Creation – Evolution Wars

 When they read the title “Creation-Evolution Wars” most readers will recognize at once just what I mean. At the same time, almost all Christians, creationist or not, accept that evolution on some level has occurred and is occurring. Even many young earth creationists think that the creatures on the ark rapidly diversified into a variety of forms after the flood. “Evolution” is not the opposite of Creationism. Naturalism, the idea that nature alone without any help from God can pull itself up by its own bootstraps, is the opposite of Creationism.

Naturalism is the belief or philosophy that nature is all that there is and all that there needs to be to explain what we see. Creationism is a subset of Theism as it applies to creation. It is the belief that the universe and everything in it is the product of a Creator who intervenes to work on His creation even after the initial creation event. Another position, Deism, is the belief God created the universe to wind up a certain way and did not intervene subsequent to the beginning.

I think naturalists have very cleverly shifted the argument from an indefensible position- the assertion that the natural universe is all that there is. The argument that the Cosmos and the richness of life on earth came to be without help from a creator is an extreme position that we almost certainly don’t have the means to really test, especially scientifically. To the extent we do I find it grossly implausible. But they have interposed “evolution” in front of their real position so thoroughly that most of us believe that the conflict is between creation and evolution. That’s mostly not true.

The conflict really ought to be called the “Creationism-Naturalism Wars” – ism vs. ism. One philosophy against another. Evolution is just the battleground in which much of the war is being fought. The Naturalists are adamantly insisting that natural forces alone can produce all the diversity of life we see and Creationists saying that Creation must have had help. It couldn’t do all this on its own. Naturalists cling to evolution not because it is the philosophical opposite of creationism, but because it’s the only answer they have to their actual opponent- Creationism.

As I will explain below, there is a great deal of overlap between creationism and some versions of evolution. Despite all the shouting, there are gray areas between creationism, “Intelligent Design” and Evolution. One could in fact be an “Evolutionary Creationist.” I don’t think that position matches the text of early Genesis well, but it is a philosophically possible position. Naturalists would oppose this position just as much as they oppose the idea that all species on earth were produced by God fashioning them out of clay. There are no gray areas between naturalism and creationism.

 In my book I make the case that Genesis chapter two is describing a very important smaller and more limited work of God within the much larger work of creation described in chapter one. That is, chapter two “zooms in” and describes in detail a special event which is necessarily only very briefly touched on in chapter one.

Chapter one is the story of the whole of creation from the beginning of time until the end of the age. Chapter two is telling the story of what happened in the Garden of Eden not too many thousands of years ago in a brief period. It is the story of a new work within creation which God intends to use to redeem and reconcile creation to Himself. Creation began as a place where the Word of God wasn’t. Therefore, it was originally subjected to futility. Creation was subjected to futility, but only in the hope that it could be raised out of futility through the illumination of God’s word which entered it and worked on it.

 That the account of Adam is a discrete event within the larger story of creation raises some interesting possibilities regarding the extent that what we might think of as “evolution” is responsible for life on earth. This is a very touchy subject for a lot of people on both sides of the issue, and I understand that what I have to say about the text in this chapter and those beyond it will probably make both sides unhappy at first. “Compromise” is seen as evil and anathema to both sides. I think compromise can be evil- when the truth is what is being compromised. I reject compromise at the expense of truth as much as anyone. But I also reject rigidity at the expense of truth. In this case, the truth is that the text of early Genesis takes a much more complicated and nuanced position than either of the extremes in this discussion advocate.

For example, the chapter two account is clearly describing a situation where both Adam and the animals of the garden are specially formed. This is very much like what we would consider the most direct form of “special creation”. But in the Christ-Centered model, this isn’t the whole creation. It’s a new work within a small portion of it. It is that mustard seed destined to grow and provide a home for many. It is a shadow of the remaking of the world which comes after some of us are born again through the sacrifice of Christ.

