Aquinas Meets Darwin on YouTube: Evangelical Professor Teaches Creationists Genomics

Holidays are happy now, vacation having begun. I’ve wanted to share this one for the past few weeks. It concerns a wonderful teach-in by an evangelical Christian professor of biology to a group of what I gather to be creationists, possibly from his church.

A bit of historical background makes it all the more interesting. I mentioned in my “back from the dead” post that I’ve been reading a good bit on the history of science, and that one of those books, Richard E. Rubenstein’s Aristotle’s Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middles Ages, zoomed in on the re-discovery of Aristotelian philosophy by Aquinas and other churchmen in the first European universities beginning around 1100 c.e. It traces the twisting relationship of scientific thinking and religious authority from that time forward through the next two or three centuries, with Aristotelian thought and thinkers sometimes embraced by the Church and sometimes condemned and declared heretical by it, depending on the politics and personalities of the day.

One important take-away from the book is its demonstration that religion and science weren’t always at loggerheads, and that many Christian theologians were instrumental in laying the foundation for the ultimate ascendancy of the scientific viewpoint in the 16th and 17th centuries. It’s a refreshing thing to realize in this age of headlines endlessly pitting religion versus science.

That background made all the more refreshing the discovery, via the excellent blog, Science and Religion: A View from an Evolutionary Creationist/Theistic Evolutionist, of the lecture on Youtube. The writer of that blog, the nicely-monikered “Jimpithecus,” introduces the video thus:

In his post on Focus on the Family’s “Truth” Project, Steve Martin had a link to some videos done by Dennis Venema on how a Christian can accept evolution. Dennis teaches biology at Trinity Wesleyan University and was faced with a situation where his church began to use the “Truth Project.” He felt that he needed to respond, so he gave a series of lectures on evolution. He has graciously posted these to YouTube….

I watched the full seven- or eight-episode lecture on YouTube and was thoroughly impressed not only by the tour-de-force “slam-dunk” of the case for evolution — based simply on genomics, only one of evolution’s many lines of overwhelming evidence — but also by the Q&A between Prof. Venema and his audience of creationists willing to listen to him, and think about what he showed. The patience, humor, and civility on both sides was a breath of fresh air.

Venema respectfully explains that he was once one of the first to dispute evolution with its adherents in the scientific community, until he honestly confronted the evidence for evolution made possible by the Human Genome Project. Better still, he — like “Jimpithecus” — underscores the possibility of being a Christian without being an evolution-denier by giving a much-needed mini-lesson in more sophisticated ways of reading and thinking about the Bible.

Regardless of your theology or lack thereof, the lecture is well worth watching on its educational merits alone. He really does a great job of translating the genomic evidence into lay terms, and unpacking the force with which it demolishes the anti-evolutionary position.

I’m embedding the first lecture below, and adding below that a few screenshots of the entire lecture as a teaser for those who need motivating to watch the entire thing.

Screenshots:

The Scientific Method

The Genomic Evidence

Overview of Arguments Based on Genomic Evidence

More screenshots below the fold…

Argument from Redundancy

Redundancy, cont'd

Driving Redundancy Home

Evolution v. Non-evolutionary Designer

Danger of "Either/Or" Position to Faith

Ways of Reading "Genesis"

Conclusions

1. Science Wars, the Sequel: Creationism Meets Armageddonism
2. Student 2.0 Teaches "Grammar" on YouTube
3. Free Online Textbook for Science Teachers: NAS’ “Science, Evolution, and Creationism”
4. Quotable: “U.S. Schools as Islamic Madrassas”

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