Evolution, Chance, and God

Understanding the Relationship between Evolution and Religion

Brendan Sweetman

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781628929867
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy of Religion

Evolution, Chance, and God looks at the relationship between religion and evolution from a philosophical perspective. This relationship is fascinating, complex and often very controversial, involving myriad issues that are difficult to keep separate from each other. Evolution, Chance, and God introduces the reader to the main themes of this debate and to the theory of evolution, while arguing for a particular viewpoint, namely that evolution and religion are compatible, and that, contrary to the views of some influential thinkers, there is no chance operating in the theory of evolution, a conclusion that has great significance for teleology. One of the main aims of this book is not simply to critique one influential contemporary view that evolution and religion are incompatible, but to explore specific ways of how we might understand their compatibility, as well as the implications of evolution for religious belief. This involves an exploration of how and why God might have created by means of evolution, and what the consequences in particular are for the status of human beings in creation, and for issues such as free will, the objectivity of morality, and the problem of evil. By probing how the theory of evolution and religion could be reconciled, Sweetman says that we can address more deeply key foundational questions concerning chance, design, suffering and morality, and God's way of acting in and through creation.

1

Introduction: Evolution and Religion Today

Few topics concerning the general worldview of religious belief today, and especially in its relationship and interaction with science, have caused as much controversy as the topic of the relationship between religion and evolution. One only has to mention the topic in the appropriate circles to start an often contentious, sometimes unsettling, and yes, frequently heated argument. It also seems that everyone has an opinion on this topic, and, more often than not, that these opinions are strongly held, and their advocates are not usually willing to give much ground to those with whom they disagree! Unfortunately, many people adopt an entrenched position on the subject, so that there is frequently little room for informed discussion and exploration of what is a quite fascinating, but also very complex, topic. It is regrettable that there is little place in the contemporary discussion for exploring carefully and responsibly the major questions and issues involved, and their various implications for matters in religion, philosophy, ethics, science, education, and culture. The topic of religion and evolution has proved to be multifaceted, with many different themes, emphases, and perspectives, so that it becomes necessary to bring a clarity and logical order to the topic before one can begin to develop an informed view of the overall subject matter. Unfortunately, our conversation today concerning religion and evolution is frequently uninformed, especially in the public square; in addition, it is often contentious, and suffused with political implications, even agendas and ideologies, that make it difficult to bring discipline, insight, and knowledge to our thinking about this vitally important cluster of issues.

As well as attempting to introduce the general, educated reader to the main concepts, themes, and arguments of the discussion concerning religion and evolution, informed by the main perspectives in the contemporary debate, this book will consider the implications that evolution raises for philosophy, religion, and morality, and explore various ways in which evolution and religion might be compatible. It will explain the theory of evolution and the evidence for the theory, and will address a number of common questions about the theory. Then, proceeding on the assumption that the theory is true, I will argue that one of the key claims of influential evolutionary theorists—that the process contains large elements of chance and randomness—is not true. The book will discuss in detail the concepts of chance and randomness in nature, and in science, along with related theological matters, such as the question of how and why God might have created by means of evolution, what the theory means in particular for the status of human beings in creation, and questions about suffering and waste in nature. I will develop my own approach and arguments concerning these topics in the company of some influential thinkers who have written on some aspect of the relationship between religion and evolution. In this way, I hope to introduce an interesting new perspective into the debate, and so make a modest, original contribution to the overall subject.

In our discussion of the compatibility of religion and evolution, our main focus will be the religion of Christianity and the Christian understanding of God. Christianity is not only the religion we are most familiar with in the West, but it is also usually Christianity that is at the center of contemporary debates with evolution. So we will discuss some of the key questions primarily from the point of view of Christianity understood in a fairly general way, rather than in any specific denominational sense. It is the case, nevertheless, that many of the general points we make as our analysis unfolds will be applicable in many different religions if they hold that there is a transcendent supreme personal being who is responsible for creation, and also if they accept some evolutionary account of the development of life.

