From Genesis to Genetics: the Case of Evolution and Creationism
by Eugene E. Selk
By John A. Moore. Berkeley: University of California, 2002. Pp. xvi + 223. $27.50.
Moore, professor emeritus of biology, offers another survey of the evolution-Christianity conflict in the U.S. Half of the book is a competent and readable presentation of Darwin's theory and the Neo-Darwinian synthesis. The other half is a discussion of the Genesis stories and the reception of Darwinism in the U.S. M.'s discussion of Genesis, including the P and J accounts, their dating, and the possible sources in Mesopotamian and Babylonian creation stories is relatively solid. And he does respectably well in surveying the debates in the U.S.--the Scopes trial, the rise of creation science, and its most recent mutation, intelligent design. All of this is sound, but it has been done better by Michael Ruse in Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? (2000) and The Evolution Wars (2000), and by Ronald Numbers in Darwinism Comes to America (1998)--both Ruse and Numbers know some theology. Aside from his serviceable treatment of the Genesis stories, M. gives no indication of familiarity with contemporary theology.
M. suggests (by what he does not cover) that the only issue that evolution raises for Christian theology is the conflict between the Genesis stories and evolution. This, in fact, is the most trivial of the issues raised by evolution and the one most easily resolved. The conflict exists only for biblical literalists. Give up biblical literalism and the problem disappears. But there are other serious issues for Christian theology raised by evolution: how God acts in an evolutionary universe, the notion of soul and the uniqueness of human beings, the purpose of the universe, and the waste and suffering that seem to be an essential part of the evolutionary process. For an excellent and fresh treatment of these issues, see John Haught's God after Darwin (2000). Twice (xi, 147) M. repeats the thoroughly discredited claim that Christianity for centuries defended the flat earth theory (see Jeffrey Burton Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth, 1991).
Read M.'s book for its elegant presentation of Darwin's theory and the Neo-Darwinian synthesis. Turn to Ruse and Haught for the theological implications.