If you dispute the mechanism of evolution by natural selection, how do you explain the data of paleobiology? For example, how do you explain all of the "blind alleys" and extinct species of earth's long history--the evolutionary adaptations that survived for specific eras, under specific environmental conditions? How do you explain the observed differentiation of species based on differential environments throughout the biosphere--e.g., the fact that island variants of species tend to be smaller than their mainland relatives? How do you explain the very gradual process of increasing complexity of life forms following eons of unicellular life in the primordial oceans, at a time when earth had not yet developed an oxygenated atmosphere? In short, how do you explain the vast progressively differentiated, complex evolving ecosystems of paleobiology? What is your mechanism? Do you think that God was micromanaging all of these genetic variations on a "case by case" basis, rather than using natural laws? Why wouldn't God use natural laws and processes to create the cosmos, just as God regulates the motion of planetary bodies and subatomic particles through natural laws?
Code: Select all
It is not enough for the Fundamentalists to say that evolutionary theory is not true, or not scientific--despite all of the scientific data to support it. They must have an adequate, alternative explanation for the data. To say that God simply "did it" (the creation of life on earth) is tantamount to saying that God makes every apple fall to earth from a tree branch through micro-management of the cosmos by Divine intervention--through never-ending, conscious acts of the Divine will, rather than natural processes or "laws" of nature. Why is biology exempt, in the Fundamentalist world view, from natural laws? I can think of no clearer evidence that we are descended from apes than the fact that so many modern homo sapiens refuse to recognize the science behind evolutionary theory.The issue is not whether you are truly Orthodox, or whether I am truly Orthodox. I will do you the courtesy of assuming, for the sake of argument, that you are truly Orthodox, like me. It is whether Orthodox Christians can accept the truths of science--including those of paleobiology and geology-- as true, or whether they must accept the Protestant Fundamentalist misinterpretations of science and Genesis, as you do, in order to be considered truly Orthodox. My position is that one can be fully Orthodox, and also accept the truths of science, since truth is an intercalated whole.
There are clearly aspects of truth that are not delineated in Holy Scripture or in the writings of the Church Fathers. For example, the Church does not tell me whether mitochondrial DNA comes from the maternal or paternal DNA in humans--such truth comes to us through scientific observation and study. Joanna has asserted, earlier, that all truth comes from scripture or the hagiography of the Church. This is simply not true. As for the Big Bang theory of cosmogeny--it is consistent with Orthodox theology, which asserts that God created the universe ex nihilo. An Orthodox Christian can surely believe that God created the universe through the Big Bang, and also created complex life forms on earth through evolutionary mechanisms, which elegantly explain the paleobiological data.
I will reiterate. The so-called conflict between science and Christianity is a fictitious creation of two narrow-minded groups; some arrogant, atheistic scientists, like Stephen Jay Gould, and some Fundamentalist Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians. Both of these groups have rigid, inaccurate perceptions of either science or true Christianity. People in both groups are very resistant to learning and changing their paradigms to incorporate other aspects of truth.
