We have discrete objective evidence for seeing God and meaning in nature, observed by humans, but I don’t know why anyone would look for evidence of theism in science, except that big bang cosmology certainly allows for it.
I offer three quotes from Finding Darwin’s God.
(p.258) For far too long, the critics of religion have used Genesis as a convenient punching bag. Their seconds have been creationists and biblical literalists eager to abandon scientific fact and read Genesis as a history text rather than a narrative “written to nourish our souls.” But Genesis, properly understood, does not lend itself to such abuse. The God of the Bible, even the God of Genesis, is a Deity fully consistent with what we know of the scientific reality of the modern world.
All too often, religious people find themselves trying to find a way of apologizing religious belief into scientific fact. As a scientist and a Christian, I do not believe that such apology is necessary. What we have learned from science explains, for the first time in human history, how God could have solved the overpowering logical problems of his divine nature by creating for us a distinctive world of meaning and substance.
. . . A strong and self-confident religious belief cannot forever pin its hopes on the desperate supposition that an entire branch of science is dramatically wrong, thereby to teeter always on the bring of logical destruction.
(p.280) Where does science sit in all of this? I would argue that any scientist who believes in God possesses the faith that we were given our unique imaginative powers not only to find God, but also to discover as much of his universe as we could. In other words, to a religious person, science can be a pathway towards God, not away from Him, an additional and sometimes even an amazing source of grace.
(p.292, the last page of the text, before the footnotes) There is grandeur in this view of life; with its several powers having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most wonderful and most beautiful have been, and are being evolved.
The last quote is the final sentence of The Origin of Species.
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I really must find the time to read this book. Thank you for sharing.
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As I said, it says nothing new. Nothing relevant at all. Just empty rhetoric. If you’re a scientist, whatever you believe will tend to be reinforced by that. It doesn’t make the beliefs equally valid.
I believe Lucy was an animal that may have been a physical ancestor to modern humans. Below is a post I made on this topic.
I too am only speculating, I do believe there is a process of evolution, however I don’t hold much of God’s creation with this view.
I personally have a background in computer science. Designing systems and programming. I understand the value of a program, it is tested over and over again until it performs as expected.
I understand and believe that all life contains a program called DNA. If one had the ability to understand its instruction set and could modify it, it would change the results of the living.
I marvel comparing our human anatomy with the bones of prehistoric animals and see how large and huge they are in many cases. This reminds me of how large the computers were when first designed and built in the late 40s, as time went on computers become smaller and smaller and much more efficient in operation. When you compare the early computers with our cell phones today you have to be amazed at the advancement in technology.
I see our father in heaven as being a super genius and scientist. Through the programming of various species He could easily test and change their characteristics by reprogramming the DNA in a cell. I can believe that the changes to the DNA resulting in one version after another (bootstrapping) of early Homo sapiens would end up with modern man that was able to support a soul.
Remember this is an opinion from a human being.
A metaphor of DNA as software with God as The Programmer. But this code wrote itself.
Part of that is that people (probably) out-competed most of the modern megafauna, and there’s also that big things preserve better (frequently).
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Finding Darwin’s God really is a wonderful book. Full of details as to why certain claims are mistaken. I almost typed “bogus” but that wouldn’t be conciliatory, would it?
I think you will enjoy the book. Dr. Kenneth R. Miller is a Christian and a renowned scientist. Take a look at his Wikipedia page and then track down the book I keep telling people about.
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Have you read Finding Darwin’s God by Dr. Kenneth R. Miller? He is a practicing Roman Catholic. Get a copy and read what he has to say about the militant atheists, creationist/intelligent design proponents and those that are content with some other notions that are misguided.
Jesus said that if you do not eat His flesh and drink His blood, there is no life in you. Do you eat His flesh and drink His blood? No? If you don’t take Him literally (which the ancient churches, such as the Eastern Orthodox Church which I belong to, do) then why do you take Genesis 1 to 11 literally?
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Like what?
Yes but do you? In something other than metaphor? That some magic occurs? There is no comparison with the allegorical myths of Genesis written three and a half to two thousand years after their setting of course and that have nothing to do with Christianity apart from being part of its founder’s culture.
