Shadow of Oz: Theistic Evolution and the Absent God

By Wayne D. Rossiter

In the century and a half since Darwin's Origin of Species, there has been an ongoing--and often vociferously argued--conversation about our species' place in creation and its relationship to a Creator. A growing number of academic professionals see no conflict between Darwin's view of life and the Christian faith. Dubbed "theistic evolution," this brand of Christianity holds that God has used processes like Darwinian evolution to achieve his creation. But is that true? Can Darwin's mechanism of natural selection acting on chance mutations be reconciled with God's intentionality in producing particular outcomes? Does humanity represent the apex of his creation, or just an erasable and ephemeral signpost along a path still being revealed? Does theistic evolution permit God to intervene supernaturally in the workings of his creation? Can we as humans be made in the image of God if we are just one of the millions of products of evolution? Can we salvage concepts like freewill, meaning, purpose, or an eternal soul within theistic evolution? In this book, Wayne Rossiter assess theistic evolution, and whether or not it is consistent with Christianity and secular science. His conclusion is that it bears little resemblance to classical Christianity, and promotes a century-old understanding of evolutionary theory. Theistic evolution renders God a passive player in creation, so far removed and undetectable that he resembles a mere shadow of the Creator described in Christianity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Oct 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781498220736

Wayne D. Rossiter

Wayne Rossiter is Assistant Professor of Biology at Waynesburg University. Interview with Grego Koukl on Stand to Reason Interview with The Universe Next Door pt 1 Interview with The Universe Next Door pt 2 The Drive Home with John and Kathy on WORD FM interview

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Shadow of Oz

Theistic Evolution and the Absent God

Wayne D. Rossiter

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Shadow of Oz

Theistic Evolution and the Absent God

Copyright © 2015 Wayne D. Rossiter. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Pickwick Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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ISBN 13: 978-1-4982-2072-9

EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-2073-6

Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Rossiter, Wayne D.

Shadow of Oz : theistic evolution and the absent God / Wayne D. Rossiter

x + 178 p. ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 13: 978-1-4982-2072-9

1. Religion and science. 2. Intelligent design (Teleology). 3. Evolution—Religious aspects—Christianity. 4. Creationism—Philosophy. I. Title.

BL240.3 R788 2015

Manufactured in the U.S.A. 09/15/2015

Figure 3 reproduced with permission from Dr. Philip D. Gingerich

Quotations of the Old and New Testament are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: The Lay of the Land

Chapter 2: Theistic Evolution as a Worldview

Chapter 3: Biological Evolution, Darwin and God

Chapter 4: Christian Conceptions of Man in a Planet of Apes

Chapter 5: A Good God in a Hostile Universe

Chapter 6: Biological Evolution Updated

Chapter 7: Assessing Theistic Evolution

Bibliography

To those brave enough to ask questions,

and honest enough to listen to the answer.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank John Thompson, James Kushiner, and Casey Luskin for their help in reading the original manuscript, advising me on how to proceed, and helping me in editing. I thank Quincy Hathaway for giving me a student’s-eye-view on this issue, as well as for reading an early draft. I thank my family for their support, and I particularly thank my wife Melissa for her patience. I thank Mick Bates for his leadership, God-centered advice, and for encouraging me to press on without fear. For the same reason, I thank the late (and wonderful) Rev. Kenneth Summers. Finally, I thank my brother and best friend, Brian Rossiter. Through endless hours of deep conversation on these matters, this book emerged, and a few of the arguments were originally his.

1

The Lay of the Land

On a warm October day in New York, Jesse Kilgore, a twenty-two-year-old college student, walked into a forest near his home, and took his own life. Implicated as the driving force behind his unraveling was Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion. Specifically, the ideas therein so devastated the boy’s Christian worldview that he could not bear a life lived under this new arrangement. This is clearly an extreme response to the acceptance of the neo-Darwinian paradigm (which is the central anvil upon which all of Dawkins’s ideas are rendered), but the general dichotomy (God or Darwin) is precisely what Dawkins and other similar intellectuals are aiming for. To reference another lightning-rod example, Daniel Dennett proudly asserts that Darwinian evolution is universal acid that eats through just about every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view, with most of the old landmarks still recognizable, but transformed in fundamental ways.¹ My story (both personally and occupationally) is not unique, but is consistent with Dennett’s claim. I entered college at Otterbein University in the fall of 1998 as a Christian. By the spring of 1999, I openly renounced my faith, and quickly spiraled towards full atheism. By my assessment, the logical consequences of Darwinian evolution left no room for a God that was actively participating in the world. In short, a blind and chance process seemed incompatible with the intentionality and purposeful creating described in Judeo-Christian traditions. I believe this observation is still valid.

