Evolution and Creation: The disconnect between how students process data and what they believe

This is a guest post by Marlowe C. Embree. Marlowe teaches psychology at the University of Wisconsin Colleges and published the 7-part series The Social Psychology of the Origins Debate last fall. He is currently conducting some original research on whether personality differences affect a person’s conclusions regarding creation and evolution, and how likely they are to change their views. This post is the last in a 3-part series where Marlowe shares some of the findings of his research.

In my previous two posts, I presented information about student views of origins and their relationship to personality type differences. In this last post, I will address some concerns related to the nature and source of knowledge.

A) Epistemology and Metaphysics

Philosophers use the terms “epistemology” and “metaphysics” (or “ontology”) to make the distinction I have in mind. Epistemology is the study of how truth can be known, what its sources and justification (or warrant) might be, and how we distinguish truth from opinion. The underlying conclusions about what is true is the domain of metaphysics or ontology. Different persons have different ideas about what is ultimately or noncontingently real, for instance: materialists believe that only matter is real (and thus presumably, in some sense or another, eternal), while theists believe that matter exists only because of the logically prior existence of God.

B) Relationship between how students process data and what they believe

For students, the data from this survey show that links between epistemology and metaphysics were modest at best. Correlations between items of the two different types were no higher than 0.2. Though it would seem logical to presume that epistemological views of such items as the existence of extrascientific sources of truth, the religious neutrality of the scientific method, the capacity for human certainty, and the like would be correlated with worldview stances like CR, TE, and SE, this did not largely prove to be the case. Nor did personality type differences correlate significantly with epistemological items on the attitude survey.

It appears that, for most students, their conclusions about reality are not grounded in a well thought out theory of knowledge. What students believe about God, about evolution, and about the relationship between science and religion does not appear, for the most part, to be a product of independent thinking. A few remarks about this observation follow.

First, this conclusion seems true for all worldview groups. The stereotype that only certain individuals (those whose conclusions one disputes!) are subject to this problem appears well refuted. Students across the worldview spectrum appeared equally subject to this kind of epistemological disconnect.

Second, the conclusion refers only to students in my research sample and cannot meaningfully be generalized beyond the sample. Since my students are at a freshman-sophomore level, the problem is likely a cognitive-developmental one. Researchers into the development of student epistemology (e.g., Belenky et al.) suggest a five-stage model of the development of independent thinking; many of my students have confirmed to me, in informal discussions, that they perceive themselves to be at an early stage of this developmental model. This isn’t a criticism of them; it’s natural for students who are just making the transition from high school to college to be at this point.

C) Conclusions and Next Steps

Overall, this study provides modest support for the notion that personality differences significantly mediate student beliefs about the origins debate and I believe further research is warranted. In future work, I hope to explore in more depth relationships among neurology, micro- and macrocultural differences, cognitive styles, personality, and views of origins.

Future studies might examine longitudinal impacts of higher education on changing attitudes about origins as mediated by type differences. There is some indication that there are discipline-specific impacts (for instance, students of biology may end up with different views than students of psychology), though rigorous empirical examination of this question in the light of type theory has not yet been completed. Self-selection biases represent an obvious confound, since students cannot be randomly assigned to different courses and since type likely plays a major role in determining student course selection. A content analysis of qualitative information, based on student narratives about their changing (or constant) views about origins throughout their college career, could prove quite interesting.

Given the ethics governing my research, I can’t directly ask interested readers to help me collect more data at this time, but would value opportunities to dialogue about this as a future possibility. You can also review a summary of my research on my college website.

Personality Types mapped to Positions on Origins: Student Survey Results

This is a guest post by Marlowe C. Embree. Marlowe teaches psychology at the University of Wisconsin Colleges and published the 7-part series The Social Psychology of the Origins Debate last fall. He is currently conducting some original research on whether personality differences affect a person’s conclusions regarding creation and evolution, and how likely they are to change their views. This post is the second in a 3-part series where Marlowe shares some of the findings of his research.

In my first post, I presented some introductory data relating to the prevalence among college students of four different views of origins (creationism, theistic evolution, secular evolution, and “other”). In this post, I will address the question of personality type and its possible influence on which view a given student might choose to adopt.

In reviewing the material below, a few significant points should be clearly understood. My research should not be construed as an attempt to dismiss the validity of any of the views of origins on the grounds that they are in some way a mere artifact of personality. Psychological research can never, within its own proper universe of discourse, pass judgment on the validity of a person’s ideas; what it can do is elucidate reasons why different people have a tendency to gravitate to different views. Social psychologists speak of the Verstehen-Erklären distinction to distinguish between an attempt to understand something “from the inside” (sympathetically or emically) and an attempt to explain away something “from the outside” (critically or etically). Philosophically and personally, my sympathies are with the former. Those who seek to use my work to disparage or discredit the worldview perspectives of others have completely missed the spirit of my research.

A) Personality Diversity and Cognitive Styles

Many different factors likely influence the viewpoint an individual comes to hold on the origins debate, including but not limited to cultural socialization, religious or nonreligious self-identification, and level and type of education, just to name a few. One potential influence that, to date, has not been extensively explored has to do with personality differences and the possible link between these differences and variations in information processing and cognitive styles. My research examines potential relationships between personality diversity, as viewed from a Jungian perspective and operationalized by means of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and student views of the origins debate.

a. Background on the Jungian Model
Jung proposed that four irreducible functions underlie all mental activity. In the standard Myers-Briggs terminology, they are known as Sensing (S), iNtuition (N), Thinking (T), and Feeling (F).

Both Sensing and iNtuition are means of gathering information about the world without otherwise analyzing or prioritizing it. As such, they are opposing forms of Perceiving (P). Sensing involves a here-and-now, observant focus on present realities as they present themselves to the five senses; hence, individuals who emphasize Sensing as their means of information-gathering tend to become practical, detail-minded, concrete, and application-oriented. In contrast, iNtuition involves a broad-brush, conceptual or imaginative focus on future possibilities as they arise from the unconscious mind or by means of a “sixth sense”; hence, individuals who prefer iNtuition are likely to become creative, big-picture, abstract, and theory-oriented.

