THE ARGUMENTS IN SUMMARY

We offer 2 forms of summary of the debate which took place in this forum: the first is very concise while the second is more comprehensive in bringing together the threads of both arguments.


CONCISE SUMMARY

Antony and Alan share a common faith in the creative power of God. However, how that power is displayed in the created order is interpreted differently by the two discussants.
Antony’s understanding of theism leads him to reject as an a priori assumption the concept that God did not direct in detail the biological processes that led to the pinnacle of creation - IE the appearance of homo sapiens. That is, we should expect to see specific evidence of the handiwork of the Creator in creation and, arguably, you have to have a deist or atheist outlook not to proceed on this basis.
Alan takes the position that a theist can explore the natural world and look for mechanistic explanations for the phenomena that are found there.
The rigorous application of the scientific method (which cannot invoke supernatural processes since it is based entirely on empirical observation) has been demonstrably successful in unlocking the secrets of the natural world. For the theist, this exercise of reason is a God-given faculty even when it is applied in a way that leads to the conclusion that there is a natural explanation for biological or other phenomena.
The motivations of both discussants are honourable and both seek spiritual insight into the work of the Creator God. Within the unity of Christ’s church, there is room for diversity of belief on these and many other matters.

SUMMARY - Question 1
For those who believe in God, what value is there in trying to understand the processes by which God achieved his creative purpose?

Question 1/Answer 1/Antony
Antony is clear that there is great value in theists engaging with science. It inspires worship and awe; it is faith enhancing; it is fascinating in itself to follow the processes at work.
He also emphasises that the human mind cannot understand the whole way in which God works to bring about his purposes.
From there, Antony turns his attention to the subject that often divides theists: evolution.
As a theist, Antony distances himself from what he perceives as a neo Darwinian non- negotiable that ‘prohibits bringing God into the discussion.’ He also expresses his belief that “a foundation stone of Darwinism is the absolute absence of purpose”.

Question 1/Answer 1/Alan
Before challenging the view that evolution is necessarily ‘God-less’, Alan complements the reasons given by Antony about why there is value in studying God’s creative processes - as far as we are able. He states the importance of recognising that all truth is God’s truth. We have a responsibility, as those who value truth, to distinguish it from falsehood and superstition with respect to the natural world. Psalm 111:2 encourages study of the works of the Lord and to take delight in them. Alan follows through by noting the connection between early scientists and the belief in a creator that motivated their exploration of the creation.

Editor’s Contribution: There is almost total agreement in answers to this question and each answer enhances and complements the other. Antony recognises this is his second short post. But now it was time to address differences of view on the explanatory power of neo Darwinism.
Alan had noted Antony’s claim about the exclusion of God from the science of evolution and was set to challenge it.

Question 1/Answer 2/Alan
Alan sees the need to define some terms: nature, theism and evolution, in order to respond to Antony.
In summary, being a theist deeply impacts how one sees nature and evolution. God is therefore not necessarily excluded. (Ed: Arguably, whether or not God is excluded from reasoning about the development of the natural world, is a matter of individual choice).
Theists reject the atheist view that nature is an autonomous force. As a theist, Allan believes in God’s moment by moment sustaining of the natural world and, indeed, if it meets God’s spiritual purpose, he may intervene at will to act contrary to the laws of nature. As a theist, Alan perceives the whole of the natural world and the scientific discoveries about it within the wrapper of theism. It includes seeing such astonishing phenomena as ‘the Big Bang’ and the necessarily fine-tuned forces in the universe that sustain life on earth as evidence of the work of God.
Finally, Alan queries Antony’s basic premise that evolution is a purposeless process, giving examples of theist-scientists who find evidence of purpose in evolution. Would Antony ‘buy’ that?

Editor’s contribution: Responses to question 1 have, by now, gone beyond answering the original question for now the really key issues are bubbling to the surface

Question 1/Answer 2/Antony
In his final post in relation to the starter question, Antony focuses on Alan’s references to certain amazing phenomena in the universe. Surely this is evidence of Intelligent Design? Isn’t Alan embracing ID without admitting it? Or can it be that Alan perceives evidence of design in the cosmos but rejects it in the world of microbiology? If evidence of design can be perceived at the macro level of the universe, why not at the micro level of DNA, for example. Antony cannot accept that something as specific and as intricate (necessarily so) as DNA can have emerged from processes that basically are random and left to their own devices.

It was time to transfer this so far unfinished business to a fresh question.

SUMMARY - Question 2
Should Christians approach the subject of evolution with a concerned scepticism?

Question 2/Answer 1/Antony
Antony notes the need to distinguish between evolution and the neo Darwinian explanation of the process. He finds convincing evidence for the process of evolution in the fossil record but also sees Intelligent Design at work in bringing sophisticated life to be. He contrasts this with what he still perceives to be the purposeless and anti-theistic neo Darwin explanation of the processes that shape the natural world. Anticipating the criticism that his view puts God in the gap of scientific understanding, he claims the ID case is made on positive evidence of design.

Question 2/Answer 1/Alan
The question was about scepticism and Alan emphasises how it is vital in pursuing truth in any subject. Like Antony, he too finds convincing evidence for evolution in the fossil record but also in genetics (which shows the interconnectedness of all living things). He believes that mutation and natural selection have had a role in this but rejects the conclusion that the process is therefore God-less -as is claimed by those with an atheist agenda.

Editor’s contribution: So there is agreement on the fact of evolution but not on the extent to which orthodox scientific explanation of the process is convincing.

Question 2/Answer 2/Antony
Antony, wishing to provide evidence for design, suggests a list of phenomena from the cosmos to molecular biology and the brain that, to his thinking, have features that show them to have been designed.

