Why evolution? June 22, 2008
Posted by Damian in Ancient Near Eastern Thought, Evolution and Creation.Tags: Beyond the Firmament, evolution, firmament, Genesis, genesis as myth, God's Character, Mythical genesis, theistic evolution
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This is almost verbatim a comment on another post in which I summarised my reasons for supporting evolution as a Christian. I’m not going into great detail, but I’ve added links to blogs that explore them in greater detail.
Firstly, I believe that evolution is compatible with Christianity if you envision it as a method God uses to create.
Secondly, given my understanding of God’s character that I see in creation and in theology, I feel that the elegance I see in evolution seems more characteristic of His nature than a ’simple’ creation in seven days.
Thirdly, I feel that a literal interpretation of Genesis doesn’t do justice to the bible itself. Genesis is many things, but a literal history is something it is not. Genesis sanctifies earlier pagan stories of creation (Undeception explains this here). Genesis is an explanation of events that were entirely beyond the scientific knowledge held by men six thousand years ago, and are to an extent beyond the knowledge of men now. But it is not a literal history, and cannot be interpreted that way.
Finally, if one chooses to interpret Genesis literally, one must interpret the whole of Genesis literally. Genesis 1:6 (look at interpretation that doesn’t update concepts so modern readers know what it’s talking about – try the NKJV) speaks of a firmament separating the waters and the heavens. A firmament is “an apparent surface of the imaginary sphere on which celestial bodies appear to be projected”. The concept of a firmament has no scientific foundation. The concept that the stars are held up by a vault above the earth is symptomatic of a flat earth and of a non-heliocentric viewpoint, both of which too, have long since been scientifically disproven. And notably, were the subject of controversies similar to the evolution/creation controversy today (Beyond the Firmament addresses this in detail here).
In reading your first point, I wonder about this: Many Christians who embrace theistic evolution accept the idea that today’s species have evolved from one or several species, and either believe that God made the first species and then left them alone to evolve by natural selection (which is what Darwin may have believed) or believe that God has continued to intervene in natural selection over the many years since then (which seems incompatible with the way Darwin and others have explained the workings of natural selection.) What are your thoughts about this – did God just get things started or has God been involved all the years since?
In reading your second point, I think of Darwin’s own words in which he wrote at the end of The Origin of the Species that there is “grandeur in this view.” There is. In addition, when I think about the interconnectedness of all of life including my own, I am moved even more to love the earth and the life here.
Ultimately, I think that the belief that natural selection accounts for the origin of the species, as Darwin explained it and as it is expressed in the modern synthesis of his argument with genetics, is incompatible in important ways with theism. And certainly, as you have written here, the view of the world expressed in Genesis and other books of the Bible is not the same as our modern view of the world founded as it is on science.
“Firstly, I believe that evolution is compatible with Christianity if you envision it as a method God uses to create.”
I appreciate it when Christians accept science instead of attacking it. However, I wish they would leave God out of it. Evolution did not need a supernatural inventor, and evolution does not need a magical sky fairy to guide it. With or without God, new species are going to develop from other animals. Evolution is how the world works. God never had anything to do with evolution.
It’s always good when Christians are flexible enough to make their religion accommodate modern science, but I suggest they would save themselves a lot of trouble by throwing Christianity in the garbage where it belongs.
Christians who accept evolution and still want to be Christians are being dishonest to themselves. What could Mr. God possibly be needed for if he isn’t necessary to explain the diversity of life. If nature can produce millions of species without supernatural intervention, why should anything else require supernatural magic?
The Christian God and all other gods ever invented are nothing more than a god-of-the-gaps. What’s the point in believing in something that is constantly being chased out of its hiding places by scientists? The God idea is for the Dark Ages. It doesn’t belong in the 21st century.
Bob is right that theology is more flexible than science – without that flexibility, it would probably be impossible to hold a theistic evolution perspective. That flexibility does not enable theologians to resolve all the incompatibilities between a belief that natural selection accounts for the origin of the species and the beliefs held in Christianity. At the same time, flexibility has always been part of theology – it was there before the need to deal with modern science.
Darwin himself had more doubts than he had faith, but even Darwin, who created the major scientific paradigm with which theology must grapple in our day, did not rule out belief that there is more to the story of life than he told in Origin of the Species and did not rule out God. Darwin is not a reliable ally for atheists seeking an argument with Christians who believe in theistic evolution.
