Religious criticism and acceptance
The theory of evolution has been seen by some people as incompatible with religious beliefs, particularly those of Christianity. The first chapters of the biblical book of Genesis describe God’s creation of the world, the plants, the animals, and human beings. A literal interpretation of Genesis seems incompatible with the gradual evolution of humans and other organisms by natural processes. Independently of the biblical narrative, the Christian beliefs in the immortality of the soul and in humans as “created in the image of God” have appeared to many as contrary to the evolutionary origin of humans from nonhuman animals.
Religiously motivated attacks started during Darwin’s lifetime. In 1874 Charles Hodge, an American Protestant theologian, published What Is Darwinism?, one of the most articulate assaults on evolutionary theory. Hodge perceived Darwin’s theory as “the most thoroughly naturalistic that can be imagined and far more atheistic than that of his predecessor Lamarck.” He argued that the design of the human eye evinces that “it has been planned by the Creator, like the design of a watch evinces a watchmaker.” He concluded that “the denial of design in nature is actually the denial of God.”
Other Protestant theologians saw a solution to the difficulty through the argument that God operates through intermediate causes. The origin and motion of the planets could be explained by the law of gravity and other natural processes without denying God’s creation and providence. Similarly, evolution could be seen as the natural process through which God brought living beings into existence and developed them according to his plan. Thus, A.H. Strong, the president of Rochester Theological Seminary in New York state, wrote in his Systematic Theology (1885): “We grant the principle of evolution, but we regard it as only the method of divine intelligence.” The brutish ancestry of human beings was not incompatible with their excelling status as creatures in the image of God. Strong drew an analogy with Christ’s miraculous conversion of water into wine: “The wine in the miracle was not water because water had been used in the making of it, nor is man a brute because the brute has made some contributions to its creation.” Arguments for and against Darwin’s theory came from Roman Catholic theologians as well.
Gradually, well into the 20th century, evolution by natural selection came to be accepted by the majority of Christian writers. Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Humani generis (1950; “Of the Human Race”) acknowledged that biological evolution was compatible with the Christian faith, although he argued that God’s intervention was necessary for the creation of the human soul. Pope John Paul II, in an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on October 22, 1996, deplored interpreting the Bible’s texts as scientific statements rather than religious teachings, adding:
New scientific knowledge has led us to realize that the theory of evolution is no longer a mere hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory.
Similar views were expressed by other mainstream Christian denominations. The General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in 1982 adopted a resolution stating that “Biblical scholars and theological schools…find that the scientific theory of evolution does not conflict with their interpretation of the origins of life found in Biblical literature.” The Lutheran World Federation in 1965 affirmed that “evolution’s assumptions are as much around us as the air we breathe and no more escapable. At the same time theology’s affirmations are being made as responsibly as ever. In this sense both science and religion are here to stay, and…need to remain in a healthful tension of respect toward one another.” Similar statements have been advanced by Jewish authorities and those of other major religions. In 1984 the 95th Annual Convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis adopted a resolution stating: “Whereas the principles and concepts of biological evolution are basic to understanding science…we call upon science teachers and local school authorities in all states to demand quality textbooks that are based on modern, scientific knowledge and that exclude ‘scientific’ creationism.”
Opposing these views were Christian denominations that continued to hold a literal interpretation of the Bible. A succinct expression of this interpretation is found in the Statement of Belief of the Creation Research Society, founded in 1963 as a “professional organization of trained scientists and interested laypersons who are firmly committed to scientific special creation” (see creationism):
The Bible is the Written Word of God, and because it is inspired throughout, all of its assertions are historically and scientifically true in the original autographs. To the student of nature this means that the account of origins in Genesis is a factual presentation of simple historical truths.
Many Bible scholars and theologians have long rejected a literal interpretation as untenable, however, because the Bible contains incompatible statements. The very beginning of the book of Genesis presents two different creation narratives. Extending through chapter 1 and the first verses of chapter 2 is the familiar six-day narrative, in which God creates human beings—both “male and female”—in his own image on the sixth day, after creating light, Earth, firmament, fish, fowl, and cattle. But in verse 4 of chapter 2 a different narrative starts, in which God creates a male human, then plants a garden and creates the animals, and only then proceeds to take a rib from the man to make a woman.
