Would Jesus believe in evolution?
(And if he did, would you?)
While compromise is one solution,
What matters is what is true.
While some look for truth in an ancient book,
I’ve always found it odd,
That afterwards, wherever they look
They can’t help seeing god
They look to the water; they look to the land
To the clouds, to the stars, to the air
And always, they say, they see god’s mighty hand
Well I’ve looked… and there’s nobody there.

The CNN belief blog has gone loopy again, with a story “Jesus would believe in evolution and so should you.” In it, Karl Giberson, the vice president of BioLogos, lays out his case. Christians have always been pro-truth (a dodgy assertion, but let’s continue); the evidence overwhelmingly supports evolution and refutes young-earth creationism (or even old-earth creationism); specific mutations even show that humans are not an exception, but share common ancestry with other apes and monkeys. Jesus would believe the evidence, and would want you to know.

And then there’s this phrase:

The Book of nature reveals the truth that God created the world through gradual processes over billions of years, rather than over the course of six days, as many creationists believe.

No, it does not. The book of nature does not reveal a god at all; the truth is that unfalsifiable presupposition of a god is not (because, again, it is unfalsifiable) disproved but merely rendered superfluous by the book of nature. If we expand the book of nature to include what we know of human perception, cognition, and belief, we find more and more reason to see god as a fiction.

We are often asked to think about what Jesus would do, if he lived among us today. Who would Jesus vote for? What car would he drive?

To these questions we should add “What would Jesus believe about origins?”

And the answer? Jesus would believe evolution, of course. He cares for the Truth.

And if we care for the truth, we’ll recognize that we are wedging god into a puzzle that is complete without that extra piece.