Evolution Sunday

This Sunday, February 11 has been designated as "Evolution Sunday." It occurs on the birthday of Charles Darwin. As we approach this day, I just couldn't let it pass without comment. Let me first share that I majored in zoology at a state university. I was a nominal Christian in those days - I had been raised going to church - a denomination that definitely could not be classified as fundamentalist or Bible-thumpers. In fact, I had Sunday school teachers that taught me that there was no such thing as eternal life because "it would be boring to live forever." Those same Sunday school teachers taught me that Jesus was no more the Son of God than the rest of us. So fundamentalism was not part of my formative years. While in the university, I sat through basic biology classes as a freshman, and gradually progressed through such classes as "Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy" where I learned that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." What that basically means is that as a human embryo develops it "retraces" its evolutionary journey. An example is that in the early days of a human embryo, there are structures that appear to be gill slits (like in a fish). As the embryo matures, those "gill slits" eventually become lungs. Thus retracing it's evolutionary development. From that class, I took basic physiology, then cellular physiology, then microbiology, and others. The crown jewel in my zoological training was a class entitled "The Biological Status of Man." Even the professor couldn't decide if this was really a biology class or a philosophy class. It was nothing but training in evolution. I share all of that to explain that I didn't just fall off the fundamentalist turnip truck.

Now back to the original point - Evolution Sunday. In the "Clergy Letter" that established this austere day, we find this quote: We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as one theory among others is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children."

The phrase in the above quote that gives me difficulty states that this theory is foundational truth. My question is, "Just exactly which theory of evolution are we talking about?" You see, we discuss the theory of evolution as if it were one - as if the entire scientific community had come up with a conclusive statement on evolution, and if we fightin' fundie Christians don't buy into it, then we are just showing our ignorance. The reality is the scientists have no conclusive agreement at all! In the newsletter Species, Speciation, and The Environment edited by Niles Eldredge we find that several views exist on several theories. He states:

Paleontologists now generally agree that stasis -- where species may persist in recognizably the same form, with little or no accumulated change, for millions of years (5-10 million in marine species; somewhat shorter durations in the more volatile terrestrial environments) -- is a common phenomenon.

Whoa there - they "generally agree?" What does that mean? It means they don't fully agree. And the reason they don't fully agree is that there are multiple theories of evolution out there. Some of these theories come from the geologists, some from biologists, some from environmentalists, some from paleontologists, and so on. Now, I love the scientific journey. I think it's exciting when scientists learn how things work. But evolution is far from a physical law. You will never hear the scientific community divided over Newton's laws of physics. No scientific journal will ever say, "Scientists generally agree on gravity." So I suggest that if churches are going to have a Sunday, why don't they have "entropy Sunday," or "gravity Sunday?"