Evolution Weekend and Science Sunday | Evolution Weekend – Patheos

Its Evolution Weekend in Lab and Pew, one hundred years after Harry Emerson Fosdick preached his famous sermon, Shall the Fundamentalists Win?

Ibelong to a group called the Clergy Letter Project directed by Professor Michael Zimmerman. Dr. Zimmerman designates the 2nd weekend of February each year to Evolution Weekend. Why? This weekend is closest to Charles Darwins birthday, February 12. And because in recent decades too much controversy over evolution has sundered Christian unity. How can lab and pew this coming Science Sunday heal this particular division?

In this series of Patheos column posts on Science and Religion I recently asked an Evolution Weekend question: should Christians dump Darwin? My answer: no. But there is so so so much more than evolution to think about on Science Sunday.

To my observation, harmony in the congregation I now serveCross and Crown Lutheran Church and School in Rohnert Park CAhas escaped this particular controversy. Nobody has waived their angry fists and denounced Charles Darwin. Whew.

Evolution Weekend 2022 will take up the urgent matter of climate change. As important as climate change is, I have two other thoughts to share.

Even though were not addressing climate change at this moment, we should still celebrate Science Sunday together. Why? Because there are two large cultural movements that we Christians should be concerned about: (1) the anti-science movement and (2) the militant atheist movement. Let me introduce them briefly.

First, weve witnessed in recent years an unexpected rise in anti-science sentiment. Scientists fear they have lost the social respect they once enjoyed. Do scientists need the churches as allies?

The Editors of Scientific American defend themselves from the social media siege. Social media amplifies toxic misinformation on an unprecedented scale (Fletcher and Jen Schwartz September 2019, 27). What defense is called for? Cool-minded attention to the data accompanied by sober conclusions. But such careful science seems to be under attach by anti-science.

During the Covid 19 pandemic, for example, much of our nation has sought advice from public health experts at the National Institutes of Health and the Center for Disease Control. To a large degree, these medical scientists are in a position to save countless lives. Yet, these scientists are widely disbelieved. Even vilified. The result is a death toll beyond our imaginations only two years ago. This phase of the anti-science movement is self-destructive.

Why has the public lost trust in our scientific experts? Should we in the churches announce solidarity with scientific knowledge and even with the scientists as persons? My Evolution Weekend answer is, yes.

Second, a new and vicious form of atheism has arisen. It began in the fall of 2006 with the publication of Richard Dawkins The God Delusion;. It has only increased in influence since. Militant atheists blame religion for the worlds violence and attack our beliefs with incessant ridicule. Atheist missionaries recruit our teenagers daily on cell phones.

Part of the propaganda technique is to pretend that only the atheists own science. If science is the sheeps clothing, the atheist is the wolf hiding beneath the scientific cloak. [Wolf in Sheeps Clothing by Harry Warwick]

We in the churches need to discern the difference between good science and the wolf-atheist hiding beneath it. This will not be easy.

University of Chicago biologist, Jerry Coyne, for example declares war against religion. What Coyne hides here is that hes declaring war on behalf of atheism, not on behalf of science.

Religion and science are engaged in a kind of war, a war for understanding, a war about whether we should have good reasons for what we accept as true.I see this as only one battle in a wider wara war between rationality and superstition. Religion is but a single brand of superstition (others include beliefs in astrology, paranormal phenomena, homeopathy, and spiritual healing), but it is the most widespread and harmful form of superstition(Coyne 2015, xii).

Evidently, we people of faith should cower in humiliation because we fall into irrationality and superstition. Oh, my head hurts! I earned my Ph.D. at Dr. Coynes university.

When confronting the likes of Coyne on Evolution Weekend or any other time, religious eyes must see through the scientific clothing to the atheist-wolf beneath.

For the health of our society, we need a heavy dose of both science and religion. The great physicist, Albert Einstein, said: Science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind(Einstein 1950, 26) To heal from being lame and blind, we ask that our scientific knowledge be complemented by our faith in God.

In a previous post I asked: can science dispense with religion? My answer: no. To be more precise, society cannot dispense with either science or religion. Chicago pastor Peter Marty recognizes the complementarity.

Scientific explanation, beautifully constructive as it is, cant exhaust reality. Faith helps complete the picture by turning our lives toward the reality of a personal God who loves and sustains this gloriously complex cosmos (Marty April 2014, 3).

Indian theologian Job Kozhamthadam draws two conclusions: (1) a constructive dialogue between science and religion is possible; and (2) such a dialogue is much needed(Kozhamthadam 2002, 40). [1]

Finally, how best to celebrate Science Sunday during Evolution Weekend? If youre in a pew, stand up. Walk to the lab. Find a scientist and deliver a big hug.

Ted Peters directs traffic at the intersection of science, religion, and ethics. Peters is a professor at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU), where he co-edits the journal, Theology and Science, on behalf of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS), in Berkeley, California, USA. He is author of Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom (Routledge, 2nd ed., 2002) and editor of AI and IA: Utopia or Extinction? (ATF 2019). Watch for his forthcoming volume with ATF, The Voice of Christian Public Theology. Visit his website: TedsTimelyTake.com.

ESSSAT (European Society for the Study of Science and Theology) publishes a fine newsletter. Visit also Greg Cootsonas blog, Science for the Church, along with reading the Science and Religion Initiative Newsletter. The journal, Zygon, has been a pioneer publication for half a century, drawing scholars from IRAS (Institute for Religion in an Age of Science).

In Berkeley, I work with physicist-theologian Robert John Russell at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, which is part of the Graduate Theological Union. For two decades we have published a fine scholarly journal, Theology and Science. The science-religion sandbox is filled with lots and lots of toys for our minds to play with.

Coyne, Jerry. 2015. Faith vs Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible. New York: Viking.

Einstein, Albert. 1950. Out of My Later Years. New York: Philosophical Library.

Fletcher, Seth, and and Kate Wong Jen Schwartz. September 2019. Truth, Lies, and Uncertainty. Scientific American 27.

Golshani, Mehdi, Ed. 2021. Can Science Dispense with Religion? 5th. Tehran: Al-Mustafa International Publication and Translation Center.

Kozhamthadam, Job. 2002. Science and Religion: Past Estrangement and Present Possible Engagement. In Contemporary Science and Religion in Dialogue: Challenges and Opportunities, by ed., Job Kozhamthadam, 2-45. Pune, India: ASSR Publications, Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth.

Marty, Peter. April 2014. Science and Faith. The Living Lutheran 3.

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Evolution Weekend and Science Sunday | Evolution Weekend - Patheos