Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? (2)

This is the continuation of my blog  Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? (1).    In this blog I am reflecting on Denis Alexander’s book CREATION OR EVOLUTION: DO WE HAVE TO CHOOSE?     The answer to the book title’s question for Alexander and for my self is “no, we don’t have to choose because the two are opposed only if one demands only a literalist reading of Genesis 1-3 or if one is an atheist.”

There is a certain difficulty for Christians in accepting a notion that Adam and Eve were created as eternal beings not subject to death, for this would imply that that Adam and Eve had some kind of existence apart from earth and were not created from real dirt/dust and that life in Paradise was not subject to the same scientific law as we are today.   For example if Adam and Eve ate fruit in Eden, were the cells and plants subject to death or not?     If they had made fig leaf garments before the fall, would they garments also have been eternal?   Were all fish, amphibians and insects completely vegan and not predators or parasites?    It would imply that Adam and Eve were angelic beings who fell to earth from some other kind of place because of sin and not because God created them with bodies.  It would imply that this world is not God’s creation but a lesser world destined for beings beneath God’s dignity.  This is Babylonian cosmology but not a Biblical one; certainly this would be an idea that the Jews and Genesis would argue against as Genesis 1 unlike the Babylonian creation stories has a good God making a good creation.   Genesis 2 admittedly is more ambivalent on the goodness of creation for there is a serpent already in Paradise and a fruit that if eaten leads to death.

Alexander however sticks with his Genesis-Jeremiah notion that the Biblical story is not meant to be read as science but rather offers a cosmological understanding of creation in which ultimately “Physical death has no place in the fulfilled kingdom of God, the new heavens and the new earth.”   Sin and death are part of this world, but this world is only a small part of the entire story which God is telling beginning with Genesis.   For Alexander the coming of Christ is inaugurating that hoped for new age in which the rules of nature (which science studies) have no final say:  the healing ministry of Jesus points not back to a pre-fallen state but looks forward to the new heaven and new earth.   The Bible’s account of creation from Genesis to Revelation is thus not intended to be science but rather God revealing His own plan which gives this world meaning which is outside of the study of science.  To try to force the Scriptures to be science is in fact to limit them and reduce them to this world rather than tying this world into the world to come.

Turning to look at some scientific concepts which are part of an evolutionary worldview, Alexander notes, “The term ‘survival of the fittest’ has sometimes been used to describe natural selection, but is not very accurate because survival is not really the main point in this process… the key point about natural selection is the successful reproduction that ensures that an individual’s genes are passed on to the next generation.”   The concept of “survival of the fittest” has been co-opted by secular social scientists and political ideologues and used for all kinds of purposes that are far removed from the original idea of natural selection.   Natural selection is a creative and life giving process not a political justification for oppressing the weak.

Alexander also notes that there are philosophical assumptions at the basis of evolution which are a matter of faith.   “Chance is simply a handy description that we humans use for our beliefs about the properties of matter.  There is no such agent as ‘metaphysical chance’, but there is the human belief held by some people that the universe has no ultimate meaning.”  In other words chance is a concept we put apply to how we perceive natural selection working.  The reality is we cannot know scientifically whether events we perceive of as chance are part of a pattern and plan that we cannot detect. 

“Evolutionary history on this planet displays overall increased complexity, genomic constraint and convergence.  …   an ‘atheism-of-the-gaps’ type of argument in which atheists seek to support their disbelief in God based on interpretations of scientific data which appear initially plausible due to lack of knowledge about the data, but appear less believable as our understanding of the process –  in this case the evolutionary process – become more complete.”

It is not only believers who have to choose faith in a God who guides the universe.  For non-believers “chance” is just as much an issue of belief because there is no way to prove that events are random rather than part of a pattern we cannot detect.

Alexander is a Christian believer, a theist and a scientist, whose writings have won him praise from evangelical Christians as well as from scientists.  He has not embraced the ideas of Intelligent Design because he feels that is an “argument from ignorance” – because we currently don’t know how complexity could emerge spontaneously does not mean that it can’t or didn’t.  It only means our ability to know is limited.  This however is the same argument he applies to atheistic scientists – we do not have the complete picture about God and His role in creation and so concluding there is no God is an assumption based in incomplete evidence. 

Next:  Evolution from Creation to New Creation (1)