The Evolution of Faith

Christ, Science, and World Religions

Thomas R. McFaul, Al Brunsting

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781666702392
• Topic: Biowissenschaften
• Subtopic: Entwicklung

A new understanding is developed in this book about the relationship between the Christian faith, modern science, and the world religions. The authors call their new position Evolutionary Pluralism. By combining the Christian faith with modern science and the global growth of religious diversity, Evolutionary Pluralism provides Christians with an alternative to current interpretations such as Young Earth Creationism, Old Earth Creationism, Intelligent Design Creationism, and Evolutionary Creationism. This new understanding stands solidly within the history and traditions of the Christian faith and builds on the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.

1

The Big Questions

During June 2016, we, the authors and our spouses, went on a land tour of some of Alaska’s amazing natural wonders. Like the multitude of visitors who travel to Alaska every year, we included in our tour an excursion to Denali National Park. The park derives its name from its central focus—the overwhelming and beautiful mountain called Denali that is also known as Mt. McKinley. The word Denali comes from the native Athabaskan language and means “the high one.” At 20,310 feet above sea level (6,190 meters), it is the tallest mountain in North America.

Given the recurring overcast weather of the area, the mountain is cloudy 80 percent of the time. On June 14, we became members of what the locals call the 20 percent club, because during our short stay at the park on that sixty-degree day with light winds, there was not a single cloud in the sky. Visibility seemed infinite, and we saw Denali is all of its glory. On our bus ride to the base of the mountain, we could briefly glimpse a partial view of the mountain in the distance; but this did not prepare us for what we witnessed and experienced at the base of the mountain.

Once there, we saw that Denali’s wrinkly conical shape was covered with snow and ice down to about twelve thousand feet. The mountain stood alone and seemed to cover about a third of the whole sky. No other peaks or alpine features competed for the mountain’s awesome magnificence. Sunlight reflected diffusely off the snowfields and glaciers that contrasted with the blue, late-morning sky and green tundra on the small rounded hills nearer to us. We lingered there for as long as we could, soaking in all that splendid beauty. In past years, our travels have taken us to some of the most majestic natural wonders the world has to offer, such as the Colorado Rockies, the California Sierra Nevada, the Canadian Rockies, and the Swiss Alps; but Denali tops them all. See Figure 1.

Figure 1. View of Denali, highest peak in North America.

During that brief awe-inspiring encounter with one of our planet’s most amazing natural monuments, our minds and emotions raced in two directions at once. The first was scientific. We wondered about the age and origin of the high one that stood before our eyes. How old is it? How did it come to be? How was it formed? What are its physical dimensions? Are there glacier ice fields along its surface? And so on. The second was spiritual. What is the nature of the power that can create something so majestic and beautiful? How are we mortal humans connected to this power that leaves us humbled and inspired at the same time? We lacked words, equations, or materials of the mountain that could capture the spiritual sensation that we were standing in the presence of God the Creator.

We guess that the feelings of amazement that stirred within us at Denali on that bright, sunny day are not unique to us. Year after year, the millions of travelers who are drawn to the natural wonders that exist on every continent bear witness to this double sensation that entwines mind and spirit. To our knowledge, we humans are the only species on earth that is both conscious of its existence and curious about its origin and destiny. We alone ask when and how the cosmos started, where it is going, and where we fit into the grand scheme of things. At our core, we stand apart from other creatures because of our curiosity, which in turn leads us to the next question: how did we develop this capacity?

Cognitive Revolution

According to modern scientific theory, modern humans began evolving about 200,000 years ago in eastern Africa. While this might seem like a long time ago, it is a short period compared to when life first appeared on earth about 3.8 billion years ago. To put this time span in another way: Think of the time for life on earth, a life-year, as one year, twelve months, and 365 days. On the life-year time scale humans lived on this planet starting in the last twenty-eight minutes of the day December 31, starting at 11:32 p.m. until midnight of that year, pretty short.

As we evolved during these twenty-eight life-year minutes, especially between thirty thousand and seventy thousand years ago,1 our thinking and communications advanced. We developed more of a sense of our individuality, our self-worth, our self-awareness, our sense of community, and a sense of wonder. Patterns and predictability became more important. What were the seasonal grazing patterns of the caribou we hunted? If my arrow tips were sharper and more pointed, would they be more effective on the group hunt? This important milestone has been called the Cognitive Revolution. One of the main components of this revolution consists of the development of language that enabled members of various human groups to communicate with each other in symbolic ways. Where are the animals to be hunted? How can we organize the next group hunt? How do we divide up the kill with the group? The capacity for linguistic interaction allowed our ancestors to better protect themselves from predators and to share their views of the patterns of nature that they experienced all around them.

Language also helped people to develop interactively new tools such as spears for hunting and knives for butchering, which in turn contributed to improving their living conditions and lengthen their lifespan. Over time, small wandering hunting and gathering human groups began settling into small self-sustaining villages where agrarian food production supported a growing population of people whose descendants became the inhabitants of the large cities of ancient civilizations.

The development of farming was a huge innovation in human history about ten thousand years ago,2 or only at 11:58 p.m. and thirty seconds on our life-year scale. The first farmers must have cultivated, watered, and weeded in favor of those plants that they wanted, such as rice and wheat. Communications with other farmers were essential to compare methods and increase their crop yields. This required language skills (including listening skills) and memory from season to season. They must have chased away animals they did not like, such as rodents, birds, and snakes.

Eventually helpful animals were domesticated from selective breeding, such as sheep, cattle, and horses. Those early farmers labored in their fields by clearing the land, planting the seedlings, fertilizing, and watering the growing plants. This was hard, continuous work. Farms required experimentation and recognizing what worked. Eventually, at harvest all their labors, planning, and testing paid off (in some years) with crops that could be used to help feed their families and sustain the members of their communities.

In addition, symbolic forms of communication helped reinforce commonly shared spiritual experiences and beliefs. As a result, there was an increase in the number of priests and religious specialists who became the guardians of a group’s religion. Language skills supported stories of God or the gods, which were handed down orally from generation to generation. Over time, as spoken linguistic sounds became transformed into written alphabets and language, many of these stories became recorded and defined as sacred scriptures.

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