|
From
reading the accounts of the challenges set out in the first section it would be
easy to conclude that evolutionary science is intrinsically destructive for
religious beliefs. This is the impression gained from reading respected
commentators such as Dennett, Wilson, Monod and Dawkins, but I hope to have
cast doubt on such single-dimensional assessments. Members of the scientific
and theological communities do the public a great disservice when they
characterise evolution as a simple and monolithic idea which can easily be
refuted or accepted and then deemed compatible or incompatible with religion.
The basic algorithmic abstraction of natural selection is indeed simple, but
this tells us little about the history and development of actual biological
history. Moving from abstraction to evolutionary history requires perseverance
with an immensely difficult and as yet incomplete scientific research
programme. By varying the ‘parameters in the algorithm’ and the ‘contours of
the fitness landscape’ very different kinds of histories can emerge. Some of
these possible histories appear to be congruent with traditional theistic
conceptions of creation, while others do not. Importantly, regardless of which
histories our own Earth has undergone, the raw data discovered by the
evolutionary sciences will not immediately entail the scientific blessing of
any particular theological or philosophical position, pace Monod, Dawkins, et
al.
Printer-friendly
| Feedback | Contributed by: Adrian Wyard
|
