Recent pop culture presented a debate between a scientist and a fundamentalist Christian over evolution and creation. The Christian, a Biblical literalist, holds to the idea of a “young creation,” a universe that is roughly 6,000 years old – this – based on calculating from the Biblical record. It is the most extreme form of Biblical literalism – one in which the appearances of the universe to be much older must be themselves understood as “effects” of how God created the world. God created a universe that only looks 14 billion years old.
There is a strong strain within some Orthodox circles that is deeply skeptical of evolutionary theories. Any account of the world that dismisses the existence of God, or seeks to disregard God as Creator, feels like an attack on the most basic tenets of the faith. Thus, it is not unusual to see sympathy for anti-evolutionist efforts.
There are deep theological flaws in all of this – both in the anti-evolutionist Christian positions and in the ill-informed attempts by scientists to undermine the Christian Scriptures.
A Tutorial on Creation
Classical Christianity holds that God created the universe from nothing. The universe had a beginning – it has not always existed. It’s existence is not necessary. The fathers are quite clear that all things that are not God Himself are created: space, time, matter, energy, all beings, etc.
The Biblical account of creation portrays God speaking all things into existence with the words: “Let there be light!”
And now we begin to engage in theological reflection. What does it mean to say that God created? How did He create? How did God cause the universe? It is at these questions that theological reflection enters into silence. For the nature and work of God’s causation cannot be known. They are not objects or works within the universe that can be observed and studied. We can see the effects of causation, but not causation itself. In the language of Orthodox theology we may say that God causelessly causes.
It is the teaching of the Church that God cannot be known. He is utterly transcendent, beyond observation and all knowing. It is also the teaching of the Church that the God-Who-Cannot-Be-Known made Himself known in the God-Man, Jesus Christ. What we know of God, we know through Christ.
No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. (Joh 1:18 NKJ)
But saying that Christ has made God known, is not the same thing as saying that Christ has now brought the nature of God’s causation into the world of phenomena. The God who cannot be known remains hidden, except as He chooses to reveal Himself in Christ.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
This renders the creative work of God opaque to His creation. We may see its effects but cannot pass beyond those effects to gaze at the cause, for the Christian teaching is that God Himself is the Cause.
An early Soviet cosmonaut famously announced from orbit that he did not see God. Nor will any work or effort of science. It would be perfectly consistent for human science to study and research, theorize and “prove,” and do so without a necessity of mentioning God. Perhaps unique within the opaque universe is the simple fact of its beginning.
That the universe has a beginning is perhaps the greatest “discovery” of modern science. And this was achieved by fairly simple observation. Prior to the 1920’s, it was generally accepted that the universe was static and had “always” existed. The universe was the definition of “what is.” But through the work of Edwin Hubbell and other physicists, it was established that the universe is not static – it is moving – and it is moving in all directions – expanding. The simple arithmetic of this movement is that the universe was moving from a single point, a beginning. And again by simple math, that single point can be calculated at roughly 14 billion years in the past.
This was deeply problematic for some. Here was straight, clear, observable evidence of a beginning. And, as work has continued in physics, a beginning from nothing! There have been many efforts to posit models other than “universe from nothing,” but they remain (and will remain) within the realm of pure theory.
But Christians cannot point to a point of origin as evidence of the Cause, only as evidence of an origin. At that point, we must stand shoulder to shoulder with those who do not believe and simply wonder. For it is in our wonder that we encounter Jesus to whom the Apostles bare witness that He is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
We meet the Cause within history itself and only know about the Cause because He Himself has told us. We report the story of His resurrection, and His continual presence among us, but never in such a way that He becomes a mere cause, an inert effect with which we may convince those who do not see. God will not be argued.
There are many who want a God who will be argued, a God who will take His place on the playing field of human debate. God as a cause among the causes becomes useful for the human project (whatever we imagine it to be). But ultimately such a God is no God at all, just a god surrounded by the many gods, not the One, but one of many.
For the literalists, God is the cause of the Bible and the Bible is the great effect by which all causes may be explained. But even here they err, making of the Bible what the Church never received. The Word became flesh (not paper). And the Word is to Scripture what He is to the universe. Even in the Scriptures He remains hidden, the Causeless Cause. Documents, stories, poems, legends and tales, histories, doctrinally-shaped accounts, letters and apocalypse, all revealing their very human hands, and yet His word.
You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. (Joh 5:39 NKJ)
And they testify much like the Big Bang. We stand even at the edge of the Scriptures and wonder.
But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1Co 2:14 NKJ)
And this is the true character of theology. We know the unknowable God. This both makes us shout from the rooftops and remain mute. For we proclaim the Causeless Cause, who has come among us. And because we know Him we see Him and proclaim Him. But you cannot see Him until you know Him. The universe and creation reads like a parable.
