"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

The Bible opens with that line, a beautiful affirmation of faith that God is the creator of the world and all that lies above and beyond. With the emergence of modern science that line has increasingly become part of a controversy. The debate on creation has been fierce, long-lasting, and (in my opion at least) completely pointless.

The debate started in the Middle Ages when the technology for creating telescopes, and the sophistication of mathematics caused scientists to question the idea that the earth was at the center of the universe. Galileo got in trouble for his understanding that the earth moved around the sun and not the other way around. He was ordered not to spread his theory which (it was thought) would undermine faith in God and which taught a "false idea" that contradicted the Bible. Galileo was a believer and didn't think his position was contrary to scripture, only to the literal way some bishops had of interpreting it.

It is fascinating to read some of the opinions of prominent church leaders of the time. There were those who championed Galileo and thought his discoveries were wonderful. There were others who believed that the notion of a universe that didn't have earth at its center negated the whole idea that Christ could be the savior. If the birth of Jesus was the central event in history surely that meant the world he was born in must be the center of the universe. If people believed that the earth was not the center they would be forced to believe that salvation was a sham.

This was a silly idea, but many theological ideas are pretty silly. They have that in common with many phiplosophical ideas, economic theories, political theories, and scientific ideas. Still, once an idea is accepted, it becomes a cherished tradition. We want to hold onto it, even when its silliness is exposed.

It was a losing battle for the reactionary voices in the church. As more people were trained for scientific inquiry, and as more good telescopes became available, the idea of the sun as the center of the universe spread. Eventually the modern understanding of the universe emerged.

As it happens, the losing battle was also an unnecessary one. People didn't stop believing in God or in Christ just because their understanding of cosmology changed. They came to understand that the scriptures that spoke of the stars hanging suspended over the earth from the dome of heaven were poetic images, not infallable scientific descriptions.

There were many other challenges that the growing scientific view of the world posed for Christians. By far the most significant were the theories of Charles Darwin. In darwin's time it was understood that animal life changed over time but it was not understood how this worked.

Many scientists of the day thought that acquired characteristics were passed on. That is, if you chopped off the tails of mice, their offspring would be born with out tails, or with shorter tails. Darwin tested this and discovered that it was a silly idea. Nothing that happened to the parents' tails had the slightest effect on later generations. He proposed the theory that change comes about through a process of mutation and natural selection. If some animals were born with a change that made it easier to survive then they would have more offspring than the animals who didn't have the change. Eventually they would survive and the animals without the change would die off. The species would have evolved into something slightly different.

The idea could be observed in nature and could be tested in laboratory conditions. It worked so well that it took the scientific community by storm. It is still by far the best and most widely held idea of how life develops in the scientific world.

The implications of evolution and natural selection led to some unscientific ideas. There was something called "Social Darwinism" in political theory which suggested that the most materially successful people were the most highly evolved because natural selection had placed them at the top of the human 'food chain.' Darwin himself repudiated this.

There were also people who began to argue about the theological implications. If the Bible said God created all animals, and human beings, fully developed and from nothing then evolution seemed to be a challenge to the Bible. A number of Christian speakers bitterly opposed the idea and especially the implication that humans had developed, just as all other living creatures had. The idea of "men from monkeys" is still an emotional one to many people who believe that it would remove humanity's special place in creation. Many of these cite the idea that human beings have divine souls but that animals do not. (For what it's worth, this idea is not to be found anywhere in the Bible.)

There are a number of Christians who have felt so threatened that they have come up with alternative theories. "Scientific Creationism" teaches that all living creatures were created simultaneously and supernaturally. Many Scientific Creationists even argue that life was created at the same time the earth was created and that this happened only 4000-6000 years ago.

I've read a number of creationist essays and think that they are a lot like the arguments made against Galileo's model of the universe. They are silly, intellectually dishonest, and completely unnecessary.

There is no real war between faith and science. The only thing threatened by scientific inquiry is bad theology. Science doesn't, and can't disprove the nature or existence of God. It can only disprove some of our assumptions about God. When we claim to be defending God we are actually defending our own assumptions.

My dad passed on a saying to be that he got from a college friend. "If God is anything, he is truth, and the truth is never afraid of honest questions."

I agree with this whole-heartedly. Christians should celebrate the wonderful things that science can reveal about the world around us. And if those things contradict our theology or doctrine let's remember that we don't worship theology and doctrine. Our God is big enough to encompass universe as it is, not only as we want it to be. God isn't threatened by evolution, or the Big Bang, or any other idea that reflects our growing understanding. Let's allow our theology and doctrines to grow enough to honor our God of truth.