The text gives us much less detail as to how the original creation was fashioned. And what little information it does give could best be described as a synthesis of creation and evolution, as well as a spectrum of Divine intervention. This spectrum runs from a situation which sounds almost like deistic evolution for plants, to a middle ground in which the land and the waters obey God’s command to bring forth living creatures but only with God’s help, and from there all the way to humanity in which God may have used earth, but He did the work Himself.  

Earlier I talked about gray areas between evolution, creationism, and intelligent design. “Descent with modification” is a standard accepted definition of evolution. But it could also be a form of creationism or at least intelligent design, depending on how the "modifications" occur. For example, farmers breed animals for certain traits and get them through descent with modification. They select far more powerfully for desired traits than nature does. So that fits this definition of evolution, but surely it is intelligent design as well.

Let’s have a thought experiment: Suppose instead of farmers who went around selecting for traits, God Himself did so. If a certain group got a rare mutation that would produce a benefit if paired with another rare mutation which existed only in a second isolated group, then He would know it and be able to put those two populations together so that they would have the suite of mutations that, when combined with yet another rare mutation four generations from then, would result in a new function.

In this scenario the Intelligent Designer is using Divine knowledge to leverage natural processes to produce something new. I would say that is evolution (descent through modification), intelligent design (intent drives the changes not natural selection) and “soft-touch” creationism (He intervened in the natural world to produce outcomes even if He never touched the genomes directly, He merely guided natural events in a way that nature herself would not at anything like the same rate).

Now suppose that instead of taking the role of a selective breeder (with perfect knowledge) only, He also assumed the role of Genetic Engineer. That is, instead of strictly waiting for Nature to come up with mutations which could be combined to create new function, He did just what our genetic engineers do. He made cuts and inserts in genetic code. Maybe nature alone would never get a particular protein to fold just right by waiting for chance to make the proper mutation. Maybe the species would die out before the right changes happened along to allow them to become something else. So God inserted a gene which would, just as our scientists do now. When our scientists make mice which glow because jellyfish genes have been inserted in them, and this population breeds, is this “descent with modification”? It is, and thus meets a generally accepted definition of “evolution”, but the modification did not come wholly by "natural" descent. It is doubtless intelligent design and special creation, and by this definition “evolution” as well.

That said, such a situation could still involve natural descent, but that would not be where the key modification would come from. Take the gap between a fish and an amphibian. What if over the course of thirty or forty generations God acted to put just enough changes in each generation so that they would still be able to be birthed and bred by natural means, but each generation would also be further toward the amphibian end of things? This so that even though no amphibian was created out of thin air, or clay, one still had a very different creature though only forty generations removed from the fish. That result would be due to “genetic engineering” moving things a bit further along each generation. That is “descent with modification” but the modification that matters was via genetic engineering. Is that evolution, special creation and intelligent design all rolled up into one? So long as you are not a naturalist, it is all three rolled up into one. Naturalism can’t accept the idea that the changes came from anything but chance acting on the environment.

Now I have used the analogy of God acting as a “Genetic Engineer” but it is not necessary to assume that He required any lab coats or test tubes to pull this off. He can turn stones into children of Abraham (Luke 3:8)! Ultimately, we know that at the quantum level the universe does not behave mechanistically. Information coming from the realm beyond need not be blaring on AM radio waves. If one has sufficient knowledge and ability, they could send information into this world which would seem to us to be a “lucky break”. A molecule could bend this way instead of that, resulting in an improbably change which would otherwise take ages. Information could in principle seep into our world at a quantum level and we could not distinguish it from chance. At least not with our current state of technology.

There is biblical precedent for this line of thought in the 19^th chapter of 1^st Kings.
11Then the LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD. Behold, the LORD is about to pass by.” And a great and mighty wind tore into the mountains and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12After the earthquake there was a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a still, small voice. 13

And of course there is Proverbs 16:33 "The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD." Even outcomes which seem like chance are really determined by Divine Action.

