Cane Toads & God

Source: animals.nationalgeographic.com

Cane toads are a large, poisonous species of toad that originates in South America that has spread widely throughout northeastern Australia.  A recent ABC Science article entitled, "Toad personalities key to territorial takeover," cites scientific evidence that suggests that the key to the cane toads ability to expand its territory in Australia has to do with "personality".  Some toads are more adventerous than others—bolder, more likely to head off into new feeding territory on their own.  Other toads are more timid and unlikely to go into new feeding territory.  The article concludes that the mix of bold and timid toads is a factor in the cane toads success in Australia.

Who would have thought that cane toads even have personality, let alone that it is apparently important to the species ability to adapt?  Such a possibility causes one to consider the potential role that personality plays in the larger, evolutionary scheme of things.  We know from experience that many other species have personality and that personality is of crucial importance in human social interactions.

The concept of personality is also important theologically.  Christian theology across the board assumes and asserts that God is a person and has the marks of personality (loving, compassionate, cares about justice, is "slow to anger") exemplified for us in Christ.  Trinitarian Christians believe that God is actually three persons (persona), Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  While professional theologians understand that the Latin term persona does not mean "person" in our English sense, the vast majority of English-speaking Christians translate the "personhood of God" as meaning God has personality.  It can be argued that this idea that God is a person who has personality is but another case of us creating God in our own image, which has pretty much been my own personal view for a long time.  It seems ludicrous on the face of it that the Divine Creator Beyond could in any sense have something as human and mundane as personality.

Still, it is worth considering that personality as a tool of our evolutionary development reflects a predisposition of the Creator, perhaps even an aspect of divine reality.  It remains entirely speculative to assert the personality of God, but it is less speculative to claim that personality is somehow within the "providence of God" and again somehow compatible with "God's will for humanity."  At the very least, it would seem that our having personalities is not a barrier that stand between us and God as such.  Certainly, the way we express personality can be a barrier, but it is not inherently so.

If, then, we apply the English-language conception of person to God as a metaphor we are not asserting something necessarily illogical or out of sorts with modern science—so long as we remember that we are using personhood metaphorically.  It functions thus as a helpful "mask" (the original Latin meaning of persona) of the Divine Beyond, which remains unknown to us directly.  It is not wrong to think of God in personal terms including the ides of having a personal relationship with God.  Whether or not God is a person or has personality, we can legitimately experience God in these terms—and think of God in this way.  It is, we might say, in our God-given nature to do so.

Reflections on Competition

The creation stories contained in Genesis 1-2 affirm a number of things including the goodness of creation including humanity and the idea that the Earth was created to be a garden in which we live in peace with all of life and each other.  The story of Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden in Genesis 3 affirms a less happy fact: it was humanity's competitive spirit, its desire to be equal with God that led to expulsion.  Humanity "had it all" and wanted more.  The story of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4:1-16) confirms this ancient analysis of the human condition: our desire to be better than someone else, to have more than they have lies at the root of our tragic failings as a race.

If we weren't so competitive, we would still be in the Garden.  Jesus made much the same point when it came to the Kingdom of God: those who want to be "first" there must be slaves and servants who are not interested in what they attain but in how they serve (see Mark 10:35-45).  The lesson of the Bible is that we cannot go home to the Kingdom, which is the Garden, until we stop being destructively, greedily competitive.

As an evolutionary tool, competition is important to our race.  We determine leadership through competition.  Our very survival required that we compete with our species and with other human groups for scarce resources.  We obtain and keep territory through competition.  Our young learned the skills they needed to survive (and even thrive) through competitive play, and we continue to take great pleasure in competition.  Placed in this context, the biblical message can be understood to make at least two important points: first, the problem is not competition itself.  We obviously were created with a competitive spirit in the Garden as a part of God's good creation of us.  The problem in Genesis is that we started competing in ways that are counterproductive.  Second, the road back to the Garden (the Kingdom, if you will) takes us away from competition.  It means unlearning the competitive spirit that gets us into so much trouble, causes so much pain.

