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Christianity Today, March, 2007 |

FOOLISH THINGS

Living with the Darwin Fish

Why the discovery of yet another 'missing link' doesn't destroy my faith.

Stan Guthrie | posted 3/12/2007 09:05AM

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And accepting the idea of common descent doesn't mean abandoning our belief that the created order declares the glory of God. Increasing numbers of world-class scientists, as a matter of fact, are in awe of the apparent design and fine-tuning of Creation. "The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture," physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson notes, "the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming."

No, this kind of evidence won't prove God's existence to the Doubting Thomases of the world—including me. But it doesn't hurt.

Related Elsewhere:

Christianity Today's articles on science are available on our site. Related articles about Tiktaalik include:

Doubts About Fish Story | Anti-Darwinists downplay 'missing link.' (June 1, 2006)

Quotation Marks | Recent comments on Intelligent Design, church architecture, and the term 'evangelical'. (June 1, 2006)

Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, Evolution News & Views of the Discovery Institute, and Reasons to Believe have articles or posts discussing the implications of the discovery of Tiktaalik.

Francis Collins, director of the Genome Project, believes evolution and Christianity can be reconciled. His keynote lecture on the voice of God is available at The American Scientific Affiliation.

Stan Guthrie's other columns are available on our site. He also keeps a blog at StanGuthrie.com.

The University of Chicago has a website for Titaalik roseae.

Related articles include:

Fossil shows how fish made the leap to land | 375 million-year-old remains look like a cross between fish and crocodile (Associated Press)

Discovered: the missing link that solves a mystery of evolution | Scientists have made one of the most important fossil finds in history: a missing link between fish and land animals. (The Guardian)

Arctic fossils mark move to land | Fossil animals found in Arctic Canada provide a snapshot of fish evolving into land animals, scientists say. (BBC news)

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March 2007, Vol. 51, No. 3

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Displaying 1 - 3 of 135 comments.

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Bryan

Posted: March 25, 2007 3:39 PM

It's sad that most of the posts on here seem to be completely reactionary, even though the article is so thoughtful. We put up our defensive sheilds the moment we detect that someone doesn't agree with us. Why do we feel so threatened? My suggestion would be to investigate this for yourself. If you only read authors you know ahead of time you're going to agree with, this investigation will be useless. Read those who believe humans were created in a day and read Christians who believe God used evolution (e.g., Kenneth Miller). And just remember how often the disciples got it wrong, even though they sat at the feet of Jesus every day. Remember how everyone misinterpreted the scriptures about the Messiah and thought he would be a political ruler. It is possible to follow God and sometimes misunderstand how he works in this world. And it is possible that the person doing this is you.

Darren King

Posted: March 23, 2007 3:34 PM

"...Does not everyone believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God and is completely and utterly inerrant? If there is only truth then animals were not all made from one creature, they were created separately." My friend you are turning the Bible into a historical/scientific textbook rather than a legacy of a people in relationship with their God. In doing so you do injustice to the true intention of Scripture. Please do us a favor and abandon your modernistic, one-size fits all view of the Bible. If you were actually to study historic Christianity- and the role the Bible has played throughout- you would find that your understanding of scripture, which is very close to verbal plenary inspiration, is closer to a historic Muslim understanding of the Koran, than it is to a Christian understanding of the Bible.

Ken Osborn

Posted: March 23, 2007 12:07 PM


My father did was not a church person, mostly because he couldn't find a minister who didn't believe that earth was created in six days. The God that I believe in certainly could have done this but why would this God have gone to some much trouble to make it seem otherwise.

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