A Redeeming Place at the Table
by Christian Y. Cardall on April 17th, 2005Why is the connection between evolution and God’s existence so emotionally charged? In a previous post I argued that evolution is unpalatable to some believers because it seems to remove what is, for some, a primary evidence of God’s existence: “the testimony of His creations.” I pointed out that this is the zeroth-order answer the Church offers to outsiders in answer to the question, How can I know God exists? At the risk of pedantically elaborating the obvious, in this post and a subsequent one I will discuss two reasons why debates about evolution—and perceived implications for the existence of God—take on a stature much larger than our insignificant intramural Mormon debate, and rise to the level of culture war.
A reconciliation between believers and evolution must give God a place at the table, but it cannot be just any place: It must be a powerful one. Consider the following from Joseph Fielding Smith (with shouting subject heading provided by editor Bruce R. McConkie):
DILEMMA OF THE THEISTIC EVOLUTIONISTS. It is true that the school of evolutionists is divided into the two great classes, the Theistic and the Atheistic branches.
But the Theistic evolutionist is a weak-kneed and unbelieving religionist, who is constantly apologizing for the miracles of the scriptures, and who does not believe in the divine mission of Jesus Christ. (DS 1:142-143)
Does this summary judgment represent a devastating, dead-on double tap, or an ineffective would-be marksman’s display of scattershot non-sequiturs? The whirlwind transition from evolution to miracles to the atonement may seem abrupt, but there is a connecting thread: authority, which derives from authorship. Following logically from God’s authorship of creation is his control and dominion over creation, with attendant ability to intervene miraculously on our behalf. The power of the words Peace, be still to calm our souls derives from the fact that they were first uttered to Galilean winds and waves stilled in response to the Creator’s fiat. This is the authority we rely upon to prosper, heal, and ultimately resurrect us.
The emotional depth of this dependence is on vivid display in the heart-wrenching account, in last week’s Priesthood/Relief Society lesson, of the death of David O. McKay’s very young son. So deep is President McKay’s need that in a move tantamount to a denial of death’s reality, he appropriates the scriptural conceptualization of Lazarus, a leap possible only because of his faith in the Creator’s power: “‘He is not dead but sleepeth’ was never more applicable to any soul, for he truly went to sleep. He did not die.”
Evolution is problematic in this connection because it raises the possibility that God’s connection to creation is merely pseudepigraphic (a false attribution of authorship, in order to lend undeserved credibility). The skeptic’s take on the connection between God and creation, mentioned in the previous post—that gods were invented to explain forces of nature beyond humanity’s comprehension—then takes on a more ominous, personal, and taunting cast. Having invented the gods to explain forces of nature, says the skeptic, propitiations to the gods are first offered as a hedge against the arbitrary destructive force of what we still (even in legal insurance contracts) call Acts of God, and in hopes of being favored with bounteous hunts and harvests. As time goes by, the expectations from divine power are elaborated to individual healing, peace, and immortality—concepts missing from the earliest Biblical views, which focused on the temporal corporate prosperity of God’s people. The skeptic likens such expectations to a patient remaining addicted to painkillers long after recovery from surgery is complete: Even after the forces of nature that motivated the invention of gods are understood scientifically, the habit of reliance upon a powerful God ready and willing to save you is hard to break.
Instinctively recoiling from this line of argument, some believers prefer that God’s authorship of creation be complete, exclusive, and undisputed, in order that his power to save may also be considered reliably undisputed. In order to overcome this tendency, those interested in making evolution acceptable to such believers will need to provide demonstrations of God’s power other than the generation of biodiversity.
[This is part of the collection Christian’s Reconciliation Notebook.]
I think that there are some historical issues, stories even, that need to be remembered.
First , the original place of evolution was seen as a direct attack on religion and proof that there was no God. When something comes out of the box that way, it can color the debate.
Second, even with the warning that some things are “purely figurative” it is very tempting to take a very literalist approach.
But our theology does not require a “from nothing” creation, and once we take the approach that we are products of personal evolution, I don’t see the need for the connection of God’s power to the process or to the world having a single use and a single mission.
