Friday, May 4, 2018

"You Asked for It" Week 5: The Compatibility of Evolution and a Creator

Notes again:

Preliminaries:
There are roughly three-ish basic Christian views about God’s creation of the world (young-earth, old-earth, and evolutionary forms of creation) and a lot of variety within those three. There are smart, well-informed people on all sides who disagree based on different views or interpretations of the Bible, philosophy, theology, and science. There are many people of each of these types who are faithful, believing Christians who simply want to follow truth but disagree about what that is. And there are people right here in this church whose views fall into each of these categories! So let’s allow that people in the church will - and should be allowed to - disagree about issues surrounding creation and evolution.

With that in mind, it’s important to note that answering this question doesn’t depend on taking any particular position on evolution. The question is purely hypothetical - IF there is a creator then COULD evolution be possible? Or, what is logically equivalent, IF evolution happened, WOULD that mean there was no creator? So we need to put the question of WHETHER it happened aside and consider what would be true IF it did.

So, for those who reject evolution, why would this question still be important? Many people believe in evolution who are not Christians and are convinced it happened. If the existence of a creator is compatible with it, this removes one obstacle to the faith for them. In addition, many Christians believe in evolution or are unsure whether it might be true. For such Christians, the compatibility or incompatibility of a creator and evolution will be a crucial issue.

On to the question:
Is a creator compatible with evolution? Suppose evolution is correct. There still could be a creator since the creator could have simply used evolution to create. Just because someone uses a tool to make something doesn’t mean they weren’t the one to make it. A sculptor might use a chisel or other tools on a piece of marble to make a statue but that wouldn’t mean the sculptor wasn’t the one who made it. Similarly, evolution could be a tool used by a creator to create - a creator could use physically random mutations to shape new species, etc.

So evolution appears to be compatible with there being some kind of creator - but what about a creator in the biblical sense? That is, could evolution be compatible with a biblical God creating in a biblical sense of “creating”? (Note that this is not asking whether it is compatible with biblical accounts of creation - just with the biblical sense of what it means to create or be a creator)

To address this, we should consider both whether the biblical God uses tools to do things and also whether, in the biblical sense, the creator could use tools to specifically create. (Note that these tools could be any kind of intermediary - nature, natural laws, physical material, created beings, etc.)

So first, does the biblical God use tools to do things at all? A quick look at the Bible reveals a definite affirmative in answer to this. God uses things as diverse as plagues, human armies, free actions, prayers, humans and evil spirits in rebellion against him, and more to accomplish his ends. There is no contradiction, for instance, between “The doctor saved my life” and “God saved my life” - God can use doctors to accomplish his ends as well as anything else. The Bible can slide easily back and forth between ‘So-and-so caused A’ and ‘God caused A’. (For instance, compare II Samuel and I Chronicles on who instigated David to take a census) (Side note: Not only are there tons of events which have no predetermined physical explanation or are not determined by natural laws (e.g., quantum mechanics), but even if there weren’t, it seems important to note that the biblical God is the creator and sustainer of everything that is not God - he not only created space, time, matter, natural laws, etc. but every second, every event, every natural law, everything that is, is directly dependent for its existence on God. God is the source of natural laws and the one who sustains them in place. Anytime any things interact by virtue of natural laws, for instance, God is there. Colossians - all things held together by him. Acts - in him, we live and move and have our being. When the doctor saves the patient, God is there sustaining the natural laws and physical interactions that will make that a success, even if everything is just going according to physics, biology, etc. God works under and through the natural processes)

Given then that he uses tools, could a biblical God use evolution as a tool to create in a biblical sense of “create”? The first thing to note is that the notions of create and creator in Israel (and in the ancient Near East more widely) do not necessarily entail a creation out of nothing without any tools at all (not that there was no ultimate creation ex nihilo, just that the concepts themselves don't require it in every case). Instead, in the ancient Near East, the most important aspect of creating and being a creator is that of ordering - producing order and arranging things so that they function appropriately - with little to no restriction on how this order is accomplished by the one creating. We see this in Genesis, for instance, when God creates humans using already present material, or when in creating land animals God explicitly calls on the land to produce these same animals (there are more potential examples of intermediaries in the creation accounts here as well). We in a sense acknowledge this when we say things like “God is my creator” or “God created me”, even though we know that our parents probably had something to do with it. So the use of tools is compatible with creating in a biblical sense. (Side note: Early Genesis presents a picture of a creation that is very good but not yet complete - the creation (specifically, under the direction of humans as the priest-kings ruling as God’s intermediaries) is itself supposed to participate in completing God’s act of creation, which now we know won’t be accomplished until after Christ returns - humans were meant to be co-creators with God)

So given that the biblical God uses tools and can use tools to create, it seems that evolution would be compatible with the existence of the biblical Creator God since that same God could use evolution as his tool to create.

(Whether or not evolution is compatible with the specifics of the biblical accounts of God creating or with the scientific evidence is, as already said, a separate question, of course!) 

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