A Difficult Dilemma: Deny that Humanity is Fallen or Deny Evolution?
I find Christianity (and Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc.) perplexing. I suppose Kierkegaard would want me to embrace this feeling (as regards Christianity). I admit my perplexity because I do not want to come across as angry or hostile in these essays. I really want to understand religion and humankind’s possible relationship with the divine better.
One of the things that troubles me with Christianity is the claim that it is only through Christ that one can achieve salvation, which I take to mean primarily that it is only through Christ that you’ll be with God, etc. This would seem to leave A LOT of people in the lurch through no fault of their own, simply because they never heard of Christ and Christianity. And it would leave those in the lurch for whom, again through no real fault of their own, Christianity is not a live option (in William James’s sense). A student of mine kindly pointed me to one of the Catholic catechisms that seems to address this concern (Thank you Mr. Shapland). It is here and reads:
1260 “Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery.” Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity.
That doesn’t completely allay my concern, but it goes some way toward it. But that is merely, at this point, an illustration of one issue I have, it is not the main topic here.
I am currently reading God is Red: A Native View of Religion by Vine Deloria, Jr. One of his goals is to compare Christianity with Native American religious traditions. He writes:
The major thesis of the Christian religion is … contained in its creation story, because it is for the redemption of man that the atonement of Jesus of Nazareth is considered to make sense. (Locations 1428-35 on my Kindle)
Deloria, Jr. takes issue with this, but not for the reason I wish to. If we start with the point that the fallenness of humans is required to make sense of Jesus as redeemer, then we are lead to a dilemma.
If the fallenness is only metaphorical, in the sense that we are simply imperfect from the get go, then God is responsible for our state, not us, even if God has given us free will to choose our actions. Our reasons for action are too complex and convoluted to say that every actual choice made is purely free or not (even if we were to be libertarians about free will). The point here is that it is an odd story, to say the least, that God, who is perfect, creates an imperfect world from the start only to try to make up for it in the end by having Jesus come into the world as redeemer. Again, this point really depends on the free will problem, which I have only gestured at.
Assuming it’s not supposed to be merely metaphorical, what evidence do we have that any such fall occurred in human history? None, it seems to me. The evidence for evolution of humans from simpler organisms is very, very strong. The evidence for a Garden of Eden scenario with God creating whole two humans is nonexistent. It is only the word of some people who were understandably trying to make sense of how we got here, why we are so often cruel, selfish, and greedy, and why the world is so full of pain and suffering.
Aside from contradicting a literal interpretation of parts of the Judeo-Christian Bible, I’ve wondered why Christians need to be so worried about evolution of humans from simpler organisms. It seems clear to me now, given the above considerations, that the possibility of our evolution from simpler organisms pushes the Christian into the uncomfortable situation of either denying humans are fallen, which removes much of the raison d’être of Jesus, or denying that evolution occurred. And given what I’ve said above, it’s clear which part of the dilemma I think is false. Any thoughts?
7 thoughts on “A Difficult Dilemma: Deny that Humanity is Fallen or Deny Evolution?”
What up Dr. Wrisley (should I call you George?),
Maybe I can shed a little bit of light here. I do agree that the “Jesus as the only way to salvation” thing could possibly seem problematic. How you view the solution to the problem depends upon how far you swing to the Armenian end or the Calvinist end of the predestination spectrum. For those who swing heavily to the Armenian end, this is why the Great Commission is so important. For those who swing more heavily to the Calvinist end, these verses from Romans 1 are huge: “19 They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. 20 For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.” (NLT)
As for the evolution question, this is a debate that is too complex to be solved in one simple comment. However, for me personally, what it comes down to is that I don’t think the evidence for evolution is that overwhelming. I can see the evidence for microevolution, but for evolution to take place on a macro scale… it raises so many questions. Even from the first day I heard the theory explained in biology class, I just thought, “That doesn’t make sense. When exactly does one animal stop being one species and start being another? And what happened to all of the other animals that came in-between?” And as I’ve studied the topic in more detail, I have only raised more questions. For a brief overview of some of the evidence for the existence of the Christian God as I see it, please feel free to read this essay: http://www.cranialcollision.com/2011/02/evidence-for-existence-of-christian-god.html I wrote it 4 years ago now, so please forgive some of the diction, and possibly the tone in spots. It could definitely do with an update, but I still strongly believe that the basic arguments are true.
