Something interesting from The American Association for the Advancement of Science:
Is Evolution Compatible with Traditional Religious Belief?
Yes. Most western religions have long since accommodated Darwin within their views of human and biological origins, and philosophers of science have made exactly the same point. Nonetheless, many religious people persist in believing that the findings of evolution are inherently hostile to religion. Typical objections include:
• Evolution is too unpredictable. Because evolution incorporates an element of chance, a loving Creator could not have used it to create our species.
• Evolution is too cruel. The repeated cycles of bloody competition and extinction are too cruel to be compatible with Divine purpose and plan.
• Evolution is too indirect. If the Creator’s purpose was to create us, why would he not have done so directly? Why was it necessary to produce so many worlds, so many different species, all destined for extinction?
In my recent book, Finding Darwin's God (© 1999, HarperCollins, New York), I argued that these and many other religious objections to evolution are illusory.
Is evolution too unpredictable? In reality, the unpredictability of evolution results from the contingent nature of any historical process. Thomas Aquinas, the preeminent theologian of medieval times, argued that the influence of random, unpredictable forces on human and natural affairs was an essential feature of any creation by a loving God. Without such events, he noted, creation could not really be distinct from its creator. We should remember that the only alternative to "unpredictability" would be a strict, predictable determinism in which the future would be a closed extrapolation of the Creator's will.
Evolution is certainly not so "cruel" that it cannot be compatible with the notion of a loving God. All that evolution points out is that every organism that has ever lived will eventually die. This is not a special feature of Darwinian theory, but an observable, verifiable fact. The driving force behind evolutionary change is differential reproductive success, the fact that some organisms leave more offspring than others. Yes, the struggle for existence sometimes involves competition and predation, but just as often it involves cooperation, care, and extraordinary beauty. As natural history writer Annie Dillard put it: "Beauty itself is the fruit of the creator's exuberance that grew such a tangle, and the grotesques and horrors bloom from the same free growth, that intricate scramble and twine up and down the conditions of time." (Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Harper & Row. New York. ©1974. p. 148).
Finally, the indirect nature of the evolutionary pathway that led to our species is a problem only if we are willing to ignore the indirect pathways of personal and political history that led to our own origins as individuals and the origins of human societies and civilizations? Why would a loving God have found it necessary to produce so many other species that perished before bringing ours into existence? I don't pretend to know the answer to this. But neither would most Christians claim to know the answer why so many human civilizations flourished and passed away before the Judeo-Christian God found a way to bring His message to a small subset of the Earth's peoples. The indirectness of evolution is exactly comparable to the indirectness of historical, social, and even linguistic change, and yet none of these is thought incompatible with the concept of Divine will and purpose. Neither, I would suggest, is evolution.
Should the Bible be Read as a Scientific Textbook?
I don't think so, nor do most modern theologians. The insistence that the Bible is a spiritual document, not a scientific one, predates the work of Charles Darwin by at least 13 centuries. In the fifth century A. D., St. Augustine pointed out the problems associated with giving scripture a scientific reading.
Augustine was not an evolutionist. Nonetheless, he saw creation as a continuing and unfolding process in which the commands of the creator were fulfilled progressively, not instantaneously. And more to the point, he was adamant that even the "literal" meaning of Genesis must not stand in contradiction to the kind of knowledge that today we would call "scientific."
"Even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn." (Augustine. On the Literal Meaning of Genesis. Book 1, Chapter 19.)
Sacred Scripture, in Augustine's words, "has been written to nourish our souls," not to present us with a scientific description of the world. Augustine goes on to scold those who put forward interpretations of Genesis that any scientifically knowledgeable non-Christian would recognize as nonsense: "Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books ." (Ibid, 1:19.).
Can Evolution be Seen as Compatible with Religion?
Absolutely. I wrote "Finding Darwin's God" for two reasons. The first was to conduct a point-by-point defense of the various attacks mounted against evolution in recent years, and the second was to point out that in many ways for people of faith Darwinian evolution can deepen our understanding of the relationship between Creator and creation:
"Seen in this way, evolution was much more than an indirect pathway to get to you and me. By choosing evolution as his way to fashion the living world, he emphasized our material nature and our unity with other forms of life. He made the world today contingent upon the events of the past. He made our choices matter, our actions genuine, our lives important. In the final analysis, he used evolution as the tool to set us free."
Finding Darwin's God, HarperCollins, 1999. p. 253.
Those who ask from science a final argument, an ultimate proof, an unassailable position from which the issue of God may be decided will always be disappointed. As a scientist I claim no new proofs, no revolutionary data, no stunning insight into nature that can tip the balance in one direction or another. But I do claim that to a believer, even in the most traditional sense, evolutionary biology is not at all the obstacle we often believe it to be.
The National Academy of Sciences agrees, as do the likes of Paul Davies, Ian Barbour, John Polkinghorne, and John Haught (whose exceptional book, God after Darwin, I strongly recommend to anyone interested in the theological issues raised by Darwinism).
In the final analysis, to find conflict between God and Darwin one must do two things. The first is to misunderstand evolution, and the second is to misunderstand religion. In the absence of such misunderstanding, science and religion can do more than coexist. They can become partners in an enterprise that strengthens the spirit, deepens our understanding of the wonders of nature, and enriches the human soul.
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