And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?” He answered and said to them, “Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. (Mat 13:10-13 NKJ)
Comments
148 responses to “Evolution, Creation and the Hidden Cause”
You certainly make a good point Nicole and Alice, I was reading Jonathan Wells on “junk DNA” (one of the strongest arguments for evolution) here’s the intro:
Terrific comment, Dino! Thanks.
Alice,
Just read Austin L. Hughes’ The Folly of Scientism, really great stuff – thank you.
This bit here I mean: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-folly-of-scientism
Thanks, friends. I like where this conversation is headed. So many people do not realize that evolutionary teaching is predicated upon atheism and exists mainly as a defense of a Godless world. Trying to find compatibility between this worldview and Orthodox teaching is a dangerous quest as it is an attempt to unite truth and at least some degree of falsehood. The example of so-called junk DNA is a great example of the propaganda-motive of the popular conceptions of evolution. How can we have an honest dialogue when dealing with such a dishonest debate partner?
Dino, I hope others will read Hughes’ article. He is not a Christian, but he’s an example of a scientist with integrity and those are the ones we can have dialogue with, Nicole.
Then there is this theory which sounds just as plausible to me as some of the other ideas on theistic evolution that are being discussed here:
The Dawn of Man
“A tribe of herbivorous early hominids is foraging for food in the African desert. A leopard kills one member, and another tribe of man-apes drives them from their water hole. Defeated, they sleep overnight in a small exposed rock crater, and awake to find a black monolith has appeared in front of them. They approach it shrieking and jumping, and eventually touch it cautiously. Soon after, one of the man-apes, realizes how to use a bone as both a tool and a weapon, which they start using to kill prey for their food. Growing increasingly capable and assertive, they reclaim control of the water hole from the other tribe by killing its leader”
🙂
@MgtPgh: LOL. Agreed.
Alice,
Fr. John R Breck, has also written on the topic of modern science from a different perspective.
…quantum mechanics, new evolutionary theory, and the slowly unraveling mysteries of human consciousness force us to expand our vision of things far beyond what was envisioned by Newton or even Einstein. These giants gave us the tools to open our conceptual casement onto new horizons. For a long while, the laws of quantum physics and those of the material world in which we live seemed to be contradictory or simply unrelated. We could not imagine how a single photon, for example, can pass through two slits simultaneously, or how nature itself can be structured so that the more scientists learn about the universe the less we really understand. If a person cannot accept an “apophatic” approach to reality, declaring what it is not before seeking to affirm what it is, then there is little way of dealing with the givens of quantum mechanics and general relativity. It is far simpler to fall back on a purely materialist view of the world, in which everything is ultimately determined and scientific certainty seems achievable. This view was scientific orthodoxy in the 18th and 19th centuries, and it still has adherents today. That world, however, no longer exists. Material reality exists, certainly. But only from the point of view of our sensory perception.
Consciousness is required to observe and measure reality, both microcosmic and macrocosmic. On the quantum level, consciousness is also required to “bring into existence” elementary particles and, variously, to determine their mass, location and velocity. This is scientific fact, demonstrated experimentally and repeatedly over the course of the last century. From this point onward, however, we can only speculate.
It seems evident to minds that are open to whatever form truth may ultimately take, that direction, purpose and meaning characterize both the world we live in and the universe as a whole. The (strong) anthropic principle holds that creation itself is moving toward an end, that it is invested with finality. It is, if you will, directed toward Teilhard de Chardin’s “Omega point.” He identifies that point with the Cosmic Christ, something most physicists today are loathe to do.….
…it all points to the reality of a supreme Being beyond being, a creative and purposeful Archê or ultimate Principle, who in the words of the Orthodox eucharistic liturgy, “calls all things from non-existence into being.”
Dino, Quantum Physics is not a field with which I am deeply familiar. Rather, my concern is to understand the Biblical worldview from the perspective of the people who gave us this material – Abraham’s Nilo-Saharan ancestors. We are still learning about these people and what we are discovering is absolutely amazing. Reading quantum physics, evolutionary theory and any modern ideology into their sacred beliefs is not helpful, and frankly, very unscientific.
Fr John is rather concerned with modern science as a whole in his article, and how through it God is leading -forcing almost- man to ask the eternal existential questions, rather than getting on his high horse (as the article you referenced rightly noted). He is certainly not reading anything into ‘their beliefs’ though…(Abraham’s Nilo-Saharan ancestors), I think there was a misunderstanding there? Sorry for the confusion.
No apologies necessary.
I fully appreciate Fr. Breck’s work.
Austin Hughes quote:
This is why I quail at well meant comments by people like Fr. Andrew Louth that “the work of St. Maxiumus must reevaluated in the light of modern science” (emphasis mine).
That is a direct quote that I heard from his mouth in person.
The older I get, the less I need to know why and how? As my flesh slowly, but surely, rots around me, I just want to know who.
Any avenue of human achievement followed with diligence, integrity and humility will lead to the who or at least point in that direction. They can also keep us from knowing through arrogance.
