Can you be a Christian and accept evolution?

In practical terms, most answer the question with a resounding "no!" For many conscientious Christians, the affirmative is unavoidable, given the strength and depth of the evidence pointing towards our "it's complicated" relationship with all life on earth. One such Christian, a theologian, answers this question and finds theological justification for accepting the science in Understanding the Beginning in Light at the End: Eschatalogical Reflections on making Theological Sense of Evolution.

As an atheist, I do not share the author's worldview and find the attendant arguments unconvincing, but that is beside the point. He is writing to convince others of the same persuasion that he has a unique, intellectually honest way to reconcile their belief system with what humans have discovered about the universe through the scientific method. Where it falls down is where the author fails to grapple with the implications of this science, where the facts gleaned through careful and modern scientific research clash with a worldview originally born in a prescientific era, subsequently transmogrified to fit our expanding knowledge.
 

As a former Christian, I find this article fascinating. Had I come upon it six or seven years ago, I would have exclaimed that I had found a theologian who finally had the honesty to grapple with science and put my very thoughts onto his keyboard. The academic language is unfortunately obscure, but it contains a wealth of meaning for the initiated. In a very short work, the author covers parts of eschatology, theodicy, natural theology, theology of sin, and even a bit of moral theology (if I may use the word once more).

I once believed that the natural laws of the universe had no power in themselves but were simply descriptions of how God ran and maintained the cosmos. The analogy I used was of rocky ground poking through the snow in winter, like miracles standing out in a universe of regularity. The rocks were not aberrations, but simply the underlying earth poking through; in this way, I believed that miracles were simply visible signs of an underlying reality.

The author accepts biological evolution and its implications about as far as a Christian can while maintaining the faith. This includes the rare acknowledgement that a literal Adam and Eve are impossible and cannot be taken seriously. The author also puts forward the theologically justifiable (not just for "liberals") and praiseworthy position that humans are "stewards" of the world around us, not mere consumers of its goods.

Where I must disagree with the author's reasoning is where he departs from the ramifications of what we have learned with the scientific method. He states "The universe, it seems, is on a journey: its trajectory is not aimless but progresses toward increased complexity and flourishing of life." This is a theological conclusion--the universe has numerous self-organizing properties, but where they lead depends entirely on what time or physical scale you use. As the author admits, the law of entropy doesn't promise a happy ending when we zoom all the way out.

Even when we zoom in, the flourishing of life we now see is predeceased by a thousand times more species, and the animals we marvel at live hungry and die painfully. He defines "God's design, calling, and covenant" as being the requirement for the death to become "morally relevant." In this way, he dismisses the problem of death's ubiquity with mere theological handwaving. He simply shrugs off the fact that our biological world depends upon difficult lives, painful deaths, and eventual extinction, with the remains building our mountains and driving our modern lives, all occupying a fraction of a mote of the universe's four (obvious) dimensions.

Furthermore, his assumption seems to be that intelligent human life was inevitable, another theological necessity contradicted by science. The contingency of evolution over time means that given a tiny change in conditions or a lack of the proper mutation, humans would not exist at all. If we could run evolution over again, there is no guarantee that humanoids would emerge, let alone with large brains. The argument that our existence is preordained is unsupported by science and can be described in the same way as fine tuning, as Douglas Adams put it:

“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.”

I'm also interested in the author's statement "Much of the time, the Spirit's work in this regard goes unnoticed and may well be scientifically undetectable." This appears as a tacit acknowledgement that scientific evidence for his views are thin even from his standpoint. He seems to move toward the Intelligent Design position of genetic "information" as evidence of divine guidance, but his statements are not clear enough to draw a firm conclusion. Besides that, I wonder what part of the Spirit's work he considers scientifically detectable.

In short, the article is a fascinating exercise in making a theological virtue of a scientific necessity. The strength of his conclusions depend, like any logically valid argument, upon the truth of his premises, which are anything but a given. The increase of knowledge about our universe has caused observant and conscientious theologians to abandon and rationalize all manner of previously-orthodox beliefs, bending their understanding of the Bible and God to fit. There is no reason to suspect that this trend will stop in the near future. While I applaud the author's efforts to "love the Lord your God with all your...mind," the mere fact that he has to work so hard, and selectively ignore the implications of science in so doing, affirms my abstention from belief in the supernatural. It also adds fuel to the conclusion that Christian belief and acceptance of scientific knowledge are further apart than ever before.