Is Evolution a Random Process?

A question that comes up quite frequently in discussions of evolution and Christian faith deals with the apparently purposeless randomness of the evolutionary process. One of the most famous images is the tape of time given by Stephen Jay Gould. Run the tape over and something entirely different will emerge. From his 1994 article in Scientific American (v. 271, pp. 84-91) The Evolution of Life:

History includes too much chaos, or extremely sensitive dependence on minute and unmeasurable differences in initial conditions, leading to massively divergent outcomes based on tiny and unknowable disparities in starting points. And history includes too much contingency, or shaping of present results by long chains of unpredictable antecedent states, rather than immediate determination by timeless laws of nature.

Homo sapiens did not appear on the earth, just a geologic second ago, because evolutionary theory predicts such an outcome based on themes of progress and increasing neural complexity. Humans arose, rather, as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently and sent history on an alternative pathway that would not have led to consciousness.

The idea that we are products of random chance and historic contingency seems at odds with any reasonable Christian theology.

But is this right – does evolutionary biology lead inevitably to the conclusion that we are the products of nothing but random chance and historic contingency?

No Interpretation Needed!?

On Sunday Scot put up a short post highlighting a shift at Bryan College tightening the “acceptable” ranges of interpretation of the Genesis account. While most of the commenters on the post mourned the change that sentiment is certainly not universal. As one of the commenters put it:

I am thankful that there are some Christians who believe the Word of God as it is written, without infusing men’s evolutionary ideas into the text. For thousands of years, Christians have understood what God meant by creating the world “in six days,” and I applaud Bryan for understanding how very important it is to look at the Biblical text itself, not men’s opinions. It is only when we start calling theories and suppositions “science” that the Christian community becomes confused. Some are even ashamed of the Genesis account.

The Lord God of the scriptures is a powerful Creator and does not need any defense from me; we must realize that His text is not up for our human interpretation. We will find out exactly how He created when we stand before Him one day, and until then– I believe exactly what He says in Genesis 1. I am thankful for Bryan standing on “the evening and the morning were the first day.”

His text is not up for our human interpretation? … Ah, well … but a text, any text, is nothing without interpretation. We interpret as we read the bible – constantly.

And this leads right into the second chapter of Ronald E. Osborn’s new book Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering entitled What is eating Biblical Literalists? Osborn comes from a background (Seventh Day Adventist) where young earth creationism is the dominant view. Flood geology began with the work of George McCready Price, a Seventh Day Adventist. According to the Wikipedia article on Price, his ideas were used heavily by Bryan in the Scopes trial. They also formed the groundwork for The Genesis Flood by Henry Morris and John Whitcomb. Because of this background Osborn takes a number of chapters to work through this issues of biblical literalism beginning with the issue of authority.

The Spirit of Life

The fifth chapter of The Spirit in Creation and New Creation: Science and Theology in Western and Orthodox Realms is by Jürgen Moltmann. I’ve heard a great deal about Moltmann over the last several years, but this is the first thing by Moltmann I’ve had reason and time to read. (Yes I could have “made” reason and time but it just never moved to the top of the heap.)

In his essay Moltmann points to a deeper understanding of creation, one that involves the ongoing creative power of the Holy Spirit.

According to Christian interpretation, the act of creation is a trinitarian act: God the Father creates through his eternal Word in the energies of his Spirit this non-divine reality, which though it is non-divine is nevertheless interpenetrated by God.

…

It is noteworthy that Basil ascribes the completion of creation to the Holy Spirit. I understand that to mean that all created beings are aligned towards their future consummation and are driven towards that through the energies of God’s Spirit. The creation open to the future has to be understood as creation fashioned by the Spirit. In this direction and movement it is not merely a material reality; it is a spiritual one too. (p. 66)

He also notes that the action of the Spirit is best described using biological metaphors rather than inanimate metaphors from the physical sciences. The Spirit gives birth, nurtures, and enlivens. Moltmann doesn’t bring it up, but I would expect that metaphors using a potter and clay are also better suited to the creative action of the Father rather than the Spirit. But all such metaphors are incomplete in isolation. Creation is an ongoing trinitarian activity.

