The God of Evolution

Providence in the post-Darwin era.

A re-evaluation of divine Providence begs with now almost universally accepted theory of Natural Evolution by the mechanism of natural selection. The first point to clarify is why this would be taught if we call it a theory? Firstly, most of our scientific understandings are theories. Facts are myriad in science. The measuring of the temperature in a room, or the level of salt in the ocean give us fixed point of accurate understand, however it is only when a theory is proposed that we make sense of the question: Why is it so? As we compare a theory to the available facts, we will see either agreement or disagreement between the theoretical expectations and the observable facts. As the theory is refined, we expect a closer correlation between these two streams, and if not the theory is over-turned and a new explanation is proposed. It is difficult to ascertain an unbiased view of exactly how widely evolution is supported since the matter is so controversial. “Although the theory of evolution is accepted by the overwhelming majority of the scientific community, presentation of this theory has aroused considerable controversy from Darwin’s time to the present.”[1]

Let us then examine the rudiments of Biological Evolution in order to understand why this theory requires Christians to re-visit divine Providence.

Biological Evolution

According to the theory of evolution life on earth started by the coming together of complex carbon based molecules. Such is the nature of the earth that it is possible that these molecules were introduced from space, such as might have formed in a comet, or may have formed in extreme terrestrial conditions such as a volcano, or deep sea. In any case, these proteins came together by normal chemical reactions to form an interesting phenomenon. These unique chemicals were so constructed that they caused self replication. That is, the molecules would assimilate necessary chemicals from the environment into their structure, which would then be arranged in such a way as to make a duplicate of the origin molecule. The molecule would then split, and the process would be started again, each time doubling the base number of these molecules. This ability to take on the building blocks and to self replicate is as good a scientific explanation of “life” as any other.

However, due either to internal or external influences, occasionally an anomaly would occur. The newly made life would have a minor molecular difference from the original. This difference could cause any number of differences in the nature of the new life. If the mutation was more able to live and reproduce in the environment, this would give the life an advantage over the previous generation of life. The life is considered “fitter”, that is: more adapted to the environment. It would then proliferate at a faster rate to its lesser competitors, and would become dominant in number in the local environment. Such a method is extremely haphazard. A mutation may indeed produce an advantage, but it could equally cause a disadvantage and the life may not be viable at all. As such, the history of life has been a history of chance mutations leading agonisingly slowly to blind developmental alleys, and only occasionally an advance in a new species. The period of time this slow and chance development took is estimated as four billion years.

After this agonising chance and error method, life developed from single cell organisms, to multi-celled, to develop legs, lungs, eyes, all the way up to modern man. Apart from the challenge this provides to a fundamentalist approach to the first three chapters of Genesis, it raises serious questions for any theist. One former cleric turned atheist puts it this way:

Could an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God have devised

such a cold-blooded competition of beast with beast, beast with man, man

with man, species with species, in which the clever, the cunning, and the cruel

survive? . . . How could a loving God have planned a cruel system in which

sensitive living creatures must either eat other sensitive living creatures or be

eaten themselves, thereby causing untold suffering among these creatures?

Would a benevolent God have created animals to devour others when he

could have designed them all as vegetarians? What kind of deity would have

designed the beaks which rip sensitive flesh? What God would intend every

leaf, blade of grass, and drop of water to be a battleground in which living

organisms pursue, capture, kill, and eat one another? What God would design

creatures to prey upon one another and, at the same time, instill into such

creatures a capacity for intense pain and suffering?[2]

A God of wildness

God gives being to the world. The ability for the universe to be at all is a strange phenomenon. The universe is, where we expected simply nothing. Even if we take this back to a cosmic explanation such as the big bang, we are left with the same question. How is it that there is a singularity in the first place, for logically, nothing can come from nothing? And so God, who is Being, offers the possibility of being to the universe.

So where is God in this process of biological evolution, which appears to be incredibly wasteful, incredibly savage? Let us first consider the alternative. If creation were simply a series of events determined by the will of God, there would be little distinction between God and creation. Creation would simply be a type of machine which God drives, and which is incapable of doing any action which the driver does not instruct it to do. Hence, man, as part of that machine would be nothing more than a robot, following the divine commands, and incapable of freedom, and so incapable of love.

Hence, to be differentiated from God, to be truly “other”, the universe needs to have freedom. This is a freedom of development which allows for actions which are evil. This is a freedom which allows for the development of the universe to be a chance, a risk. If God so loves the world that he gave his only Son for it, then the type of world we would expect is a world where freedom, and natural selection is exactly the type of world we would expect. There would be little “otherness” in a world where development and actions are dictated by God. A world where God guides us away from appalling errors such as Auschwitz, or harsh natural methods such as natural selection is a world which is not “other”.

Hence, the action of divine Providence in the day to day action of the world is God sustaining a world capable of developing as itself. The final consummation of the world with God then is not a marriage of God with a robot, but God with a truly individually developed world, where freedom allows for bitter lessons, but also for mature self-giving love for the Father.

If God is love, and not controlling power, the world will be given leeway

to experiment with an array of creative possibilities. And if life is allowed

such an amplitude of potential ways of being and becoming, it will happen inevitably that some experiments will succeed and others fail. At first such an idea may be unsettling, but consider the alternatives. A more directive,

dictatorial deity might bring the universe to completion in one magical moment, but what a bland, lifeless, storyless world that would be.[3]

Hence, the freedom which allows us to be savage, is also the freedom which allows us to love, to have faith, to have hope, and to desire something which is greater than ourselves. It is a freedom which by necessity allows evil, but a freedom which allows a desire for communion with the Father.

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[1] “evolution,” in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15^th ed. (1993), 4:623.

[2] John Haught, “Darwin and Contemporary Theology”, Worldview 11 (2007): 46-7.

[3] John Haught, “Darwin and Contemporary Theology”, Worldview 11 (2007): 54.