I think that a more balanced approach to and on the Spirit and testimony makes many issues, from the sources and authors of the Bible to any other topic of the day to evolution, much easier to deal with and less of an issue.
My two bits.
Stephen, I agree that Mormonism has a stronger case to make, both in terms of personal and historical religious experience, for the power of God than “apostate” Christianity, which is surely an important reason why on average Mormons are less exercised by and politically active with respect to evolution.
I know essesntially nothing about how evolution was initially received and interpreted culturally, in connection with religion. Do you know any good references?
Gasp!!!! Christian has posted!!!
I wish I could say that my two posts manifested a quality and value that corresponded with (and therefore justified) their rarity!
Christian,
It is unfortunate that you do not post more often, for your posts are always well stated. I already posted on “what kind of God uses evolution” and “is evolution the best he could do” but your more in depth analysis of these topics is definitely warranted.
I especially liked the phrase: “God’s connection to creation is merely pseudepigraphic” for it really bring home a lot of issues analogous to scriptural pseudepigraphy.
Pseudonymity (sp.?) doesn’t mean that the text is necessarily false or less sacred. This brings to mind Ostler’s modern expansion theory for the BoM, which the Encyclopedia considered a viable option for BoM historicity within the Church.
Just like we don’t have to believe that Nephi wrote every single word which the BoM attributes to him, we don’t have to believe that everything which we see around, above and beneath us came from God. Sometimes, in fact, most times thing just happen.
This is not to say that God did not pay close attention to the process, it simply means that it’s wasn’t all done exactly as He ideally intended it. While we can say that this was because He couldn’t have done it as He ideally intended, it would probably be more accurate and faith promoting to simply say that He allowed it do go otherwise within a somewhat large range of tolerance.
After all, when chemists are doing chain syntheses, they don’t really do everything exactly as they want it. They allow for a moderate range of error and leway. There is a certain threshold where things are “good enough.”
Yes, I recognize I’m not plowing any new ground, and also not keeping up with where your series is at. I think in the end we’ll all be covering the same territory at our own pace and with our own slant.
With apologies to the fallen sparrow, your description of a basic quasi-autonomous process working within tolerances, corrected as needed, is a description that feels more comfortable to me, too, than one in which every last detail is micromanaged.
Just so you know, I wasn’t critcizing any kind of lack of creativity. I think that you have gone sufficiently beyond my analysis to even consider it worth mentioning. Feel no obligation whatsoever to “keep up” with anything I do. By our venturing out on our own paths and seeing the differences and/or similarities in our end points we can more easily see the strengths and weaknesses of our approaches.
I was just wondering if there were any opinions on Elder George Hill’s statements on Evolution as found here:
http://speeches.byu.edu/htmlfiles/Hill_George_11_1991.html
To paraphrase: The Second Law of Thermodynamics contradicts the concept of Evolution without Divine influence…
This was the most recent GA statement, outside of the first presidency’s office letter and the Encyclopedia of Mormonism article, that I could find.
The second law of thermodyanimcs argument is one of the oldest in the book. I mean no disrespect to Elder Hill, nor to his apparent background in physical sciences, but it is not a serious argument. His framing of the argument it too narrow anyway–there is more to mutation than just radiation.
His challenge is not very impressive and will be addressed later. But briefly here is an overview:
The 2nd law of thermodynamics only holds for closed systems. The earth is not a closed system. This is what leads Stuart Kauffman to describe our universe as nonergodic in his book Investigations (highly recommended though a dense read).
Here is an example. Suppose we have lots of chemical A. 2 A’s can make a B if there is enough energy. Eventually there will be an equilibrium reached where there are A’s and B’s scattered randomly throughout the closed system.
But wait, there is more. 2 B’s can react to make a C or an A and a B can react to make a AB. Thus there will be a push toward equilibrium between not only AB, but between BC and A,BAB. Now we can imagine AB and C being reactive as well creating more and more letters in the alphabet, but if the system is closed, soon there will be no more material or extra energy to “push” the lower letters into higher letters and the system will be randomly distributed.