Just as we abuse God's good gift of a loving spirit by turning it into lust, so we abuse the good gift of competition by turning it into greed.  The antidote for love gone bad is asking and giving forgiveness; the antidote for competition gone bad is seeking to serve.  We are created to be competitive.  The issue is how we compete, which takes us ultimately into the realm of the uses and abuses of power.

Failing the Test

New Life that Emerged during the "Cambrian Explosion"

Credit: D. W. Miller

If biblical literalists are going to make a persuasive case against evolution to those who accept the truth of evolution, there are certain minimum requirements that they need to meet including:  First, they have to demonstrate that they understand the process itself.  Second, they have to stay abreast of recent findings in evolutionary biology.  Third, they must show a willingness to consider the points made by "the other side" in the debate.  Finally, they should always be aware of the huge danger involved in using God to fill in the gaps in scientific knowledge.  The whole point of science is to fill in those gaps without recourse to supernatural explanations.  Forcing God into the gaps is only asking for failure

A recent posting at the Christian Post entitled, "Technology Proves Darwin's Evolution Theory is Flawed," demonstrates the importance of sticking to arguments that meet the above requirements.  It begins by violating the first requirement with a frivolous and ignorant argument, namely that evolution must be false because the author has trouble logging unto websites. He reasons, "...if evolution were true, then we are to believe a whole series of complex sequences managed to get everything right---repeatedly."  He can't get through complex sequences to log onto some sites, therefore evolutionary theory is wrong.

The comparison is silly, and therein lies the problem.  Logging onto a website has nothing whatsoever to do with biological evolution.  For one thing, evolution doesn't "get everything right."  In fact, evolution requires failure, repeated failure—the failure of species and of individual representatives of species to reproduce where others are successful.  And the evolutionary record is resplendent with species or branches of species that were successful but then failed, Neanderthals being the example that comes most readily to mind.  For another thing, evolution works over vast spans of time with vast numbers of species, not the tiny fraction of a moment of time one person spends trying to get onto a website.  It involves complex biological processes working over those spans.  The posting's comparison is important only because it demonstrates that the author does not understand biological evolution.  His arguments are persuasive only to others as ignorant as he is, which in the long run is hugely self-defeating as more and more people leave the ranks of the literalists.

Another argument put forward in the posting against evolution is the "Cambrian explosion," a period of time that saw the emergence of a large number of new species and the rapid expansion of life on the planet.  The author cites Stephen Meyer's new book, Darwin's Doubt (HarperOne, 2013), to make his case.  It turns out that Meyer is intimately connected with the intelligent design movement, and his book has met with intense rebuttal by those who actually work in the field of paleontology, such as Dr. Donal Prothero (here).  The thing is that science can account for the Cambrian explosion as an evolutionary phenomenon.  The explosion took place over tens of millions of years, plenty of time for evolution to work.  There are links to species already in existence before the explosion.  There are a number of theories as to why it took place, none of which require divine intervention.  The posting in the Christian Post does not consider any of this and is apparently ignorant of the essentially evolutionary nature of the phenomenon.

The posting ends by asserting that "the Word" caused the Cambrian explosion.  It is what provides the information necessary for the explosion to take place.  God fills the gap in scientific knowledge.  In fact, this gap has already closed; God is not necessary to explain it.  It is in this way that biblical literalists and a narrowly constructed creationism fails the test of putting forward cogent rebuttals of evolution.  It is in this way that the literalists give comfort to their enemy, those who reject the existence of God at all.  It is in this way that they fail the test...inevitably.

God & Evolution: Indirectly or Not At All?

When it comes to opinion polls, wording is everything.  In a news posting entitled, "Belief in Evolution Up Since 2004,"YouGov reported on the findings of a poll it recently conducted investigating American beliefs about God's role (or lack of a role) in evolution.  Those results show that some 21% of those polled agreed with the statement that, "Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process."  The alternative responses are: "Human begins evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, but God guided this process" (25%); "God created human beings in their present form within the last ten thousand years" (37%); and "not sure" (17%).  Readers can see the full results of the poll (here).

