Some people suggest that God used evolution to design the world. They are motivated, I think, by two impulses. The first is a desire to affirm the Bible. The second is a suspicion Darwinism may have merit. Thus, they declare both true.
These two notions, however, seem incompatible to me. It may sound reasonable for God to “use” evolution, but if you look closer I think you will see the problem.
Suppose I wanted a straight flush for a hand of poker. I could either pull the cards out of the deck individually and “design” the hand, or I could shuffle the cards randomly and see if the flush is dealt to me. It would not make any sense, though, to “design” the hand by shuffling the deck and dealing. There’s no way to ensure the results. (I guess if I were really clever I could make it look like I was shuffling the deck when in reality I was stacking it, but that would be a deceitful kind of design called “cheating.”).
In the same way, either God designs the details of the biological world, or nature shuffles the deck and natural selection chooses the winning hand. The mechanism is either conscious and intentional (design), or unconscious and unintentional (natural selection). Creation has a purpose, a goal. Evolution is accidental, like a straight flush dealt to a poker rookie.
The idea that something is designed by chance is contradictory. Like trying to put a square peg in a round hole, this just doesn’t fit.
Fundamental problem here. As I understand it (need to do more reading), theistic evolutionists don't claim that God used evolution to design the world. Rather, they might claim that God used evolution in his work of creation, or that God established evolution as a process by which things change and develop in the world he created. Once again, can one really mount a serious argument without properly understanding the position one is arguing against?
2 comments:
Could you recommend any books to read up on this?
I found Michael Ruse's book Can A Darwinian Be A Christian? quite good. Also Kirsten Birkett's The Essence of the Darwinism and a new book just out from Denis Alexander, the director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion in Cambridge: Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?
"Dr Denis Alexander is a biochemist who believes passionately in both the biblical doctrine of creation and the coherence of evolutionary theory. His book draws on the latest genetic research. What do we mean by creation and evolution? What are the common scientific objections to evolution? Is evolution atheistic? Who were Adam and Eve? Can the concept of the Fall be reconciled with evolutionary theory? How could a God of love create a world where animals kill each other? What about Intelligent Design? The author concludes that the question in the title is a false dichotomy: we do not need to choose, since both are true. 'Nature is what God does' - Augustine."
I need to do some more reading on this topic once I've finished my PhD.
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