The issue of how respondees interpret the question may give us pause in
trying to analyze their responses. It is tempting to assume that respondees
(self-identified as Christians) will understand the term "Christian
theology" to be the religious system to which they subscribe. However,
some Christians may view their own beliefs as being unorthodox. Evidence in
this direction is given by an examination of the responses to the question
concerning the compatibility of Christian theology and evolutionary theory and
the responses to the question concerning one's belief in the completeness of
evolutionary theory in explaining human origins. While there is a high
correlation between answers to these two questions (0.41), they do not trace
each other. However, even here, we run into hermeneutical issues; a person
could accept that the basic evolutionary mechanisms underlie human origins,
but may hold that the details of that process are largely unknown and hence
that the theory (developed into a historical account) is not complete.
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| Contributed by: David Caccia
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