The YouGov posting goes on to note that when compared with similar polls conducted by CBS in 2004 and 2008 this most recent poll shows an increase in those who believe that "human beings evolved without guidance from God" from 13% in 2004 to 15% in 2008 to 21% in 2013.

The problem is that, as reported in a CBS news posting concerning its 2004 poll, the wording for the statement about God's not guiding evolution is, "Humans evolved, God did not guide [the] process."  The YouGov statement is wordier but still comparable were it not for the word, "directly".  In the CBS poll God is not involved at all.  In the YouGov poll God is not directly involved.  That leaves the possibility that God is indirectly involved in at least a couple of possible ways.  It is possible that God set the process of evolution going but since then has not been involved.  It is also possible that in one guise or another God indirectly encourages the emergence of a more godly humanity but does not directly influence the course of events because that would violate human freedom.  Now, both of these possibilities leave room for debate, but that is precisely the problem.  The YouGov wording is too open ended.  It requires interpretation.  And there is no way of knowing how many individuals who believe that God is involved with evolution indirectly decided to affirm the statement that, "Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process" and how many decided that the second response, "Human begins evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, but God guided this process," better fit their views.  Some respondents who do not believe that God is involved in evolution at all, on the other hand, might also have a problem with the wording of the first YouGov statement.  It leaves open the possibility that God might be indirectly involved when they believe that God is not involved at all.  Such a person might chose "not sure" rather than leave even a slight possibility of divine involvement in evolution.

There is little doubt that the number of Americans who reject divine involvement in evolution is growing.  There is every reason to doubt on the basis of the YouGov poll that it has grown by 8% in nine years.  It would not be particularly surprising if it has, but we don't know that it has based on this data.  And while this may be a minor point, statistical data such as this is always open to interpretation and should never be taken as certain even without the added inconsistency of wording in this particular case.  As the texts on survey methods remind us, questionnaires don't reveal what people think. What they do reveal is how a particular group of respondents answered a particular question on a particular day.

The Evolution of Our Faith

Evolution is not just a biological phenomenon.  It is built into us culturally as well.  And where we seem to be evolving is away from violence and toward nonviolence, away from injustice and toward justice, and away from discrimination and toward inclusiveness.  It is likely that we are still in the early stages of our social and ethical evolution, and its prospects for success are not clear.  We may consume our planet and ourselves before the arc of our evolution has a chance to fully kick in and take us back from the brink (or lead us around the brink, or show us how to leap across it).  Or it may well be that we evolve toward the Kingdom faster (if only slightly faster) than we destroy ourselves and our world.

Theologically, we can understand evolution as being both a divine test and a manifestation of God's grace.  Why we have been created in the way we are is beyond our knowing, at least now.  Why we can't just be perfect and skip the massive amounts of pain and suffering that are a part of evolution is also beyond our knowing.  It is true that the pain and the beauty of our evolutionary experience are deeply entwined and in their intimate dance lies a truth we keep reaching for and never quite grasp.  The Test and the Grace are two sides of the same coin—perhaps dimly like the athlete who must invest hours of dreary sweat and physical pain in pursuing that instance of victorious glory.  Or, more powerfully, the reality of both the Test and Grace, that is Cross and Resurrection, are exposed to our view in the person of Jesus Christ.

Theology evolves as well, and a key moment in our Protestant corner of that evolution came with the dawning realization that in spite of certain very clear biblical passages we can, should, and must open the gates of opportunity for full service and authority in the church to women.  The battle for racial equality has been of central importance in American society, but it has been the battle for gender equality in the church that has brought us face to face with the need to balance doctrine with justice—actually to tip the scales of faith in the direction of justice over doctrine and the social injustices that sometimes accompany our doctrines.  We are learning thus to see the Other who is not our gender, race, ethnicity, political suasion, sexual orientation, or religion as being fully within the shade of God's grace.    In this evolutionary direction lies the Kingdom of God's love, justice, and peace.  Amen.

