As her AP Biology teacher explains evolution, senior Anna Kim, Christian, dutifully takes notes with her peers. But years of church and learning about biblical creation stories have taught her differently.
“When we learned about evolution, I felt that it contradicted my beliefs,” Kim said. “I was taught that God created Adam and Eve at the beginning of time, and that they were the first humans. However, in AP Biology class, I learned that humans evolved from apes to their current form.”
This tension appears in other courses as well. In Escape Literature, human evolution is a central idea in an assigned movie, “Space Odyssey.” Rather than openly challenging the material, Kim said she separates academics from personal beliefs.
“Since it’s related to grades, I approach it as studying a theory that isn’t necessarily factual,” Kim said. “Because it’s part of the class, I can’t ignore it.”
Biology teacher Elizabeth Brimhall said she understands this tension, but thinks conflict is avoidable. Brimhall, who is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said much of the intellectual-spiritual divide depends on the way religious texts are interpreted.
“I understand the narratives I find in the Bible as symbolic,” Brimhall said. “Often, folks who have trouble with evolution because of their religion are looking at a more literal interpretation of Scripture. From my perspective, Scripture was often written with specific narratives and symbols in mind, for a purpose and an audience. It’s a different type of writing than a scientific paper.”
Senior Pastor of the First Congregational Church of Palo Alto David Howell said the story of Adam and Eve, for example, was not meant to function as a historical or scientific document.
“It’s written to be an expression of what it means to be human and how we relate to the presence of God in the world, and I think it actually diminishes the story to try to say it has something to do with science,” Howell said. “It answers the question, ‘If God is perfect, why isn’t the world perfect?’ And the answer that the story gives is that we would rather have a choice and choose to eat that fruit every time. Because we’d rather know and be challenged and have the opportunity to grow and struggle than we would like to live in a perfect world and have everything taken care of for us.”
For students like senior Kishor Rajmohan, who identifies as agnostic, grappling with science hasn’t so much challenged his faith as reframed beliefs.
“We used to fill in a lack of understanding with the power of a god,” Rajmohan said. “Many people make arguments for God as a necessity for the creation of the universe. More rigorous philosophy, which has been informed by science, has definitely changed religious thought relating to non-scientific things like the nature of existence, purpose and free will.”
While Rajmohan sees science reshaping religion’s explanatory role, Howell said faith addresses what remains beyond scientific explanation.
“Science is about understanding our universe, and faith is about embracing the mystery that is left,” Howell said. “If somebody believes that all life is connected, I think the next question is, ‘What do you call that which connects all of it? And I call that which connects all life, God. That is what I understand to be God in a religious context.”
For Brimhall, science and faith are different but coexisting perspectives on the world.
“Science often answers the question of ‘how’ — looking at mechanisms like evolution by natural selection,” Brimhall said. “But faith systems are often looking at the ‘whys’ — why are we here? Do people have souls? Those are questions that wouldn’t necessarily be answered by science.”
She said that the two perspectives reinforce rather than contradict each other in her view.
“As a biologist, I can see the world is beautiful, and part of that is understanding the mechanisms of how something like photosynthesis works in a leaf,” Brimhall said. “As a person of faith, I can also see nature as beautiful and the earth as a creation of a supreme being. They can go hand in hand.”
Still, Kim said the cultural context of Palo Alto, where many residents identify as nonreligious, makes expressing her faith difficult.
“It seemed like students avoided bringing up religious topics, so I also felt that I shouldn’t reveal my own religious beliefs,” Kim said. “When studying evolutionary theory, everyone seems to take it as fact, so sometimes I wanted to express my own thoughts and have them respected. It doesn’t seem like the students in the class respect those with different beliefs.”
Rajmohan said pressure to choose between being “scientific” and religious still exists, though, as illustrated by the debate over vaccines.
“Vaccines surely involve ethics and values, mainly relating to autonomy and belief in science,” Rajmohan said. “There is a question of autonomy when vaccines are going to be forced upon people and mandated to be taken. Though science shows that vaccines can help people, does that mean we can force everyone to take them?”
And Associate Pastor at First Congregational Church of Palo Alto Eileen Altman said vaccines can also be misused or politicized, raising concerns beyond religious or ethical guidance.
“I think vaccines serve a political agenda of some people,” Altman said. “There has been a concerted effort over the last couple of decades to make people afraid of vaccines. I don’t feel like people should be forced to do something that is terrifying to them. On the other hand, I believe they are being told lies. They are being told lies for the purpose of gaining political power or economic returns from selling people quack remedies.”
Beyond vaccines, new medical technologies like genetic testing and gene editing present complex moral dilemmas.
Howell said that religion has a role in guiding how society responds to these challenges.
“Scientists ask the ‘Can we?’ and the religious people ask the ‘Should we?’” Howell said. “Religion has a responsibility to really encourage people to think ethically, to think morally, to think about the dignity of all persons, all those things.”
Ultimately, Rajmohan said science can inform, but not resolve, questions about life.
“Science studies and can explain what is here and how it works, not necessarily why it’s here or where it came from,” Rajmohan said. “It is up to our conscious experience and philosophical thought to poke and prod at these questions until we find a framework that we can agree upon or we each find an answer that makes sense to us.”