Bob,
I read a quote once, that “God is unnecessary for scientific description, but scientific description is not a complete description of reality.”. I tend to subscribe for this point of view. Read this (http://einfall.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/cosmology-in-ten-minutes/ ); it is a brief summary of the current scientific cosmology. But notably, it points back to something prior to the big bang. I personally feel that this is an example of science being unable to completely describe reality (although it can attempt it).
I think you miss the key point of faith in God – it is not simply to describe the physical universe. In this way, He is not a ‘god of the gaps’. He is a God to inform our moral choices, to provide us with hope in times of duress, and to point us in the direction of a better future.
And yes, I’ll freely admit that these are psychological needs that God is satisfying. I try my hardest to separate my psychology and my theology – that what a great portion of this blog is about. But I think you make a mistake in thinking that He is a ‘god of the gaps’.
Thankyou for your time.
Ken,
The resounding answer to your question is “I don’t know”. Which I know isn’t very satisfying. It seems to me that God is a God of process – Christianity is concerned with, among other things, betterment of self and betterment of world. These things are ongoing. The entire gospel story has been unfolding and developing over the past six thousand years or more, and is still developing. I don’t feel that evolution is out of character in such a context. So, I would suggest that he ’started it off’.
I’m not sure intervention is necessary here, to be honest. God is, after all, supposed to be omniscient and omnipresent and all of these things. I would believe that God is always complicit in sustaining life, matter, energy and everything else we know as the universe (or more). In addition, he knows how it all works – I don’t think he’d need to intervene on a physical level.
Obviously, I believe He has made spiritual and physical interventions, and will likely continue to do so. But I doubt that He does this on a regular basis. If Jesus wasn’t exceptional, He wasn’t special.
What I don’t understand is why you believe evolution is incompatible with theism? I simply don’t understand your reasoning. Do you mean that evolution is incompatible with a literal reading of the scripture? Because I’d agree with you. But as I said originally, I don’t think Genesis can be read literally on multiple counts.
I think the greatest incompatibility has to do with the view of life offered by much of Christianity and the view of life offered by the belief that natural selection accounts for the origin of the species. I think of Christianity, including the Bible, as offering a view of life in which life has meaning and purpose, and they are good, whereas the natural selection view says that life has no meaning or purpose and is an expression of chance and necessity (as Darwin put it.) Natural selection is indifferent to good and evil, love and hate, life and death. Christianity is not – God is not.
When you are referring to literal readings of the Bible I am thinking that you may be referring to beliefs that many Christians hold that the Bible is inerrant, or that you are referring to particular literal readings of Genesis by Christians who call themselves creationists. I think that over its long history Christianity has almost always involved belief in the inspiration and authority of the Bible, but Christians have not always agreed on the meaning of the words. From your writings at your blog, I think you may only be in disagreement with particular literal readings or interpretations, but not with the more widely held belief in inspiration and authority. I think that the idea that scripture is inspired and has authority does itself fight with the idea that natural selection is sufficient alone to account for the origin of the species. It fights with it because the natural selection argument seems to imply that scripture is only a human document that was born out of the struggle for existence and random variation upon which natural selection depends. It is true that in liberal protestant theology, scripture that the human side of scripture is emphasized, and yet, even in most theologies there remains a belief that it reveals something about divinity, and that there is more going on there than chance and necessity can explain.
I think the further we push theology to embrace natural selection it is not theology that suffers, but the science. Theistic evolution often does involve a distortion of science, a distortion of the world view offered by science.
I think Darwin saw this problem, even though he was not a theologian. Darwin wrote that at the time he wrote Origin of the Species he deserved to be called a theist because he had some doubt that chance and necessity are sufficient to explain the “immense and wonderful universe” and even the nature of humanity. Years later he wrote that he had come to believe that less than before. Even though theology is flexible, science is unyielding.
Hello Damian
Like you, i also decided to post my reply here as a separate blog entry
And it’s a good thing too, because otherwise i would not have been able to see your response, because i don’t really get to blog as much as i want to and tracking back my comments is not that easy for some sites. (Doesn’t WordPress have an email-follow-up-comments feature? 
)
Anyways, here’s my separate blog entry, updated only with a quote i just read this morning:
http://tecigurl.blogspot.com/2008/06/brief-history-of-timeof-evolution-ofwhy.html
First, comments on the main blog entry. (By the way, i haven’t the time to go to all your links so these questions might have been already addressed somewhere.)