But if we open the system, adding more energy and/or A’s (this need not be done by God, but by any source, say the Sun) there is no limit to how big the letter combinations and complexity can get.
Thus, Kauffman concludes, life is far more probable than many tend to think. This is his idea applied the the beginning of life on earth.
With regard to evolution from species to species the story is a little different. Michael Ruse in his book Taking Darwin Seriously uses a great analogy. Envision a man who wants to write a biography but is stranded on an island, but is able to recieve a Book of the Month every month. Based on his available his biography, no matter who it is about, will not be very impressive. But consider a man who is stranded in the Harvard library. Obviously his book, no matter what the subject, will turn out far better than our island cast away.
So it is in evolution. Not only are we talking about millions of parellel processors for every species, but each processor is different. There is a wide variety already available in any given species from which nature can select. At any given moment, natural selection has a mass of variety from which to draw surviving mutants. That is an important point in evolution, we are all mutants. Every organism, especially when sexual reproduction is involved.
The variation which evolution depends on is not always or even principally drawn from radiation, as Elder Hill’s seems to think. Radiation mutates the species “too far” in almost all cases. It over shoots the target so to speak.
I don’t want to diverge too far in this thread, so I’ll leave it at this.
Jeffrey said: This is not to say that God did not pay close attention to the process, it simply means that it’s wasn’t all done exactly as He ideally intended it. While we can say that this was because He couldn’t have done it as He ideally intended, it would probably be more accurate and faith promoting to simply say that He allowed it do go otherwise within a somewhat large range of tolerance.After all, when chemists are doing chain syntheses, they don’t really do everything exactly as they want it. They allow for a moderate range of error and leway. There is a certain threshold where things are “good enough.”
Christian and I have discussed this on his site and I think that there is a middle ground. I believe that God operates under all the natural laws and is limited by them; however this doesn’t necessarily imply that something was done that “wasn’t exactly as He ideally intended it.” There is room enough for omniscience and natural laws. He can foresee everything without determining anything.
I agree the argument that Alma used to convince Korihor that God lives can be a weak one. To me there are many more evidences (spiritually individualistic in nature) besides the physicality of the earth for the existence of a loving, eternal, omniscient God.
(an aside: The other day, during a conversation, my 8 year-old son asked me whether Heavenly Father could take away his agency but didn’t want to, or whether he wasn’t able to take it away. I answered that he couldn’t. Any comments, thoughts?)
Mike, it’s good to see your name on the contributor list. Welcome! We look forward to your posts.
On your son’s question about agency: We know that those with power can, in technical terms, restrict agency; that is, peoples’ behavior can be forcibly controlled under certain circumstances. But could God do this while simultaneously achieving his aim of bringing to pass our development? Apparently not. So technically, theoretically, he could restrict our behavior, but not without compromising his larger aims.
Perhaps also, if he restricted agency on a large scale he might “cease to be God”, like Alma says would happen if he allowed mercy to rob justice. What the practical mechanics of this would be—who knows? Some sort of cosmic rebellion?
AHHHHHH!!!! Blogger did it to me again!
I had responded to Mike and when I hit post comment there was an error. So naturally I didn’t want to lose my comment so I waited patiently until it came back online, checking occasionally by hitting post comment.
Of course when it did come back online there were now 7 copies of my comment. So, I deleted all but 1, or so I thought. IT DELETED ALL OF THEM! Arrrgh!
Here is basically what I said:
I agree with what you told your son to a certain extent. It really depends on how you define agency. Is it some kind of magical free will sort of thing? If so then I think you answer is correct. If it is the ability and freedom to make decision without being coerced or blackmailed by another agent (what Lehi calls being acted upon) then I would disagree.
We should also define omniscience. Ethical monotheists believe that God can do anything which is logically possible, which means that even they don’t believe God to be fully omnipotent. Physical possibility is not an issue with them at all for God is free to create matter and/or energy ex nihilo whenever He wants.
