May 21, 2007

Reconciling Darwinian Natural Selection with Christian Theology

Posted at 4:00 pm by Richard and tagged creationism, darwinism, Essays, science. Popularity: 48% [?]

This essay was originally written in 2006 for the subject “God and the Natural Sciences” at Melbourne University’s History and Philosophy of Science department.

“Some Nineteenth century Christian Darwinians were scientifically and theologically successful in reconciling Darwinian Natural Selection with Christian theology.”

Introduction

Darwin’s theories on the origin of species have been summarised by Gould¹ in three major points:

1. “Organisms vary, and these variations are inherited (at least in part) by their offspring.
2. Organisms produce more offspring than can possibly survive.
3. On average offspring that vary most strongly in directions favoured by the environment will survive and propagate. Favourable variation will therefore accumulate in populations by natural selection.”

Darwin’s ideas have been greatly debated over the years, but most of all his theory on natural selection, cited by Gould as the means by which these favourable variations are acquired, and thus, after long periods of time new species created. “Natural selection is a process by which biological populations are altered over time, as a result of the propagation of heritable traits that affect the capacity of individual organisms to survive and reproduce.”². This caused issues for many, especially those for whom ‘special creation’ was the preferred method by which new species were created. For many, God had been exiled from the process of creation and, if one accepted Darwin’s arguments, there seemed to be no plausible theological alternative but to hold a Deistic (“religious beliefs must be founded on human reason and observed features of the natural world”³) or Atheistic point of view.

According to Charles Watts, a 19th Century atheist, the word ‘evolution’ had “become very popular as representing a theory of man and the universe opposed to the old orthodox notion of special creation and supernatural government”⁴ Many agreed with Watts (both in the 19th Century, and still today) and believed that evolution and Christian theology are two opposing and forever incompatible ideas. This idea was not held by all in the 19th Century, however. “Opposition to evolutionary theory has always been most vigorous among those who felt that their religious beliefs required them to reject it”⁵, but not all Christians felt that their beliefs require them to reject Darwinism. Among these Christian Darwinists, were Aubrey Lackington Moore and Asa Gray.

Aubrey Lackington Moore

Aubrey Lackington Moore was a clergyman who became an amateur botanist through his friendship with E. B. Poulton, a young Darwinian. Despite being only an amateur, Moore’s expertise led to him being offered the curatorship of the Botanical Gardens in 1887.⁶ According to Moore, faith “is not dependent on any particular understanding of organic origins”. For him, separating facts of nature and acts of God was akin to Deism, a theological standpoint he rejected. Moore stated that, “for the Christian theologian the facts of nature are the acts of god”⁷, and yet, he was also able to reconcile Darwin’s theories of natural selection with his own Christian theology.

For Moore⁸, evolution and special creation were not inherently incompatible, as they described different stages of ‘creation’. Special creation was still true for Moore, but evolution was able to take over as the means for ‘secondary creation’. Further, Moore had issues with the idea of an ‘occasionally interventionist’ God, as would be the case if God ‘specially created’ every individual species. Moore pointed out that a god who occasionally intervenes is, by implication, ordinarily absent.⁹

Evolution was theologically more satisfying for Moore, as Darwin’s theory “implies the immanence of God in nature, and the omnipresence of his creative power”¹⁰. Scientifically, Moore believed evolution “to be the truest solution yet discovered by science”¹¹

Asa Gray

Asa Gray (1810-88), along with George Frederick Wright, has been credited with being one of the creators of Christian Darwinism.¹² Gray summarised natural selection as a process by which “those individuals and those variations which possess any advantage, however slight, over the rest, are in the long run sure to survive, to propagate, and to occupy the limited field, to the exclusion or destruction of the weaker brethren.”¹³ He agreed with Darwin’s natural selection theory¹⁴,¹⁵ while still maintaining his Christian beliefs.

Darwin himself made an argument (dubbed the “stone house” argument) which “likened natural selection to an architect making a stone house from the rocks that had fallen from a cliff”¹⁶. Darwin argued that, while specific stones would be selected by the architect to best fit the structure which was being created, “it would be unreasonable to say that God had overseen the shapes that the stones took”¹⁷. Gray’s response to Darwin’s stone house argument was that the argument was ‘unanswerable’¹⁸, and instead, he responded with a different metaphor – a sailing vessel, propelled by the wind (God), but guided by a rudder (natural selection)¹⁹. Gray maintained his theological belief in the sovereignty of God, while agreeing with Darwin’s scientific theory.

Gray may have agreed with Darwin’s own description of natural selection, in that natural selection “is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, persevering and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.”²⁰ Gray would probably argue that such a specific scrutinising process would have to be an example of his ‘sovereign wind of God’.

Conclusion

Although Darwin’s theories created tension for many Christians in the 19th Century, special creation and evolution – two theories which both claim to explain the origin of species – were reconciled by separating them in other ways.

Moore separated the two theories by allowing them both to act in their own time periods. For Moore, special creation was the mode for primary creation, while evolution was the method by which species continued to diversify. Gray, on the other hand, separated them by purpose. While evolution was the guiding process by which species were created, God was still the driving force behind it.

Popularity: 48% [?]

1. Gould, S. J. (1980) Ever Since Darwin: Reflections on Natural History, p.11. [↩]
2. Wikipedia, Natural Selection. [↩]
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism [↩]
4. Watts, C. (circa. 1880), Evolution and Special Creation [↩]
5. Brians, P. (Date unknown), Reading About the World, Volume 2, Washington State University. [↩]
6. Moore, J. R. (1979) The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p.260. [↩]
7. Moore, p.261. [↩]
8. Moore, p.263. [↩]
9. Moore, p.263. [↩]
10. Moore, p.264. [↩]
11. Moore, p.262. [↩]
12. Moore, p.261. [↩]
13. Gray, A. (1860) Darwin on the Origin of Species: A book review, The Atlantic Monthly, July 1860. [↩]
14. Ferngren, G. B. (2002) Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London [↩]
15. Gray, A. (1860) Darwin on the Origin of Species: A book review, The Atlantic Monthly, July 1860. [↩]
16. England, R. (2003) Design After Darwin, 1860-1900. Salisbury University, Maryland, USA. [↩]
17. England, R. (2003) Design After Darwin, 1860-1900. Salisbury University, Maryland, USA. [↩]
18. Moore, p.291. [↩]
19. Moore, p.289. [↩]
20. Darwin, C. (1982), Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, Penguin Classics, p.133. [↩]

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