Evolution: Religious or Political?

Dr. Niel Nielson, President of Covenant College, writes in a recent post about embryonic stem cell research and the consequence of ideas in conjunction with the appointment of Dr. Frances Collings, a professing evangelical Christian, as the director of the National Institute of Health.

Dr. Nielson raises concern "about how Dr. Collins, a professing Christian whose appointment to this new post has been hailed by many Christians, reconciles his Christian faith with his clear commitment to Darwinian evolution. I questioned the biblical adequacy of his approach, and encouraged believers who hold to the authority and sufficiency of the Bible to look elsewhere." Which moved me to begin to think about evolution in yet another way... political.

I have moved in recent years to this idea that the theory of evolution has more traits that are religious in nature than scientific, but I have never considered the political nature of evolution, until now. I encourage all Believers to read Dr. Nielson's post on this very important matter. I believe he has hit on a very important aspect of the debate... the dignity and sanctity of human life. Others have given this aspect of the debate a cursory wave, but none, to my knowledge, have taken the hard stance Dr. Nielson has. I applaud him for this and encourage all Christians serious about their faith to read his blog post on the subject (click above for it).

In this post, I wish to examine a new thought... evolution that is political. In the past, I have thought evolution to be both science and religion. If we define the word "religion" we will find ... not surprisingly, traits that we can be easily applied to evolution. For example:

"an organized approach to human spirituality which usually encompasses a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural or transcendent quality, that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power or truth."

But, what if we define the word "political?" We find a similar surprise:

"of or relating to your views about social relationships involving authority or power; "political opinions."

"the process by which groups of people make decisions."

According to a UC Berkley website on evolution, "Biological evolution, simply put, is descent with modification. This definition encompasses small-scale evolution (changes in gene frequency in a population from one generation to the next) and large-scale evolution (the descent of different species from a common ancestor over many generations)." No matter which strand you choose to explore you will find evolution, religion and politics entwined.

Dr. Nielson's issues with Dr. Collins' mixture of Christian faith and evolution is its failure to register in him an ethical concern for stem cell research. This, in turns, leads to my consideration of the political nature of evolution in addition to the religious nature. As I went over the semantics of both words (political and religious), I found ethical and moral references embedded in the semantics of any word associated with religion, but in words associated with politics, there are no such references. Which may mean that evolution has become more political than religious. At this point, I am not in position to make such a judgement.

Human beings, regardless of political or religious affiliation, know that morality is part of the human fabric and not found in the animal kingdom. Animals do not think rationally or reason in any way despite our desire for that to be a reality as portrayed in movies and cartoons. The lion does not consider whether the gazelle has had a bad day; the lion is hungry, sees the gazelle, reacts and eats.

I do believe it is proper to study evolution in the right context, for it may contain some truth about God's world that needs to be communicated and learned, but my views of it have been altered since reading Dr. Nielson's post. I thought of evolution only in terms of science and religion, and took it for what it is: a religious and scientific theory. I am now persuaded to explore the idea that evolution may be political as well, and may actually be more political than scientific. Blessings!