The evolution/creation debate has long been seen as the epitome of the battle between science and religion, holding as it does vast implications for our conception of humanity, of nature, and of God. Unfortunately, the debate is clouded by a lack of terminological clarity: say the word “evolution,” for example, and people immediately think of an anti-theistic worldview. A distinction needs to be made between two very different ways the term “evolution” is used.
Evolution, as a scientific theory, is the idea that all species are descended from common ancestors through heritable changes. There remain unanswered questions about this theory, but questions are to be expected in any science. The principle of evolution as just defined is held to be unquestionably correct by the scientific majority.
However there is a second application of the term “evolution” which is less scientific and more controversial: evolution as philosophy. This view, sometimes called evolutionism, holds that all evolution has been an entirely unplanned process; it is essentially anti-theistic and materialistic, a direct assault on the “divine first cause” worldview. This philosophical extrapolation of a scientific theory originated the battle between evolution and intelligent design, and it needs to be separated from the science if that conflict is to end.
This mistaken notion that acceptance of evolution necessitates acceptance of an unplanned universe is still prevalent, even unconsciously, among many scientists today. Richard Dawkins said that “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist,” and even when writing non-controversial scientific papers many scientists still demonstrate this attitude.
Because evolution and evolutionism are seen as irredeemably interconnected, many people condemn the whole theory to the detriment of their own cause. Biblical literalists are therefore forced to insist that the world is 10,000 years old and that no evolution has occurred. Intelligent design (ID) proponents are left inferring divine causality from natural phenomena, which is perfectly rational, but not scientific: science can only talk about the material causes of natural processes, not about anything non-material.
And thus the misunderstanding occurs: when anti-theists refute the creationists’ scientific arguments and point out that ID-ers are stepping outside science, it now appears that the existence of a divine first cause has also been disproved. The common misconception-that science and religion are opposed-is again reinforced.
What many people fail to understand is that God and evolution are not incompatible. Some intellectuals have seen this clearly, including Pope John Paul II, who reiterated the comments of Pope Pius XII by agreeing that the human body could have evolved, insisting that “if the human body takes its origin from pre-existent living matter, [nevertheless] the spiritual soul is immediately created by God.”
In other words, while evolution is quite possible and even likely, evolutionism- heritable development free of any divine influence-is not. To say that God created the world and that human beings are made in His image is not incompatible with saying that all species, including humans insofar as their bodies are concerned, evolved according to the proposed evolutionary mechanisms.
The question of divine causality cannot be answered by science, and the question of evolutionary mechanisms cannot be answered by philosophy or the Bible. Thus, the only way to end the nonsensical divide between science and religion on this issue is to recognize where both sides have stepped out of their boundaries and to realize, in the words of physicist Stephen Barr, that “no truth of science can contradict the truth of revelation.”