(a) There *is* elegance in evolution, but — and this is purely a matter of personal preference here — i believe there is more elegance in deliberate literal-Genesis creation. Why? Evolution *implies* that all life is accidental [mutation], and if one is not good enough, tough, you die [survival of the fittest]. Again this is purely preference, but it seems reasonable enough that i must point it out.
(b) i respect that you do *not* believe in a literal creation, because i also have done so previously. [Now, it does not matter as much to me, as i would rather focus on the truth of Jesus Himself and how God transforms lives, but i understand that it is essential and even the turning point of faith for many.]
But you said: “if one chooses to interpret Genesis literally, one must interpret the whole of Genesis literally.”
As i said, i respect and i understand what you mean, especially considering the limited understanding of the ancients compared to now. Even in the gospels, Jesus and the evangelists would sometimes speak in hyperbole or other figurative language.
But…(i) How can you be so sure? (i checked Undeception.com by the way, pretty comprehensive and reasonable, and i agree that “the ancients used mythological stories in order to apply meaning to the subject of their speculation” especially with the absence of much facts.) Is not a literal reading *also* possible?
And…(ii) What about the other books in the Bible? How can we tell which are only-figurative and which are completely-factual? Especially when (1) the Bible is written as the inspired Word of God, (2) the entire Bible has been written over a time span much shorter than the time from then to now — in short, if you reason that Genesis borrowed much from the ancients and more figurative than factual, the Gospels and other books can be said to be just as ancient.
(iii) Which brings us to this: not accepting Genesis literally opens the door to not accepting the entire Bible literally, and not accepting the Bible as truth. Where is the line drawn?
(iv) Remember that we are talking about God, who is able to do anything: whether it be through nature or not. ex: Is God not really able to make the world in six 24-hour days? If we just look at what are scientifically possible/feasible, are we even still accounting for the possibility of God?
(v) We both say that evolution and creation are compatible but we diverge on the interpretation of Genesis.
But, like i say to those who believe in a god-less evolution, “is deliberate divine creation not possible?” 
Here, “is a literal Genesis not possible?”
Now replying to the comments
Damian quotes: “God is unnecessary for scientific description, but scientific description is not a complete description of reality.” Wow! i love that!
(Btw, the quote is mentioned here:
http://undeception.com/index.php/2008/05/21/limitations-of-science/)
As Ken notes, science *is* more rigid than faith. Science wants to be *really* sure, hence experiments never end / theories always reformulated. (But I disagree about science as “unyielding”: a scientific theory is discarded in a heartbeat if you found one single instance to disprove it. As for faith, the Bible for example maintains that it is Absolute Truth.)
But not all real things can be directly observed (ex: air) or measured (ex: feelings), hence science accounts for painfully little compared to the Bible (science deals only with what can be observed and/or measured). (The question becomes, is the Bible true? Which leads to a separate discussion
)
I also agree that God is not a ‘God of the gaps’. He can and is at work in the details as well as the big picture. A deep question is, “Do humans have free will?”, because God says He works in the hearts of people, yet the gospel always brings the hearer to a choice: to believe or not, to follow or not.
Similarly, regarding nature. God “sustains all things” — as Ken and I pointed out, does this mean second-by-second intervention or did He just get things started? Interestingly, Damian said: “It seems to me that God is a God of process” but later, “I would suggest that he ’started it off’…I’m not sure intervention is necessary here, to be honest.” Why not also a continuous process?
But I’m just throwing questions around here. We don’t need another division, and personally I don’t think there has to be. It’s all quite deep, and cannot be easily verified in the first place
Yet another thing
Thanks to this entry, I now know that people are starting to say that there is something “before” the Big Bang 
Well, whether there is or not, I say that there is something “beyond” the Big Bang until now, something that science cannot directly observe nor measure, hence something that science cannot address.
Some people think that God is not real simply because God is not “scientific”. In fact, it is science that has built-in limitations, not God.
(But thankfully, observation, experimentation, and critical thinking can and are being applied to the Christian life.)
You have begun a very interesting conversation here and Teci adds so much to it.
