FINDING GOD IN HUMAN EVOLUTION
Blessed Sacrament Parish & UW Catholic Newman Center
Seattle, Washington
October 24-25, 2006
Michael J. Dodds, O.P.
of the
Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology
Berkeley, CA
The Science of Evolution
I suppose if this is a talk on evolution, we might just as well begin with ...
himself. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) gives a rather poetic account of the
essential elements of the theory of evolution in the conclusion of his key work,
The Origin of Species, published in 1859:
“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with
many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with
various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through
the damp earth,
and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different
from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a
manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.
These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with
Reproduction; inheritance which is almost implied by
reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the
external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of
Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a
consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of
Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms.
Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death,
the most exalted object which we are capable of
conceiving, namely, the production of the higher
animals, directly follows.
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several
powers, having been originally breathed into a few
forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone
cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from
so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and
most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”1
2
From this text, we can glean the key factors in his evolutionary account of the origin of
species:
 Growth, Reproduction, Inheritance
 Variability
 Struggle for Life
 Natural Selection
The key feature in Darwin's theory is the notion of “natural selection,” or as it was later
called, “the survival of the fittest.” When variations occur within the population of a given
species, struggling to survive amid limited resources, the organisms that enjoy variations that
give them a certain advantage in the particular environment tend to be the ones that survive and
breed, passing on the variation to the next generation. This unguided selection of advantageous
variations is called “natural selection.” As Darwin explains this:
It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the
world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving 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. We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the
hand of time has marked the long lapses of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into
long past geological ages, that we only see that the forms of life are now different from
what they formerly were.2
We might sum up Darwin's understanding of evolution as “descent with modification
from a common ancestor by means of natural selection.”3
While Darwin exploited the idea of natural selection, he did not have a mechanism to
explain how variations arose or how they were preserved and handed on to the next generation.
The work of the Augustinian monk and biologist Gregor Mendel was later
used to answer these questions. Studying how traits are preserved among
generations of pea plants, Mendel postulated that biological inheritance was
accomplished “through particulate factors (genes), inherited one from each parent,
which do not mix or blend but segregate in the formation of sex cells or gametes.”4
A genetic variation would give rise to a new physical trait which, if the organism survived and
reproduced, would then be genetically handed down to the next generation. Mendel produced his
work in 1868, but its importance was not recognized until the early twentieth century. 5
3
In 1953, the work of James Watson and Francis Crick revealed the structure of
deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA as the molecular carrier of genetic traits.
When the science of genetics was added to Darwin's theory, a more complete
understanding of evolution was possible. The theory could now account for spontaneous
variations in new generations of offspring (through genetic change) as well as the stable passing
on of characteristic genetic traits through genetic inheritance.
 Growth, Reproduction, Inheritance
 Variability
 Struggle for Life
 Natural Selection
 Genetic variability
 Genetic inheritance
Accretions to the science of evolution
Almost from the moment Darwin published his On the Origin of Species, different
thinkers began exploiting aspects of his theory and applying them to other areas of inquiry.
The philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) applied the theory to human
society, finding there also an inherent competition, that led to the survival of the
more fit of the human species. In fact, he coined the phrase “survival of the
fittest.”6 His Social Darwinism was antithetical to notions of social justice and the
common good, seeing ruthless competition as the only way to insure the advance of the human
race.
The biologist Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) drew the conclusion that Darwin's
work eliminated the need for, and practically excluded the possibility of, divine
intervention in the origin of species, especially of the human species.7
Today, the biologist Richard Dawkins makes similar claims about the
atheistic implications of evolutionary theory in his latest book, The God Delusion.8
Such applications certainly make the theory of evolution look antithetical to the dignity
of the human person and the providential action of God in the world. They make it
understandable why some Christians have thought it necessary to reject the theory of evolution
4
itself. They also illustrate the propensity of some biologists to draw philosophical conclusions
from the theory which are not justified by the empirical science of evolution. It will be important,
therefore, to sort out the science of evolution from the different claims that have been made
about it.
Reactions to evolution
Ted Peters and Marty Hewlett have written a book titled
Evolution from Creation to New Creation. Ted teaches theology at
Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, up the hill from the
Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley where I
teach. Marty is a molecular biologist and a member of the Dominican Laity. Both are members
of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at the Graduate Theological Union in
Berkeley, which has published five volumes on the relationship between theology and various
aspects of science, one of which deals with evolution.9 In trying to sort out current arguments
about evolution, they point out how difficult it is to separate the science of evolution from the
ideological accretions that have grown up around it. They suggest that evolutionary theory now
comes to us “shrink wrapped” in claims and attitudes that are extrinsic to evolutionary science.10
Reactions against evolution are often really aimed at accretions that lie beyond the theory as
such, but it's hard to sort out what claims are proper to the science and which ones are based on
extrinsic or even ideological presuppositions.
