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Quite a few Christians choose science as a profession: http://biologos.org/blog/ham-o... This is where I believe the faith vs science debate will harm us the most. To tell a child that the scientific method and tools of science are inaccurate then support that with any brand of "science" like Ken Ham and the yec movement does is going to flaw every child that grows up and becomes a scientist. This will in turn degrade the quality of scientific findings that we as a nation are able to come up with and in turn will further set us behind the rest of the world in scientific achievement. If you teach someone a flawed method to begin with their every outcome from that point forward will be flawed.

http://biologos.org/blog/ham-o... their is a large body of Christian doctoral professors that have voiced their thoughts on that debate. it is a good read.

http://biologos.org/blog/ham-o... when you have a body of Christian doctoral professors that do not agree with you about your own interpretation of scripture you can not force the debate on children. If you are an adult you can read up on what these issues are and make your own decision. Children do not have that luxury. To force a religious belief on a child that can not even be agreed upon within that religion is equatable to child abuse. Public schools should teach No faith, faith is up to the parents to teach. This is more of a problem with parents expecting schools to do it all for them than it is about religious over scientific view points. Guess what, raising a kid is hard. It is not the job of teachers to teach religion that roll is on the parents and religious leaders of the community. Do you think schools teach the about Native American history or our spirituality? As a native man I can say they absolutely do not. So should I petition the school or should I just sit my child down once and a while and teach it to him myself and help him form his own opinion on the conflicts that arise from being taught booth views. Don't be a lazy parent and teach your kid your faith and let others do the same for their children. If you don't fell like raising your child is your responsibility then maybe you should not have had them.

But a story about a 600 year old man and his sons building a boat with bronze age technology to hold every life form on the planet with sufficient genetic diversity to prevent inbreeding with a year of supplies, collecting them from every remote corner of the planet, and returning them all to their native habitat afterwards (which somehow wasn't destroyed by the flood) makes perfect sense. From polar bears to penguins, koalas and kangaroos to the Inaccessible Island rail, a flightless bird. Over 8000 species of ants alone. Don't forget the fresh water tanks for any aquatic life that wouldn't survive when salt water flooded their habitat. Returning all those fresh water life forms back to their home lakes and ponds all over the world afterwards must have been some trouble....

Honestly, I have an easier time believing a bearded man in a red suit comes down a billion chimneys on Christmas eve delivering toys.

You're first mistake is making a bunch of assumptions. You're assuming the flood was worldwide and that all species on earth needed to be saved. It's my understanding that the human population was small at that time and likely covered a very small region. A flood that would wipe out all of the human population wouldn't have to have been that big. So, saving the indigenous species for that particular region wouldn't have been nearly as hard as sliding down chimneys.

http://biologos.org/questions/genesis-flood

Christian organizations which understand that the Christian faith and evolution (or science in general, when practiced with integrity) are not at odds:

http://biologos.org/
http://truecreation.info/
http://asa3.org/

An excerpt from TrueCreation.info:

In general, the scientists who dissent from the basics of evolutionary theory are driven by ideological goals, usually based on faith, whether or not it is faith in the God of the Bible. In many cases, they do not hide the fact that they use presuppositional logic when formulating their “theories”; that is, they start by selecting their desired outcome and then seek only evidence that supports that outcome. They readily and openly admit that they sift facts through a filter, discarding any facts that do not fit with a literal interpretation of the Bible because they “simply cannot be true.” Presuppositional logic may be fine for understanding some foundational parts of the gospel message. It is of dubious value when used as an apologetic tool. But it fails miserably and completely as a scientific method. Let’s be clear — this is not science. If you seek answers to questions about the natural world using presuppositional logic, you will open yourself up to any number of incorrect answers. This goes a long way toward explaining why the results disseminated by the various “creation science” and “intelligent design” organizations rarely agree with each other! Which “Bible-based” outcome would you like? You can choose from many different ones, simply by believing the results from the various organizations I will describe below. I say “believe” rather than “accept”, because your reception of these results will be based on faith, not reason, nor trust in the practice of reason. Some evangelical Christian educators lambaste the teaching of evolution and “materialistic” science, claiming that it is an example of a heinous relativism that pervades the American educational system. They are encouraging relativism by using presuppositional logic.