Once information is gathered, it can be evaluated or assessed using either of two so-called Judging (J) functions, either Thinking or Feeling. Thinking involves an impersonal, objective analysis with a focus on causes and effects, leading to an orientation among those who prefer Thinking that is calm, consistent, logical, and efficient. Feeling, on the other hand, involves a personal, subjective assessment focused on personal and collective values, producing among those who prefer Feeling a style that is sensitive, individualizing, empathic, and harmony-seeking. However, it should be carefully noted that Thinking does not mean intellect (there are no correlations between T-F and IQ, for instance) and Feeling does not have emotion (both Ts and Fs have emotions, but manage them differently).

Each of these functions can be expressed either in an outward-looking, Extraverted fashion or an inward-looking, Introverted manner, and one of these two modes dominates the entire personality. Finally, a person can either be drawn to closure and structure (a so-called Judging type) or to openness and flexibility (a so-called Perceiving type) in the conduct of their outer lives. Thus, the four possible preferences (E or I, S or N, T or F, J or P) together yield 16 possible psychological types (e.g., INFP). The relative prevalence of the sixteen psychological types in my research sample is presented in Table 3. Isabel Briggs Myers and others have confirmed that liberal arts students tend to be disproportionately NF, so this type distribution is not surprising.

b. Current Consensus of relationship between Personality Types and Religion
The existing type literature strongly suggests a consistent relationship between Feeling and religion (formal citations are not provided in this overview, but are readily available upon request). Most religious leaders and most self-identified religious persons have a higher probability of a Feeling preference than the general population, whereas secularists tend to prefer Thinking. The Sensing-iNtuition preference appears to relate to the conservative-liberal disparity within religious circles, with Sensing types more likely to adhere to conservative forms of religion and iNtutive types more likely to identify with liberal forms. Thus, the main hypotheses of this study refer to the four so-called functional combinations (Sensing-Thinking, Sensing-Feeling, iNtution-Thinking, and iNtuition-Feeling). It would be expected that creationists would be disproportionately SF, theistic evolutionists disproportionately NF (and perhaps NT), and secular evolutionists disproportionately ST (and perhaps NT).

B) Relationship between Personality Type and Attitudes to Origins: Initial Results

The Thinking-Feeling and Judging-Perceiving dimensions yielded statistically significant differences among the four worldview groups (see Table 4).

CR and TE respondents were statistically higher in Feeling, and SE and OT respondents higher in Thinking, suggesting that theists vs. nontheists utilize strikingly different ways of turning inputs (data) into conclusions. This may suggest an underlying genetic propensity to view the world in either personal or impersonal ways.

CR and SE respondents, though opposite in many respects, were statistically higher in Judging, while TE and OT respondents were higher in Perceiving. This makes sense given that Judgers seek closure and certainty (whether theistic or atheistic certainty) that might preclude seeing any value in their opponents’ positions, while Perceivers seek openness and flexibility (which might include a desire to find value in both sides of a debate or a tendency to presume that no simple answers can be correct).

By a Self-Selection Ratio (SSR) criterion (a common comparative statistic utilized in typological research), each worldview was characteristically adopted by different types (see Table 5). Creationists are most likely to be ISFJ or ESFJ, among the most traditional and group-minded of the types. Secular evolutionists are most likely to be INTJ or ENTJ, among the most iconoclastic and individualistic of the types. Theistic evolutionists are most likely to be ISFP or INFP, among the most tender-minded and harmony-seeking of the types. Thus, individuals’ core motives may shape their worldview preferences in interesting ways.

C) Next Post

This research may suggest that some (by no means all!) cultural disputes about origins may reflect “arguments about the shape of the table”, in which each disputant defaults to his or her dominant cognitive posture (as determined by her/his personality type). This may encourage a greater willingness to find value in the ideas of others with whom one disagrees, and may suggest a way to disagree more respectfully. Indeed, one goal of my research is to demonstrate that what appear to be disputes about specific issues are often meta-disputes in disguise, in which each party is really defending his or her own characteristic mental process. If the real issue is one of process (how one thinks), apparent disputes about content (what one thinks) will be permanently unresolvable. My last post will address questions about the relationships between mental process and mental content among students.

Personality Types and Student Views of the Origins Debate: Part 1 – Background and Results of the Origins Views Survey

This is a guest post by Marlowe C. Embree. Marlowe teaches psychology at the University of Wisconsin Colleges and published the 7-part series The Social Psychology of the Origins Debate last fall. He is currently conducting some original research on whether personality differences affect a person’s conclusions regarding creation and evolution, and how likely they are to change their views. This post is the first in a 3-part series where Marlowe shares some of the findings of his research.

I am currently doing research that explores the correlation between personality type differences and student views of the “origins debate”. The influence of personality types in this discussion has not been adequately explored, and my initial findings suggest some interesting relationships. In this post, I will provide a background to the origins debate in the dialogue between religion and science and comment on the results of the first part of my survey that explores student views on origins. In a second post later this week I will provide a background on personality diversity and cognitive styles, and summarize the results of the second part of my research which matches student views on origins to personality types. In a third post I will comment on what the survey shows regarding how students determine “truth”, and what they believe.

A) The Origins Debate and the Relationship between Religion and Science

A century and a half after the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Americans outside the professional scientific community remain deeply divided about the “origins debate”. The majority of recent national surveys converge on the general finding that about 40-50% of Americans adopt a creationist view, roughly 40% adhere to a theistic evolutionist or evolutionary creationist view, and the remaining 10-20% affirm a secular evolutionary view. Underlying this debate is a larger dispute about the best way to conceptualize the relationship between religion and science, which has been sharpened in recent years by the writings of the so-called “new atheists”.

