Thank you, Mervin, Brad, and Christy for your replies and warm welcomes.
I think it may be helpful to give an overview of my background to provide some perspective to my thoughts on this topic, so please indulge me in a brief biographical detour.
I was raised in a fairly stable family in the DC suburbs of Maryland. We were very involved in a local Baptist church, but it was not of a strong fundamentalist nature (they went with the moderates during the brouhaha of the late 80s, for those who followed that episode). My formative years as a serious follower of Jesus were shaped strongly by my involvement with Young Life and, during college years at Clemson, the Navigators.
Through my teens and twenties, I never recall being influenced by what I have called YEC propaganda. I spent many a night in a college dorm discussing the Bible and theology through the wee hours of the morning, but issues of human origins just didn’t come up much. I would hear occasional discussions on Christian radio programs criticizing evolution, and, if pressed, I probably would have identified a vague skepticism towards it. Twenty-some years later, I’ll say that I was really rejecting philosophical naturalism—or what BioLogos calls Evolutionism. But, again, the whole topic just wasn’t a salient one for me during my first decade or two as a Christian.
I started to pay more attention to this issue and see a shift in my thinking in the early- to mid-2000s. At that time I was part of a non-denominational church that was very progressive and innovative (the church was a major influence in what became known as the Emerging Church). I recall that they had a science and faith book discussion group, and I’m pretty sure one of the authors they covered was John Polkinghorne. I never attended the group, but I was aware of it, and it may have been the first time I knew of Christians engaging science within a Christian worldview. I also recall following the Dover trial a bit and being intrigued by Intelligent Design—or at least the little I understood of it at a glance, which (in my mind) boiled down to a way to acknowledge evolution over time while rejecting philosophical naturalism. Around this time I also recall a conversation with one of my best friends—one of the most well-read and learned people I know, but not a practicing Christian—that betrayed skepticism towards “macro-evolution” on my part. My friend was aghast. “Bruce, you’re scaring me” is the quote I remember. But I wasn’t entrenched in any thinking, and when my friend later passed along a brief profile of Francis Collins that he had found in the Washington Post, it stirred my interest in the topic and my desire to learn more.
I think I learned of BioLogos pretty soon after it was established. Over the last five to ten years I’ve read a good bit on the relationship between science and Christian faith, including articles in BioLogos and Christianity Today, as well as books such as The Language of Science and Faith, Saving Darwin, and The Rocks Don’t Lie. Among the most helpful was an interview with Alvin Plantinga about his book Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism that helped me understand that the “naturalistic spin” that gets appended to evolution by many of its popularizers is really just that—an appendage—and not intrinsic to the scientific theory itself. I don’t recall a watershed moment when I decided, “Yes, I believe the Theory of Evolution is true”; for me it was a gradual realization that the overwhelming preponderance of scientists, including many devout Christians whom I trusted, believed the evidence.
In many ways, it was my involvement with homeschooling that compelled me to consider the evidence for evolution more seriously and figure out what I believe, odd as that may sound to many. But I’ll save that story for a separate post.