I was perusing old posts on Faith and Theology the other day and came across this quote by Karl Barth evolution and theology:

[One] can as little compare the biblical creation story and a scientific theory like that of evolution as one can compare, shall we say, an organ and a vacuum-cleaner – that there can be as little question of harmony between them as of contradiction?… The creation story deals only with the becoming of all things, and therefore with the revelation of God, which is inaccessible to science as such. The theory of evolution deals with what has become, as it appears to human observation and research and as it invites human interpretation”

The brilliance of this quote is the way that it captures the subtlety of the distinction between science and theology.  A vacuum cleaner and an organ operate according to the same physical principles of pressure and suction.  Yet their role and significance in human life is rather different from one another.  So, it is not the case (as it is often argued) that science and religion are totally distinct epistemological categories.  Rather, starting from the same world, they diverge to accomplish different epistemological goals.  In Kantian language, we could say that, starting with the same noumena, theology and science apply different manifolds of perception to reality, thereby arriving at different perceptions of the phenomena while remaining both ‘true.’

Theology derives its significance as more-than-myth by virtue of being based on fact.  The creation story as theology would bear no significance were it not based on the fact that the world did in fact come into being.  We need not look at the Bible as a science textbook, but we need not relegate its truth to the realm of merely aesthetics.  As Barth says, “…[One] should distinguish what is to be distinguished and not shut [oneself] off completely from either side.”