The rise of evolutionary psychology as a new discipline has led to aggressive attempts to explain (or, in the minds of some critics, “explain away”) religion in terms of an evolutionary artifact (technically, a so-called spandrel) related to the modularization of cognitive processes, by way of the development of a so-called “hyperactive agency detection device” in the brain. Some recent research on the relationship between religious experience and brain activity, such as Persinger’s work with his self-styled “God helmet”, have received much attention in the popular media, though they have been criticized on both conceptual and methodological grounds by others in the neuropsychology community (e.g., Mario Beauregard).

As a result of the meta-level differences that exist among those who ponder questions of how science and religion might be related, those who seek to inform themselves about these issues in order to resolve the origins debate for themselves are confronted with a plethora of mutually contradictory perspectives and may well be at a loss to know how to resolve the contradictions. It would not be surprising if many Americans, including college undergraduates, remain confused if not conflicted about these issues.

B) Student Survey on Origins

For the first part of my research, I administered a 50-item questionnaire measuring attitudes about biological origins and related matters to 429 UW Colleges students. Based on responses to the origins attitude survey, students’ level of belief in God and their degree of acceptance of mainstream science (organic evolution) were measured separately, to yield (by way of a median split method) a fourfold classification scheme: belief in God but not in evolution (creationism or CR); belief in both God and evolution (theistic evolution or TE); belief in evolution but not in God (secular evolution or SE); and, perhaps somewhat incongruously, belief in neither (other or OT).

Among students surveyed, 56% were creationists, 13% were theistic evolutionists, 16% were secular evolutionists, and 15% were “other”. The table below describes these results.

These results show that 69% of the students believe in God, somewhat below the 80% figure within the general American adult population. However, only around 29% accept evolution, which is well below the 60% figure for the general American population. It is difficult to say why these results are discrepant; it may be due to the general conservativism of the rural Midwest, or due to the manner in which I defined acceptance vs. rejection of evolution (using a more attitudinally sensitive methodology than is typically used in national opinion surveys). Utilization of my survey methodology in a wider geographic setting could prove interesting. The Baylor University survey of religious attitudes by region confirms an earlier finding by sociologist of religion Mark Silk that there are strong regional differences (for instance, religious conservativism is higher in the Midwest and South and lower in the East and West).

C) Is Theistic Evolution A Unique Position?

To some extent, this study suggests that, as students view the world, TE is an intermediate or compromise position between CR and SE. On a majority of the origins inventory items, TE respondents endorsed the items at a level in between the responses of CR and SE individuals (suggesting that a primary motive for these students is to split the difference between CR and SE or to mediate in some way between them). However, on some items, TEs respond uniquely. TEs were the most likely of the three groups to agree that “science can neither confirm nor deny the existence of God”, that “both those who believe in God and those who do not may be rational persons”, that “both evolution and intelligent design should be taught in the public schools”, and that “God used evolutionary processes to create life”. TEs were less likely than the other two groups to agree that “there is an inherent conflict between science and religion” and that “if evolutionary theory is true, it is fatal to all forms of religious belief”. To this extent, TE represents a unique point of view that is a “third way” all its own, rather than a mere compromise between creationism and secular evolution.

D) Conclusion

The results of this first survey on student views on origins were used to map these views to personality types. In my next post, I will summarize my findings on this relationship by connecting the results of this survey with these students Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. I will also include a summary of Carl Jung’s taxonomy of personality for those who are unfamiliar with it.

Copyright © 2009 - Marlowe C. Embree, Ph.D. - All rights reserved

Ebook and Index for the Student Perspective Series

This completes the series on “Evangelicals and Evolution: A Student Perspective” - well, at least the main posts; the conversation in the comments seems to be continuing.

Thanks a lot to Ryan, Emiliano, Eric, Jordan, and Bethany for taking the time to participate (I realize “writing one more essay” can hardly be a huge priority for busy post-grad students), but also for the energy, personal investment, and thoughtful approach to each of your articles. This was definitely not an assignment that any of you “mailed in”. It showed. I know you have provided encouragement to many of us here in the EC wilderness.

As I’ve done for other series published on this blog, this series has been compiled into a Ebook. Anyone can download the free PDF version of it from scribd and redistribute it as they see fit (bearing in mind the Creative Commons license – which in my rudimentary understanding means “you can copy it, but don’t claim it as your own or charge money for it”).

I’ve also included a quick index below with direct links to each of the articles in the series.

1. Introduction (Steve Martin)

2. My journey from opposing evolution to studying it (Ryan Bebej)

3. An evolutionary biology student discovers Christ ... and the toxic anti-evolutionism that often taints the Gospel (Emiliano Carneiro Monteiro)

4. My transition from a conservative creationist to a theistic evolutionist - albeit with some unanswered questions (Eric DeVries)

5. Clarifying concepts in the creation-evolution dialogue (Jordan Mallon)

6. Avoiding the topic of Evolution in Christian academia: Reflections from a theology student (Bethany Sollereder)

Avoiding the topic of Evolution in Christian Academia: Reflections from a Theology Student

This is a guest post by Bethany Sollereder and is the sixth in our series on “Evangelicals and Evolution: A Student Perspective”. Bethany is working on her Masters in Christian Studies at Regent College in Vancouver, where her studies focus on evolutionary theodicy from an evangelical perspective.

“I just don’t think that’s a very interesting question...” the professor said slowly from the front of the full lecture hall, “there are so many more important issues.” The first year class of graduate students collectively sighed in disappointment. The questions about evolution had poured in when they were told they could ask any question of a panel of professors at the end of the year long course in Christian thought and culture. The answer they received seemed like yet another evasion.

