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Crossing the divide between science and religion: a view on evolution.

Article Excerpt
Many people today question the place of religion in an age of science. This is understandable: the extraordinary success of the scientific method at providing a nearly seamless explanatory framework for the physical world has acutely challenged traditional religious beliefs.

Perhaps nowhere is this challenge more apparent than in the theory of evolution. For some, evolution is the ultimate scientific theory: simple, powerful, and elegant, it offers an explanation of the great mystery of how life, order, and complexity can arise from lifelessness and chaos. For others, evolution threatens to undermine deeply held beliefs about the meaning and purpose of life: it pushes the Creator from the cosmic stage, replacing a universe suffused with meaning with one that is cold, pitiless, and utterly indifferent to human suffering.

For many thoughtful people, believers or not, neither extreme seems adequate. They intuitively understand that there ought to be no contradiction in both embracing the theory of evolution and holding the conviction that human life has a higher origin and a larger purpose than the mere struggle for survival.

Yet coming to a satisfactory resolution of the tension between those two ideas cannot rationally take place without a seismic shift in perspective.

And it is in the Baha'i writings...

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