For some time now, Darwinian paradigms have been the ideological and philosophical seas in which academic professionals swim (in the physical and biological sciences as well as the humanities), and the general consensus appears to be that part of us and our God dies with acceptance of the Darwinian dogma. John F. Haught (a theologian at Georgetown University) acknowledges the seriousness of the situation saying:

By collapsing the sacred hierarchy, modern evolutionary materialism gives every appearance of having pulverized the cultural, ethical, and religious formations around which human life on this planet has been organized for many thousands of years. It is impossible to exaggerate the enormity of this great drama of dissolution. Clearly then, a central task of theology after Darwin is to face as honestly as it can the question of whether the hierarchical structuring that constitutes the very backbone of our religious traditions is in any substantive and coherent sense recoverable today.²

Kenneth Miller, devout Catholic and Brown University biology professor, is equally forthright in his initial appraisal, writing,

Once Darwin’s apple had fallen from the tree, there was no stopping the ways in which eager scholars would apply it to one problem after another. Like a tide sweeping away old explanations of natural philosophy, Darwinian thought made scientists everywhere demand naturalistic, materialistic explanations for the way things are. . . . Evolution displaced the Creator from His central position as the primary explanation for every aspect of the world. In so doing, Darwin lent intellectual aid and comfort to anti-religionists everywhere.³

Miller goes on to say that, for this reason, "people were afraid of the book [The Origin of Species]"⁴

For their part, the secular evolutionists are of the clear and unanimous opinion that Darwin destroys all religious claims about reality. For example, evolutionary biologist Douglas Futuyma has written,

If the world and its creatures developed purely by material, physical forces, it could not have been designed and has no purpose or goal[;] . . . in contrast, [the creationist] believes that everything in the world, every species and every characteristic of every species, was designed by an intelligent, purposeful artificer, and that it was made for a purpose. Nowhere does this contrast apply with more force than to the human species. Some shrink from the conclusion that the human species was not designed, has no purpose, and is the product of mere material mechanisms—but this seems to be the message of evolution.⁵

Francisco Ayala is often referenced by proponents of theistic evolution, but he is equally clear that, It was Darwin’s greatest accomplishment to show that the complex organization and functionality of living beings can be explained as the result of a natural process—natural selection—without any need to resort to a Creator or other external agent.⁶ Even famed evolutionary biologist Niles Eldredge titled one of his books on the topic, The Triumph of Evolution: And the Failure of Creationism. So overwhelming is this sentiment, that the evolutionary biologist Austin Hughes’s recollection of graduate school is, I eventually realized that my scientific peers weren’t any more tolerant than my philosophy professors had been, it was just that they assumed that no one in their field subscribed to religion. They found the idea so ridiculous that it was a complete non-issue.⁷ This side of academic science was also laid bare by Richard Lewontin when he revealed that scientists are, "forced by [their] a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.⁸" As a final example of the secular perceptions of the Darwin-God dialogue, consider the words of the late William Provine, professor of biology at Cornell;

It starts by giving up an active Deity, then it gives up the hope that there’s any life after death. When you give those two up, the rest of it follows fairly easily. You give up the hope that there’s an immanent morality. And, finally, there’s no human free will. If you believe in evolution, you can’t hope for there being any free will. There’s no hope whatsoever of there being any deep meaning in life: We live, we die, we’re absolutely gone when we die.⁹

To pick back up on my story, I had developed into a staunch and cantankerous atheist by the time I got to Rutgers to pursue a PhD. This was aided by an equally atheistic advisor who was of Dawkins’s ilk. Advanced education at our best universities is surprisingly insular. Like bobbleheads, we tend to read and agree on the same things, and give little to no countenance to critics of our views. I can’t be certain, because I didn’t personally know everyone, but there were roughly sixty to seventy faculty and at least twice that many graduate students associated with my program. When I converted to Christianity in 2008, there were six theists of any sort (four Christians, one Hindu, and one Buddhist) among the graduate students. There were four or so theists among the faculty (just one Christian). In other words, I had little to no push-back as an atheist in the program. It’s worth noting that there was significant disagreement (usually behind closed doors) about what evolution really was, but I will save that part of the story for later.

