Are Humans Special? Another Inescapable Question

The Bible clearly and unambiguously reveals that human beings are special creatures –the only creature made in the image of God. That claim is now a focus of the evolution debate, as is made clear in a recent op-ed column published in The New York Times.
“Grasping the Depth of Time as a First Step in Understanding Evolution” by Verlyn Klinkenborg sets the issue clearly:
The essential, but often well-disguised, purpose of intelligent design, is to preserve the myth of a separate, divine creation for humans in the belief that only that can explain who we are. But there is a destructive hubris, a fearful arrogance, in that myth. It sets us apart from nature, except to dominate it. It misses both the grace and the moral depth of knowing that humans have only the same stake, the same right, in the Earth as every other creature that has ever lived here. There is a righteousness – a responsibility – in the deep, ancestral origins we share with all of life.
Once again, we are confronted with the fact that evolutionary theory and the Christian faith represent two rival faiths, with two rival cosmologies and incompatible understandings of humanity.
Klinkenborg also stated: Accepting the fact of evolution does not necessarily mean discarding a personal faith in God. But accepting intelligent design means discarding science. Much has been made of a 2004 poll showing that some 45 percent of Americans believe that the Earth – and humans with it – was created as described in the book of Genesis, and within the past 10,000 years. This isn’t a triumph of faith. It’s a failure of education. So, accepting evolution does not mean that one must “necessarily” abandon belief in God, but it does mean that one must necessarily abandon belief in the uniqueness of humankind — at least according to Verlyn Klinkenborg.