© 2000 Meredith Sprunger
© 2000 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
Kenneth R. Miller is a Professor of Biology at Brown University. Finding Darwin’s God is a definitive refutation of the creationist description of the origin of humankind. Dr. Miller takes issue with those scientists who claim that modern science precludes the existence of God. He convincingly argues that science and religion offer different, but compatible, ways of viewing the world. Properly understood, evolution adds depth and meaning not only to a scientific view of the world, but also to a spiritual one.
“It is high time that we grew up,” Miller says, “and left the Garden. We are indeed Eden’s children, yet it is time to place Genesis alongside the geocentric myth in the basket of stories that once, in a world in intellectual naivete, made helpful sense. As we walk through the gates, aware of the dazzling richness of the genuine biological world, there might even be a smile on the Creator’s face — that at long last His creatures have learned enough to understand His world as it truly is.” (p. 56)
Why do many people reject evolution? Miller’s answer: “The reason, I would argue, is not because they aren’t aware of the strength of the scientific evidence behind it. Instead, it is because of a well-founded belief that the concept of evolution is used routinely, in theintellectual sense, to justify and advance a philosophical worldview that they regard as hostile and even alien to their lives and values.” (p. 167)
In Miller’s detailed analysis and repudiation of creationist views, the nonscientific reader may find that his descriptions get a bit tedious, but generally the book is written with sharp wit and pungent prose. The creationists, he points out, demean the concept of God: “They hobble His genius by demanding that the material of His creation ought not to be capable of generating complexity. They demean the breadth of His vision by ridiculing the notion that the materials of His world could have evolved into beings with intelligence and self-awareness. And they compel Him to descend from heaven onto the factory floor by conscripting His labor into the design of each detail of each organism that graces the surface of our living planet.” (p. 268) “In many respects, evolution is the key to understanding our relationship with God.” (p. 291)
Thoroughgoing materialism is an untenable position, Miller observes, because quantum physics and the Heisenberg “uncertainty principle” show that reality is nondeterministic. “By recognizing the continuing force of evolution, a religious person acknowledges that God is every bit as creative in the present as He was in the past. That — and not a rejection of any of the core ideas of evolution — is why I am a believer.” (p.258) And that is how Miller finds Darwin’s God!