The Princeton Guide to Evolution

VIII.13

Evolution and Religion

Francisco J. Ayala

OUTLINE

1. Natural theology and the Bridgewater Treatises

2. Darwin’s revolution

3. Evolution and the Bible

4. The problem of evil

5. Evolution: Imperfect design, not intelligent design

6. Evolution and religion: Coda

Theologians and other religious authors have over centuries sought to demonstrate the existence of God by the argument from design, which asserts that organisms have been designed and that only God could account for the design. Its most extensive formulation is William Paley’s Natural Theology (1802). Darwin’s (1859) theory of evolution by natural selection disposed of Paley’s arguments: the adaptations of organisms are outcomes of a natural process that causes the gradual accumulation of features beneficial to organisms. There is “design” in the living world, but the design is not intelligent, as expected from an engineer, but imperfect and worse: defects, dysfunctions, oddities, waste, and cruelty pervade the living world. Science and religious faith need not be in contradiction. Science concerns processes that account for the natural world. Religion concerns the meaning and purpose of the world and of human life, the proper relation of humans to their Creator and to one another, and the moral values that inspire and govern people’s lives.

GLOSSARY

Evolution. Hereditary change and diversification of organisms through generations.

Intelligent Design. The idea that adaptations of organisms are designed by an intelligent author (= God), rather than resulting from natural processes.

Natural Selection. Differential reproduction of alternative genetic variants.

Problem of Evil. The challenge of explaining the presence of physical evil (e.g., earthquakes that kill millions of people), and biological evil (e.g., the cruelty of predators) if they are designed outcomes of an omnipotent and benevolent Creator.

Religion. Faith in and worship of God or the supernatural.

Religious authors have over the centuries argued that the order, harmony, and design of the universe are incontrovertible evidence that the universe was created by an omniscient and omnipotent Creator. Notable Christian authors include Augustine (353–430 CE), who writes in The City of God that the “world itself, by the perfect order of its changes and motions and by the great beauty of all things visible, proclaims … that it has been created, and also that it could not have been made other than by a God ineffable and invisible in greatness, and … in beauty.” Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274), considered by many to be the greatest Christian theologian, advances in his Summa Theologiae five ways to demonstrate, by natural reason, that God exists. The fifth way derives from the orderliness and designed purposefulness of the universe, which evince that it has been created by a Supreme Intelligence: “Some intelligent being exists by which all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.”

This manner of seeking a natural demonstration of God’s existence became later known as the argument from design, which is two pronged. The first prong asserts that the universe evinces that it has been designed. The second prong affirms that only God could account for the complexity and perfection of the design. A forceful and elaborate formulation of the argument from design is The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation (1691) by the English clergyman and naturalist John Ray (1627–1705). Ray regarded as incontrovertible evidence of God’s wisdom that all components of the universe—the stars and the planets, as well as all organisms—are so wisely contrived from the beginning and perfect in their operation. The “most convincing argument of the Existence of a Deity,” writes Ray, “is the admirable Art and Wisdom that discovers itself in the Make of the Constitution, the Order and Disposition, the Ends and uses of all the parts and members of this stately fabric of Heaven and Earth.”

The design argument was advanced, in greater or lesser detail, by a number of authors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. John Ray’s contemporary Henry More (1614–1687) saw evidence of God’s design in the succession of day and night and of the seasons: “I say that the Phenomena of Day and Night, Winter and Summer, Spring-time and Harvest … are signs and tokens unto us that there is a God … things are so framed that they naturally imply a Principle of Wisdom and Counsel in the Author of them. And if there be such an Author of external Nature, there is a God.” Robert Hooke (1635–1703), a physicist and eventual Secretary of the Royal Society, formulated the watchmaker analogy: God had furnished each plant and animal “with all kinds of contrivances necessary for its own existence and propagation … as a Clock-maker might make a Set of Chimes to be a part of a Clock” (Hooke 1665). The clock analogy, among other analogies such as temples, palaces, and ships, was also used by Thomas Burnet (1635–1703) in his Sacred Theory of the Earth, and it would become common among natural theologians of the time. The Dutch philosopher and theologian Bernard Nieuwentijdt (1654–1718) developed, at length, the argument from design in his three-volume treatise, The Religious Philosopher, where, in the preface, he introduces the watchmaker analogy. Voltaire (1694–1778), like other philosophers of the Enlightenment, accepted the argument from design. Voltaire asserted that in the same way as the existence of a watch proves the existence of a watchmaker, the design and purpose evident in nature prove that the universe was created by a Supreme Intelligence.

