Must we fight about evolution AGAIN?

This morning I was in the men's library (to use an old Knight Ridder Washington Bureau euphemism) perusing The New York Times. Turns out it was the NYT of Dec. 19, but under such circumstances beggars can't be choosers.

Anyway, I ran across a piece about Mike Huckabee's famous "floating white cross" TV commercial. We'll set the cross controversy aside for the moment. What struck me was the Times' assessment of the potential downside of the ad:

While that may work in Iowa, the religiosity of the message may turn off more-secular voters elsewhere, and remind them that Mr. Huckabee has been dismissive of homosexuality and indicated that he does not believe in evolution.

We'll also, if you don't mind, set aside the homosexuality thing. What got me going was the bit about how "he does not believe in evolution."

What does that mean -- "believe in evolution?" As an overriding credo -- as opposed to, say, believing in God? If so, then put me in the disbeliever's corner with Mr. Huckabee.

Or does it mean believing in evolution as a mechanism through by which organisms have developed into their present shapes? If so, yeah -- I believe in evolution. But I can certainly understand why Mr. Huckabee has been dodgy on the issue, saying such things as "I believe God created the heavens and the Earth. I wasn't there when he did it, so how he did it, I don't know."

Or at least, I can understand why I would be dodgy about the issue, were I in his shoes. I would resist every effort to pin me down on one side or the other of what I see as a false choice: That between religion and science.

To me, this dichotomy is as bogus, as pointless and as unnecessary as the chasm that the MSM tell us exists between "liberal" and "conservative," "Democrat" and "Republican," or what have you. I'll tell you a little secret about this universe: Very few things that are true fit into an either-or, yes-or-no, black-or-white model. At least as often as not, it's "both-and" or "neither."

Trying to make a Southern Baptist preacher either offend secularists by asserting that the world was created in six days or dismay his co-religionists by saying that's a metaphor is a lot like those wise guys asking Jesus to offend either his followers or Caesar with the trick question about taxes. I've gotten nothing against asking a guy to be clear; I do have a problem with a question that seems designed to make the questioned a bad guy either way.

In fact, in the interest of clarity, here's what I believe:

• Evolution seems to me exactly the sort of majestic, awe-inspiring way that God would have created us.  He's no magician doing parlor tricks, as in Poof, here's a man! or Zing! There's a mountain; he's the actual Master of Space and Time (and more; I just can't explain it, being trapped as I am in space and time). He's the only Guy I know who can complete a project that  takes billions of years. Therefore evolution has his handwriting all over it. It's his M.O.
• I believe in "natural selection," if by that you mean mutations that adapt an organism to his environment and enable him to survive to reproduce are the ones that prevail. The guy who can outrun the saber-toothed tiger is the one who gets all the grandkids.
• I do not believe in "natural selection" if by that you mean "random chance." I don't believe those  aforementioned mutations just happen. That offends me intellectually. So many adaptations seem so clever, so cool, so inspired, that there's just gotta be somebody out there to congratulate for having come up with the idea. Yeah, 4.54 billion years gives random chance a lot of room to work with, but not enough to satisfy me. If you put an infinite number of monkeys in a room with a typewriter you do not get Shakespeare; you get an infinite amount of monkey poop smeared on a perfectly good sheet of paper.
• I believe that, judging by this photograph, Charles Darwin may indeed be descended from an ape. Check out the brow on that guy!
• I believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, in that it describes better than any other book the development of a continuing relationship, a blossoming revelation, between Man and  God over a period of thousands of years.
• I do not believe that Adam and Eve were actual individuals, living at the same time, whom you could photograph if you had a time machine, the way you could photograph Benazir Bhutto if you dialed that same machine back a couple of weeks (and had a plane ticket to Karachi). I read a lot, you see, and I've developed a knack for telling poetry from prose, hyperbole from understatement and the like. And reading Genesis, it's pretty clear that this is an allegory that describes truths about our relationship to God, not a court stenographer's version of what happened in a leafy garden in Mesopotamia one week long ago. Have you never noticed that novels often tell us more true things about how life is lived in the world than, say, nonfiction textbooks about geology or algebra do? There is great moral truth in Genesis, and that's what we're supposed to take away from it.
• I do believe that some wise guy asked Jesus (who was probably known as "Yeshua" among friends) the aforementioned trick question about taxes. That has the ring of a very real situation, one that takes its meaning from the particular political situation in which a first-century rabbi would have found himself. It was clever, but not nearly as smart as his answer, and it's just the sort of thing his friends would have remembered and told about him later. It also contains great moral truth, as does the story of the Garden of Eden.