This becomes especially important when evolutionary theory is taught as part of a high
school curriculum. Are the students learning only the science of evolution or are they also being
taught, perhaps only by implication, an atheistic world view? How can one know where science
stops and ideology begins?
Since science and ideology are hard to separate in this case, some have thought it best to
reject the science of evolution as well as its ideological shrink wrapping. They suggest other
ways of explaining the origin of species, especially the human species.
One alternative goes by the name of “creationism.” Henry Morris of the
Institute for Creation Research makes a distinction between “biblical creationism”
and “scientific creationism.” While biblical creationists base their claims directly
on the authority of scripture, scientific creationists use scientific evidence, often from geology, to
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establish their claims which are then shown to support the teaching of scripture.
One can also distinguish “Old Earth Creationists” from “Young Earth Creationists.” Old
Earth Creationists allow for a 13.7-billion-year old universe and a 4.5 billion-year-old earth.
They hold that God originally created many species and allow that, with the help of divine
intervention, those species have evolved through mutation and natural selection.
Young Earth Creationists accept “microevolution” or evolution within a given species (as when
moths of a certain species that were originally light-colored became predominantly dark-colored
because of a change in the color of the environment which originally camouflaged the lightcolored ones from potential predators but was later darkened and so camouflaged the darkcolored ones, which accordingly survived and reproduced, without becoming a different species).
They reject “macroevolution,” the idea that evolution can account for the emergence of new
species or the transformation of one species into another. They argue, by pointing out the
absence of “transitional forms” in the fossil record, that the theory of evolution is unable to
explain the development of all living things from one initial type. They support a literal reading
of the six-day creation account of Genesis and argue that the earth is less than ten thousand years
old.
They also believe that Noah's flood literally engulfed the entire earth and
occasionally mount expeditions to search for the remains of the ark on
Mount Ararat. From its American beginnings, the
movement has spread to over thirty countries and runs
the “Institute for Creation Research” near San Diego.11
Creationism had its “day in court” in 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, when a high school
teacher, John Scopes, was charged with illegally teaching the theory of evolution. With William
Jennings Bryan as prosecutor and Clarence Darrow as defender, the court rendered a verdict of
guilty which was later overturned on a technical point by the Tennessee Supreme Court which
wisely dismissed the case, commenting that “Nothing is to be gained by prolonging the life of
this bizarre case.”12 The U.S. Supreme Court intervened 43 years later in
1968 in Epperson vs. Arkansas, to decide that laws prohibiting the
teaching of evolution were unconstitutional since the violated the
“Establishment of Religion” clause of the first amendment.13
6
An alternative to creationism is “Intelligent Design” or “ID.” ID does not deny natural
selection or descent from a common ancestor. It simply argues that certain complex
organisms and organic structures exhibit a degree of design that requires the influence
of an intelligent designer. Some biological structures, Michael Behe argues, are
“irreducibly complex.”
He uses the analogy of a mousetrap. As a mousetrap won't work if you remove any
of its parts (spring, catch, bar, etc.), so certain biological structures, like the bacterial
flagellum, “won't work” if you remove any of their parts. (The flagellum is made of about thirty
different proteins, so precisely arranged that if any one of them were removed the whole
flagellum would cease to function.14 How could such a structure be built piece by piece, by
chance, as evolution, involving only genetic mutation combined with natural selection, suggests?
ID does not postulate who the designer might be. It could be a transcendent God or an intelligent
life form another planet. ID simply argues that, in the same way a crime scene
might imply that the death of the victim was not by chance but the result of
some plan, so the evidence of nature seems to suggest the influence of
intelligent design. ID has been championed by the Center for Science and
Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle (which celebrated its tenth
anniversary on October 21 of this year).
The Dominican Cardinal Christoph Schönborn (my teacher in Fribourg,
Switzerland, in 1980) weighed into this discussion with an op-ed piece in The
New York Times on July 7, 2005. Overlooking the usual love for distinctions
characteristic of the followers of Thomas Aquinas, he painted the situation in
broad strokes, seeing Neo-Darwinism as involving a denial of design (and so of
divine providence) in nature. By October 5, of that year, he had moved somewhat from his op-ed
position and was writing from his Vienna website that the views of scientific evolution and
intelligent design were “complementary.” He wisely remarked that an essential condition for
“combining belief in the Creator with the theory of evolution” is that “the limits of a scientific
theory” be respected.15 We will have to return to the limits of a scientific theory in a moment.