Not so with Mormonism. We restrict our God to physical possibility. God is limited by the self existence of 1) element (which I take to be matter/energy) 2) intelligence (agents such as our selves) and 3) laws (both moral and physical for we reject objective miracles). These are no small limitations and allow plenty of room for bad things to happen even with God intervening to the best of His ability.
We should also mention that just because God can do A and He can do B doesn’t mean that He can do both in all circustances. Also, just because God CAN do somehting, does not mean that He DOES do it. The samething can be said for His knowledge. Just because He can turn His attention to something and know all that can be known about it, does not mean that He does. This historical contingency is a further limitation.
Now Mike accepts my second statement which says that evolution and the like happen not because God can’t do it a better way, but because He chooses not to intervene thus allowing a rather broad range of tolerance. This is fine, but we must insist on there being reasons for His deciding not to intervene. Is it not worth His time? Does He not mind all the suffering and waste? Is there some unknown greater good which is being accomplished?
My first statement is another answer to this question. Things don’t go as He ideally intends them because He doesn’t have the power. Or put less offensively though amounting to the same thing, He has to respect the autonomous existence of the elements, intelligences and laws involved.
This raises questions regarding God’s worthiness of worship, accusations which Mormons should be used to by now. We believe that though God is limited in many ways, He is still vastly powerful. Powerful enough to bring to pass His purposes. Not only that but He is omnibenevolent. It is because of His boundless love and vast power that we should worship Him.
Jeffrey:
We must define also what is meant by what “He ideally intends.” I believe that God is omniscient (in Maxwell’s sense of the word) while not omnipotent (in the “apostate” Christian sense) but that He is totally all-powerful in all things requisite to our eternal salvation.
His intent is to save as many of us as will be saved. That things don’t go as He ideally intended sounds a lot like the Jehovah’s Witness doctrine of Satan tempting of Adam and Eve was able to screw up God’s plan for a paradasiacal existence. His plan will go exactly as He ideally intended and foresaw. I don’t see any wiggle room. I believe that the suffering and waste inherant in an evolution-like creation was a necessity, because that is the only way it could have happened. I don’t believe that God has back-up plans just in case things don’t go right. He just does things the way they have to be done.
That may be more hard-line than other things I’ve posted, but I believe this stance is critical to developing sufficient faith for salvation.
I don’t think that we differ all that much here. I assume that “ideally” God would like to save as many people as possible with as little suffering or waste as possible. Ideally, it would be all and none respectively, but this is not what happens. Once our differences in the definiton of “ideal” are taken into account, I don’t think our beliefs differ very much.
Matt - here is a cite to another talk on evolution, by Elder Nelson:
http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll?f=templates$fn=default.htm
This was a talk given at BYU in 1987 and subsequently published in both The Ensign and The New Era
“The Magnificence of Man” Jan 1988 in the Ensign
THanks for the Link Greg, I’ll check it out.
[…] [This is cross-posted from Mormon Evolution: A Quest for Reconciliation. Please go to the original post to comment.] […]
[…] [Originally cross-posted 17 April 2005. Please go to the original at Mormons and Evolution to read the entire post and comment.] […]
As I have alluded to, in comments to the “Creating Information” post, both the traditional second law of thermodynamics argument and the classic response to it are both overly simplistic because they equivocate on the meaning of the term “entropy”. So far as traditional thermodynamics is concerned, entropy is structurally imperceptible thermal noise.
So argument one says that life cannot be an accident because increasing entropy means “order” is being destroyed, not created.
The rebuttal says that the second law of thermodynamics is a constraint on total entropy, not local entropy and that processes can decrease local entropy as long as it is deposited somewhere else.
Both are right to a degree, but “entropy” and “disorder” are not the same thing, and more to the point the opposite of entropy is not specified or macroscopic complexity. An increase in entropy certainly has something to do with the expected stability of higher order structure, but pulling entropy out of a system does not create higher order structure.
Every refrigerator moves entropy from one place to another. All you get when you remove entropy from a system is it gets very cold, i.e. it approaches absolute zero. No “complexity” is created.
