Does Evolution Bear on the Question of Belief in God?

With God's help

NRG – 2014

In this article I will try to sketch the contours of the issue of the relationship between evolution and belief, a topic that tends to confuse almost everyone who deals with it, believers and atheists alike. Priests and religious preachers polemicize with atheist priests and preachers. Both sides speak and write with the same fanatical fervor, and so it is no wonder that neither side is always careful about intellectual honesty. Each side tries to hem in members of the opposing camp and deny them freedom of expression. Each side accuses the other of lies, heresy, primitiveness, and of threatening morality, enlightenment, and the social order (and the especially zealous even blame the other side for Arlosoroff's murder). To tell the truth, at times I get the feeling that both are right about that. Be that as it may, those who watch these polemics come away perplexed.

This confusion creates in many people the feeling that we must choose whether to accept the neo-Darwinian scientific findings or instead prefer belief in God. There is one thing on which both atheists and creationists agree: belief in God and neo-Darwinism do not go together. I will try to show here that precisely this shared assumption is mistaken. There is no need whatever to choose. A person can believe in God and at the same time accept neo-Darwinism. Moreover, in my opinion both of these are entirely reasonable, and therefore this combination is not only a possible position but the view called for. Despite this, my aim here is not to determine whether there is or is not a God. I am focusing here mainly on clarifying the role of neo-Darwinism in this discussion. The constraints of space dictate a certain degree of schematism in the discussion, but even so I will try, insofar as possible, to contribute a bit of order to the chaos.[1]

In the last third of the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species. Since then and to this day, his theory, which has in the meantime been greatly refined, has received much support, both theoretical and empirical. The picture accepted in the scientific world today is called neo-Darwinism. Its core consists of three components that can be described very schematically as follows: a. the formation of mutations (different protein chains created by distortions, random or otherwise, in existing protein chains). Each such mutation is realized as a living organism (this is the phenotype, whose protein structure is in fact its genome). b. Natural selection (a struggle for survival among the organisms produced by these mutations). In the end, the most "successful" survive. c. Genetics. The organisms that survived pass on their traits (including, of course, the successful ones produced through natural selection) to their offspring. The process then repeats itself, and from the chain produced in the previous stage new mutations are again formed, which undergo natural selection and genetic transmission, and so on. That, essentially, is how we came into the world (so no, it was not the stork).

Evolution and neo-Darwinism are scientific theories, and ostensibly we ought to examine their validity with scientific tools. Yet Darwin himself already sensed several questions touching on the theological implications of his theory, and indeed to this day many attack evolution and neo-Darwinism on theological, and not necessarily scientific, grounds. Discussion of these questions has not subsided to this day.

One type of question concerns contradictions between the neo-Darwinian picture and the biblical account of creation (the opening of Genesis). A second type concerns a contradiction between neo-Darwinism and belief in God as such. There is also a third type of question, concerning the character of God (good or evil) and the character of His governance of reality (providence), as these emerge from the neo-Darwinian picture.

Centuries before evolution burst onto the scene, deep in the Middle Ages, the biblical account of creation was understood by many commentators as a description that was not necessarily historical-factual but rather allegorical. Therefore, regarding the first type of question I will content myself here with referring to Maimonides' remarks in his Guide of the Perplexed, which lays out a principled path for dealing with such challenges. Maimonides writes that our conception of reality should not be determined by tradition or Scripture, but by scientific tools. Where science has spoken, there is no impediment to an allegorical interpretation of Scripture (and especially the beginning of Genesis, which, as we have already seen, has long been understood as a kind of allegory). Questions of the third type depend on different theological conceptions that there is no room to detail here, and therefore I will not address them either. From here on I will focus on questions of the second type: the relation between neo-Darwinism and belief in God.

Contrary to common conceptions, the interface between belief in God and evolution is limited. In fact, there is not much connection between these two issues. There is no obstacle to believing in God as the creator of the world and the one who governs it (at least in a very specific sense) while at the same time holding a neo-Darwinian picture. By the same token, there is no obstacle to being an atheist who does not accept neo-Darwinism. The only interface between the two issues lies in relation to the physico-theological argument for the existence of God. That and nothing more. For the sake of what follows, I will now briefly present it.

