The Shock and Awe of Creation

This is actually quite an educational and thought-provoking piece on the reconciliation between evolutionary biology and "God", or at least, the philosophy of god. The most important aspect of the argument can be summarized here:

There are, of course, many people, among them prominent scientists, who have claimed and continue to claim that the scientific notions of evolution do indeed necessarily imply such a materialistic philosophy. Richard Dawkins is among the most vocal proponents of such a philosophy, arguing that "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist". This strident atheism does not, however, help their scientific work in any way, and on the contrary, is the source of so much of the controversy that rages over it.

It is a fundamental mistake, however, to accept their bundling of the three scientific evolutionary ideas with what I have termed evolutionism. Rather, a more sophisticated response would be to show that the three scientific notions in any form are compatible with theistic philosophy.

In many cases, however, the reaction of religious believers to the materialistic claims of evolutionism is not to simply reject the assertion that evolutionism necessarily follows from scientific ideas. Rather, they tacitly or unconsciously accept the bundling of evolutionism with the science, and then see no option but to attack a part or all of the scientific ideas of evolution as a way of cutting the support for the philosophical claims of evolutionism.

In doing so, however, they find themselves in the awkward situation of attacking a solidly established science, ultimately motivated not by objections to the science per se, but by the illicit bundling of evolutionism with the science.

The author tries to distinguish between evolutionary biology, which is an accepted fact, versus "evolutionism", which often are bundled together with evolutionary theory by people like Richard Dawkins and, strangely enough, rabid creationists and ID proponents. So both of the extreme camps in this debate are actually doing the identical thing, and therefore, are the ones lobbing the loudest attacks and counterattacks at each other, with the rest of us caught in the middle.

It is a good article for one to read since it tries to clearly address various major issues in not only evolution, but also the various seemingly-contradictory aspect of evolution and theistic philosophy.

Zz.