A Theological Foundation for Evolution? Part II

While the term "creationism" is bandied about a lot and with much derision, this term is actually much too general. After all, even Christians like myself who accept evolution would not consider themselves "anti-creationists" because along with our belief that the conclusions of science regarding biological change and diversity must be accepted, we also hold strong to the belief that God is the Creator of all things. We are thus "creationists" in a general sense.

But what is meant by "creationism" is usually belief in what is known as "special creation," the idea that God created all living things as we find them today. Or to put it in the terms of intelligent design, "that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact: Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings, etc." [Of Pandas and People]. Now there are various sub-groups of special creationists, from the Young Earth Creationists who think the world is at most 10,000 years old to the proponents of Intelligent Design who seem to subscribe to a kind of "progressive special creationism" that maintains that God continues to create today, creating new species from time to time. Some special creationists even allow for the ideas of evolution to an extent, claiming that evolution may be responsible for the general appearance of a species over time, but cannot result in speciation.

Despite their differences, however, all special creationists have a theological assumption in common: they all grant the perfection of nature as it is. Fish, vertebrates, plants, etc. all are as they should be - they are as God created them. Interestingly, this assumption, while rarely explicitly discussed by creationists themselves, is often one of the central arguments made by vocal atheists for the inexistence of God. As notables like Dennet and Dawkins have discussed at length, what we see around us does not look at all like the result of the perfect creative act of an all-powerful, all-loving God. Rather, it is full of merciless, brutal violence and always has been. Anyone who has seen lions take down their prey knows this in a particularly graphic way. Lions aren't interested in killing their prey, just stopping it from moving long enough so they can start eating it. Zebras and wildebeast are often still bucking and braying as their entrails are being consumed. Even better examples of the raw brutality of nature is found at the lower levels of the biological spectrum in the form of various kinds of parasites. Consider the protozoa Trypanosoma, for instance. This one-celled organism is transmitted to people by tsetse flies in Africa. For those infected, a simple fever turns into extremely swollen lymph nodes, anemia, and cardiac and kidney problems. Then the organism gets really nasty as it passes through the blood-brain barrier. It disturbs one sleep cycle and induces forgetfulness and confusion, causing bouts of manicness and fatigue (which is why it is known as sleeping sickness). Eventually, the victim goes into a coma and doesn't wake up.

There are millions of other examples we could bring up and all of them beg this question: if God is the all-knowing, all-loving Creator who made this world we live in, why in the world would he create something like Trypanosoma? Why would a God who is life-giving make creatures whose sole purpose is to bring death? If God is so good, why is nature so full of suffering and violence? Atheists argue that if there were such a God, he would obviously be intelligent enough to avoid such outcomes to his creative acts, and that therefore no such God exists. While I don't think that's a necessary conclusion to draw here, the question itself is a very good one - and one which those who ascribe to special creationism have no good answer for. If one assumes that God created all living things more or less as we find them today, then one must admit that God created Trypanosoma and that God designed the lion to eat zebras alive. God might still exist, but if he does then he creates just as much out of cruelty and violence as out of love.

The assumption of special creation, then, leads to the assumption of a God that doesn't seem consistent with the God of the Bible, the God Christians presume to worship. But is there another answer to the objection above? Is there a solution to the problem of natural evil that doesn't require cruelty in God? I think that the Bible suggests one, and I'll turn to it in the next post.