With just a few days until the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth on the 12th of February, this week will bring new energy to the brutal and often vicious battle in courts, schools, and religious institutions across the nation. And it’s not only in this country.
Last week I posted about a survey in the Guardian which reports that even in much more secular England, Britons — like Americans — are evenly divided between those who “believe” in evolution and those who don’t. In each nation, about 50% of those surveyed agreed with Darwin’s approach to how we got here and 50% did not.
Those are scary numbers, and painfully ironic too, given the high degree of correlation between those in the anti-evolution half and people who report deep concern with the threat posed to western values and culture by radical Islam. I guess they don’t appreciate that it’s the fanatical attachment to any belief, including their own, that threatens us all, not the particular tradition in which the fanaticism finds its footnotes. But that’s another topic.
For now, I would settle for finding language that helps us end a needless 200-year-old cultural struggle, which helps nobody but the most strident ideologues. Rather than fighting against each other to determine which side is Right, we should find ways to learn from each other, precisely because we do not address these issues in the exact same ways. And to those ideologues whose vision of either science or religion is so narrow as to assume that no such learning is possible, we should say a pox on both your houses!
We can start with the phrase “believe in evolution,” commonly used by so many including those reporting about the recent survey in England. Using the same word to describe faith in God and support for a scientific theory strikes me as foolish and pernicious. It’s bad for both science and faith, creating a false dichotomy between the two positions – one which serves nobody but a small group of culture warriors dedicated to making our public culture as stupid and ugly as possible.
How can one use identical language to describe the decision to follow a particular spiritual path which is necessarily beyond scientific testing, and the decision to rely on a theory which is the product of such ongoing testing? We may use the same word, but are they really the same kind of belief?

The theory of evolution is just that: the best possible explanation possessed by science after years of testing and inquiry, which explains the process of biological development and differentiation. It makes no claims about the meaning or purpose of that process and represents no necessary threat to faith in God or in the eternal truth of a revealed scripture, if that happens to be one’s belief.
Like all scientific theories, and unlike religious faith, those who support the theory of evolution are prepared to dump it for something better at any moment. In fact, scientific breakthroughs occur when past theories are disproved more than when they are confirmed. It’s the exact opposite of religious truth, which is premised on immutable truths which can/must not give way.
I am not opposed to the notion of eternal religious truth. In fact, I trust in it about many things. But I don’t confuse that kind of truth, or belief in it, with my belief in evolution. They are two different issues, and blending them together brings out the worst in each.
Even words like evolutionists and creationists, so often used to describe the camps in this ongoing battle, only serve to highlight the most arrogant and coercive forces within their respective intellectual communities. “Evolutionist” evokes a God-hating materialist who wants nothing more than to rid the world of “silly ancient beliefs” and if necessary, those who subscribe to them. And creationists are portrayed as angry, fearful people prepared to battle in the name of God, against anyone who does not share their beliefs. That just doesn’t describe most people, regardless of the ideological camp in which they place themselves.
Believing in evolution simply means that one trusts the scientific method to provide answers about the mechanics of the physical universe. All one need posit to qualify as a creationist is that some force which exists beyond the laws of nature, willed our world into existence with some initial act or thought, one which may well have triggered the very processes described by Darwin’s theory.
It’s entirely possible to be both a creationist and an evolutionist. To be sure one need not be both, but if we addressed this ongoing debate which consumes huge amounts of time and financial resources in a way that reflected that possibility, we would all be better off.
Instead of continuing to nurture a culture of people doing battle over that which they most deeply believe, we should focus on how different intellectual worlds struggle with different kinds of questions, and how regardless of one’s beliefs, there is much to be learned from them all.