With respect, the further I read this conversation the more convinced I am that the last couple commenters are using “evolution” to mean an entire scientistic atheist paradigm that the people I know who actually work in life sciences have and never had any truck with. (All of them except one are Christian of some sort, and that last one is a shamanistic pagan and by no means the usual Dawkins-type.)
The entire theory can be summarized as this:
You do not need to believe in the infallibility of “Reason” (no scientist with any integrity or sanity believes in the infallibility of science!) or the non-existence of God, or even deny the Resurrection, to believe this. The so-called “randomness” element is no more or less than why a person is not perfectly identical to their siblings.
Personally, the only problems I see with reconciling evolution (as properly understood in blockquote) and Christianity are that a) death must have existed before Adam’s fall to allow space for the subsequent generations, and b) the separate creation from “dust” cannot be understood literally. At which point we go back to the whole days thing, and the problem of the existence of parasitoid wasps and specialist “recycler” detritus feeders. I myself prefer to admit death before Fall, as the only alternative is to allow that the Fall is extremely creative in producing such beautiful predator, parasite and scavenger biodiversity around us.
I hesitated in stepping in, but I cannot stand by, whether out of compassion or pride or simple need to not be repelled back into atheism by association, while otherwise perfectly reasonable people appear to hinge the faith on what appears to be a fundamental misunderstanding of terms.
Forgive me, a sinner.
Matt,
your assertion
need not be the problem many make it out to be and for those reasons you mentioned.
It has already been discussed here that, as St Athanasius famously explains, death / corruption / return to nothingness, is a constant threat, built into everything created. It is an indispensable part of ‘createdness’ from the very start. Therefore death prior to the Fall is not a problem in this sense. Death free life is only to be found in the Uncreated God and in communion with Him. We obviously need to understand that one difference before and after the Fall is this: what came about with the Fall was the revelation of this inherent reality of death being natural for contingent beings created from nothing. Prior to the Fall, in communion with God, “in grace”, man / Adam had the apperception of his immortality (given to him by grace not by nature), of his eternal life in communion with ‘Life Himself’. But Man did not embrace his calling, (his ‘priesthood’) of returning eucharisticaly all of creation to the Maker, (and therefore transubstantiating all of this mortal createdness into an eternal paradise). He usurped it instead. This priesthood remained an unfulfilled potential that was fulfilled on the Cross by the Second Adam. Only in Him do we see that there was a ‘potential’ of such magnitude that wasn’t carried out by the first Adam.
In addition, only in Him do we now understand that death is the necessary mystery we must embrace in order to be born into true life. And we understand that even prior to the Fall, without a physical death (if we were to be “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, made incorruptible, changed” [1 Cor. 15-52]), there would of necessity be “a death” (a Cross) to the egocentric self (the proof of true kenotic love).
So when we chant that Christ has bestowed life to ‘those in the tombs‘ we must understand that this is an eternal (backwards and forwards) truth… death is always trampled only by death!
The creation of free beings who can say ‘yes’ as well as ‘no’ to their Maker – whether angels or humans – has ingrained in it from the beginning (way before the fall, even the fall of the angels), the notion of the Cross, kenotic love that costs life. This is the love our God has – as he has showed on the Cross – and this is also His Life. Therefore this is the life we can become communicants of.
We see this in the parable of the prodigal and how the Father from the beginning offers his son the freedom to say to Him (in all intents and purposes) “you are as if dead for me, give me my inheritance now”. That is a created being (the prodigal) to whom is gradually revealed the reality of the potntialities of his wretchedness when away from the Father, through his fall.
He has always been ‘mortal’ (as is his brother) but this need not become actualised – depending on how his freedom is used.
Dino,
Very well put and to the point.
Here’s another really crazy thing to add. It’s not mainstream, so bear with me. If you look back at the history of biology, you find that at the time Pasteur did his work, there was another scientist (a biologist, unlike Pasteur) by the name of Antoine Bechamp who was much more qualified and skilled, and who came to a different conclusion than Pasteur about the cause of diseases. (Bear with me, this is totally relevant.) Using some very interesting microscope technology that is not even used today, he observed the actual generation of what we call viruses and bacteria from living tissues! His conclusion was that all these things we think of a microorganisms are actually “loose parts” of macrobiological organisms. When you learn all about this theory and how well it fits the empirical evidence, it is startling, in spite of how different it is from the way we’ve all been taught to think. The reason I bring this up is that it *explains* physical corruption without having to add any “new” creatures to creation at the point of the fall. It harmonizes extremely well with a literal understanding of Genesis, as well as with many puzzling mysteries surrounding “contagious” disease. Too much to cover here, but a worthy study for the curious.
