A Reasonable Accommodation

Preface

I am a born-again, evangelical Christian. I am also a scientist, more specifically, a biologist. My reason for writing this book is to share my thoughts, as well as those of others, in an attempt to bridge a gap that often exists between natural scientists and people of the Christian faith. It deals with some basic questions regarding the origin and ages of the universe and the earth, what life is and how it developed, and how mankind came into being. It also deals with the fall of man, the questions of suffering, sin and evil in the world, and the role that the God of the Bible has played in that unfolding drama. It is not intended to be an exhaustive review of all the scientific, theological or philosophical aspects of these questions. I have written it primarily for the layman, and, as much as possible, I have avoided the use of the particular jargon often associated with each of those highly specialized fields.

Since I am also a novelist, I have chosen to use the dialogue format of a novel to explore these questions. The setting for this exploration is a small seminar class dealing with the nature of God, held on the campus of a hypothetical Christian college. The college and its students and faculty do not exist. I have never been enrolled in or involved with a seminar class concerned with the nature of God. All of that is a product of my imagination. The one exception is the character Dan, the narrator of the story, who by and large represents myself. Aside from that, any similarity of the locales to real places, or the players in the drama to real people, is purely coincidental.

On the other hand, while the setting and characters in the story are fictional, the professional scientists and authors referred to by the characters were or are real people, and their ideas are very significant. I use the dialogue among the players in the story as a vehicle for expressing and exploring those ideas, many of which are concepts that have been published by various individuals. I give credit to them, and I refer to some of their more significant, published work in the course of the narration. A selected bibliography is provided at the end of the book. However, there are a few ideas that are, to the best of my knowledge, mine alone. These I have not previously published, and thus there are no references for them.

Many of these ideas are, to say the least, controversial. Let me as-sure the reader that I am not trying to be dogmatic regarding any of these more contentious subjects. I am merely trying to share some of my thoughts, and the thoughts of others, about these topics in a way that may make some sense. However, I must be rather inflexible about what I feel are two bedrock, immutable tenets of the Christian faith which relate directly to this discussion. First, I firmly believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, his written revelation of himself to mankind. Second, I also firmly believe that God created the universe, including the planet on which we live, and that he gave to man the unique ability to observe, investigate and understand that creation, from the smallest subatomic particles to the most distant galaxies. These are God’s dual revelations of himself to mankind: his inspired, written Word—the Bible, and his creation—the universe in which we live.

These two revelations, and their relationship to each other, have given rise to serious conflicts and have raised many questions. As a scientist I try to consider those questions by examining as many of the available, relevant facts as possible, using both biblical and natural sources. Then I try to arrive at a tentative synthesis that I feel is best supported by those facts. Because these are areas in which there have been widely varying opinions, it is my hope that this book will provide an incentive for open discussion and perhaps lead to some level of agreement, or at least tolerance, involving some of these often-divisive subjects.

David K. Shortess, Ph.D.