Even extremely intelligent persons who are trained in the scientific method, with degrees from prestigious universities, may fall into the trap of thinking that yielding the scientific method to presuppositional logic is acceptable if done under the guise of Christian education. After all, the end justifies the means, right? Author Michael Hawley, in his book Searching for Truth with a Broken Flashlight, explains the psychology of this trap. In short, people will believe what they want to believe, and when they let this drive their approach to science, they will construct all sorts of flawed arguments to prove it to themselves. In many cases, they simply let themselves submit to the argument from incredulity. The human mind excels at both of these logical failings. Some will turn this around and say that this is exactly why scientists accept evolution and other theories; they want to “believe” in evolution. They completely miss the point of how and why the modern scientific method has been applied since its inception almost 200 years ago. When the scientific method is practiced using deductive and inductive logic with integrity, the impact of individual beliefs and human failings such as confirmation bias is minimized. When over 99% of scientists from different specialties and a variety of backgrounds (including many evangelical Christians) practice the scientific method with integrity and objective reasoning and come to agreement on a theory, you can trust that the theory is a solid one.

This phenomenon may have started in the US, but they know very well they'll eventually reach some point of saturation in such a politically divided country. That's why creation science proponents are on an all-out assault on science throughout the world, especially in developing nations.

http://www.nwcreation.net/international.html

Oh, you thought it had something to do with missionary work and spreading the Gospel message? NO. These organizations (Institute for Creation Research, Creation Ministries International, The Discovery Institute, and a few other smaller ones) are big business. Look at their Web sites. From the very first page, they're either asking for donations or they're selling you their wares. Homeschooling textbooks, tracts, videos. Yes, the missionary work is integral to their purpose -- they need a wide audience of buyers. They're happy to do that too.

You aren't going to be able to counter this movement with any kind of science education. They have their own "science" now, any science from any other source will be viewed with tremendous suspicion if it conflicts with their view of creation. You need to work this at its source -- by educating people on the history of creationist thought, and the reasons *why* they believe what they do -- educate them on the *reason* why they have a certain *interpretation* of the Bible. If you're an atheist, you'll think it's easy enough, just discredit the Bible. But attacking a person's faith at its core is NOT going to help, it only adds fuel to the fire. So please DON'T take that approach. Seriously, it will make things much, much worse.

The only way forward is to educate Christians on creationism as a movement itself, in a way that is NOT abusive to their faith. Get people to learn specifically about the history of the three organizations mentioned above! There is a tremendous amount of dirty laundry there (see http://truecreation.info/ or the book Searching for Truth with a Broken Flashlight) Better yet, find respected Christians who they trust, who understand science -- and geology, cosmology, and evolutionary biology in particular. It can be done:

http://biologos.org/
http://truecreation.info/
http://theistic-evolution.com/

Books:
The Language of Science and Faith, Karl Giberson and Francis Collins
Origins: A Reformed Look at Creation, Design, and Evolution, Deborah Haarsma and Loren Haarsma
Searching for Truth with a Broken Flashlight, Michael Hawley
Beyond the Firmament, Gordon J. Glover
Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul, Kenneth Miller
The Passionate Intellect, Alister McGrath
I Love Jesus and I Accept Evolution, Denis O. Lamoureux
The Lost World of Genesis One, John Walton

Yet another article that seems to imply you can't believe in evolution and be a Christian. This is not the case and Biologos is one such institution setup by Christian biologists that has a wealth of information to support the case for Christians accepting evolution and genesis. One of those involved was previously head of the human genome project. The book "the language of science and faith" which I have just finished reading provides additional insights.

It is unfortunate that people use hostile labeling for creationists since it makes it harder for everyone to think clearly. I grew up believing as you. But the evidence for an old earth and evolution of species became so clear that I abandoned Young Earth Creationism. The evidence is really not circular. For the full story about how radiometric dating works, check out the essays linked at : http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/evid.anc.earth.pdf For a more complete account of why many Christians find the evidence for evolution compelling see: http://biologos.org/ And let's be clear that this is not about the origin of the universe. Or even the origin of life. The point that is overwhelmingly obvious from the data is that life has become more complex on earth over the last few billion years.

is a top-ranking Christian university which promotes a correct scientific understanding of evolution. They recently opened an Evolution Education Research Center in conjunction with Harvard and McGill.

Pepperdine University and Wheaton College are two other prominent Christian colleges which teach evolution.

Sites such as http://truecreation.info/ http://theistic-evolution.org/ and http://biologos.org/ illustrate that there are Christians out there who have reconciled faith and science.

Sounds good, right?

That said, I still believe that the problem won't go away any time soon. Why? Power and money. The organizations behind the modern-day creationism movement (Institute for Creation Research, Answers in Genesis, Creation Science Evangelism, and The Discovery Institute) are multimillion-dollar Christian textbook publishing houses -- or they supply the "science" for other homeschool textbook publishing houses.

