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Dissecting Biology and Theology

Ron Coody - 3/10/2009

In the eighties at High School I had to take biology along with all other sophomores. One day we got to the chapter in the textbook on evolution. My teacher simply stated that she didn’t believe in evolution, that God created everything, but that we could read the chapter if we wanted. At that time it was legal in Louisiana to give equal time to both perspectives about the origin of the species. That short discussion is one of the very few things I clearly remember from tenth grade.

I went on earn a degree in microbiology at Louisiana Tech, so I become thoroughly acquainted with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. One day a professor at Tech discovered that I believed in God and laughed mockingly, commenting something to the effect that such a belief was silly. Of course conversation happened on government property and during work hours, so the “wall of separation of church and state” lost a few bricks on that exchange and many other ones like it. To his credit, one of my microbiology professors at Tech announced in class one day that Louisiana law required him to say that evolution could have happened either randomly or at the initiative of a Creator. Even though he didn’t believe in a Creator, he said he could see no reason why one couldn’t use evolutionary processes to fill the biosphere with diverse life.

I can clearly remember that day, just like I remember the day from tenth grade. I guess it’s a little more proof this is a red button subject that leaves a big impression one way or the other on young minds, and why it stubbornly keeps coming up in national conversation. Though the Louisiana law and those like it have been repealed, new laws to “teach the controversy” have been proposed, debated, and fought over in federal courts. Currently a new law in Louisiana will allow teachers to speak freely about evidence both for and against evolutionary theory.

However, this controversy, for most folks, really isn’t about science, it’s about God. The questions “is evolution true or not”, and “does God exist or not”, are irrelevant to one another. You could answer either question either way and they would not contradict each other. You could say that evolution did not happen, that the earth is only six thousand years old, that humans mysteriously appeared out of no where, and at the same time, it could still be true that God doesn’t exist. Why not just say a super-advanced race of aliens created everything living. At the same time, you could easily say that evolution occurred and God exists, that he simply used natural processes for his purposes. For instance, no modern person believes God is sitting on a cloud throwing down lightening bolts, but many Christians do believe God is sovereign and controls whether a lightening bolt strikes a house or a tree according to his divine plans, so that he is controlling nature, but in ways imperceptible to our human senses. Darwin ’s theories, like Newton ’s theories or Pasteur’s theories, must be judged by science, not theology. Whether right or wrong Darwin didn’t prove or disprove God any more than Newton or Einstein. Also, science can’t judge theology, like the misguided attempt to conclude “God can’t be loving because there is so much suffering in the world.”

This controversy is an age-old disagreement between people who believe in God and people who don’t. A Jewish writer wrote three thousand years ago, “The fool says in his heart, there is no God.” In reply the atheist states, “the fool says in his heart there is a God.” Who is right? Does a proper understanding of Darwin ’s Theory of Evolution settle the issue? To even ask such a question seems absurd, like asking a child who just discovered how a light bulb works, “Do you still believe in God?”

If any more legislation should be passed, I suggest that educators be held liable for teaching atheism as a scientific fact or as the most probable explanation for absolute reality. It makes no difference whether an economics teacher says, “Marxist economic theory best explains the bible,” or a psychology professor says, “Freud disproved the God hypothesis,” or a biology teacher says, “Darwinism proves there is no Creator.” Whatever the subject matter, state education has no business teaching a religion, in the sense that a religion is a belief system claiming to have the final truth about the existence or non-existence of God.