Re: "Hidden" Theological Issues with Theistic Evolution (was Re: [asa] E.O. Wilson "Baptist No More")

> In contrast, evolutionary epistemology seems to suggest that all human
> knowing is thoroughly conditioned by natural selection. It is a
> reductionist account of knowing, rooted in a reductionist account of mind,
> which in turn is rooted in a reductionist account of nature. In this
> reductionist account, where is there room for the Holy Spirit as an
> independent entity -- and not only as an independent entity, as a person of
> the triune Godhead from which reality and knowledge ultimately proceeds? It
> seems to me "evolution" is a package deal -- you can't elide its biological
> aspects from its social, behavioural, and mental aspects. I'm not sure
> evangelicals who slide over to TE really appreciate that problem.

The assumption that evolution explains everything about humans is
reductionist, but one cannot validly claim to derive that assumption
from biological evolution. What evolution does tell us is that the
human brain has physically been shaped by our evolutionary heritage.
However, I don't see any reason why an atheist could not consistently
maintain a position that this evolutionary process has produced in us
mental abilities that allow free will, the possibility of assessing
things, etc. He'd be hard pressed to justify why I should accept his
value judgements, but my point is that evolution does not require a
reductionist or deterministic view; conversely, it is not incompatible
with predestination, omniscience, etc. either.

I don't see how evolution in any way impinges on the idea of knowledge
deriving from the Spirit. If God is sovereignly directing the
evolutionary process, he can make it arrive at an end state able to
receive communication from Him. Being omniscient, He also can figure
out how to communicate even with an unpromising audience.

Extreme versions of sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, etc. try to
come up with "just-so stories" in Gould's sense of how absolutely
everything about humans has evolutionary roots. In reality, any
organism has features that are incidental to its survival and
reproduction. As long as something does not significantly harm an
organism's success, it can persist. To this extent, there's actually
some merit in Dawkins' tales of parasitic memes-just because many
people do something does not mean it's adaptive. (Dawkins falls into
the opposite error of concluding that it is therefore maladaptive).
Another significant problem is that any number of scenarios are
potentially adaptive under certain plausible conditions, so the fact
that one can create a computer model that demonstrates that a
particular human behavior could be adaptive under a certain set of
conditions is a far cry for proving that evolution has explained the
behavior. Also, given that God's commands are actually in our own
self-interest, an overlap between evolutionarily encouraged
predispositions and God's design is hardly surprising.

It's perfectly true that humans behave in selfish evolutionary
self-interest more than we realize or care to admit, just as Marx and
Freud were right in that money and sex motivate us more than we
realize or care to admit. However, the jump to conclude that
everything about humans is explicable evolutionarily, financially, or
sexually is fallacious.

Also, evolution describes what organisms do. What we ought to do is
outside the scope of scientific investigation. Thus there are
inherent gaps in what evolution can tell us.

To some extent, this ties into the question of the origin of the soul.
 There are plenty of debates already within Christianity about the
exact nature (e.g., monist, dualist, etc.) of spiritualty and about
how it is transmitted to each new person. These illustrate the rather
limited data we have to go on. Thus, there is also little to decide
between various models of "ensoulment" of humanity within an
evolutionary context. One could take a gradual developmental view, in
which increasing mental capabilities in organisms was matched by an
increasing spirituality, or an abrupt developmental view, in which
spirituality is an emergent property of an organism that reaches a
certain level of mental complexity, or a mroe intervention-style view
in which God basically inserts a soul at the point He wants to. As
long as the first two are envisioned as being under the direction of
God's sovereign plan, I don't see a problem fitting them into
conventional theology. The first would tend to rasie questions about
animal spirituality, though such questions already exist independent
of evolutionary considerations. Inserting the soul sounds a bit like
ID; however, as it is unclear exactly how the soul relates to the
physical body and mind, it is far from clear that spirituality would
be determined by physical processes such as evolution; after all,
God's spiritual nature is unrelated to an evolutionary or physical
heritage.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama
"I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
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