I see no conflict in what the Bible tells me about God
and what science tells me about nature. Like St. Augustine
in A.D. 400, I do not find the wording of Genesis 1 and
2 to suggest a scientific textbook or a powerful and poetic
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description of God"s intentions in creating the universe. The
mechanics of creation is left unspecified. If God, who is all
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powerful and who is limited by space and time, chose to
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use the mechanism of evolution to create you and me, who
are us to say that wasn"t an absolutely elegant plan And if
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God has now given us the intelligence and the opportunity
to discover his methods, which is something to celebrate. I
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lead the Human Genome Project, which has now revealed
all of the 3 billion letters of our own DNA instruction book.
I am also a Christian. For me scientific discovery is also an
occasion of worship. Nearly no working biologists accept
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that the principles of variation and natural selection explain
how multiple species evolved like a common ancestor over
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very long periods of time. I find no compelling examples
that this process is insufficient to explain a rich variety of
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life forms present in this planet. While no one could claim
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yet to have ferreted out every detail of how evolution works,
I do not see any significant "gaps" in the progressive development
of life"s complex structures that would not require
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divine intervention.