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Chapter 2 explores the epic of an evolving universe in order to understand the entities, structures, and processes that disclose the nature, attributes, and purposes of its Creator. This exploration investigates insights regarding the origin of the cosmos and engages scientific theories that challenge classical conceptions of the God‐world relationship. It focuses on Darwinian and neo‐Darwinian theories that suggest an ongoing creativity immanent in the cosmos itself. It probes the interaction of law and chance that suggests freedom and autonomy inherent in the evolving cosmos and that raises questions concerning the operation of divine omnipotence and omniscience in relation to cosmic events. Arriving at the conclusion that such cosmic freedom and autonomy implies an intrinsic measure of risk, pain, suffering, and even death for its creatures and its Creator, this exploration finds itself in an inexorable movement toward the inference of the suffering of God in, with, and under the suffering of the cosmos.

This chapter examines how people acquire religious beliefs and protect them even when they are irrational. It integrates insights from psychology (Festinger on cognitive dissonance; Hinde on the persistence of religious beliefs), anthropology (Evans‐Pritchard on primitive religion; Boyer on evolution and religion), cultural history (Marsden on ‘creationism’), and social theory. It examines existential, social, and emotional functions served by religion, and how theology develops (unconvincing) bulwarks against challenges to religious beliefs. It analyzes defense mechanisms of believers, and eleven attitudes towards ‘truth’ of fundamentalists of the Abrahamic faiths, and notes similarities between theology and magical beliefs. The chapter debates a religious philosopher who is a critic of ‘evidentialism,’ and discusses the role that evidence and reason should play in making religious commitments about how to lead one's own and how to educate one's children. The chapter considers eighteen factors that can contribute to the loss of religious belief and faith.

This chapter explores how science and faith can be related positively, despite the deep polarization that exists on the cultural level, thanks to the constant skirmishing between creationism and “soulless scientism.” On the academic level, discussions about theology and science tend to overlook Scripture as a fundamental source of insight. Biblical faith and science share a common sense of wonder, even mystery, that fosters active inquiry about the world. If theology is “faith seeking understanding” and science is “understanding seeking further understanding,” then theology has much to gain from science. But by inviting science into the world of the Bible, traditional notions of authority must be redefined, and the Bible’s diversity must be take into account. The author identifies seven diverse creation traditions and outlines a method of inquiry that proceeds from exploring the biblical text within its own context to appropriating the text in the context of modern science.

Although strongly supported by multiple lines of evidence and relevant to many “real world” problems, Darwinian evolution remains a battleground in the culture wars. A variant of creationism, known as intelligent design (ID), recently gained ground in political circles even as new research more firmly established the validity and vitality of Darwin's framework. This chapter explores the ID movement — especially that led by the Discovery Institute — showing how it is without scientific merit. ID backers contend that many biological systems show irreducible complexity, and thus cannot evolve by Darwinian evolution. This is not the case; systems like blood clotting and eyes that appear irreducibly complex can indeed evolve through stepwise Darwinian evolution. This chapter also addresses several issues of the philosophy of science, as well as the relationship between science and religion.

This chapter examines how perceptions of moral decline intersect with the reality of living in towns experiencing population declines and diminishing job opportunities. The specific moral issues of concern that residents of small towns most frequently mention are abortion, homosexuality, and education issues, such as teaching the Ten Commandments and creationism alongside evolution. Whole communities were sometimes divided between factions that supported or opposed a revision to the school curriculum, or because a local pastor declared themselves to be in favor of gay marriage. There are other moral issues that townspeople said were important enough that they should receive more attention than they do—problems such as drug use and alcoholism, job training, school improvement and consolidation, the gap between rich and poor, and protection of the environment.

The question of the soul's origin was unsettled in early Christian thought. Traducianism, creationism, and pre-existence were competing theories, though the first two involved several theological dilemmas. This study asks what cultural work pre-existence performs; what questions, dilemmas, and yearnings has the paradigm addressed, and why it has proved so persistent and enduring, though unrecognized as a major tradition in its own right.