The Science – Faith Dialogue: Great Potential in Christian Academia
I have now spent six years in the Christian academy and I find it remarkably hard to understand why the discussion on the interaction between faith and science is so often avoided. If anything, it is a wonderful doorway into many “more important” topics such as hermeneutics, models of biblical inspiration, ancient worldview, cultural engagement, and interdisciplinary studies. The science-faith topic stems from and reaches into all these areas and many more. The beauty of this subject area is precisely that its implications are so wide-reaching. The same tools that you use to exegete Genesis 1-11 extend out into the rest of the biblical literature. For example, an understanding of ancient near eastern cosmology gained in Genesis 1 brings an excellent understanding of passages as diverse as 1 Chronicles 16, Job 26, Psalm 104, Isaiah 40, Philippians 2, and Revelation 21! A discussion that takes modern science into account can challenge traditional readings of everything from theodicy to literary criticism, leading to a wide array of interesting topics. Perhaps it is because it can lead in so many directions that professors avoid it: it is a conversation that might never end.

The Challenge of Teaching about Origins
On the other hand, the issue of origins in particular seems to be uniquely challenging from both an emotional and a spiritual perspective. Step the wrong way in this issue, and it is not simply belief in the historicity of the opening chapters of Genesis that threatens to topple, but potentially a person’s entire faith! However, given the spiritual volatility of the topic, isn’t the Christian academy the perfect environment to critically examine issues of faith, and therefore issues of origins? Would it be better for the student to struggle through these issues in the context of leading a church or working in the secular environment? Yet, even though questions about origins are embarrassingly common, it seems that the topic is often sidestepped in order to avoid giving offense. Even when asked directly about it, answers from Christian faculty are often short and evasive; there seems to be a fear of committing too strongly to one side of the debate. Perhaps this betrays a lack of clear thought on the side of the faculty; perhaps it is simply an unwillingness to engage in such a volatile issue so directly. Yet it is precisely because it is such an explosive topic that we need more thorough training in the area.

“I feel so frustrated” a student once confessed to me, “I feel like everyone deals with the evolution debate as if it’s a conversation we’ve already had, yet I’ve never heard it talked about once in two years!” From the faculty’s point of view, I can imagine that dealing with the same issues over and over again, year after year, would be exhausting. It is true that addressing the hesitancies of students in relation to the science-faith interface must be tiring, especially when it can be a remarkably pedantic area, and can branch almost out of control. But that is not a good reason for avoiding it! I’m sure that New Testament Greek professors do not consider it an exhilarating task to teach the declensions year after year. However, delivering this technical information is foundational, and they realize that the relative drudgery of grammatical basics will one day lead to more interesting debates on interpretation.

Reclaiming the Study of God’s Works in our Culture
I wish that the science-religion dialogue would receive a similar grounding: some aspects of the topic may be tedious, but this grounding is necessary in light of the current cultural battles. And the cultural battle is real. A Gallup poll on Darwin’s 200th birthday found that only 39% of Americans accept evolution, while another 36% do not have an opinion either way. For one hundred and fifty years, evolution has provided biology with its unifying theory and the evidence for it has only strengthened over time. However, 61% of Americans still do not accept evolution as valid. Perhaps the ambivalence in the Christian academy is simply a reflection of the wider culture’s lack of conviction. In this case, it would be a great opportunity for the Church to rise up and become, once again, those who drive discovery of the natural world forward while providing a theological framework in which to understand those revelations.

New Resources for Evangelicals
At the Bible College I attended, a small faculty was responsible for covering a wide spectrum of academic disciplines. As a result, the idea of tackling the massive issues involved in the science-faith dialogue may have seemed quite daunting. Ten or fifteen years ago this task was even more difficult since there were so few books that affirmed both evolution and an evangelical faith. Today, however, there is a torrent of books which provide both the scientific and hermeneutical material necessary to “get past” the most common roadblocks to accepting evolution: how to read Genesis and how to reconcile the theory of human evolution with our affirmation of divine creation. Francis Collins, Darrel Falk, Denis Lamoureux, and Loren and Deb Haarsma have all provided valuable resources to the evangelical community.

With so much good information “out there”, why is there still a reluctance to discuss the science-faith interaction in our academies? I think that we shy away from the challenges science presents to our interpretation of the Bible because there is always a “fear factor” involved in evangelical hermeneutics. This was clearly seen at my Bible College where biblical criticism was largely portrayed as that “slippery slope” where “liberals” began by questioning the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and ended up denying the resurrection of Christ. There was very little effort put into incorporating the beneficial aspects of criticism because there was so much fear that one might go “too far”. We evangelicals are happy to admit, as a sort of joke, how susceptible we are to guilt; it is much less frequently admitted how susceptible we are to fear. Yet the reality is that as God’s children we have nothing to fear when searching for truth in God’s Works and his Word. The discoveries of science and the tools of higher criticism help us to understand better the amazing world in which God has placed us and the ways in which God has revealed himself to us. With the excellent voices speaking from within both science and theology, the time is ripe for moving past this debate. But we should do this carefully by working through the issues rather than ignoring them.

Conclusion
Fortunately those first year students in that full lecture hall I mentioned in the opening did not have to wait long for a more helpful response. Another professor on the panel took the microphone and spoke about fossils, genetics, his preference for the term “evolutionary creation” over “theistic evolution”, and the importance of a robust theology of creation without extreme dogmatism over the method of creation. It was a brief answer, and it did indeed stir up controversy in some of the tutorial sessions after the class, but it was one of the first times I had observed a positive, informative answer that clearly dealt with some of the issues raised. I hope this type of response is a harbinger of what we can come to expect of Christian academia, and that Evangelical students will receive the guidance they need in the science-faith dialogue.

Clarifying Concepts in the Creation-Evolution Dialogue

This is a guest post by Jordan Mallon and is the fifth in our series on “Evangelicals and Evolution: A Student Perspective”. Jordan is a Ph.D. student at the University of Calgary where he is studying the evolutionary palaeoecology of the Late Cretaceous herbivorous dinosaurs from Alberta.

