[♪♪♪] ROBERT LAWRENCE KUHN:<i> If God
exists, doctrines of God</i> <i> must align
with truths of science.</i> <i> For almost 60 years
I've been thinking hard</i> <i> about theology
in light of science.</i> <i> So, why have I not
thought hard</i> <i> about theology
in light of evolution,</i> <i> or the reverse,
evolution in light of theology?</i> <i> My indifference to evolution
seems odd,</i> <i> because I do wonder about God,</i> <i> and my Ph.D.
is in the biological sciences.</i> <i> Evolution works fine
without God, no challenge here.</i> <i> But how could
evolution work with God?</i> <i> That's the real challenge.</i> <i> So, here's my approach.</i> <i> I will assume God exists,
then ask,</i> <i> what follows for evolution?</i> <i> In other words,
if God, what's evolution?</i> <i> I'm Robert Lawrence Kuhn,
and</i> Closer to Truth <i> is my journey to find out.</i> [♪♪♪] <i> I've tried to discern meaning
or purpose, if any,</i> <i> by exploring cosmology
and consciousness.</i> <i>Because cosmology is fundamental</i> <i> and consciousness, well,
might be.</i> <i> But not by exploring evolution</i> <i> because evolution
is not fundamental.</i> <i> But evolution concerns
human origins,</i> <i> and origins can reflect
meaning and purpose, if any,</i> <i> which could affect theology,
compliment it or contradict it.</i> <i>So, if I were to believe in God,
how could I handle evolution?</i> <i>I begin by arraying the issues,
the problems, or difficulties</i> <i> that evolution
brings to theology.</i> <i> I ask a theistic philosopher
who takes evolution seriously,</i> <i> Michael Murray.</i> <i> We meet in St. Andrews,
Scotland.</i> Michael,
what are the issues involved, knowing evolution is true and
having to deal with theology, which you know is true
and I wonder is true? Let me say something first
about what we mean by evolution. So, there are three
central components. The first is the idea that there's changing gene
frequencies over time. There's something that's
happening as we go through an evolutionary lineage, where
certain traits are becoming more common and other traits
are becoming less common. And that happens because
gene frequencies are changing. The second component
of evolution refers to common ancestry, so, the idea that all
organisms that exist spring from some single
common ancestor. And the third component,
the changing gene frequencies over time, is just referring
to something we observe. But then evolution also
involves certain mechanisms that explain those changes. And the one that most people are
familiar with is just variation or mutation and selection. When we think of evolution
in that way, it intersects with theology
in a variety of ways. So, let me give you an
overview of what those are. So, the first has to do
with the compatibility between the evolutionary
story and the various claims about origins
in revealed sacred texts. Secondly, religious believers in
many traditions believe that God was involved in some way
in the origins of life, or at least in the origins of,
of humanity in some way. But it looks like
the evolutionary story is a purely naturalistic one. So, how do we reconcile
those two, where does God
come into the picture? The third area has to
do with what looks like the way in which suffering
and evil is intrinsic to
the evolutionary process. So, death, predation,
the sort of waste that comes with extinctions,
the suffering that's involved in all of those things
looks like it's incompatible with the existence
of an all good creator. Another issue
that comes up here has to do with
evidence of purpose. So, it looks like, according
to some evolutionary biologists, evolution is a purely
random process. And the sort of randomness
that's involved in evolution seems to indicate that it's
not a purposive type of process. And that seems intentioned with
theological views that hold that God's revealing God's
purposes through creation and through the processes
that lead to the diversity and complexity of life. And then finally there's the
question that's really related to that question about whether
or not there's evidence of directionality or teleology in the overall course
of evolution. So, some people like Gould claim
that there's none, and others, like Simon Conway Morris,
claim that there's a lot. That is, if you were to replay
the tape over and over again, you'd get this very same result. And that should lead us to look
for guardrails in evolution. But you don't mean to imply
that there's an equal number on each side?
