I found this article. This was particularly choice and shows why evolution and religion can be mixed, BUT only in a metaphysics class (outside the system of either science or philosophy, and into the environment in which the disciplines are commonly defined). They are different substances, and the truth only resides as a subjective view based upon the observer and his/her givens:
eb.tuebingen.mpg.de
The relation between physical laws and the occurrence of life in the universe is another crucial problem that may not lend itself to a stringent scientific solution. Life 3 could develop only because there are stars and planets have persisted over billions of years, because physics allows for organic chemistry based on the properties of the carbon atom, and because many other conditions are met, conditions by no means trivial; rather, they depend sensitively on the structure of the basic laws of physics, on the numerical values of the “constants of nature” therein, and on the initial and boundary conditions of the development of the universe, particularly with regard to its earlier stages. Is the universe habitable by chance, by design, or for some other reason? One of the conceivable explanations is the “design”-version of the “anthropic principle”: it proposes that it is a law of nature - a kind of “meta-law” - saying that the structure and numerical constants of physical laws, as well as the initial conditions of the universe, are set in a way that permits life and mind to evolve materially in the course of development of the universe. One of the interpretations, in turn, is a religious one: The universe is created by God so as to allow for the evolution of life, including that of beings that are in God’s image (in the cognitive, mental sense of the term) - human beings having comprehending and creative minds. This interpretation is not the only possible one, but it is logically fully consistent with the body of scientific knowledge that we accept. All lines of thought - be they on quantum indeterminacy, mathematical undeciability, the limits of decodability of the brain-mind relationship, or the question of how and why the physical conditions of the universe allow for the evolution of life and mind - indicate that it is possible to interpret nature and the human mind in agnostic as well as in religious terms and that both types of interpretation are fully consistent with logical thinking and scientific facts. |
