A thought for your Evolution Sunday service ...

Recently, prominent Darwinist E. O. Wilson commented on how he ceased to be a Baptist:

Then I discovered evolution. Suddenly -- that is not too strong a word -- I saw the world in a wholly new way. This epiphany I owed to my mentor Ralph Chermock, an intense, chain-smoking young assistant professor newly arrived in the provinces with a Ph.D. in entomology from Cornell University. After listening to me natter for a while about my lofty goal of classifying all the ants of Alabama, he handed me a copy of Ernst Mayr's 1942 Systematics and the Origin of Species. Read it, he said, if you want to become a real biologist.

[ ... ]

On a far more modest scale, I found it a wonderful feeling not just to taste the unification metaphysics but also to be released from the confinement of fundamentalist religion. I had been raised a Southern Baptist, laid backward under the water on the sturdy arm of a pastor, been born again. I knew the healing power of redemption. Faith, hope, and charity were in my bones, and with millions of others I knew that my savior Jesus Christ would grant me eternal life. More pious than the average teenager, I read the Bible cover to cover, twice. But now at college, steroid-driven into moods of adolescent rebellion, I chose to doubt. I found it hard to accept that our deepest beliefs were set in stone by agricultural societies of the eastern Mediterranean more than two thousand years ago. I suffered cognitive dissonance between the cheerfully reported genocidal wars of these people and Christian civilization in 1940s Alabama. It seemed to me that the Book of Revelation might be black magic hallucinated by an ancient primitive. And I thought, surely a loving personal God, if He is paying attention, will not abandon those who reject the literal interpretation of the biblical cosmology. It is only fair to award points for intellectual courage. Better damned with Plato and Bacon, Shelley said, than go to heaven with Paley and Malthus. But most of all, Baptist theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God? Might the pastors of my childhood, good and loving men though they were, be mistaken? It was all too much, and freedom was ever so sweet. I drifted away from the church, not definitively agnostic or atheistic, just Baptist no more.

I'm still in awe of the effrontery of people who think I am not supposed to notice that MOST evolutionary biologists sympathize with his views.

That colours everything they tell us about evolution, and at The Design of Life some of us are now systematically revising the story.

More on Evolution Sunday here.

Dhimmis for Darwin? Well, we do live in strange times ...

Canadian journalist David Warren, who is a Catholic like me, writes to say that

American Protestant clergy prepare annual "Dhimmis for Darwin" weekend ("Evolution Sunday"), in which they present themselves to be eaten by the Natural Selectors:

He is referring, of course, to the upcoming Evolution Sunday, on which American liberal Protestant clergy will try to sell Darwin's theory of evolution to their congregations. It's unclear to me why that should be their business, but in any event, Warren also notes the Houston Chronicle's puff, and sums up Evolution Sunday as follows,

The conflict, as I have been at pains to stress, is specifically between Christianity, & Scientism. Surrendering to Scientism is one way to end that conflict, but not my preferred way.

Update!: Readers who wish to know what kind of theology results from any prolonged immersion in Darwinism should see this most interesting story by Jeremy Manier in the Chicago Tribune. If you are a Christian and Evolution Sunday is coming to your church soon, this theology probably will be too:

"If your faith requires supernaturalism, or a God who wields overpowering control over nature, then yes, evolution will challenge that," says Van Till, who took early retirement from Calvin College in 1999."The key is to correct your portrait of God," he says.

My advice: Compare it to the New Testament and make your choice. Because it IS a choice.

Frankly, I can't really blame Evangelicals for not taking part. Even if an Evangelical church and pastor were comfortable with the relationship between evolution and a specifically Evangelical expression of the Christian faith, I doubt they would be comfortable with a) identifying with a group that includes many Christian congregations and pastors well outside of Christian orthodoxy (& from the website, it looks like the group is now broadening the scope to other religions as well) and b) signing a statement that may forcefully support the science of evolution but which waters down the faith component to make it almost unpalatable for Evangelicals. (For eg., Christ is not mentioned in the formal statement see [linked here]

Martin has ideas for doing what Darwin himself could not do, and knew he couldn't do: Make materialism coincide with theism.

Oh, and while you're here, a book for your school library, if you are an American who prefers Darwin Day to Lincoln's birthday. Hat tip fivefeetoffury.com

Also, today at Access Research Network: Freud, Marx, and Darwin - this time by Theodore Dalrymple

Update February 7, 2008: Steve Martin, a supporter of Evolution Sunday admits