Seeking Common Ground, Research Paper Example

Seeking Common Ground: Christian Geologists and the Establishment of Inclusive Theology

In their paper, “Theologians Need to Hear from Christian Geologists About Noah’s Flood,”Wolgemuth, Bennett and Davidson put forth two arguments: that there is inescapable scientific/geologic evidence the Earth is older than 10,000 years; and, that belief in the natural does not require rejection of the supernatural.

The historical basis of Young Earth Creationism is the Bible itself.  It is an “all-or-nothing” belief system that does not permit contemplation of the fact that natural evidence of the Earth’s history does not, necessarily,refute the teachings of the Bible.  As a strictly faith-based philosophy, Young Earth Creationism not only stands in opposition to the kind of geologic evidence laid out in Wolgemuth, Bennett and Davidson, it opposes the very notion of scientific inquiry as a means of helping us understand the relationship between the divine and the natural.

We see here two diametrically opposed viewpoints at work.  Young Earth Creationism draws on a history thousands of years old, upon which Christians base their lives and which frames their “window on the world.”  Geologic inquiry and investigation is a comparatively new discipline, one which creationists equate with other science-based theories such as evolution and the Big Bang, which are anathema to the creationist outlook.

Toward a scientific explanation

Eighteenth-century scientists could not reconcile a strictly biblical explanation for the earth’s creation with scientific evidence found in bedrock layers.  What they found provided no evidence to support catastrophism, which posited that events such as the Flood, as told in Genesis, accounted for shifts in land mass.

In the late 1700s, Scottish geologist James Hutton claimed that the Earth’s history could be interpreted based on observable processes.  This introduction of scientific inquiryestablished, as its baseline principle, that uniformity of existing natural processes should provide the framework for studying the Earth’s geologic history.  This influential paradigm, which aided Charles Darwin in his work, is the theoretical “ancestor” of the arguments laid out by modern-day Christian geologists.

Why Christian Geologists Should be Heard

In the paper presented by Wolgemuth, Bennett and Davidson, they quote the Apostle Paul, who stated in Romans 1 that “God’s eternal character and divine nature are manifest in what he has created” (Wolgemuth, Bennett and Davidson, p. 13).  They go on to say that, “If the creation speaks of a specific history, it is our belief that God’s creation speaks truthfully and the history is real” (Wolgemuth, Bennett and Davidson, p. 13).  In other words, it is possible to gain a knowledge and appreciation of God’s creation through a better understanding of the physical world.

While Young Earth Creationists would have us believe that there is room for nothing but faith in the biblical account of creation, conversely, there are strict adherents to a naturalistic theory which presupposes, perhaps arrogantly so, that geology and evolution have shown beyond question that belief in a Creator is a product of mere superstition.  The problem here, it would seem, could be equated to philosophical differences between Atheism and Agnosticism – if, in spite of science, it is not possible to possess empirical knowledge of everything, how can one profess a truly atheisticviewpoint.

If scientists can claim that physical evidence, which is tangible, cannot be refuted, it stands to reason (and fairness) that a purely scientific explanation should not preclude the possibility that there are indeed things that we can take on faith.  That what rocks and sediment alone can tell us are all that can be known.

“Although many details remain to be worked out, it is already evident that all the objective phenomena of the history of life can be explained by purely naturalistic or, in a proper sense of the sometimes abused word, materialistic factors. They are readily explicable on the basis of differential reproduction in populations (the main factor in the modern conception of natural selection) and of the mainly random interplay of the known processes of heredity… Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind” (Johnson, p.1).

This quote from Harvard paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson reflects the kind of blind certitude that Wolgemuth, Bennett and Davidson warned against, albeit from the Young Earth Creationists.  It also helps explain why Christian geologists should have a voice in the debate and why their viewpoint has the potential to, at the very least, foster a more open-minded exchange between strict faith and strict science.

Common ground?

It is interesting and should be remembered that in Darwin’s work, Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, he presumed the existence of a Creator, or creative force.  Subsequent findings and theories have tended to distort this fact, but it is instructive in that the scientist who theorized about man’s primal antecedents should underlay his work with a belief in the divine.  The tendency to explain this position by saying that Darwin was simply a product of his time plays to a modern scientific chauvinism.  Darwin above all appeared to understand and appreciate the power of creation and that life itself is the supreme expression of that creativity.  In A New Reading of Evolution: a Study of Man, Henry Clayton Thompson reproduces Darwin’s statement of belief.

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one…” (Thompson, p. 29).

As Phillip E. Johnson pointed out in his 1993 article, “Creator or Blind Watchmaker?”,such statements about a “purposeless” universe close the door to the possibility that evolution could be part of God’s plan, a “gradual process of development that a purposeful Creator might have chosen to employ” (Johnson, p.1).

One of the most direct, and eloquent, statements about the synchronous relationship between the natural and the divine comes from Wayne Grudem’s book Systematic Theology, as quoted in Wolgemuth, Bennett and Davidson.

“God’s providence provides a basis for science: God has made and continues to sustain a universe that acts in predictable ways” (Wolgemuth, Bennett and Davidson, p. 13).  Such an understanding could do much to sustain Christians in their faith and provide an acceptable theological model for scientists.

Works Cited

Johnson, Phillip E.  Creator or Blind Watchmaker? First Things.  January 1993.

Thompson, Henry C. A New Reading of Evolution: a Study of Man. New Reading Publishing: 1907.

Wolgemuth, K., Bennett, G.S., Davidson, K. “Theologians Need to Hear from Christian Geologists About Noah’s Flood.”  From Evangelical Theological Society presentation. New Orleans, La.: 2009.