Well, I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that I get offended when someone is questioned in a format that seems designed to make him choose sides between the "godless Darwinists" or the "Bible-thumping rubes."

Finally -- and this is really where I was going with all this; the Huckabee stuff was just my way of warming up -- do we really have to have another stupid, pointless argument over evolution in the classroom? This story I read over the holidays seems to indicate that we do. May God deliver us.

Comments

[Herb Brasher]

I meant to link to the article rather than to the discussion (scroll up). The discussion isn't very enlightening at this point.

[Richard L. Wolfe]

The Bible has no Proof? How do you explain the recreation of Israel in the middle east?
How do you explain the fact that Biblical prophesy is unfolding as fast as the headlines can print it out? Just take a good look at the world and then read the books of Revelation and Daniel.
If democrats are so concerned about carbon emissions then why did their champion Bill Clinton sign the NAFTA-GATT treaty into law.
Al Gore supposedly won a debate with Ross Perot over "Free" trade. Didn't he realize that all that "Free" trade would have to be shipped and transported by carbon emitting ships and trucks?

[sillysillysilly]

"That offends me intellectually."

Then someone like me needs to insert an appropriate ad hominem here.

[Phillip]

I really don't want to debate theology here, or to disrespect anyone's religious beliefs. But is it not possible that "chance," or mutations "just happening," could still be set in motion by a Creator? Could this be but one of several or more universes in multiple dimensions (the others of which we cannot perceive), and the Creative Dynamic Force sets up certain parameters, pushes the ON button, and just lets 'er rip? I don't see that talking about "chance" necessarily negates the possibility of a Overarching Guiding Dynamic to all universes.

[Herb Brasher]

Personally, I have no quibble with that, Phillip. I think there is more to it than that, but I can live with it. I believe that Genesis is meant to tell us the "why," and not the "how," which we can investigate for ourselves.

What gets my dander up is statements by Richard Dawkins, who does not hesitate to insult anyone's beliefs, and does not seem to recognize that he has faith issues of his own. He is a classic example of how evangelicals are being accused of intolerance (or worse) by people who are most intolerant.

[Capital A]

Richard Dawkins is a fool. A highly intelligent and erudite fool, but nonetheless a fool.
Posted by: Herb Brasher | Jan 4, 2008 3:51:28 PM

Matthew 5:22) - "But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, 'You good-for-nothing,' shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, 'You fool,' shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell."

He may be a fool, but you are no doubt a hypocrite, Herb. You're still believing in the fairytales of ancient Jews (largely ripped from more interesting, predated and more thematically cohesive sources), and you have the nerve to call anyone a fool?

Pack for warm weather, Herb, and when you get there, don't blame me. I'm just repeating what has been already been ordained in your blackbound, "error free" funnybook.

[Herb Brasher]

Cap, you're back! We've missed your skepticism around here; where have you been?

I won't say anything about your hypocrisy at quoting an authority that you don't believe in. If you had bothered to follow the link, you would have seen that I was quoting Scripture itself in describing Dawkins. But you shouldn't be quoting it if it's a "fairytale of ancient Jews," now should you?

Anyway, if I'm a hypocrite, it's nice to have such good company.

[rick campbell]

...there are park rangers in the grand canyon that are telling visitors that the grand canyon was formed by the biblical flood...if that does not scare you then you probably voted for bush...both times...

[Sexy girl!]

Several times, the people are admonished to remember the sabbath on the seventh day because "in six days God greated the world, and on the seventh He rested eve isk(http://www.eveiskstores.com/).