Creation, Evolution and the Nature of Science

This is a guest-post by geologist Keith B. Miller, and is the second installment in our “Evangelicals, Evolution, and Academics” series. Keith edited the book Perspectives on an Evolving Creation and has written numerous articles on science and faith including Theological Implications of an Evolving Creation.

Despite the long theological dialogue with evolutionary theory, many people continue to view evolution as inherently atheistic and inseparably wedded to a worldview that denies God and objective morality. Although this understanding of the meaning of evolutionary theory is strongly promoted by some, it is widely rejected as philosophically, theologically, and historically false. Science is a methodology, a limited way of knowing about the natural world. Scientific research proceeds by the search for chains of cause-and-effect, and confines itself to the investigation of "natural" entities and forces. This self-limitation is sometimes referred to as “methodological naturalism.”

The Limitations of Science
The first detailed use and discussion of the term “methodological naturalism” (MN) was in 1986 by Paul deVries, an evangelical Christian philosopher at Wheaton College. He used the term to describe the legitimate purview of science as one limited to explaining and interpreting the natural world in terms of natural processes and causes. Furthermore, deVries embraced this understanding of the nature and limitations of science because he saw it as consistent with, and supportive of, a vibrant and vital role for theology. In his view, to broaden science to include the supernatural would be yielding to a culture of scientism.

Science restricts itself to proximate causes, and the confirmation or denial of ultimate causes is beyond its capacity. Science does not deny the existence of a Creator -- it is simply silent on the existence or action of God. Methodological naturalism simply describes what empirical inquiry is. It is certainly not a statement of the nature of cosmic reality. Science pursues truth within very narrow limits. Our most profound questions about the nature of reality (questions of meaning and purpose and morality), while they may arise from within science, are theological or philosophical in nature and their answers lie beyond the reach of science.

From the perspective of scientific inquiry, a supernatural agent is effectively a black box, and appeals to supernatural action are essentially appeals to ignorance. A supernatural agent is unconstrained by natural “laws” or the properties and capabilities of natural entities and forces -- it can act in any way, and accomplish any conceivable end. As a result, appeals to such agents can provide no insight into understanding the mechanisms by which a particular observed or historical event occurred. Belief in the creative action of a supernatural agent does not answer the question of how something happens. “A miracle occurs here” is no more an answer to the question of “How?” than is “We don’t know.”

Divine Action and Scientific Explanation
One commonly held perspective that tends to reinforce a conflict view of science and faith is that God's action or involvement is confined to those events which lack a scientific explanation. Meaningful divine action is equated with breaks in chains of cause-and-effect processes. This view has been called a "God-of-the-gaps" theology. God's creative action is seen only, or primarily, in the gaps of human knowledge where scientific description fails. With this perspective, each advance of scientific description results in a corresponding reduction in the realm of divine action. Conflict between science and faith is thus assured. However, this is a totally unnecessary state of affairs. God's creative activity is clearly identified in the Bible as including natural processes, including what we call chance or random events. According to scripture, God is providentially active in all natural processes, and all of creation declares the glory of God. The evidence for God's presence in creation, for the existence of a creator God, is declared to be precisely those everyday "natural events" experienced by us all.

Some people will argue that MN arbitrarily excludes supernatural agency from scientific explanation and unnecessarily restricts the search for truth. It does nothing of the sort. If God acted in creation to bring about a particular structure in a way that broke causal chains, then science would simply conclude -- "There is presently no known series of cause-and-effect processes that can adequately account for this structure, and research will continue to search for such processes." Any statement beyond that requires the application of a particular religious worldview. "God did it" is not a scientific conclusion, although anyone is of course free to draw such an inference. However, if God acted through a seamless series of cause-and-effect processes to bring about that structure, then the continuing search for such processes stimulated by the tentativeness and methodological naturalism of science may uncover those processes.

Some non-theists see God as an unnecessary addition to a scientific description of the universe, and therefore conclude that there is no rational basis for belief in a personal God. In fact, as I have argued, God is unnecessary for a scientific description, but a scientific description is not a complete description of reality. Science excludes appeals to supernatural agents simply because the actions of such agents cannot be investigated by scientific methods. To then use this methodological exclusion to support a philosophical/religious exclusion is completely fallacious. That science does not make reference to God says nothing about whether or not God is actively involved in the physical universe or in people's lives.