The transition from young earth creationism to a position that reconciles evolution and faith doesn’t occur abruptly. It’s a process that takes time and usually proceeds by the gradual piecing together of concepts and information. This was certainly the case for me. When I was growing up, I sympathized with young earth creationism as taught by the conservative Lutheran church I attended. Now I research and teach evolutionary science at the university level, but only after a prolonged period of soul-searching and careful study during my post-secondary education. My theology of nature is still incomplete, but the clarifying concepts introduced below helped to deconstruct the barriers that often polarize the evolution-creation ‘debate’ and allowed me to gradually formulate what I consider a more integrated view of science and faith. Hopefully, these concepts will help other students in their struggle to harmonize evolution and evangelical Christianity.

1) Agency and Mechanism in Creation

The word ‘creationism’ is understood by many evangelical Christians to refer to the miraculous and instantaneous creation of life by God. This view is prevalent and has pigeonholed many of us into confusing agency for mechanism. That is, the act of creating becomes needlessly associated with divine intervention. The corollary is that any explanation for life’s diversity that doesn’t appeal to miracles, such as evolution, is assumed to somehow exclude God’s creative agency. Evolution is often described by believers and non-believers alike as ‘godless’.

This conflation is unfortunate because the Bible teaches that even natural processes, such as weather, are under God’s control (e.g., Lev 26:4; Deut 11:14; 1 Sam 12:18; Job 5:10, 37:6; Ps 135:7, 147:8). More to the point, we are each called a creation of God (Ps 139:14) despite the fact that human conception and development proceeds by entirely natural processes. The Bible’s distinction between agency and mechanism therefore allows God to exercise His creativity using the laws of nature He instilled at the beginning of creation. In this sense, creationism doesn’t preclude evolution at all! I liken evolution to the Lutheran doctrine of the Real Presence, in which God is “in, with, and under” the natural processes that produce biodiversity on Earth.

2) Methodological and Ontological Naturalism

If evolution were truly godless because it does not invoke divine intervention, then the same argument would necessarily apply to all of science because the scientific method excludes all appeals to the supernatural. Miracles, by definition, can’t be measured or explained and therefore they do not further our knowledge about how the universe works. Sir Isaac Newton once believed that the stability of our solar system was due to the miraculous intervention of God, but the French astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace later showed that the stability could be explained entirely through the natural laws of gravity.

It’s important to note, however, that the preclusion of miracles from science is only done in practice. Science cannot comment on whether or not miracles happen, or whether or not God exists; science is neutral on these matters. God may perform miracles every day, but for the reasons given above, the scientific method simply can’t detect them. The search for natural processes that operate in the universe is called methodological naturalism. The atheistic belief that there’s no God and that the natural world is all that exists is called ontological naturalism. The former is perfectly in line with Christian principles, but the latter, obviously, is not.

3) Accommodation and Concordism

If there’s nothing inherently atheistic about the scientific theory of evolution, why do so many evangelicals oppose it so strongly? The answer in large part has to do with the assumptions we bring to the scriptures. Evangelicalism, under the influence of fundamentalism, has promoted the idea that in order to take the Bible seriously, we must believe that it provides a literal and accurate description of the physical universe. That is, God revealed to the authors of Scripture scientific facts about the universe that could not otherwise have been known to them at the time. This assumption is known as scientific concordism. A concordist interpretation of the Genesis creation accounts obviously does not leave room for evolution.

In spite of the popularity of concordism as it pertains to Genesis, history shows that it’s a largely unwarranted assumption. At various points in the past, prominent Christian scholars used the Bible to support numerous outdated ideas about science, most notably geocentrism (e.g., Jos 10:12; 1 Sam 2:8; 1 Chr 16:30; Job 38:4; Ps 19:4–6, 24:2, 50:1, 93:1, 96:10, 104:5; Ecc 1:5; Hab 3:11). These ideas have since fallen by the wayside in light of scientific knowledge, and Christians now read these parts of the Bible in a different way. Rather than blindly insisting that our understanding of the physical world must accord with a literal interpretation of these passages, we now appreciate that God sometimes accommodates His message to the limitations of human understanding. The sun may not literally rotate about the earth as the Bible describes, but it certainly appeared that way to the earth-bound Hebrew people of the Old Testament. The principle of accommodation is the understanding that God spoke to the authors of Scripture using language and imagery with which they were familiar. Many Christians now feel that, given the previous shortcomings of concordism, the Genesis creation account might likewise be better understood as an accommodation of God’s timeless message to the culture of the ancient Hebrew people. If that’s indeed the case, then accepting evolution may be no more heretical than accepting that the earth goes around the sun!

Further Reading

The concepts introduced above are obviously interrelated and merit much lengthier discussions than given in this essay, but time and space prevent further elaboration. I’ll offer instead a few relevant resources that helped shape my thoughts here. Stephen Godfrey and Christopher Smith’s co-authored book Paradigms on Pilgrimage dedicate a couple helpful chapters to exploring more fully the concepts of agency and mechanism, and methodological and ontological naturalism. Denis Lamoureux’s books Evolutionary Creation and I Love Jesus and I Accept Evolution similarly provide a thorough discussion of the principles of accommodation and concordism. All the various concepts considered here are connected in Keith Miller’s edited volume Perspectives on an Evolving Creation. Steve Martin tells a similar story to mine in a blog post here. Be sure to also see Steve’s selected bibliography for more resources about the relationship between science and faith.

My Transition from a Conservative Creationist to a Theistic Evolutionist (albeit with some unanswered questions)

This is a guest post by Eric DeVries and is the fourth post in our series on “Evangelicals and Evolution: A Student Perspective”. Eric is a post-grad biology student at Calvin College.

I’m an evolutionist, a theistic evolutionist to be specific. My transition to this position is relatively recent and I still have much to learn about the interaction between faith and science. I can’t say that my journey is a unique story, but maybe it resonates with some readers of this series.

So here it is.

Early impressions of Evolution
I grew up in a typical, western Michigan, Dutch family. By this I mean to say my family was reserved, proper, and attended church every Sunday. Our first church was a mega-church named Calvary which we attended until I was in 4th grade. At this point my dad decided that he was tired of all the behind the scenes drama so we left to find a “better” church. Ironically we ended up at one of the spiritually deadest churches I have ever attended. It was there that the idea of evolution was first presented to me. And in a typical “good” Christian way, it was described as a theory which directly contradicted the bible and was therefore wrong; so wrong in fact that those who accepted it were ostracized as “unbelievers”.

