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8.13 Evolutionary creationism

Disputes relating to evolutionary biology are central to the controversy between Creationists and the scientific community. The aspects of evolutionary biology disputed include common descent, macroevolution, and the existence of transitional fossils.

Evolutionary creationism states that the Creator God uses evolution to bring about his plan. Critical Analysis of Evolution has not been well received by the scientific community, which has overwhelmingly rejected the Discovery Institute’s premise, that evolution is a flawed and disputed theory.

Although evolutionary biologists have often been agnostics (most notably Thomas Huxley and Charles Darwin) or atheists (most notably Richard Dawkins), from the outset many have had a belief in some form of theism. These have included Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913. Wallace, in his later years, was effectively a deist who believed that “the unseen universe of Spirit” had interceded to create life as well as consciousness in animals and in humans.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) was a noted geologist and palaeontologist as well as a Jesuit Priest who wrote extensively on the subject of incorporating evolution into a new understanding of Christianity. Initially suppressed by the Roman Catholic Church, his theological work has had considerable influence and is widely taught in Catholic and most mainline Protestant seminaries.

The role of Scripture in relation to science is captured by an oft-quoted phrase: “The Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” The phrase is especially heard in discussions of the relation between cosmology and theology. In the realm of biology and theology, the saying coined by Thomas Jay Oord is perhaps more appropriate: “The Bible tells us how to find abundant life, not the details of how life became abundant.”