Why Liam? It does not say anything that hasn’t been preached to the choir many many times.
Because some of us in the congregation want to find out for ourselves if the preacher is speaking the truth. 
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Let us know what that is when you’ve read it. I’m looking at the truth of an early autumn young Quercus rubra against bands of grass, English oak, white on blue.
Take a look at what the early Church Fathers said about the Eucharist. I have more confidence in them than in people from the 1500’s and later.
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And I find it quite easy to come to the realization that some fanatical religionists are demonically possessed in order to trick people into worshipping Satan under the name of God, by convincing them that Bible God is an unforgiving megalomaniacal jealous sadistic hate-filled controlling being obsessed with power and glory and using the earth and sky to tell unending lies. By getting them to worship such a personality then emulating this they are likely to become an army of demonic people bent on destroying the world.
Or… we can emulate quite a different personality that seeks to see the good and beauty of different people… one who sees power and control as something to be set aside as nothing, even to become a helpless infant born in the poorest of circumstances, growing up to show an example of forgiving mistakes, helping those in need, fighting oppression, and loving ones enemies.
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Why? What did they know that Jesus didn’t?
It is interesting that some throw out the Gospels, claiming textual criticism scholarship, and then conveniently cite them about Jesus to support whatever they want to believe about him.
The Church Fathers’ writings indicate what was taught and practiced at the time they wrote. So do St. Paul’s, as in 1 Corinthians 10:6: Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?
Jesus Himself said that if we don’t eat His flesh and drink His blood, we have no life in us. That’s what He said. The Fathers believed Him. So do the ancient churches - Orthodox, Armenian, Coptic, Roman Catholic, Syriac and so on. Why should I believe someone that says communion is only a memorial, an interpretation that came up during the Reformation?
Besides, if taking Scripture at face value (according to the people that come up with the interpretations), without reference to what the Fathers had to say is the way to go, why are there so many Protestant denominations that delight in their distinctives? Why have people over and over again felt the need to start yet another organization to get things right once and for all? There must be something inadequate with this method if the results are so varied.
Indeed . . . why should I have confidence in anyone’s views but my own? I can start The First Church of Richard and be content with my own teaching.
Have a good week.
That is the argument atheists give for there being something wrong or inadequate with religion altogether. And I find that argument more convincing than yours.
But then this is as bogus as argument that something must be wrong with life and evolution because it comes up with so many different species… 350,000 species of beetles alone. This is frankly the argument of the BORG – which is wrong. Diversity is the sign of LIFE, and uniformity is a symptom of stagnation and death.
Why should I believe someone who says they are a blood drinking cannibal?
The point of John chapter 6 is not that we need to be blood drinkers and cannibals, but that there is more to reality than the visible measurable material practicalities. Jesus was contending with people who thought getting everyone fed with food was the important thing, when that wasn’t the point of the miracle (feeding 5000) at all. Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Our spiritual well being is also important.
It was precisely because of their excessive literalism that everyone abandoned Jesus at the end of John chapter 6. Jesus warned in Matthew 13 that literalism was the refuge of those who don’t want to understand. Now, it is a demonstrable, measurable physical fact that there is no human blood or flesh given in communion. That is not what we mean when we say it is the blood and body of Christ. It is Jesus who said, “do this in remembrance of me.” So I see nothing wrong with calling it a memorial. But personally I would say it is more than this – about our acceptance of the grace of God in helping us to be conformed to the image of Christ. But I also do not believe in magic – neither by God nor human ritual. We are changed by the lessons and experiences God gives us and not by some woo woo abracadabra.
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And you Richard. I would never dream of leaving a fellowship over such a matter. If that’s what everyone else has to believe literally as well as figuratively, fine. It’s when it’s read in an excluding, superior manner it becomes a problem. Anti-Christian. Not in the spirit of Christ. Such cultic practices exclude those who cannot believe in magical ritual cannibalism when it becomes mandatory to believe them, a test of faith, of fellowship, of Christianity, of following Christ when being incarnational is.
Anglicanism has its equivalents one way and another.