Set 17—Creation and the Challenge

of Evolution

TH01

Introduction to TheologySpring Term 2009

Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

Neanderthal, 500-000 to

30,000 years ago, living adjacent Homo sapiens in western Asia and Europe

Evolution and Darwin

• Evolution = descent with modification• Darwin: proposed a theory (variation

and natural selection) to explain how this happens

• These are quite distinct• Evolution (as defined above) is a fact

with great implications for theology• Darwin’s theory (widely accepted)

poses additional challenges• “Just a theory”?

Implications of Evolution (Darwin aside)

• Humans are descended from other species

• Share ancestry with chimps and great apes

• Many species of hominids without clear demarcations

• Raises question of more and less “advanced” human beings and of multiple “races”

• All this challenges traditional theological views of human origins

If human evolution, then

• No historic event of the fall. Implications for original sin

• Who is included in incarnation? Who is redeemed? From what?

• When does the “soul” come in? Do non-human animals have souls? Do other primates? Did Neanderthals?

• Are the powerful meant to rule?

Critical points

• All these implications are in play even without Darwin

• “Intelligent Design” doesn’t avoid any of these problems

• Theology has not gotten very far in addressing these implications

Added implications of Darwin

• First, a little background…

Prior to Darwin…• Widely accepted that traditional

arguments for the existence of God didn’t work.

• Kant’s argument for God as a postulate of “practical reason” was widely accepted.

• William Paley (1743-1805): Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature, 1802.

• For more info: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/paley.html

Charles Darwin

1809 – 1882

Core Elements of the Theory

1. Over-Reproduction with slight variation. Variations confer slight advantages or disadvantages for survival.

2. The individuals possessing these advantages are 'selected' by the environment for to have a greater chance at reproduction. In this way the advantages are retained (natural selection on analogy with selective breeding).

3. Given sufficient time, this can account for major changes. Isolation, speciation.

4. Darwin’s ideas were merged in the 1930s with genetics to form the “grand synthesis.” Confirmed by subsequent advances in molecular genetics, most recently by the Human Genome Project.

5. Together, evolution and genetics are the foundation of modern biology. Evolution is a theory but not “just a theory,” as if it had serious rivals.

Implications of the theory of natural selection

• Raises profound questions about purpose in nature. For many interpreters, nature is blind or random chance, at most constrained by law-like regularities.

• Examples: Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene

• Counter-arguments: Arthur Peacocke or Simon Conway Morris, Life’s Solution

Implications (2)

• Invites new reflection on God as creator: what does it mean to think of God as creating through these processes?

• Theodicy: Evolution can seem cruel. It doesn’t care about you. Does God?

• Divine Action: what (if anything) do we mean if we say: “Evolution is just God’s way of creating”? See

Options…

• God “acts” by setting up the process as one favorable for life and consciousness, but does nothing else

• God “acts” by determining the outcome of indeterminate quantum level events, which affect mutations (see Links 1 and 2)

• God “acts” by attraction

Asa Gray, a leading American biologist and a devout Presbyterian who corresponded with Darwin and defended his theory

Homo floresiensis, who lived on the Indonesian island, Flores, until about 12,000 years ago

If evolution…?

• Purpose in creation and in human life?• Are human beings unique? If not, how do

we safeguard human dignity and human rights?

• Fall and a need for redemption?• Is there a “climb” rather than a “fall”? If so,

what’s the role of Jesus Christ?• How inclusive is incarnation and

redemption?

Evolution of “the Soul”? Position of the Vatican

• Affirms evolution as the best explanation of the origin of the human body. But….

• It is by virtue of his eternal soul that the whole person, including his body, possesses such great dignity. Pius XII underlined the essential point: if the origin of the human body comes through living matter which existed previously, the spiritual soul is created directly by God ("animas enim a Deo immediate creari catholica fides non retimere iubet"). (Humani Generis)

• As a result, the theories of evolution which, because of the philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. They are therefore unable to serve as the basis for the dignity of the human person.

6. With man, we find ourselves facing a different ontological order—an ontological leap, we could say. But in posing such a great ontological discontinuity, are we not breaking up the physical continuity which seems to be the main line of research about evolution in the fields of physics and chemistry? An appreciation for the different methods used in different fields of scholarship allows us to bring together two points of view which at first might seem irreconcilable. The sciences of observation describe and measure, with ever greater precision, the many manifestations of life, and write them down along the time-line. The moment of passage into the spiritual realm is not something that can be observed in this way—although we can nevertheless discern, through experimental research, a series of very valuable signs of what is specifically human life. But the experience of metaphysical knowledge, of self-consciousness and self-awareness, of moral conscience, of liberty, or of aesthetic and religious experience—these must be analyzed through philosophical reflection, while theology seeks to clarify the ultimate meaning of the Creator's designs.

John Paul II, “Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences: On Evolution,” 1996 http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP961022.HTM