Religion, Evolution, and Proselytizing

I attended the Religion and Evolution panel, which might have been more aptly named "Does Evolution Threaten Christians." I recognize that my phrasing is quite universal, and indeed the panel fell prey to universalism left, right, and center, aside from L.D. Russel bringing the scholarly perspective and bringing the audience back to earth every so often, who Kristina mentioned in her post. This universalism assumed that "religion" and "Christianity" linguistically represent the same constructs, and that five white men could speak to this topic holistically and diversely, another salient point from L.D. The panel ranged from atheist to evangelical, and these poles are what I would like to consider. In many ways, these two panelists operated exactly the same way, simply as two sides of the same coin. Both were decisive in their answer that evolution was not a threat to their faith (to use the language of the presentation). Both totally ignored the actual question, which was about evolution, preferring to use their precious 5 minutes to evangelize about The Scientific Method and The Bible, respectively. The atheist scientist said that evolution absolutely confirms his faith in science (which was perhaps not the definition of faith Dr. Gammon had in mind in creating this panel) and spoke passionately about how science works. Empirical data is gathered by the scientific method, and this is all we can truly know he said. On the other end, the preacher disregarded the question at hand just as quickly, instead preferring to give a 5 minute sermon. There was no discussion about evolution or intelligent design, rather it seemed like an attempt to convince as many people as possible as quickly as possible to read The Bible.

The three middle men had their strengths and weaknesses, but offered much more balanced and rational responses, which actually dealt with the question at hand. It follows, then, the moral of this observation: one must be wary of extremely polarizing viewpoints. As a scholar of religion, I do  not believe that anyone has a monopoly on truth, and these two men were certain they each had it. In evaluating a question, especially one as "high stakes" as "Does evolution represent a threat to my faith?", the argument which takes into account multiple viewpoints and the importance of context will always be preferred in my mind over that which is one sided and completely inflexible.