Meantime, we should note that the Cardinal's editorial provoked a good deal of debate
which resulted in some helpful distinctions.16 Especially useful are some remarks
7
of Nicola Cabibbo, the president of the Pontifical Academic of Sciences, a 78-member panel of
scientists that advises the pope on scientific matters:
The theory of evolution can be disturbing to Christians because it seems to clash with the
idea of divine creation. However, this is not true. What clashes with divine creation is an
extension of the theory of evolution into materialistic interpretations, the so-called
“evolutionism.” What evolutionism says, and here I'm thinking about people such as
Dawkins, is that there's no need for God. But that is not science; it's not part of what has
been discovered by science. … The great intuition of Darwin was that there is an
evolution, that different species evolved over time, even if he could not understand the
mechanism. … To this, there are two different reactions. One is the atheistic view, saying
that since we know how it works now, we don't need God. This goes beyond the
scientific facts because it is a metaphysical conclusion. The other is the theistic response,
believing that God is the cause of this process.17
We will have more to say about how God might be seen as the cause of evolution in a moment.
Meantime, we should note that ID has also had its day in court. In the case of
Kitzmiller vs. the Dover Area School District of Pennsylvania, the judge
determined on December 20, 2005, that the mandated teaching of ID was
unconstitutional in view of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the United
States Constitution. Judge John E. Jones, III, went on to say that ID “is simply not
science” because it depends upon “supernatural intervention” which cannot be
explained by natural causes, or be proven through empirical investigation, and is
therefore neither testable nor falsifiable.18
Scientific method
Before we take the court's word for what is and is not science, we might take a closer
look at the issue ourselves.
Since the time of Galileo, empirical science has followed a well defined and
enormously fruitful path of inquiry, known as the hypothetical-deductive method.
It begins with observation and collection of data that can be represented quantitatively.
This is ideally an objective exercise, but it inevitably involves subjective factors such as what
data to look at and how to interpret what you see. After observing, you invent a hypothesis to
make sense out of your data. You then deduce or predict certain conclusions or outcomes based
on the hypothesis, and set up an experiment to verify or falsify your predictions. If the
experiment is a failure, you can either decide that the hypothesis was incorrect and invent a new
one or you can check the experiment again to see if some reason can be found why the expected
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results were not attained and then try another experiment after eliminating the factors that
interfered with the first. If the experiment is successful and things turn out as predicted, you have
a working theory to use in further investigations. This of course does not mean that the
hypothesis actually nails down the real reasons why the predicted results occurred. It indicates
only that you now have an adequate model for predicting results which you can use until a still
more adequate or accurate model is postulated and confirmed.

Observation

Selection of data

Interpretation of data

Hypothesis

Deduction (prediction)

Verification (experiment)

Theory
For instance, if you have tons of observations of the positions of the planets on different
dates, you might look for a model or hypothesis of planetary motion that could account for all
your data. In fact, over the centuries, numerous models have emerged. To determine whether a
given model or hypothesis is valid or useful, you can make “deductions” or
“predictions” based on the hypothesis. You might say, for instance, that if the
planets move in a certain hypothetical pattern, then Mars should be in this
precise position on this date. You can then “verify” the deduction or
prediction by experiment.
The way you accomplish your “verification” will of course depend on what you're trying
to verify. For instance, if you're trying to show that gravity attracts objects at a certain rate of
speed, all you have to do is pack up a bunch of junk, head up some tower, and drop it off,
discovering by its rate of descent whether your hypothesis is right or not.
But if you're dealing with something like the motion of planets, it's not so easy. You can't
pack them up and haul them off somewhere. Instead, you might wait patiently for the predicted
date to come and see if the predicted position is achieved. Or you could use your model of
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planetary motion to project back into the past, from where a planet is now, to where it should
have been some time ago. You can then use the data of past record keepers to see if you are right
or not.
Astronomers have engaged in this activity over the centuries, even
before the time of Galileo. The medievals thought of it as inventing a
hypothesis to “save the appearance” or fit the observed data. A number of
models have come and gone, from the earth-centered model of Ptolemy
(with its epicycles and eccentrics), to the sun-centered models of
Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Kepler, to the relativity model of Einstein. Each of these
models was verified and so became an accepted theory, but a theory that could always be
replaced if a better one came along.
Thomas Aquinas recognized the tenuous nature of the conclusions of this science. As
he wrote, “In astrology the theory of eccentrics and epicycles is considered as
established, because thereby the sensible appearances of the heavenly movements can
be explained; not, however, as if this proof were sufficient, forasmuch as some other
theory might explain them.”19
Is evolution a verified theory of empirical science or still only a working hypothesis? If
natural selection, by definition, is a process that takes place over millennia, we cannot expect it
to be verified or falsified in a single experiment (as was to some extent possible with Einstein's
theory of relativity).20
Regarding this question, Francisco Ayala, a biologist at the University of
California, makes a helpful distinction between
1.
