Accomodationism

Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True blog is becomming one of my new favorite bloggity blogs. Besides being an awesome science writer (I'm in the middle of his new book by the same title), my admiration has to do with the many discussions on the topic of accomodationism.

I don't think science should bend over backwards to make religious people happy. Science just delivers the facts, and we should look at what these facts tells us instead of trying to fit them into a pre-existing world view. I've never been comfortable with saying that belief in religion and evolution are compatible. I'm not so sure they are.

Mind you there are plenty of religious people far smarter than myself that accept evolution. Ken Miller being of the best examples. But it does seems to me as though Miller holds two conflicting sets of facts in his head.

If humans are God's special creation, why did he wait some 4.5 billion years to create them? If he chose the process of evolution to create humans than not only is it highly inefficient, but it turns evolution into a guided directed process. This is contrary to all the data we've so far accumulated on the matter, as I'm sure even Miller would agree, evolution does not have foresight.

It would be dishonest of me to say the study of evolution and cosmology don't influence my disbelief in the supernatural. Yet I'm not advocating that science be used to turn people into atheists. However attempting to convince creationists that evolution is compatible with religion might not be the proper way to proceed. Evolution is compatible with all of the factual data scientists have collected about life on the planet Earth. If that puts one at odds with one's Holy book, maybe it's time to re-examine said text's validity.