First, the general arguments that support evolution are clear enough and have been driven home relentlessly to the satisfaction of an overwhelming majority of trained scientists. Although I am not trained in the sciences, I can discern good arguments from bad ones. The persistent claim of fundamentalist scientists that modern science is filled with misinformation and falsehood is rhetoric rather than substance. The evidence in our hands is now quite sufficient to warrant the conclusion that the cosmos is very old and that life on our planet originated through a long and complex evolutionary process.

Secondly, Fundamentalism stands in unconscious complicity with atheistic naturalism. Though Scripture and tradition plainly tell us that the created order itself is evidence for God’s existence, Fundamentalism accepts the atheistic premise that such a naturalistic explanation as evolution would disprove God’s existence. Fundamentalism has unwittingly accepted the idea that, if we find a natural explanation for the emergence of life on earth, then this would demonstrate that we are studying a world without God. But if nature really is God’s creation, then there is no reason at all to deny that nature has the creative capacity to give rise to life. In fact, evolution might actually turn out to be impressive evidence for God’s creativity and existence.

Third, Fundamentalism’s resistance to evolutionary theory is largely the result of its faulty view of the Bible. It understands the early chapters of Genesis as essentially scientific in that they must be compatible with what we learn from modern science. I have already pointed out that some of the best minds of Christian antiquity, such as Augustine and Calvin, saw very quickly how precarious it was to accept this view of Scripture. Many modern Christians have made the same observations. If Genesis is not a science book, what is it? In our next discussion, I should like to look more closely at the genre of Genesis … at the kind of text that it is.

It was this realization that really changed my mind about evolution. I saw a debate where Philip Johnson, defender of Intelligent Design, made the argument that if evolution was true, there was no God. On this point he agreed with his atheist opponent. I realized with sort of an ”ah-ha” moment, ”both these guys are wrong.”