How to approach the topic of evolution and religion

Creationism

The topic of this book can be approached from a number of angles. One obvious starting point (especially in the United States) is the conflict between, and the controversy surrounding, what is called creationism, and the scientific theory of evolution. Many religious believers regard the theory of evolution as a threat to their (fairly literal) reading of the Bible—as contradicting this reading—and so this fact automatically puts the theory on a collision course with religion in the eyes of many of these believers. Something has to give, and from the point of view of the creationists, who generally hold that God created the universe, and especially the various species, more or less as described in the Book of Genesis, the theory of evolution has to be rejected. Of course, there are different versions of this general approach, not all of which espouse the same positions, and so we should always be careful when discussing creationism to identify correctly the specific view with which we are concerned. Some representative creationists would include Wayne Frair, Gary Patterson, Paul Nelson, and John Ashton.¹ (A caution that creationism is not to be confused with Intelligent Design theory; we will return to this distinction, and especially to the way in which the view I develop in this book differs from Intelligent Design theory, in Chapter 8.) One might be inclined to think that this creationist/evolution controversy is unique to the United States, that the rest of the world does not take this dispute seriously, that perhaps it must be something unusual in the American approach to religion that gives rise to this particular controversy. And it is true that the main reason historically in the United States for the clash between evolution and religion is that many see the theory as being on a collision course with the Bible. But this is too simplistic a way of looking at the problem for three reasons.

The first is that it is not just the creationists who are responsible for generating the controversy; many atheists and secularists were quick to jump on the theory right from the beginning and to co-opt it as an argument in support of their atheism. This fact set up a confrontation between atheism and religion, with evolution (and perhaps science in general) caught in the middle (we will come back to this point in Chapter 4). So the theory of evolution became a kind of pawn in a larger cultural debate concerning worldviews, ethics, and the meaning of life, a debate that continues and perhaps is even more intense today, as we will see in the next section. A second reason is that we do see similar problems in other countries, especially perhaps in Islamic countries, and the Far East, which generally take a dim view of evolution. The religions of India also have mixed feelings about evolution.² So the problem is not unique to the United States. But, thirdly, we must consider that another reason why evolution and religion do not generate as much controversy in other countries is because interested parties in those countries simply have not given enough attention to the topic. They are not as exercised, for various cultural reasons, as we are in the United States by what the theory of evolution claims, and by its implications for matters in philosophy, religion, and ethics (of course, there are millions in the United States who adopt the same attitude toward the subject!). But if educators, pastors, and academics in other counties gave more time to thinking through the topic of religion and evolution, they would have to deal with all of the questions that shape the US discussion, and it is likely that believers and intellectuals in other parts of the world would find these matters just as challenging, unsettling, and contentious as do believers and intellectuals in the United States. Indeed, if the topic of religion and evolution were to be the subject of careful scrutiny in other countries, it is likely that the theory would become more controversial in these countries, even if not perhaps to the same extent as in the United States.

It is simply a fact that whenever people think deeply about the meaning of evolution and its implications for various areas of life, including religion, ethics, and the role of science in life and culture, it inevitably raises questions of a most foundational kind, and these questions provoke a significant response from all sides of the spectrum. It is only because many countries do not engage in a discussion about evolution, or focus on it to any significant extent in their teaching and study of religion (and also perhaps because some maintain a careful separation between scientific matters and discussions of religion and ethics), that the theory receives less attention in these countries. It is not because people in other countries are more enlightened than their American counterparts. Enlightenment has little to do with it; the theory of evolution is complex in itself, and raises challenging questions about matters outside of evolution. These questions are not easily resolved, and require careful reflection; yet careful reflection is rarely decisive on many of the key issues, which in itself generates debate, doubt, and further controversy.

Secularism

A second approach to understanding the relationship between religion and evolution is the reverse of the first approach. I call this second approach the secularist (or naturalistic) interpretation of evolution, and we have already alluded to it above briefly. This approach has been enormously influential in contemporary culture, almost as influential as the presence of creationism in our culture and its various clashes with evolution. The secularist interpretation of evolution is also a significant contributory reason for why the creationist position has become so contentious, and draws so many diverse parties into the dispute (as we will see). Yet, although the secularist approach has been influential, it is not nearly as well understood as the creationist approach, so we need to take a moment here to introduce it. It very often plays an influential background role in many of the issues that arise in this book, and so it is important for us to have a grasp of this approach before taking up other crucial questions in considering the relationship between religion and evolution.

