August 2/6, 2006

The Language of God: Faith & Science
(Creation and Evolution)

There's an old legend that the place where Jesus was crucified is actually the original site of the Garden of Eden... where God planted creation and formed Adam, the first man and from him, formed also Eve, mother of the human race.

Of course, things changed over the years, the garden was lost by sin, and the site became a mound of death, the hill called Calvary. Then when Jesus died, this legend says, his blood flowed from the cross and touched a human skull lying on the ground beneath the cross... according to the legend, actually the skull of Adam, still there on the ground. So Adam, too, was baptized, saved by the sacrifice of Christ.

In medieval paintings of the crucifixion, you can see this; a skull is often included in the scene, and now you know why. The same pastor who told me this also mentioned an icon presently hanging in a church in the city of Jerusalem. It shows the risen Christ standing in a plowed field holding two heads by the hair, as if (this pastor said) plucking them from the ground like fresh carrots. One head is Adam's, the other Eve's. Christ has plowed up the earth in order to replant it with life, you see, and he retrieves the treasure buried in it - Adam, Eve, and by extension, you and I. [1]

Now what possible point can I make with these two very odd illustrations? I re-found these two stories in an old sermon of mine for the 25th anniversary of Earth Day (back in 1995) - had forgotten about them, but when I re-discovered them, immediately I thought of how remarkable it is, that long ago, in that pre-scientific legendary age, those people nonetheless understood that we are creatures, formed from the dust of the ground, that we are related to the earth by our very nature. By our creation at the hands of God, we are part of our physical environment... and yet by God's touch we are restored.

I thought, these visual stories could illustrate an enduring doctrine of creation - from 'way back pre-pre-science in Genesis and the Jewish Books of Moses, to the Middle Ages when science as we know it was just beginning to be kindled, and then to our own scientific age... and our odd American uneasiness about science, our origins, and our environment. Global warming is one element of that for another time... but this weekend, what about our origins in the soil that brought us forth? We are no longer a PRE-scientific people. If we are formed from the earth, we'd like to know HOW did that happen... and when... and what are we to think of that? In other words, creation and evolution, science and faith.

I come to this topic from my own pre-scientific childhood in a conservative and literalist Christian home... Lutheran, yes, but still biblically simplistic. Even there in rural Oklahoma, however, we could not escape science and the questions it seemed to raise about the claims of Christian faith. I remember struggling in 4th grade to reconcile the fossil evidence for dinosaurs with biblical claims against it. So I've always had a personal and a pastoral investment in helping our church's children avoid conflicts between faith and science, especially those foolish and unnecessary arguments over creation and evolution. Earlier in the summer it occurred to me to use a Sunday to address these questions, and here we are. You may or may not agree with me but at least hear me out.

To help our confirmation students pay attention in a difficult setting (in church, that is), we ask them to write Worship Notes. Amazing, what intricate designs and doodles they can draw on just a half-sheet of paper, but often they write something worth reading - and I read each and every Worship Note I get. Here are two of them I've saved:

"How does the theory of evolution affect the creation story?"

"Why did God create science if it proves God doesn't exist? Or does it?"

See, our students in the 21st century also are asking questions of faith in this scientific age. Of course they're asking; 7th graders are smart enough to notice polar opposites. 45% of Americans hold the view that the earth is no more than 10,000 years old, created in six 24-hour days precisely as described in Genesis 1. And the vast majority of science - medicine, physics, biology, astronomy, genetics, chemistry - honors the theory that life and the universe have evolved over something like 14 billion years of existence. [2]

This difference may or may not be a personal issue for you but it still may push our buttons when conservative Christians try to steer a school board, for example, to certain decisions about curriculum, or we get into discussions with friends or classmates or members of other churches about faith and science.

For years now I've recommended something that others call "theistic evolution" - that's an inelegant description and not very personal, but it means that "God created the heavens and the earth and here's (probably) how he did it." That's a faith statement, by the way. I'm not a scientist; I can't claim to know much that's reliable about evolution. I can't make credible scientific statements from a platform of faith (or ignorance), just as science (as science) can't make credible claims about faith... such as, "Evolution rules out the need for God" or worse, "Evolution proves there is no God." That's absurd on the face of it because it's not a scientific statement; it's a hypothesis that can't be tested and therefore it's a statement made from a platform of belief... in the same way as any statement that the Bible rules out the possibility of the development of species.

Both science and faith, creationists and evolutionists, have often over-stepped the common-sense limitations of their position. Scientists, certainly, ought to know better - they've been trained to be precise - but people of faith have been known to be pushy, too, eh? These days, any discussion of origins sooner or later gets to questions of belief, the existence of God, atheism, and faith - because we've all made those subjects intertwined. Our culture - religious and scientific as it is - our culture has forced us all to link questions of science and questions of faith. Now, I think I can make a good case for faith, based on my own life of faith [11] - but I'd rather spend your time today talking about the language of God. And the language of God is written down... in the human genome. There's a faith/science statement for you, eh?

To prepare for this sermon I bought and read this book (The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief) when I saw it reviewed in Time magazine; I recommend it. [3] Francis Collins is the head of the Human Genome Project which mapped the genetic code of the human race - 3 billion letters long in 4-letter DNA sequences... Science at its highest level of competence and precision, multiple layers of international competition (even) to confirm or revise theories and replicate results. Collins managed, guided, and participated in this project not as a Christian but as a molecular geneticist with credentials in math, medicine, and biochemistry. The book is his story of faith and science.

