and theology, too
Gorden J. Glover excellently captures the needless struggle between Theology and Science in his current series Missed Opportunities Part 1 and Missed Opportunities Part 2. The basic idea is that if all of life did not descend from a common ancestor, then God seems to have missed His opportunity to tell us that in within his blueprints. In fact, the blueprints appear to be screaming “COMMON DESCENT”.
Given the purpose of my own blog, to show that science and scripture are really telling the same story, I find Gordon’s posts to be timely and needed. People need to realize that the conflict between science and theology is artificial, and only due to our stubbornness and ignorance.
Some highlights:
Part 1:
We can all agree that God is responsible for this, but how did He accomplish it? Was it “according to the nature of second causes” or was it “without, above, and against them”? Either way should leave us some clues.
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For those of us who like our theology to fit neatly into man-made systems that we can easily wrap our finite minds around, the special creation model is a no-brainer. Why bother with anything else?
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There are several lines of physical evidence used to support the common descent model of creation. But if God requires His people to believe in the doctrine of special creation, could there have been other reasons for Him to give us so much evidence to the contrary? If the special creation model does not also require these same lines of evidence, why didn’t God seize the opportunity to give us clues that point specifically to the special creation of all living things?
Part 2:
It appears that if special creation is true, then God is going to great lengths to try and convince us that common descent is true.
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It’s time for theologians to start sorting these things out. Up to this point, the only people who seem willing to offer a friendly synthesis between the Garden of Eden and the science of human origins are evangelical scientists and Biblical scholars, or laymen like myself who have nothing professionally vested in any particular idea.
Well, I have kind of invested myself in an idea (Geocreationism), but I agree with Gordon’s point completely. Must reading!