Question of the Week #969: Guiding a Son through Evolutionary Biology
Read this Question of the Week Here: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/guiding-a-son-through-evolutionary-biology
Guest (Male): Hi Dr. Craig, your honest and faithful work has ministered to me for over 12 years now, starting with your debates versus two of the big four of new atheism that now debunked religion. My question centers on my son. I have listened just a little to your work on the historical Adam. My son is 14 and is bright. He seems particularly interested in evolutionary development as means of explaining the way the animal kingdom has developed.
One of his favorite projects in school recently has been work illustrating the hippopotamus and whale as having a common ancestor. His science teacher is now launching into a unit devoted to natural evolution. My son believes in God and Jesus and attends youth group, but I don't think he has put the questions together yet concerning what part does God play versus evolutionary explanations.
He is not a rebellious person and we have a good relationship, so he will be accepting of anything I want to put before him and ask him to read and consider with me. How can I: one, be part of this journey with him, though I am not knowledgeable in this area, willing to learn but not sure of a simple place to start?
Two, introduce my son to the line of thinking in your work in a way that is digestible to him, particularly your thought development in investigating how scientific observation in animalia's evolution interacts with God's initial design and continuing work in us as creation? In Christ and full humanity, Caleb, United States.
Dr. William Lane Craig: It's great that you want to share this journey of discovery with your son, Caleb. Learning how best to integrate Christian theology with evolutionary biology is a vital task in contemporary culture. I'll be addressing that question in the forthcoming volume three of my systematic philosophical theology. I argue that the thesis of common ancestry, according to which all biological organisms are genealogically related, is easy to incorporate within a Christian doctrine of creation. You can therefore share your son's enthusiasm for his learning about the common ancestry of whales and hippopotami.
Moreover, evolutionary biology has moved beyond the so-called modern synthesis, and no consensus theory has been able to replace it, so that we really do not understand the mechanisms which produced the history of life on this planet.
So, in answer to your questions, number one: I encourage you to work your way through a textbook on evolutionary biology, such as Douglas Futuyma's and Mark Patricks' Evolution, published by Oxford University Press 2022. You need not read every chapter, but you will find it to be enormously informative. That will enable you to stay several steps ahead of your son.
Number two: in terms of a digestible treatment for your son, I highly recommend my Defenders lectures on Excursus on the Origin of Life and Biological Diversity. Unlike the secular book that I just recommended, my lectures will provide an integrative approach to theology and evolutionary biology. I hope these resources prove helpful. I'm thrilled that you're doing this together.
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The Daily Defender is a 31-day journey through the attributes of God, drawn from Dr. William Lane Craig’s Defenders Sunday school class. Each day features a verse of Scripture, a Defenders reading, and a short prayer designed to engage both the mind and the heart.
Whether you’re new to theology or have studied it for years, this daily reader will help you:
Grow in your understanding of the attributes of God
Cultivate a worshipful response to God’s greatness and goodness
Deepen your confidence to give a reason for the hope that is within you
Join the Reasonable Faith community as we grow together in our knowledge of God!
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Reasonable Faith features the work of philosopher and theologian Dr. William Lane Craig in order to carry out its three-fold mission:
1. to provide an articulate, intelligent voice for biblical Christianity in the public arena.
2. to challenge unbelievers with the truth of biblical Christianity.
3. to train Christians to state and defend Christian truth claims with greater effectiveness.
Reasonable Faith aims to provide in the public arena an intelligent, articulate, and uncompromising yet gracious Christian perspective on the most important issues concerning the truth of the Christian faith today, such as:
the existence of God
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intelligent design
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About Dr. William Lane Craig
William Lane Craig is Emeritus Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California. He and his wife Jan have two grown children. At the age of sixteen as a junior in high school, he first heard the message of the Christian gospel and yielded his life to Christ. Dr. Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (B.A. 1971) and graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977), and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984). From 1980-86 he taught Philosophy of Religion at Trinity, during which time he and Jan started their family. In 1987 they moved to Brussels, Belgium, where Dr. Craig pursued research at the University of Louvain until assuming his position at Talbot in 1994.
He has authored or edited over thirty books, including The Kalam Cosmological Argument; Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus; Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom; Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology; and God, Time and Eternity, as well as over a hundred articles in professional journals of philosophy and theology, including The Journal of Philosophy, New Testament Studies, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy, and British Journal for Philosophy of Science. In 2016 Dr. Craig was named by The Best Schools as one of the fifty most influential living philosophers.