I think there are two main ways that theology deals with creation in an attempt to accommodate the idea that the species we now see in the world evolved from other species. One is to say that God made the first specie or species and then natural selection took over. Another is to say that not only did God make the first specie but that God has intervened in the evolutionary process. Darwin seemed sympathetic to the first option when he wrote that God breathed life into the first specie or species. He may have had some sympathy for the second option to the extent that he doubted that “chance and necessity” alone are sufficient to account for the “immense and wonderful universe” and for the ability of humanity to see far back into the past and ahead into the future (as scientists do.)
It seems to me that a belief that God has intervened in the process challenges the core belief of evolution – that natural selection is sufficient (without God) to explain the origin of species. At the same time, the belief that God started the process but did not intervene later challenges a core belief of Christianity that God does intervene in history and in personal lives and answers prayers. Beyond these incompatibilities it seems to me that evolution and theology challenge each other in other important ways that are not directly tied to creation. For example, no matter which approach one takes to theodicy, in Christianity is generally associated with a belief that suffering matters to God and that how we live our lives matters to God. The idea that God works through natural selection seems to conflict with that such beliefs because natural selection seems to be necessarily indifferent to suffering and to how we live our lives in a moral sense. Darwin wrote much about the indifference of natural selection to love and hate, even maternal love and hate. Ultimately, Darwin and Huxley, his friend and promoter, cited this indifference in the face of suffering as the reason that he doubted the existence of God that intervenes and answers prayers.
Even if one believes that God does not intervene or answers prayer, but started creation and then let evolution take over, there is a similar theological problem because the evolutionary process God made is indifferent to us, to our life and death, to our suffering, to our hope, and to the way we live our lives. That poses an enormous problem for theodicy.
I think that one can achieve an intellectual coherency through atheism, but the price of that coherency is nihilism – this was what Nietzsche tried to cope with in his writings. I know that contemporary atheists often deny that nihilism is inevitable, but I don’t think their arguments are convincing and greater minds than theirs, including Darwin, have experienced and recognized the nihilism. I think what theology reveals about evolution is that, true or not, the idea that natural selection is sufficient to explain the origin of species is an inherently dark view of life.
Ken,
I’m going to attempt to reply to both of your comments, and then reply to Teci’s; I may answer Teci’s in the process. I’m sorry if this is a little incoherent – it’s hard to reply to so much without jumping around alot.
I agree that natural selection is indifferent to things that we regard as meaningful. It has to be in order for it to work.
I suggest that our lives in and of themselves *are* meaningless. I’d argue that it is God that gives them meaning. That is what baptism is (among other things): being born into a life of meaning. You say that natural selection is indifferent to meaning; in the same way meaning is indifferent to natural selection.
I avoid using the phrase ‘inerrant’, because I think this is messy terminology. I think that the bible is literature, and hence has fingerprints on it, has analogies within it, and has to be read accordingly. Therefore, whilst I don’t believe any of the bible was written in error, I don’t take this to mean that the bible is a miraculous text that does not require interpretation in the light of the times it was written and the structure and history of its contents. This seems to me what most people call inerrancy.
So yes, I believe in inspiration and authority. Now, as you discuss later, you don’t see God as able to intervene in a evolutionary world. So I understand why you feel inspired scripture (as an intervention) does not fit with that. I also understand what you’re writing about a ‘distortion of science’ and theistic evolution.
However (and this replies somewhat to Teci), I’d argue that God is a God of process, and hence, he might set up an elegant system to develop His chosen race. His intervention (as recorded) hasn’t interfered with this race’s evolution, but rather the race’s spiritual direction. This intervention provides us with meaning, not evolution. This is why I don’t believe that Nihilism isn’t inevitable for Christians like you and I , despite our dual beliefs in evolution and Christianity.
Teci,
I’m sorry – I didn’t realise that there’s no email follow-up. I’ll look into it; but for now, you can subscribe to the comment RSS or become a wordpress user (you don’t need to have a blog) to keep updated.
(a) I freely admit that there is personal preference involved here. I wasn’t writing this to prove to anyone that I was write, but rather to state the reasons that I have found that have convinced me. I appeal here to the ‘God of process’ that you mention later – if God works in ’stories’, in gradual revelation (over thousands of years), gradual development (over a lifetime), etc., I feel that developing humanity over eons also fits the elegance and character of God. If you look back over some of my posts here on evolution, I hope you will see some of the elegance I see – you can click the tag at the bottom of this post or in the side-bar.
(b) (i) I believe (in conjunction with what you read at undeception; I’m doing further reading but I’m not as well read as Steve who writes there), that a literal reading (of the beginning of Genesis, at least), is not a correct reading.