I still remember the details of my conversion. It was a Friday night in late winter. I was in celebratory mode because I had just published a paper in the Journal of Molecular Evolution, discussing the rapid adaptive evolution of rattlesnake venom enzymes. My wife and I settled in for a typical graduate student-style evening: pizza, wine, and a movie (3:10 to Yuma). After my wife had gone to bed, I stayed up watching TV on the couch. I began to feel ill, and thought I’d eaten some bad food. As shivers and chills took over, I was paralyzed by a sudden fear and dread. For the first time, I truly comprehended the reality of death. I understood the complete and abrupt end of self-awareness. And, many of the other implications of atheism set in. I realized that, because I cannot experience the good or bad outcomes of my decisions beyond death, there was no rational or logical reason to care about any actions that might outlive me. On what rational grounds could I care about the state of the planet (or even my family) after I’m gone? And what did I even mean by good or bad? I couldn’t argue that any objective morality existed apart from our subjective experiences. Any moral laws that might objectively exist—whether or not anyone ascribes to them—would be beyond our grasp, and we would have no objective or rational reason to obey them if they did exist. Nothing mattered. Much like William Provine outlines in the quote above, there could be no objective meaning, purpose, free-will, or morality. This is Dennett’s universal acid, and Darwin’s ideas applied that acid to the human condition. If molecules led to cells, and cells to organs, and organs to bodies, then the molecules-to-man hypothesis was true. We really were just wet computers responding to external stimuli in mechanical and unconscious ways. No soul, no consciousness. Just machines. I was completely and utterly devastated.

During the coming days and weeks, my wife and I had to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I sought council from an aged psychiatrist named John Titus. Contrary to his name, he was actually an Indian man (much to my surprise on the first visit), but had turned from atheism after thirty years to Catholicism (and he was a double dose of that). We didn’t talk about how I felt, or what sort of crises I was experiencing. We talked about God, and the reasons why he believed. At the same time, I started to read and listen to scientists and intellectuals who had found faith in God compelling. Just as I was converting, so too was the famed atheist Antony Flew (though never to Christianity). I started to realize that there were good reasons to doubt the metanarrative of naturalism (the centerpiece of which is Darwinian evolution), and that many secular thinkers in fields related to the topic had also come to doubt the entire enterprise (and Darwin in specific).

I’ve always been an atypical guy. I remember a family vacation to the Smoky Mountains when I was in middle school. I asked why the trees at the tops of the mountains had no leaves. Up until that moment, nobody in the car had even noticed the pattern (the defoliation was apparently caused by ozone formation). I was always that way. I asked strange questions and made strange observations. So it’s not surprising that I chose a strange path after graduate school. I initially interviewed for a postdoc position at Notre Dame, but when that fell through, I turned down a postdoc at a prestigious west coast school, and accepted a tenure-track position at a small Christian university south of Pittsburgh. My reasoning was simple. My wife and I wanted to simplify life a little, enjoyed the idea of being closer to family (we grew up in Ohio), and I felt I could continue the kind of ecology-based research I enjoyed without being in a publish-or-perish environment. Moreover, I had cultivated a deep desire to help students who were trying to make sense of their faith and their aspirations in the biological sciences. I love the intimacy of a small classroom, and wanted to make real connections with students as individuals.

As a Christian professor at a Christian university, I can attest to the countless students who find the central tenets of their Christian faith difficult to retain in light of the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, or more precisely, its implications. It is precisely this topic that is routinely the central point of discussion in every faith and science event held on Waynesburg University’s campus. Given the near consensus view that Darwin’s theory greatly encroaches on our perceptions of God, an odd subculture has arisen in academic circles, and is now filtering out into the public sphere. Within the Darwinian camp, many intellectuals who claim theism now argue that it is conceptually kosher to meld the idea of God with Darwin’s views of life. In fact, some even argue that there is nothing at all to reconcile when attempting to unite these two ideas. As Kenneth Miller puts it, if two ideas are not in conflict, they have no need of reconciliation.¹⁰ This view has been termed theistic evolution. Proponents argue that the idea of God is perfectly compatible with evolutionary theory, that there are no doubts regarding the full efficacy of Darwin’s theory, and that acceptance of the full form of this theory should have no real bearing on our capacity to believe in the Judeo-Christian God. This is a startling juxtaposition. On the one hand, numerous secular evolutionists have told us that Darwin greatly compromises faith in a God that is (or ever was) active in his creation, and that there is no need for theology in our descriptions of the workings of the natural world. On the other hand, theistic evolutionists are pushing Darwin in every aspect of our faith discussion. Moreover, they present it as if there is no conflict between the two ideas (Darwin and God). The Christian student sitting in a high school or college classroom is told not to be uncomfortable with what Darwin has to say. Our educators point to names like Francis Collins or the late Theodosius Dobzhansky, and say, See. These scientists are Christians, and yet they accept Darwin. So the theist is being asked to fully ascribe to Darwinian evolution. But none of these educators, lecturers, or writers are making an equally forceful case to atheistic evolutionists that, These evolutionists also believe in God. It’s worth noting that Miller’s first treatise on the subject was titled, Finding Darwin’s God, and not the counter.