Attending a Conservative Christian school in a Liberal part of America
When I was in grade 6 my family moved to a part of California that many would describe as relatively liberal. Being the only Christian school in the area, my parents enrolled me in a conservative, Baptist school. Again the idea was taught that evolutionary science could not be reconciled with God’s plan for humanity. Only this time instead of just hearing it, I integrated it into my belief system and self-identify. I came to believe that whomever held to the theory of evolution was at best direly misguided and at worst going to hell.

Instead of joining an existing church, my family connected with a couple other families to start our own church. We lived the challenges of launching a church in an area resistant to organized Christianity. One of the biggest challenges was church growth, which was extremely slow. This lead to quickly solidifying the relationship between my family and the few others who were part of the church and it was with these families that my love of the outdoors, of mountains and the ocean, developed. The hobbies of hiking and backpacking became central to my life in California, sparking my interest in biology. Evolution was not really avoided as a subject of discussion with this group of families; it was more put on a side burner, and not considered an important enough issue to waste energy discussing. Instead we went about meeting a much more diverse group of people, realizing that Christianity does actually consist of more than the conservative, Dutch social group we were part of in Michigan.

Learning to be more Open-Minded in a Conservative Heartland
Moving back to Michigan is a turning point in this story. The irony is that I started becoming more open minded in one of the most conservative places in America after I had learned to be a fundamentalist in one of the most liberal areas of the country . On the recommendation of my dad, I became connected with Young Life, which is a Christian organization in high schools. I loved it. These people, instead of hiding their failings, accepted them and worked those weaknesses into their stories, changing them into something that God could work with to teach others. My experiences in the conservative Christian school in California had taught me the exact opposite, to hide my failings and only deal with them between myself and God. It took me a long time to accept this new approach, nearly two years in fact.

We started attending a church in Grand Rapids which was pretty “radical”. The pastor there had no reservations about discussing topics which most churches would avoid. The sermons opened up dinner table discussions. Our discussions became more open minded, and my parents tackled controversial topics; we were not afraid to ask some hard questions about our conservative brand of Christianity. We never outright denied specific traditional beliefs, but we were encouraged to ask questions about these beliefs. Yet through this entire time I never gave up on my belief that evolution was a theory from the devil, and that the proponents of evolution were like little demons running around spreading a theory directly against the will of God.

These discussions, along with my eventual acceptance of my failings, became a crucial point in my ability to mentally prepare myself to engage evolution once I went off to college.

Starting College and my investigation into Evolution
After graduating from high school I attended Calvin College. Calvin was like pouring alcohol on a fire as it caused my desire to ask questions, and in particular questions regarding evolution, to explode. Why did so many Christians at this Christian College actually accept this theory which I had been taught was wrong (notice the difference between belief and taught at this point in my life)? I began to dig deeper into the evidence for evolution; and the more I learned the more concerned I became. Evolution made sense, or at least its basic arguments made sense. Some of the particulars were, for me, a bit sketchy. But the basic claims of evolution had a logical ring to them, and they appealed to that left-brained side of who I am. So I accepted a conditional form of evolution which excluded the common ancestry of apes and humans. These new ideas brought tension between my faith and what I was beginning to accept about evolution. It was a real testament to the changes I had been going through since moving back from California that I was able to spiritually and intellectually engage evolutionary theory.

Evolution and Biblical Interpretation
My exploration of evolutionary theory, and its implications, made me revisit my ideas of biblical interpretation. I began to see that a literalistic interpretation of Genesis leads to many discrepancies. One, which may not seem as blatant as others, but oddly enough is the one I remember most, is the geography of the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 2 the garden is described as having 4 rivers flowing through it. One of those is located in Egypt, while two others are located in current day Iraq, and the fourth has its probable current day location in Ethiopia. How these four rivers found themselves, within the recent past (geologically speaking), to either originate or terminate in one area is still beyond me.

This rethinking of biblical interpretation was important in my journey. But even more important was the evidence supporting evolution. Coming back to Calvin, following a semester in Spain during my third year, I decided to take a J-term evolutionary biology class. This class was a three week course exploring the evidences behind evolution. I had previously studied population genetics, homology, and common ancestry in first two years of college, but had yet to see a condensed list of the evidence supporting each idea. We examined the various anatomies of the ear bone in the transition from land to water in the story of the whale. We read The Song of the Dodo by David Quamman, which sifts through the various ideas presented by naturalists over the past two centuries before delving into island biogeography and its affects on the composition and genetics of an isolated population. But most important was our discussion about genetics, which was spurred on by our readings in Quamman and our study of the whale. I began to see the picture of history painted by genetics using the mechanism of evolution.

And it convinced me.

Now I identify myself as a theistic evolutionist; an interesting transition.

Conclusion
I transitioned from a conservative creationist to a theistic evolutionist in a journey that took anywhere between 4 and 8 years, depending on the starting point. Today I see evolution as a beautifully fluid display of the creative aspect of God. But that does not mean I have all the pertinent questions answered. One of the biggest unanswered questions is how to explain death. Evolution is pushed forward by death, but according to the biblical account death is an evil only present in the world after “the fall”. And for that reason how do I explain “the fall”? So evolution doesn’t explain everything, and it actually presents new problems.

But evolution happens. For me the bible no longer dictates what I believe about science. I don’t think it was ever meant to. Science describes science. That’s that.

An Evolutionary Biology Student Discovers Christ ... and the Toxic Anti-Evolutionism that often Taints the Gospel

This is a guest post by Emiliano Carneiro Monteiro and is the third post in our series on “Evangelicals and Evolution: A Student Perspective”. Emiliano is a doctoral student studying cellular biology with a focus on morphology at the Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. He is currently researching the digestive system of a Phasmid (stick bug) species, as well as physiological features of its digestive processes.

