DOF points to a Chicago Trib article about some efforts to reconcile science and religion into a new theology that resembles deism (in terms of having a world that operates by natural processes, not constant divine intervention) but with a caring God behind the clockwork, for whom a non-deterministic world (so far as can be recognized) is actually the divine plan.
He rejected the idea of God as a supernatural being who took care to design every galaxy and blade of grass. The God he sought couldn’t have designed everything at the outset, because the universe that science reveals is always unfolding, always changing. He began to think of God as a silent presence within nature, the source of the nameless awe he felt when studying the genesis of solar systems and the life of our endlessly fertile planet.
“If your faith requires supernaturalism, or a God who wields overpowering control over nature, then yes, evolution will challenge that,” says Van Till, who took early retirement from Calvin College in 1999.”The key is to correct your portrait of God,” he says.
It’s an audacious suggestion, but transforming the way people think about God has become a vital mission for a wave of scientists and theologians who want to place the natural world at the forefront of religion. They see themselves as spokespersons for an emerging religious majority that has been obscured by the excesses of stubborn creationists and the iconoclastic broadsides of scientific atheists.
Evolution, they contend, is more than a soulless explanation for the development of life. It is a glimpse of a divine plan so subtle it’s almost invisible.
The term use is “theistic evolution” (one proponent calls it the bit geekier “BioLogos”). It’s not going to convince traditionalist Christians, who see such a God as “having his hands tied” (though one seems to recall that Christianity speaks of a God who literally did just that). Nor does it particularly satisfy anti-theists who see it as needless complicating something that its proponents admit doesn’t need God around for an explanation.
Does it satisfy or convince me? It’s probably closer to my own views than a lot of other schools of thought, but I’m still pondering it a bit. A good read, regardless.