theistic evolution?

Michael Shermer and Jerry Coyne had a little spat recently, Coyne calling Shermer an "accommodationist" for suggesting that theists who admit the provisional facts of science ought to not be badgered by atheists.  I sided with Shermer, as in general I side with the defenders of so-called theistic evolution. Putting a god behind the big bang may be gratuitous and non-explanatory but it's not obviously wrong, so long as scientific details aren't bent over backwards to fit (say) the narrative structure of Genesis.


And that's just what some theistic evolutionists and young earth creationists have done. They are Shermer's target here.  We saw Julia Sweeney saying, so sweetly, that the scientific evidence was stronger for her than her old unexamined religious pseudo-evidence. Shermer's making the same point here, less sweetly. He gives no quarter to those who attempt the logical absurdity of trying to squeeze the round peg of science into the square hole of religion. 





Shermer says this is not intended as a sacrilege of the poetic beauty of Genesis; rather, it is a mere extension of what the creationists have already done to Genesis in their insistence that it be read not as mythic saga but as scientific prose. If Genesis were written in the language of modern science, it would read something like this. Stephen Jay Gould, wherever he isn't, would approve. (That's what he meant about keeping religious and scientific magisteria apart.) But Jerry Coyne still calls him a sell-out. I'm still with Mike, and Julia, and Pearl too.