A) My New Life in Christ
My story with Christianity, and with its struggle with science, began on January 31st, 2007. In the middle of a great big mess in my life I met Alberto Malta, a very dear friend and a leader with Campus Crusade for Christ at the Universidade de São Paulo. I was in the last year of my undergraduate degree in biology and after a long talk with Alberto, I took the first step towards the Christian faith and accepted Christ. Before that, in my adolescence and throughout college, I would have described myself as an agnostic or an atheist, although today I realize my position was probably pantheistic. The Campus Crusade for Christ website published a little post about my story at: http://www.ccci.org/training/evangelism/cojourners/builder-model.aspx

B) My Introduction to Creationism
At the time, I was already well aware that some Christian denominations did not accept evolution and held a ‘literalistic’ interpretation of the book of Genesis. Although it surprised me at first I didn’t really mind; I was busy experiencing my new life and setting my things straight. Furthermore I saw no problem with Darwin's theory. Evolution didn't get in the way of my faith but actually helped. To me, it was a wonderful and elegant process that explained how life developed. Back then the subject of creation and origins rarely came up. When it did I often told people that I accepted evolution but wasn’t a fanatic about it and that there should be more profound and fulfilling explanations that lay outside science.

But tension soon arose. At the first church I attended (Igreja Batista Esperança) everyone kept talking about “Dr. Adauto Lourenço”. I soon discovered that he was a physicist, with a doctorate degree from Bob Jones University, and a creationist. I wasn’t completely aware at the time of what kind of arguments creationists used to defend their point of view. I never met Adauto Lourenço in person, but I rushed to buy a set of 5 DVDs with his lectures.

C) Discussions: Some Fruitless, some Fruitful
While watching the DVDs I had my first faith crisis. Here was a Christian preacher spreading information that was simply not true. Soon I ran across more and more information about the whole “Creation vs Evolution” subject. In no time I was familiar with most (if not all) arguments used by creationists to defend their point of view. I was also aware that almost all their arguments were false. To make the situation worse the topic suddenly seemed to be really important for those around me. However, the many discussions I had were tiring and fruitless, so I avoided arguments about it as much as I could when at Church or among Christian friends.

I even had one or two arguments with my girlfriend, Karollina, on the subject. She is also a biologist and played a big role in leading me to Jesus Christ. Until recently, she defended a creationist point of view (she was never profoundly interested in the whole controversy though). Through my own investigation, interest and dialogue, she became aware of the full array of Creationist’s arguments. She has since reviewed her ideas and now accepts the compatibility of evolution and the Christian faith.

D) Evangelical Christianity in Brazil
Evangelical Christianity is having truly exponential growth here in Brazil. That is great because many people are getting to know more about the gospel and are engaging in following Jesus Christ. It is also very good that we Brazilians are developing our own identity and addressing the unique problems we face here south of the equator. Still, the process is slow and evangelical Christians in Brazil tend to follow trends in the US evangelical church. Antagonism towards evolution is one harmful idea that the American church has exported to Brazil.

I’m extremely grateful to those who helped me grow in my Christian faith. Still, it breaks my heart to see so many honest followers of Jesus believe that one must deny evolution in order to be a Christian. That is due partly because of a lack of information, but also due to the spreading of misinformation (for example, the ministry of Dr. Adauto Lourenço). I continue to find the subject of evolution completely fascinating, and learn more and more everyday. I do not think that the knowledge of the theory of evolution should interfere in a destructive way with anyone’s beliefs.

E) Portuguese Resources on Science and Faith
Francis Collins’s book Language of God really helped me. I remember thinking while reading: “Hey, this guy agrees with me!”. I also had the opportunity to meet and talk to some ministers and theologians whose views on Christian faith and science differ from the creationists. Unfortunately very few books that show a positive relationship between faith and science get translated into Portuguese, and other resources in Portuguese are almost non-existent.

Instead, creationism is being widely promoted amongst evangelical communities in Brazil as being the one and only Christian approach to science. It is despairing for me to see anti-evolutionary misconceptions and false scientific statements being spread in a country that already has significant challenges with its educational system (poor management, and lack of investment from the state). I don’t think there has ever been a poll in Brazil to measure the acceptance of evolution, but I doubt the results would be good.

F) Conclusion
So that is my story. I am hopeful that with prayer, love and action, we may see a change in the evangelical churches in Brazil. I am hopeful that they can spread the Gospel in a way that is relevant for my fellow countrymen, but without the damaging additions to the Word of God that are intellectually faulty and hinder faith in Jesus Christ.

Paz de Cristo

My Journey from Opposing Evolution to Studying It

This is a guest post by Ryan Bebej and is the second in our series on “Evangelicals and Evolution: A Student Perspective”. Ryan is a Ph.D student at the University of Michigan in the Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology where he studies the early evolution of whales.

That I am currently studying evolution is somewhat of a miracle. If ten years ago someone had told me that today I would be earning my Ph.D. at a large public university, researching the evolution and paleontology of mammals, I would have never believed them. Why not? Well, for the majority of my life, I believed that the concept of biological evolution was complete rubbish. I was raised in a close-knit Christian family that was very active in our local church, and I had always been taught that the Bible was literal history, precluding any types of evolutionary scenarios.

These anti-evolution sentiments were indirectly affirmed even in my public high school. In the small town where I grew up, being a Christian was virtually assumed, and schools were very accommodating of religious belief—even in the classroom. I recall that the little background on evolutionary theory that I gleaned from my high school biology class was prefaced with a disclaimer that we didn’t have to believe any of it if we didn’t want to. Needless to say, I promptly forgot most of what was said about Charles Darwin, natural selection, and the like, and I continued believing what I thought almost everyone else around me believed: that God created the universe miraculously several thousand years ago and that the idea of evolution was simply not true.

