Darwin’s God

DARWIN’S GOD
Evolution and the Problem of Evil
Cornelius G. Hunter

 
 
Evolution is predicated on the failure not of a scientific idea but on a religious idea.
(p. 10)
 
Darwin and his fellow naturalists tried to explain the origin of natural evil; evolution was Darwin’s solution. (p. 11)
 
The main purpose of Paradise Lost was to solve the problem of evil. (p. 12)
 
But both men were dealing with the problem of evil – Milton with moral evil and Darwin with natural evil – and both found solutions by distancing God from the evil. And most important, the two held similar conceptions of God. (p. 12)
 
Nature seemed to lack precision and economy in design and was often “inexplicable on the theory of creation.” (p. 13)
 
Evolutionists use negative theological arguments that give evolution its force. Creation doesn’t seem very divine, so evolution must be true. Evolution is a solution to the age-old problem of evil. (p. 14)
 
Darwin’s solution distanced God from creation to the point that God was unnecessary.
(p. 16)
 
The existence of evil seems to contradict God, but the existence of our deep moral sense seems to confirm God. (p. 18)
 
The term phylogeny refers to these hypothetical evolutionary relationship. Phylogeny is one of the many terms coined by nineteenth- century Darwin disciple Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919). A phylogenetic tree, popularly known as an evolutionary tree, illustrates the supposed branching relationships among species – the evolution of younger species from older species. (p. 20)
 
The National Academy of Sciences claims that the molecular clock “determines evolutionary relationships among organisms, and it indicates the time in the past when species started to diverge from one another. (p. 25)
 
The very use of the term vestigial begs the question, for vestigial structures serve as evidence for evolution only if they are indeed vestigial. But we cannot know they are vestigial without first presupposing evolution, because we cannot directly measure their contribution to the organism’s fitness. Therefore when evolutionists identify a structure as vestigial, it seems that it is the theory of evolution that is justifying the claim, rather than the claim justifying the theory of evolution. (p. 33)
 
The human embryo, on the other hand, obtains its oxygen (and nutrients) from its mother’s bloodstream. It has no need for its own gas exchange system, and it certainly never has gills. It does have folds in the skin that superficially resemble gills, but they serve no function akin to a fish’s gills. (p. 34)
 
But in the 1970s researchers began comparing the genetic material of prokaryotes and eukaryotes in detail. They made two interesting discoveries: first, there appeared to be a third category of cell type, and second, the three different types were sufficiently different that they could not have evolved from each other. The three categories were similar in many ways, but they also were sufficiently distinctive that no evolutionary relationships could exist between them. (p. 39)
 
Models are only models; they are only as good as the underlying assumptions. And if the number of assumptions (unknowns) is greater than the number of equations, a rigorous solution is but an illusion. (p. 43)
 
The problem is that this evidence relies on a particular religious notion. When evolutionists use evidence against fixity of species to lend credence to evolution, they incorporate a particular metaphysical notion into a scientific theory: Evolution is supported by the premise that God must make species absolutely fixed – beaks must not get longer and coloration must not change. And since beaks do get longer and coloration change, we know that God must not have created them. (p. 64)
 
As one recent paleontology text put it, “The observed fossil pattern is invariably not compatible with the gradualistic evolutionary process.” There is a problem either with the fossil record or with the idea that evolution is gradual. To make the data compatible with the theory, “undiscovered fossil forms can be proposed” or “unknown mechanisms of evolution can be proposed.” But neither of these ad hoc hypotheses is known to be true or untrue.
Such ad hoc hypotheses are often used by evolutionists to try to explain the “Cambrian Explosion,” that most spectacular of biology’s big bangs. Estimated to have taken place almost 600 million years ago over a period no greater than five million years, it initiated virtually all the major designs of multicellular life with barely a trace of evolutionary history. In a geological moment, the fossil species went from small wormlike creatures and the like to a tremendous diversity of complex life forms, including virtually all of today’s modern designs. (p. 69)
 
Evolutionists may forgo natural selection if a replacement mechanism provides a better explanation, but they will not allow for creation. (p. 84)
 
But this whole argument for evolution depends on one’s view of God and his creation. (p. 84)
 
Spontaneous generation was disproved by Louis Pasteur in the nineteenth century, and with its passing biology embraced the law of biogenesis, which stated that all life comes only from preexisting life: omne vivum ex vivo – all that is alive came from something living. (p. 97)
 
The problem lies in his premise that parasites must have evolved form free-living organisms because the parasitic mode of life could not have worked at first since there were no hosts. (p. 107)
 
More important for our story, the idea that God would use direct intervention or miracles was increasingly questioned in favor of the idea that God acts exclusively via natural laws. (p. 116)
 