Slowly Drifting Toward the Kingdom

It is, admittedly, a painfully slow drift toward a more peaceful world, but there is evidence (as I've written before here) that the human race is evolving in that direction.  It is not clear if it is actually another piece of that evidence or not, but a recent opinion piece in the Chicago Tribune entitled, "American football industry is on its deathbed," by John Kass has certainly gotten its share of attention. Kass argues that a combination of factors related to the inherent violence of the sport will lead to its extinction.  One factor is the many lawsuits against schools, colleges, and professional teams.  Former players and their families are suing for the physical pain and hurt caused by the game.  The other main factor is parents.  Kass argues that more and more parents are keeping their kids out of football because they know how dangerous it is for them.  He writes, "In cultural terms, parents who send their 10-year-olds to play football might as well hold up signs saying they'd like to give their children cigarettes and whiskey."  Lawsuits will "overwhelm" the game even as there are fewer and fewer young athletes taking part in it.

OK, maybe Kass is overstating the case.  In the absence of a good deal of research, who is to say?  But, if you do a Google search on the question, "Is football in decline?", you come up with a good deal of opinions out there supporting the idea that it is either in decline or about to change radically because of the findings of medical science about the physical consequences involved in playing football. One of the first hits on my search list was, "The Coming Decline of American Football," which makes some of the same points Kass makes.

The Kingdom is not going to come in some great cataclysmic event, whatever the rapture crowd believes.  It is coming, in fact, through the quiet work of the Spirit working through many ways and means in concert with humanity itself.  As this debate over American rules football suggests, we no longer value violence in the way our race once did, or at least we no longer value it to the degree we once did.  And in spite of the headlines, nations and individuals are less given to resorting to violence to get what we want.  We have a long, long, very long way to go, but slowly we are drifting toward the Kingdom.  Amen.

Is Evolution "Guided"?

Earlier this year, the blog Open Parachute posted an article entitled, "Theological mental gymnastics over evolution," which criticizes theists who believe that God actively guides evolution for "throwing the baby out" with the bath water.  The author is a self-proclaimed non-theist who is concerned to protect the practice of science from theistic intrusions.  In the article, he says that he doesn't have a problem with those believers who think that God somehow initiated the evolutionary process and then leaves it alone so that it carries on unguided.  The author, however, does not approve of those theists who believe that God guides evolution.  He insists that evolution is an unguided process.  The Open Parachute posting echoes the sentiments of the biologist, Jerry A. Coyne, who has written (here), "...I vehemently oppose those evolutionists and accommodationists who won’t affirm that evolution is unguided and purposeless (in the sense of not being directed by a higher intelligence or teleological force). For to the best of our knowledge evolution, like all natural processes, is purposeless and unguided."

The short answer to these sentiments that theists often rush to is that they are nothing more or less than the opinions of individuals who do not know that evolution is purposeless and unguided.  Science, the argument goes, is not competent to judge such things.  In fact, by its very nature it is purposely blind to meta-physical realities.  When atheists assert the absence of God, they enter the realm of theology and make theological claims, and they can no more prove scientifically their anti-doctrines than we can prove our doctrines.

As far as it goes, our critique of their critique is correct.  As far as it goes.  But our atheistic friends raise a question that we should not dodge by jumping to our own counter-critique.  They are correct in observing that evolution is, as best we can tell, a random process that does not seem to be guided or to have purpose.  We should also pay attention to the danger of too easily imposing a theistic overlay onto natural processes, such as evolution.  Science is a valuable tool for obtaining knowledge, and we have to respect its integrity as such.

