Creation and Evolution

In Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons: Evolution and Christianity from Darwin to Intelligent Design, historian Peter Bowler makes it his goal to show that the history of the debate between creationism and evolution was not two-sided, as we are tempted to see it today, with atheistic Darwinism on the one hand and young-Earth creationism on the other. Instead, he shows that there was an array of alternative interpretations to earth and human origins, some of which represent what Bowler calls the “liberal synthesis,” or liberal theologians’ attempts to promote a compromise between Scripture and evolution. In the midst of his argument, he explains the two main issues that Christians have with naturalistic evolution, and attempts to show that there are ways to overcome them.

The issues Bowler mention involved random variation on the one hand and the requirement of competition and death on the other. The idea that humans are a result of random variation implies there is no purpose in human evolution; and if there is no purpose in evolution, God never intended a humanity that has the moral and spiritual character that we do. (23-24, 220) Further, the idea that humans evolved through a process of competition and death contradicts the Christian view that suffering is a result of Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden. Suffering could not have been a precursor to Adam, Christians say, because it was Adam who caused the suffering in the first place. (27-28, 225-226)

Bowler responds to the first problem of purposeless evolution by arguing that it might be best to question the atheistic Darwinist belief that evolution is totally nonprogressive. Drawing on several examples, he concludes that God may have used natural selection as the evolutionary mechanism to produce the moral and spiritual humans we see today. This may, at first glance, mean we have no real freedom, because God ultimately determined that we would become who we are; but he goes on to cite three theologians and one scientist, who argue that natural selection may have been the only way that God could give humanity the freedom to develop in the way he determined us to go. He did not, they say, give us a specific goal to reach, but risked the fact that we may not have developed in the way he wanted. (222-225)

Bowler holds up the belief of John Polkinghorne and John F. Haught as a possible response to the second problem of suffering. If God gave us a measure of freedom, they say, it should not surprise us that we would use that freedom to cause suffering. God’s incarnation in the world, to them, would be intended to sympathize with the suffering inherent in humanity and in nature. Bowler understands that answers like this and the one cited above would be inadequate to fundamentalists, but he is encouraged by the fact that liberal Christian thinkers are now able to formulate a view of their faith that comes close to fitting with Darwinist ideology. This shows him that there are, as there historically have been, alternatives to the polarized views of fundamentalists and atheistic Darwinists. (226-227)

Note that this exposition on Bowler's work is just that. I am not critiquing his thesis here, but only exposing it. It may suffice here to say that he convincingly shows that the perspective of a two-sided argument, between young-Earth creationism on the one hand and random evolution on the other, is oversimplified. Whether or to what degree I believe God included evolution in man's makeup is the subject of another post.