Science might be able to come along later and detect the past presence of the wind which shattered the rocks, the earthquake which shook the earth, and the fire which burned it, but science would have no way of gleaning the the information from the “still, small voice” by which God spoke. Science can only say it was an unlikely coincidence that high winds, an earthquake, and a fire struck the same locality contiguously, but there was doubtless a natural cause for all three.

 Is there really any scientific evidence that known evolutionary processes can operate at the rate and scale necessary to explain all of the "modification" of life on earth through its history? Another way to ask it would be like this, suppose there were a billion earth-like planets and a single celled organism was placed on each. How many of them, using only known biological processes without any intelligent intervention, would have a biotic phase which looks anything like the history of life on earth?  I think the number would be "zero". Someone else might think the answer would be in the thousands or even millions, but none of us have done the experiment or anything like it to say for sure. Therefore, neither side has a scientific basis for saying either way, though one might have naturalistic assumptions on the question. It is a pity that few people can even recognize there is a difference between the philosophy of naturalism and the process of evolution.

I don’t think “natural selection” or any of the natural means we have discovered thus far could have, on its own, produced the vast diversity we see today or in the fossil record. I think nature had help. And I think some of this arguing we are doing over it is because we are talking past one another on terms.

If we get better at figuring out how fast these processes can really work to produce great change and what if any limits there might be, I can see a situation in biology arising which is very similar to that which as already occurred in the realm of Astrophysics. Many years ago, scientists thought that the universe was eternal. Then they discovered that it is likely that it started with a “big bang” (it had a beginning). Then it was determined that the fundamental forces which determine the structure of this universe had to fall within very, very, very, very narrow parameters for the universe to be able to support life as we know it and perhaps even life as we can conceive it. If any of those parameters varied for a whole host of fundamental measures, then life could not exist. It was like the universe was designed to be able to host life. 

This was called the “Anthropic Principle” and it drove “naturalists” to distraction. How could they avoid the conclusion that the universe had a Designer when its fundamental forces had to be so precisely balanced for us to be here? It was like we were meant to be here. Chance failed as an explanation because we aren’t that lucky. It would be like winning a billion lotteries and for the last thousand of them you didn’t even buy a ticket! Ironically, some Christians are still opposed to the idea of a “big bang” because they don’t see how it is really an overwhelming problem for the naturalist viewpoint. The universe had a beginning, just like it says in the very first verse of The Book. 

The escape hatch for the naturalists has been the “multiverse” theory. This idea says that this universe is only one of an infinite or near-infinite number of universes which have all come about by chance. We were not lucky, rather if there is a vast number of universes then by chance one of them could turn out to be able to support life, and eventually, again by chance, evolve beings able to ask questions about where we come from. Does this sound scientific to you? It isn’t in the least. It shouldn’t even be called a “theory” because a theory is something which has been confirmed in some way by scientific experiment or observation. It really isn’t even a decent hypothesis, since a hypothesis is supposed to be able to be tested scientifically in some way and we can’t test for the existence of other universes. 

I call it what it is, a desperate escape hatch for those who want to deny the existence of a Creator. It’s an act of rebellious faith that there is no one to whom they are accountable. Assuming we have an infinite number of universes when our known set is “one” is surely a gross abuse of probability theory. Even if there are vast numbers of universes, it still is not proof that there is no God since He could have created them all and maybe all of them support intelligent life within them. 

Even so, I have seen atheists very aggressively and brazenly insist that theists are the ones “without evidence” for their position. I have seen them, in a powerful example of psychological projection, accuse theists of ignorance while they pose as the ones with “knowledge”. But I ask you, who in this case has the worst kind of ignorance in the cosmos- willful ignorance? It is the worst kind because the intelligence and reason of the offender is focused on maintaining ignorance rather than knowing truth. It is the worst kind because it can’t be cured with an application of knowledge. That’s because its not a knowledge problem, it’s a heart problem. Repentance, not more information, is the only cure for such belligerent willful ignorance. 