Still, theists approach such questions relying on another set of "data," which is not scientific but compelling.  For Christians, Jesus of Nazareth is the key data point, or perhaps it is better to say that the Incarnation is that key data point.  Religious experiences, which have a biological component and so are a part of the "real" world of science, comprises a second data point, one we Christians share with people of other faiths (and, apparently, some who claim no faith).  The almost mystical connection that we have with the natural world (and something we feel with particular clarity here in Lewis County) provides a third data point, perhaps linked to the second.  And, then, the ongoing process of creation is itself still another data point.  That a universe friendly to life on Earth even exists defies odds so incredible that on the face of it belief in an unguided and purposeless natural world seems more outlandish than belief that it the universe is in some way guided and built out of some purpose.  The speculation of some atheists that there is an infinite number of universes (so, of course, at least one must have life) only makes the whole thing even more incredible—an infinite reality that has no purpose?  The belief that evolution is purposeless and unguided is just a belief and one that has nothing to do with science as a set of disciplines devoted to study of the natural world.  Evolution, indeed, actually seems to be headed in a direction, one in which non-life leapt into life and non-intelligence became intelligence and, quite possibly, we are standing on the verge of another leap from biological intelligence to cyber-intelligence.  Over the course of evolution things are getting more complex.  To no end?  That could be, but given our other data points we Christians think that there is guided purpose to it all.  Evolution seems to have direction because it does have direction, within that direction there lies purpose, and Beyond that purpose there lies guidance.

But, what kind of purpose?  How is evolution "guided"?  We need to walk beyond some of our traditional thinking and answers because our non-theist friends are correct when they state that evolution does work randomly and does not appear to be guided.  They are correct that we can understand a great deal about the biology of evolution without recourse to metaphysical "speculations."  How can evolution be both guided and not, both purposeful and not?  Those are the questions we must face.  (Actually, we have long faced them in such questions as the relationship between divine sovereignty and human free will).

Evolution & Dr. Luke

When Dr. Luke wrote the Book of the Acts, neither he nor anyone else had an inkling of the advances in the biological sciences that we are making today.  Darwin lay far, far in the future.  Luke's world view was what anybody's would be in the first century.  One cannot prooftext anything he wrote to prove that evolution "fits" with the Bible.  For the sake of the integrity of scripture, we have to be very clear on this point.  The Book of the Acts was not written to prove our 21st century understanding of the universe.

Still, it is interesting to note that Luke's description of God in Acts 17:22-28 can be read quite comfortably from an evolutionary perspective (a "Darwinian" perspective, if you like).  That description begins with an affirmation that God is creator of heaven and earth, that is the universe and all that is in it, including Planet Earth.  God the Creator is the source of life.  Verse 26 avows that, "From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live." (NRSV)  It is not even a stretch to read into this statement that God did these things by means of biological evolution, creating in us the potential to inhabit the planet and the potential for human cultural as well as genetic diversity—so that some adapt themselves to the extremes of the frozen North while others find habitation in tropical jungles.  These verses also affirm the ultimate goal of humanity as being the search for God.  The trajectory of evolution has taken us from non-being to being, non-life to life, non-intelligence to intelligence, and it is not hard to believe that each evolutionary leap is taking us in the direction of the divine.  We are created to reach out for God.  It is also not difficult to think of God as the Beyond One that is also intimately Present in the vast flow of evolution, particularly human evolution. It makes perfect sense to say, then, as verse 28 does, "For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'"  Amen.

On That Day

Human life is complex.  It involves a good number of living, moving pieces.  When all of these pieces are working well together, we are healthy in all of the dimensions of life.  Because we are complex, we can picture health in a variety of ways, but one helpful way is to focus on the relationship between feeling and thinking.  We are created to feel, and when we are healthy our emotional life is runs deep.  We are also created to think, and when we are healthy our cognitive life runs deep.

When God breathed Spirit into us and set us on the course of evolution, God built into us the potential to feel and to think.  In the real world, we all too often fail to balance the two, but the direction we're headed in suggests that One Day, if we remain true to the path we are on, we will learn that balance.  We will learn to feel with our minds and think with our hearts.  In fact, it may be better not to speak of "balance" at all because balance implies a scale while the direction of evolution is taking us toward a deep unity between feeling and thinking that, paradoxically, also maintains the separate integrity of each while blurring the boundaries between them into insignificance.  We will learn to think with our heart and feel with our mind.