Even when it lands them in jail for tax evasion, they have a cult-like following:

http://freehovind.com/

As much as it seems like they're a united front, they love to criticize and sue each other:

http://www.icr.org/article/intelligent-design-or-scientific-creationism/

Legal controversy between AiG and CMI

It's not about the individual believer anymore. It's not about worldviews. It's not even about the churches! It's about the money-driven organizations that are feeding them. They've sucked people in using slick propaganda, books and Web sites, and encourage people to not just teach this stuff, but to teach other people to teach this stuff.

In short, it's not any different from any modern political movement.

Scientists practice the scientific method. Creationists do not. They practice their faith. But what about your "creation science", you ask.

The entire concept of "creation science" began in 1915 with George McReady Price's textbook, "The Fundamentals of Geology".
Price was a Seventh Day Adventist, and his teachings derived directly from the visions of the teenage prophet Ellen White several decades prior. Ellen White claimed to see visions of Noah's flood and the supposed fossilization of creatures underneath it. What Price added to the mix was the use of scientific terminology to make "flood geology" sound plausible to the (frankly) uneducated layman. He taught that the Earth was approximately 6000 years old, and that all fossils were the result of Noah's flood, and he produced plenty of pseudoscience to support this teaching.

This view was then adopted as the official position of mainstream Protestant Christianity within a few years, by the publication of "The Fundamentals", a series of tracts created by Bible scholars during the early 1920s to try to rein in Christianity which was diverging on many points of faith. (Wonder where "fundamentalism" and "fundamentalist" come from? Most Christians don't even know that it comes from this series of publications.)

To make matters worse, "The Genesis Flood" published in 1960 by Henry Morris picked up where Price left off. The link between Morris and Price is creationism's "dirty little secret", as author Michael Hawley exposes so well in his book, "Searching for Truth with a Broken Flashlight". Henry Morris' organization, the Institute for Creation Research, STILL EXISTS TODAY as a multimillion dollar publishing house pandering to Christians eager for more "creation science". Their research, such as the million-dollar RATE project, forms the basis for much of the "research" used in Christian school and homeschooling materials today.

MOST EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS TODAY WOULD BE HORRIFIED TO KNOW that their "creation science", most of which comes from the ICR, can be traced directly to the teachings of a teenage Seventh Day Adventist prophet in the mid-1800s.

I have a lot to say about "intelligent design" but I'll stop here and get back to the point of this thread: So where's the tie-in with climate change denial? Most of the evidence for long-term climate change comes from ice cores and similar dating methods which yield time ranges going back hundreds of thousands to millions of years. Doesn't fit well with a 6000-year old universe, does it? So of course they reject the evidence. Accepting the evidence would be a tacit admission that creation science is wrong.

I am a Christian. I'll be even more specific: I am an evangelical Christian. But I am sick of the lying and the hypocrisy of these "creation science" and "intelligent design" organizations. A Christian can practice science through the scientific method and still have faith in the God of the Bible. FAITH. We don't need to "prove" God. If you still don't get it, visit resources such as http://truecreation.info/ and http://biologos.org/

There are resources which show that the Christian faith does not need to attack evolution (at least, for some definition of each).

For example, http://biologos.org/ or http://truecreation.info./

I've searched, but found nothing similar for Islam. The articles I have found, are strikingly similar to apologetic articles written by intelligent design proponents (http://www.irfi.org/articles/articles_151_200/muslim_responses_to_evolution.htm).

You are right in that Christianity encompasses a wide range of opinions. You are also correct that many promiment scientists were Christian.

However, at present, over 40% of the US population believes in a "young earth". That is not a very small minority.
Source: Reference #7 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism

This has been an ever-increasing problem since the US decline in science education since the end of the Cold War. We aren't going to combat this with debates and statements from authority figures, especially when the debate is between an atheist and an evolutionary creationist. It's too bad we didn't see the debate, because it's almost certain that the debate wasn't over science, but rather theology. I'll bet they agree on the science part. This type of debate is a distraction from the real problem.

The only way we're going to improve this situation is to educate, educate, educate. Provide resources about geology and biology that are squarely directed at those who are Christian. Provide information that deconstructs their impression of science but does not attack their religion. There are Web sites specifically directed at this:

http://biologos.org/
http://www.answersincreation.org/
http://theistic-evolution.org/
http://truecreation.info/

Great website addressing just your question at BioLogos. On a base level, they are Christians who believe exactly as you say about evolution. On a detailed level, well, there are lots of details. My understanding is a lot of "real" scientists eventually developed this resource. People like Francis Collins, the guy who decoded the human genome ... currently appointed by Obama to head the NIH, are involved.

Oh come on the current director of the fucking National Institutes of Health is Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian who literally wrote the book on theistic evolution and founded BioLogos, a website dedicated to harmonizing science and religion. If he's been that successful, there's basically no stigma involved in being a religious scientist.