Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution

By Karl W. Giberson

Book Overview

Intelligent design, creationism, and evolution have always been hot topics for debate in America. Creationism and intelligent design are usually seen as the province of religious people, while evolution belongs to the scientists. More often than not, both camps see the other as "the enemy." But what about committed Christians who find something lacking in the ideas of both creationism and intelligent design? Can you still be a Christian and support the idea of evolution? Scientist Karl Giberson believes you can. Raised a fundamentalist and influenced as a boy by Henry Morris's creationist classic The Genesis Flood , Giberson firmly believed in creationism through his college years. But while working on his Ph.D. in physics, he began to doubt that science could have gotten everything as thoroughly wrong as the creationists suggested, and he gradually abandoned his creationist beliefs--but not his belief in Christianity. Through careful research, Giberson concluded that Christianity and evolution do not have to be incompatible. In Saving Darwin , Giberson paints a clear picture of the creation/evolution controversy and explores its intricate history, from Darwin to the current culture wars, carefully showing why--and how--it is possible to believe in God and evolution at the same time.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061228788
• ISBN13: 9780061228780
• Release Date: June 2008
• Publisher: HarperOne
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.9" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

An Illuminated Manuscript

One rarely comes across a book like this. The genre of evolutionary theology is small but growing. But even here, you don't find books like this. Giberson is part Pennock, explaining the history of Literal Creationism, part Miller, giving the overwhelming evidence for the theory, and a large part St. Augustine, giving his own personal story in moving terms, of how he was once in the darkness of literalism and was lead to the Light of God's presence in evolution. It is this third aspect that makes the book overwhelmingly worth reading. I grew up much as Giberson did, and traveled through much the same path. I grew up as a Literal Creationist, because this is what the Bible says- and one must believe and obey the Bible in it's entirety, literally, lest one reject God. There was only one suitable interpretation, and if there seemed to be inconsistencies, there were ways to harmonize the Word to make it work. One Gospel might say Judas fell and his guts spilled on the ground, and another that he hung himself, so it is quite obviously that he hung himself, the rope broke, and his guts spilled on the ground. Likewise, I followed the NIV which worked to deal with the animals being created before humanity in Genesis 1, and after, in Genesis 2, by accepting the tweaking of the Hebrew in Genesis 2 to make it appear that the animals were brought to Adam and had been created earlier. I believed this for so long, and did not know why. Giberson here tells the backstory, of why so many American Christians read the Bible in this manner, despite most of the initial authors of Fundamentalism being Evolutionists. It is amazing to read here how the current Literal Creationist beliefs can be traced in a direct line to Morris' Genesis Flood, in turn based on Price's New Geology, and that based on the founder of Seventh Day Adventism Ellen White's detailed visions received after the Millerite Great Disappointment (where Jesus didn't come back on October 22nd, 1844) of a literal 7-day creation event, contrary to the beliefs of most devout Christians up to that point. Thus as we read, we are astonished to find that basic beliefs that many Christians hold, that I held, are in fact firmly grounded in if not heretical ideas, at least those that are severely aberrent by Christian standards. My journey continues to track with Giberson. I, too, entered college convinced of my beliefs. I would write in the margins of my tests, "If evolution were true..." I knew the arguments against evolution cold, both theological and biological. I'd read my Morris and Gish and Ross. But again, following Giberson, somewhere between my sophmore and junior year I started to realize something amazing. Just as repeatedly the Bible would predict archeological findings (not always, but often), so repeatedly evolution would predict fossil findings, and other scientific events. How could I with integrity accept one and reject the other, if the methodology was the same? At the sam

Injecting Civility into the unending debate

I read every book I come across on the topic of "Religion vs. Evolution." Dr. Karl Gilberson's was the most civil I've read. The proselytutes on either side of the fence seem to need to demonize and vilify their opponents. Dr. Gilberson resisted the temptation. It is nice to know that Christians have a voice that does not need to "bear false witness" to help Jesus Christ reach people. I think the position of the young earthers is odd because most of the light reaching the dark side of our planet is hundreds of thousands of years old.