The secularist interpretation of evolution involves the manner in which atheists and secularists in contemporary society, especially those of a militant nature, have co-opted the theory of evolution (and to a lesser extent, other scientific theories) as a way of trying to explain and justify their atheism. And perhaps not just as a way of defending it, but as a way of trying to shore it up, give it some plausibility and respectability, render it more sophisticated, make it less negative in contrast to religious belief. Thinkers such as Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, the late Carl Sagan, William Provine, and Michael Ruse would be in this camp, and I will refer to the work of these thinkers and others with similar views throughout this book.³ Dawkins, who is probably the best known (and most notorious) representative of this approach, along with Coyne, Ruse and several others, are what I call positive atheists, or secularists. This means that they do not primarily adopt the approach of the typical atheist, who traditionally defined himself in terms of what he did not believe or in terms of what he rejected (God, religious tradition, religious morality, and so forth). The typical atheist of the past also defended his view mainly by attacking some other view (viz., the religious worldview), usually by critiquing arguments for the existence of God, or by pointing to the sins of religious believers, or by some combination of these kinds of arguments. However, it is obvious that from a logical point of view the alleged failure of arguments supporting religious belief and a catalogue of the all-too-real sins of religious believers does nothing to show that an atheistic, secularist worldview is true. So atheists like Dawkins, Sagan, and others came to realize that they must make a conspicuous attempt to present a more sophisticated face for the contemporary world. This takes the form of adopting a positive rather than a negative stance about what they believe, and why they believe it.

What this means in practice is that sophisticated contemporary intellectual atheists now try to think about what they believe in positive terms, to consider what they actually believe is true about reality, what really is the case out there in the real world (specifically about the universe, about human life, and about morality and politics), to express what they believe in positive statements. One might wonder how one could express in a positive way that God does not exist, or that various religious doctrines are not true, or that one does not believe in religious morality! What we need is not just some clever way of spinning these statements positively, of course, but from the philosophical and logical point of view, we need to show, if it is not true that God exists, or that human beings are designed by God, or that human beings have a soul, or that we differ in kind and not just in degree from other species, and so forth—then we need to say what is in fact true. And we need to work out eventually what is true on all of the ultimate questions of existence including those concerning the origin and structure of the universe, the origin of life, and the origin and nature of human life in particular, especially in relation to key human characteristics, such as consciousness, reason, free will, and morality.

Naturalists (as they are also sometimes called) or secularists⁴ (I will use both terms in this book) have therefore attempted to re-express some of their views in positive statements. So they will say that what they believe is that “everything that exists is physical in nature,” or that “human beings are completely physical beings, made up totally of matter and energy,” or that “human beings originated as a result of an evolutionary process that operates purely by chance” or that “human consciousness is only an operation of a very sophisticated physical organ, the brain,” and so forth. The point is then, according to these secularists, that if these claims are true, then their opposites would be false (i.e., various religious claims on the same topics are false); for example, it would be false then that human beings are made up of body and soul, or that human life is designed, or that human beings differ in kind from other species. By stating their views in this positive way, secularists are seen as not just rejecting or critiquing some other view (viz., the religious view), but as presenting their own independent view, which, if true, would logically entail the falsehood of the religious view.

However, in order to defend a more positive development of one’s worldview or philosophy of life, one must then marshal positive arguments to support one’s positive claims. We may liken the approach of contemporary atheists to supporters of the steady state theory of the origin of the universe (in the 1950s many thought this was a very plausible theory). Suppose you ask a supporter of the steady state theory why she holds the theory and she replies: “well I think the big bang theory is false.” And then she offers various criticisms of the big bang theory. It is obvious that logically one cannot defend the steady state theory solely by critiquing its main rival. This is because of the logical fact that just because the big bang theory might be false, this does not show that the steady state theory is true! There will come a (logical) point where, if this scientist wishes to defend the steady state theory, she will have to give positive evidence to support the theory, a point where she can no longer rely on critiques of rival theories to establish her position. This means she will have to present positive evidence in favor of the steady state theory, not just point out how the evidence purporting to support the big bang theory does not in fact support it. It is the same with the atheist and his rejection of religion. He has an obligation, especially when he states his view positively in the way illustrated, to then present positive evidence to back up his claims.

