Evolution

The number one reported conflict between faith and science today is probably the (overly) sensationalized conflict over the Theory of Evolution.

There's a brief post on the Internet that suggests one possible road to resolving this conflict. Readers can view it for themselves. It may take a little background study for those unfamiliar with some of the scientific concepts, and in the end, it suggests the outlines of a model that may not please the "fundamentalists" on either side. But it may appeal to some of those who feel there is truth in both camps.

To me, this model suggests that both camps can be right in their basic points. The analogy is made to Plato's Cave, a situation in which the everyday "reality" is a mere shadow of a much higher reality. This suggests that good, careful science can be consistent and accurate in terms of its own framework, and yet the spiritual description of Paradise -- as is found in the first part of Genesis -- can also be true and consistent on its plane just as it is described.

On the other hand, this introduces the concept of a higher plane, something I'd guess many scientists will criticize as unnecessary and unscientific. And it also proposes that in the everyday plane of our existence that the Earth really is some 4.5 billion years old, something I'd guess many fundamentalists won't accept. Perhaps I shouldn't assume either of those reactions, but based on the debate in prior years, those are my best guesses.

However, the view of this world as a shadow of a higher realm is one with a long history in theology. As recently as last December, such a model was invoked in an article by David Hart in the Wall Street Journal on the tsunami, and the theology of a world where such events occur. A friend has included portions of that article in his blog, including the line, "Perhaps no doctrine is more insufferably fabulous to non-Christians than the claim that we exist in the long melancholy aftermath of a primordial catastrophe, that this is a broken and wounded world, that cosmic time is the shadow of true time, and that the universe languishes in bondage to "powers" and "principalities"--spiritual and terrestrial--alien to God." This is a direct reference to such a shadow world.

The Meeting of the Ways

The hope of this blog is to contribute to the dialogue and reconciliation of science and Christianity. There is a Bible verse that symbolizes this to me, in the story of Christ's entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday:

Mark 11:4 - And they went their way, and found the colt tied by the door without in a place where two ways met; and they loose him.

We who believe in both these pathways of human civilization are in many ways like this colt, tied in a place where, "two ways met". We hope to be loosed under God's guidance to proceed with scientific understanding into the Holy City of God.

This is not a course without disagreements and strife. In yet another Bible verse, we find similar symbolism, in the story of Paul's shipwreck:

Acts 27:41 And falling into a place where two seas met, they ran the ship aground; and the forepart stuck fast, and remained unmoveable, but the hinder part was broken with the violence of the waves.

And so we too may encounter stormy seas in this quest, and find our ship at risk from, "the violence of the waves." ...