1. NATURAL THEOLOGY AND THE BRIDGEWATER TREATISES

William Paley (1743–1805), one of the most influential English authors of his time, formulated in his Natural Theology (1802) the argument from design, based on the complex and precise design of organisms. Paley was an influential writer of works on Christian philosophy, ethics, and theology, such as The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785) and A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794). With Natural Theology, Paley sought to update Ray’s Wisdom of God of 1691. But Paley could now carry the argument much further than Ray, by taking advantage of a century of additional biological knowledge.

Paley’s keystone claim is that there “cannot be design without a designer; contrivance, without a contriver; order, without choice; … means suitable to an end, and executing their office in accomplishing that end, without the end ever having been contemplated.” Natural Theology is a sustained argument for the existence of God based on the obvious design of humans and their organs, as well as the design of all sorts of organisms, considered by themselves and in their relations to one another and to their environment. Paley’s first analogical example in Natural Theology is the human eye. He points out that the eye and the telescope “are made upon the same principles; both being adjusted to the laws by which the transmission and refraction of rays of light are regulated.” Specifically, there is a precise resemblance between the lenses of a telescope and “the humors of the eye” in their figure, their position, and the ability of converging the rays of light at a precise distance from the lens—on the retina, in the case of the eye.

Natural Theology has chapters dedicated to the human frame, which displays a precise mechanical arrangement of bones, cartilage, and joints; to the circulation of the blood and the disposition of blood vessels; to the comparative anatomy of humans and animals; to the digestive tract, kidneys, urethra, and bladder; to the wings of birds and the fins of fish; and much more. After detailing the precise organization and exquisite functionality of each biological entity, relationship, or process, Paley draws again and again the same conclusion: only an omniscient and omnipotent Deity could account for these marvels of mechanical perfection, purpose, and functionality, and for the enormous diversity of inventions that they entail.

Francis Henry Egerton (1756–1829), the eighth Earl of Bridgewater, bequeathed in 1829 the sum of £8000 with instructions to the Royal Society that it commission eight treatises that would promote natural theology by setting forth “The Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as manifested in the Creation.” Eight treatises were published in the 1830s, several of which artfully incorporated the best science of the time and had considerable influence on the public and among scientists. The Hand, Its Mechanisms and Vital Endowments as Evincing Design (1833), by Sir Charles Bell, a distinguished anatomist and surgeon, famous for his neurological discoveries, examines in considerable detail the wondrously useful design of the human hand but also the perfection of design of the forelimb used for different purposes in different animals, serving in each case the particular needs and habits of its owner: the human’s arm for handling objects, the dog’s leg for running, and the bird’s wing for flying. He concludes that “nothing less than the Power, which originally created, is equal to the effecting of those changes on animals, which are to adapt them to their conditions.” William Buckland, Professor of Geology at Oxford University, notes in Geology and Mineralogy (1836) the world distribution of coal and mineral ores, and proceeds to point out that they were deposited in remote parts, yet obviously with the forethought of serving the larger human populations that would come about much later. Later, another geologist, Hugh Miller (1858), would formulate in The Testimony of the Rocks what may be called the argument from beauty, which allows that it is not only the perfection of design but also the beauty of natural structures found in rock formations and in mountains and rivers that manifests the intervention of the Creator.

