If you sit enough monkeys down with typewriters, eventually they will produce the latest theological 
meanderings of the Anglican Church. This experiment was successfully verified at Lambeth 2008.
In the never ending quest for its own destruction, the CofE is celebrating the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’. It is a fitting tribute to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, since the Anglican Church in the West is a live demonstration of the theory’s application. The church, having adapted to its surrounding culture in all the wrong ways, has made itself irrelevant and incomprehensible (just listen to Rowan Williams) to all and sundry; very soon it will cease to exist – it will have adapted itself into extinction.
The CofE pays its homage here.
It is this need for humans to think, and love, that forms the centrepiece of a new retrospective by the Revd Dr Malcolm Brown, Director of Mission and Public Affairs for the Church of England, called ‘Good Religion Needs Good Science’. After warning of the social misapplication of Darwin’s discoveries, where natural selection justifies racism and other forms of discrimination – perhaps predicted in the “misguided” over-reaction of the Church in the 1860s – Brown writes: “Christians will want to stress, instead, the human capacity for love, for altruism, and for self-sacrifice.” He separates the biological and emotional further by pointing out the naivety of assuming a wholesale evolution of the human race: “Despite our vastly expanding technical knowledge, even a fairly cursory review of human history undermines any idea of constant moral progress.”
This is replete with the usual Anglican drivel. First, if natural selection is true, then of course it would engender ‘racism’: if one race is superior and stronger than another, the inferior will be selected out. If natural selection is true what incentive is there to indulge in the opposite – self-sacrifice. And as for ‘other forms of discrimination’, there is hardly any worse discrimination than that of the abortionist towards the unborn child; a fairly predictable result of adopting a theory which declares that the strong survive and the weak perish.
The very worst part of all this is the diabolically bad logic of attempting to believe in Christianity and natural selection simultaneously. Leaving aside the squabbling about whether the universe arrived in 6 days, minutes, millennia or a few septillion years, the fact is, natural selection depends on accident to work. This means that mankind is accidental: it would be quite possible – indeed likely – for it not to have existed – ever. From a Christian perspective this is absurd: the Christian view is that God planned man’s existence, planned revealing himself through Jesus, planned to redeem us through Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, and eventually plans to renew all of creation. The very opposite of an accident.
So, Church of England, you can have Christ or natural selection; you can’t have both. And it seems you have made your choice.
I hadn’t thought of it that way. Personally, I think the six days in Genesis are metaphorical. God is outside of time, and His thoughts are not our thoughts, why should His days be identical to our days?
There’s another aspect to this. The fossil evidence is there – how do we put it together with the biblical evidence? There must be a way; God wouldn’t put the fossils there just to play around with our heads after all. I read a book a while ago by a geneticist who did a marvelous logical job of reconciling the two, but the name of the book and the author escapes me at the moment.
Kate,
Proponents of Intelligent Design argue that the fossil evidence for mankind’s evolution is not there – or at least hasn’t been discovered yet.
I think both sides of this debate have a vested interest in its outcome; that of the Christian is fairly obvious, the materialist’s less so: Christians are more likely to admit the tendentiousness of their position, while Darwinists hide theirs. A Christian’s world view is determined by his belief in God, an atheist’s by his disbelief – except the atheist conceals that fact by smothering it in science.
I don’t particularly care whether incontrovertible fossil evidence that mankind’s predecessor was an ape appears or not (I don’t think it has yet), but I would object vigorously to the idea that it was accidental.
I would object vigorously to the idea that it was accidental as well, but I don’t think that you have to believe in a young earth to be a Christian, either.
but I don’t think that you have to believe in a young earth to be a Christian, either
Agreed.
What a stunning ‘either/or’ fallacy you grind out here – and a wholly irrelevant one to boot. The term ‘red herring’ comes to mind. “Natural selection or Christ” is a classic for both its illogicality and its irrelevance as a contribution to the important on-going discussion about origins and the roles of faith and science in that discussion. Yes, truly stunning.
Steve,
You do indeed appear to be stunned since you don’t actually offer a rational explanation of how mankind can be both accidental and planned by God.
Do you regard all either/or arguments as fallacious? Eg, either 1 + 1 = 2 or it doesn’t.