Finally, lately I have been thinking about the possibility that Christians have a philosophical ace-in-the-hole when it comes to the evolution debate. I say a “philosophical ace,” because it is not grounded in scientific fact, but philosophical theorizing. This “ace” is the idea of “apparent age.” Essentially, this boils down to the chicken-or-the-egg dilemma, but according to the Genesis account of creation, it seems that the chicken wins. According to the account, God made all sorts of creatures and plants and, finally, humans. And apparently he made them full-grown… it would have been tough for Adam to feed himself and name all of the animals as an infant. Carrying this line of thinking one step further, what if the rest of the world REALLY had some serious apparent age incorporated into it? What if the geographic record was made to look ancient? What if creatures were meant to look like they evolved (but I still challenge this point)? This thinking would be congruent with everything I’ve read in Genesis. Interesting stuff to contemplate. No hard evidence, but food for thought…
Thanks for the blog post, I enjoyed it! I think it is important that we keep asking these questions and think critically about the topic.
Later,
-Greg
Greg, “George,” is certainly fine. Thanks for the response to the essay. And thanks for the information on the Calvinist vs. Armenian views. Regarding the claim that “For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God” it seems to me one could agree with that, i.e., that a God is revealed through nature, but such a natural revelation does not point to the Judeo-Christian God. In fact, depending on how fallen you think the world really is, it might be problematic to find God in the world.
The evolution issue is, indeed, too big to settle here. But I would recommend reading Philip Kitcher’s *Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism*
http://www.amazon.com/Abusing-Science-Case-Against-Creationism/dp/026261037X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314834116&sr=1-1
Regarding your blog essay on God’s existence, while I am sympathetic to some versions of the cosmological argument and some versions of the fine tuning version of the teleological argument, neither of those arguments get you a Christian God, nor one who is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient. The moral argument isn’t any good either, I don’t think. You seem to set up a false dichotomy: either morality is from God or there isn’t really any morality (subjectivist theories and relativistic theories are the only other option and they are wrong). But that ignores the non-theistic moral theories such as virtue theory, deontology, and consequentialism. They are not so easily dismissed as the moral relativisms. And the divine command theory has serious problems as does some kind of Thomistic natural law theory.
Regarding the ace in the hole, it doesn’t seem to me consistent at all with the Judeo-Christian God to say he’s such a deceiver as to make the earth look billions of years old than it is. I can’t imagine an all-good God doing that.
And I certainly agree about the need to keep asking these questions! Thanks again!
George
Yes, there is definitely a difference between “general revelation” and “special revelation.” Since general revelation will only get yo so far, this gives missionaries their drive to “go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.” (Mark 16:15) Personally, for me this dilemma has boiled down to the concept that God is an infinite being, and we cannot begin to fathom his plan in the universe or how he works. (Think Romans 11:34)
I do agree that this doesn’t lead you to the Judeo-Christian God, which is why apologetics goes further and examines other religions as potential sources of truth. I do think that if these arguments hold water, there is serious evidence for omnipotence and omniscience, as well as a monotheistic God (think the moral argument plus Euthyphro’s dilemma).
Thanks for the book recommendation. I’ll definitely look into it when I have time, but I’ve got a pretty big reading load this semester 😉
I have only studied deontology and virtue theory briefly, and have not spent much time at all with consequentialism. But from what I do know of these theories, it seems that it isn’t too tough to set up a situation where there is a contradiction or a question that said theory cannot answer. Also, with deontology, we have the question of “where do the rules (duty) come from?” And in virtue theory, where did Aristotle get his virtues and his vices?
