Did Darwin Kill God?

[Dudeacus97]

This is a documentary I found recently on YouTube. It was on BBC's "Darwin Season." The description at the bottom of the video says this:

There are some who believe that Darwin's theory of evolution has weakened religion, fuelled in part by Richard Dawkins' publishing phenomenon The God Delusion. Conor Cunningham argues that nothing could be further from the truth.

Cunningham is a firm believer in the theory of evolution, but he is also a Christian. He believes that the clash between Darwin and God has been hijacked by extremists - fundamentalist believers who reject evolution on one side, and fundamentalist atheists on the other. Cunningham attempts to overturn what he believes are widely held but mistaken assumptions in the debate between religion and evolution.

He travels to the Middle East where he shows that from the very outset, Christianity warned against literal readings of the biblical story of creation. In Britain, he reveals that, at the time, Darwin's theory of evolution was welcomed by the Anglican and Catholic Churches. Instead, he argues that the conflict between Darwin and God was manufactured by American creationists in the 20th century for reasons that had very little to do with science and religion and a great deal to do with politics and morality.

Finally, he comes face to face with some of the most eminent evolutionary biologists, geneticists and philosophers of our time to examine whether the very latest advances in evolutionary theory do in fact kill God.

This programme, part of the BBC's Darwin Season, came from the realisation that it would touch on issues raised by Richard Dawkins in his book 'The God Delusion'. The publishing phenomenon has fuelled a widespread perception that the theory of evolution makes belief in God redundant, even perhaps perverse. But how compelling was that argument? It was clear that many Christians have easily been able to reconcile their belief in God with the theory of evolution. How was this possible? This was the question we wanted to explore and so we invited Dr Conor Cunningham, a Christian but also an eminent philosopher and theologian from the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham, to show how it was possible to believe in Darwin and God. Cunningham has just completed a book 'Evolution: Darwin's Pious Idea' to be published in the autumn, so he was ideally placed to explore this question. His argument is that we have been witnessing an unnecessary cultural war between religion and evolution that is damaging to both religion and science. Cunningham reveals that since the early days, mainstream Christianity's view of God and Creation has not been literal. The idea of reading the Book of Genesis literally is essentially a 20th century American phenomenon that had very little to do with science and religion and a great deal to do with the morality and politics of the time.

Jean Claude Bragard
Executive Producer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yU2y7jGWVs

When I was done watching it, I was very impressed. Before I watched it, I was juggling towards Theistic Evolution and Progressive Creationism, unsure where I was going to go. After this, I have switched to Theistic Evolution and now see God's majesty in a light I've never felt before. I've never felt so close to him since I was touched by the Holy Spirit for the first time.

What are your thoughts of this documentary?

[neo-x]

I am fascinated by evolution. I cant watch this documentary because YouTube is not available in Pakistan but I am theistic evolutionist in the very loose sense of the word.

And I am very pleased that you gave some insight into evolutionary studies. I just remembered that we had a little talk on it some time ago. You were searching for anti-evolution books(?) I think.

[Ivellious]

As I've noted before, last semester I took a course called "The Evolution-creationism Controversy" which studied the social, legal, and political impact evolution has had since Darwin's days. The description seems to basically nail it right on head, based on what I learned...The only place where anti-evolution Christians have flourished since the first World War is America, whereas basically every other industrialized part of the world (and their religious groups) have come to accept the Theory of evolution. It's actually pretty stunning if you actually look at the history of the anti-evolution fundamentalist movement in America. It is literally all about money and control/power. And of course, even today it is remarkable how wealthy you can become simply by opening your own creation museum or writing your own book on the evils of evolution. Only in America...

EDIT: And as a side note, I rather dislike Richard Dawkins specifically for his whole anti-religion slant. If people like him weren't so damn vocal about evolution "killing" God in their minds, we might actually be able to get somewhere in the conversation regarding evolution and religion. Instead, they just fuel the conservative-creationist movement in America by giving them an easy evolution=atheism=evil thing to point at.

[Dudeacus97]

As I've noted before, last semester I took a course called "The Evolution-creationism Controversy" which studied the social, legal, and political impact evolution has had since Darwin's days. The description seems to basically nail it right on head, based on what I learned...The only place where anti-evolution Christians have flourished since the first World War is America, whereas basically every other industrialized part of the world (and their religious groups) have come to accept the Theory of evolution. It's actually pretty stunning if you actually look at the history of the anti-evolution fundamentalist movement in America. It is literally all about money and control/power. And of course, even today it is remarkable how wealthy you can become simply by opening your own creation museum or writing your own book on the evils of evolution. Only in America...

EDIT: And as a side note, I rather dislike Richard Dawkins specifically for his whole anti-religion slant. If people like him weren't so damn vocal about evolution "killing" God in their minds, we might actually be able to get somewhere in the conversation regarding evolution and religion. Instead, they just fuel the conservative-creationist movement in America by giving them an easy evolution=atheism=evil thing to point at.

Additionally, the Young-Earth Creationists and ardent Anti-Darwinists are supporting their movement, since the New Atheists are outright shocked and afraid that they are going to undermine all of Biology with their psuedoscience (my computer thought this was misspelled.) It's similar to how the Westboro Baptist Church fuels the Gay "Rights" movement and Islamic terrorists are promoting Islamophobia (my computer thought this was also misspelled.)

I also think he misrepresented ID in this documentary. What he describes sounds more like Progressive Creationism, like what Hugh Ross teaches. From reading what the ID community says on their website, it seems to be more on the origins of life. They don't seem to take a stance on who the designer is, either, opting for religious neutrality to get as much support as possible, along with wanting to get it taught in Public Schools by obtaining neutrality. There are Christian, Agnostic, Jewish, Muslim, and even Atheist (how an atheist would fit ID into his worldview is his problem) proponents of Intelligent Design.

Even if he misrepresented them, though, It was still a massive blow to Progressive Creationism. Also, here's another thing I thought of about it: If God progressively created every life form in Earth's history, then why are there so many millions of years ago? Couldn't He have just made all of the modern animals that we see today? Did He decide "I'm going to go and give a lizard different-sized teeth and make it mammal-like" when He created the gorgon and dimetrodon? Did He decide "I'm going to make bird-like land dinosaurs" when He made the raptors? Did He decide "I'm going to make something like a fish, but it breathes air and walks on land" when He made tiktallik? (However he's spelled.) In Progressive Creationism, it seems that God is constantly toying with reality, like we're all some giant simulation game and He's the player, seeing how reptiles would work with different-sized teeth and how He could make all sorts of environments for fun. Maybe He was experimenting, seeing what works and what doesn't, but He's omniscient, so He can see through time (He is not bound to it) and see what's going to work out. A God of Progressive Creationism who is constantly experimenting with his creations becomes much less like Progressive Creationism and more like Theistic Evolution.

[theophilus]

When Darwin did his research he didn't have our knowledge of how heredity works so he arrived at some wrong conclusions.

http://discussions.godandscience.org/vi ... =7&t=38411