The fact of evolution (that organisms are related by common
descent with modification)
2.
Evolutionary history (the details of when lineages split from one another and of
the changes that occurred in each lineage)
3.
The mechanisms or processes by which evolutionary change occurs.
He argues that the fact of evolution “is the most fundamental issue and the one established with
utmost certainty.” Evidence for evolution can be found in the fossil records of paleontology, in
comparative anatomy, embryology, and biochemistry. Finally, evidence from molecular biology
10
“has shown all living organisms, from bacteria to humans, to be related by descent from common
ancestors.” Regarding the second and third issues, “natural selection has been able to explain
some things such as the adaptive configuration of such features as eh human eye and the wings
of birds. Some other matters are less certain, others are conjectural, and still others- such as
precisely when life originated on earth and the characteristics of the first living things- remain
largely unresolved.”21
Albert Einstein argued that the “truth” of a scientific theory does not lie simply in its
experimental confirmation, but in the way it accounts for many observations in a
unified way: “The theory finds the justification for its existence in the fact that it
correlates a large number of single observations, and it is just here that the 'truth' of
the theory lies.”22
Perhaps not wanting to bend the idea of “truth” so much in the direction of utility, Ted
Peters and Martinez Hewlett do not claim that Darwin's theory is “true,” but they do claim that it
is a “good” theory for three good reasons:
1. It provides a unified explanation of empirical observations;
2. it is “fertile” in that it can make predictions which open avenues to further
scientific research and knowledge;
3. it is “falsifiable” (subject to “revision or even replacement by a better model or
theory”).23
They argue that creationism and ID tend to close off rather than open new lines of research. If
the amazing similarity between species is explained (as in creationism) simply by the fact that
“God created them that way,” then further inquiry in that direction is at an end. If, as ID argues,
certain organs or organisms exhibit an “irreducible complexity” that “cannot be adequately
explained in terms of undirected natural forces” but only through an intelligent agency, then the
search for a purely naturalistic explanation is over and human inquiry is at an end.24 Or is it?
Perhaps what is really happening in each case is that a way is open to a kind of inquiry
beyond the bounds of science. This raises the question of what kinds of inquiry creationism and
ID really are.
11
If creationism is, in the end, taking its starting point from scriptural
Creationism:
Science
or
Theology
?
revelation, then perhaps it should be understood as a mode of faith
seeking understanding, the mode of inquiry we call theology. As such,
it would not close off inquiry, but open human understanding to the
infinite truth of revelation. Aquinas says that theology is a way of
knowing that borrows its principles from some other mode of
knowing.25 As the science of perspective takes its principles from the
science of geometry, so theology as a way of knowing takes its principles from divine knowing
itself, which is given to us in revelation and received in faith. The certitude of the fundamental
truth of creationism, then, would not be the provisional or tentative certitude of science (where
one theory may always be replaced by another) but the certitude of divine revelation. Based on
the revelation of God's creative act, one could then use all the resources of human reason,
including all of empirical science, to penetrate the depth of that revelation. If creationism is
understood as theology, one question that might eventually be asked is whether it is good
theology or not. That might be a challenging question for the creationists, but if creationism is
theology, it makes more sense to ask whether it its good theology than to ask whether it is good
science.
Intelligent Design may also be pointing to an area of inquiry
ID:
beyond the bounds of empirical science in its insistence that events in the
Science
natural world point to the influence of an intelligent designer. It certainly
or
begins as empirical scientific inquiry, but its faithful pursuit of that inquiry
Philosophy
leads it to affirm the influence of an agency beyond the limits of scientific
?
methodology. We might say that it steps out of the boundaries of science
and into the realm of philosophy, which is still a reasoned inquiry into the
nature of being, but one that is not confined to the limits of empirical scientific method.
Aquinas follows a similar path in his fifth way of showing the existence of
God. From what we might call the empirical observation that things without
intelligence act intelligently (insofar as they act for an end), he reasons that they must
achieve that end “not fortuitously, but designedly” (not by chance but by design). Since whatever
lacks intelligence “cannot move towards an end unless it be directed by some being endowed
with knowledge and intelligence (as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer), some intelligent
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being must exist by whom all natural things are directed to their end, and this being we call
God.”26 We might say that as the natural world points beyond itself to the existence of God, so
the discoveries of science point beyond science to the reality of a divine influence that lies
beyond the limits of empirical inquiry. Again, this opens an extremely rich area of inquiry in
realm of philosophy. How can we speak rationally about the influence of that agent and how can
we understand that agency in a way that does not deny but rather grounds the investigations of
empirical science?
