Some scientISTS understand evolution as a mindless, purposeless process.
Nancey Murphy, a philosopher and Fuller Seminary professor, agrees. Anyone who attributes the characteristics of living things to creative intelligence has by definition stepped into the arena of either metaphysics or theology. Since science, as it is currently conceived, is methodologically atheistic, it excludes any concept of a Creator who has designed, created and controls the universe in general and evolution in pareticular, for a purpose. With very few exceptions, these believers maintain their respectability by tacitly accepting the naturalistic rules that define rationality in the universities. This is true in every field of study, but especially so in natural science, the discipline that has the authority to describe physical reality for all the others.