In the 1990s, a new version of the design argument was formulated in the United States, named intelligent design (ID), which refers to an unidentified Designer who accounts for the order and complexity of the universe, or who intervenes from time to time in the universe so as to design organisms and their parts. The complexity of organisms, it is claimed, cannot be accounted for by natural processes. According to ID proponents, this intelligent designer could be, but need not be, God. The intelligent designer could be an alien from outer space or some other creature, such as a “time-traveling cell biologist,” with amazing powers to account for the universe’s design. Explicit reference to God is avoided, so that the “theory” of ID can be taught in the public schools as an alternative to the theory of evolution without incurring conflict with the US Constitution, which forbids the endorsement of any religious beliefs in public institutions. The ID movement and the “creationism” claims that preceded it are the subject of chapter VIII.14.

2. DARWIN’S REVOLUTION

Darwin occupies an exalted place in the history of Western thought, deservedly receiving credit for the theory of evolution. In The Origin, he laid out the evidence demonstrating the evolution of organisms. However, Darwin accomplished something much more important for intellectual history than demonstrating evolution. Darwin’s Origin of Species is, first and foremost, a sustained effort to solve the problem of how to account scientifically for the design of organisms. Darwin explains the design of organisms, their complexity, diversity, and marvelous contrivances as the result of natural processes.

There is a version of the history of the ideas that sees a parallel between the Copernican and the Darwinian revolutions. In this view, the Copernican revolution consisted in displacing the earth from its previously accepted locus as the center of the universe, moving it to a subordinate place as just one more planet revolving around the sun. In congruous manner, the Darwinian revolution is viewed as consisting of the displacement of humans from their exalted position as the center of life on earth, with all other species created for the service of humankind. According to this version of intellectual history, Copernicus accomplished his revolution with the heliocentric theory of the solar system; Darwin’s achievement emerged from his theory of organic evolution.

Although this version of the two revolutions is correct, it misses what is most important about these two intellectual revolutions, namely, that they ushered in the beginning of science in the modern sense of the word. These two revolutions may jointly be seen as the one Scientific Revolution, with two stages, the Copernican and the Darwinian. The Copernican revolution was launched with the publication in 1543, the year of Nicolaus Copernicus’s death, of his De revolutionibus orbium celestium (On the Revolutions of Celestial Spheres), and bloomed with the publication in 1687 of Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy). The discoveries by Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and others in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gradually ushered in a conception of the universe as matter in motion governed by natural laws. These scientists showed that the earth is not the center of the universe but a small planet rotating around an average star; that the universe is immense in space and in time; and that the motions of the planets around the sun can be explained by the same simple laws that account for the motion of physical objects on our planet. These and other discoveries greatly expanded human knowledge. The conceptual revolution they brought about was more fundamental yet: a commitment to the postulate that the universe obeys immanent laws that account for natural phenomena. The workings of the universe were brought into the realm of science: explanation through natural laws.

The advances of physical science brought about by the Copernican revolution drove mankind’s conception of the universe to a split-personality state of affairs. Scientific explanations, derived from natural laws, dominated the world of nonliving matter, on the earth as well as in the heavens. However, supernatural explanations, which depended on the unfathomable deeds of the Creator, were accepted as explanations of the origin and configuration of living creatures. Authors such as William Paley argued that the complex design of organisms could not have come about by chance—or by the mechanical laws of physics, chemistry, and astronomy—but was, rather, produced by an omniscient and omnipotent Deity, just as the complexity of a watch, designed to tell time, was fashioned by an intelligent watchmaker. It was Darwin’s genius to resolve this conceptual schizophrenia. Darwin completed the Copernican revolution by drawing out for biology the notion of nature as a lawful system of matter in motion that human reason can explain without recourse to supernatural agencies.

The conundrum Darwin faced can hardly be overestimated. The strength of the argument from design to demonstrate the role of the Creator had been forcefully set forth by philosophers and theologians. Wherever there is function or design, we look for its author. 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. The origin and adaptations of organisms in their profusion and wondrous variations were thus brought into the realm of science.