Pasteur’s ideas caught on because they were profitable and because he had a gift for self-promotion. Bechamp was humble and his ideas were suppressed until forgotten. It’s important, in all things “science,” to realize that we are not presently at some great pinnacle of human understanding and truth. We never really have been, and we have always believed ourselves to be, at least since the beginning of the modernist era. Profits and patents are the most powerful forces, not pure inquiry, unfortunately, and we do not really know even what we think we know.
Thanks, Dino. I knew it had been discussed elsewhere but had neither the time nor presence of mind to attempt to articulate it when I made my comment.
(It also occurs to me that if death didn’t even exist before Adam’s fall, God’s warning about the tree of knowledge of good and evil would not have made any sense, nor Satan’s need to deny that death would be the result…)
Nicole: I was raised as an evangelical. One of the things that drew me to Orthodoxy was the existence of this unbroken tradition that can be traced back to the teachings of the Apostles, something that we can rely on instead of trying to puzzle things out from an out-of-context book, shoulders of giants to climb onto instead of guessing what might be over that hill. The current, “orthodox” science is also that sort of unbroken tradition, but with (and only with) respect to secular, rational, empirical investigation of the natural/created world.
It’s a bit early and tangential and microbiology isn’t my field so I can’t make a full rebuttal, but when I read about Bechamp I get this same vibe as when reading about, say, Pelagius – heart’s in the right place but unorthodox for a good reason. The frequent associations with vitalism and vaccine denialism aren’t exactly helping.
That said, there’s something to be said about the “loose parts falling off” image – modern microbiology is blurring (or at least thinning) the line between “us” and “the microbes living in us” as things are shown to be increasingly more likely to be an important symbiote than an invasive parasite, and many infections are the result of the wrong numbers of microbes being in the wrong places at the wrong time (good things that are twisted towards evil, if you will). Our grandchildren will definitely be paying for the omnicidal extremism of Pasteur’s legacy, though I don’t think a swing in the opposite direction is the answer when the best of each school of thought can be synthesized.
Yes, modern microbiology is veering into Bechampian territory. Because, IMO, he’s been right all along. But the truth is not, cannot be, profitable. Vaccine denialism is an unfortunate, and loaded term. Vaccines are one of the sad ways that people have been abused for centuries by the Pasteurian model, for profit. I have multiple family members and close friends who are vaccine-damaged. It’s not a trivial problem. If you look at the state of medicine and health in the US, where we use the most vaccines and the most prescriptions in the developed world, and also have the worst health stats in the developed world (life expectancy, infant mortality, chronic illness, maternal mortality, etc), you’ve got to wonder if it’s not mere coincidence. Handing your body over to the medical institutions in the event you are ill is a very dangerous way to handle it. My experiences and empirical research are broad and deep in this area, in spite the fact that I have no letters after my name to “qualify” me. Can’t really discuss any more than that in this forum, but suffice it to say I have excellent reasons for my assertions. Had I trusted in modern medicine in the midst of my horrific illness four years ago, I’d be long dead.
Matt,
You seem to have a deep antagonism toward science. Maturity requires that we not allow personal experience to cause us to slide into a theological ditch on either side of the road. God bless you!
I hope you will investigate the origins of science among Abraham’s Nilo-Saharan ancestors who sought to understand God by deep study of the order of creation (Rom. 1:20).
Dear to Christ Alice: I think your comment to Matt must have been meant for Nicole, but I could be wrong. I don’t think Matt is hostile to science at all; nor does Nicole seem to be. Her concern seems to be the distortions that can come about by the commercialization of certain discoveries (and the possible commercial suppression of other remedies and modes of treatment that might be available “free of charge” or by more “natural” unpatentable means. In the example given, she even suggested that Bechamp was more scientifically qualified than Pasteur. I haven’t the expertise to say–never even heard of Bechamp before now–but I don’t think the cocnern is over science but over Mammon and the potential abuse of science by our disorderded passions.
Be that at it may, I’d like to thank Matt, Dino and Nicole for their recent comments. They provide much food for thought and–to me at least–Dino’s comments to Matt were very articulate and helpful.
Thanks agian, Father, for hosting and maintaining this blog. May it be blessed.
Christ is in our midst.
rlb
I would ask that the discussion not continue in the area of biology, etc. I’m not competent to moderate it.
Thanks, Robert. I did intend my comment to be a reply to Nicole. I was thinking about something Matt had written at that moment. I apologize for the confusion.
Nicole, I hear you. And, Alice, I believe you may be misreading Nicole a little here. I believe the issue is the abuse (motivated by greed), of scientific investigation especially in modern medicine, not the validity of science per se as a human endeavor. Nicole can correct me if I’m mistaken here.
Nicole wrote, “evolutionary teaching is predicated upon atheism and exists mainly as a defense of a Godless world. Trying to find compatibility between this worldview and Orthodox teaching is a dangerous quest as it is an attempt to unite truth and at least some degree of falsehood. The example of so-called junk DNA is a great example of the propaganda-motive of the popular conceptions of evolution. How can we have an honest dialogue when dealing with such a dishonest debate partner?”
