Evolution is God’s work -- The Catholic Herald


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There should be no conflict between Christianity and Darwinism

February is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, and his great
book On the Origin of Species was published 150 years ago on November
24. Festivals and symposia are already planned, and we may look
forward to endless comment in the press.

We can see Darwin as the great liberator - freeing us from the
superstitious burden of being created by God, and transporting us into
the sunny uplands of scientific nirvana. In recent times, his theory
of natural selection has become a proxy for a general view that the
flora and fauna of the world have come about through biological
causes, relegating the existence of God to a gratuitous hypothesis.

On the other side of the divide is the theory of Intelligent Design in
which God is the necessary agent intervening to a greater or less
degree in the creation of the species. My purpose is to explain why
this difference is born of a false dichotomy, and that neither
approach conflicts, so long as our thinking is clear and we understand
the limitations of each.

Evolution is an immensely complicated subject (and appears more
complicated every day) but the principle is simple. In the process of
reproduction many mutations occur. The great majority are harmful and
so disappear. But a tiny number prove useful and give the species a
small additional chance of survival in the existing environment. Those
with this advantage are likely to breed more than those without, and
so the advantage tends to accumulate.

Over many thousands of generations, genetic mutations can result in
substantial changes.

The story of the peppered moth is illustrative. Before the Industrial
Revolution the light-coloured moths were camouflaged against the light-
coloured trees, while the dark-coloured were an easy prey for birds.

But as the tree trunks blackened through industrial pollution, the
advantage switched to the dark-coloured version. And, with successive
generations, the proportion of black moths increased greatly, at the
expense of their lighter cousins. The survival of the fittest for the
prevailing environment could be observed in action.

But this relatively minor alteration within a species is a long way
from the development of the variety of complex species from the
original basic life forms. And so we are right to call evolution a
theory since there is no practical way in which all the missing links
can be discovered.

Nevertheless, it is a very strong theory, supported by various
different forms of complementary evidence - and recently much
strengthened by deepening knowledge of DNA. Indeed, this new knowledge
is prompting science to explore supplementary ways through which
evolution may occur. There cannot be a proof, but the degree of
plausibility is so high that those who discount the theory appear to
be generally motivated by principle rather than by rigorous
examination of the science.

Intelligent Design always needs definition. The meaning can range from
the literal six-day account of Genesis to various levels of divine
intervention in the evolutionary process in order to correct its
course towards God's ultimate ends. At the very least it cannot be
disproved, and since satisfactory empirical evidence is not obtainable
it is not a scientific issue.

Evolution in itself is a mindless process; it has no internal purpose.
It works though filtered chance in which the random mutations of
reproduction have to pass the test of enhancing, or at least not
diminishing, the survival value of their host. One might compare it
with a fisherman who uses a large meshed net. The fish that swim in
are of random size but only those who pass the test of the mesh are
caught.

This makes evolution, as you would expect, untidy. So the bower bird
builds a nest to attract a mate, but the nest is never used. The
pea*** has an unnecessarily large tail to prove his suitability as a
father. We are prone to bad backs because we were not originally
bipedal. The spermatic cord travels in a vulnerable circuitous loop
because an ancestor had its gonads near its liver. All rather
unintelligent, but because these systems work well enough they
survive.

Naturally our interest is focused on the human line. Although homo
sapiens is genetically closer to the chimpanzee than the chimpanzee is
to the gorilla, it did not spring into existence overnight. In fact
our lines of descent diverged about five million years ago, and we
have no evidence of any significant changes in the hominid line for
the next three million years.

Our own species is very new in evolutionary terms, appearing in Africa
about 200,000 years ago. The small population (perhaps 10,000 to
50,000 individuals) began its emigration about 60,000 years ago.
Neanderthals, our evolutionary cousins, spread somewhat earlier.
Current evidence suggests that they sometimes lived alongside homo
sapiens, and may have interbred to some degree. They declined for a
variety of reasons. Fossil records suggest that they were skilled,
innovative and may have had limited powers of speech.

Despite our genetic similarity to the chimpanzee (which is by no means
the whole story, for genes can express themselves differently and in
different combinations) we are struck by the obvious differences. Our
capacity for self-consciousness, abstract thinking, freedom of the
will, and our sense of moral obligation stand out. These faculties are
not explicable through biology, although they necessarily work through
the brain. For example, free will cannot by definition be caused by
the biological, and without free will moral responsibility has no
meaning.

If I describe such faculties, as I do, as being infused by God I have
no account to give about how this happened beyond the fact that the
human brain must have evolved biologically into an instrument through
which the faculties could work. I do not know whether Neanderthals, or
other species earlier in the human line, had souls, but the evidence
of intelligent activities suggests that we cannot rule this out.

If homo sapiens were purely the result of biological evolution the
anthropologists would hold that descent from a single couple was
extremely unlikely. But this would be irrelevant in the case of a soul
infused by an act of God, who could have chosen monogenism or
polygenism according to his purposes. What we do know is that we
inherit a nature which is a blend of the biological and the spiritual,
and that it is our inability to integrate our selfish, biological
elements with our aspirational, spiritual elements in which disorder
lies.

So I do believe in Intelligent Design in the sense that God used
evolution as his biological methodology. Whatever his reasons may have
been, in human terms I recognise that the fisherman who uses a
combination of the random tempered by the filter of the mesh has
chosen a more economical method than picking out his fish by hand. But
I need to remember that nothing, in the end, is random to God, who
knows from all eternity the movement and mutation of creation, right
down to the most basic sub-nuclear particle. The outcome of evolution
was known and intended in every detail from the beginning.

I also know that my spiritual faculties were created and given to me
directly by God. I could not meaningfully claim truth for any
proposition I have made if I were obliged to make it only through the
biology of my brain.

Biology could not give me a mind to judge the workings of my brain or
my emotions. And I could not see how far I fall short of the life of
love if biology were my only means of knowing that I should follow the
good and avoid the evil. Moreover, such faculties are not susceptible
to evolution.

For instance, one either has free will or one has not: there is no
halfway house.

So, as believers in a creator God, natural selection through evolution
is not an obstacle but a fruitful way of exploring the wonderful way
through which he most probably worked. Our celebration of Darwin's
anniversary year should be all the richer since we are able to see the
methodology in its proper context.

I am aware that my account is simplistic. There is much more to say
about the complexities of evolution, including some real difficulties
raised by its critics. Or the part that a Catholic priest played in
discovering the mechanism of inheritance. The integral intellectual
connection of Darwinism to eugenics needs to be examined. The claim
that the source of altruism is evolutionary advantage requires
assessment. I would like to have written more about the myopic vision
of the secular scientist. I would like to have looked more closely at
our first ancestors and discussed the part that Original Sin played in
our inheritance from them. I shall try to deal with some of this in my
fortnightly Science and Faith column during the year.

But I would be greatly helped by your suggestions which www.secondsightblog.com
awaits. Owing to an internal glitch it appears that people have not
been able to register on the site recently. Apologies for this. The
fault has now been corrected.

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/features/f0000372.shtml

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