Aquinas looks at such issues in Question 105 of his Summa Theologica, where he asks
“whether God works in every agent.”27 To him, the presence of divine agency does not mean that
our investigation of natural agents is at an end. Their causal activities retain their own integrity
and can be studied in themselves. This is the work of the natural sciences. But beyond natural
science, we can also ask how the activities of those natural agents point beyond them to a divine
agency. And we may ponder how to understand the influence of that divine agency in relation to
the authentic causality of natural agents.
The blossoming of these new areas of inquiry points out the limits of science and reminds
us that science, in being faithful to its method, must leave many things out of its consideration.
Francisco Ayala uses a meditation on Picasso's
painting, Guernica, to illustrate how, as he says, “a
scientific view of the world is hopelessly incomplete.”
The painting had its origin in Picasso's horror at the
intentional destruction a small Basque village by a
Nazi aerial bombardment in 1937. Ayala reflects that
science, within the confines of its method, might comment on such things as the size of the
painting, the position of the images, the chemistry of the pigments and the durability of the
canvas material. Such an analysis, however, would hardly do justice to the aesthetic and moral
import of the painting. It would basically miss the point. From his example, Ayala draws the
moral that “once science has had its say, there remains much about reality that is of interest,
questions of value and meaning that are forever beyond science's scope.”28
Science views the world empirically and describes it quantitatively. It therefore cannot,
without violating its own method, comment on realms of being that may lie beyond that method.
13
It is only when science is turned into scientism (an ideology claiming science as its base) that
such comments arise. Scientism turns the method of science (with its limited, quantitative
approach to the world) into a metaphysics by the scientifically unjustifiable claim that there is
nothing that science cannot investigate, that reality itself is limited to the scope of scientific
method. Scientism shows up in the area of evolution as evolutionism, especially in the claims of
some biologists that evolution has eliminated the need for God.29
The Catholic Church and evolution.
In considering what the Catholic Church has to say about evolution, it's important to
remember that we are speaking about the scientific theory of evolution, not scientism or
evolutionism with their atheistic overtones.
Pius XII sorted out science from scientism in his encyclical, Humani
generis, in 1950, by criticizing those who would conflate the theory of evolution
with the ideology of monism or pantheism. He notes that, in his view, the theory of
evolution “has not been fully proved even in the domain of natural sciences.” He
explains that the Church “does not forbid” research regarding “the doctrine of evolution in so far
as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter.”
At the same time, “Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.”
In such research, the arguments “favorable and those unfavorable to evolution” should be
“weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure...”30
John Paul II was considerably more welcoming and less wary
than Pius XII in his approach to evolution. Noting that Pius XII
had called the theory of evolution an unproven hypothesis, he
remarks, “Today, almost have a century after the publication of
the Encyclical [Humani generis], new knowledge has led us to
realize that the theory of evolution is no longer a mere hypothesis.”31 He does, however, echo
Pius XII's teaching that “if the human body takes its origin from pre-existent living matter, the
spiritual soul is immediately created by God.”32
Finally, John Paul does his own sorting out and reconciling of the methods of science,
philosophy and theology:
Consideration of the method used in the various branches of knowledge makes it possible
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to reconcile two points of view which would seem irreconcilable. The sciences of
observation describe and measure the multiple manifestations of life with increasing
precision and correlate them with the time line. The moment of transition to the
spiritual cannot be the object of this kind of observation, which
nevertheless can discover at the experimental level a series of very
valuable signs indicating what is specific to the human being. But the
experience of metaphysical knowledge, of self-awareness and selfreflection, of moral conscience, freedom, or again of aesthetic and
religious experience, falls within the competence of philosophical
analysis and reflection, while theology brings out its ultimate meaning
according to the Creator's plans.33
I'd like to conclude this talk with a suggestion on how we might understand God's
causality to be present in the evolving world that science studies in a way that does not disrupt
the work of science. I think a key reason why some scientists are suspicious or downright hostile
to the idea of introducing a divine agent or designer into the account of evolution is that they are
convinced that the action of such an agent is fundamentally incompatible with the natural causes
they have discovered in the evolutionary process. It therefore looks like an either/or choice:
either design or evolution, but not both.
If we sort out the different orders of causality, however, we might see not only how a
both/and picture emerges, but may even find a way of affirming evolution itself as an instrument
of God's providential action in the world.
