Intelligent Evolution

Via New York Times, Kenneth Woodward debunks the notion of evolution being locked in a zero-sum struggle with the notion of an intelligent creator.

While he, like us, accepts the mechanism of evolution and prefers keeping faith and science separate, he understands why many perfectly sensible people of faith -- who understand well the epistemology of science -- are frustrated by those who use evolution as a club to mock their faith.

For some religious fundamentalists, this may indeed be a way of making room for God in science classes. But for many parents, who are legitimately concerned about what their children are being taught, I suspect that it is a way of countering those proponents of evolution - and particularly of evolutionary biology - who go well beyond science to claim that evolution both manifests and requires a materialistic philosophy that leaves no room for God, the soul or the presence of divine grace in human life.

It is one thing to bracket the divine in pursuit of scientific truth - after all, there is no way to include God as a factor in a scientific experiment. But it is something else to suppose that scientific methods and the truths thus arrived at constitute the only kind of knowledge we can have.

Very well stated.