One of the central arguments in the philosophical-theological tradition for the existence of God is what Immanuel Kant called the "physico-theological argument." This argument appears in different shades and formulations, but generally speaking it is an argument based on the special character of reality. A clergyman named William Paley, some forty years before the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, offered the following argument:[2] "Suppose I am walking through a field and my foot strikes a stone. If I am asked how the stone came to be there, I may answer that, for all I know, it may have been there forever… But suppose I find a watch on the ground, and I am asked how the watch came to be there. Clearly I would not think of answering as before, that, for all I know, the watch had been there forever." Reality is surely more complex than a watch, says Paley, and therefore reality too requires us to infer that it has a maker who created it. A more familiar and modern formulation is that of the well-known British physicist and astronomer of the twentieth century (that is, after Darwin), Fred Hoyle, who wrote that the probability of the accidental formation of a protein chain (which he calculated) is far lower than the probability that a strong wind passing over a junkyard would create from it a Boeing aircraft. These two arguments are merely different formulations of the same inference: the complex character of reality leads us to the conclusion that it has a maker. The assumption underlying this inference is that a complex thing cannot come into being without a guiding hand. Neo-Darwinism attacks that assumption.

Hoyle's Boeing argument was met with torrents of contempt and ridicule, and today many atheists refer to it as "Hoyle's mistake." The reason is that neo-Darwinism shows a possibility for a complex system to arise without an externally guiding hand, thereby undermining the assumption that a complex thing requires such a hand. The difference between life and Hoyle's airplane or Paley's watch is that life arises through a gradual process that includes the formation of mutations, natural selection, and genetic inheritance. This is not a one-time accidental formation of a protein chain or a living organism, as Hoyle assumes ("Mount Improbable," in Dawkins's phrasing), but rather a slope that breaks the process down into a great many very small stages, each of which is entirely possible. In general terms, neo-Darwinism proposes a mechanism for the formation of complex organisms without a guiding hand, and thereby challenges the assumption at the basis of the physico-theological argument.

The conclusion is that even if we accept the neo-Darwinian picture (which, to the best of my judgment, currently has no scientific alternative), and even if we accept the claim (mistaken in my view; see below) that neo-Darwinism refutes the assumption underlying the physico-theological argument, at most we are in a situation in which one of the arguments for the existence of God has fallen. Does that mean there is no God? Not necessarily. First, even if the argument falls, the conclusion does not necessarily fall with it. At most, it ceases to be necessary. Second, even if one argument has fallen, several other arguments remain. A single valid argument is enough to adopt the conclusion. Moreover, many would say that belief in God requires no arguments at all. On their view, it is a basic intuition, one that can be adopted even without philosophical arguments. By way of illustration only, there is no proof that what I see before me actually exists. Does that mean I cannot believe that it really exists? Many of us would say that this is a basic intuition, and that suffices for them in order to adopt it. In any event, even if you do not accept any of this and reach the conclusion that there is indeed no God, it is not my intention here to prove or persuade anyone of God's existence. My purpose here is only to explain the (limited) place of neo-Darwinism in the theological discussion.

Does neo-Darwinism indeed refute the physico-theological argument? It turns out that even in this limited respect the situation is not as simple as the priests of evolutionary atheism tend to say. Neo-Darwinism does not really perform even this limited role. Richard Dawkins, one of the most prominent priests of neo-Darwinian atheism, writes that before the advent of evolutionary theory we had to adopt belief in God (because of the physico-theological argument), but that neo-Darwinism refutes it once and for all. We have already noted one of his errors: even if neo-Darwinism refutes the physico-theological argument, it does not lead to an atheistic position. We shall now see that he has another error: neo-Darwinism does not even refute the physico-theological argument. Moreover, to a considerable extent it actually enhances its force. The conclusion that there is a guiding hand is only strengthened within the neo-Darwinian picture.

The evolutionary process takes place within a framework of rigid laws. Usually we assume that these laws are the laws of physics (without entering here into the question of reductionism). This means that any slight change in the laws of physics would have prevented the evolutionary process from occurring (what is called fine-tuning). If so, what neo-Darwinism really offers us is at most a recasting of the physico-theological argument: instead of asking how life arises, we should ask how the special laws of nature that make the emergence of life possible came into being.

Let us take an example to illustrate the point. Suppose we saw Paley's watch lying on the sand beside us, and we ask how that watch came into being. And suppose the answer given is that there exists some natural process that can be described by a set of several laws, a process that takes us from a collection of parts to a complex watch (or from a collection of spare parts to an airplane). In essence, this is a watch factory (or airplane factory) operating according to a set of laws. Does that render superfluous the assumption that this watch has a maker? Certainly not. Those laws simply describe the way the maker operates and his plan. If someone explains to us the laws governing the operation of a computer, does that eliminate the conclusion that this computer has a maker? Certainly not. The laws merely describe the way the maker operates and his plans. This is exactly the case with respect to the emergence of life as well. Neo-Darwinism offers us a description, by means of several basic laws, of the emergence of life. This is a description of the way the maker operates. Here too, a description in terms of laws does not touch the question whether there is or is not a maker.

