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“We answer that …” both the religious and scientific perspectives have important and complementary insights to offer to any worldview that takes full and proper account of the complexity and wonder of life of Earth. From a religious perspective, we take as essential that life, and especially human life, does have purpose and meaning. From the scientific perspective, we acknowledge that the mechanism whereby the Creator brought us into being does seem to contain a genuine openness to a variety of possible ways by which life on Earth became the way it is.

Science vs. scientism (reprise)

As we stated earlier, our plan in this lesson is to spend less time on the “contrast” perspective, which is concerned with resolving the apparent conflict between these two accounts by properly differentiating between science and religion as disciplined ways of knowing. Nevertheless, it is important that we make a few “contrast”-related observations before moving on to more sophisticated concerns.

First, many thinkers agree that Dawkins’s perspective on life’s origins conflates a physical theory with metaphysical speculation [1, 55; 2, 163-164; 3 178-179, 4, 162-163]. Of course, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that philosophical move. It’s simply important to realize that, in doing so, Dawkins uses examples from the natural world in support of an empirically untestable belief system, not a set of evidence-based scientific claims. This particular brand of scientism is often called evolutionism. It is related to its physics-based counterpart, which we encountered via Stephen Hawking in the last lesson.

The point is, of course, that theistic belief systems offer reasonable alternatives to Dawkins’s evolutionist view (see below). We take it that it is perfectly coherent to agree with Dawkins that the mechanism of “slow, gradual, cumulative natural selection” is a description of how life came about but not “the ultimate explanation for our existence” [5, 318]. Once again, science does not answer to our satisfaction the big-picture question, the why?

Hopefully this insight from the contrast theologians, together with our earlier discussion about the good reasons for Jews and Christians not to be overly concerned about factual inconsistencies in the Old Testament’s mythic and poetic manner of presentation, have cleared up some of the more superficial worries about the apparent conflict between the scientific and religious accounts of the origin of life on earth. Francis Collins ably summarizes what seems to us a harmonious account, technically known as theistic evolution:

God, who is not limited in space or time, created the universe and established natural laws that govern it. Seeking to populate this otherwise sterile universe with living creatures, God chose the elegant mechanism of evolution to created microbes, plants, and animals of all sorts. Most remarkably, God intentionally chose the same mechanism to give rise to special creatures who would have intelligence, a knowledge of right and wrong, free will, and a desire to seek fellowship with Him. [2, 200-201]

As writer Walker Percy observed, “The Christians need not have got in such a sweat. The evolutionary facts about the emergence of man … are as spectacular as the account in Genesis and allow hardly less room for theology” [4, 162]. We are inclined to agree, though we would add that in agreeing we are not forced to “throw out” or treat as having secondary importance the important theological and spiritual insight the Genesis account offers.

Blindness, carefully considered

In our opinion, much of the confusion in the “evolution debates” arises from Dawkins’s provocative choice of the term “blind” to characterize the seemingly paradoxical interworkings of random and nonrandom processes in evolution. This choice corresponds to his interpretation that there is no ultimate purpose guiding evolutionary processes. Critics of Dawkins understandably want to expose this interpretation for what it is, an interpretation. But in so doing, many make intellectual mistakes of their own.

First, many critics overlook Dawkins’s subtlety (a reflection of the subtlety in evolution itself), assuming blindness means complete randomness. (Presumably, they haven’t read Dawkins’s book; the distinction is subtle but carefully emphasized [6, 39].) They point out that a completely random process could no more create the complexity of life than a bag containing disassembled pocketwatch parts could be shaken until those parts came together in a functional way. Of course, Dawkins realizes this; indeed, it is a principle motivating observation in his thesis! His point is that evolution isn’t like shaking a bag of stopwatch parts. Evolution involves “untamed” but “tame” chance: “To ‘tame’ chance means to break down the very improbably into less improbable small components arranged in series. No matter how improbable it is that an X could have arisen from a Y in a single step, it is always possible to conceive of infinitesimally graded intermediates between them [5, 317].”

Once over this important hump, there is surely room to take Dawkins to task. John Haught summarizes some standard arguments against Dawkins’s appeal to chance and purposelessness:

In the first place, the “chance” character of the variations which natural selection chooses for survival may easily be accounted for on the basis of our inevitable human narrowness and ignorance. Allegedly “random” genetic mutations may not really be random at all. They could very well be mere illusions resulting from the limitedness of our human perspective. Our religious faith convinces us in any case that a purely human angle of vision is always restricted. … [F]inally, there is no more theological difficulty in the remorseless law of natural selection, which is said to be impersonal and blind, than in the laws of inertia, gravity, or any other impersonal aspect of scince. Gravity, like natural selection, has no regard for our inherent personal dignity either. It pulls toward earth the weak and powerful alike–at times in a deadly way. But very few thinkers have ever insisted that gravity is a serious argument against God’s existence. Perhaps natural selection should be viewed no less leniently. [1, 59-60]

These are strong and important arguments. Indeed, it’s hard not to be reminded here of Isaiah 55:8: “my thoughts are not your thoughts, / nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.” But there is a serious intellectual point at stake here that we believe too few theologians account for adequately. They rightly reject the notion that evolution necessarily rules out the existence of God. But Dawkins’s book does make a definite point about how God must have gone about the work of creatio continua, continuing creation. The evidence Dawkins accumulates, in our opinion, makes a strong case for the idea that God gave the world a large amout of leeway to become what it would. Mutations happened, some organisms and their offspring survived preferentially, and some of the resulting solutions nature came up with in the process make it very clear, to use Collins’s words, that “no special supernatural intervention was required” [2, 200].