Organisms exhibit complex design, but it is not, in current language, “irreducible complexity,” emerging suddenly in full bloom. Rather, according to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, the design has arisen gradually and cumulatively, step by step, promoted by the reproductive success of individuals with incrementally more adaptive elaborations.

Natural selection accounts for the “design” of organisms, because adaptive variations tend to increase the probability of survival and reproduction of their carriers at the expense of maladaptive, or less adaptive, variations. The arguments of Paley against the incredible improbability of chance accounts of the adaptations of organisms are well taken as far as they go. But neither Paley, nor any other author before Darwin, was able to discern that there is a natural process (namely, natural selection) that is not random but rather is oriented and able to generate order or “to create.” The traits that organisms acquire in their evolutionary histories are not fortuitous but determined by their functional utility to the organisms, “designed,” as it were, to serve their life needs.

3. EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE

To some Christians and other people of faith, the theory of evolution seems to be incompatible with their religious beliefs, because it is inconsistent with the Bible’s narrative of creation. The first chapters of the biblical book of Genesis describe God’s creation of the world, plants, animals, and human beings. A literal interpretation of Genesis seems incompatible with the gradual evolution of humans and other organisms by natural processes. Even independent of the biblical narrative, the Christian beliefs in the immortality of the soul and in humans as “created in the image of God” have appeared to many as contrary to the evolutionary origin of humans from nonhuman animals.

In 1874, Charles Hodge, an American Protestant theologian, published What Is Darwinism?—one of the most articulate assaults on evolutionary theory. Hodge perceived Darwin’s theory as “the most thoroughly naturalistic that can be imagined and far more atheistic than that of his predecessor Lamarck.” Echoing Paley, Hodge argued that the design of the human eye reveals that “it has been planned by the Creator, like the design of a watch evinces a watchmaker.” He concluded that “the denial of design in nature is actually the denial of God.”

Some Protestant theologians saw a solution to the apparent contradiction between evolution and creation in the argument that God operates through intermediate causes. The origin and motion of the planets could be explained by the law of gravity and other natural processes without denying God’s creation and providence. Similarly, evolution could be seen as the natural process through which God brought living beings into existence and developed them according to his plan. Thus, A. H. Strong, the president of Rochester Theological Seminary in New York State, wrote in his Systematic Theology (1885): “We grant the principle of evolution, but we regard it as only the method of divine intelligence.” He explains that the brutish ancestry of human beings was not incompatible with their excelling status as creatures in the image of God. Strong drew an analogy with Christ’s miraculous conversion of water into wine: “The wine in the miracle was not water because water had been used in the making of it, nor is man a brute because the brute has made some contributions to its creation.” Arguments for and against Darwin’s theory came from Roman Catholic theologians as well.

Gradually, well into the twentieth century, evolution by natural selection came to be accepted by a majority of Christian writers. Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Humani generis (1950, Of the Human Race) acknowledged that biological evolution was compatible with the Christian faith, although he argued that God’s intervention was necessary for the creation of the human soul. Pope John Paul II, in an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on October 22, 1996, deplored interpreting the Bible’s texts as scientific statements rather than religious teachings. He added: “New scientific knowledge has led us to realize that the theory of evolution is no longer a mere hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory.”

Similar statements have been advanced by Jewish authorities and leaders of other major religions. In 1984, the 95th Annual Convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis adopted a resolution stating: “Whereas the principles and concepts of biological evolution are basic to understanding science … we call upon science teachers and local school authorities in all states to demand quality textbooks that are based on modern, scientific knowledge and that exclude ‘scientific’ creationism.”

Christian denominations that hold a literal interpretation of the Bible have opposed these views. A succinct expression of this opposition is found in the Statement of Belief of the Creation Research Society, founded in 1963 as a “professional organization of trained scientists and interested laypersons who are firmly committed to scientific special creation”: “The Bible is the Written Word of God, and because it is inspired throughout, all of its assertions are historically and scientifically true in the original autographs. To the student of nature this means that the account of origins in Genesis is a factual presentation of simple historical truths.”

