Let's start with some back-story. Over the last few months--for whatever reason--I've been seeing a lot more articles and things online about the debate between "creationism" and "evolution" (I use the quotes because those terms can be rather vague, and I want to assure you all that I mean them in the vaguest possible sense). You know--the whole "OMG CopurnicuSTUPID and DERPwin were n00bz, God 4EVR"-vs.-"Science FTW, biotches" kinda thing. That debate doesn't bother me; I enjoy participating in it on occasion, even.
The thing that bothers me is that I don't completely understand why it is such a Big Deal.
It's something I've never really understood about the fundamentalist "Bible-as-literal-truth" sort of position; what difference does it make? Does it really have to be six-literal-day creation? Really? Does God's existence or validity require a geocentric cosmology? Is there no possible way for mankind's salvation to be just as necessary and important in a world where human life developed over millenia?
I've never had the importance of this debate fully explained to me. It's not like, say, abortion where the presumed ensoulment of the embryo is what makes it an issue for the religious pro-life types. That I understand; that's the sort of thing I can handle as a basis for a position. But what's the basis for the vehement attack on the whole "modern" cosmology? What moral turpitude is the scientific community committing there?
I have a few speculative notions on what the actual issue is, but they're just that: speculative.
- "No supernatural causes means no God": This one I hear a lot, but I don't see how it follows. I think the basic argument is that science seeks naturalistic explanations for everything, but God is a supernatural agent. So, if science succeeds, you just apply Occam's Razor and excise God from the universe. That won't work, though; Occam's Razor only applies to such explanatory principles when they are sufficient for the explanandum, which I doubt will ever be possible, given the ex nihilo and conservation constraints which exist in most dominant scientific theories. So, if you take the approach of "I have a reason to believe in God" and "If creation wasn't a miracle, there's no reason to believe in God" leading to "Creation was a miracle", then I have a perfectly valid scientific argument for you, based on what I consider to be pretty sound empirical evidence: "There's stuff! Holy shit, it's a miracle!"
- "No 'Adam and Eve' means no fall, which means no sin": I can almost get behind this one as a theological position. If the point of Christianity, say, is that Christ sacrificed himself to redeem humanity from the sin that was introduced to the universe by the two unique progenitors of the species, then yes--I can see how threatening the "two-unique-progenitor" idea is a problem (why you need sin at all is a different theological question all together). I suppose that attacking the basis for sin would overturn the entire basis for the religion, but I somehow don't think that this is the main crux of the cosmological debate. I think if pressed, most evolutionists would be perfectly willing to let the theists pick two early homo sapiens sapiens or two of whatever proto-humans and say "These two; God put the souls in here". Selective ensoulment doesn't have a whole lot to do with evolution, in my understanding.
- "Evolution means that God's original creation wasn't perfect": I'm just throwing this one out there for kicks, because personally I think this is utterly idiotic. I'm a software architect; I design systems. To me, a well-designed system is always better than a kludge-filled hack. Things like fault-tolerance and autonomy are the hallmarks of a well-designed system; the more the programmer has to mess with it during operation, the worse it is. So, if God made the entire universe as a system that works on its own with a minimum of interference, God is awesome. Designing a perfectly-functioning static system--while admirable--isn't particularly impressive. Designing something as complex and dynamic as the universe required by science and having that work perfectly--that's the kind of perfection I want my God to embody.
- "Science robs life of its significance.": Again, I think this is rubbish. The significance I find in my life is not tied to being chosen or created by God; it's not the actions and experiences of another being that make my life worthwhile, nor is it my importance relative to the events in the universe. I don't have to live at the center of the universe, and I don't have to have been specifically detailed by some creator. I exist, whether as an ensouled being or as a haphazard collection of elements bound together by chance. I don't see why being designed by God makes me any more or less worthwhile than being the product of evolution.
Anyway, that's just a few ideas I had or arguments I'd read--nothing too comprehensive. I just don't get it; the argument is obviously not about theology, nor is it about empirical science.
What principle says we can't accept both?