My Initial Exposure to Evolution in College

However, once I got to college, things began to change; it was there that I began to seriously wrestle with evolutionary theory for the first time. In my introductory biology class at Calvin College, we read some articles about evolution by writers ranging from Phillip Johnson to Howard Van Till to Richard Dawkins. These initial readings didn’t convince me to change my views, but they did prompt me to start thinking critically about evolution for the first time.

In my second semester, I took an animal biology class that spent a good deal of time focusing on how evolution works according to population genetics. Prior to this, I had never really understood the basics of evolutionary mechanisms, and I admit that I was a bit alarmed at how plausible it seemed. Could evolution really have occurred? If it did, what would that mean for my faith? This became a crucial issue for me, and I began to read ravenously and watch anything and everything I could get my hands on that discussed evolution. Yet, despite my little obsession with the topic, if someone had asked me what I thought about evolution at that time, I would have answered with a resounding, “I have no clue.”

My Second Year: The Evidence Builds

I read a ton during the summer following my freshman year. By the time my sophomore year began, I had realized that there was an awful lot of strong evidence for biological evolution. During my second year of college, the strength of this evidence continued to grow. In my comparative anatomy course, the homology of structures across disparate animals, as revealed by their development, provided compelling evidence for common ancestry. I also took two geology courses, in which I learned about radiometric dating, stratigraphy, and how to interpret the rock record, and I became thoroughly convinced that the earth had to be billions of years old rather than thousands.

In a January term evolutionary biology class, we surveyed the fossil record, and I was completely overwhelmed by the anatomies of transitional fossils, of which I had virtually no prior knowledge. These fossils exhibited the mosaics of anatomical characteristics that one would expect to see in an intermediate form, and they came from fossil beds during the time periods between their proposed ancestors and descendents. In my mind, the evidence for the evolution of life on an ancient earth continued to grow (and this was before I even knew about the abundant genetic evidence). I became convinced that evolution was anything but false; in fact, given the weight of the evidence, it seemed to be the only coherent explanation of the past and present biological world.

Evolution and My Faith

But even as I began to accept that evolution was a real phenomenon, I still wasn’t sure how this could be reconciled with my Christian beliefs. Growing up, I had always thought that there were two positions: you were either an atheistic evolutionist or you were a Christian who was opposed to evolution—there was no middle ground. Fortunately, my Calvin professors, in both the science and religion departments, demonstrated to me that there are many people who don’t fall into these two polarized camps. There are many Christians who agree with the findings of the greater scientific community, while managing to retain—and even grow and strengthen—their faith. This revelation opened up a whole new set of doors to me that I had no idea even existed.

Since those first couple of years when I was afraid that my knowledge of evolution would lead to a crisis of faith, I have found the opposite to be true. My study of evolution as a scientist and my pursuit of integrating my scientific knowledge with my Christian beliefs have helped my faith to grow by leaps and bounds. I often wonder how my faith would have been affected had I been confronted with the evidence of evolution somewhere other than Calvin. If I had not had the support and encouragement of such understanding Christian professors who cared deeply about my personal and spiritual development, my faith might not have remained intact. But by God’s grace, I was in just the right place at the just the right time, and today I take great pleasure in studying the long history of life in God’s creation.

Evangelicals and Evolution - A Student Perspective: Introduction

This is the first post in a seven-part series on “Evangelicals and Evolution: A Student Perspective”.

For many evangelicals, their first serious encounter with evolution occurs as a student in post-secondary school. Evolution is certainly encountered and discussed prior to this, but it is usually in the form of anti-evolution propaganda. Our churches, youth ministries, Christian camps, and other Christian organizations are very good at attacking evolution; they are not so good at introducing thoughtful material on the dialogue between modern science and an evangelical expression of the Christian faith. Thus the first encounter with the evidence for evolution in college or university can be a formative experience for evangelical students; it can be traumatic or awe-inspiring, depressing or exhilarating, faith shaking or faith affirming.

Better Availability of Resources for Today's Students
Fortunately evangelical students today have access to much better resources than past generations. Today, there are numerous books, articles, and electronic material that provide a positive view of evolution from an evangelical perspective; even twenty years ago these resources were virtually non-existent. Today a healthy minority (maybe majority?) of evangelical scientists accept the scientific consensus for evolution, our OT biblical scholars acknowledge that the best scholarly interpretations of the ancient scriptures (including Genesis) do not in any way exclude evolution, and a healthy number of our theologians accept that God created through the process of evolution.

This recent, and significant, change is reflected in our mainstream evangelical institutions. For example, Wheaton (which could possibly be referred to as “Evangelicalism’s Rome”) has for years been offering a Theories of Origins science course for its undergraduates. The major course objective is to give students a background for evaluating the merits of scientific and theological claims for origins theories. Source material from a range of creationist positions (YEC, OEC, and EC) is reviewed in the course. Student surveys show that a YEC position on human origins is historically the position with the most support at the beginning of the course, and the position with the least support when the course ends.

The Series
Over the next month, in a series of posts on this blog, five post-secondary students will be sharing their perspective on evolution. Three science students will share their personal accounts on reconciling their faith with evolutionary science. In separate posts, Ryan Bebej and Eric DeVries will describe their transition from opposing evolution because of their faith, to accepting evolution while growing in their faith. Sandwiched between these posts, will be the story of Emiliano Monteiro, a student of evolutionary science, who found faith in Jesus Christ through a campus ministry, but then discovered that his new Christian community rejected the conclusions of the science he was studying. The fourth post in this series will be from Jordan Mallon. Jordan has been involved in the creation-evolution dialogue for quite some time, and he will share three concepts that he has found helpful in this dialogue. Finally, Bethany Sollereder, a theology student, will discuss why Christian academics often avoid the topic of evolution. Evangelical academia may be making progress, but there is still room for vast improvement.

The evangelical landscape on the science-faith dialogue has changed dramatically in the last generation. Although we are still a long way from making peace with science, I am hopeful that within another generation evangelicalism will have accomplished this once seemingly impossible objective. If we are to arrive there, it is this generation of students that will be carrying the torch.

Enjoy the series.