Many Bible scholars and theologians have long rejected a literal interpretation as untenable, however, because the Bible contains mutually incompatible statements. The very beginning of the book of Genesis presents two different creation narratives. Extending through chapter 1 and the first verses of chapter 2 is the familiar six-day narrative, in which God creates human beings—both “male and female”—in his own image on the sixth day, after creating light, earth, firmament, fish, fowl, and cattle. In verse 4 of chapter 2, a different narrative starts, in which God creates a male human, then plants a garden and creates the animals, and only then proceeds to take a rib from the man to make a woman.

Which one of the two narratives is correct and which one is in error? Neither one contradicts the other if we understand the two narratives as conveying the same message: that the world was created by God and that humans are His creatures. But both narratives cannot be “historically and scientifically true” as postulated in the Statement of Belief of the Creation Research Society.

There are numerous inconsistencies and contradictions in different parts of the Bible, for example, in the description of the return from Egypt to the Promised Land by the chosen people of Israel, not to mention erroneous factual statements about the sun’s circling around the earth and the like. Biblical scholars point out that the Bible should be held inerrant with respect to religious truth, not in matters that are of no significance to salvation. Augustine wrote in his De Genesi ad litteram (On the Literal Meaning of Genesis): “It is also frequently asked what our belief must be about the form and shape of heaven, according to Sacred Scripture…. Such subjects are of no profit for those who seek beatitude…. What concern is it of mine whether heaven is like a sphere and earth is enclosed by it and suspended in the middle of the universe, or whether heaven is like a disk and the Earth is above it and hovering to one side.” He adds: “In the matter of the shape of heaven, the sacred writers did not wish to teach men facts that could be of no avail for their salvation.” Augustine is saying that the book of Genesis is not an elementary book of astronomy. The Bible is about religion, and it is not the purpose of the Bible’s religious authors to settle questions about the shape of the universe that are of no relevance whatsoever to how to seek salvation.

In the same vein, Pope John Paul II said in 1981 that the Bible itself “speaks to us of the origins of the universe and its makeup, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe. Sacred Scripture … in order to teach this truth, it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer.”

4. THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

Christian scholars for centuries struggled with the problem of evil in the world. The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) set the problem succinctly with brutal directness: “Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then, he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then evil?” If the reasoning is valid, it would follow that God is not all-powerful or all-good. Christian theology accepts that evil exists but denies the validity of the argument.

Traditional theology distinguishes three kinds of evil: (1) moral evil or sin, the evil originated by human beings; (2) pain and suffering as experienced by human beings; and (3) physical evil, such as floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, and the imperfections of all creatures. Theology has a ready answer for the first two kinds of evil. Sin is a consequence of free will; the converse of sin is virtue, also a consequence of free will. Christian theologians have expounded that if humans are to enter into a genuinely personal relationship with their maker, they must first experience some degree of freedom and autonomy. The eternal reward of heaven calls for a virtuous life, as many Christians see it. Christian theology also provides a good accounting of human pain and suffering. To the extent that pain and suffering are caused by war, injustice, and other forms of human wrongdoing, they are also a consequence of free will; people choose to inflict harm on one another. On the flip side are good deeds by which people choose to alleviate human suffering.

What about earthquakes, storms, floods, droughts, and other physical catastrophes? Enter modern science into the theologian’s reasoning. Physical events are built into the structure of the world itself. Since the seventeenth century, humans have known that the processes by which galaxies and stars come into existence, planets are formed, continents move, weather and seasons change, and floods and earthquakes occur are natural processes, not events specifically designed by God for punishing or rewarding humans. The extreme violence of supernova explosions and the chaotic frenzy at galactic centers are outcomes of the laws of physics, not the design of a fearsome Deity. Before Darwin, theologians still encountered a seemingly insurmountable difficulty. If God is the designer of life, whence the lion’s cruelty, the snake’s poison, and the parasites that secure their existence only by destroying their hosts? Evolution came to the rescue. Jack Haught (1998), a contemporary Roman Catholic theologian, has written of “Darwin’s gift to theology.” The Protestant theologian Arthur Peacocke has referred to Darwin as the “disguised friend,” by quoting the earlier theologian Aubrey Moore, who in 1891 wrote that “Darwinism appeared, and, under the guise of a foe, did the work of a friend” (Peacocke 1998). Haught and Peacocke are acknowledging the irony that the theory of evolution, which at first seemed to remove the need for God in the world, now has convincingly removed the need to explain the world’s imperfections as failed outcomes of God’s design.