Continuous Creation
I fully and unhesitatingly accept the doctrine of creation. God is the Creator of all things and nothing would exist without God's continually willing it to be. Creation was not merely a past accomplished act, but also is a present and continuing reality. The best term for this view of God's creative activity is "continuous creation." I also believe that God's existence can be known in the creation through faith. However, scientific observation provides no proof of the existence of a creator God, indeed it cannot. Neither does scientific description, however complete, provide any argument against a creator. Since God acts through process, scientific description and the theology of creation are perfectly compatible. Thus Christians should not fear causal explanations. Complete scientific descriptions of events or processes should pose no threat to Christian theism. Rather, each new advance in our scientific understanding can be met with excitement and praise at the revelation of God's creative hand.

The Incarnation within an Evolutionary Process

The incarnation is an audacious claim. That God would become a man was considered either blasphemous or ludicrous in the 1st century. Not much has changed in that regard although it probably leans more to ludicrous than blasphemous today.

At Christmas time Christians talk a lot about “God coming as a baby” and accepting the vulnerability of an infant. But as Martin Labar points out, Christ did not come as a baby, he came as an embryo. At one point, the Creator of the universe (or the multiverse if it exists) limited himself to a single cell. How can we possibly talk about a single cell even being self-aware let alone omniscient? How does the unlimited author of life limit himself to a single building block of life? Given that Christians still have difficulty articulating this mystery after 2000 years, I’m not even going to make an attempt here.

So if we can accept that God at one point became part of the process of embryo development, one that began with a single cell, why do we have so much difficulty in accepting that God could also become part of the process of evolutionary development, one that traces its ancestry through primates, reptiles, fish, and yes, even single celled organisms. Gordon has a humorous little post that addresses just his point. In Evolution and Incarnation he states:

It should be known, and so it is my duty to tell you, that there are scientists who believe every person alive today can be traced back to a single-celled organism. And that all of us are actually the result of nature acting on this cell over time. And this first cell is believed to have gone through an explosive multi-cellular stage before taking on fish-like characteristics. Some have said that as time passed, the fish-like characteristics gave way to reptile-like characteristics. And after more time had passed, the reptile-like characteristics gave way to mammal-like characteristics. And these same folks also believe that we once had tails, and that we had smaller brains, and that we were naked and lacked the ability to effectively communicate. And to make things worse, this purely naturalistic view of humanity seems to leave no room for God to work wonderful creation miracles, or for Him to personally fashion mankind by His own hands. This so called, “scientific” view - even though science itself can’t fully explain it - simply asserts that we were fashioned by the impersonal laws of nature acting on the biological material of lower species. In short, we are a product of nature.

But Gordon is not referring to evolution; he is referring to the nine-month creation process we all experienced prior to our official birthday. The Psalmist describes this same process from a different perspective:

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

(Psalm 139: 13-16)

Merry Christmas.

End of Year Note:

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all my readers, particularly those that have provided feedback through comments and emails. It has been an enjoyable and stimulating experience, and I appreciate the dialogue.

I will be taking a few weeks break from blogging. A “Subscribe via email” link has been added to the right column on the blog. This will allow you to receive any new posts by email the day they are published. This also means that I can see your email address, (and so does feedburner.com which is now owned by Google) so if this concerns you, don’t subscribe. Personally, I prefer an RSS or newsreader - I now use Google Reader to follow blogs that interest me.

Polkinghorne Quotes #4: The Christian God: Not Limited to nor Restricted by Edges

Theology is concerned with ontological origin and not with temporal beginning. The idea of creation has no special stake in a datable start to the universe. If Hawking is right, and quantum effects mean that the cosmos as we know it is like a kind of fuzzy space-time egg, without a singular point at which it all began, that is scientifically very interesting, but theologically insignificant. When he poses the question, “But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary, or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?”, it would be theologically naïve to give any answer other than: “Every place – as sustainer of the self-contained space-time egg and as the ordainer of its quantum laws”. God is not a God of the edges, with a vested interest in boundaries.

Creation is not something he did fifteen billion years ago, but it is something that he is doing now.

From Science and Christian Belief, page 73

Many Christians, I think, put too much stock in the implications of scientific discoveries. Thus for example, since biological evolution seems to threaten traditional ideas of a historical instantaneous Fall, many Christians dismiss biological evolution out of hand. Rarely is it asked: “Does evolution really change our ideas of a historical instantaneous Fall?” (some evolutionary creationists say no), or “Is a re-examination of a historical instantaneous Fall helpful for our theology” (possibly yes), or even “Do I really need to definitively resolve this particular tension right now?” (maybe the best question of all).

