In and Out of God - God and Evolution

Just a theory

The only encounter that I had in my religious past with the theory of evolution was in Biology class. The teacher stood in front of the class and monotonously droned about black butterflies eventually outnumbering the white butterflies because they were the same colour of tree trunks and that natural selection was the vehicle for this occurrence and that this is what we meant by evolution. Did you feel as bored reading the last sentence as I felt writing it?

I did have a secondary encounter with the theory though, and surely enough it was in a Religious Knowledge class. I usually had docile, risk averse,  Religious Knowledge teachers as far as I can remember, but in Form 5, our teacher was very much involved in his faith. I remember him telling us that evolution was 'just a theory' and that it had recently been disproved. And just like that I was convinced. After all, he was a teacher, and I had much better things to worry about - like getting all 1's in 'CXC' (CSEC). How I got a 1 in Biology baffles me to this day.

It's not until I was 20 years old that the theory reared its head again like an atavism. What better a place to do this than in a group of young Catholic males, motivated from within and burning with passion for intellectual evangelisation. We wanted to save Catholicism from immature theology among the laity and defend Catholicism from creeping atheism. One in our bunch was fond of evolution and I would bounce my skepticism off of him. He dealt with them like a professional. Thanks to his responses, and that wonderful book by Jerry Coyne that he lent me, I now see that evolution is the best explanation for the diversity of life we see on earth.

Get this book.

My acknowledging the truth of evolution did have its accompanying problems, unfortunately. But first, let me give a simple explanation of evolution for those who misunderstand it. Then I will refocus on my struggle with accepting it alongside my faith.

"Life on earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species - perhaps a self-replicating molecule - that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection". 


Take a deep breath. First of all, the theory of evolution does not say anything about the origin of life on earth. That's an entirely different question. Hopefully the following example would help to understand the theory better -


Each human being is unique because they have different genetic codes. Genes are like on and off switches - when on they turn on a particular trait, like eye colour and when off they are inactive. Genes are inherited from parents. However, when a male and a female mate and have a child, their chromosomes come together to form a new genetic code. Usually when this happens, the gene that is chosen to be expressed in the child is the one that was more dominant than the other. If your mother had black eyes and your father had blue eyes, but your father had a dominant gene and your mother a recessive, it is highly probable that you would inherit your father's blue eyes. The amazing thing about genes is that through meiosis or some other reason, ever so often, they randomly mutate. They are called random because they can either be favourable or detrimental to the life of the organism. When they are fortunate enough to be favourable, that organism increases its survivability.

Now, imagine 100 human beings - 50 male and 50 female. They are living in the jungle and all of them have hands without thumbs. Then one day, one couple bears a child with a thumb! Let's name him Darwin. His genetic code randomly mutated to produce this, and it has never been seen before. His thumb now allows him to hold food more efficiently and to carve weapons like spears which increases his chances of survival. Darwin, thankfully, grows up and has a mate of his own and bears a child. Remember the preceding paragraph? If his gene for having a thumb is dominant, it will be passed on to his progeny. If that happens, there will be two human beings who have thumbs - their population has increased! As long as these human beings have sex and pass on their genes the population of thumbers will continue to grow. Eventually, the human beings who did not have thumbs may evolve in their own way and soon be unable to breed with the thumbers. When this happens, it means a new species has arisen. An alternative to this is that the non-thumbers may die out due to their inability to protect themselves from the threat of predators as well as those with thumbs could. Evolutionary history is littered with examples of the latter option because over 90% of all species that ever existed have gone extinct.

We have various things at work here - random genetic mutation, long expanses of time and natural selection. Natural selection is the term given for the process whereby the organisms most adapted to their natural environments survive and pass their genes on to the next generation while the mal-adapted organisms become extinct.

To the uninitiated, this is all bullshit, and I was uninitiated. It was easy for me to imagine this working for microevolution but to say it lead to macroevolution was saying too much. Scientists have evidence to show that there is no real difference between the two, other than time. Macroevolution is the result of millions of years of microevolution. But I needed evidence for this theory. It's amazing how much we call for evidence when a thought is not in line with what we hold to be true. Why don't we ask for evidence for our own truths? Well, evidence abounds for this theory and I will not be able to do it justice. I recommend Jerry Coyne's book or a simple youtube video with Richard Dawkins. I will share the two points that keeled me over.

Vestiges


You've probably wondered why your appendix adds no benefit to your body but runs the risk of getting infected and inflamed, which can lead to your painful, untimely death. If you were a whale, in your time spent alone with your thoughts, you'd be bewildered over the presence of legs on your sides. Try to imagine yourself as a blind mole rat, burrowing your way beneath the surface of the earth in complete darkness. Why do you have eyes?

Free Willy could have easily climbed over the rock-mound.

These are examples of vestiges. They are traits found in living organisms that are either not used or do not function anymore. They have been handed down through the evolutionary line by former forms of the species that did have use for the traits. However, as time went on, random mutation and natural selection went to work and pushed the evolution of the species along a different path. Our appendix serves no purpose, but herbivores like rabbits have them and they are used to help digest cellulose. Most likely, at some point in our evolutionary history, our diets changed from being mainly plants to mainly meat, and our appendix was rendered virtually useless. There are many more examples of vestiges in other animals. Please check out the book. 


Bad design


There was a time in my life when I was a romantic and I had an eye only for beauty. How naive. When you look objectively at creation, both beauty, horror and the occasional comedy can be found. This little section of Jerry's book got me thinking. The idea of a designer carefully crafting each species is ridiculous. What engineer would put in a part who's only use is to potentially destroy his creation? Why would he give an ostrich wings? Heck, why would he make a food chain? Wasn't there a way to avoid all of us having to eat each other to survive? Noah must have had a hard time keeping things peaceful in the ark.