I would think the skew is heavily to the former,
not to the latter? Well, when it comes to
the question of randomness, I guess everyone agrees
that there's a certain element of randomness in evolution. When it comes to directionality,
I think there's an increasing number of biologists
who are agreeing that there are certain kinds
of directionality. Now whether
it's purposive directionality is another question. Just to set the correct status, the percentage of working
evolutionary biologists is heavily skewed though, still
to the Stephen Jay Gould model. That's probably right. So, where, having looked at
the potential incompatibilities, where do you see
compatibilities? So, two things come to mind. The first has to do with this
question of directionality. So, for most theists who believe
that Gods purposes are being lived out through
the natural world, one would expect that
if we have a natural history that goes from the Big Bang
to something like we see today, where we've got complex forms
of intelligent life, that there's got to be something
in the process itself that's leading
in that particular direction. And I think that leads some
people who have these kinds of theistic motivations to go back
and look at the record and ask, well, are there,
is there anything like that? The second comes out of the work
that Al Plantinga did in<i> The Evolutionary Argument
Against Naturalism.</i> The summary line is, you know,
if you're a naturalist and an evolutionist,
then it looks like you end up with certain kinds of paradoxes. And the only way you can
resolve those paradoxes is to invoke something
like a divine creator who ensures that what we get
is reliable belief from them. So, then there's two ways
that can happen fundamentally. One is that from the beginning
the way the laws were constructed, enabled, even though it looks
random on the surface, that there was this teleology
built into the process. And then God didn't have
to fiddle with the dials during this period of time. The other says,
whatever it was to begin with, God had to make
minimal interventions. So those are two
radically different ways that the world could work.
Both have a teleology. Yeah. It's an interesting
question, and, you know, I think what we've seen in the
course of the history of theology is vacillating between
these two different poles. So, at different junctures
when new theoretical paradigms become predominate
in the sciences. And you get theologians arguing,
well see, this is evidence of the divine engineer,
the divine clockmaker. I mean, some people argue
that that first view, the view according to which God
sets the laws in motion and it brings about the things
that God wants to bring about, just isn't sustainable because
of the kind of randomness that we find in the world.
That's probably wrong, because even if there are
random processes, if God were to put in place
certain kinds of guardrails, - it can force evolution...
- And quantum mechanics... KUHN:<i> I like the clarity
Michael stresses</i> <i> for tensions between
theology and evolution:</i> <i>origin stories in sacred texts,</i> <i> God is creator of life
and human life,</i> <i> vast suffering,
and apparent waste in evolution.</i> <i> Absence of purpose
and randomness of evolution.</i> <i> I find two
fundamental questions.</i> <i> First question: Does
evolution have directionality</i> <i> or teleology,</i> <i>or is evolution entirely random
without path or purpose?</i> <i>But even if evolution does have
guardrails as Michael suggests,</i> <i> could those not be natural
consequences of physical laws,</i> <i>selected for by randomly evolved
observers, like ourselves,</i> <i> in a vast unsolvable
multiple universes.</i> <i> Second question: If God
as creator does exist</i> <i>and if God had a primordial plan
to create human beings,</i> <i> how could God work
through evolution?</i> <i> What could be the mechanisms?</i> <i> Proponents have answers.</i> <i> Several are attending
a conference</i> <i>at the University of Notre Dame
called</i> <i> The Quest for Consonance:</i> <i> Theology
and the Natural Sciences.</i> <i> Evolution naturally
is a prime topic.</i> <i> I go to South Bend, Indiana.</i> <i> I begin with
an atheistic philosopher,</i> <i> known for his vigorous
and iconoclastic engagement</i> <i> with evolution and theology,
Michael Ruse.</i> Michael the question,
the old question between evolution
and versus theology. Help me to understand
the real deep questions today from your perspective
as one of the world's experts on this unusual relationship. First of all, it's not evolution
and theology, it's evolution
and Western Christianity. Because in so many respects
evolution is something which comes out of or in contrast
to Western Christianity. Starting with the whole
question of origins. The Greeks didn't talk about
origins in those sorts of ways. The Jews did,
and evolutionists did. So, it's evolution
and Christianity. Within about 10 years
after Darwin had published, pretty much all the world
except the American South had accepted evolution. Catholics and Protestants
and people said, of course there's evolution,
now let's get on with it. As it were,
that boils been lanced, it doesn't deny the existence
of God, that's how he worked. I think it was after
the Second World War that things started to change. And a book called<i> Genesis Flood</i>
came out in 1961 and that's the kind of bible
of the creationist movement. Championing of biblical
literalism, that raised, obviously, biologists like you
and philosophers like me, into saying, gosh,
something's here. Of course, then we start
to work on it and the academic side takes over and the world starts to see
it's a lot more interesting. So, give me some of the
sophistication that's going on. Well, I think one of the big
issues, for instance, that people
are very interested in is issues to do with
the whole Christian story, the Augustinian story
of original sin. Why did Jesus die on the cross?
