Evolution and Christianity
Does Evolution Contradict Christianity?
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Is Christianity compatible with the Theory of Evolution? It seems like it should be - after all, quite a few churches (including the Catholic Church) have recognized that the Theory of Evolution is acceptable for describing the development of life on this planet.
A great many Christians readily accept evolution as a scientifically accurate account of how life has developed - in fact many of the scientists who study evolution label themselves as Christians. Regularly we hear from a variety of evolution supporters on the internet that evolution and Christianity are not mutually exclusive and can, in fact, exist peacefully together.
However, quite a few fundamentalists from many denominations argue against such accommodation and insist that belief in evolution undermines the Christian faith. According to them, no True Christian (tm) can accept the explanation offered by evolutionary theory.
I have to say that I do sympathize with this latter position of the fundamentalists. In fact, I suspect that if a person is truly going to take Christianity seriously, then perhaps they cannot simultaneously accept the Theory of Evolution. Although I rarely credit Christian fundamentalists with sensible, reasonable arguments, I suspect that they may hold a stronger position than most liberal Christians in the matter.
Sin and Faith
Fundamentally speaking, the central message of Christianity is that Jesus Christ died and
was resurrected for our sins. We deserve death and eternal punishment, but he paid the
price for us. To paraphrase Paul: without that, the Christian faith is in vain.
So far, so good.
Now, why did he have to die? That question is a bit more complicated. As stated, he had to die because we deserve to die - and that is due to the fact that we are all horrible sinners. Why is that? There are two points of explanation.
The first is Original Sin, brought into the world by the disobedience of Adam and Eve. Because of this, everyone is born a sinner. What's more, once that happened, a second explanation comes into play: people started committing their own, new sins - thus making them worse sinners.
Without these sins, there would be no need for Jesus to be punished and killed. The question then becomes: is this notion of sin tenable from a naturalistic perspective? We have to approach it from a naturalistic and not supernaturalistic perspective because our central question involves evolution, and the process of evolution is supposed to describe the development of our species in a purely naturalistic manner.
This is what angers fundamentalists so much - the idea the humans are simply a flesh and blood development of the animal kingdom and not in fact spiritual creations of God. Given the framework of evolution, I'm not convinced that the traditional Christian notion of "sin" is tenable. Basically, if the evolutionary account of human origins is true, then there was certainly no literal Fall from Grace - no Adam and Eve disobeying the Christian God.
But if there was no Fall, then there was no advent of Original Sin - and without Original Sin and explusion from The Garden of Eden, then there is no reason to think that anything called "sin" (which is supposed to be disobedience to God) suddenly entered the world at all. If sin simple "evolved" into our ancestors through the natural development which God set into motion, why would God hold us accountable? In essence, a naturalistic development of sin means that insofar as we are naturally sinners, we simply are what our creator had us evolve into being.
All of this is obviously true if the Bible is read literally, as the fundamentalists do - thus their rejection of evolution is quite understandable. At the very least, their conception of humanity and the world would suffer irrevocably if they were to accept evolution as an explanation for human origins.
But is it still true if the Bible is read metaphorically or allegorically? I suspect so.
Allegorical Readings
To begin with, even if Genesis is read in a non-literal manner, how many liberal Christians
read the death and resurrection of Christ as not literal? Not many. Most liberal Christians
still believe in a literal crucifixion and resurrection - but unfortunately, a literal
death for an allegorical Fall makes little sense. Thus, there is some reason to suspect
that a purely allegorical reading might not be adequate.
Some might argue that "sin" should be read as simply "transgressing moral codes" and "original sin" is really the "original self-awareness" of moral codes - but whose moral codes? If we are the creators of the moral codes, then what we have is the assertion that God needed Jesus to die because we have trouble following rules we create for ourselves. Not only doesn't that make much sense, but it doesn't look much like traditional Christianity anymore.
In addition, there is evidence that other primates, like chimpanzees, not only have rudimentary rules within their groups but also an awareness of when they are and are not following them - the basis for morality. Are chimps sinning? Did Jesus die for them, too? Should we be sending missionaries to them in zoos and in jungles? Of course fundamentalists and traditionalists are concerned.
Some might also argue that "sin" is still "disobedience to God," but only where it concerns those moral rules God has given us. This eliminates the Fall of Original Disobedience, but it still has problems. For one thing, these same people are unlikely to argue that the moral rules from God have reached us unadulterated by human interests - so the situation begins to look a lot like the previous one described.
Moreover, the elimination of the indelible "stain" of Original Sin makes the necessity of the torture and death of Jesus much more difficult to justify and explain. Is an allegorical Fall a significant enough reason to warrant Jesus' sacrifice? I don't quite see how. Is my failure to perfectly uphold moral rules which may or may not come from God a significant enough reason to warrant Jesus' sacrifice? Again, I don't quite see how.
Furthermore, if we evolved from primitive primates, where exactly could Sin (described allegorically in Genesis) have come from? Where did it enter us? How could it have been our fault? Within the framework of evolution, sin does not appear to have any tangible, real existence. We are supposed to have sin, but did Neanderthals? Homo Habilis? Homo Erectus? Is is possible to logically argue that this "sin" was dependent upon some specific piece of genetic code which evolved into our species?
None of this can be easily argued. Sin, our alleged disobedience to God, appears to be nothing except one more religious concept created by some human beings and imposed upon other human beings. That, however, would mean that Jesus died for nothing, and no devout Christian can really accept that.
Souls & Evolution
There is yet another, related issue which has a serious impact upon whether or not a person
can be both a devout Christian and accept evolution: the soul.
As stated above, Jesus was supposed to have 'saved' us by dying for our sins. But it is not our physical bodies which have been saved - instead, it is our eternal souls. If we don't have souls, then it is unlikely that Jesus' alleged sacrifice had any real significance.
But how can the existence of a soul be reconciled with evolution? I'm not really sure. Although I do not believe in souls, I can at least comprehend how they might have been brought into existence along with a "special creation" of humanity. But where do souls come into play with the evolution of homo sapiens out of earlier hominids and before that primates? Did Cro Magnons have souls? Neanderthals? Homo Erectus? Why or why not?
What would make one hominid species so special that it would have a soul and not another hominid species? If they did have souls, were they saved without Jesus? If they weren't saved, then the Christian God is cruel and capricious. If they were saved without Jesus, then there's no reason for me to need Jesus. But if we are so special and are the only hominids to have, what on earth was the point of those earlier species of hominids? Why did they struggle, suffer, and die?
Why, in fact, was there a process of evolution at all? Why all the time, death, and suffering over millions of years of so many species now extinct? Was it just to create us?
The entire Neanderthal line apparently developed and ended without direct impact upon our eventual development - and for what? Christianity actually seems to make more sense if taken within the framework of a cosmology that reads Genesis literally in at least some ways, particularly when it comes to the special origins of humanity. Could it be that the fundamentalists are correct in asserting that belief in evolution leads to atheism? Maybe.
One word of caution: saying "God works in mysterious ways" is an essentially meaningless answer to all of this. All it serves to state is that "I don't know either, but I still believe." If there the Christian god-hypothesis is to be considered reasonable, it has to be able to deal with issues like those above.
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