Is Evolution a science or a faith?

[Whateverist]

Re the OP: I take it on faith that what can be repeated in the lab and which has been peer reviewed in science journals is provisionally the best we can do where empirical questions are concerned. So I'm going to go way out on a limb and accept science -including evolution- on faith over what ever any holy book may be interpreted as saying to the contrary. That's just the way I roll.

Many people think that when we have scientific explanation of something we don’t need God. People like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawkins say to the people, “you have got to choose between science and God.” The first thing to clear up here is that they imagined God to be a kind of god of the gaps (I cannot explain it therefore, God did it). Now, if you think of God like that then of course you ask people to choose between God and science because the more God the less science or more science the less God. However, that is not true in the light of the religious definition of God that says God is the creator of the whole show. He is the God of things that we understand and He is the God of things that we don’t understand. So summing up what we have here two kinds of explanation.

1. Explanation in terms of law and the mechanism on the one hand and
2. Explanation in terms of agency on the other hand.

It is absurd to suggest that an explanation in terms of law and mechanism rules out the existence of the agency and yet that is exactly what people are arguing in the case of explanation of the universe.

But I don't claim that an explanation in terms of law and mechanism rules out the agency of a creative god. I am agnostic but also apathetic where such claims are concerned.

I've never been satisfied with any description of a god which I've heard so far. Some claim a god blinked everything into existence from nothing at all. But that is only one aspect of gods and I can't show that no gods exist just by showing that no god was necessary for the universe as we know it today - even if I could (which of course I can't). Likewise, just by pointing out that an explanation in terms of law and mechanism does not rule out gods, you haven't established the necessity of gods.

Now I'm not invested in demonstrating that an adequate account of everything is possible without gods .. anymore than I think it necessary to show that such an account is possible without accounting for unicorns or trolls. I just don't care about those things. They don't prick my imagination as being important or even relevant. But by all means, include any of them that you like in your own musings. As I said originally, that just isn't the way I roll but I have no agenda for the way you should proceed.