He died for our sins. But why are we sinners
if we're made by a good God? Because of Adam's sin.
And the whole story like that. Now along comes evolutionary
biology, and particularly, more recently paleoanthropology. We now know a huge amount
about human evolution. We know there wasn't
one Adam and Eve. And more than that, we know that
Adam and Eve's mom and dad were just as nice, but also just
as nasty as the rest of us. So, there's something
wrong here. Now, the Richard Dawkins
approach is to say, that clearly show that
Christianity is false, move on. The other way is to say,
well, hang on a minute, not every Christian believes in
the Augustinian story. So, I think what you're starting
to see now though, is a much more
nuanced engagement over the science-religion
relationship. Even by people like myself
who are nonbelievers, just as much as people
on the other side like the late Ernan McMullin
who are believers. Okay. I understand
from your perspective how this is
a very pleasant story. But from people who are
believers in Christianity, when they see some fundamental
doctrines like the fall and original sin
which goes back to Adam and has to have a specific Adam. If you take that away,
you're getting painted into a smaller and smaller corner
on the dance floor of reality. Smaller and smaller at one level but not necessarily
at another level. Because don't forget a
theologian is a theologian, not a scientist. So, in other words,
if the scientist says to the theologian, sorry, you
can't believe in Adam and Eve, okay, you're constrained
if you like core science. How do we roll with this? Let's look at
alternative traditions, let's work on alternative ways. What did Jesus represent? Was it a blood sacrifice,
or was it being an exemplar? Theologically speaking,
it seems to me, it opens up a whole new vista. Michael, you could be
a wonderful theologian. [laughing] Yeah. If you taught a course
in theology I would sign up. My trouble is though,
I'm not prepared to wear polyester suits and a tie. Okay. Very good. Are you happy to be
called a debunker? Well I'm certainly
a debunker about morality. I would probably
apply it to religion too. But my feelings are a little
bit like Charles Darwin in<i> The Descent of Man.</i> He spends a huge amount of time
talking about morality and this much time
talking about religion. Because at some level
he feels that kind of debate has moved on.
He's not anti-religion; he just doesn't see
the conflicts in quite those sorts of ways. [♪♪♪] KUHN:<i> Michael himself
is a proud atheist.</i> <i> Yet he does not begrudge
believers their beliefs,</i> <i>provided of course, they conform
their theological doctrines</i> <i> through evolutionary science.</i> <i> A bit patronizing perhaps,</i> <i> though social tolerance
is usually a good thing.</i> <i> How could theology so conform?</i> <i> What kind of moves
must theology make</i> <i> to reconcile itself
with evolution?</i> <i> Rationalizing the horrors
of natural evil</i> <i> must come near
the top of the list.</i> <i>I ask philosopher Nancey Murphy,</i> <i> a believer
who privileges science</i> <i> even when it challenges
theological doctrines.</i> When Augustans set out
to explain why a universe that was originally created good
would contain events like floods, tsunamis, plagues,
famines, and so forth. His explanation was partly due
to the fall of the sin of Adam. And so, a lot of human suffering
was deserved punishment. But how do you
explain natural cataclysms? And his explanation was that
some of the Angels also fell, being free
and mutable creatures. And because, it's, was like
a chain of command from God, to the Angels,
to the natural world. If you've got rebellious Angels,
it's like cutting out a level of the military command
in the Army. And so, everything below
is disturbed, it's disordered. And so that was an explanation
for natural evil that was maintained
for centuries. When any biblical basis
for the fall of Adam and especially
for the fall of Angels. Theologians and philosophers
focused on human moral evil but never paid much attention to
what we've called natural evil. And certainly
not enough attention to the suffering
of sentient beings. And here evolution, of course,
is relevant because we now know that there
were sentient beings suffering and dying long before
there were humans to sin. What I look at is not
evolutionary theory but the so called fine-tuning of
the cosmological constants that determine that we live in
a world that has natural laws almost exactly like the ones
we've got. And when you ask,
why are there earthquakes, why are there tsunamis,
why are there deadly parasites? These things happen
as a result of laws of nature and cause the suffering. But those laws
had to be that way. The question I'm asking
is about evolution per-se which is the way that
if you believe God created the evolutionary process
or enabled that. You have to believe
that's the best, the optimal way to do that. Well I don't know that you could
say that's the optimal way but it's just obvious
the way that God did it. There was a position
in early modern science called providential deism. Which is not the deism
of the absentee God, but it was part of the
development of the whole concept of a law governed universe. The laws given to Moses
for the Hebrews was a providential way of
guiding and making a good life. Likewise, the emphasis
in early modern science was on God's laws
being his providential means of taking care of
the universe as a whole, with more emphasis