The one that most disturbs me is the small gap between the ovary and the Fallopian tube of a woman. An egg has to cross that gap in order to get to the uterus and be implanted. Ever so often, an egg doesn't make the leap and gets implanted in the abdomen which can lead to the death of the baby and/or the mother without proper surgery. What kind of designer would make such a malicious feature? Evolutionary theory better explains these horror stories, because evolution does not build a new species from scratch, it uses the parts it has available from an old species. Evolution does not produce perfect creatures. I would have expected that much from a Watchmaker.

Beautiful isn't it?

It is unfortunate that science bores people. But something tells me that people's recalcitrance in accepting the theory is not the theory in itself. Many people don't even know what the theory really is. It absolutely does not say man came from nothing or that we evolved from apes, as some believe, which leads to laughable questions like "If man evolved from apes, why are there still apes?" So even in misunderstanding the theory, people dislike the very notion of it and I think I know why, because I was one of them.

Genesis

The theory of evolution is so well-documented, it leaves very little wiggle room for the intervention of God in causing the variety of lifeforms we see, especially ourselves. What the theory does, is discredit the Adam and Eve story, which many believers hold to be the truth of our creation. Thankfully, the Catholic Church was not affected by this because the Church regarded the first chapters of Genesis as a 'myth', an inspired story meant to teach us deeper truths about God and ourselves. Pope John Paul II himself acknowledged that evolution was "more than a hypothesis" and tried to reconcile the truth of evolution with the truth of revelation. In 1909, the Pontifical Biblical Commission published a document, approved by Pius X, which related that Genesis was to be regarded as historical truth with regard to:


"the creation of all things by God at the beginning of time; the special creation of man; the formation of the first woman from the first man; the unity of the human race; the original happiness of our first parents in the state of justice, integrity, and immortality; the command given by God to man to test his obedience; the transgression of the divine command at the instigation of the devil under the form of a serpent; the degradation of our first parents from that primeval state of innocence; and the promise of a future redeemer."

When I first heard this, I was relieved that the paradigm shift in my understanding of life would not directly affect my faith. Theodosius Dobzhansk, a biologist who called himself a 'creationist and an evolutionist' wrote the now famous line - "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" also wrote that "Evolution is God's, or Nature's method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way." A beautiful thought, this was. Unfortunately, this little safety net of faith didn't hold me for very long because the Church needed to do more than simply say it was unaffected than to actually be unaffected. The theory of evolution does affect our view of very fundamental theological constructs.


Original sin


Okay. So the Church accepted evolution. So what? How, then, could the Church continue teaching on the doctrine of original sin, which is (or was) based on the idea of a First Fall? We were still expected to believe that the reason for our concupiscence was a result of the sin handed down from the disobedience of our 'first parents' - original sin. Exactly what this sin was and when it occurred and how, in light of evolution, we were to determine just who our first parents were is never clearly addressed. All these facts are regarded as unimportant as long as you believe the truth of Catholic revelation while disregarding the truth of Islamic, Jewish or Hindu revelation.

The so called 'symptoms' of original sin were much better explained to me by evolution than by theology. Our sickness is not because Eve was hungry or Adam was a louse, but because we are imperfect products of evolution living in a world where bacteria and viruses evolve at a much faster rate than we do.Ruminating on our screwed up nature was easier to do with natural selection as the cause than the bad-temper of an omni-everything God who got so angry with our first parents for disobeying him that the rest of creation has to suffer. What did that flounder fish's face have to do with Adam's disobedience? And here I was, calling this God my Father in heaven. If my father were like that I'd hate him, and I'm glad to say he isn't like that at all.


Souls


The theory of evolution shows that the development of life was continuous. Human beings and apes share a common ancestor. At what point in our development, then, did we become 'human beings' - God's 'special creation'? It is said that our eternal souls are what distinguish human beings from other animals. It would have been easy to say that our soul was inserted 'here' or 'there' if evolution was discontinuous with clear cut steps and stages, but it isn't. Also, the faculties that we regard to be of the soul can be found in other animals as well, admittedly not as developed. Do they have souls? Are their souls smaller or less developed than ours?

The Theology of the Body by John Paul II made these waters murkier because it condemned the Manichean view of the body which separates the soul from the body, condemning the body as evil. In its stead, the Church believes that the body is the manifestation of the soul and that they are inseparable. Did our souls evolve along with us, then?


Enough with the questions. I felt like I was opening Pandora's box. Why in the hell were there so many questions? Why was I constantly being forced to reconcile facts with my faith? The Church probably thought that saying evolution did not affect it would help, but it didn't for me. I liked the idea of being formed in the palm of God's hands and it was easy for me to agree that I was because I was a healthy young man. But evolution. What kind of God sits idly by and watches as things randomly occur? It's all so ugly and inelegant a thought when God is supposed to be the Author of this narrative.

Conclusion

The more I read, the less room God had in my understanding of the world. He was receding like the ocean, only he wasn't coming back in. I had hoped that he would come rushing back in like a tsunami, but I got tired of standing on the shore. The little of him left made him a 'God of the gaps', a filler for our dark spots of ignorance. I could not serve a God of the gaps because he was always on the run, looking for new hiding places until he was found out. So this is where I stopped praying, I stopped wanting to go to Church or preach or write for Vision. What was the point? The God that remained after all this research into the universe and life was not the Christian God.

I spent a day as a deist, but only a day. The idea of a God that designed the universe presupposed some evidence of design, and the universe does not show any signs of being designed, far less of being designed for a specific purpose like being a home for human beings.