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Monday, August 24, 2009

Science and Faith, a Quote

One of my actors from Inherit the Wind sent me this article containing this quote that we both found intersting...

"There are atheists who go beyond declaring personal disbelief in God and insist that any form of god-talk, any notion of higher purpose, is incompatible with a scientific worldview. And there are religious believers who insist that evolution can’t fully account for the creation of human beings.

I bring good news! These two warring groups have more in common than they realize. And, no, it isn’t just that they’re both wrong. It’s that they’re wrong for the same reason. Oddly, an underestimation of natural selection’s creative power clouds the vision not just of the intensely religious but also of the militantly atheistic."

-Robert Wright

3 comments:

jenA said...

"Believers could scale back their conception of God’s role in creation..."

So how much credit do we give the omnipotent, onmiscient God for the appearance of life, the evolution of the planent, its natural selection processes and macro- and micro-evolution of all species?
Atheists say none, "believers" say all.

What do you say?

Ann said...

I would say all. All goodness comes from God. All creation.

But I don't think creation happened either way its described in Genesis.

Patrick said...

This was a great article - I especially like the idea of things like justice being truths in the universe that exist in their own right and can be discovered.

I think the quote Jen mentions means the author is most comfortable with a Deist God. I think there are other ways to be a theistic evolutionist -

“If evolution simply means that a positive thing called an ape turned very slowly into a positive thing called a man, then it is stingless for the most orthodox; for a personal God might just as well do things slowly as quickly - especially if, like the Christian God, He were outside time.” – G.K. Chesterton