Indeed, a major burden was removed from the shoulders of believers when convincing evidence was advanced that the design of organisms need not be attributed to the immediate agency of the Creator but rather is an outcome of natural processes. If we claim that organisms and their parts have been specifically designed by God, we have to account for the incompetent design of the human jaw, the narrowness of the birth canal, and our poorly designed backbone, less than fittingly suited for walking upright. Imperfections and defects pervade the living world. Consider the human eye. The visual nerve fibers in the eye converge to form the optic nerve, which crosses the retina (to reach the brain) and thus creates a blind spot, a minor imperfection, but an imperfection of design, nevertheless; squids and octopuses do not have this defect. Did the Designer have greater love for squids than for humans and thus exhibit greater care in designing their eyes than ours? It is not only that organisms and their parts are less than perfect but also that deficiencies and dysfunctions are pervasive, evidencing incompetent rather than intelligent design. Consider the human jaw. Humans have too many teeth for the jaw’s size, so that wisdom teeth need to be removed and orthodontists can make a decent living straightening the others. Would we want to blame God for this blunder? A human engineer would have done better.

5. EVOLUTION: IMPERFECT DESIGN, NOT INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Evolution gives a good account of this imperfection. Brain size increased over time in human ancestors; the remodeling of the skull to fit the larger brain entailed a reduction of the jaw, so that the head of the newborn would not be too large to pass through the mother’s birth canal. The birth canal of women is much too narrow for easy passage of the infant’s head, so that thousands on thousands of babies and many mothers die during delivery. Surely we do not want to blame God for this dysfunctional design or for the children’s deaths. The theory of evolution makes it understandable: it is a consequence of the evolutionary enlargement of the human brain. Females of other primates do not experience this difficulty. Theologians in the past struggled with the issue of dysfunction because they thought it had to be attributed to God’s design. Science, much to the relief of theologians, provides an explanation that convincingly attributes defects, deformities, and dysfunctions to natural causes.

Consider the following. About 20 percent of all recognized human pregnancies end in spontaneous miscarriage during the first two months of pregnancy. This misfortune amounts at present to more than 20 million spontaneous abortions worldwide every year. Do we want to blame God for the deficiencies in the pregnancy process? Many people of faith would rather attribute this monumental mishap to the clumsy ways of the evolutionary process than to the incompetence or deviousness of an intelligent designer.

Evolution makes it possible to attribute these mishaps to natural processes rather than to the direct creation or specific design of the Creator. The response of some critics is that the process of evolution by natural selection does not discharge God’s responsibility for the dysfunctions, cruelties, and sadism of the living world, because for people of faith, God is the Creator of the universe and thus would be accountable for its consequences, direct or indirect, immediate or mediated. If God is omnipotent, the argument would say, He could have created a world where such things as cruelty, parasitism, and human miscarriages would not occur.

One possible religious explanation goes along the following lines of reasoning. Consider, first, human beings, who perpetrate all sorts of misdeeds and sins, even perjury, adultery, and murder. People of faith believe that each human being is a creation of God, but this does not entail that God is responsible for human crimes and misdemeanors. As stated earlier, sin is a consequence of free will; the converse of sin is virtue. The critics might say that this account does not excuse God, because God could have created humans without free will (whatever these “humans” might have been called and been like). But one could reasonably argue that “humans” without free will would be a very different kind of creature, a being much less interesting and creative than humans are. Robots are not a good replacement for humans; robots do not perform virtuous deeds.

