What do you think? I’m personally tepidly okay with it, at the same time though, a more teleological form of evolution could count as evidence for God.
I’ve never thought that the particulars of Neo-Darwinism* were relevant to anything in Christian/biblical claims about creation. Any account of evolution, whether it’s Neo-Darwinist or not, involves an ancient earth that can’t accommodate a ruinous human-caused fall. If there is a point where “the bible” is not “compatible” with science, in a way that matters to Christian belief, that’s it.
*I assume that Neo-Darwinism refers to a theory that combines random mutation (properly understood) with natural selection and population genetics to explain the tree of life.
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What exactly is “Neo-Darwinism” anyway? I can’t help getting the impression that it’s a term that is used by some ID folks to sound like it means something specific when in reality being vague enough to allow them to acknowledge common descent while playing to the anti-evolution crowd. In other words, it’s a weasel word.
One important thing that you need to realise is that, whatever you like to call it, evolution is not a single take-it-or-leave-it monolith. It is a complex, multi-faceted subject with a lot of different moving parts. There’s also a lot of different opinions about what exactly does and doesn’t belong under the banner of “evolution.” As such, it’s safe to say that while some aspects of it are indisputable facts, other aspects of it are more open to interpretation or dispute.
Accordingly, my current line on evolution is that if you want to critique it, you need to break it down into its constituent parts and examine each of them individually. Whether you’re saying “evolution is only a theory,” or “evolution is a fact, get over it,” or “evolution is/is not compatible with the Bible,” statements such as these are all really unhelpful and simply generate more heat than light.
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