Question 2/Answer 2/Alan
Alan agrees that many phenomena display the imprimatur of the creator’s intelligent mind but challenges the view that these are somehow exceptions to the way in which God has brought about the whole of the created order. Recognising that a core concept in ID is ‘irreducible complexity’, Alan probes Antony on this concept. Why is it necessary?

Question 2/Answer 3/Antony
Responding, Antony claims there are ‘systems that can only work to the advantage of the organism if they are complete’. However, Antony does not thereby wish to imply that God is only occasionally
‘tweaking’ His creation. In his view this would be to misunderstand ID. Neither does finding evidence of ID in a part of life negate God’s perfect activity in the whole of life.

Editor’s Contribution: Darwinism states that evolution takes place by a series of tiny steps with each one being ‘selected’ because it confers some form of developmental advantage.
It is clear that Antony and Alan approach this explanation with very different levels of comfort.
Antony is deeply uncomfortable with what he perceives to be its exclusion of God in its explanatory approach, its acceptance that complex systems develop principally by random mutation and natural selection and its apparent rejection of inbuilt purpose.
Alan is comfortable with the sense that neo Darwinism - like all scientific explanations - must be seen within the perspective of theism; science is never the ultimate explanation. That leaves the question of whether neo Darwinism is necessarily purposeless. That is the initial focus of the third question.

SUMMARY - Question 3
Must evolution by random mutation and natural selection be considered an inevitably purposeless process and therefore incompatible with the idea of divine intention?

Editor’s Contribution: Central to the discussion of this question are the concepts ‘chance’ and ‘randomness’. How these words should be understood are recurring themes in the ensuing discussion. Their meaning is crucial to whether the standard theory of evolution is compatible with purpose and therefore with theism. The appropriateness of the word ‘miracle’ in trying to understand the science of creation also comes under scrutiny.

Question 3/Answer 1/Alan
Alan argues that the creator is not less sovereign in a situation where there are chance events within his overall purpose. Such events take place in the context of God’s ordered universe. Indeed there are known examples of where systems are developed to produce random sequences. Alan pushes back too on the notion that evolution is a purposeless process, especially citing Denis Alexander’s book Is There Purpose in Biology?

Question 3/Answer 1/Antony
Antony, by contrast, takes the meaning of the word ‘random’ at face value. He sees the input of information (the DNA code required to build organisms) as the antithesis of ‘random’. Therefore in his view, the combination of random mutation and natural selection are inadequate to account for a theistic idea of creation.

Editor’s Contribution: It is fairly clear once more that Antony’s understanding of neo Darwinism does not accommodate the idea of divine intention. That is at the centre of the diversity of opinion between the two.

Question 3/Answer 2/Alan
Alan accepts that there is a naturalistic definition of ‘random’ which is ideologically opposed to belief in a creator. But the word ‘natural’, by contrast, can support the idea of nature being the working out of God’s purposes for creation. He re-asserts his belief that seemingly random activity can operate within an overall sovereign purpose and intention. He also warns Antony that inferring design, as some form of unexplained miraculous divine act, ‘is a substitute for watertight reasoning’. Concluding to design is not a scientific explanation of process of the kind scientists would try to establish. To claim inference to design in certain aspects of the natural world also, Alan argues, demeans the Christian concept of ‘miracle’ whereby God interrupts the normal pattern of activity and appears to be putting God’s exceptional activity into a gap in scientific understanding. Alan finds it more credible to see the whole as an integrated unfolding of God’s overall plan and so finds distasteful the idea that the Creator’s chosen means of bringing into being and maintaining in being an orderly physical universe, was not able to encompass the emergence of the bacterial flagellum. The “hand that flung the stars into space” had to resort to a special miracle to get the bacterium mobile? He believes this casts aspersion on the quality of the Creator’s handiwork.

Question 3/Answer 2/Antony
In response, Antony also focuses on the meaning of words. He accepts Alan’s valid distinction between ‘naturalistic’ and ‘natural’ and then returns to the word ‘miracle’. Antony uses the word, not just to distinguish ‘exception to the rule’ interventions, but he uses the word to describe God’s whole pattern of activity. Antony then recaps on the reasons he finds neo Darwinism unconvincing- and unable to explain satisfactorily, in his view, the way in which one species gives rise to another.

Question 3/Answer 3/Alan
Meanwhile, Alan resists using the word ‘miracle’ for the generality of God’s activity, preferring to reserve use of the word for God’s operating outwith normal expectations in the outworking of his plan of redemption. He then returns to the ID claim of irreducible complexity in certain entities and the ID conclusion that a natural cause is all but impossible to establish in such cases. Alan asserts this ID claim shows an unnecessarily restrictive understanding of the creator’s creativity and places imitations on the natural processes he has put in place. Not only is ID an unconvincing argument in this regard, it takes on the unenviable task of having to prove a negative.

Question 3/Answer 3/Antony 3
Antony begins his final post by defending his use of the word ‘miracle’ as describing ubiquitous wonder throughout the universe, arguing it is an accurate use of the term. He goes on to describe as ‘scandalous’ the weight of explanatory power assumed for neo Darwinism. In any case, to look to science to explain all of the natural world is ‘scientism’: the attempt to explain everything in naturalistic God-less terms. In Antony’s view, science falls far short of the explanation. To continue to look to science for answers is to undervalue the opportunity to assert a clear role for the creator.

Question 3/Answer 4/Alan 4
Naturally, Alan rejects the assertion of scientism. He makes three distinctions which in themselves help sum up the three perspectives pertinent to the present discussion.
- ‘Scientism revels in a material world that creates itself.
- Intelligent Design revels in apparent exceptions to the scientific order of cause and effect.
- Evolutionary Creation revels in the awesomeness of the workings of the material world - God’s matter and God’s working.