Evolution, creation, and human uniqueness

There’s an account making the rounds of a recent debate between atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett and Christian theist Alvin Plantinga. One of the issues that comes up is the compatibility between Christianity (or theism more generally) and evolution, a perennial topic of interest here at ATR.

Dennett seems to see them as incompatible. Plantinga not only thinks they are compatible, but makes the stronger argument that believers in evolution ought also be theists, because only theism adequately accounts for our ability to understand the world in the ways required by modern science, as opposed to being just adaptive enough to get by. In other words: if naturalism is true, we have no reason to trust our ability to know that it’s true!

That’s a difficult argument to evaluate, and I’m not particularly interested in trying right now. In fact, I probably disagree with Plantinga almost as much as I would with Dennett, so I don’t really have a dog in this fight. However, I do have a dog in the fight about the compatibility between theism and evolution.

Some critics point out that evolution would seem to be a circuitous and wasteful means of bringing humans into existence if that was the creator’s sole intention. But there’s no reason for a Christian, or any other variety of theist, to think that creating human beings was God’s sole purpose in creating.

It’s quite plausible–and indeed I think true–that God’s purposes, so far as we can discern them, include bringing into existence the entire array of creatures that exist and have existed for their own sake, not just as a means to the end of creating humans. I see no reason, for example, to think that God isn’t quite fond of dinosaurs, considering they were around for a lot longer than we have been.

Clearly Christian theology is committed to some kind of unique status for human beings. Though we should be wary of confidently stating what that is. After all, the gospels teach that God goes to excessive lengths precisely for the ones who least deserve it. So it could be that we’re special in our unique ability to ruin things.

However we come out on that issue, though, it’s perfectly consistent with Christianity to say that the purpose of the evolutionary process is to bring into existence not only humans but the entire bewildering array of creatures, each of whom in their own way reflect something of God’s glory. Humans, with our intelligence and potential for spiritual awareness, are one, but by no means the only, reflection of that glory.

(Link via John Schwenkler)

A two-phase Iraq withdrawal

That’s what it looks like anyway, based on Obama’s speech and the analysis I’ve seen. “Combat troops” will withdraw in 2010 with “residual” forces engaged in training and counter-terrorism activities (which, make no mistake, will involve at least some combat). But full withdrawal is supposed to occur by the end of 2011.

Not ideal, by any means, but a step in the right direction. But see Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo for an even more pessimistic take.

By (almost) any means necessary

I thought this interview with Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. They’re like Greenpeace on steroids: they do everything short of harming people to stop whalers. In fact, Watson calls Greenpeace the “Avon Ladies” of environmentalism and compares their philosophy of “bearing witness” to standing idly by while someone’s attacked:

They have this thing called “bearing witness.” That’s their approach. And I said, “You don’t walk down the street and see a kitten being stomped and do nothing, or see a woman being attacked and do nothing, or see a child being molested and do nothing. And you don’t sit there in a boat taking pictures of whales dying and do nothing.” Bearing witness, to me, is just another way of saying they’re cowards.

Watson’s tactics–though I wouldn’t necessarily endorse them–raise a question worth pondering. Most people will say that, in cases of grave injustice, it’s sometimes right, or even obligatory, to break the law. For instance, abolitionists helping slaves escape in antebellum America is regarded by most of us as not only not wrong, but extremely noble. Does preventing the hunting of whales fall into this category? Especially when there is no international authority with the wherewithal or power to prevent it?

Veggie kids

A conscientious omnivore on raising vegetarian kids.

Darwin and the deity

Check out Kim Fabricius’s ten propositions on the subject.

Inching closer to voting rights

Senate clears way for approval of D.C. voting rights bill

D.C. Vote: As Constitutional As You Want It To Be

If DC isn’t going to be “retrocessed” into Maryland, or made the 51st state, then I don’t really see any other solution that’s fair and reasonable. I look forward to having a representative in Congress who can actually vote.

Michael Pollan interviewed in Mother Jones

Here.

I do take issue with this, though:

MJ: When you first wrote the mantra “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” did you have any idea what kind of reaction you’d get?