When the Human Genome Project was completed and announced, President Clinton said, "We are learning the language in which God created life" and in the process, he said, "we are in awe of the complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God's most divine and sacred gift." [4] Both science and faith speak this language of God. Both faith and science are ways to seek and know truth, and both are forms of worship. Both are revealed one step at a time by the One who made them both to reveal himself.

Francis Collins' journey to faith started one day when, as a physician, he was treating a patient.

An older woman, suffering daily from severe untreatable angina, asked me what I believed. It was a fair question; we had discussed many other important issues of life and death, and she had shared her own strong Christian beliefs with me. I felt my face flush as I stammered out the words "I'm not really sure." Her obvious surprise brought into sharp relief a predicament that I had been running away from for nearly all of my twenty-six years: I had never really seriously considered the evidence for and against belief. That moment haunted me for several days. Did I not consider myself a scientist? Does a scientist draw conclusions without considering the data? Could there be a more important question in all of human existence than "Is there a God?" And yet there I found myself, with a combination of willful blindness and something that could only be properly described as arrogance, having avoided any serious consideration that God might be a real possibility. Suddenly all my arguments seemed very thin, and I had the sensation that the ice under my feet was cracking.

This realization was a thoroughly terrifying experience... [5]

I read you this lengthier piece because - just as this scientist is challenging his colleagues to investigate faith with an open mind - I believe people of faith ought to approach science with minds open to the wonders and the language of God that are revealed in science. Francis Collins began to realize that as a scientist he was speaking (or thinking) from ignorance. Might some Christians be thinking and speaking in ignorance of science?

In ten pages Francis Collins tells the steps he then took toward faith, and it's not spiritually generic, either; toward the end of the book he tells about faith in Jesus Christ. [6] But the purpose he wrote is to give the solidly scientific reasons why evolution appears to be the tool, the language, God uses to create, then and now... and how evolution itself, far from being a roadblock to faith, evolution can be considered an argument supporting faith.

The counter-claims of 7-day creationists, Collins says, are like insisting that two plus two doesn't equal four. [7] "Molecular support for the theory of evolution

... has convinced virtually all working biologists that Darwin's framework of variation and natural selection is unquestionably correct... 'Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.'" [8] In fact, Collins says - and I agree with him - it actually does damage to our Christian credibility for Christian churches to be so blindly hostile to such obvious scientific evidence. [9]

Stories of creation in Genesis - and there are two stories, by the way, with a different sequence and different emphases - those creation stories are creeds of faith, not scientific texts. Genesis tells us not the HOW but the WHY and the WHO. Why was the universe started? Because the Creator is a God of relation-ship. And who is this? The God so personal in these relationships that he is pictured with dirt on his hands. Later on he is pictured with nail-prints in those palms. This earth and we its inhabitants are personally important to God - and personally responsible to God.

Francis Collins, like so many of us, doesn't believe there is or should be an either/or. Creation or evolution... faith or science... that's a false choice that has no integrity either as a system of belief or as a search for truth. Galileo (who was not always right, but at least he asked the questions) said, "I don't believe that the God who has given us sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." [10] There you have it - a useful, scientific, and altogether true statement... of faith!

Nathan Castens
Chanhassen, Minnesota

[1] I no longer remember who the pastor was nor the source he quoted (if any)

[2] The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, Francis S. Collins. New York: Free Press, 2006. p. 172 & repeatedly

[3] Time, "Reconciling God and Science," July 17, 2006

[4] Collins, p. 2

[5] p. 20

[6] p. 219 f.

[7] p. 174

[8] p. 141

[9] quoting Augustine, p. 157 (Collins has sprinkled great quotes throughout his book)

[10] p. 158

[11] Here's an addendum, if you're interested...
I don't get to my faith from proof of any kind, either by science or by Bible. I get there by faith, a gift of God through the convergence of several things. I was raised in a family environment of faith. In spite of what I said in this sermon about that family environment, the faith I learned wasn't a dumb, blind faith. It was perhaps naïve about the world, but it was faith... faith in a quite active daily relationship with God personal and receptive, forgiving, God a compassionate Companion.

Even now, when I am listening, God seems to speak to me through the Bible and the Christian church. God seems to touch me in Holy Communion and in the words I speak in worship, along with other Christians, in the Lord's Prayer and the Creed. I have experienced God in my sorrow and in the good things that happen to me every day. That's the evidence I have for faith - personal experience.

But not only that. Also evidence from outside. Other people say they have experienced the same things that I have (above) in the same way. Other people very much smarter than I am and in very different settings have thought carefully and deeply and come to the same conclusion: There is a God, and that God is personal, pays attention to us, and loves us. This is what the Bible is, revealing more than I alone could discover about God or understand, especially God revealed in Jesus Christ.

Some people point to "evidence" that there is no God but I see so much other "evidence" that God does exist and that God is good. How do we account for the presence of so much good in the world? Yes there is a great deal of evil and distress, but what about all the good that happens? Where does that come from? How do we account for miracles? There may not be many, but those there are... why? And the liveliness, energy, creativity, compassion, and durability of the Christian church? Anyone can explain the bad stuff Christians have perpetrated over the centuries - Christians haven't lived up to their faith-claims but down to the lowest animal traits of the human race. But how explain all the consistent good that has come from the Church? And what's the origination behind the Big Bang, or, as someone put it, Why is there something rather than nothing?

So - for me, at least - it doesn't threaten my faith in the least to hear so-called proof that God does not exist or that evolution calls into question my faith in God. No, it doesn't; we're not talking the same language. Nate