The wrong horse in evolution education

Hi all,

a recent Science NewsFocus on evolution, C. Holden, "Darwin's Place on Campus Is
Secure - But Not Supreme", Science 311, 769-771 (10 Feb.2006) laments the lack
of success in science education with respect to evolution: "Professors at many
U.S. universities say their students are learning about evolution without
abandoning their belief in some form of creationism."

Unfortunately, much of current thinking in this area is still steeped in the
antiquated belief in the warfare model of science vs. religion, or evolution vs.
creation. In the article and the persons interviewed, there is hardly any
attempt to distinguish YEC, OEC, ID, TE and other Christian models. Rather, one
just tries to convince the students that evolution is correct and creation wrong.

Of course, the main /pièce de résistance/ remains the common ancestry of humans
and apes. But nobody seems to think that both evolution and creation could
possibly apply.

Now, confronted with their failure to convince a large percentage of the
students that they were not created by God but descended from apes, some
evolutionists are trying to convince them of the reality of "evolution" looked
at in a much wider context, such as computer simulations of digital organisms,
or in social and behavioral science.

Will they succeed? I think they might face a sad disappointment. They are
backing the wrong horse.

The strongest evidence, by far, for the reality of evolution in the sense of
common biological descent is found exactly in the case of the common descent of
humans and apes, namely in the molecular genomics context, with the hundreds of
cases of copied errors in nonfunctional sequences. But of course, no evidence
for this will ever be accepted by Christian students, as long as the insidious
lie of the warfare model with its implication of absolute incompatibility of
evolution and creation continues to be perpetrated.

On the other hand, digital organisms risk to be recognized as what they are:
allegories of life, rather than realistic models of it. And "evolution" in
social and behavioral sciences might risk to be recognized as having very little
to do with biological evolution. In both cases, criticism of biological
evolutionary thinking will be strengthened among many students, rather than
diminished.

YECs and some other Christians, as well as all atheists continue to emphasize
the "creation _or_ evolution" warfare model. But the only way out of the impasse
is to recognize the reasonableness of "creation _and_ evolution" models.

And these models must be consistent, in that they include human origins. If such
models are to be successful in the longer run, and among all kinds of
Christians, they have to recognize:
1) the theological significance of Adam as representing all humans (being a
federal head, rather than a common ancestor);
2) the archeological and biblical evidence for Adam's placement in Holocene Sumer;
3) the genetic evidence for the biological relatedness of all existing humans
and all their precursor fossil Homo sapiens back to at least about 60,000 if not
100,000 or more years ago;
4) the archeological evidence for early spirituality in humans (how early? this
depends on very difficult interpretational judgements).

The only possibility I see at present of conforming to conditions 2) and 3) is:
a) to dissociate the biblical Adam (Gen.2:7) from the first humans created in
God's image (Gen.1:27);
b) to combine the biological and psychological evolution of the first humans
with their spiritual creation "in God's image" at a given point in time (no
requirement of the first humans to have no biological parents!).

As you know, I am against too easy accommodationism and mythologizing of the
Bible text - we need to take seriously all of it. So these questions are not
irrelevant.

Shalom!

Peter

-- 
Dr. Peter Ruest, CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern, Switzerland
<pruest@dplanet.ch> - Biochemistry - Creation and evolution
"..the work which God created to evolve it" (Genesis 2:3)