Christianity and Evolution are Incompatible

Unfortunately, my opponent was unable to offer a rebuttal, so I will use this space to further expound on my response to PRO. Specifically, I want to address PRO's objection that if evolution is true, God is therefore out of the picture. Or maybe a better way of positioning PRO's objection is that is evolution is true, then our existence is "random" or by "chance" and therefore was not "guided" by God. At the end of my last rebuttal I stated that I thought PRO's objection was philosophically inadaquate. The reason I describe it this way is for the same reason Thomas Aquinas, a great theologian from the Middle Ages, would have described it. Aquinas said that when you show that something that happens in the natural world has a natural cause, that does not take God out of the picture because he is the author of all things natural. So when you say the rain has a natural cause in the clashing of cold and warm fronts, that does not take God out of the picture, it simply places all of nature in God’s providential plan. I attempted to convey this same thought with the analogy of every single human being's conception which was caused by the joining of a sperm and egg from a father and mother respectively. Similarly, just because we know there are natural processes which explain our births, doesn't mean God isn't our creator. One good way to explain this distinction might be to talk about a Ford Motor car. Imagine I asked you what is the explanation for the Ford Motor car and I asked you to choose either 1) Henry Ford or 2) the internal combustion engine? Which would you choose? The correct answer is both because these two options are both explanations of the existence of the Ford Motor car, but they are different kinds of explanations. The internal combustion engine is the mechanism or the natural process if you will, while Henry Ford is the agent. So we see here there are two types of explanations: Explanation by way of mechanism and explanation by way of agency. It seems to me that in the case of natural history and the origin of species, it makes plenty of sense to say that evolution is the mechanism, while God is the agent. In the same way that Henry Ford was the planner, the engineer, the artist, the mind underlying the existence of the Ford Motor car, God is the planner, engineer, artist, and mind behind the vast and beautiful array of species we see on this planet. Evolution is simply the mode of operation in which it happened. I think Ken Miller explains this point in a much better way that I can, he says:"The most satisfying, Christian view is a God who is the master of everything, including nature itself. Does that mean that God is not involved? No, to a person of faith like myself, God is involved in every second, every millisecond of existence, not by constantly pulling strings and subverting our independence, but by supporting our existence and the natural laws that make this world so orderly and enable us to do science in the first place." [1]One of the things that Miller so clearly expounds here is how so many Christians want to look for gaps in science and say "ahh...thats where God fits in". In other words, God fits into those gaps of scientific ignorance. This type of thinking is very similar to the tradition of the Middle Ages where as soon as they found something that couldn't be explained, they said it therefore must be the work of God. I find this to be a very paganistic view of the world in which God is no longer the God of everything, rather He is the God of what science cannot explain - similar to how pagans had Gods for rain, thunder, lightning, corn, etc. They couldn't explain these things and therefore they were explained by some divine being. Rather I think a much more robust view of all of this is like what Newton and other scientists did, which was to assume that the universe made sense because it had a designer, and then to use what we would call ordinary material scientific methods to investigate that universe. That's just what science does today. It is this view that is perfectly consistent, if not more consistent with Colossians 1:17 which says "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." So to PRO's objection I ask this:Does the natural process that brings about the creation of a main sequence star mean God didn't create the stars?Does the natural process of egg and sperm joining to form a new living being mean God is not the creator of us?Does the natural process of rain with the natural cause in the clashing of cold and warm fronts mean God is not the author of it?and lastlyDoes the natural process of evolution which is the cause of the vast array of species on Earth mean God is not the author of that?My main point is if PRO takes this view that God is no longer needed if evolution is true, then he/she has much bigger problems than evolution. There are natural processes everywhere happening all the time that we never attribute directly to God, but as Christians we know God upholds it all and makes it all possible. I will conclude with a quote by Aubrey Moore, a clergyman who wrote in 1891 that "The one absolutely impossible conception of God, in the present day, is that which represents him as an occasional visitor. Science has pushed the deist's God further and further away, and at the moment when it seemed as if he would be thrust out all together Darwinism appeared, and, under the disguise of a foe, did the work of a friend. It has conferred upon philosophy and religion an inestimable benefit, by showing us that we must choose between two alternatives. Either God is everywhere present in nature, or He is nowhere."So if evolution is true is God out of the picture? My answer - Not even in the slightest! He's everywhere. SOURCES1) http://www.godofevolution.com...2) http://www.pbs.org...;