Likewise, the second law of thermodynamics does not rule out the universe starting from a high information, low entropy state (that correlation is not automatic) or containing yet unknown laws that account for higher order structure unexplainable from the known ones.
The related positive argument for biological complexity from “chaos” theory doesn’t work either, but that is another story.
I agree with the main point of this post, with the proviso that one could certainly write the converse argument about factors motivating the opposite point of view.
First of tradition religious doctrine places God outside the universe, with infinite, unlimited, and arbitrary power. The late medieval (15th century) theologians debated this a lot, expanding on a line of analysis William of Ockham started. Ockham took the position that God’s power was exercised in two ways- absolutely, at the time of creation, and ordinately (by command) afterwards. That worked very well with his extensive theory of ethics and natural law.
But a century later, the leading theologians pretty much abandoned the temporal distinction between potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata - in favor of the argument that absolute power really was absolute, arbitrary, and temporally unrestricted. If you can imagine, that was an enormous disaster for theology (philosophy as well) because there was not only no basis for classifying the rationality or morality of divine action - everything that was known to be true or correct might change at any time. God had no particular reason to follow even his own laws.
Well Calvin among others in the century after that patched up this disaster, partly by adopting the doctrine that God pre-planned all his temporal actions infinitely far in advance - the practical origin of the the Protestant doctrines of Providence and Predestination - in many ways a return to the Thomistic position developed by Aquinas a century before Ockham - e.g. that God was an immovable pillar around which all else rotated - no temporal aspects at all.
Like usual the heirs of Calvin took his doctrine to its logical extreme, eventually provoking the Arminian counter reaction (Arminianism is much more free will oriented), a fault line of sorts that divides the Protestant world even today.
Interestingly enough, Arminianism or free will theism lay at the core of the Great Awakening in England in the 18th century. Methodism, Wesleyanism, etc. drew part of their enormous popularity from the simple coherence of free will theism in contrast to the dark and analytical overtones of the prevaling Calvinism (c.f. TULIP).
In any case, modern Mormonism was established at roughly the time of the Second Great Awakening, in many ways an echo of the first, and common Mormon theology on many issues for the first century or so tended to be more an echo of Arminianism (a rather progressive theology) than of Calvinism or Lutheranism (Calvin and Luther having jointly set the baseline of Protestant orthodoxy).
That all changed in the twentieth century, primarily due to where the main stream of Protestant liberalism ended up more than any theological consequences per se. But to return to topic, these various theological strains have at their root different positions with regard to the temporality of God’s creative effort. The issue is more pressing in classical Christianity (and Judaism, and Islam) than in Mormonism, but it is relevant nonetheless.
The classic Thomistic or Calvinist view meshes pretty nicely with Deism and a variety of religious positions that approach Deism on scientific matters - roughly the idea that God “wound up the clock” and then largely just watches it it run - in other words almost all potentia absoluta and little potentia ordinata. Absolute power exercised at creation, minimal interference aftewards.
Likewise in the two common theistic evolution positions, one simply says God prepared the initial conditions for life to evolve, and the other says that God interfered with the process on a regular basis, steering it in the direction he wanted it to go.
Of course, at this point, it is really hard to say that Mormonism proper has much to say regarding the two classic positions either way. It is basically considered a theological question, not a doctrinal question. The modern Catholic church has the same attitude. Either way, the echoes of seven hundred year old debates are fascinating to observe.
Let me finish the last post by adding the scientific line to the story - basically religious scientist / philosophers like Descartes and Pascal (both serious Catholics) had no problem with determinism. From a classic Thomist perspective the regularity of natural law was part of the glory of God, and many scientists looked on determinism in that light.
The problem was that Descartes convenient division plus scientific determinism generally evolved into Enlightenment era Deism, Rationalism, and Skepticism, in roughly that order, and so far as mainstream science is concerned we have been there ever since, save for a few rumblings of deeper doubts.