(ii) I rely on two things (and perhaps I should refine this) to decide which are figurative and which are factual. Firstly, the contents of the book – Genesis contains mythology, plainly based on older mythologies. Psalms contains poetry; Revelation contains apocalyptic imagery. This genres are by definition not literal – they rely on imagery, big concepts, to codify meaning. Whereas, for example, Matthew, is simply an account of what happened to Jesus – a biography. You interpret a biography differently than you interpret a poem.
Secondly, I try to have a consistent interpretation. Ie., if I decide that something is literal, I try to maintain it – If I read concept as literal, I should interpret adjacent verses as literal – if Jesus speaks in a parable, the whole parable is not literal, for example.
(iii)I don’t believe that by treating the bible as literature you open the door to not accepting it as truth. It is a God-inspired piece of literature, that was communicated at a specific time and place to a specific people. These people had cultural quirks, they had limitations of knowledge, they spoke a different language, and all of these things must be taken into account when we’re interpreting God’s inspired word.
(iv) I don’t argue that God could have created the world in 6 days, I just don’t think he did. I don’t account for God scientifically – I think that attempting is a ridiculous concept; as with what you found on undeception, “God is unecessary for scientific description, but scientific description is not a complete description of reality” (thankyou Teci for finding that so I can thank Steve for posting it).
Your second reply:
What I meant by God ’sustaining all things’ is that for anything to exist God must be responsible for it.
I answered your second question about processes in Ken’s reply, because it came up. It’s the last paragraph.
Your third reply:
I like to point out the comparison between science and history to illustrate the limits of science: Science observes the repeatable, and history observes the unrepeatable. There are no rules to history, and it is full of events that only happened once and, even if they were to have been repeated, wouldn’t have the same meaning or significance the second time. And yet, we don’t doubt that the history books are correct.
Thanks for your replies, Teci.
(For the record, whilst I find this topic intriguing, I, like you, don’t understand why the topic of evolution and creation is such a dear one to many people’s hearts. I don’t think it is very relevant to peoples lives, or to how we should live as Christians, but nevertheless, it’s something that people seem to care about. So when I see that this post has gotten so many views and comments in such a short time, compared to other (more important, to me) posts that have barely been viewed, it bothers me a little.
Thank you Damian. What you wrote certainly makes sense.
I suppose that this topic attracts so much attention, not just here, but in the media and book publishing, is that it deals with the questions: who are we, where did we come from and where are we going?
I developed an interest in the topic because of my enjoyment of nature writing. In that genre evolution is a critical paradigm. Reading Darwin enhances one’s appreciation of that literature. At the same time, my enjoyment of nature is intimately connected with my enjoyment of God. My tendency is to see God expressed in nature – in its beauty, especially. This makes evolution highly relevant to theology for me. The evolution paradigm does seem to me to create problems for theology and so I was interested to find out how you resolve them.
I will try to be sensitive to the posts that matter more to you and contribute to their discussion.
Ken,
I hope I’ve shown you that the result of evolution isn’t necessarily ‘a dark worldview’. You’re probably right about the reasons for the topic attaching much attention.
I agree with you totally the beauty in nature being an expression of God. Whilst standing on a hillside, watching the clouds roll over a plateau like waves, I feel closer to God than I do at any other time. But when I’m out of that environment (I live in the city, now, so I’m out of it far too often), I think I can see beauty in the systems that create it – in systems of the weather, of erosion, of the movement of the earth that creates mountains and valleys. So I agree that it’s important to address subjects such as evolution as they are a part of these systems.
My objection wasn’t at you asking the questions – I’m happy to provide my viewpoint, and you’ve helped me clarify it in many ways. I thank you for that. It’s more the general fact that the topic receives so much more attention than topics such as justice and beauty and pain that deserve more attention, as they’re actively applicable to our lives.
I meant to say: read and discuss whatever your heart wants to discuss. I didn’t mean that as a jab.
Thank you Damian. It is true, your perspective on theistic evolution is not dark at all. Even to me the evolution story is not all dark. Loving the wilderness as I do and you do, it makes me feel good to think of our long intimate relationship with all the wild creatures and plants. And Darwin is right: there is grandeur in the evolutionary view of life. When I look at the immense and wonderful universe, my faith is strengthened, just as was Darwin’s, and I am moved to pray.
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