I mention all that about astrophysics because it is possible we are in a similar position with “evolutionary science” that we were with astrophysics some decades ago. With a small amount of knowledge it looks like chance could explain all of the changes we see, but as we learn more we may discover that like the cosmos itself, earth’s biota will appear to have gotten very, very, very, very “lucky” to ever wind up with creatures like us or many other of the living things in the vast array of life on this planet. We may find that the earth and chance can produce some variation in living things, but not anywhere near the scale and scope necessary to account for the richness of life on this planet. As with the universe, none of that will “prove” that God guided nature but I predict that if we ever get that far naturalists will have to resort to the types of evasions we see with astrophysics in order to deny the implications that nature would be screaming at us- without Him nothing that is would be.

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PS- I also have a book. It is more theology than science and it's work to get through but if you want to do the work, the glorious truth about Early Genesis is there for the having...

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Why I Just Bought "Darwin Devolves"

I remember the beginnings of my online debates with Philosophical Naturalists (atheists) over evolution. This was perhaps fifteen years ago or more. They were adamant, with unshakably certainty, and heaps of scorn for those with any doubt, that evolution was entirely responsible for the full diversity of life on earth. There was no need for, and certainly, positively, absolutely without any doubt no evidence for, any input from a so-called "Creator".

Back in those days I would point out a particular amazing transformation which "evolution" was supposed to have done in an unguided manner. Then I would express doubt that "chance" could accomplish such an amazing feat. The result was invariably  derision and mockery and insistent assurances that not only was I daft, but I "don't understand how science works". At the time I was either at the end of my twelve-year stint as a public school science teacher or this was just after it concluded.

The basis for the fusillade of such accusations was that "it's not chance you nitwit, it's natural selection acting through chance." So then "chance" was not said to be powerful enough to produce these changes, but I was assured through many insulting remarks that natural selection was powerful enough. These pronouncements were always made with an air of absolute and unshakable confidence. Any hint of doubt as to whether natural selection could really achieve such feats was dismissed with instant and palatable contempt- followed by opinions that there must be something wrong with me personally in order to even make such a suggestion.

I didn't stop there though because I didn't see how natural selection, once one looked at the details of how it worked, was powerful enough either. This only provoked new rounds of laughter, derision, and an implacable opposition to even consideration of the idea that I might have a point, on anything whatsoever. This was all well-established science and my crack-pot ideas about letting a supernatural foot in the door were deserving of all the scorn which they could muster.

Fast forward to today. Michael Behe has come out with another book, "Darwin Devolves". In it, he claims to show that Darwinsim has been falsified because changes through natural selection can't build new structures. just evolve by "devolving" or losing information/functionality. Basically you can't get from a bacteria to a man by losing information. And then of course he repeats the argument which he is known for, Irreducible Complexity. Certainly not everything claimed to be "irreducible complex" really is, but he doesn't have to be right every time to win. If he's right one time out of five, that's still too much for the naturalist side to bear.

Oddly, Behe isn't that far removed from the naturalist view. He still thinks that all living things evolved from a common ancestor. He just thinks that the first life forms were Designed by the Creator with the capacity to evolve into all the rest of the living things in earth's history without any more specific guidance from outside of nature. Even this tiny proposed exception to naturalism has produced an uproar, and this before the book actually came out.

One of the charges against him is that he has ignored instances where his claims have been falsified. Once I read it I will be in better position to say if he is really evading contrary evidence or if this is simply a reflection of what I have said before: He doesn't have to be right in every instance in order to win the argument on irreducible complexity. He only has to be right sometimes. Nor does showing he was incorrect in one instance necessarily say anything important about another instance. To any philosophical naturalists who think this standard of measure is "unfair" I must point out that you are the ones making sweeping and absolutist claims about the nature of reality. This goes to the extent of making claims about reality based on science concerning questions that science is probably not even able to answer! If you think the burden of your task unfair, consider adopting a more intellectually-defensible position. Or at least bring a modicum of humility and reflection to your current one.

