Denyse O’Leary found this article at the Washington Post about a Christian woman who discovered Darwinian evolution through the works of Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne. She found it to be incompatible with Christianity. (H/T Uncommon Descent)
Excerpt:
But of course evolution poses a problem for Christianity. That’s not to say it poses a problem for all Christians, since many Christians happily accept evolution: they see Genesis 1 as merely a metaphor, and declare that if God chose to create us using evolution, that’s fine by them. I used to be this kind of Christian myself; but I must confess that my blitheness was only possible because I had only the vaguest possible idea of how evolution works and certainly didn’t know enough about it to realize that unguided-ness is central to it.
While I welcome anyone who recognizes that the evidence for evolution is such that it cannot sensibly be denied, to attempt to co-opt evolution as part of a divine plan simply does not work, and suggests a highly superficial understanding of the subject.
And:
Evolution poses a further threat to Christianity, though, a threat that goes to the very heart of Christian teaching. … Evolution could not have produced a single mother and father of all future humans, so there was no Adam and no Eve. No Adam and Eve: no fall. No fall: no need for redemption. No need for redemption: no need for a redeemer. No need for a redeemer: no need for the crucifixion or the resurrection, and no need to believe in that redeemer in order to gain eternal life. And not the slightest reason to believe in eternal life in the first place.
That’s the understanding of evolution that she got from Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne.
Denyse O’Leary mentions that there is a group of “Christian” Darwinists who have no problem at all with the scientific claims made by atheistic Darwinists. They oppose intelligent design – the idea that science can detect effects in nature, like protein sequences, that are best explained as the result of intelligent causes. When it comes to what the science can show, atheists and “theistic evolutionists” agree: God didn’t do anything. So why are these “theistic evolutionists” pushing a theory that leads people to become atheists, when properly understood?
WINTERY KNIGHT 
Wow, she found Dawkins’ view incompatible with Christianity? That’s a shocker.
People like her should go all the way and just call themselves atheists or at least make up a new name for the religion for which they’ve made a god in their own images. Christianity may not be their forte’.
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May I propose that evolution is incompatible with science?
For a hypothesis to move to a theory – the following must occur.
1.Define a question
2. Gather information and resources (observe)
3.Form an explanatory hypothesis
4.Perform an experiment and collect data, testing the hypothesis
5. Analyze the data
6. Interpret the data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis
7. Publish results
8. Retest (frequently done by other scientists)
There isn’t enough robust (#7 & #8) to prove anything.
Therefore, evolution is at best a speculation or hypothesis.
Btw, Christianity does support evolution of man both spiritually, morally, and physically into the image of Christ. In addition, there is over 4000 years of published data:)
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While I reject macro-evolution (or, for those who don’t like the term or who think it is imprecise, “Anagenesis”) on purely scientific and observational grounds, I do not find it incompatible with Christianity unless one takes a literal 24-hour day interpretation of the Genesis account of creation. As far as the claim, “God didn’t do anything” goes, there are a lot of things that God doesn’t actively “do”, but rather sustain. I mean, are there any other physical processes that God is actively involved with? I should think not, and I don’t see this process as anymore “different” in that regard.
I also don’t see humans being denigrated as being made in the image of God since the Mark of the Image is the “quality” or “complexity” (for lack of a better word) of our soul. God is spirit and invisible, so our material/physical bodies aren’t part of the image of God, and I don’t really recall any theologian saying that our physical bodies, while good as far as they are (as exemplified by Jesus having a corporeal, physical, but glorified body after His resurrection), are part and parcel of said image.
I also don’t buy into this slippery slope fallacy that if we’ve evolved physically, that undermines all of Christianity. At best we drop the literal interpretation of Genesis (not to say that we must think all of it is metaphorical, however). I am aware, of course, the explaining that needs to be done in relation to animal suffering, and passages in scripture talking about creation “groaning” if it was “always like this”.
Also, this “unguided-ness” property as being essential to evolution never made sense to me. If you want to define and restrict the definition of evolution as unguided, then yes, having it guided is contradictory. To my knowledge however, evolution can’t be self-organizing and does not account for the increase in new genetic information. So at best, some scientists are simply unaware of other factors that could be at play here, both natural and supernatural; at worst, they are trying to push the self-organizing property as “necessary” to avoid having a divine foot in the door.