I would like her think about this. What is meant by “evolutionary teaching”? This should be unpacked. As I have said before, evolution has four main ideas: mutation, adaptation, common ancestry of apes and humans, and natural selection. The first two are facts, the second are hypotheses for which the physical evidence is not there. I am speaking as an anthropologist. The unity of organic life is explained in Scripture and Scripture is our authority here. All things were created through and by HIM and in HIM we life and breathe and have our being. Christ is the basis for organic unity. He is also the basis for distinctions such as male/female and ape/human.
Alice and Nicole,
have you read Dr Wolfgang Smith – a Catholic, philosopher and scientist?…here’s an example:
Thanks, Alice. Perhaps Nicole is aware of some of the information presented in this book, I am just myself beginning to read:
http://www.amazon.com/Icons-Evolution-Science-Teach-About/dp/08952620027
Apparently, some of the “evidence” for full-blown Darwinian Evolution has been misrepresented/fabricated, and this has been left uncorrected in our public school textbooks, for instance. Wells is a biologist (Ph.D.) with Discovery Institute who advocates ID.
The link I provided for Alice doesn’t work. Please try this one instead:
http://www.amazon.com/Icons-Evolution-Science-Teach-About/dp/0895262002
Dino, thank you for finding an estemed scholar who lays out the identical argument I have been making since these threads started. An argument that any one with basic training in history understands right away and even a few lawyers.
The pitfalls illucidated by Dr. Smith concerning the response of “science” are plainly seen in the arguments our brother Greg attempts to mount in defense of his “irrefutable” facts.
Shoot, even Grissom on CSI constantly preached “context gives meaning to facts”
[…] an attempt to continue a wonderful discussion started on Fr. Stephen Freeman’s popular blog, Glory to God for All Things. We were trying to tease apart the various issues involved with the study of the cosmos, biology, […]
This is an attempt to continue this wonderful discussion while Fr. Stephen’s request that we drop the biology tangent. We were trying to tease apart the various issues involved with the study of the cosmos, biology, and science in general, while remaining faithful to the Creed, Scripture, and Holy Fathers. I’m hoping everyone who is over here, and many more, will join us over there for more thoughtful discussion. Thanks!
visibleandinvisibledotorg.wordpress.com
Whoops. Bad link. Trying again. http://visibleandinvisible.org/
I don’t know how they train lawyers in the States, but it’s impossible to work in a general practice here and not frequently see the tension between, say, how a businessman, an engineer, a cop, a lawyer, a government bureaucrat, a banker, a single mother, a social scientist, a “real” scientist, a doctor, a nurse, a young lawyer, an old lawyer, a legal assistant, a trial judge, an appellate judge and a disgruntled ex-husband might respectively work out whether or not they ought to believe something is true.
Most scientists I know aren’t arrogant by any means, though I wouldn’t be surprised some of them have no philosophical background or interest outside of empirical science, but the way the media portrays them both pretends they have these godlike powers to dictate what’s real and blames them for making such implications – which was actually inflicted by the media – whenever some received scientific wisdom (and sometimes even just a media distortion thereof) is shown to be flawed, like the epistemological version of a lustful man painting an erotic picture of a woman and projecting his own desires/shame on her by titling it “Vanity”.
Even as an atheist I always winced whenever there’s some nonsense about God particles or whatever in the news.
Karen: The Discovery Institute association already taints that book in the eyes of many involved in evolutionary science and/or this debate, myself included. The derogatory comparison to icons should also be a red flag that whatever Christian or Scriptural interpretation the writer is assuming should be taken with some salt.
One of the reviews seems to encapsulate the spirit of the book in a nutshell:
In short, it feels as damning as OJ Simpson’s acquittal felt exonerating: even if someone fudged something along the line, on the whole of the evidence it looks like he did it (and has been proven on a balance of probabilities if not beyond a reasonable doubt).
I stand by my first comment in this thread that I see no reason why one needs to deny any Christian doctrine to believe that all life arose from a common ancestor that spawned various lineages (that themselves each spawned various lineages, etc.) over the ages, and add that I see no need to believe that “according to its kind” can only be read such that any given “kind” that is apparent to our subjective senses (little flying nectar-drinkers, moving things in the sea whether or not they have fins or scales, legless scaled creeping things on the ground, animals without backbones) is each not only an inviolate reality but a wholly immutable, closed-class, completely isolated category that overlaps with nothing else. (Adam himself only named the animals after they were created, and had total freedom to be completely arbitrary about it – “whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name”.)
Matt,
I would agree with your assertion viz. Christian doctrine. I think there is something inherently wrong in doing theology in a manner that says “that can’t be true” – there have been many times in my life that such a temptation came along. Instead, I’ve been blessed to maintain enough wonder to occasionally learn something I didn’t already know. I believe the Orthodox faith – but that is not the same thing as saying that I fully know it or understand it. The teaching of the Church is like the world itself to me – very like the world itself. It is what I am presented with – sometimes I am just plain “gobsmacked” as the Brits say. Other times the beauty of it all simply overwhelms me.
