[asa] Saving Darwin -- On the "Fall"

I got my copy of Karl Giberson's "Saving Darwin" today and read through the
Introduction, in which Karl briefly discusses the problem of the "Fall."
The book, BTW, is a delightful read, and its discussion of the contours of
the problem are very valuable, even if one doesn't agree with every
conclusion.

As we've discussed a bit already, Karl finds unconvincing and contrived any
effort to "save" the fall through some kind of federal representative view
of "Adam". Here is what I think is the key passage of his positive
statement of the fall, on page 13:

If nature, in all its many processes, is 'free' to explore pathways of
possibility, then the evolutionary process would predictably lead to
creatures with pathological levels of selfishness. Creatures inattentive to
their own needs would not have made it. By these lights, God did not
'build' sin into the natural order. Rather, God endowed the natural order
with the freedom to 'become,' and the result was an interesting, morally
complex, spiritually rich, but ultimately selfish species we call *Homo
sapiens*. This is an entirely reasonable theologcal speculation, at least
by my amateur standards. It brings the Christian doctrine of the fall into
the larger picture of an extended creation. Humankind did not appear all at
once, and neither did sin.

Queries:

1. Is this notion of the fall theologically adequate?

2. Is this notion of the fall open theism or process thought?

3. Does accepting biological evolution require the acceptance of open
theism or process thought?

A couple of tangential questions as well -- Karl if you're able I'd love to
hear about these:

1. In the Introduction, Karl describes how his undergraduate Bible /
religion professors at a Christian college began to dissuade him about
taking the Genesis accounts literally / historically. It appears from this
description that only the fringe of fundamentalism still took those accounts
literally. My experience has been different -- I've reached out to many
Bible scholars and theologians from evangelical institutions that I would
not consider fundamentalist, and none have been willing to commit to a
non-historical Adam -- with the possible exception of Kent Sparks in his
book "God's Word in Human Words," and there only indirectly. As I
mentioned, even at my more "progressive" alma mater, Gordon College, it
seems that none of the theology / Bible faculty are of this view. Are there
people who are just afraid to "come out of the closet," so to speak? Or is
it just that "evangelical" must equal "fundamentalist?"

2. Karl also mentions some theologians who are accepting of evolution,
including Alister McGrath, and he cites to McGrath's "Scientific Theology"
trilogy. Does McGrath take on evolution head-on in that series, and in
particular, does he address Adam and the fall? I know McGrath accepts
evolution, but I've never been able to find any published reference of his
either on exactly how this relates to this central point of tension.

Also, I'm not so sure that McGrath's version of "critical realism" would be
as accepting of the pragmatism of daily scientific practice as Karl is in
Chapter 6. And I can testify for certain that the characterization of legal
education versus practicing scientific education on page 158 is just wrong.
All of the law professors I know -- and I'm one -- would scoff at the idea
that "science is different from, say, law, where rules dominate and the
prevailing philosophy is that following the rules leads to the truth."
(Page 158). Actually, the prevailing philosophy of law is scientific
pragmatism / realism, in which nobody really "knows" the law except through
lived, experienced adjudicated disputes (or messy legislative or rule-making
processes). But more on that another day.

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
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