Ancient history about ancient history (the abstract)

Q: So you've made a case for the importance of differentiating between "evolution" and "naturalism" and you've hinted that the origin of evolutionary theory is really more theological than because of overwhelming empirical evidence. (Whether these arguments are really that good or not is a separate question.) Assuming that we accept these arguments, why would we believe that--naturalistic implications or not--evolutionary theory has anything to offer us?

>Alright. We're now at a curious point. If we take evolutionary theory at face value, we seem to have a theological problem.1 Does evolutionism entail that the universe is random? Does creationism, in whatever form, imply designedness? Does evolution mean the biblical account of Genesis is not true? The easy position is simply to just say no: there aren't dichotomies between the Bible and science, between faith and reason, between evolution and creation, between cosmological meaninglessness and comprehensibility unless we make them. Engagement assumes that there must be some overlap in all these areas of knowledge and belief. But it's much more difficult to define where and to what degree and in what level of permanency we have overlap. I want to make three claims in these posts (think of this as your "abstract" so you can stop reading afterwards, if you like). Because this can get really, really, long and convoluted, I'll break this down into (at least) three posts based on the three claims:

1. The dichotomies between science and faith, the Bible and science, etc. were first posited by natural historians in the 1700-1800s who were threatened by the monopoly on the state and on the universities by the organized Protestant church. Pietistic/puritanical forms of the church reacted by deepening the divides begun by these early men of science.
2. (a) Though ostensibly about matters of faith and reason, the divide between Church and Science was really a power struggle. Many of the arguments in favor of one reading of Scripture or one telling of the natural record were masking political issues in the U.S. and U.K. This power struggle continued through the early part of the twentieth century, when it became clear that society's thirst for short-term practical answers--closely tied to the rise of consumerism--was fracturing the traditional, liturgical stance of many mainstream Protestant denominations. (b) Though many expressions of Protestantism fell between the two, extremes of progressivism and fundimentalism grew up out of mainstream Protestantism at that time. Struggles both for doctrinal truth and for power between and within the extreme interpretations of Protestantism polarized, rightly or wrongly, around issues of science vs. Scripture, faith vs. reason, communal vs. individual, social justice vs. moral purity, etc. And issues that were matters of degree were portrayed as simple, black and white decisions for or against Christ and His Church. Science and especially the theory of evolution were lumped into this system of dichotomies.
3. The ca. 1750 to the present system of dichotmies can be broken down and a level of concord (though perhaps not agreement) reached between Church and Science if the Church makes the first move of addressing questions of faith and reason in a loving and self-critical rather than combative spirit. (I would also argue that this is happening in limited way already--mostly within the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches.)

(1) Again, by evolutionary theory, I mean here the theory of common descent with modification or "macro-evolution." I doubt anyone really has a problem with micro-evolution. People get nervous when we talk about the "mutability" of species, meaning for instance that the species we know as "dog" is descended from something that we would not have recognized as a "dog." Whether or not that applies to humans is a somewhat different issue, so for now, let's try to leave it aside. In this accounting creatio ex nihilo is not discounted. In other words, God could have designed the universe out of nothing with certain "basic types" representing the beginning of the evolutionary life scale, knowing that a dinosaur, say, would be able to mutate into dogs, cats, birds, etc. This point was believed by some late 1800s Christian evolutionists in an attempt to sync up Scripture and evolution. This model was called the "Ark" model--speculating that it might look similar in the fossil record to a population bottleneck, like a Deluge, followed by rapid speciation and repopulation.