on taking care of the whole than on interventions
to take care of our particular individuals. [♪♪♪] KUHN:<i> I agree with Nancey
that the laws of nature</i> <i> certainly seem to operate
within tight boundaries.</i> <i> But I'd not quickly
buy the argument</i> <i> that an omnipotent
creator of the universe,</i> <i> if such a being exists,</i> <i> would be bound by
such simple constraints.</i> <i> And thus, compelled
to allow natural evil.</i> <i> If a creator god exists</i> <i> I'd suspect another kind
of explanation.</i> <i> Perhaps God planned,
perhaps God doesn't mind</i> <i> all that evolutionary
suffering -</i> <i> an explanation that
gives theologians heartburn.</i> <i> Can theology ever be
reconciled with evolution?</i> <i> If so, perhaps only
in nontraditional ways</i> <i> at deeper explanatory levels.</i> <i> I ask a theologian
whose different kind</i> <i> of Christological vision
takes an expansive view</i> <i> of Christ in the world.</i> <i> With doctorates in biology
and theology,</i> <i> she is director of the
Notre Dame Center for Theology,</i> <i>Science, and Human Flourishing,
Celia Deane-Drummond.</i> When I always started thinking
about theology and evolution was the focus has always
been on God and evolution. And making those two things
compatible between, you know, how can you be a theist and also
be an evolutionary biologist. But what I thought was,
hadn't been tackled sufficiently were two aspects.
One was Christology, how can you believe in
Christ as being divine and human and also believe
in an evolutionary world? And how can we think abut humans
being in the image of God but also believe in this
evolutionary narrative? You know, the way I tackled it
was actually to try and answer the
Christological question first. So, my first project
was<i> Christ and Evolution</i> and I subtitled
wonder and wisdom. And in that book, I tried to
work out how can we come to a different kind of
Christological understanding that still makes sense in the
light of evolutionary biology? And so, what I wanted
to avoid was to say, well, Christ is simply emergent,
an emergent religious figure who's particularly unique
in his ability to relate to God. To me that was dissatisfying
as a theologian because it seems to undercut
Christ's divinity. So, you're avoiding the sort of
Chalcedon definition, which is to say that
Christ is both divine and human simultaneously. Really divine,
not metaphorically. Yes. Truly divine rather
than just sort of metaphorically divine,
just as you say. So, I try to find a different
way of describing Christ's narrative
or time in the world that would somehow resonate
with the evolutionary account but at the same time
say something distinct. And I found that actually Hans
Urs von Balthasar's theo-drama was one of the most
convincing narratives. Theo-drama is different
from a grand narrative because it's combining a story
or a narrative in a drama with existential understandings
of what it is to be human. Theo-drama was about
participating in the actual drama of Christ. So, Christ's incarnation,
life, death, and resurrection is the kernel of
the theo-dramatic process. Now the reason why
this is interesting in relation to evolution is that
each stage of the drama includes aspects of contingency
but also aspects of determinism, if you like, or a frame
of thinking of things where things are sort of
moving forward. So, the common ground between
Christology and evolution, for me,
was this dramatic narrative. So, the agency wasn't
just about Christ's agency but started to include
the agencies of these other creatures
in the evolutionary process. That then were caught up
in the evolutionary story and became part of
this theo-drama. So, there's a theo-dramatic
account but of course at each stage in that drama
you have contingency. But you also have a sense
of directedness as well. And so, there is a sort of
uncanny convergence of forms in the evolutionary world and
they can't particularly explain precisely why that happens. And yet if you see it now
through a lens of theo-drama then that theo-drama resonates
with the evolutionary story. It's not identical to it, so I see these as they're sort
of analogies of one another. I think it's a fascinating
metaphor, but it sounds more like art
than science to me. In that, first of all,
the convergence of evolution is a controversial concept. The point though, that if you're
drawing this parallelism between evolution
and the theo-drama of the four stages of Christ. This is an artistic expression but there's no
contingency there. I mean, if there is a God
and God planned that, that's the way it was going
to always happen. Right? No. no, this is where
I disagree. I think there's deep
contingency-- You think Christ is contingent? I think that Mary's yes
could have been no. Otherwise she doesn't
have pure freedom. When Mary was asked
by the Angel Gabriel, will you become the handmaiden
of the Lord? She said, do it unto me
according to thy word. She could have said,
I don't want to do this. Do you think she really
understood what the question was? I think she didn't understand
but she was prepared to risk it. And you assume contingencies
on both sides, contingencies on evolution
and contingencies on Gods relationship
with the world, particularly with Christ. What
are the implications of that? I think the implications are
that we don't live in a fixed universe. You mean as far as
God's plan is concerned? Yes. There are
different possibilities. There isn't such a thing
as God's plan; it's a kind of fixed mode.