There are certainly things out there that I know are wrong and not true – things that contradict the faith in a way that tells me they cannot be true. There’s a lot of nonsense in the modern world. But it’s usually pretty obvious if you keep your head down and pray a good bit.
I am doubtful of conspiracies – other than the “conspiracy of dunces,” the various guises of the Zeitgeist and his spawn. As such, it’s useful to know what time you live in.
That said, there’s this other thing.
The world (to a modern person) often appears just as a non-believing scientist of Mr. Newton or Mr. Darwin might have thought (or substitute your own characters). But that is only because he does not see the whole of it. The world as we see it, I think, is more like an icon. If read rightly, it reveals more than we know at first.
The trouble with many is they insist that the world is not iconic, but rather literal, and then they argue and try to force the literal one way or another. This is the false notion of literal – and is a product of modernity itself.
But it is late at night and I’m off to sleep. I tried to write a bit yesterday and today, but I think I’m too exhausted from the week – a good beginning to Lent. As God wills I’ll post again soon.
But I do see a contradiction and a great deal of deception. It’s not one or two examples of fudging; it’s very nearly everything. It’s all “fudged” to support a basic assumption of evolutionary descent. And besides, the admission of even one or two fudges belies a great deal of missing evidence, and calls into question the integrity of the author/researcher/field.
1.There’s no such thing in actual, physical reality as a transitional fossil.
2. There’s no such thing, real or imagined, as a biologically beneficial mutation (and no other reasonable mechanism for change has been proposed to my knowledge).
3. There’s no feasible way you can go gradually from a 2-chambered to a 4-chambered heart (amphibian to reptile) and have the in-between hearts function at all.
4. There’s no way to solve this with “punctuated equilibrium” because if a lizard lays an egg and out comes a baby chicken, another lizard has to also lay a chicken egg and have a baby rooster in time for that first chicken to have a mate, or it’s all over (not to mention that they have to be geographically close enough to actually meet each other, and they have to have instincts which cause them to know how to act like chickens, and recognize another chicken when they see it, and know they are not lizards. Right. (And I do realize that lizard to chicken is a greater developmental gap than even P.E. proponents would try to claim, but that’s not material to my argument.)
To me, the claims I just denied are all preposterous, and they would be so even if I was an atheist. I just can’t see a pattern of anything like the integrity, empiricism, and logical rigor needed to support such a hypothesis. And yet we as a culture act as though evolution is our true god and monkeys are our grandparents. It’s intellectually dishonest, and that’s the problem I have with it, much more than anyone’s attempts to discredit our Creator, since using our God-given intelligence irresponsibly is something that cuts at the very soul of truth, whether in science, relationships, or anything else.
If Adam named the animals, but there was no Adam, how can you believe Adam named the animals?
Kinds: Microevolution (which is not “evolution” in any sense that any theist would object to, and is, as such, a misnomer), is observable in just a few generations of many animals. Seagulls on the Atlantic coast of the North American continent have specialized and will not re-mix with previous groups under normal circumstances, although it is likely that they are completely capable of doing so. Are they new species? Maybe, but first you have to define “species”. Is this proof of Darwinian evolution? No, because no new information was added. They just changed what part of their existing genome they expressed. This is what they were DESIGNED to do. It’s what adaptation IS. Adaptation is not growing new features, limbs, and abilities; it’s becoming more able to handle a particular diet or climate or habitat or predator. But the information making this possible, the innate ability, was already there. No mutations needed, just genetic expression, already provided by the diversity in the genome. Galapagos finches are just another example of the same thing.
This observable, real-time, microevolutionary reality cannot be honestly extrapolated to prove a Darwinian version of the actual origins of species. The evidence points to the special creation of all life.
Your angle is interesting, but I am confused. Can you please distinguish your statement that the world “is not literal” from a neo-platonist view of reality? I don’t think it’s very fair to say we can admit macroevolution as a part of the method of creation on the basis that we can’t see everything that is. If that were a sound way of making epistemological decisions, anything would be admissible because we have limited information and anything could be true. With that as a baseline, knowledge becomes impossible.
Nicole: Absent a discussion about the biological merits I will respond to your most recent points here only to point this out: evolutionary theory has helped predict not what events will happen in the future, but what kind of organisms both living and dead would likely be found where and when, in the same manner that astronomers find, identify and classify stars and planets and nebulae despite never being able to experiment on a star or observe one throughout its lifetime.
Father:
You give yourself too little credit. The world as icon was precisely the reassurance I needed to get through tonight not entirely unhinged.
Great are the Lord’s works!