As Christians I think we can make a similar mistake with scientific discoveries that seem to cohere nicely with orthodox Christian theology. The Big Bang, a theory proposed by a Catholic priest, is the classic example. Christians have stated that it is “proof that God created the universe”. Now, I have absolutely no reason to doubt the Big Bang theory (Simon Singh’s book on the topic is one of my favourite works of popular science). As well, I must confess to some satisfaction in knowing that the theory continues to incite strong opposition from some atheistic materialists, and that it meshes neatly with the Christian concepts of creation ex nihilo and a non-eternal universe. However, my Christian faith does not rest on the theory of the Big Bang and I disagree with the statement that the theory “proves that Christianity is true". If the scientific consensus of the ultimate fate of the universe suddenly changed from "a universe accelerating towards The Big Freeze" to "a universe entering a cycle of Big Crunches & Big Bangs (of which our instantiation may not be the first)", I do not see how that is relevant to my faith.

God is neither restricted by nor limited to the edges. We should neither search for him there, nor fear that they constrain him.

Other Polkinghorne Quotes: [Introduction] [Previous] [Next]

Polkinghorne Quotes #2: The Dangers of a Designer God

Speaking of those who claim to have scientifically detected intelligence behind the evolution of the universe, Polkinghorne states:

“Yet it is possible that they are being offered a gift by the Greeks, as much to be feared as to be welcomed. For the God so discerned seems but an austere and impersonal deity; the ground of a cosmic process which rolls on without obvious concern for the fate of individuals. He commands our intellectual respect but not our love; we can wonder at his works but we are not moved to trust him in our personal lives."

"The offering of a revived natural theology would have proved to be a Trojan horse for Christianity if it replaced the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ by the Great Mathematician”

From “Science and Providence”, page 4

As I mentioned in my last post, I believe that the ID movement is potentially dangerous to Christian theology because of its focus on natural theology. Polkinghorne’s Trojan horse metaphor is particularly apt. Those who use the gift of modern science as a sword to defend the faith may find that sword to be lethally double-edged.

But Polkinghorne’s warning needs to be heeded by Evolutionary Creationists (ECs) and Theistic Evolutionists (TEs) as well. Those of us that acknowledge no gaps in natural processes are often fond of pointing to the Big Bang, the fine-tuned universe, and the anthropic principle as evidence of God’s providence and design. This may indeed be so. But the initial act of speaking the universe into being is not the totality of God’s creative act; creation is not just about origins. In Denis Alexander’s words, we must be “robust theists” who acknowledge God’s ongoing and continuous creation.

ID proponents often accuse ECs of being little more than Deists ie. acknowledging a God who started the process and but who is uninvolved thereafter. This is a potentially valid criticism of the EC position if we leave no room for divine action after the initial parameter calibration for the infant universe. But that is not my position, nor is it the position of most ECs. We worship a God that is intimately involved in his ongoing creation. He is the God of the bible, the God who led the Israelites out of Egypt, the God who raised Jesus from the dead.

Other Polkinghorne Quotes: [Introduction] [Previous] [Next]

Creation: It’s not just about Origins

Last week I stated that it is important for us to reclaim the word creation from Young Earth Creationists so that we can proclaim the message of creation to a fallen world. It is not simply that the scientific evidence conflicts with a YEC view of origins; it’s the exclusive focus on origins that is the problem. The ideas of Karl Barth may be helpful here. Although I have not yet read much of Barth, quotes like the following (which I stumbled across at http://theologyandsnack.blogspot.com/search/label/creation) provide added incentive for me to do so:

[M]ost of the laity believe the doctrine of creation deals with the beginning of the world and its details. As such, the creation-doctrine is a matter for preaching, but also one to which “the latest news from the science front” is also relevant. The average theologian, on the contrary, insists on quite a different understanding of the doctrine, one to which scientific discoveries are simply irrelevant, because the doctrine intends to affirm something that science is not competent to assess.…

The doctrine of creation is thoroughly and completely a religious-theological affirmation.… The affirmation of creation is the form in which the community of faith sets forth its understanding of the world. As it does so, its goal is to permit its understanding of the world to be fully congruous with its belief in God.… “Creation” is a word that refers to the whole of the world when viewed as belonging to God, and the doctrine of creation is an elaboration of how we understand the world when we permit our understanding of God to permeate and dominate our thinking.

I can’t agree with Barth’s (as it seems to me) dismissal of science, but I wholeheartedly agree that God’s creation is more than a discovery or affirmation of how God acted in the past. It is also about the present since God continues to sustain and nurture creation. God’s present and ongoing activity, his continuous interaction with the world, his care and sustenance for all his creatures, these are also creation. And that should permeate all our thoughts and actions.

