Mon
May
9
“ Each of the great Western monotheistic traditions sees God as truth, love, and knowledge. Each and every increase in our understanding of the natural world should be a step towards God, and not, as many people assume, a step away. If faith and reason are both gifts from God, then they should play complementary, not conflicting, roles in our struggle to understand the world around us.
Understanding evolution and its description of the processes that gave rise to the modern world is an important part of knowing and appreciating God. As a scientist and as a Christian, that is exactly what I believe. True Knowledge comes only from a combination of faith and reason…
As more than one scientist has said, the truly remarkable thing about the world is that it actually does make sense. The parts fit, the molecules interact, the darn thing works. To people of faith, what evolution says is that nature is complete. God fashioned a material world in which truly free, truly independent beings could evolve. He got it right the very first time…
The discovery that naturalistic explanations can account for the workings of living things neither confirms nor denies the idea that a Creator is responsible for them. To believers, however, it does signify something important. It shows that their God created not a creaky little machine requiring constant and visible attention, but a true, genuine, independent world in which our existence is the product of material forces. Those who choose to reject God, already know (and so do we) that they need not live in fear of His hand reaching into the sandbox to check our childish actions. God loves us, but he is perfectly willing to allow us to make our own mistakes, commit our own sins, make war on ourselves, and ravage the planet that is our home.
To some, the murderous reality of human nature is proof that God is absent or dead. The same reasoning would find God missing from the unpredictable fits and turns of an evolutionary tree. But the truth is deeper. In each case, a Deity determined to establish a world that was truly independent of His whims, a world in which intelligent creatures would face authentic choices between good and evil, would have to fashion a distinct, material reality, and then let His creation run. Neither the self-sufficiency of nature nor the reality of evil in the world mean God is absent. To a religious person, both signify something quite different—the strength of God’s love and the reality of our freedom as His creatures. Dr. Kenneth Miller, excerpt of “Faith and Reason” from Finding Darwin’s God.
Understanding evolution and its description of the processes that gave rise to the modern world is an important part of knowing and appreciating God. As a scientist and as a Christian, that is exactly what I believe. True Knowledge comes only from a combination of faith and reason…
As more than one scientist has said, the truly remarkable thing about the world is that it actually does make sense. The parts fit, the molecules interact, the darn thing works. To people of faith, what evolution says is that nature is complete. God fashioned a material world in which truly free, truly independent beings could evolve. He got it right the very first time…
The discovery that naturalistic explanations can account for the workings of living things neither confirms nor denies the idea that a Creator is responsible for them. To believers, however, it does signify something important. It shows that their God created not a creaky little machine requiring constant and visible attention, but a true, genuine, independent world in which our existence is the product of material forces. Those who choose to reject God, already know (and so do we) that they need not live in fear of His hand reaching into the sandbox to check our childish actions. God loves us, but he is perfectly willing to allow us to make our own mistakes, commit our own sins, make war on ourselves, and ravage the planet that is our home.
To some, the murderous reality of human nature is proof that God is absent or dead. The same reasoning would find God missing from the unpredictable fits and turns of an evolutionary tree. But the truth is deeper. In each case, a Deity determined to establish a world that was truly independent of His whims, a world in which intelligent creatures would face authentic choices between good and evil, would have to fashion a distinct, material reality, and then let His creation run. Neither the self-sufficiency of nature nor the reality of evil in the world mean God is absent. To a religious person, both signify something quite different—the strength of God’s love and the reality of our freedom as His creatures. Dr. Kenneth Miller, excerpt of “Faith and Reason” from Finding Darwin’s God.