I do respect Jonathan Wells deeply, Nicole…
Nicole,
I am not a biologist and not able to judge the merits of your arguments. If the alternative to some sort of developmental theory of creation is a direct, special creation, of some short time ago, I disagree that this is what the evidence points to.
More than that, I think that this contradicts Scripture. “Let there be light,” is an interesting phrase. It is not “God made light.” Obviously God created all things, but the creation is expressed rather interestingly. “Let the earth bring forth” is very different than “God made frogs, etc.” It clearly implies process.
Man comes into special consideration. But everything about that story, which I think is a very “poetic” account, is geared not towards describing process but relationship and image.
The special creation, that is almost magical in its imagery, points away from the “process” that characterizes all life. We are not just things, but living systems and those systems are among the most wondrous things that exist. If God used “biology” to bring forth the manifold creation, it would seem far more consistent. Kalomiros’ article on the Six Days treats this very well.
As to “literal” I would mean “what you see is what you get.” Or that “what you see is all there is.” Things are what they are – but not always what they seem. The rocks sing, the trees clap their hands – and I take these phrases as something more than metaphors. The “noetic” realm permeates everything. Everything has a “logos” that could never be located by science – at least not by merely rational science.
It is this relationship between what we see and what we do not see that makes the world more than literal. When I say it is not “literal” you were hearing me say “less than literal.” I am saying “more than literal.”
Hope that helps.
BTW, many of the fathers were steeped in Neo-Platonic thought. They were not Neo-Platonists, but they certainly used that idiom of speech and thought. Genuine familiarity with it is quite helpful in understanding them.
Biology texts used in public schools do not reflect the latest discoveries which indicate that archaic humans (2 million years+) controlled fire, hunted, had ritual burials, and that within a single family unit there were considerable anatomical differences, just as there might be today.
God is light. He is uncreated, by definition, and we do not understand the relationship between the uncreated light and regular light, but it is something we have opportunity to observe every year on Holy Saturday at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. We will never understand it. So, when God says, “Let there be light”, is he giving permission to something that, of its own accord, by its own power, wants to exist somehow? Perhaps, but we DO distinguish the uncreated light from all the rest, which would mean the rest is created, right? Is there some third possiblity?
“Let the earth bring forth” is even more commonplace, less strange, because it’s still happening all around us and in us. Without soil and the life contained in the soil, we die. Vegetation is completely dependent on the earth (the soil), and the light, and all you have to do is work up the food chain. None of this has anything to do with whether monkeys became man or dinosaurs became birds. Genesis does not say, “Let the water bring forth a living cell and let the living cell get so complex that it becomes a multi-celled creature and eventually walks out of the water and breathes air and…” you get the idea. Completely different, and contradicts the other part of the same verses you quote: “according to it’s kind.” “Let the earth bring forth” just sounds like a less detailed way of explaining that God made everything out of the dirt, just as he did Adam. And then, to distinguish Adam, he adds divine life to him.
Special Creation is what Genesis describes. No, they don’t match what scientists posit as an explanation for origins or as a process for development, but they do match what we still observe. The gospels are not naturalistic, either, and we accept them as actually true. If the truth is only what we can test and prove, we’ve got a problem much bigger than anything we’re discussing here. In that case, we’ve become logical positivists, and should just quit discussing theology altogether.
Yes, God “used” biology, but it is the same biology we can observe in action now, as he both created it and used it at the same time. Not a long-gone, non-repeatable, strange and random descent of things into other things. And yes, everything has a logos, (and a telos) and the trees do clap! Now there’s something we agree upon. And to me, it is just more evidence that random forces and accidents did not make them. God did.
The world as an icon of love, of nourishment, of providence, of purpose, of stewardship and care, and as a training field for the soul… yes that is all part of what I see. But when you take the design out of God’s hands and make it a process of creativity by destructive force, all that is made into nonsense, just by the lens it puts on it.
Now I see you were not putting forth a neo-platonic argument (nor did the fathers), but I think what you are actually saying is so much better supported by the angle of a direct creation than by the necessarily theistically divorced evolutionary model.
Matt, when I manage to pick all the pieces of my exploded head up and put them back together, I may try once again to explain the manner in which you refuse to except anything as true outside of your established paradigm
Nicole,
The “direct” model you suggest would posit that everything (species, etc.) that exists today has always existed. And yet there seems irrefutable evidence that there have been distinct periods of different flora and fauna on our planet. Something has happened. I do not find the theological assumptions that you’re suggesting to be at all persuasive. I haven’t said anything about “random forces” or accidents.
The miracle in Jerusalem is not an example of the Uncreated Light. Whatever the nature of the light that happens in the tomb, it is a created nature. It is not God Himself – which uncreated Light is. It’s a miraculous light but not an Uncreated Light. Uncreated Light is God Himself.
