Jeremy Manier
Jeremy Manier is a science and medical reporter for the Chicago Tribune. His work covers a range of research—from stem cell policy to the manned space program—often focusing on its ethical, religious, or political implications. He joined the Tribune in 1996 as a journalism fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was part of a three-person team that won the 2006 Lisagor Award for in-depth reporting from the Chicago Headline Club for a series on the commercial and biological basis of America’s love affair with junk food.
| Article |
Chicago Tribune
The New TheologyReconciling the biblical God with Darwin’s theories would challenge even an omnipotent being. But a growing number of thinkers and scientists are altering their concept of the deity to make room for evolution. More than 350 years after the inquisition hounded Galileo over charges of heresy, physicist Howard Van Till, of Calvin College in Michigan, confronted a little inquisition of his own. Van Till roused a small but fervent pack of enemies at the conservative college with his book, The Fourth Day, in which he argued that the stories of the Bible and science’s account of evolution could both be true. His critics on the school’s board of trustees had no interest in reconciling the religious account of creation with a naturalist explanation of how life and the universe have evolved over the ages. For years after the book’s release in 1986, Van Till reported to a monthly interrogation where he struggled to reassure college officials that his scientific teachings fit within their creed. Van Till’s career survived the ordeal, but his Calvinist faith did not. Over the next two decades, he became the heretic his critics had suspected. |