Biblical scholars point out that the Bible is inerrant with respect to religious truth, not in matters that are of no significance to salvation. Augustine, considered by many the greatest Christian theologian, wrote in the early 5th century in his De Genesi ad litteram (Literal Commentary on Genesis):
It is also frequently asked what our belief must be about the form and shape of heaven, according to Sacred Scripture. Many scholars engage in lengthy discussions on these matters, but the sacred writers with their deeper wisdom have omitted them. Such subjects are of no profit for those who seek beatitude. And what is worse, they take up very precious time that ought to be given to what is spiritually beneficial. What concern is it of mine whether heaven is like a sphere and Earth is enclosed by it and suspended in the middle of the universe, or whether heaven is like a disk and the Earth is above it and hovering to one side.
Augustine adds later in the same chapter: “In the matter of the shape of heaven, the sacred writers did not wish to teach men facts that could be of no avail for their salvation.” Augustine is saying that the book of Genesis is not an elementary book of astronomy. It is a book about religion, and it is not the purpose of its religious authors to settle questions about the shape of the universe that are of no relevance whatsoever to how to seek salvation.
In the same vein, John Paul II said in 1981:
The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of the universe and its make-up, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe. Sacred scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer.Any other teaching about the origin and make-up of the universe is alien to the intentions of the Bible, which does not wish to teach how the heavens were made but how one goes to heaven.
John Paul’s argument was clearly a response to Christian fundamentalists who see in Genesis a literal description of how the world was created by God. In modern times biblical fundamentalists have made up a minority of Christians, but they have periodically gained considerable public and political influence, particularly in the United States. Opposition to the teaching of evolution in the United States can largely be traced to two movements with 19th-century roots, Seventh-day Adventism (see Adventist) and Pentecostalism. Consistent with their emphasis on the seventh-day Sabbath as a memorial of the biblical Creation, Seventh-day Adventists have insisted on the recent creation of life and the universality of the Flood, which they believe deposited the fossil-bearing rocks. This distinctively Adventist interpretation of Genesis became the hard core of “creation science” in the late 20th century and was incorporated into the “balanced-treatment” laws of Arkansas and Louisiana (discussed below). Many Pentecostals, who generally endorse a literal interpretation of the Bible, also have adopted and endorsed the tenets of creation science, including the recent origin of Earth and a geology interpreted in terms of the Flood. They have differed from Seventh-day Adventists and other adherents of creation science, however, in their tolerance of diverse views and the limited import they attribute to the evolution-creation controversy.
During the 1920s, biblical fundamentalists helped influence more than 20 state legislatures to debate antievolution laws, and four states—Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Tennessee—prohibited the teaching of evolution in their public schools. A spokesman for the antievolutionists was William Jennings Bryan, three times the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the U.S. presidency, who said in 1922, “We will drive Darwinism from our schools.” In 1925 Bryan took part in the prosecution (see Scopes Trial) of John T. Scopes, a high-school teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, who had admittedly violated the state’s law forbidding the teaching of evolution.
In 1968 the Supreme Court of the United States declared unconstitutional any law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. After that time Christian fundamentalists introduced bills in a number of state legislatures ordering that the teaching of “evolution science” be balanced by allocating equal time to creation science. Creation science maintains that all kinds of organisms abruptly came into existence when God created the universe, that the world is only a few thousand years old, and that the biblical Flood was an actual event that only one pair of each animal species survived. In the 1980s Arkansas and Louisiana passed acts requiring the balanced treatment of evolution science and creation science in their schools, but opponents successfully challenged the acts as violations of the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state. The Arkansas statute was declared unconstitutional in federal court after a public trial in Little Rock. The Louisiana law was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled Louisiana’s “Creationism Act” unconstitutional because, by advancing the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind, which is embraced by the phrase creation science, the act impermissibly endorses religion.