Although God’s original action to bring the universe into being is an important aspect of creation, creation is not exclusively, or even primarily, about origins. Confining God’s “creation work” to a distant time in the past (whether that be assigned to billions of years ago, or to a single 6-day work week several thousand years ago) is little more than deism. As ASA’s “Statement on Creation” affirms:

1. God is the creator of all things.
a. All things were created through the Word. (Jn1:1-3; Col 1:15-20)
b. God is both transcendent over creation and immanent in creation. (1 Kg 8:27)
c. God continually upholds all of creation. (Col 1:17; Heb 1:3)
d. God is continually creating. (Ps 104:29-30)

and later:

3. God actively cares for His creation.
a. God declares all that He has made very good. (Gen 1:31)
b. The earth is the Lord’s possession. (Ps 95:1-5)
c. All creation praises God. (Ps 148)
d. God sustains and provides for His creation. (Job 38-41, Ps 104)

There is very strong scientific evidence to support biological evolution. For a Christian, there are also strong theological reasons to accept the concept of God’s evolving creation. (See for example, George Murphy’s essay: “A Theological Argument For Evolution”). Certainly speaking about God’s evolving creation seems much more biblical than speaking about creation as a single event that occurred in the distant past. For God is actively involved in the present, he is active in a creation that is not yet finished.

Reclaiming and Proclaiming Creation

All Christians believe in creation – including those like myself who accept biological evolution as a mechanism employed by the creator. Thus you could argue that all Christians are creationists. Unfortunately, “creationist” has taken on connotations that make it an embarrassing label. In modern parlance it means not only “belief in a caring creator” as the historic creeds confirm, but also assent to specific methods and timings on how God realized his purposes, methods and timings that are little more than nonsense when viewed in the light of modern scientific evidence. I think I can appreciate the turmoil Egyptian Christians must have endured during the crusades when European “Christians” raped and pillaged their way through the Holy Land. I’m sure that many of these Egyptian Christians tried desperately to convince their Muslim neighbors that the title “Christian” should not be associated with the viscous, un-Christian acts of the crusaders. And I’m sure they had just as much trouble defending Christ because of Christians as we have in defending creation because of creationists.

Reclaiming creation will be difficult. But it is an essential part of the gospel. Even as Christians should never abandon Christ when other Christians bring the name of Christ into disrepute, neither should we be ashamed of creation simply because certain forms of creationism make untenable claims based on flawed interpretations of scripture. As I posted earlier, combating this type of creationism is important because it is dangerous. A more urgent task, however, is communicating God’s positive message of creation to a world that desperately needs to hear it. For there is purpose in creation, there is ultimate meaning.

For many of us, biological evolution is fascinating, but it is not the most important aspect of the origins discussion. Creation is the central truth. Genesis is very clear about who was responsible for bringing forth life on earth – it was God. Out of nothingness, a good creation was brought into being. The pinnacle of this good work was humanity, which was created in the image of God. And humanity was entrusted with the stewardship and care of creation.

Genesis also states that a central problem is human sin. Because of this sin, a gulf developed in humanity’s relationship with God. God could no longer enjoy communion with those he created in his own image, since the image was severely marred. The story of the destructiveness of this sin and the pain caused by this sin is developed throughout the rest of scripture. Genesis also states that the solution for this problem is God’s faithfulness, and this story too is developed throughout scripture. Out of loss and separation, through redemption, a new good creation is brought into being, redemption possible only because God entered into his creation, suffered with and for his creation.

The story of evolution may be interesting, even wondrous. I believe it provides even more reason to be awed by God’s handiwork. However, it is should not take center stage. Because evolution answers the “how” of the origin of life, it is therefore a dependent concept, dependent for purpose on creation which answers the “who”, “what” and “why”; it is peripheral to the questions of ultimate meaning in life. God could have brought life forth in many different ways, but it appears that biological evolution was the mechanism he chose. Through this process we obtain a better appreciation for the power and scope of his creativeness, for his patience, and for his insistence on cooperation rather than coercion. However, an understanding of this process is not essential to what we already know from the scriptures about his love, selfless sacrifice, forgiveness, and final redemptive plan.

Since creation is an essential part of the good news, maybe I shouldn’t be so hesitant to wear the label creationist. Maybe, like Denis Lamoureux, I should call myself an Evolutionary Creationist. It certainly is a more appropriate term than Theistic Evolutionist since it highlights the centrality of creation. But I’m hesitant to wear the creationist label since it would require constant qualification. I’d rather stick with the positive and simply answer “Creation? Yes!”