With the most recent Ham and Nye debate about evolution and creationism, I thought it only appropriate that I put out there some of my own reflections on the debate. And I want to begin with a letter that Karl Barth wrote to his niece (found in Karl Barth Letters: 1961-1968 edited by Jurgen Fangmeier and Hinrich Stoevesandt, translated and edited by Geoffrey W. Bromily [T& T Clark,1981], p. 184):
Dear Christine,
You have had to wait a terribly long time for an answer to your letter of 13 Dec. -- not because of indifference, for I am sincerely interested in your welfare, and in that of your mother and sisters, and am always pleased to have good news from Zollikofen [near Bern, Switzerland].
Has no one explained to you in your seminar that one can as little compare the biblical creation story and a scientific theory like that of evolution as one can compare, shall we say, an organ and a vacuum-cleaner -- that there can be as little question of harmony between as of contradiction?
The creation story is a witness to the beginning or becoming of all reality distinct from God in the light of God’s later acts and words relating to his people Israel -- naturally in the form of a saga or poem. The theory of evolution is an attempt to explain the same reality in its inner nexus -- naturally in the form of a scientific hypothesis.
The creation story deals only with the becoming of all things, and therefore with the revelation of God, which is inaccessible to science as such. The theory of evolution deals with what has become, as it appears to human observation and research and as it invites human interpretation. Thus one’s attitude to the creation story and the theory of evolution can take the form of an either/or only if one shuts oneself off completely from faith in God’s revelation or from the mind (or opportunity) for scientific understanding.
So tell the teacher concerned that she should distinguish what is to be distinguished and not shut herself off completely from either side.
...
Yours,
Uncle Karl
I love that image of "an organ and a vacuum cleaner". The contrast demonstrates something that I find generally true for fundamentalists, but specifically true for creationists: The problem is a lack of humor. Uncle Karl knew that all too well.
Only those theologians among us who are paid-up members of the schools of Kierkegaard or Bultmann would argue that history has little or no bearing on faith. Why should science be any different? If we exclude the empirical altogether, isn't there a danger that our theology becomes docetic, obscurantist, or just plain irrelevant?
No, I'm sure that there has to be a certain amount of "permeability" between scientific and religious discourses. Indeed the church has always adapted to demonstrable scientific discoveries and to proven, or at least to-date unfalsified, scientific theories -- even if dragged along kicking and screaming! And, moreover, even when it has meant adjusting, or even discarding, some traditional teaching -- or at least accepting that the teaching is now discussable -- e.g. over the virgin birth, eschatology, and -- now -- over homosexuality.
The question here is really never science. It's always Scripture. How are Scriptures about creation to be read? "Naturally", as Ham said? Or is there a depth and polyphony to them (as Barth and I maintain)?
I accept that there's a danger here of the tail of experience wagging the dog of doctrine -- but then a dog that has lost its tail is a freak, and, if the tail is large enough, the dog may lose its balance. In any case, my main point is that some serious work of the teasing-out variety needs to be done on the relation between science and theology. We don't see that nuancing in debates like the other day.
That's why I didn't watch. And it's why I'm unconcerned. Evolution poses no threat to Scripture, just as Scripture poses no threat to evolution. There's enough evidence to go around in "support" of both. So I'll take my nuanced reading over Ham's collapsing, docetic creationist deism any day.