Following on from his
review of two books by theistic evolutionists, Jerry Coyne recently wrote an article
criticising the US National Academy of Sciences for saying that evolution and Christianity are compatible.
Richard Hoppe at Panda's Thumb disagrees with Coyne, but
P Z Myers supports him. Atheist fight!
Is evolution compatible with Christianity? Well, yes and no. I was a Christian who believed in evolution. This means not having good answers to some stuff Christians might care about: was the Fall a real event, and if not, where does original sin come from? Did physical death really enter the world through sin? If, as Christians usually argue as part of their
theodicy on natural disasters, creation itself was corrupted in the Fall (whatever the Fall was), how exactly does that work? If you're a Christian who accepts evolution, you don't need atheists to ask these awkward questions, your creationist brothers (
and sisters) will do a much better job of it.
But that doesn't show incompatibility. If you keep running into these problems and have to keep adding
ad hoc patches to your theory, you should consider discarding it, but there are things I don't have good answers to as an atheist, and that hasn't stopped me being one.
I was a student of science who was a Christian. That seems to be where the real problem lies. Theistic evolutionists tend to say stuff like "Evolution
could have been the way God did it" or "Maybe God nudges electrons from time to time". They might make a wider point about "other ways of knowing". At some point, someone is probably going to say "well, Science cannot prove your wife loves you, but you believe that, don't you?"
The
Less Wrong crowd recently discussed whether their community is and should be welcoming to theists.
Theism, Wednesday, and Not Being Adopted is a good post which deserves reading on its own merits, but I was particularly interested in
Eliezer Yudkowsky's comment about compartmentalising rationality.
If Wednesday [the child of Mormons mentioned in the article] can partition, that puts an upper bound on her ability as a rationalist; it means she doesn't get on a deep level why the rules are what they are. She doesn't get, say, that the laws regarding evidence are not social customs that can be different from one place to another, but, rather, manifestations of the principle that you have to walk through a city in order to draw an accurate map of it.
Sam Harris mocks this compartmentalisation in his
satirical response to Coyne's critics (the paragraphs following "Finally, Kenneth Miller, arrives" are the key ones). Science is one manifestation of the principle that you draw a map by walking the streets, not by sitting in your room and thinking hard about it. There are other legitimate forms of cartography, such as the one you apply when you conclude that someone loves you (assuming you're not actually a stalker). Perhaps, like the
Tube map, they're not doing quite the same precise measurement as you'd expect from science, but they make useful maps.
Recall the original point of the
Flying Spaghetti Monster, before it developed into a cod-religion for annoying Christians with, like the worship of
Invisible Pink Unicorn (PBUHHH). The FSM's inventor used it to
point out that if you're going to say your god created the universe because you sat your room and had a strong inner conviction about it, on your own argument, the FSM revealed to me as a Pastafarian is as legitimate as the creator your conviction revealed to you. This point is not lessened if you say your god sometimes happens to do stuff in a way which isn't directly incompatible with known science.
Perhaps theism isn't incompatible with evolution, but it is incompatible with good cartography.
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Bored with new atheism? Why not try the old school? 
This round of bad arguments is about science. Before I start, I'll acknowledge my debt to 
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Gambling at Rick's Bar