An Important Book For Christians To Read

I am a Christian and I find that books such as this and Francis Collins "The Language of God" to be important additions to the Christian worldview. Such works as these help to bridge the often chasm between science and religion, religion being that of Judeo-Christianity. Far too many times scientists and people of faith fail to listen to one another and instead hold onto their dogma with stuffed ears, whether we are talking about the oft held onto dogma of Young Earth Theology or the dogma of secular evolution. I would have to say that I myself am astrophysics-wise a Christian Theistic Evolutionist and that in terms of biology wise, I tend to consider Old Earth Theology. Such a book as this goes into examining the various fields of science through the lens of Christian Theistic Evolution. The style of writing is intelligent and intelligent driven while also being humble and considerate. You are not thrown high theology and science, more like you what you would expect to find when talking to someone more than being lectured by someone. Even if you are not a Christian Theistic Evolutionist, even if you a Young Earth Theologian, I think that it is important to read books such as this. Why? I would like to point out that I am in seminary. I plan on gaining a degree in Old Testament theology, plan on teaching theology on a seminary level. I will use a book like this in my lectures on Genesis, along with several books that I have that deal with Old Earth Theology and Young Earth Theology. It is important that students keep an open mind and for students to see the various views on how to interpret Genesis 1 and 2. Giberson's book, Saving Darwin, is a great book to have on your bookshelf. So, pick this book up, it will indeed educate you and help you to have a greater grasp on the ways people view creation.

Wonderful Explanation of How Christianity and Evolution Are Compatible

Saving Darwin is an excellent book! A must read! It is a very accessible analysis of the "origins" controversy in American culture. Giberson preserves the integrity of science while being religiously sensitive and encourages us to see the harmony, in principle, of science and Christianity. Giberson convincingly argues for the explanatory mission of science as the detection of natural mechanisms as causes for natural phenomena, while steering carefully between two serious misunderstandings of science. On the one hand, popular cultural icons of science who represent evolutionary theory as entailing a naturalistic worldview--or even any particular philosophical position such as ethical relativism or social Darwinism--are misrepresenting science as such and thus harming our cultural discussion. On the other hand, religious fundamentalists who think that biblical sources should be imported into scientific work--as in "creation science"--are equally misguided about what science is. The more recent Intelligent Design movement also displays an egregious misunderstanding in insisting that science can inquire into transcendent or ultimate (supernatural) causes for natural phenomena. Giberson exposes the serious defects in these religiously-based "alternative" ways of doing science which continue to polarize the cultural discussion in their own ways. Although Giberson's autobiographical journey, so well portrayed in the book that many can identify with him, carried him away from his early anti-evolution fundamentalism, it did not erode his Christian belief because he came to see evolution as an expression of God's creativity. Giberson shows that more sophisticated (less simplistic) categories for understanding the Bible and Christianity, coupled with a realistic, nonagendized view of science, make it entirely possible for a faithful believer to embrace evolution as a fascinating part of the total truth about God's ways with the world. The reader of this book will be invited into the thought process that led the writer to see Christianity and evolution as compatible and even as mutually enlightening one another. The reader will also learn the history of the origins debate in this country, some of the real history of science and its positive relation to Christianity, and some helpful conceptual distinctions for making sense of this important issue.

An Enjoyable History of 150 Years of Controversy

Misleadingly shelved in the "Spirituality" section of my local bookstore, Karl W. Giberson's SAVING DARWIN is a focused work of history that concentrates on the endlessly fascinating conflict surrounding the meaning of the theory of evolution in our public lives. If you're a "secularist" try not to be put off by the subtitle, "How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution." Giberson is not preaching here. Not at all. Relying (perhaps just a little too exclusively) on first-rate secondary sources - including Ronald Numbers, Edward Larson, Peter Bowler and Jon Roberts - Giberson has assembled a great overview, and his charming and somewhat snarky style makes for a very enjoyable read. Giberson gets it right in my opinion when he writes on page 64, "Biological evolution, in its pure form at least, is purely descriptive. It tells us, as best it can, what happened, like a video of an event. It does not pass judgment on whether the history it describes was good or bad, just as a video passes no judgment on the event it captures." Too many scientific popularizers over the last 100 years (Julian Huxley, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, E. O. Wilson and Daniel Dennett to name just a few) have tried to see in evolution patterns of progress that could be harnessed and manipulated to "advance" the human species or defend the contention that religion can or should "evolve away." These beliefs invariably generate a cultural backlash as they always imply some sort of scale of progressive human value, whether it is from poorer to richer, from feebleminded to intelligent or from superstitious to scientific. My only real criticism relates to Giberson's apparent lingering hope that the science of evolution, if viewed correctly, may still be a useful lens for examining not only God's wonders, but also God's plan. Gould may have been wrong when he suggested that if the tape of life were rewound and replayed we would never end up with the life forms we have today, or that increasing complexity of life forms over time is nothing but a statistical phantom (see FULL HOUSE). Life may indeed be unfolding like some kind of divine road movie. But Gould may also have been right. Better I think to try and separate the theory of evolution from its misuse in defense of an ideology of progress, as Christian historian John C. Greene suggests. This would allow all of us, the religious and not, to see both the beauty of science and its limits.