Throughout the history of Western monotheism, the most common explanation for animal pan and suffering has been that it is an inevitable result of the Fall of Adam or of Satan and his cohorts, thus identifying animal suffering as a variety of moral evil. This chapter explores variants of this explanation of animal suffering. It begins with an examination of the traditional version of this explanation according to which animal suffering occurs only after the Fall. Such explanations not only seem implausible because they deny pre-human animal suffering, but also because they leave unexplained why God would create a natural world that would be so catastrophically disordered by an act (or acts) of creaturely misconduct. After considering a few variants of the traditional view, the chapter closes by considering the view that Satan or similar preternatural free beings influenced the course of terrestrial creaturely development in such a way as to make gratuitous non-human animal pain and suffering both possible and inevitable. It is argued that this explanation meets the standard for an acceptable explanation detailed in Chapter 1.

This chapter considers the significance of creationist belief in the contemporary Western world. The history of creationism is traced from the roots of fundamentalist Protestantism, and twentieth- and twenty-first-century sympathy for creationist beliefs is measured via attitudinal survey data from the United Kingdom and the United States. What follows is an analysis of creationism as a sociological phenomenon. Drawing from empirical examples and the work of scholars such as Peter Berger and Nancy Ammerman, the chapter discusses how creationist ideas function within the social contexts in which they are affirmed, debated, and challenged, paying particular attention to how they acquire plausibility among those who hold them. It concludes by arguing that contemporary creationism may be understood as an expression of what Christian Smith calls "engaged orthodoxy," i.e., the evangelical tendency to engage combatively with the challenges of the modern world and to draw strength and cohesion from the resulting sense of conflict.

The first chapters of Genesis have been enrolled into scientific creationism by some Christian groups or completely rejected by some scientists for their lack of relevance to the concerns of scientific cosmology. Yet the theological themes of the origin of the universe, the observed order of nature, the question of human significance, and the experience of awe which leads to worship go beyond a biblical literalism and find significant resonances in the questions raised by modern science. This chapter explores such themes in the relationship of the biblical text and modern science. It further suggests that the battles of the Darwinian controversies may free us for a deeper and more authentic dialogue between the text of Genesis and the discoveries of evolutionary cosmology and biology.

The chief theological concern in Taylor's doctrine of original sin lay in avoiding the notion that sin resided as a property or component of humanity's natural constitution. While many Old Calvinists held to the belief that depravity passed to humans through natural procreation, Taylor argued that this made God the author of sin, an unacceptable conclusion. In opposition to the Exercisers, Tasters, and Tylerites, who put the majority of their emphasis on human inability, the Taylorites worked hard to maintain what they believed to be continuity with the Edwardsian tradition as it related to the doctrine of original sin. Taylor recognized that there was a delicate balance between the doctrines of natural ability and divine dependence that required constant redress. In the end, the difference between Taylor's emphasis on the human ability to obey God in spite of the fact that sin was certain to prevail prior to regeneration proved largely semantic; but even this semantic difference was significant for his relationships with fellow Edwardsians and his identity as a theologian.

This essay examines in some detail a range of positions that people have adopted in coming to personal terms with evolution. Numbers focuses on four individuals, all from the United States and with scientific backgrounds, who struggled with reconciling evolutionary theory and theistic faith. He begins with Joseph LeConte, well-known in the late 19th century for his efforts at harmonizing theism and evolution. LeConte’s deep personal struggles over the loss of a two-year old daughter and his rejection of the atheistic “dragon of materialism” formed a powerful emotional thrust toward an espousal of evolution which avoided materialism, supported the hope of immortality, and maintained a resolute if not altogether traditional theism. Numbers’s second and third examples, J. Peter Lesley and George Frederick Wright were both trained in geology and had deep religious backgrounds. Both accepted modified forms of Darwinism, yet rejected full-bore evolutionary thought, understandable via life events and quite different forms of engagement with Christianity; Lesley rejecting much of it though not, in turn, embracing evolution, and Wright growing more fundamentalist with time. His final example, early 20th century creationist George McCready Price, found personal and professional satisfaction in well-publicized rejections of evolution. Numbers candidly recounts his own life story, in which emotional crisis precipitated in part by reconsideration of evolutionary theory, eventually led to rejection of a fundamentalist upbringing. Numbers closes by reiterating his belief that “feelings count often more than facts,” suggesting that this is why so many Americans continue to call themselves creationists rather than evolutionists.