You may have a point regarding apparent age, I need to think about this, although I wouldn’t say that it would necessarily be deceptive if indeed it was the case.
Thanks for the response! Definitely gives me plenty of food for thought…
Obviously, my knowledge of some of these theories is lacking. 😉 I probably need to spend some time doing some independent study on these.
Thanks again for the response!
Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism states that if naturalistic evolution is true, then human faculty has evolved to produce beliefs that contribute to human survival, not beliefs that are true. Therefore, Plantinga reasons, one would have to reason to doubt things which one believes to be true (i.e. naturalistic evolution). How would you respond?
Matt, I’m not familiar with the details of Plantinga’s argument, so I’ll just respond to your brief description. It’s not clear to me why human faculties’ having evolved to contribute to human survival would imply that they haven’t evolved to track truth. Why not think that the best way to survive predation would be to form true beliefs about the location and general intentions of one’s predator, for example?
Further, I take it that PART of the case for evolution is that it provides the best explanation for the fossil record and fits with other evidence for the earth’s age. Alternative explanations that involve God seem either ad hoc or make God into some sort of trickster.
I’m not necessarily a proponent of a “young earth theory,” but I am opposed to naturalistic evolution.
Plantinga actually responds to that counter argument in his book Warrant and Proper Function. He would say that there may be some overlap between beliefs that contribute to survival and true beliefs, but has this to say,
“Perhaps Paul very much likes the idea of being eaten, but when he sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks it unlikely the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body parts in the right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way of true belief… Or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away from it… Clearly there are any number of belief-cum-desire systems that equally fit a given bit of behaviour.”
Matt, thanks for the added detail from Pantinga. However, I find the passage bizarre. The behavior to explain is the avoidance of the predator, e.g., seeing it and going elsewhere. Plantinga’s point, as he explicitly says at the end, is that different belief/desire systems fit that behavior. That’s nothing surprising, as behavior underdetermines belief, desire, feelings, etc., anyway. In his example he seems to grant that Paul has formed a true belief about there being a tiger (hence, the “some overlap”). He needs the rest of the example to show that, as you wrote, human faculties have “evolved to produce beliefs that contribute to human survival, not beliefs that are true.” It’s tempting to say that the case with Paul doesn’t make sense because I would never form the belief that a tiger would be unlikely to eat me, nor would I have the desire to be eaten. But that would beg the question, since Plantinga would presumably say: “Well, of course you don’t, since you aren’t the product of naturalistic evolution, and you have a better truth-tracking belief system. And that was my whole point.” So, a different tact has to be taken in response to the argument/example. Here goes: on what principle is Plantinga basing the admission that Paul has formed a true belief about the tiger’s presence but has formed false but survival granting beliefs about the tiger’s intentions? Presumably, Paul has seen other tigers in action and formed true beliefs about what they’re capable of, after all, if he can form true beliefs about their presence, why can’t he form true beliefs about their actions, namely, “There is a tiger eating a thing it’s just killed”? (That would seem to undermine the one possibility of taking the tiger to be cuddly; but that’s not my point.) If Plantinga is going to admit that true beliefs can overlap with beliefs that grant survival but then deny that they all do, he needs to give some reason to think that that they actually do diverge. I take it that a way to do so, perhaps the only way, is to provide some principle for saying which beliefs would be which and why. His scenario with Paul is, of course, possible. But he needs to do more than just give a possibility, since he has admitted that true beliefs can overlap with survival granting beliefs. For example, when we examine evidence for naturalistic evolution, why wouldn’t the beliefs about naturalistic evolution that result be like Paul’s belief that there’s a tiger and not like Paul’s false belief that tiger’s are friendly and cuddly?
Turning things around on him, assume the truth of his denial of naturalistic evolution. An important implication for him, I take it, is that we are often pretty good at forming true beliefs. Now we have all these true beliefs about evidence for naturalistic evolution. Well, either those true beliefs count as evidence for the falsity of his denial or they count as evidence that god is some kind of trickster. Neither result is palatable for Plantinga.