On That Day, the ongoing battle among Protestants between those who lead with their hearts and those who lead with their heads will finally come to an end—not in a truce, but in a profound marriage of mind and heart.  On That Day, our churches will read the deepest theologies with enthusiasm and worship with thoughtful joy.  We will learn passionate patience.  Our hearts will sing in harmonious silence.  We will mock neither the revivalist nor the scholar nor will we honor one at the expense of the other.  Indeed, On That Day, our scholars will lead the revival and our revivalists will call us to sit down and think.  On That Day, we will celebrate the end of absolutes and the demise of relativism and live in thoughtful-joyful worship of the One God who is Beyond all and Present in all.  On That Day.

Bad Policy

One of the worst errors of theology and popular religion is to make statements which intentionally or unintentionally contradict the structure of reality.

Paul Tillich

Dynamics of Faith (HarperOne, pp. 39-40)

Evolution and Providence

The windmills of Lewis County, NY

Evolution does not fall within God's providence.  Providence, rather, falls within the movement of galactic evolution in the universe and biological evolution on Earth.  That is, we experience God's care for us in the context of evolution, which is why so many of us can connect, for example, so deeply with a dog or a cat or another member of another species to the point that their presence in our lives improves our mental and even physical health.  That is why one of the places where most of us are most apt to feel the presence of God's Spirit is not in worship on Sunday but on the trail on a Saturday—or in the presence of a magnificent sunset or sunrise, or in the quick, cool touch of a dancing breeze. Galactic and biological evolution are the ways God creates, and they are the ways God creates us.  They do not fall within God's providence.  They are, instead, the context through which God channels divine care and compassion.

JX 594: A Name to Remember

Medical researchers in Canada have completed an initial clinical trial of a bio-engineered virus, JX 594, which has the ability to replicate in and potentially destroy cancer cells anywhere in a patient's body, not just where the cancer is known to be.  In a group of 23 test patients with various stages of cancer, JX 594 proved that it could replicate inside of cancer cells while leaving all other cells alone, and the patients suffered only mild colds as a side effect.  More trials have to follow, but this viral therapy may well revolutionize and simplify the treatment of cancer.  JX 594 can apparently be engineered to attack different kinds of cancer cells in a way tailor made for patients.  This is incredibly good news (reported here).

Things like cancer, which causes untold amounts of human suffering and sadness in our world, remain one of the most difficult things to deal with theologically.  Why did God's good creation lead to things like this?  Suffering and sadness, however, seem to be related somehow to the divinely structured evolution of life on Earth.  We know from personal experiences that pain and loss can have beneficial affects.  We grow, we learn, and sometimes we find deeper spiritual life through such things.  Why it has to be this way, we don't know.

If, however, we are going to "blame God" for all of this suffering and sadness, then it is also only fair to understand that God also created (and continues to create) us with the potential for medicine—for being increasingly able to reduce suffering and bring relief to those in pain.  Evidently (or, better, evidentially), the capacity to overcome diseases is engineered in us as a potential we are more and more realizing.  And when we also realize that nature itself provides the basis of many medical treatments including many herbs and plants—well, if we're going to blame God for allowing the suffering, it is only fair that we praise God for graciously engineering in us and our world answers to our suffering.

The God who built grief into us has also built joy, and there seems to be a connection between them that we don't understand very well at all.  It's worth wondering, however, if our joy would be so deep, so meaningful if we had never known grief.  Are not joy and sadness partners in the dance of life, together drawing us to a deeper place within ourselves?  Is that place not wisdom, which remains one of our most precious human gifts?  This is not to say that we should not seek to conquer cancer with things like JX 594, but rather to say that in doing so we are heading in the direction set us for us from the beginning—the peaceable Kingdom of God.  Amen.

Evolution & the Bible

In 1969, the General Assembly of the former Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) approved a statement on the relationship of the theory of evolution to the Bible.  Apparently, it remains the only formal statement by one of the predecessor general assemblies of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and, as such, is the only formal statement we have of the denomination's stand on evolution.  It's not a long statement, and I've included the whole text below.  The link to the online source is (here).

EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE

Neither Scripture, our Confession of Faith, nor our Catechisms, teach the Creation of man by the direct and immediate acts of God so as to exclude the possibility of evolution as a scientific theory. Scripture states that "out of the ground" the Lord God formed every beast, Genesis 2:19, and "of the dust of the ground" the Lord God formed man, Genesis 2:7. Genesis 1 teaches that according to the Word of God there came into being Light, Firmament (called Heaven), the Earth and the Seas. Then, God said: "Let the waters bring forth" and "Let the earth bring forth." After the creation of Light, the Firmament and the Earth, after the Earth and the Waters brought forth plant, aquatic and animal life, then God said: "Let us make man." This man, Adam, meaning both a man and man, is by nature both individual and corporate. The name Adam is simply a generic term for man brought forth from the Earth. Genesis 1 describes Creation as taking place in six days; however, it is not necessary to understand the Genesis account as a scientific description of Creation. Our Confession of Faith says:

"It pleased God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom and goodness, in the beginning, to create or make of nothing the world, and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good.

After God had made all other creatures, he created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls . . ." (Chapter IV).

The Larger Catechism answers the question "How did God create man?" as follows: "After God had made all other creatures, he created man, male and female; formed the body of man of the dust of the ground, and the woman of the rib of man; endued them with living, reasonable, and immortal souls; made them after his own image . . ."(Q. 17)

It may be that the Westminster Divines understood the "six days" as well as such phrases as "of the dust of the ground" and "the rib of man" in a literal sense; but, as they were merely using the words of Scripture with no intention to argue the theory of evolution (of which they had never heard), we are free to interpret their words in a different sense, just as we now do the words of Scripture. Nowhere is the process by which God made, created or formed man set out in scientific terms. A description of this process in its physical aspects is a matter of natural science. The Bible is not a book of science. As John Calvin said, commenting on Genesis: "To my mind, this is a certain principle, that nothing is here treated of but the visible form of the world. He who would learn astronomy and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere." (Genesis Commentary — on Chap. 1, verse 6).

If the Confession of Faith, or the Catechisms, appear in some manner to support the position of the General Assemblies of 1886, 1888, 1889 and 1924 this is not because of Scripture itself but rather because Scripture was interpreted with 17th Century perspectives and presuppositions.

Some form of evolutionary theory is accepted by the majority of modern scientists. The Darwin Centennial celebration, composed of fifty outstanding experts on the various phases of evolutionary theory, expressed the meaning of evolution as follows: "Evolution is definable in general terms as a one-way irreversible process in time, which during its course generates novelty, diversity, and higher levels of organization. It operates in all sectors of the phenomenal universe, but has been most fully described and analyzed in the biological sector." (Evolution After Darwin, edited by Sol Tax, University of Chicago Press, containing the University of Chicago Centennial papers and discussion, 1959)

Our responsibility as Christians is to deal seriously with the theories and findings of all scientific endeavors, evolution included, and to enter into open dialogue with responsible persons involved in scientific tasks about the achievement, failures and limits of their activities and of ours. The truth or falsity of the theory of evolution is not the question at issue and certainly not a question which lies within the competence of the Permanent Theological Committee. The real and only issue is whether there exists clear incompatibility between evolution and the Biblical doctrine of Creation. Unless it is clearly necessary to uphold a basic Biblical doctrine, the Church is not called upon and should carefully refrain from either affirming or denying the theory of evolution. We conclude that the true relation between the evolutionary theory and the Bible is that of non-contradiction and that the position stated by the General Assemblies of 1886, 1888, 1889 and 1924 was in error and no longer represents the mind of our Church.

We re-affirm our belief in the uniqueness of man as a creature whom God has made in His own image.

Darwin, Texas, & Textbooks

According to a news posting on the Dallas Morning News website entitled, "New science e-books approved by state education board," the Texas Board of Education avoided a confrontation over materials for teaching biology in the state's schools.  Texas could not afford to buy new biology textbooks this year, and the board decided instead to publish a list of recommended supplementary online materials.  It looked like the the list might include some items promoting intelligent design (ID) theory, which is widely seen as a "front" for conservative Christian creationism doctrines.  According to the news posting, a number of "social conservatives" sit on the board, including its chairperson, and there was a real possibility that there would be a fight over the supplementary list as a result.  In the end, no ID texts were included, and the potential skirmish never materialized.

