We'll look at something like an
iPhone and it is a marvel,
right, a technological marvel.
It's far beyond things of
yesteryear that were
technological marvels.
You look at a steam engine— it's
complex— but you look at an
iPhone and it's like
mindbogglingly complex.
No one could pick up an iPhone
or smartphone of any kind and
think that it was an accident,
right?
We know that thousands of people
spent probably millions of hours
on the different aspects of
this— the different components
that go into something like
this— it might not be quite as
obvious to a non biologist.
How much more complex even a
simple organism, a worm, a
firefly is than a smartphone.
But it's true if you look at the
inner workings of something as
simple as say, a firefly, you'll
find that it's layer upon layer
upon layer of complexity.
All these things are very
sophisticated in how they
function.
The mere fact that a firefly
comes from a single cell that
then develops into a firefly
puts it in a completely
different league.
That doesn't happen with
smartphones.
Factories make smartphones.
Fireflies come from fireflies
and come from an initial
fertilized cell.
It's absolutely mind-boggling.
We have no idea how a single
cell produces an adult.
These things are marvelous. And
it's for that reason I think
that scripture keeps coming back
to this idea of God challenging
Job.
"Is it by your understanding
that the hawk soars and spreads
his wing to the south?" And Job,
when challenged with something
like that, realizes
"'I said too much I'll shut up
and let you speak. I did things
which I did not understand.'"
Theistic evolution is a
viewpoint that God created
matter and after that, God
didn't guide or intervene or act
directly to cause any
empirically detectable change in
the natural behavior of matter
until all living things had
evolved by purely natural
processes.
It is the idea that God somehow
set up the process at the
beginning and then just let it
run, that's sort of like deism.
Or he was involved in the
process of evolution as long as
there can be no way to tell that
he was involved.
There are several things at
stake in the debate about
theistic evolution.
There's a key scientific issue
at stake.
There's a philosophical issue at
stake. And there are theological
issues at stake.
Scientifically, the really odd
thing about this debate is that
at just the point when leading
evolutionary biologists and
evolutionary theorists are
acknowledging the main standard
orthodox textbook theory of
evolution known as neo-Darwinism
is in serious trouble,
we have Christians who are in
the sciences, theologians,
pastors saying we need to
embrace Darwinian evolution lest
we lose credibility in the
secular world.
The whole claim of theistic
evolution is that Christians
need to get on the evolutionary
bandwagon because the science is
overwhelming.
But the fact of the matter is if
you actually look at what's
happening in the sciences, it's
completely the other direction.
There is an overwhelming amount
of evidence now that standard
neo-Darwinian evolution, the
idea that random mutation and
natural selection can explain
everything including us.
It doesn't work.
We know what evolution can do in
the lab.
We have experiments with
bacteria, and it's not much.
The mechanisms that the theistic
evolutionists propose are
themselves demonstrably not
creative.
Natural selection explains the
survival but not the arrival of
the fittest.
Does a good job of explaining
things like beaks getting a
little bit bigger, a little bit
smaller, adaptation to
environmental change.
But it doesn't do a good job of
explaining where you get birds
in the first place.
I also like to think of it as a
circular argument because to get
the first cell you need DNA, and
you also need RNA, and you need
protein.
You need DNA to make RNA to make
protein, but you also need
protein to make DNA.
Coming up with that out of a
process of random mutation and
natural selection is just not
possible.
There are certain philosophical
assumptions that underlie the
belief in theistic evolution.
The first one is that science
is, by far, a more authoritative
source of knowledge of reality
than is theology or any other
field.
Those who have adopted the
strong form of theistic
evolution that we're critiquing
have pretty much embraced and
even defended methodological
naturalism.
Methodological naturalism is a
convention that says we must
formulate theories about the
world as if it were true, that
nature acting on its own can
produce everything that we see.
C.S. Lewis, near the end of his
life, wrote a book about how a
lot of developments of science
actually follow, not just the
evidence, it follows our
presuppositions and the things
that we bring to nature.
And he has this wonderful
passage where he talks about how
nature answers the questions
that we ask her.
So if our preconceptions think
that all that exists is just
matter and motion, we're only
looking for material
explanations and we're excluding
mine from the get go.
So we're going to get true but
partial answers, you know nature
will give us those answers
because that's the only thing
we're looking for.
His point is that we have
different preconceptions, if
we're open to other ideas we
might get different answers from
nature.
If we are really looking for
truth then it's not persuasive
to rule out some kinds of causes
before you consider the
evidence.
The primary obligation of the
scientists is to be truth
seeking.
We want to have an open
philosophy of science, the
theistic evolutionists are
content to limit the potential
hypotheses under consideration
to materialistic ones and that's
a big issue between us.
The thing that's at stake in
theistic evolution, the debate
about it, is our understanding
of scripture.
And it's sad to say but theistic
evolution actually undermines
Christian's confidence in the
authority of scripture.
The doctrine of creation and the
general way the creation took
place is at the very foundation
of Christianity, that God
created all life and that there
was at least a certain
discernible way he did it.
Theistic evolution puts all of
that up for grabs and as a
result it takes the core of
theology and severs it from
history.
And so theology becomes placed
in what Francis Shaefer used to
call the upper story.
In an area where theology isn't
really about facts, it certainly
isn't about things we can test
or know it's more about beliefs
and feelings but science does
the hard work.
It's really about evidence in
fact.
If we keep revising the Bible
when science tells us we have to
then at some point we're going
to end up believing that the
Bible may not really be a
factual book in the first place.
The question is whether
Christians will reject God's
authority in whole areas of
human knowledge.
Talking about where we came from
and how we got here.
Do we take the latest scientific
ideas or the textbook orthodoxy
of the scientific community to
be our ultimate authority?
And if so then we have to make
everything conform to that
including our reading not only
of Genesis but the entire
reading of scripture.
Whereas if we take scripture to
occupy a position of higher
authority than the opinion of
the scientific community then we
view things differently.
It's not that we're rejecting
science, it's that we recognize
the science is not ultimate
authority.
One of the things that just
disturbs me personally having
been immersed in this issue in
the debate about biological
origins for now over 30 years is
that there is a kind of
uncritical acceptance of
scientific authority that has
affected the way the church
understands its own doctrines.
There's an unnecessary deference
to scientific authority in part
because there is no consensus
view right now except that
neo-Darwinism is failing.
Last November in London at the
Royal Society, the largest
oldest most august authoritative
scientific group in the world,
there was a conference that was
assessing the status of
neo-Darwinian theory that was
called by many evolutionary
biologists who become
disenchanted with the theory.
We have leading people in
evolutionary biology today
saying that the modern form of
Darwinian theory has now failed
to account for the most
important thing that any
evolutionary theory must account
for which is where it is the new
form, the new biological
structure come from?
The answer essentially is we
don't know.
So it seems to me a very odd
time for Christians who are
concerned about the
science-faith dialogue to be
saying well we need to embrace
the modern form of Darwinian
theory.
Otherwise we're going to be out
of date.
It's just the opposite in fact.