The suggestion I'd like to make is found in a rather dense quotation from Aquinas'
Commentary on Aristotle's work On Interpretation. I'll lay the quotation on you first, then try to
flesh it out a bit:
There is likewise a difference to be noted on the part of the divine will, for the divine will
must be understood as existing outside of the order of beings, as a cause producing the
whole of being and all its differences. Now the possible and the necessary are differences
of being, and therefore necessity and contingency in things and the distinction of each
according to the nature of their proximate causes originate from the divine will itself, for
he disposes necessary causes for the effects that he wills to be necessary, and he ordains
causes acting contingently (i.e., able to fail) for the effects that he wills to be contingent.
And according to the condition of these causes, effects are called either necessary or
contingent, although all depend on the divine will as on a first cause, which transcends
the order of necessity and contingency.
This, however, cannot be said of the human will, nor of any other cause, for every other
cause already falls under the order of necessity or contingency; hence, either the cause
itself must be able to fail or, if not, its effect is not contingent, but necessary. The divine
will, on the other hand, is unfailing; yet not all its effects are necessary, but some are
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contingent.34
To explain the quotation, we can begin very simply with the notion of cause and effect: a
cause produces an effect. We can then ask, though, whether the effect is contingent or necessary.
A necessary effect is something that had to happen and could not not happen. When you let go of
an object, for instance (apart from quantum considerations), it has to fall (effect), because of
gravity (cause). A contingent effect is something that didn’t have to happen. It might not have
happened. When an arrow hits the bull's-eye (effect), because of the action of an archer (cause),
for instance, this is something that didn't have to happen.
Now, if you think about it, you can’t tell whether an effect is necessary or contingent just
by looking at the effect itself. For even a contingent effect cannot not be happening while it is
happening. Though the arrow did not have to hit the bull's-eye, it cannot not be hitting the bull'seye while it is hitting the bull's-eye. So, every effect has a kind of “necessity” in its instantiation.
We therefore have to look beyond the effect in itself to the relation of the effect to its cause to
decide whether the effect is necessary or not.
We can say that necessary causes (like gravity) produce necessary effects (like falling).
Such causes cannot not produce their effects. Such effects cannot not happen. Contingent causes,
however, (like the archer) produce contingent effects (like hitting the bull's-eye). Such causes
may or may not produce their effects. Such effects may or may not happen.
If we were to classify the types of causes, we could have one group of necessary causes,
and another group of contingent causes. The second group would include causes like our free
will (which may or may not produce a given act, depending on what we decide in a given
circumstance) and like “chance,” a rather mysterious kind of cause that we invoke when we
attribute some event to “good luck” or “bad luck,” and which the theory of evolution invokes as
the “reason” why certain genetic mutations occur. A grouping of causes might look like this:
Contingent causes
Necessary causes
Free will
“Chance”
16
Given these types of causes, we might then ask, “What type of cause is God?” Should we
say that God is a necessary cause (since what God wills always happens)? Or a free cause (since
what God wills for us is not due to necessity, but to the freedom of divine love)?
It's a tough question, but here, as on many a multiple-choice (or multiple-guess) tests, the
answer is: “None of the above.” Why do we say that God's causality belongs to “none of the
above”? Aquinas gives the answer: “There is likewise a difference to be noted on the part of the
divine will, for the divine will must be understood as existing outside of the order of beings, as a
cause producing the whole of being and all its differences.”
But if God's causality is “none of the above,” how are we to understand it? How is God's
causality related to other causes? The answer, according to Aquinas, is that God's causality is
transcendent. God is a transcendent cause, above all other causes, and for that reason most
immanently present in each. God is above the classifications of contingency and necessity. God
can therefore, without robbing other causes of their proper causality, ordain necessary causes for
necessary effects and contingent causes for contingent effects. As Aquinas says, “According to
the condition of these causes, effects are called either necessary or contingent, although all
depend on the divine will as on a first cause, which transcends the order of necessity and
contingency.” God's transcendent causality above necessary, contingent, free, and chance causes
might be represented as follows:
17
The Primary Causality of God and the Secondary Causality of Creatures
God, as the source of all actuality, is involved in every causal instantiation of actuality or being. In exercising his
causal influence, God wills not only the things that are actualized but also the way in which they are actualized.
(God is not involved in sin as such, since the evil of sin does not consist in actuality but privation, a lack of
actuality.)
God
(transcendent cause)
(above contingency and necessity)
(ordains necessary causes for necessary effects
and contingent causes for contingent effects)
Necessary causes
(infallible causes)
Contingent causes
(defectible causes)
Free causes
“Chance”
Necessary effects
Contingent effects
Free effects
Chance effects
So how is God's causality involved in evolution? Evolution requires certain “necessary
causes” since natural selection involves certain regularities of nature, what we may call
“necessary causes” that produce “necessary effects.” But God’s causal influence, as a
transcendent cause, is not excluded from the operations of such necessary causes. Rather, they
could not exercise their causality at all without God’s influence.