The limits of space do not allow me to enter into subtler points. I will therefore only note that even if the laws of physics had existed from eternity (to the extent that one can speak of "from eternity" within the framework of the Big Bang), their mutual fit (which makes the emergence of life possible) would still require explanation. True, not a causal explanation, but an explanation in terms of sufficient reason.[3] It is important to understand that such an explanation cannot be given in terms of evolution, for we are not acquainted with the formation, random or otherwise, of systems of natural laws, nor with natural selection and genetics applying to them. Moreover, even if such an explanation is found, by its very nature it will be formulated in terms of other, second-order laws of nature (which are responsible for the formation of first-order systems of natural laws). The question will then move onward to those laws of nature (who created them, and how their character allows the formation of special and fine-tuned laws of nature such as those in our world). The only way to cope with this argument is by means of what is called the "anthropic argument." This argument suggests that perhaps there were countless attempts in which systems of different natural laws were formed, and we happen to be in the one experiment that succeeded in creating life like ours. Apart from the additional problems with this bizarre proposal, one of its fundamental difficulties is that it relies on the assumption that there exist multitudes of universes that none of us has observed and for whose existence we have no real basis for assuming them to exist (apart from very authoritative statements by some of the priests of atheism). We certainly are not acquainted with processes of the formation of universes and/or systems of natural laws. If these proposals are the alternative of "common sense," or science, to the "primitive" and unfounded conclusion that there is a creator of our world, then it seems to me that we have somewhat lost sight here of what reason and/or honesty mean.

So far we have seen that neo-Darwinism does not refute the physico-theological argument. At most, it deals with describing the way the creator operates, but not with his very existence. Yet a further look shows that neo-Darwinism actually strengthens this argument. Let us now compare two scenarios: a. An entire universe like ours comes into being in a single one-time moment. b. There is a system of natural laws, synchronized in such a way that when one begins with a small point of matter, then through a process that begins with the Big Bang and continues through abiogenesis (the formation of the first protein chains), we arrive at life as we know it today. I now ask the intelligent reader: which of these two possibilities points more strongly to the existence of a guiding hand? It seems to me that without doubt it is the second. The first possibility might perhaps, with great difficulty, be interpreted as a successful accident. But the establishment of a system of laws that leads the world clearly over the course of about fifteen billion years from a point of matter directly to the complexities and life familiar to us today plainly testifies to a guiding hand with very impressive intelligence, which created the laws that govern this process. They are what is responsible for the evolutionary process reaching its present state. We therefore learn that the less steep the slope leading up to Mount Improbable, the stronger the physico-theological argument becomes. This is Dawkins's third error (and there are many others), as well as that of his colleagues.

In conclusion, I will add an important clarification here. The physico-theological argument can be challenged in additional ways as well (although, in my understanding, it is a very good argument), ways that I have not touched on here. For example, even if we accept the physico-theological argument, what relation is there between the philosophical God presented here (a creator, and perhaps also the one who governs the world) and the God of religion? There are also other claims that challenge the substance of the physico-theological argument in various ways. Some will argue that an explanation in terms of God cannot count as an explanation (because the concept of God is not really intelligible or familiar to us). Others will say that the conclusion that a creator exists is called for only in situations in which we know from experience that things of the type we are observing are supposed to have a creator (such as a watch or an airplane).[4] Still others argue that there is nothing special at all about life as we know it now, and that many other systems of laws would have produced complex beings of other kinds. In my understanding, all of these are mistaken claims, but I will not enter into them here, because my purpose in this article was to clarify the role of neo-Darwinism in this discussion. The conclusion is that neo-Darwinism is not relevant to the theological discussion in any way. Anyone who does not accept the physico-theological argument for these or other reasons could have rejected it (mistakenly, in my view) even in the tenth century. And anyone who does accept it should only be strengthened in his conclusions in the post-Darwinian age. Engagement with my claims in this article should not proceed by way of attacks on the physico-theological argument. In order to formulate a position regarding my remarks, the reader must ask himself whether neo-Darwinism, in his view, changes anything in this respect. That, and only that, is what I have discussed here.

[1] For further discussion, I refer the reader to my book, God Plays Dice – What Evolution Really Tells Us, Yedioth Books, 2011.

[2] The translation is taken from the "Hofesh" website, although this should not be seen as a recommendation of that site. To the best of my judgment, not many sites present so many glaring errors and so little openness of mind as one finds there. There are far better presentations (even if, in my view, mistaken) of atheist positions.

[3] On this matter one may also see my book, The Sciences of Freedom, Yedioth Books, 2013, in chapter six, especially from p. 201 onward.

[4] See on this in the final appendix to my book God Plays Dice.