A young man I know only from Twitter shared a link with me to an article on theistic evolution at Rational Wiki. [1] Within the first couple of sentences I ran into an erroneous assertion, which I pointed out to him with a correction. Then I said to him, “I’m still reading this article, of course, but what was your intent in sharing this? You’d like a response to it?”
He replied that it was just intended to demonstrate that theism and evolution can co-exist but, he said, “I always appreciate a thoughtful response as well.”
So there are two things I would say in response. First, with respect to the co-existence of theism and evolution, there are far better resources than Rational Wiki (which is a genuinely ironic title since their material is typically less than rational). Just off the top of my head, one of the best resources in this regard is the BioLogos Foundation, created by Francis Collins who led the Human Genome Project and is director of the National Institutes of Health. [2] There is also the American Scientific Affiliation, along with its journal Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith. [3] I would also mention the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, particularly the Emeritus Director Denis R. Alexander who wrote possibly the most important book on evolutionary creation, Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? (2014, rev. ed.). [4] There are also a host of other books I could recommend on this subject, including Darrel Falk, Coming to Peace with Science (2004) and Nancy Morvillo, Science and Religion (2010). [5]
Second, there were some problems with this article at Rational Wiki and they mostly involved the confusion or conflation of different ideas. For example, they equate “theistic evolution” and “evolutionary creation,” as if they were the same thing (they are not). This is an error I’m accustomed to witnessing creationists make—young-earth, old-earth, and intelligent-design—and one that rational people usually manage to avoid. (All the same, it amuses me to observe atheists making similar arguments as creationists.) By the very nature of nouns and adjectives, the term “theistic evolution” makes evolution the point articulated in theistic terms. This is inconsistent with a biblical world-view and an inappropriate inversion of priorities. For Christians, creation is the point and should therefore be the noun, articulated in evolutionary terms (i.e., “evolutionary creation”).
Denis Lamoureux explained it like this:
The most important word in the term “evolutionary creation” is the noun “creation.” These Christian evolutionists are first and foremost thoroughly committed and unapologetic creationists. They believe that the world is a creation that is absolutely dependent for every instant of its existence on the will and grace of the Creator. The qualifying word in this category is the adjective “evolutionary,” indicating simply the method through which the Lord made the cosmos and living organisms. This view of origins is often referred to as theistic evolution. However, such a word arrangement places the process of evolution as the primary term, and makes the Creator secondary as merely a qualifying adjective. Such an inversion in priority is unacceptable to me and other evolutionary creationists. [6]
And Howard J. Van Till explained the matter in very similar terms:
Views similar to mine are sometimes identified with the label theistic evolution. But that term has some very serious shortcomings. As I see it, it turns the order of importance of divine and creaturely action upside down. Because it appears as the noun, the term evolution … appears to be the central idea. Meanwhile, by referring to God only in the adjective, theistic, the importance of divine creative action seems to be secondary. But that implication would be unacceptable to me. [7]
Third, even though at the beginning of the article they properly understand that theistic evolution is “a theological response to the scientific theory of evolution,” throughout the remainder of the article they seem to forget this point as they criticize this view on scientific grounds. It is a confusion of categories to level scientific criticisms at a theological position. For one example, they refer to deistic views on evolution as “the least scientifically contentious opinion.” Well, deism and evolution are entirely different categories, one theological and the other scientific; it would be incoherent to raise scientific contentions against theological opinions in the first place. Another example is found in their point about Occam’s razor. If such evolutionary processes as natural selection are explainable without recourse to supernatural devices, “then God becomes an unnecessary hypothesis.” True—with respect to scientific work. But didn’t we just admit that theistic evolution is a theological perspective on evolutionary history?
Fourth, they claim that the “scientific” conception of evolution “maintains that the process [of evolution] is unguided.” This is simply false. There is precisely zero science involved in the concept of evolution being unguided. If that is anything more than uncritical prejudice, it is a philosophical conclusion, not a scientific one, and almost certainly crippled by fallacious reasoning. The question of whether evolution is guided by a transcendent Creator is outside the competence and purview of science because it is impossible to control for natural processes that are guided by God and those that are not. Scientists don’t draw conclusions about God; they simply ignore the question of God in their work. This is understood as methodological naturalism. A strictly scientific theory is religiously neutral; God is neither included nor excluded. Here I will turn to Denis Alexander and let him explain why:
There is a tradition in modern science not to use “God” as an explanation in scientific discourse. This tradition was nurtured by the early founders of the Royal Society partly in an attempt to let the natural philosophers (as scientists were then called) get on with their job without becoming embroiled in the religious disputes of the time, but also in recognition that the universe is, in any case, all the work of a wise Creator—so using God as an explanation for bits of it didn’t really make much sense, given that God was in charge of all of it. [8]
Finally (and trivially), I cannot figure out what distinction they intended between (a) “theistic evolution and natural selection” on the one hand and (b) “theistic evolution and guided evolution” on the other. On my reading of it, they seem identical. On the one hand we have God guiding such evolutionary processes as mutations, and on the other hand we have God intervening to make certain genetic modifications. That sounds like the same thing to me.
Such were my thoughts on that article.
John M. Bauer
@JohnMBauer1
Approx. 1,000 words.
Footnotes:
[1] Rational Wiki, s.v. “Theistic evolution” (accessed September 30, 2019).
[2] The BioLogos Foundation (web site; Wikipedia article); Francis Collins (NIH bio; Wikipedia article).
[3] American Scientific Affiliation (web site; Wikipedia article); Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (online archive; Wikipedia article).
[4] Faraday Institute for Science and Religion (web site; Wikipedia article). Denis R. Alexander, Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?, rev. ed. (Oxford, UK: Monarch Books, 2014). [Amazon] The first edition was published in 2008.
[5] Darrel R. Falk, Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds Between Faith and Biology (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004) [Amazon]; Nancy Morvillo, Science and Religion: Understanding the Issues (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) [Amazon].
[6] Denis O. Lamoureux, “Evolutionary Creation: Moving Beyond the Evolution Versus Creation Debate,” Christian Higher Education 9, no. 1 (2010): 28–48. Quote is taken from p. 29.
[7] Howard J. Van Till, "The Fully Gifted Creation," in J. P. Moreland and John Mark Reynolds, eds., Three Views on Creation and Evolution (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1999), 172.
[8] Denis R. Alexander, Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? (Oxford, UK: Monarch, 2008), 183–184.
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