This book examines how Kansas became known as one of the most conservative states in America. Kansas was one of the first to pass mandatory Prohibition and one of the last to overturn it. Kansas schools regularly included Bible reading and prayer, and by the end of the twentieth century were a battleground for proponents of creationism and intelligent design. The Republican Party was a strong contender among the possible explanations for Kansas conservatism. Religion was another. The connections between faith and politics in Kansas would begin and end with arguments about the self-perpetuating power of conservative ideas and leaders in the nation's heartland. However, the book suggests that red state religion and politics in Kansas had less to do with contentious moral activism than it did with local communities and relationships among neighbors, friends, and fellow churchgoers.

Newton was the ultimate seeker. He looked for the fundamental causes of everything and believed he was destined to find them. Science and mathematics were only a part of his lifelong search. He applied his great intellect also to alchemy, theology, prophecy, history, and ancient literature. He was a creationist who looked for the Hand of God in all things and believed all knowledge was One Truth. Newton was the ultimate mystic who wanted to experience and unravel the Great World Mystery. His scientific work was astounding and his Mathematica Principia was the greatest scientific treatise ever written. He gave us the laws of mechanics, the law of gravitation, the correct theory of the motions of the planets, the theory of colored light, the tides, and a host of other scientific accomplishments. In addition, he invented calculus, the most powerful mathematics ever conceived. In many ways, modern science is a postlude to Newton.

This chapter traces the readmission of evolution into the classroom during the 1960s, leading up to the Epperrson case, which struck down Arkansas anti-evolution law, and parallel legal actions in Tennessee and Mississippi. It notes the budding creationist legal response to this development. Assuming that biblical creationism could not be taught in public schools, Bryan sought neutrality through silence on the subject of biblical origins by excluding evolutionary teaching as well. This form of neutrality ended when the BSCS texts successfully reintroduced evolution as the central concept in biology instruction during the early 1960s. Meanwhile, the Schempp decision offered strong legal support for teaching creationism along with evolution.

This chapter reviews the crossfire during the 1970s, as creationists initiated lawsuits and legislation designed to win a place for “creation science” in the classroom. Following the skirmished in California and Texas during the 1960s, creationist legal activities rapidly spread during the 1970s and early 1980s. Reviewing early creationist legislation and lawsuits, University of Tennessee law professor Frederic S. Le Clercq wrote about the hope of the creationist to dilute the theory of evolution to the level of hypothesis or speculation and to win equal time for the doctrine of special creation. This analysis correctly identified the emerging two-prong attack on evolutionary teaching and recognized the broad support for the movement.

This chapter examines the complex litigation over creation-science statutes, which culminated in the 1987 US Supreme Court decision against them in Aguillard v. Edwards. As the ultimate responsibility for resolving the dispute moved from the elected state legislators moved from the elected state legislators and judges to the appointed federal judiciary, persistent popular support for accommodating creationism in public education still influenced the law, but its impact became subtler. The ACLU moved first against the more vulnerable Arkansas law. In doing so, the ACLU generated the most dramatic creation-evolution legal confrontation since the Scopes confrontation mentioned in Chapter 3. In January 5, 1892, Judge Overton found that the new equal-time statute had an unconstitutional religious purpose and repudiated the Arkansas statute. Meanwhile, every brief opposing the Louisiana law asserted or assumed that creation science was solely religious and not scientific.

The rejection of evolution in favor of creation by a supernatural deity is not the only feature of intelligent design creationism that marks it as a religious movement. Its integral but lesser known features include anti-modernism, anti-secularism, religious exclusionism, and anti-rationalism. The intelligent design movement, following a Wedge Strategy, seeks not only to return American education to a premodern understanding of science, but to move the country culturally and politically away from secular democracy and toward a premodern, Christian commonwealth. The movement’s leader, Phillip Johnson, brands secular academics as apostates and warns Christian students against relying on “your own thinking”. Scientists must join concerned citizens in stopping the advance of intelligent design in the public school science class.