Some scientists would speak about randomness or accidents – though your description of those things lacks understanding of the nature of randomness. The design is obviously in God’s hands – but the mystery of that process – as I describe in the article itself (does anybody read the article anymore when the discussion does on like this?) – the mystery is that what might appear as random might be quite otherwise but indeed maintains the appearance of randomness – this is precisely the characteristic of “causelessly causing” as I have described it.
Frankly, most creation arguments from most Christians are crude and lack wonder and imagination. They are reductionistic. I utterly believe in a created universe – absolutely. But this is spiritually discerned. The rational accounts of creation, particularly the forms introduced into arguments with science – do not do justice to a proper account of creation.
Christians, Orthodox Christians, need a healthy dose of apophatic wonder and less influence from Protestant fundamentalism. Forgive me.
Michael:
I’ve been reading both this thread and the other one (with the 300+ comments) and I still don’t know what your thoughts are on this beyond “that which I understand to be referred to by the word ‘evolution’ is unmitigatedly horrible horrible horrible horrible”, with “that which…” including a presupposed atheism that seems to beg the very question being discussed. I’m going to need a lot more than someone’s instinctive horror of something to want to shun it myself, especially when the vast majority of arguments against that I’ve heard seem to understand the concept as meaning a large variety of things that I do not mean by that concept (and do not believe people to mean by that concept who actually use it in their day jobs).
The potential theological problems I see are thus, and 2 of the 3 seem to be manufactured by people who actively want to drive a wedge:
“Ham’s Problem”: Evolutionary account contradicts Bible.
Key trigger words and phrases: Scripture, God’s Word
Status: Thoroughly discussed. Was one of the main points of both of Fr. Stephen’s recent posts as well as the older one.
“Dawkins’ Problem”: Belief in evolution leads to mechanistic approach to all nature, thus ultimately necessitating atheism.
Key trigger words and phrases: random, all life
Status: Discussed, but one side is not seeing the other’s. Personally, I would think if evolution leads to atheism because of its mechanistic approach to creation, then so does astronomy. Once all the high-profile anti-Christian astronomers (Galileo) are dead and gone and the controversy’s forgotten as a current hot-button issue, it’s not a problem anymore, and I think the same would apply to evolution a few hundred years after Dawkins is gone too.
“Chesterton’s Problem”: To quote from the man himself:
Key trigger words and phrases: kinds, neo-Platonism (correct me if I am wrong), species, define, micro/macro-evolution
Status: Currently under discussion. The thinking behind my previous question to Fr. Stephen about nominalism/realism in the other post’s comments. (The answer and my subsequent readings actually changed my position on that – that someone might call a whale a fish (or a bat a “bird” of the air) doesn’t mean mammals don’t exist.) If this objection is unsurmountable, then I think we’ve got the fundamental impasse that will force everyone to take one side or the other, but so far I don’t think it is.
Forgive me, a sinner.
I’ve done my best to make clear that I see a unity between Genesis and what I observe. I’ve been unfairly written off. I’ve been told to stop arguing from science, and then accused of arguing against science. And I face straw man and ad hominem attacks, yet no one has even touched my numbered points above. No engagement with the substance, just attacks.
I can make a similar statement to the one with which you closed: “Christians, Orthodox Christians, need a healthy dose of intellectual honesty and less influence from scientific atheism.”
I enjoyed this conversation while it was still productive, but I no longer think it’s worth the bother. Blessed Lent to everybody.
This is a notable article by Dr Wolfgang Smith that seems to bring together many of the ideas discussed here:
http://brightmorningstar.blog.com/2008/01/10/wolfgang-smith-on-the-plague-of-scientistic-belief/
Nicole,
No one (me) engaged your points because, as I noted, I am not competent to argue biology. Strangely, though, your points seem to caricature evolutionary theory. I’m around a lot of scientists – I live in a “science city.” They don’t paint in such broad strokes. There are serious questions among them about how you get from point a to point b and it is a matter of ongoing, careful research. Only with the slow integration of genome research and microbiology could we begin to get answers about heart chambers and the like. If they don’t have them yet, it’s not for lack of asking. But neither do they simply throw up their hands and say, “Can’t happen!” because no one has the information to declare that at this point.
But I won’t argue the points. I agree with Matt that there is a lot of mischaracterization of science and scientists that does not match my experience with either one. I think there are genuine issues to be discussed. If you think that my own consideration of this will be easily changed by suggesting examples like those you’ve mentioned – then you would indeed be wasting your time.
There is a “scientism” (as Dino cites). And this represents not science, but the “politics” of science/religion/etc. The academies are rife with political non-sense and agendas that are not befitting their subjects. There are entire departments and fields of study in the modern Academy that are simply bogus and would not exist apart from political/religious agendas (here I would describe feminism as “religious” as well as “political”).
But these people do not represent science or reason – they simply represent their agenda. I am turning the comments off on this article. It has long since ceased to concern itself with the article or its ideas. A forum somewhere else would be a better place for the present.