And I think that's a mistake. And I think that's what theology
can learn from evolution. [♪♪♪] KUHN:<i> Celia offers radical links
between evolution and theology,</i> <i> looking to theo-drama,</i> <i> a kind of participation
in the Christ experience,</i> <i> as mediating between
the contingency of evolution</i> <i>and the determinism of theology.</i> <i> Although, well,
something of a stretch,</i> <i> the unusual idea confirms
that real reconciliation</i> <i> remains a real challenge.</i> <i> Having explored theological
moves to co-opt</i> <i>and explain evolution, I circled
back to the basic question:</i> <i> If God exists,
how does evolution work?</i> <i> I meet a distinguished
evolutionary biologist</i> <i> and philosopher of biology,</i> <i> who in his early life
was a Dominican priest</i> <i>and in his later life, reflected
on evolution and theology,</i> <i> Francisco Ayala.</i> Francisco, can you differentiate
between the God who made
the evolutionary process and then sort of stepped away
from an evolutionary process that was designed specifically to yield human
sentient creatures? Can you differentiate there? When the second one, you have
the issue of intelligent design. God designed the world
so that it would produce the human being we are now. - Same problem occurs.
- Somehow that would have to account for all the
problems that we have. And not only ourselves
but the problems that exist in the living world. And in the whole world,
you know, all the galaxies are collapsing,
and stars are disappearing. So, what's your ultimate
conclusion between evolution and theology? Well if you accept evolution and
what we know about the origin of organisms and the origin
of humans as we are. And then places of God, there
for the people of faith, is there, there's no need
to be removed. This is an interesting issue
that bothers, very often, theologians. So, what do you do with God? Are you willing to accept
that we were created by God? Is it possible to accept
that we were created by God and that we are a product
of evolution? [♪♪♪] KUHN:<i> It is not for me
to challenge evolution.</i> <i> Nor to use evolution
to challenge theology.</i> <i> Harmonizing evolution
and theology is not my goal.</i> <i> Forced congruence
would be self-deception.</i> <i>I'd not prior pursued evolution</i> <i> because I was sure nothing
would follow.</i> <i> God, no God.
Evolution would seem the same.</i> <i> I am no longer so sure.</i> <i> The default explanation
is atheistic evolution,</i> <i> accidental and without
purpose for humans,</i> <i> which is obviously consistent
with science.</i> <i> If God exists,
here are three options.</i> <i> One, God intervenes
to guide evolution</i> <i>in ways discoverable by science,
I don't think so.</i> <i> Two, God intervenes
to guide evolution</i> <i> but in ways imperceptible
to science.</i> <i> If that's possible,
by definition,</i> <i> it would be impossible
to confirm.</i> <i> Three, God set the laws
of nature so perfectly</i> <i>that evolution would ultimately
bring forth sentient creatures</i> <i> without God's
further intervention.</i> <i> If God exists,
this would be my bet.</i> <i> But I'd remain
deeply dissatisfied</i> <i> and open to radical ideas
not yet on my list.</i> <i> I'm sorry I do not have
further clarity to get...</i> <i> closer to truth.</i> [♪♪♪] ANNOUNCER:<i>
For complete interviews
and for further information,</i> <i>please visit closertotruth.com.</i> [♪♪♪]
