As you may have heard, famed Bill Nye “The Science Guy” will debate creation versus evolution with prominent face of young earth creationism Ken Ham today.  Now, generally speaking, I’m game for a good debate. Either you support gay marriage or you don’t, you approve of the ACA or you don’t, you support capital punishment or you don’t, etc. With these types of issues, there really is not much of a middle ground.  However, when it comes to creation and evolution, this is not exactly the case.
  Unfortunately, without the ability to travel through time to witness the actual act of creation, and short of having a one-on-one interview with God, the best we can do is bring the two sides of this debate together to find a history that makes sense and fits well with the biblical narrative and scientific evidence.
  Those who are bold enough to actually break the ludicrously childish maxim to never talk about money, politics or religion generally fall into one of the two camps: creationists and evolutionists.  A 2012 Gallup poll estimates 46 percent of Americans believe in creationism, while 37 percent regularly attend church (Pew Research, 2013). It should be safe to say creationists are on some level religious individuals.  Other Gallup polls show an association between evolutionism and atheism.  For the sake of argument, I will generically categorize evolutionists as atheists.
So, what we have is a face-off between religion and science —  wait a minute, not so fast.  Who said these two must be mutually exclusive?
    Over the years, I’ve heard evangelicals complain scientists’ ultimate goal is to prove God does not exist and that they want to lead people away from the word of God.  First, this is simply not true, as about half of scientists believe in a higher power (Pew Research, 2009).  Next, let us agree these scientists have conscientiously followed God’s call to become foremost experts in their fields.  Prior to the 20th century, creationists may have had a point when questioning scientifically accepted constants.  However, nearly every published scientific finding has been peer-reviewed since the early part of the last century, which means that not only have God-fearing scientific experts uncovered remarkable evidence using thoroughly tested techniques and theories, but these results have been examined by other God-fearing (and non, of course) experts before publication. To dismiss these methods as unreliable amounts to telling tens of thousands of people they fail to follow faithfully such biblical scripture as Colossians 3:23: “Whatever you do, do heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.”
   Let’s suppose atheists are right for the moment and agree God does not exist.  They believe humans are the ultimate achievement of the process and that all beings that came before are less advanced. This obviously allows that humans can continue to evolve further. Although we have not yet detected advanced life beyond this planet, this does not mean it doesn’t exist or has never existed.  It is therefore quite feasible that such a being has existed beyond our current natural perception.  To flat-out deny God’s existence then becomes a self-conflicting point of view.
   My point is that instead of debating the separation between the theories, we should work to blend them.  Nye and Ham have this issue all wrong. They shouldn’t debate; they should work together. Even the Catholic Church takes the official stance of “theistic evolution,”or evolution guided by God.  
    Scientists seek the truth.  The Bible claims to be the truth.  It is possible for both to be right and agree.  I believe God would prefer we devote debating energies to finding the truth together — not fighting over it.