Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, who is running for the Republican nomination for President, wrote a column in The New York Times recently defending his views on evolution.
While no stone should be left unturned in seeking to discover the nature of man’s origins, we can say with conviction that we know with certainty at least part of the outcome. Man was not an accident and reflects an image and likeness unique in the created order. Those aspects of evolutionary theory compatible with this truth are a welcome addition to human knowledge. Aspects of these theories that undermine this truth, however, should be firmly rejected as an atheistic theology posing as science.
The Times published eight letters, in response, an unusually high number. Almost all of these took issue with Brownback’s view of science, finding it insufficiently, um, scientific. Time magazine writer Michael Lemonick argues likewise.
No one seems interested in exploring the potential theological pitfalls of Brownback’s view, so here is a question to get the conversation started: If God created the natural world, and science helps us understand it more completely, shouldn’t religious people be its greatest proponents?