Day 20: Wait, whose birthday is it?

Self portrait by Carl Buell (left), who also creates serious scientific illustrations and Darwin portraits.

Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday, coinciding with the 150th anniversary of his famous book “The Origin of Species,” has riveted the science community. It’s fun to read major publications, like the journal Nature, and realize they’ve been planning their stories for ages. Social networks including Twitter and Facebook are abuzz with the celebration. It’s like an Olympic Games in science writing. It’s a party.

Darwin’s idea was revolutionary, to be sure — and fairly simple. He observed that various animal forms, or species, seemed to have descended from common ancestors and that their success or failure was determined by their fitness, through a biological culling called natural selection that happens on long time scales. In the two intervening decades, fossil evidence has poured in to support Darwin’s ideas and continues to do so, though the puzzle is nowhere near complete. Genetic evidence has revealed that evolution is not as simple as it first appeared: it’s complicated and nuanced. Also throughout the two intervening decades, people who adhere to strict beliefs about religious creation have bristled at evolution and its ever-mounting scientific support.  Some people, like fundamentalist Christians in America, are strict deniers. On the other end are scientist-atheists, who seem increasingly annoyed with the religious holdouts. This ongoing culture war is well documented elsewhere.

Personally, I like the middle.

I’ve come to appreciate people who have strong faith in their own interpretation of a God, and yet make room in their world views for science’s revelations. I think it’s people like these, who are open-minded enough to accommodate new information and forthright enough to admit it, who will be the backbone of progress when it comes to rescuing life that was created and/or has evolved on this planet. I’ve been collecting examples, and the rest of today’s post is a collection of quotes that I find particularly heartwarming, and hopeful. 

When astronomers look out into space they look back in time.  Thus, they are able to see our universe at many stages of cosmic evolution since its beginning in the Big Bang.  Here on earth biologists, paleontologists, geneticists and other scientists are showing that life has evolved over four billion years, and are reconstructing evolution’s history.  None of these scientific discoveries and the theories that explain them stands in conflict with what the Bible reveals about God’s relationship to the creation.
– Cathecism of Creation, Episcopal Church

It is possible to be inspired by the religious teachings of the Bible while not taking a literalist approach and while accepting the validity of science including the foundational concept of evolution.
– The Clergy Letter – from American rabbis – An Open Letter Concerning Religion and Science

We can no longer afford the stalemate of past centuries between theology and science, for this leaves nature Godless and religion worldless.
– Robert John Russell, Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences

… there is no contradiction between an evolutionary theory of human origins and the doctrine of God as Creator.
– 214th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, as quoted in National Center for Science Education

To preserve their own integrity both science and religion need to remain in a healthful tension of respect toward one another and to engage in a searching debate which no more permits theologians to pose as scientists than it permits scientists to pose as theologians.
– Edwin A. Schick, “Evolution”, in The Encyclopedia of the Lutheran Church, Vol. I J. Bodensieck, ed., 1965 Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House. The Encyclopedia is a publication of the Lutheran World Federation (as reprinted at NCSE).

… my faith influences how we conduct experiments with human research volunteers.  … I try to conduct my work in a way that respects the personhood of those we collect data from.  This is not to say that I believe that one must be Catholic in order to respect individual autonomy and conduct ethical research. I don’t believe that being an atheist provides carte blanche to behave like an ass.  However, it would be dishonest for me to claim that my personal motivations do not stem directly from religious principle.
– Isis, a working physiologist, in her popular blog On Becoming a Laboratory and Domestic Goddess

And finally, Father Christopher Corbally, a priest and astronomer who is vice director at the Catholic Church’s Vatican Observatory, spoke last fall of “God-inspired evolution – not just inspired, but God present with the development.” Corbally believes the potential for evolution is made real by the possibility of randomness, and that very potential comes from God: “God’s power. That’s the most powerful thing is to let things be, and to develop in ways that are natural to themselves. It’s the balance between guiding and letting be … the gift of a parent.”