It’s a one-sided push. Why? As we will see, this is because theistic evolutionists are persuaded to make room in their theology for Darwin, but not room in their Darwin for theology. They perceive this as a discussion between demonstrable facts (for Darwinian evolution) and claims of blind faith (in God’s activity). Naturally, whenever the two disagree, the facts will necessarily carry the day, or the faith claims are simply compartmentalized, and the conflict is not acknowledged. There is the unsupported assumption that, since God created all nature, whatever we find in nature is consistent with God. Thus, our understanding of God changes with our science. I would agree (and do in later chapters) that our understanding of God should be consistent with reality. But, to use an analogy, the enterprise of theistic evolution does not seem to be the artist looking at a block of stone and seeing a magnificent sculpture, yet to be carved (i.e., the sculpture already exists, and the artist discovers it). Instead, the general trend is to simply hammer away at our primitive block of God until there is nothing left, and then stand back and marvel at its beauty. The current depiction of God from theistic evolutionists is somewhat akin to the piece 4:33 by composer John Cage, in which he (being a skilled classical pianist) plays not one note for four minutes and thirty-three seconds, and the intellectuals marvel at his artistry for having done nothing. In short, the trend is to sacrifice God at the altar of Darwin, and never the other way around, all the while assuring us that nothing in our faith has been compromised. Outside of arguments for the fine-tuning of the universe at its inception (and perhaps first life), what happens to the faith claim that God is active in his creation if we simply see no signs of his active participation?

It is also common, but errant, for many theistic evolutionists to coerce the uninformed by appealing to authority. A famous or powerful name is tacked in front of the idea, and the actual evidence, merit, and its implications are simply glossed over. For example, Karl Giberson writes,

Many thinkers welcomed Darwin, seeing in evolution a more acceptable role for God as a creator. And there continue to be thoughtful Christians today who have made their peace with evolution. . . . That so many other Christians are now massed against Darwin has more to do with American culture than biology or Christian theology. . . . [I]f controversy had not driven discourse so quickly off the rails, the voices of reason might today be speaking from the center of American Christianity, rather than the fringes.¹¹

Bruce Glass tells us, Given that so many very knowledgeable Christians see no real conflict between Christianity and the findings of science, we might wonder why perceptions of conflict are so pervasive.¹² This is a humorous appeal to authority and consensus. It does no logical work in advancing the veracity of theistic evolution’s claims. I could just as easily say, Given that so many very knowledgeable biologists are atheists, we might wonder why belief in god’s existence is so pervasive. In typical form, this argument slays its own position. Why should we simply trust in the theology of Francis Collins, when his training is in the biological sciences? It is as if, just because he is highly reputable in his field, his logic is sound in areas outside of his area of expertise. Again, this is usually a one-way street. While the theistic evolutionist is happy to use mathematicians and physicists to tell us about biology, and biologists to tell us about theology, they are not apt to do so when it is contrary to their case. In reality, an idea should stand or fall on its own merit, regardless of its source. We all know somebody who is exceptional at a particular thing, but utterly helpless outside of it. Einstein devised explicit and inordinately detailed rules for the ways in which his wife could approach or distract him. We all stand in awe of his mathematical mind, but few of us would ask him for marital advice. Most revere Eric Pianka when it comes to his knowledge of the evolutionary ecology of lizards. However, most would not feel comfortable sporting his views on human life (he has publicly stated that he hopes for a mass pandemic or world war, that everyone who gets to survive needs to bury nine,¹³ and that we are no better than bacteria¹⁴). My point is that we academic-types are a strange lot, full of quirks and oddities, and you should not trust us on the basis of prestige alone. You should evaluate the coherence and logical consistency of our ideas. If an author tries to drub you with his or her views based on authority, you should be leery and hesitant. As a wise sage once wrote, test all things. Keep what is good.

In large part, that is precisely what I will attempt to do in this book. I ask us to actually do the hard work of fleshing out how Darwinian evolution works and what the God of theistic evolution looks like. This, when seriously considered, is often frightening ground to tread upon. For example, while names like Kenneth Miller and John Haught are used as evidence of the happy marriage