As a Molinist, it can very well be the case that God created a world in which all the parameters and values necessary for permitting life are there so that God doesn’t have to actively guide it; He would know worlds that would need active divine intervention and worlds that would not necessarily need it (depending on the actions and outcomes that God intends, of course). So if anything, God not guiding evolution as Theistic Evolutionists exclaim actually exalts and highlights His foreknowledge (and foreordination as well?).
It is like the software engineer who puts all the correct values, parameters, and flags before compiling the program and instantiate a process. Except with God it’s even more radical; it’s as if the Engineer knows every single conditional branch in the infinite UML diagram of possible and feasible worlds, and this Engineer simply chose the particular finite state machine that requires minimal “object” initialization (yet in every created world, God would need to of course actively sustain it).
Just throwing in my four cents there…please feel free to rip this apart!
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See when we talk about these topics, I like to leave “what God could have done” out and just talk about what we know happened from science, and whether it is possible that science can detect that some things in nature are best explained as a result of intelligence. Nevermind God or the Bible.
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I see your point WK, but I’m coming from this from a theological POV, not necessarily an apologetic one. I was just stating that it’s a false dichotomy, as some Christians and atheists make it out to be, that God and Evolution are incompatible. I even stated that I rejected macroevolution/anagenesis on purely scientific grounds, not anything dealing with God or the Bible. When talking to my friends about this issue, I almost never bring up God/The Bible, not because I am ashamed or anything of that sort, but because I’ve now come to treat it as what it is, a scientific theory.
@Salvatore Mazzotta:
“There are many similar passages which describe God controlling nature, and history, and even the hearts and deeds of men. Yet, even if one were to present an exhaustive list of such passages, no doubt someone would come up with something not mentioned in the scriptures, such as the flow of electrons through a printed circuit, and make much of the fact that “The Bible nowhere states that God is in control of THAT.”
I’m not saying God is NOT in control, in fact, it is my conviction that God is sovereign in all things, including every single weather pattern and event; it is not out of His power or awareness. So in that sense, I do agree with you! However, I don’t think that God is “active” in the sense that everything is caused by Him, because if that’s the case, every natural disaster would be God’s fault, and every deformed child is God’s doing, which I don’t think either of us would want to imply. I mean, that seems to be going the way of Occasionalism.
As a Molinist, I believe that God chose this specific world to create in which all the parameters, values, and events would be as they are. So then, God wouldn’t have to always be the cause for every single event that happens; in that sense, I seat God’s sovereignty based on His knowledge (and His acting on it via creating this world) rather than meticulously causing every event.
Also, could you cite some other verses? I don’t see Nahum 1:3 being a prooftext that God is actively in control of whirlwinds and tornadoes, but rather transcending them and not being subject to them; as well as using them as judgments. What this means is that He doesn’t necessarily have to invoke a tornado ex nihilo, but rather create a world in which He knew that He would judge group X with a tornado AND which He knew that the particles and weather patterns would be such that the tornado would occur naturally at the time of judgment. Granted, God could also equally create a world (if it is feasible) in which the natural patterns would not generate a tornado, and so God can supernaturally invoke one.
Matthew 5:45 also doesn’t help too much because the point of that passage is that God can and will place people, both just and unjust, both Christian and non-Christian, in circumstances of both good and ill; it’s not really talking about God’s sovereignty so much as God’s impartiality. I mean, that passage talks about the sun rising, even though we know that it doesn’t technically rise, but you and me would think it’d be kind of off-base for a geocentrist to use that passage as a prooftext.
I must reiterate, I am not advocating some sort of Open Theism position, I believe that God is in control of ALL things both small and large, but I do not believe He is the CAUSE of all things. Clearly we, as causal agents, are responsible for our sins, and it is we who are responsible for our actions to which we are held accountable to Him who sits on Heaven’s mercy seat (unless one is a Calvinist/Hypercalvinist).