Mark, thanks for interesting historical overview. Regarding your statement “Of course, at this point, it is really hard to say that Mormonism proper has much to say regarding the two classic [theistic evolution] positions either way. It is basically considered a theological question, not a doctrinal question.”, it may be that the Church has not explicitly/directly/definitively denounced either one. But material published by the Church recently (Ensign, True to the Faith, Teachings of Presidents of the Church) espouses the paradisaical creation and no death before the fall, which implicitly inveighs against either category of theistic evolution.
A sophisticated answer might be that for a variety of reasons the fall of Adam and various aspects of the creation account play an important role in LDS doctrine, and indeed in any traditional Christian theology. That account cannot easily be “finessed” without going into territory the Church has considerable reason to avoid.
Re-introducing the position of Brigham Young that the creation account was comparable to a nursery school story leads to all sorts of problems that might best be avoided. By all evidence the contemporary Church wants nothing to do with theology, just plain and simple doctrine, the simpler the better.
There are good reasons to believe that choice vitiates the ability of say BYU to make more than a dent in the field of Mormon theosophy, or for LDS religious beliefs to influence any other work there in more than a generic manner. Apparently the danger of theology or philosophy overpowering doctrine is perceived to be more significant than the positive influence that would flow the the other way.
I think that’s a bit overstated Christian. But certainly within the deep recesses of correlation there is quite a debate over evolution. You have one group deeply opposed to it and an other group (the group who sends out the letters to your Bishop on behalf of the First Presidency) who feel yet an other way.
Clark, what do the letters on behalf of the First Presidency say that allows for death before the fall?
That take a position of neutrality towards evolution which implies neutrality towards death before the fall.
According to Evenson and Jeffrey’s compilation of official statements, responses to inquiries to the First Presidency ca. 2003-2004 consist of two sentences from the 1909 and 1925 statements:
That is to say, the Encyclopedia of Mormonism article—from which some (mistakenly I think) took a position of neutrality on evolution—is apparently no longer used as a response. The two sentences that are now quoted don’t negate the ‘no death before the fall’ position that continues to be published by the Church, as Gary documents.
[…] A Redeeming Place at the Table: There must be assurance that evolution does not preclude God’s miraculous intervention in the world, and his ability to give us life beyond this world. […]
Setting aside the question of what the doctrine of the Church really is, a persuasive theological explanation is going to require some pretty serious creativity. Not only that, the hope for altering the common understanding of the relevant scriptures should be measured in tens of decades, if not centuries. Without formal endorsement, at least.
The creation account (literally interpreted) does not just have scientific problems, it has equally serious theological problems. Trimming a few objectionable branches here and there may force fit evolution into the scheme, but in my opinion a more persuasive interpretation would (regrettably) require much of the account to be reduced to allegory - not just florid or token symbolism - but as a substantive metaphor of the basis of our natural condition.
As far as the historical components of the account are concerned, I might add that in general it appears to be completely untenable to hold that any of the primary events in the Garden of Eden occured ~4000 years ago, rather than say 600 million years ago, on a “spiritual earth” rather than the “temporal earth” as we know it today, assuming those particular events happened at all, which seems unlikely to me.
For those events to be read as history rather than metaphor, Adam and Eve must have been otherwise occupied for ~600 million years, between their preliminary judgment and the beginning of their actual mortal existence on the earth a few thousand years ago, (by which time they would have had no shortage of fhuman contemporaries, by the way).
Mark, I certainly agree that some more revelation on Adam is necessary to resolve a lot of issues. Although I don’t quite see things as problematic as you do.
The doctrine of the Fall makes sense as a general statement of the human condition, and why we need the Atonement, and so forth. As a historical account though, it is exceedingly problematic. The standard explanations do little to help - practically suggesting that the whole thing was just an act - that Adam and Eve were clueless and clued in simultaneously, or that everything magically went according to plan, like a set up. The idea that a piece of fruit can convey knowledge, or guarantee eternal life is similarly incredible - the latter practically negating the whole doctrine of the Atonement.
In any case, though I must disagree with Brigham Young on the details, his position that the standard creation account was comparable to a nursery school story sounds like the most plausible explanation to me.