MP: Well, I studied my poetry in school, and I knew there was something about the way it sounded that made it easy to remember. After writing The Omnivore’s Dilemma I wanted to write a book that got past the choir, that got to people who didn’t care about how their food was grown, but who did care about their health. I wanted to make it almost billboard simple. It started out as just “Eat food.” But then I realized, Eh, not quite good enough. You’ve got to deal with the quantity issue. And then plants; the more you looked, the more you realized that the shortage of plants in our diet could explain a lot. Not that I’m against meat eating. I think we’re eating too much. That’s why I said “mostly plants.”

MJ: Did you hear from the beef lobby?

MP: No, but there’s another group, the Weston A. Price Foundation, who are fierce in their love of animal fat. And a lot of what they say is right, but they really don’t like plants. People feel like they have to take sides on this plant/animal divide, and I don’t think we do.

MJ: There’s no dilemma?

MP: [Laughs.] No dilemma. And of course a lot of vegetarians were annoyed that I wasn’t saying “all plants.” It’s a thicket. People have strong, quasi-religious views. Secularizing the issue is challenging.

This is unfortunately not atypical of Pollan’s writing: to dismiss strongly held moral views as “religious” (and therefore, presumably, not rational). For an antidote, it’s worth reading B.R. Myers’ infamous review of the Omnivore’s Dilemma. This isn’t to say I think that everyone has to be vegetarian, but moral concerns can’t just be swept under the rug.

In other foodie politics news, the nomination of “organic food expert” Kathleen Merrigan for Deputy Secretary of Agriculture has been generating good buzz among food reformers. See this Ezra Klein post and follow the links for more info.

“Christian Ethics and Nonhuman Animals”

It doesn’t break much new ground, but this essay in the online journal of Orthodox Theology Theandros nicely brings together several strands of thought about re-evaluating Christian attitudes toward animals.

Lent — always beginning again

I hope everyone’s enjoying their Fat Tuesday. I plan on “feasting” on a bowl of pasta in a cream tomato sauce with roasted cauliflower on the side and watching some Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs.

Lent is upon us again and what’s struck me this year, as in years past, is just how crappy I am at living the Christian life. As a Lutheran, I should fully expect this. And yet it’s always a bit disappointing.

On the other hand, there’s some deeply embedded wisdom in the tradition of dedicating Lent to prayer, fasting, and alms-giving. For a very simple reason: this is what Christians should be doing all the time anyway! Lent isn’t about adding on onerous new tasks, but recommitting ourselves to the Christian life.

So, maybe one way of looking at Lent is that it’s our opportunity to begin anew what we should’ve been doing all along. A kind of reset button for the Christian life.

Similarly, Luther recommended “drowning” our old self anew every morning in the memory of our baptism, recognizing that we’re always beginning anew and we always need grace and forgiveness. Spiritual “progress”–particularly self-discerned–is often a snare and delusion.

Anyway, that’s how I make myself feel better about my backsliding and sloth over the last year (among other sins, known and unknown). So, tomorrow I’ll have the ashes imposed on my forehead and try to remember that my efforts are always going to be dust, but that living into God’s ever-present and unfailing grace is our truest calling.

(I have a sneaking suspicion I wrote a similarly-themed post in some previous year, but that just proves my point, doesn’t it?)

Some thoughts on Christianity and evolution

This is a bit late for the Darwin 200th birthday bash, but I thought it might be worth jotting down some thoughts on Christianity and evolution. This post could serve as a kind of summary of things I’ve been thinking and reading about over the last few years, though naturally they’re all subject to revision:

1. The argument over “literal” vs. “non-literal” readings of Genesis 1-3 is, in my view, a total red herring. It just seems clear from the text itself that what we’re dealing with there is myth or “saga” (to use Karl Barth’s term). That doesn’t mean that the stories don’t contain memories of some historical events, but their main point is to illustrate key truths about God’s relationship to creation and to humankind.

2. “Young earth creationism” is an intellectually bankrupt position and not worth taking seriously. Not only does it require rejecting virtually all modern biology, but also geology and astrophysics. A “young earth” is simply not tenable given current knowledge about the physical world. Moreover, as noted above, nothing in the Bible compels us to posit a young earth.