I am also saying that, as a Molinist, God doesn’t necessarily have to divinely control things in the way that a puppetmaster has to control the puppet. God, by way of His middle knowledge, can create a world knowing what all free agents would do in the given situations they are in. I suspect that this may hold true to physical processes as well. God would know in World 1 that particle X would move at a certain velocity in a certain direction at time t; in World 2, God would know that particle X would move at, say, a different velocity in a certain direction at time t (and all other times, of course). It is in this sense that God has sovereign control of all things, He can let things run their course, and nothing would surprise Him, nothing would be out of His purview, no particle would move in a direction that God would not foreknow, etc.
So, then, even IF macroevolution/anagenesis WERE true, and even IF it came about that it was “unguided”, that doesn’t mean God is not sovereign or not in control, at least given the molinist perspective.
The original point I was trying to make was that wherever the scientific evidence points to, it doesn’t have “fatal” theological consequences; it is this point, I think, that can allow Christians ease and just focus on the science and be open-minded as opposed to atheists who almost seem to demand evolution be true in some (vain) attempt to shove God out of the picture.
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I might be wrong be it is not scientific theory yet. Theory has to tested (multiple) and proved (multiple) to be moved from a hypothesis.
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While there are theistic evolutionists who hold to a literal Adam and Eve, it seems that most of them do not. Why? Because a literal Adam and Eve is not entailed by evolutionary theory. And doesn’t really fit well with it.
And, since Darwinian Evolution describes how man’s origin actually happened, and Genesis 1-3 is merely a myth; there’s no compelling reason to hold to the literal existence of anyone named in that myth.
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Micah wrote:
As far as the claim, “God didn’t do anything” goes, there are a lot of things that God doesn’t actively “do”, but rather sustain. I mean, are there any other physical processes that God is actively involved with? I should think not, and I don’t see this process as anymore “different” in that regard.
There are lots natural processes that scripture declares God is directing:
Nahum 1:3b (ESV) His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.
Matthew 5:45 (ESV) For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
There are many similar passages which describe God controlling nature, and history, and even the hearts and deeds of men. Yet, even if one were to present an exhaustive list of such passages, no doubt someone would come up with something not mentioned in the scriptures, such as the flow of electrons through a printed circuit, and make much of the fact that “The Bible nowhere states that God is in control of THAT.”
So, here’s one that plugs the gaps by declaring God’s sovereign control over “all things.”
Ephesians 1:11 (ESV) In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will,
Given these facts, must we not conclude that there are no “undirected processes?”
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Good post, WK. What I found particularly interesting was the woman’s recognition that her own “blitheness” (by which I assume she means “blithe ignorance”) resulted in her adopting or defaulting to the accepted “consensus”. Probably true for a LOT of people and all the more reason we — Christians and otherwise — need to be at least somewhat familiar with this stuff and the arguments from both/all sides.
I posted on a similar subject a few weeks ago here: http://aviewfromtheright.com/2011/07/24/must-christians-accept-evolution/
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The Christian theist evolutionists with whom I’ve dialogued over the years seem to be primarily concerned to be fashionable & respected among their peers in the scientific community, while still being fashionable & respected among their peers in the Christian community. They seem to be unable to reconcile their evolutionary convictions with their Christian convictions, including Jesus’ views on Adam and Eve.
Several have asked me to solve this dissonance for them. In response I’ve challenged them to show scientific evidence to support their beliefs in the spontaneous generation of the cosmos, of first life, of male and female genders of any species, of actual transformation of any species to a different species, etc. They seem to refer only to similarities of structure at the skeletal and genetic level and the authority of dominant professional bodies and publications. Such appeals to authority do not constitute warrant in my view.
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“In response I’ve challenged them to show scientific evidence to support their beliefs in the spontaneous generation of the cosmos, of first life, of male and female genders of any species, of actual transformation of any species to a different species, etc.”
That’s exactly what to do. And what they do in response is talk about their feelings, their childhood faith, the songs like to sing, the church they attend, what God could do (that science cannot detect), etc. The easiest way to dialog with a theistic evolution is to rule out references to feelings, possibilities, hopes and wishes. Ask them whether there is anything that science has shown or CAN show that would demonstrate that material processes cannot to all the creating they say it can do. They’ll say NO. And that’s why I call them theistic atheists. The theism is is just subjective smokescreen – their view of reality from their philosophy of science is that God doesn’t exist.
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