Precisely what is "Natural Selection"?

Mark Phillips (mark@ist.flinders.edu.au)
Tue, 15 Jun 1999 10:08:05 +0930

Hi,

On Sunday at church we had an interesting sermon. It was on Genesis 1
and dealt briefly with questions on evolution.

The sermon started out talking about the strong structure within the
chapter. About how days 1&4, 2&5, 3&6 line up. Day 4 being a
"filling" of day 1 and so on. It also talked about the tight
structure of the prose within each day. Ie, that each day matched the
same structure.

The point of all this, was that Genesis 1 is not a scientific
document, rather it is telling us about the nature of God and his
relationship with creation.

Anyway, later he came to talking about evolution. He said he didn't
have a problem with evolution as "change". The big problem with
Darwin's theory, as a Christian, was the notion of "natural selection"
(emphasis on the "natural"). He said Darwin used the term *natural*
selection to distinguish it from *supernatural* selection. And that
the concept was basically that through pure chance, without God,
selection took place causing species to evolve (or something like
that).

Afterwards they had a question time and I asked whether perhaps we
should reject thermodynamics as well, because the temperature and
pressure of a gas can be described in terms of probabilities of
molecules without reference to God. He answered that God is
intimately involved in sustaining creation and providing we understood
God was involved in thermodynamics then we could keep it. But natural
selection was different he said, in that the very concept was opposed
to God, the very definition of what it is: selection that occurs by
natural means --- without God.

Later I asked him if I took the concept of "natural selection" and
called it "X" instead --- getting rid of the connotations of "natural"
--- would he be happy with the concept then? He said no, because the
concept "X" would still be defined involving selection without God.

Now it was my understanding that "natural selection" could be defined
in almost mechanical terms without reference to God --- in much the
same way as for thermodynamics. That is, where there is a mechanism
for a population to produce variation in offspring, "natural
selection" is the process whereby those offspring more equipped to
produce offspring (within their environment) will increase their
representation within the population.

In the above definition, there is no need even to mention whether
there is or isn't God's involvement in the process. One can then, as
a philosophical position, state whether you believe God was involved
in the process or not, but I wouldn't have thought the concept of
"natural selection" fundamentally required such a statement.

So my question is: was my minister mistaken on the concept of "natural
selection", or is it true that in Darwin's original formulation of the
concept, it necessitated the absence of divine activity?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and input.

Cheers,

Mark.

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"They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!"