3. “Intelligent design” has always struck me as completely beside the point. Once you grant that life evolved through a gradual process, it seems unnecessary–or at least premature–to assert that God tinkered with the process at various observable points. Better to think that God superintends the entire evolutionary process.

4. A common response to evolution among mainline Christians–at least in my experience–is to accept it, but to keep the scientific and religious outlooks in hermetically sealed compartments. Apart from rejecting “literal” readings of Genesis, evolution has too often been prevented affect theology’s content.

5. Specifically, there are several particular areas where evolution poses a challenge to traditional Christian beliefs that are still taken for granted, even among people who reject creationism.

5a. The problem of evil: traditionally (though not unanimously) Christians often held that death and suffering only entered the world when human beings sinned. Thus God could be relieved from any responsibility for the world’s suffering. But modern biology tells us that death and suffering not only pre-dated human beings, they are inextricable parts of the evolutionary process itself. Without them, life wouldn’t have been able to develop. This would seem to require a re-thinking of God’s relation to these processes.

5b. Humans as part of creation: Christian theology has usually emphasized humanity’s transcendence over nature, focusing on our reason or free will or some other capacity that sets us decisively apart from the rest of the animal kingdom (though the Bible itself has a more balanced and “earthy” view). But we now know not only that we emerged from animal life, but that many of the differences we once thought were unique to humankind have been shown to be present to some degree in other animals, including reason and morality. This challenges the anthropocentrism of much traditional theology, but opens the possibility of a truly theocentric theology, which only seems proper.

5c. Original sin: Just as evolutionary theory denies that suffering entered the world with humanity, it also denies that humans lived in a paradisiacal state of innocence prior to a historic “fall.” And if there was no historic fall, then it’s difficult to know what to make of the teaching that, because of Adam’s transgression, humanity was cursed with death and incurred an inherited guilt, with the implication that each one of us would be properly damned were it not for Christ’s atoning death. This isn’t to deny that human beings are “turned in on themselves,” to borrow Luther’s phrase. But this should probably be seen as a legacy of our evolutionary heritage and/or cultural transmission.

5d: Atonement: The abandonment of a “forensic” account of original guilt would also seem to require re-thinking the atonement as a sacrifice for human sin required to balance the books with God. We might say instead that, in the Incarnation, God pledges God’s love to creation by identifying with it, including with the suffering victims of the evolutionary process, and re-creates human nature in Jesus, making possible our participation in a new humanity lived in restored relationship with God, each other, and the rest of creation.

5e. Eschatology: if humans are embedded in the physical world in a much more profound way than we previously imagined, we can begin to recover aspects of the Christian tradition which hold out hope for a redemption of all creation.

6. Some Christians have tried to avoid some of the apparent implications of evolution by positing a “cosmic fall”: sin and suffering entered the world through the actions of supra-human intelligences (the devil or his minions), and this accounts for the evil we see in the world. I think this is untenable for a variety of reasons, preeminently because it implies that the world isn’t really God’s creation, since it developed from a primal state of affairs that was corrupted at a fundamental level. This view skates too close to gnosticism and is contrary to the balance of the biblical witness.

7. Other Christians have gone to the opposite extreme and embraced a kind of nature mysticism. They view the natural world almost as ultimate reality itself, thinking that whatever happens in nature is right and embracing a kind of ethical Darwinism. The error here is to treat nature not just as God’s good creation, but as a finished product. Instead, we should see nature as “in process” and “groaning in travail,” destined for a redemption where suffering and evil will be banished and all God’s creatures will be given the opportunity to flourish. Nature by itself doesn’t provide the standard for morality, though the study of nature can provide us with knowledge about what’s good for us and for other creatures.

In a sense, I think some very conservative Christians have sound instincts in rejecting evolution, since it does pose challenges to certain traditional formulations of the faith and requires a significant re-thinking of what is essential and what isn’t in Christian belief. But if rejection isn’t an option, as it’s not for me, it’s not enough to treat science and religion as “non-overlapping magisteria” as Stephen Jay Gould suggested. Religion makes truth claims, and Christianity in particular makes claims about God’s relation to and involvement with the world. Consequently, as our knowledge of the world changes, our understanding of how God relates to it may have to change too.