Death Before the Fall

I recently received a copy of a new book Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering by Ronald Osborn courtesy of the publisher (IVP). This is not your typical coffee table book, although the imagery with which Osborn starts, Mana Pools in Zimbabwe, would fit right in … aside that is from the lions feasting on a fresh killed Cape buffalo.

Three young females had taken down a Cape buffalo, which they had not yet dragged into the cover of the bush. Its legs were splayed at odd angles and its side was opened, exposing an impressive rib cage in shades of white and crimson. The lions were feasting on the carcass in the middle of the road, panting heavily as they tore into its body, their chests and muzzles soaked in blood. … At last we continued on our way, dipping into the sandy shoulder of the track we navigated about this scene of beautiful carnage. The lions paid us little notice. (p. 12)

A picture of Mana Pools taken from the article in Wikipedia is below, no lions, but a couple of elephants are seen.

Ronald Osborn was raised to believe in a young earth, with creation in six 24 hour days. In the original creation there was no mortality and no predation. The attraction the lions have for a young Cape buffalo is a consequence of human rebellion in the sin of Adam and Eve. This sin produced not just death, but also a myriad of anatomical changes in the animals populating the garden and the world.

The idea that the lions in Eden were docile vegetarians with dagger-sharp claws originally designed by God for tearing the bark off trees appeared downright silly. Somehow those massive canine teeth and retractable claws for taking down living prey had got there. This seemingly left one possibility: God himself was responsible for the transformation of all nature in what amounted to a hostile second creation after Adam and Eve’s fall. All mortality and all predation in the animal kingdom were the result of a divine punishment or “curse.” (p. 16)

Osborn has a way with words, this book could be interesting. The topic certainly is. The earth isn’t young – ice cores, lake varves among other things demonstrate this whatever one might think of radiometric dating and evolutionary mechanisms for speciation. Nor were animals all originally docile cuddly kittens, lambs, and bunnies. Lions, hawks, scorpions, tyrannosaurus, and even parasitic wasps – or the like – were part of God’s good creation before humans were in the picture.

Start With Isaiah

Last Tuesday I put up a post addressing the supposed revelation that camels in Genesis prove scripture wrong (The Mighty Mysterious Camel). Headlines include such memorable tags as “the camel that broke the bible’s back.” Despite the claims made in many of the media reports the late date for domestication of camels and the challenge this poses for Genesis is nothing new. Many scholars, not just skeptical or liberal scholars, see the camel as anachronistic, an addition by a later redactor fleshing out the story. Pete Enns has a nice post on this as well (everybody…put the camel bones down and step away before someone gets hurt). Anachronisms are not unusual in stories that are told and retold. The picture above is a depiction of Rachel and Laban from Genesis 31 as painted in the 18th century. That the camel might be a later addition doesn’t really concern me as the camel is not in any way central to the story. Any other beast of burden would suffice.

The camel does raise some concerns however, and one of the commenters put a couple of them quite well.

Concerns/Questions: 1) the “world” obviously sees this as a blow to the faith (as the headlines indicate). We may see it as an incidental, but it does not. Do we need to, from now on, go into lengthy descriptions with those outside the faith (or struggling with the faith) on how Scripture came together? In a world short on attention, that may be challenging.

2) how do we define “incidentals”? A camel may be an “incidental” to you (and me) because you interpret the story in a certain way. What about the Exodus, King David, or even the physical Resurrection? M. Borg may see those as “incidentals”, since he wants to interpret the story in a different way.

These are great questions worth some serious discussion.

The Benefit of a Spirit-Breathed Perspective

In the third chapter of The Spirit in Creation and New Creation: Science and Theology in Western and Orthodox Realms Jeff Schloss, Professor of Biology at Westmont College in Santa Barbara CA, reflects on the role that Spirit played in creation (past) and plays in creation (present).

Hovering Over Waters: Spirit and the Ordering of Creation.

Any discussion of spirit or Spirit in creation needs to start with a definition of spirit. This is not quite as easy as it seems. According to Jeff Schloss “it is not entirely clear what we mean by “spirit.” Theologians differ, and most scientists not only ignore, but actively shun the notion.” (p. 26)

The Latin word spiritus, from which we get the word spirit, the Greek word pneuma, and the Hebrew word rauch all refer to breath. As a consequence Jeff starts with “spirit” as the distinguishing principle of life. Spirit in scripture, however, is more than simply the distinguishing principle of life. The Spirit, capital S as one part of the Trinity, gives life, sustains life, and renews life and this shapes much of Jeff’s chapter.