Evolution also presupposes “chance.” Natural selection involves the contingent causality
of “chance” with its contingent effects (as when a chance genetic mutation results in some
contingent change in the structure of the offspring). But God’s causal influence, as a
transcendent cause, is not excluded from such contingent/chance causes. Rather, they could not
exercise their causality at all without God’s influence.
Putting together these different kinds of causality, we can see that God's influence in the
“necessary” and “chance” causes involved in evolution would not rob these causes of their
proper character, but would be the very source of their proper causality. And if we factor in the
different approaches to reality that we have considered (the approaches of empirical science,
18
philosophy, and theology), we can see that these do not contradict or exclude one another, but
complement one another, leading to a more complete understanding of the world of our faith and
experience.
Incorporating these different approaches, we may find a broader and more “colorful” way
of understanding the quotation from Darwin that began this talk, adding a few clarifications from
science, some notes from philosophy, and a few comments from theology:
“There is grandeur in this view of life [whose empirical principles are
discovered in science, whose fundamental causes are found in philosophy,
and whose ultimate source and end is revealed by God, accepted in faith and
pondered in theology], with its several powers, having been originally
breathed [by God (Gen. 1-2)] into a few forms [the nature of which is most
profoundly studied in philosophy] or into one; and that, whilst this planet has
gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a
beginning [Gen. 1:1] endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have
been, and are being evolved.”
19
1
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, Conclusion. http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/theorigin-of-species/
2
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, “Natural Selection”.
3
Ted Peters and Marty Hewlett, Evolution from Creation to New Creation (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
2003), 11.
Francisco Ayala, “The Evolution of Life: an Overview,” in Evolutionary and Molecular Biology, edited
by Robert John Russell, W. Stoeger and Francisco Ayala (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Publications,
1998), 25.
4
5
Peters & Hewlett, Evolution, 44.
6
Peters & Hewlett, Evolution, 53.
Huxley invented the term “agnosticism” and preferred it regarding his positions. He measured the limits
of human knowledge by the limits of scientific inquiry. For him, agnosticism “was a position which rejected the
knowledge claims of both 'strong' atheism and traditional theism.” In 1889 he wrote: “Agnosticism is not a creed but
a method, the essence of which lies in the vigorous application of a single principle... Positively the principle may be
expressed: 'In matters of intellect, do not pretend conclusions are certain that are not demonstrated or demonstrable'“
http://atheism.about.com/library/glossary/evolution/bldef_huxleythomashenry.htm. Thomas Huxley's grandson,
Julian Huxley (1887-1975), continued the project of tying evolutionary science to materialism and atheism. (See
Peters & Hewlett, 20.) Darwin himself mentions God only once in his work On the Origin of Species, and then it is
to refute his opponents. To deny the evidence of evolution in the natural world, he says, is “to reject a real for an
unreal, or at least for an unknown, cause. It makes the works of God a mere mockery and deception...”
7
8
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006).
9
Robert John Russell, W. Stoeger and Francisco Ayala, eds., Evolutionary and Molecular Biology,
(Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1998).
Martinez Hewlett and Ted Peters, “Why Darwin's Theory of Evolution Deserves Theological Support,”
Theology and Science 4 (2006): 178.
10
11
Peters & Hewlett, Evolution, 71, 75-77, 81-3, 85.
12
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/evolut.htm
13
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/epperso.htm
See H. Allen Orr, “Devolution: Why Intelligent Design Isn't,” New Yorker (May 30, 2005).
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050530fa_fact
14
15
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/myprint/print.php
16
A carefully reasoned response to Cardinal Schönborn's original arguments may be found in Robert John
Russell, “A Critical Response to Cardinal Schönborn's Concern over Evolution,” Theology and Science 4 (2006):
193-198.
17
Nicola Cabibbo, in an interview with the National Catholic Reporter's Vatican correspondent, John L.
Allen, at http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/word072205.htm.
18
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/kitzmiller_v_dover_decision.html
19
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, 32, 1, ad 2.
20
This involved one experiment dealing with the motion of the perihelion of Mercury and another
measuring the deflection of light a star by the gravitational field of the sun during an eclipse. See Albert Einstein,
“Appendix III: The Experimental Confirmation of the General Theory of Relativity,” in Relativity: the Special and
General Theory (1920), online at http://www.bartleby.com/173/a3.html
20
21
Francisco Ayala, “The Evolution of Life,” 27-8, 34.