This line of argumentation can be extended to the catastrophes and other events of the physical world and to the dysfunctions of organisms and the harms caused to them by other organisms and environmental mishaps. However, some authors do not find this extension fully satisfactory as an explanation that exonerates God from moral responsibility. The point made again is that the world was created by God, so God is ultimately responsible. God could have created a world without parasites or dysfunctionalities. But a world of life with evolution is much more exciting; it is a creative world where new species arise, complex ecosystems come about, and humans have evolved. These considerations may provide the beginning of an explanation for many people of faith, as well as for theologians.

The Anglican theologian Keith Ward (2008) has stated the case in even stronger terms, arguing that the creation of a world without suffering and moral evil is not an option even for God: “Could [God] not actualize a world wherein suffering is not a possibility? He could not, if any world complex and diverse enough to include rational and moral agents must necessarily include the possibility of suffering … A world with the sorts of success and happiness in it that we occasionally experience is a world that necessarily contains the possibility of failure and misery.” The physicist and theologian Robert J. Russell (2007) has gone even further, making the case why there should be natural (physical and biological) evil in the world, “including the pain, suffering, disease, death, and extinction that characterize the evolution of life.”

An additional point is that physical or biological (other than human) events that cause harm are not moral evil actions, because they are not caused by moral agents, but are the result of natural processes. If a terrorist blows up a bus with schoolchildren in it, that is moral evil. If an earthquake kills several thousand people in China and destroys their homes and livelihood, there is no subject morally responsible, because the event was not committed by a moral agent but was the result of a natural process. If a mugger uses a vicious dog to brutalize a person, the mugger is morally responsible. But if a coyote attacks a person, there is no moral evil that needs to be accounted for. In the world of physical and biological nature (again, excluding human deeds), no morality is involved. This claim, of course, may or may not satisfy everyone, but it deserves to be explored by theologians and people of faith.

6. EVOLUTION AND RELIGION: CODA

Evolution and religious beliefs need not be in contradiction. Indeed, if science and religion are properly understood, they cannot be in contradiction, because they concern different matters. Science and religion are like two different windows for looking at the world. The two windows look at the same world, but they show different aspects of that world. Science concerns the processes that account for the natural world: the movement of planets, the composition of matter and the atmosphere, the origin and adaptations of organisms. Religion concerns the meaning and purpose of the world and of human life, the proper relation of people to the Creator and to one another, the moral values that inspire and govern people’s lives. Apparent contradictions emerge only when either the science or the beliefs, or often both, trespass their own boundaries and wrongfully encroach on each other’s subject matter.

The scope of science is the world of nature, the reality that is observed, directly or indirectly, by the senses. Science advances explanations concerning the natural world, explanations that are subject to the possibility of corroboration or rejection by observation and experiment. Outside that world, science has no authority, no statements to make, no business whatsoever taking one position or another. Science has nothing decisive to say about values, whether economic, aesthetic, or moral; nothing to say about the meaning of life or its purpose; nothing to say about religious beliefs (except in the case of beliefs that transcend the proper scope of religion and make assertions about the natural world that contradict scientific knowledge; such statements cannot be true).

Science is a way of knowing, but it is not the only way. Knowledge also derives from other sources. Common experience, imaginative literature, art, and history provide valid knowledge about the world; and so do revelation and religion for people of faith. The significance of the world and human life, as well as matters concerning moral or religious values, transcends science. Yet these matters are important; for most of us, they are at least as important as scientific knowledge per se.

The proper relationship between science and religion can be, for people of faith, mutually motivating and inspiring. Science may inspire religious beliefs and religious behavior as we respond with awe to the immensity of the universe, the glorious diversity and wondrous adaptations of organisms, and the marvels of the human brain and the human mind. Religion promotes reverence for the creation, for humankind as well as for the world of life and the environment. Religion often is, for scientists and others, a motivating force and source of inspiration for investigating the marvelous world of the creation and solving the puzzles with which it confronts us.