Extinction (was Re: Stereotypes and reputations)

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Cornelius Hunter
  To: Glenn Morton ; asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Sunday, July 31, 2005 2:20 PM
  Subject: Re: Stereotypes and reputations

  Glenn:

  You raised basically 3 concerns with the idea that evolution could be false:

  1. Extinctions
  2. Species changeover
  3. Long time periods.

  In other words, God would not make species that would go extinct; He would not have the flora and fauna go through complete makeovers; and He would not be very very slow acting, using long time periods. Hence, evolution must be true. These are powerful arguments for evolution. They and several others like them have been around for centuries. #1 goes back to Wesley and Jefferson in the 18th century. How's that for bracketing the theological spectrum? A Wesleyan (literally) and a deist both making the same identical point, that God would not have species go extinct. These concerns cut across the spectrum and they can be found in a great many thinkers, from the highly influential to the more obscure. So when Darwin made his powerful arguments for evolution he was drawing from a rich tradition.
  .......................................................

  Cornelius et al. -

  Loren Eiseley discussed the difficulty that people had in realizing that species had become extinct in an excellent essay "How Death Became Natural" [
  [in The Firmament of Time (Atheneum, New York, 1962), pp.33-58]. I think that the theological significance of this is rather different from what you suggest. The concept of God that lies behind resistance to the possibility of extinction is the deity who guarantees the status quo - a fundamentally unbiblical concept of God. The biblical God is the one who can destroy, or allow to be destroyed, everything that his promise seems to rest upon & still remain faithful to his promise - cf. Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem & the death of Christ. The possibility that God would in fact allow extinction is an important step on the way to realizing that God could even use extinction in bringing forth new forms of life, as in natural selection. & that in turn is a step on the way toward realizing that the God who is active in the evolutionary process is the God whose character is made known in the cross & resurrection of Christ.

  I am not, of course, saying that those are the steps that all Christians who accept evolution have taken in coming to that position: Too many are content with superficial "reconciliation" of evolution & creation. OTOH, if one begins with a theology of the cross, extinction & its role in the evolutionary process don't come as a shock.

  (I should note that of course my characterization above of resistance to evolution is oversimplified: There is a vast tradition of the "great chain of being," a "principle of plenitude," &c. But the net result is still a philosophical concept of God with no real grounding in God's self-revelation & in important ways at odds with it.)

  Shalom
  George Murphy
  http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Sun Jul 31 15:23:08 2005