The Austin Statesman noted in its posting (here) on the Board of Education's decision that a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Kelly Allen, was among those speaking against including the ID material on the supplemental list. It quotes her as saying, "I don't want my children's public school teachers to teach faith and God in a science classroom. True religion can handle truth in all its forms. Evolution is solid science."

Whatever our personal beliefs about evolution, Pastor Allen is correct in saying that evolution is solid science.  ID, on the other hand, has failed to establish itself as a viable scientific alternative for the study of biology. It is theology disguised as science, and as such it has no place in courses teaching the science of biology. If allowed in science classrooms, the teaching of ID not only introduces extraneous subject matters, but it also offers teachers of a certain theological persuasion the opportunity to evangelize their students with their religious beliefs.  Pastor Allen is also correct in her statement that religion can "handle truth in all its forms."  Religious faith at its best is a search for and a commitment to truth.  Not only can it "handle" scientific truths, it can embrace them.

Divinely Guided Evolution

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's report entitled, "Global Survey of Evangelical Protestant Leaders," introduced in an earlier posting (here), included a question concerning evolution, which provides us with further insights into the various ways people of faith understand the relationship between God and evolution.  Question 41 of the questionnaire (p. 109) asked the respondents, evangelical leaders who attended the 1010 Lausanne Conference in South Africa, to select one of three choices that corresponded most nearly to their own thinking.  The results were:

• 3% agreed that, "Humans and other living things have evolved over time due to natural processes such as natural selection."
• 41% agreed that, "A supreme being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of creating humans and other life in the form it exists today."
• 47% agreed that, "Humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time."
• 9% gave no answer.

This is not what we might have expected.  The general perception is that evangelicals are biblical literalists and have to believe that all living species were created out of whole cloth at the beginning of creation.  No so, however.  Four evangelical leaders in ten, instead, accepted the truth of evolution but rejected natural selection as the mechanism that drives evolution.  Instead, they hold that God guides the process of evolution—a half-step away from a literalist interpretation of Genesis and toward biological evolution.

The Rev. Bill McGinnis, who apparently represents this middle way between outright rejection and wholesale acceptance of evolution, writes, "God created evolution, and He guides it and controls it, for His own purposes. Evolution is not an accident, and it does not happen according to any mechanistic process."  Rejecting the idea of the survival of the fittest and the role of random mutations in evolution, McGinnis also states, "No. God is the Creator of everything, just as it says in the Bible. He uses evolution as one of His creative tools, and he guides it and controls it every step of the way."

It's an interesting approach, but the problem is that the evidence for natural selection is overwhelming and growing by the minute.  (See the RPK posting, "The Scientific Method vs. the Creationist Method," on this same subject).  It, furthermore, leaves unanswered the issue of why God would use a method that is so clearly hit or miss and leaves all sorts of sloppy left overs (like the human appendix) that are unnecessary and sometimes harmful.  The idea that God manipulates the details of evolution, finally, also leaves us with the thorny issue of predestination and human freedom.  If God is in such intimate control, then we seem to be no more than puppets whose strings are pulled by a divine evolutionary comptroller.  God must also be the immediate source of all suffering in nature and among humans.  In all, it still seems best to understand God as the creator of evolutionary processes, which operate by fixed laws but also incorporate freedom and even chance as part of the process.  We see God's presence in the process of evolution as just that: a Presence working within the laws of evolution, seeking to mold us to ends that we really don't comprehend.  God works by the Spirit, not by fiat.

An Article of Blind Belief

The classical neo-Darwinian explanation of the development of life on Earth...has been to assign it totally to the sifting and preservation through the process of natural selection of the effects of small random genetic mutations.  No reasonable person doubts that this is a component of the history of life but that it is the sole and and totally adequate cause of all that has happened is simply an article of blind belief.

John Polkinghorne,

Belief in God in an Age of Science

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