Two recurring ideas have fueled the notion that God acts according to natural laws: divine sanction and intellectual necessity. In the former, God is seen as being all the greater for designing a world that works on its own rather than requiring his divine intervention. In the latter, the restricting of God to natural laws is urged because only this ensures that meaningful scientific inquiry is possible. If natural laws are liable to violation, then we cannot discern the law from the exception. (p. 116)
 
Many solutions, or theodicies, for the problem of evil hold that evil arose from the autonomy that God granted to his creation. God installed natural laws between himself and creation, and evil was somehow an unfortunate byproduct of the workings of those natural laws. God is distanced from creation and is therefore absolved of its evil. The problem of evil could be solved with careful explanations of how God relinquished control of creation. (p. 121)
 
It is not that God cannot control evil but that he places a high premium on the autonomy of the creature, so God allows for the existence of evil. (p. 121)
 
When God made matter it was perfect, and it became imperfect after God loosened his hold on it. Here Milton deviated from the Scriptures he knew so well. “I bring prosperity,” the LORD declared through the ancient prophet, “ and create disaster.” But for Milton, God should be distanced from the world’s evil ways. It was not that God is surprised by historical events, but he is, in a sense, disconnected from the. God knows the future before it happens, but this is because he is omniscient, not because he influences the future.  This pious view of God protects him from evil, but it also makes the world somewhat independent of the Creator. (p. 122)
 
Darwin was also concerned with the problem of natural evil as he developed  the theory of evolution. There is an obvious parallel between Hume and Darwin. Both overturned long-standing traditions (natural theology and divine creation, respectively) that explained the world as a result of God’s creative activities. And both Hume and Darwin based their arguments on the existence of natural evil. (p. 126)
 
Catastrophism would make such evolution less plausible, and, perhaps more important, it suggested that Go, rather than natural law, guided the creation process. (p. 135)
 
Auguste Comte, founder of positivism, developed sociology primarily as a tool for investigating the laws of social evolution. He found that civilization progressed according to his famous law of three successive stages: the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive. Humankind was now entering the final stage, where superstitions would be laid aside in favor of the truth of reality. (p. 135)
 
Although Kant had destroyed the theistic proofs of natural theology, he also concluded that the moral law within is both necessary and sufficient for the proof of God. (p. 137)
 
He (Darwin) presented what we might call the evolution theodicy, which distanced the Creator from natural evil just as Milton had distanced the Creator from moral evil. (p. 145)
 
It also affirmed view of God and humanity that throughout history have been popular with religious thinkers. God, on the one hand, is seen as all-good but not necessarily as all-powerful, or at least he does not exercise all his power. God is virtuous, not dictatorial. (p. 146)
 
Gould is not the only contemporary evolutionist with Gnostic sympathies. Niles Eldredge takes the position that “religion and science are two utterly different domains of human experience,” and Bruce Alberts, writing for the National Academy of Sciences, says, “Scientists, like many other, are touched with awe at the order and complexity of nature. Indeed, many scientists are deeply religious. But science and religion occupy tow separate realms of human experience. Demanding that they be combined detracts from the glory of each.  (p. 149)
 
Darwin correctly observed that creation and its supporting arguments hinge on one’s concept of God, but he conveniently forgot that arguments against creation equally hinge on one’s concept of God. (p. 151)
 
MATERIALISM  – Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins summarizes the view: “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but pointless indifference. (p. 153)
 
The answer is that evolutionists find their confidence not in positive arguments for evolution but in negative arguments against the modern idea of creation. (p. 158)
 
B.B. Warfield advocated a theistically directed evolutionary process that included the “constant oversight of God in the whole process, and his occasional supernatural interference for the production of new beginnings by an actual output of creative force, producing something new, i.e., something not included even in posse in preceding conditions.”
            ….His main point was that the evolutionary process could have been a sort of creation tool used by God, and in this sense it did not conflict with the Scriptures.
            (p. 166)
 
Another notable thinker who has maintained that evolution is the creative tool of God is Howard Van Till, professor emeritus of physics at Calvin College. (p. 169)
 
…biology professor Kenneth Miller. ….Miller envisions an “at risk” deity. …The evolutionary history of life is full of undirected events, but God can still use it. Miller believes that the evolutionary process eventually gave “the Creator exactly what He was looking for.” God may not know where the world is headed, but he can watch and wait for the right events to come along. (p. 170-171)
 
The National Academy of Sciences’ document Science and Creationism states that only science should be taught in science classes:
            No body of beliefs that has its origin in doctrinal material rather than scientific observation, interpretation, and experimentation should be admissible as science in any science course. Incorporating the teaching of such doctrines into a science curriculum compromises the objectives of public education.  (p. 174)