Abstract
Religion, like science, seeks to thematize reality. But they differ in what they abstract from: Religions focus on values; often, ultimates. The sciences seek causes, typically, proximate causes. Territorial disputes, then, are misguided, and scientism errs in seeking to displace religion. For science, as Goodheart explains, does not replace what it seeks to understand. Monotheists find goodness, beauty, love, truth, and wisdom in nature, and affirm an infinite Goodness as their ultimate Source. Neither Big Bang cosmology nor neodarwinism competes with that idea. Medieval creationists would have welcomed the evidence for an initial singularity, as confirmation of the soundness of their quest for a self-sufficient Being behind the world’s contingency. Evolution, far from displacing creation, addresses the how of nature’s emergence, just as scripture looks to its ultimate worth. Resistance to evolution is misguided, and Intelligent-Design is tactically and strategically unwise: It relies on a god-of-the-gaps, rather than recognize the ubiquity of God’s creativity and generosity. But the kernel of truth in I-D lies in the sense of wonder that religion shares with science.
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Further Reading
Cronin, H. (1991). The ant and the peacock. Cambridge: University Press.
Ganssle, G. E., & Woodruff, D. M. (Eds.) (2001). God and time: Essays on the Divine nature. New York: Oxford University Press.
Goodman, L. E. (1996). God of Abraham. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goodman, L. E. (2006). Avicenna. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Nakhnikian, G. (2000). Quantum cosmology, theistic philosophical cosmology, and the existence question. Philo, 3(1), 63–72.
Pennock, R. T. (Ed.) (2001). Intelligent design creationism and its critics. Cambridge: MIT.
Woods, J., & Walton, D. (1989). Fallacies. Dordrecht: Foris.