22
Regarding experimental confirmation, Einstein mentions the difficulty of adjudicating between Darwin's
theory and the theory of genetics which were just being brought together at his time. “Corresponding to the same
complex of empirical data, there may be several theories, which differ from one another to a considerable extent.
But as regards the deductions from the theories which are capable of being tested, the agreement between the
theories may be so complete, that it becomes difficult to find such deductions in which the two theories differ from
each other. As an example, a case of general interest is available in the province of biology, in the Darwinian theory
of the development of species by selection in the struggle for existence, and in the theory of development which is
based on the hypothesis of the hereditary transmission of acquired characters” (Albert Einstein, “Appendix III: The
Experimental Confirmation of the General Theory of Relativity,” in Relativity: the Special and General Theory
[1920], online at http://www.bartleby.com/173/a3.html).
Martinez Hewlett and Ted Peters, “Why Darwin's Theory of Evolution Deserves Theological Support,”
Theology and Science 4 (2006): 172-3.
23
Ibid., 176-7. H. Allen Orr seems to agree: “It’s also hard to view it as a real research program. Though
people often picture science as a collection of clever theories, scientists are generally staunch pragmatists: to
scientists, a good theory is one that inspires new experiments and provides unexpected insights into familiar
phenomena. By this standard, Darwinism is one of the best theories in the history of science: it has produced
countless important experiments (let’s re-create a natural species in the lab—yes, that’s been done) and sudden
insight into once puzzling patterns (that’s why there are no native land mammals on oceanic islands). In the nearly
ten years since the publication of Behe’s book, by contrast, I.D. has inspired no nontrivial experiments and has
provided no surprising insights into biology. As the years pass, intelligent design looks less and less like the science
it claimed to be and more and more like an extended exercise in polemics” (H. Allen Orr, “Devolution: Why
Intelligent Design Isn't,” New Yorker [May 30, 2005]
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050530fa_fact
24
25
Thomas Aquinas, ST I, 1, 2, co.
26
Thomas Aquinas, ST I, 2, 3, co.
27
Thomas Aquinas, ST I, 105, 5.
28
Francisco Ayala, “Darwin's Devolution,” in Evolutionary and Molecular Biology, 116.
29
Sir Arthur Eddington illustrates this with a parable about a zoologist who decides to study deep-sea life
by using a net of ropes on a two-inch mesh. After repeatedly lowering his net and examining his catch, he concludes
that there are no deep-sea fish less than two inches in length. As the zoologist's method of fishing determined what
he would find, so scientific method limits what science can observe. And as the zoologist was not justified in his
claim that there are no fish less than two inches in length, so science can never be justified in claiming that there are
no realities beyond its limits. See Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (Cambridge: Cambridge U.
Press, 1928), p.16, quoted in Christopher Mooney, SJ, Theology and Scientific Knowledge (Notre Dame, 1996),
p.10
“If anyone examines the state of affairs outside the Christian fold, he will easily discover the principle
trends that not a few learned men are following. Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution, which has
not been fully proved even in the domain of natural sciences, explains the origin of all things, and audaciously
support the monistic and pantheistic opinion that the world is in continual evolution....For these reasons the
Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and
sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to
the doctrine of evolution, in so far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and
living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this
must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to
evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are
prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically
the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith. Pius XII, Humani generis, (1950), nrs. 5 and 36.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html
30
21
“Today, almost have a century after the publication of the Encyclical [Humani generis], new knowledge
has led us to realize that the theory of evolution is no longer a mere hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this
theory [of evolution] has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various
field of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted
independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory” (John Paul II, Message to the Pontifical
Academy of Sciences on October 22, 1996., nr. 4, in Evolutionary and Molecular Biology, 4). [Original French:
“Aujourd'hui, pres d'un demi-siecle apres la parution de l'encyclique, de nouvelle connaissainces counduise a
reconnaitre dans la theorie de l'evolution plus qu'une hypothese.”]
31
“Pius XII stressed the essential point: if the human body takes its origin from pre-existent living matter,
the spiritual soul is immediately created by God. ... Consequently, theories of evolution which...consider the mind as
emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the
truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person.” Ibid, nr.5.
32
33
34
Ibid., nr.6.
Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's On Interpretation in J. Oesterle, tr., Aristotle: On
Interpretation. Commentary by St. Thomas and Cajetan, Milwaukee: Marquette U. Press, 1962, p.118-119; Book I,
lect.14, nr.22. “Voluntas divina est intelligenda ut extra ordinem entium existens, velut causa quaedem profundens
totum ens et omnes eius differentias. ... Omnes dependeant a voluntate divina sicut a prima causa, quae transcendit
ordinem necessitatis et contengentiae” (In peri hermeneias I, 14, Nr.22).