And so it is to science that modern atheists turn to find their positive evidence, and especially to the theory of evolution. The great problem that this approach has given rise to (especially in the United States), and it has become a cultural problem, and not just a problem confined to the esoteric disciplines of philosophy and theology, is that these secularist thinkers often exaggerate the implications, and often the evidence, for various scientific claims and conclusions. They do this because they are attempting to give an atheistic spin to these theories, so they frequently claim more for the theories than the theories themselves can support, and even more than the scientific theories officially claim to support. A conspicuous recent example of this phenomenon is the claim by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in their book, The Grand Design, that the latest scientific evidence in physics, astronomy, and mathematics supports the conclusion that the universe may have arisen spontaneously out of nothing!⁵ They are led into making not only an illogical, but a ridiculous, claim like this by their atheistic agenda that motivates them, not only to exaggerate and misrepresent scientific evidence for their own purposes, but also, in their fervor to promote their view, to make silly claims that a moment’s sober reflection by these highly qualified scientists would show are irrational!

An unfortunate consequence of this general secularist approach has been to confuse in the minds of the general public the discipline of science with atheism. When people who do not follow this complex debate too closely read thinkers (or watch them on TV) like Dawkins, Hawking and Sagan, and others, who are often public spokespersons for modern science, they come to the erroneous but understandable conclusion that modern science is really a form of atheism. When they hear scientists like Dawkins arguing that evolution should make people atheists, and urging teachers to push evolution in public education, not just to teach science, but as a way of undermining religion, then one can easily understand why they would adopt a suspicious, even hostile, attitude toward science, and especially toward programs of scientific education. Unfortunately, secularists who appeal to science in this way have fostered the view that science as a discipline (and not just science as hijacked by, and as represented by, certain thinkers with a political and moral agenda, a distinction the public does not usually make) is anti-religion, and this view has done a lot of harm to the cause of scientific education in a number of countries, especially perhaps in the United States. But from our point of view in this book, it also has the effect of making dialogue between religion and science much more difficult. Despite the championing of science by these scientific secularists, their work has the effect paradoxically of undermining people’s appreciation for and understanding of various scientific theories. This leads a section of the general public to ignore, downplay, or even to scoff at excellent work in science, to weaken or even denigrate the valiant attempts by the vast majority of scientists around the world who are doing their best to understand the fascinating world around us (and, in many cases, to harness their discoveries for the benefit of mankind). These developments remind us that in any discussion of the scope of scientific theories, the evidence for them, and the relationship of science to other interesting questions and the disciplines that discuss them, it is always best to be very mindful of the distinction between science and scientists!

There is a further dimension to the co-opting of cutting edge, challenging scientific theories by secularists for the purposes of advancing their moral and political worldviews. This is in addition to provoking hostility to science among the general public (and so perhaps increasing rather than reducing the level of scientific ignorance), and misrepresenting the nature of the objective debate about various scientific theories. This is the fact that some religious leaders use the ammunition (if we might put it like that) they receive from the secularist camp to avoid engaging in any attempt at constructive dialogue with scientific theories. It may be only a minority who react like this (and I want to be careful not to brand all of those religious leaders, thinkers, and believers who are more on the conservative side in the general debate between religion and science, since they are already frequently stereotyped by the secularist and liberal religious camps), but at the same time I think that secularist approaches like those of Dawkins make it easy today for any religious individual or group tha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents 
• 1. Introduction: Evolution and Religion Today
• 2. The Theory of Evolution
• 3. Evolution and the Evidence: Questions and Answers
• 4. Evolution: Reactions and Implications
• 5. Evolution, Chance, and Determinism
• 6. Chance and Randomness in Evolution
• 7. How Does God Act? The Compatibility of Religion and Evolution
• 8. Evolution and Design, and the Challenges of Evil and Morality
• Notes
• Further Reading
• Index
• Imprint