What do we gain from a spirit-breathed perspective on creation?

Discussion of science and faith, science and the creative spirit of God tends to get bogged down in topics like creation of species, Intelligent Design, the insufficiency of evolutionary mechanisms, the need to demonstrate God. There are, however, more fruitful directions we can take. A spirit-breathed perspective should not attack the natural conclusions of scientific findings, but rather the “purposeless” and “directionless” mantra that is oft repeated in much of the scientific community. In what follows I will summarize what I see as some of Jeff’s most significant points.

Theology provides a starting point. While Jeff sees no reason to eliminate the possibility of “gaps” requiring divine action in the ordering of creation, moving in this direction has scientific and theological risks. It is not a particularly profitable pursuit. Any gap has the potential to be filled by some “natural” explanation. The Spirit is not active only in those places where other explanations fail, but in every aspect of creation. The action of the Spirit in creation is seen not in gaps, but through the life of faith. Theological commitments are the fundamental starting point. He points to the oft cited statement from John Newman, but not original to him “I believe in design because I believe in God; not in God because I see design.”

Far from urging us to inductively posit the presence of the divine from the abridgment of natural regularities, the spirit of Yahweh claims “I will put breath in you and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord (Ezekiel 37:4). It is the experience of being revived that generates the conviction of God’s presence in the world. The direct experience of being enlivened by God’s breath changes perspective on reality. But of course the task still remains to make sense of the world in light of this perspective. (p. 32)

He refers as well in a footnote to T.S. Eliot’s introduction to Pascal’s Pensees …”the task of the Christian intellectual is not to develop arguments for the virgin birth by calculating the odds of conception by spontaneous parthenogenesis, rather it is to develop a coherent understanding of our beliefs and their relation to the world.” (p. 32)

We have a spirit-breathed perspective on creation that interacts with science in complementary ways. Faith influences plausibility criteria active in science and science also informs belief by affirming and challenging it. Jeff uses the gospel accounts of fishing in Luke 5:4-10 and John 21:4-9, “throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some” as examples and a running theme throughout the chapter (hence the picture at the top of the post).

The Mighty Mysterious Camel

There has been something of a stir around the internet and on the news the last week or two. It seems that a couple of archaeologists at Tel Aviv University published a paper suggesting that the earliest appearance of the domesticated camel in Israel an environs was ca. 930 BCE (pdf here) (BCE = before common era, essentially the same as BC). Off hand this seems fascinating, but not terribly surprising. Yet it raises issues with the interpretation of scripture. The story has hit the major news channels, blogs, and Christianity Today.

Some of the headlines are rather sensationalistic.

Domesticated Camels Came to Israel in 930 B.C., Centuries Later Than Bible Says (National Geographic)

Camels Don’t Belong in the Old Testament (Forbes)

The Mystery of the Bible’s Phantom Camels (Time)

Will camel discovery break the Bible’s back? (CNN Religion Blog)

Camel bones suggest error in Bible, archaeologists say (FOX News)

And this is only a small selection. Christianity Today has posted a response to this on their site:

The Latest Challenge to the Bible’s Accuracy: Abraham’s Anachronistic Camels? with the subtitle: Despite the latest study of bones, evidence indicates the iconic desert animals do belong in Genesis.

I was first made aware of the flap through an email sent by a concerned reader wondering what I made of this controversy. It is worth some discussion. Although the Christianity Today response makes some good points it really doesn’t eliminate the problem. There is no early evidence for domesticated camels in the area of Israel as far as I can find, and while absence of evidence doesn’t prove absence, it certainly doesn’t prove presence either.

So why the controversy? Several places in the Old Testament we find references to domesticated camels. In Genesis 12-50 the references to camels involve events dated somewhere around 1900 to 1700 BCE (all dates here are rough to give an idea, some will place Abram closer to 2100 BCE but the exact date isn’t really the point).