The other charge against him I found more salient, and more interesting. It comes from eminently qualified evolutionary scientists who are on the cutting edge. That is that Behe is beating on a "strawman" because classical Darwinism, and even neo-Darwinism, is not where evolutionary science is right now. I think "strawman" or I have also heard "tilting at windmills" is an unfair way to put it because the ideas Behe is challenging were at least fairly recently the mainstream view of evolutionary science. They are the same ideas I was castigated for not believing in those online dialogues I spoke of earlier. A "strawman" was never a real man and a wind mill was never a dragon. But Behe is fighting ideas that reflected evolutionary thought in the fairly recent past that do not appear to be the current state of evolutionary science. So the cliche that may fit to describe what Behe is doing would be "fighting the last war."

So it appears that "Darwinism" has been "falsified" by evolutionary science and science has now moved on to an idea called "Constructive Neutral Evolution." The gist of the new thinking is that natural selection is not the big dog driving evolution. It's a role player for minor changes and may have little to do with the kind of big evolutionary change people have been arguing about. Chance is the big player according to the new evolutionary thinking. If so, all of Behe's carefully constructed case that natural selection is too weak to be responsible is essentially too dated to be relevant to the present discussion on evolution. It is "the last war" not the current one.

The astute reader may notice that this revelation brings your humble writer full circle. When I began this journey, I was assured by the naturalists I was debating that I was a nit-wit and a gasbag who probably doesn't even know enough to participate in their lofty discussions, my voice disturbing the harmony of their echo-chambers. The reason for this is that I was so so wrong about chance being the major driver of evolution. It was natural selection which was so powerful that even unguided it could make the earth fruitful with every form of life. That I didn't accept that conclusion at once merely amplified how bigoted, childish. and narrow was my thinking.

Now it seems their whole case was built on a house of cards and I was exactly right about natural selection not being powerful enough to produce these changes and further that the power of chance is ultimately what their case rests on. Nevertheless, I am presently assured that chance can, after all, do what they were saying that natural selection was responsible for fifteen years ago. And the amazing thing is there was absolutely no change in tone or any hint of doubt whatsoever at any stage of the transition from one idea to the other. They displayed an attitude of meta-physical certainty that their views, even when conflicting the views held previously by their school of thought, were 100.0000000% correct with zero chance of their being anything but a zero chance that they were wrong at any point in time. And that from people who explicitly reject the concept of meta-physical certainty!

Look, despite their claims over the years that this is all about the evidence it has become crystal clear that it's not all about the evidence. It's not even about whether evolution is responsible for all life on this earth. This is about men and women who very very strongly do not want there to be a god who intervenes in His creation. It's about sin in the human heart, not evidence in the laboratory.  It is about folks who want to hide behind "science" to say there is no evidence for God - when by definition science looks for natural causes only and couldn't see God if God were standing right in front of it. It's an evasion. An excuse to avoid an accountability to one's Maker that they had rather not face. Ironically, the world's most likely candidate for God allowed us to escape all accountability for our sins by placing the accountability on His own Son Jesus Christ instead.

Michael Behe may have some good arguments to make in Darwin Devolves or he may have some bad ones. If he has good ones, they are liable to be dated. But I still bought the book, because I have become convinced that the arguments are the excuse, not the reason. If the neutral theory of evolution is shown to be inadequate then I have little doubt that these same people will go right back to chirping about "natural selection" so quickly that you will not be able to detect the moment they switched stories. Excuses to avoid God are like fashions. There is nothing new, it all goes round in circles. If Behe has missed this round,  I'll just save it for the next one.

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PS- I also have a book. It is more theology than science and it's work to get through but if you want to do the work, the glorious truth about Early Genesis is there for the having...

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