Perhaps the most awe-inspiring example comes from Dawkins’s discussion of “convergent evolution”–the fact that the mechanisms of evolution seem to arrive at similar solutions to similar problems via very different evolutionary paths. For instance, “The leg of a litoptern is all but indistinguishable from the leg of a horse, yet the two animals are only distantly related.” The two species each independently “lost all their toes except the middle one on each leg, which became enlarged as the bottom joint of the leg and developed a hoof.” In both cases, nature brought forth “the same qualities to cope with the problems of grassland life” [5, 103-104]. So too evolved only distantly related “specialists” in the ant-eating game and also independent practitioners of the “many different branches of the ant/termite trade” [5, 106].

The list could go on and on. The point is, it seems to us a right interpretation of this data (though it is still interpretation) to say that God did not actively nudge these disparate species toward pre-determined successful solutions. It seems more likely that the process of evolution simply converged converged on the successful strategies. How? Because if they weren’t successful, these species would not have survived. So, we do not want to totally override the contrast-theologians’ points about human beings being limited in our understanding of God’s complex and subtle purposes. But if there is not some genuine freedom built into the evolutionary system, God sure went to some serious effort to make it look like there is. Might God have done so to test or confuse us? The idea is not inconceivable, but it does seem inconsistent with God’s goodness and with the traditional Christian belief that the Holy Spirit is active in the world guiding us “into all the truth” (John 16:13).

Now, this belief in some “give” in the system need not commit us to the God of deism, the hands-off God of Isaac Newton and Thomas Jefferson who creates the universe but never again relates to it. We will make the case for this claim in the next lesson. For now simply note that John Polkinghorne in particular consistently emphasizes that in letting science inform our theology we must always be faithful to the witness of scripture to a God who is no “impoten[t] or indifferen[t] … Deistic Spectator” [7, 80].

What these findings do seem to mean is that God didn’t “micromanage” evolution. Thus, science suggests to theologians something about the openness of the world God created, and probably something about that Creator as well. God has embued the world with what Polkinghorne calls “true becoming” [7, 61]. Yes we are “marvelously made” (Psalm 139:13), and that would be no less true if we had, say, a different number of toes [6, 40]. Though some of you will not wish to go with us this far (in which case Haught’s observations above might better represent your position), we believe Christian de Duve achieves an intellectually satisfying harmony of the scientists’ common sticking point and the theologians’ convictions about God’s most special creation:

Evolution, though dependent on chance events, proceeds under a number of inner and outer constraints that compel it to move in the direction of greater complexity if circumstances permit. Had these circumstances been different, evolution might have followed a different course in time. It might have produced organisms different from those we know, perhaps even thinking beings different than humans. [quoted in 8, 160]

If we were instead those different “thinking beings,” would we be any less God’s special creation, nurtured throughout our development and held in God’s loving arms? Would God have been any less capable of becoming one of us to redeem us from our sins? If we answer these questions in the negative, then even an interpretation of the facts of evolution that takes very seriously the apparent freedom in the system ought not to put Christians on the defensive.

And perhaps it is this freedom to “become” that gives evolution those remarkable characteristics that convince many of us that there is indeed purpose at work within it. Perhaps it is that freedom that gives rise to so much diversity and fecundity, to wonderfully peculiar characters like the platypus and the playwright. Perhaps Arthur Peacocke is right to characterize evolution as the “unfolding the divinely endowed potentialities of the universe through a process in which its creative possibilities and propensities become actualized” [quoted in 9, 75]. Haught captures this line of speculation beautifully:

[M]ight it not be [that] God wants the world and beings within the world to partake of the divine joy of creating novelty that the cosmos is left unfinished, and that it is invited to be at least to some degree self-creative? And if it is in some ways self-creative can we be too baffled about its undisciplined experimentation with the many different, delightful, baffling, and bizarre forms that we find in the fossil record and in the diversity of life that surrounds us even now? And can’t we therefore learn much about the ways of God’s creative love by looking at the pictures of nature that evolutionists like [Stephen J.] Gould are giving us today? [1, 63]

This is “contact theology” at its best, grounded in convictions about who God is (and who we are) but open to the insights that a survey of the world’s wonders can offer us.

The theodicy question

We have treated the interrelated issue of randomness, blindness, openness, and purpose in some detail because it cuts to the heart of why evolution is unsettling even for those who, as a popular bumper sticker goes, “take the bible too seriously to take it literally.” But we mentioned in the last page another common sticking point, and we should at least sketch a possible answer here. As always, our goal cannot be absolute certainty, since that’s something theology cannot provide (plus, quite frankly, these are difficult questions that philosophers and theologians have been arguing about for thousands of years).

As you may recall, this other point involves the theodicy question,