Paul asked:

Should God the bible and religion be given the same consideration by evolutionists as scientific
theory?

It meets the criteria. And if so wouldn't the extremist who assert "all religion is nonsense" be deemed
by both creationist and evolutionist as being out of step and illogical?

============

Part of the problem here is determining the role of both. The Bible does not deal with 'scientific' truth
but with religious truth as it is experienced by that particular group of people. This makes its
subjective but in its very subjectivity lies its claim to truth. The worth of religious truth claims,
therefore, cannot be determined by science, but only by the ones who hold to that particular religious
belief. Science can determine its asserted truths by recourse to empirical experimentation and
demonstration that its hypotheses concur with the accepted laws of physics etc. but it cannot
demonstrate that the biblical text is 'wrong' since it cannot apply the criteria for empirical or physical
determination to the religious vision of the world made in the biblical text.

We are confronted with the age old problem of the relationship between faith and science. To accept
the biblical vision is not to be at loggerheads with the scientific vision of the world and one would
expect vice-versa. However, it seems to be the 'in thing' that proponents of the 'new science' attempt
to claim that science and its discoveries can give us all the answers. Indeed it can. It can give us all
the answers it possesses thus far in its discoveries of the structure of life and the universe, it can
show us what the physical purpose, or biological purpose of phenomena are, but what it cannot do is
tell us or show us what its meaning is beyond the phenomenological. Only a different 'world' vision
can do that, and men and women of faith make this claim.

As a Franciscan I embrace what science can reveal to us of our brothers an sisters in the universe,
embrace it and claim them as Brothers and Sisters, and marvel at the splendour of God's creation,
where every living thing is a little logos of his mind. At the same time, I accept the theory of evolution
and the 'Big Bang' as the best working hypotheses we have at the moment for the historical and
existential manifestation of physical phenomena. But, as a person of faith and religious belief, I
believe that it can be given shape and dimension that takes it from the realms of the physical to the
realms of the mysterious and profound and awe. It is not a question of logic, or illogic, but of
perception and belief.

I have no problem with evolutionist theories, but they may have a problem with my assertion that the
manifestation of physical phenomena has its source in the creative dynamism of God who simply
speaks the word 'Let it be' but does not tell that physical phenomena how 'to be'. That is the inherent
freedom of the universe — and science cannot quantify that, only measure the consequences of its
exercise of that freedom -evolution, the Big Bang, General Relativity, 1+1 will always equal 2 etc.
Religion and science are not out of step, they are simply walking the same way by different roads.

Fr. Seamus Mulholland OFM

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