Greetings in that Divine and Most Precious Name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!
^My own Priest is a very intelligent and erudite individual, as well. He actually majored in the Sciences before he was ordained, which is why I was surprised to hear that he was so opposed to a theistic interpretation of evolution.
Well I think in regards specifically to scientifically fluent clergy, their rejection of evolution is smart, because in truth, the current theory is so absolutely flawed, full of holes, and in reality more part fantasy and wishful thinking than anything resembling the kind of science you find in say engineering or even astronomy. I agree in Theistic evolution in premise, not necessarily according to the current theories of Evolution so much as that the observed realities and facts which suggest evolution could be the mechanism of God's creative powers. The only way to reconcile the current theory of Evolution with Theism is essentially Thomas Jefferson's kind of Deism, the non-God God.
I agree then with these kinds of objections, but what I do tend to disagree with is fundamentalist or backwards interpretations of the Scriptures which do not follow the Tradition. For example, the Orthodox Church rarely takes dates or statistics in the Bible seriously, most of the "days" or "years" or "numbers of armies" or "surveys" etc etc are really taken to be more allegorical representations of power, size, and force. A thousand years then comes to symbolize something more like a long period of time less than an actual 1000 times 365.24. After all, is God really limited by the solar calendar and the Earth's rotations? The scale of the Universe (maybe even Multiverse, after all what else is heaven and hell in concept aside from multidimensions?) is obviously grander than our human perception of time can account for, even in His Omnipotent power, God can't create 14.1 BILLION light years of matter in 7,000 human years of time, it is physically impossible, and remember, God created these physical rules for a reason. That God is infinite itself obviously suggests that there is more than just the limited time-frame we read about in the Scriptures or experience as humans. Further, God is beyond the rules, true, but not His Creation. The Creation by definition is subject to the rules which God has imposed, including things like mass, distance, and variations in the conception of time.
That being said, the current theory of Evolution is an absolute farce. We shouldn't honestly be teaching it in schools so much as fact, because its blatantly inaccurate to the nature of science. However, in premise, evolution is indeed a fact of reality. We see it happening all the time, and we've seen evidence that it has happened before. What there is not necessarily evidence of at this time, is the convenient theory, and we and priests should rightfully disagree with this. Of course, that shouldn't also suddenly make us bedfellows with the Pat Roberston crowd either
stay blessed,
habte selassie
