(This represents a response I made to a theistic-evolution blog, BioLogos)
Thanks for acknowledging that we encounter great problems when we try to put Jesus and Darwin together. It is vexing to dialogue with a Christian who pretends that they go together like peanut butter and jelly.
I think that we’d both agree that, despite the challenges, we must somehow seek to reconcile the physical world with the Bible, recognizing that they both represent God’s singular truth. We’d also agree that this endeavor is made even more difficult because we “see in part.”
We both probably work from what we know and try to apply it to what we don’t know. We take what is most certain and use it to illuminate what is less certain. However, I think we take divergent paths from this point. While you might start with the modern consensus of the community of science as certainty, I start with Scripture, as Scripture mandates (2 Cor. 10:4-5; John 15:5-8). It becomes my lens through which I see everything else.
You might regard this as putting my head in the sand and refusing to take an unbiased look at the real world. However, I see Scripture as a good pair of glasses that brings the world into sharp focus. In fact everyone wears his own lens. The question becomes this: “Does my lens obscure or illuminate what’s out there? Does Darwin blind or lead research in fruitful ways?”
Several esteemed archeologists have claimed that their diggings had been profitably guided by Scripture. Scientists have stated likewise. Karl Giberson even had an interesting post on this subject. (Please see my July post, “Christians can’t do Science!”)
Our paradigms exercise tremendous influence over our selection and organization of the facts. This helps to explain our variant ideas. While you regard evolution as an unassailable fortress, I see it as a tottering façade. Likewise, two people can write my autobiography; one will make me into a saint, while the other can have me looking like a rank sinner, all depending upon the facts they choose. This same principle pertains whether in regards to science, history, or any other discipline. (I don’t mean to relativize the facts, but merely the way we humans make use of the facts.)
Here’s one example out of many. While you, choosing certain supporting facts, may regard dinosaurs as having pre-dated humans by millions of years, Creationists point to other evidences—ancient drawings of people fighting dinosaurs, dinosaur recorded history, a footprint containing both species, DNA found in a dinosaur remains.
You write about how many disciplines are bringing together convergent evidence for evolution. Evolutionists point out the agreement between several systems or measures of dating the earth and its objects. However, we need to see this claim in light of the fact that there are literally thousands, even millions, of possible ways to date. Each object moves or deteriorates at its own formulaic way and rate. So each object becomes a possible source to assess dates, given certain presuppositions. Creationists have pointed to many of these—the movement of the moon towards the earth, the deterioration of Saturn’s rings, soil formation, sediment deposits. The list is potentially endless.
If all these possible measures exist, it becomes easy for us to cherry pick which measures agree with our hypothesis and forget the rest. It also becomes easy to find agreement for evolution between the various disciplines. Besides, there is a lot of energy, time and resources being invested to prove this very thing. I would be surprised if they didn’t find oodles of evidence in this unbalanced manner.
It’s like an insurance company going to court with their team of lawyers. How could they not build an overwhelming case for their client!
Debates over evolution and creation generally suffer from 2 major problems, at least as I see it. The first is that different people understand evolution in quite different ways. Some add too much into it and others strip too much out of it. Likewise, there are different conceptions of how Divine Causality works. Ultimately, one needs to flesh out an account of divine causlity before one can declare that theistic evolution conflicts with Christianity or not. This requires discussing how different levels of causality can work together (or not). Roman Catholic theologians have been working on these metaphysical levels of causality for some time. Recently, there has been some useful commentary about levels of causlity in paragraph 69 of the document here:
ReplyDelete"The current scientific debate about the mechanisms at work in evolution requires theological comment insofar as it sometimes implies a misunderstanding of the nature of divine causality. Many neo-Darwinian scientists, as well as some of their critics, have concluded that, if evolution is a radically contingent materialistic process driven by natural selection and random genetic variation, then there can be no place in it for divine providential causality. A growing body of scientific critics of neo-Darwinism point to evidence of design (e.g., biological structures that exhibit specified complexity) that, in their view, cannot be explained in terms of a purely contingent process and that neo-Darwinians have ignored or misinterpreted. The nub of this currently lively disagreement involves scientific observation and generalization concerning whether the available data support inferences of design or chance, and cannot be settled by theology. But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas: “The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency” (Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1). In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science. Divine causality can be active in a process that is both contingent and guided. Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so. An unguided evolutionary process – one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence – simply cannot exist because “the causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only as to constituent principles of species, but also as to the individualizing principles....It necessarily follows that all things, inasmuch as they participate in existence, must likewise be subject to divine providence” (Summa theologiae I, 22, 2)."
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html
In my judgment, Evangelical Christians would do well to focus on preparing a detailed, philosophically informed account of Divine causality before they make judgments about theistic evolution. This is especially so considering there are different versions of theistic evolution as well. The discussion will go no where if conceptions of Divine causlity and levels of causation are not at the heart of it.
God bless,
Bob
Bob,
ReplyDeleteI have no issue at all with those who say that God could have worked through evolution. Instead, my argument is with those who insist that God DID work through evolution. Why? Because this latter notion undermines the core of Scripture!
While Scripture insists that God had made everything good, and that it was humans who screwed everything up, the evolutionary model posits a bloody, murderous beginning. And this undermines the Bible doctrines subsequently built upon this dual revelation of God’s utter goodness and our rebellion.