timeimmortal

The problem with a book like Denis O. Lamoureux’s Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution is that it is proposing something which is at once radical and entirely normal. It proposes that evolution and science can be fully reconciled with Religion, and especially with the Bible. Not only that, it further proposes that science and religion actually work together, in a kind of harmony or companionship, to bring God’s revelation to humanity, though each in different ways. This is not a proposal which many Christians and non-Christians are willing to accept, in part because they are caught up in a false dichotomy that unnecessarily assumes that science — and in particular the theory of evolution — and religion are mortal enemies which must, by definition, contradict each other.

Dr. Lamoureux’s view is not simply a syncretic one, nor is he attempting to simply establish a synthesis between disparate concepts. His conjecture, rather, is that in looking at Scripture and then at science, we are looking at different forms of revelation of the same one God — science and religion, then, are not simply bridged by the idea of Evolutionary Creationism, but treated as a kind of unit whole, each effecting the revelation of the Lord by a different means.

Because this concept is above the grasp and reasoning of so many who are caught up in the unnecessary conflict that infests the origins “debate,” Evolutionary Creation can’t simply start by jumping in head-first into an explanation of its core philosophies and the justifications for them. Instead, Dr. Lamoureux must begin at the very beginning of reasoning itself, by discussing and establishing categories.

In a nutshell, categories are the foundations upon which we base how we look at the world, and how we think about the world. Evolutionary Creation uses the example of how our eyes are programmed to perceive the spectrum of colours in visible light to illustrate this point, noting that our brains are wired to perceive the issues which we face in a similar, ranging manner that is rarely ever “black and white.” Yet at the same time, Dr. Lamoureux notes that many view the origins “debate” in a very “black and white” way. Even referring to it as a “debate” suggests a conflict model that pits a secular and godless science against a Christian, Biblical view of creation. This very limited category set thus forces people to make a choice between science and religion, “faith” and “reason,”
God or the various things which humanity has discovered about the nature of the world and the processes which formed it.

This dichotomy, incidentally, is seen on both sides of the debate, and it’s almost impossible to ferret out who fired the first shots in the war. Atheists who promote the dichotomy present atheism as the bastion of reason and wisdom, and portray Christians as mental dullards and uninformed fundamentalists. Christians who promote the dichotomy denounce evolutionary theory as misguided or, worse, Satanic, and discard the substantial body of evidence in support of an old Earth as “circumstantial” whilst simultaneously clinging to threadbare evidence which purportedly justifies their own positions.

Even worse, both sides turn on like-minded folk who dare to step outside the conflict model. Atheists or skeptics who step outside the model and propose that empiricism and research are not a sufficient basis upon which to base a rejection of the existence of God, or who themselves admit to even weak agnosticism, are derided as being senile or simply in error. Christians who afford even a handful of scientific discoveries are denounced as liberals, heretics, cafeteria Christians, or proto-secularists.

At the same time, however, these two warring sides actually agree on at least one thing: whatever the exact nature of the origins of the world, human Morality and ethics are intimately connected with the view of origins one is informed by. This gives the origins “debate” special relevance, because our beliefs about who we are and where we come from directly influence and inform our believes about how we should relate to one another, and how we should order the societies in which we live. Christianity and secular humanism alike concede this point…and for as wrong as both sides may be about the topic of origins, both sides are at least correct in noting this important connection.

The key contributors to the false dichotomy (Greek: dicha - “in two”, temno - “to cut”) are, in Dr. Lamoureux’s opinion, two related factor. The first is what is that both sides tend to adopt “popular” understandings of terms like “evolution,” “creation,” and “theory.” This logical error is compounded by the second contributing factor: conflation. When a Christian hears the word “evolution,” she immediately associates the term with atheism, with a worldview that postulates a godless, chance-driven reality. When a secularist hears the word “creation,” he immediately associates the term with the (false) notion that the world was formed in six 24-hour days. And whether both sides realize it or not, this immediately prohibits any progress in the dialogue between them; both sides are trapped in their thinking.

So the question must be asked: is their thinking accurate?

Dr. Lamoureux begins his analysis by looking at the popular categories and conflations involved in how both sides view “evolution.” He begins by unpacking the term a bit, and by moving past the conflation: he proposes that the idea of evolution must be re-categorized thusly:

• Teleological: has a plan and a purpose (reflects an intelligent designer)

       ↑
Evolution
       ↓

• Dysteleological: has no plan or purpose (reflects random chance, not design)

The Greek term telos indicates the presence of an end or a goal; dysteleology is a term coined first in German which was intended to refer to the absence of said same. The two terms refer as much to the actual nature of the evolutionary process as they do to the views each of us has concerning it: we either view evolution as a process which was set in motion — and which may be reflective of some influence of — a designer or creator, or we view it as a the result of purposeless, random chance.

It should be noted that the teleological category actually can be broken down into a few different sub-categories, which roughly correspond to the range of religious opinions evident in the world today (theism, deism, paganism, etc.). This is an important point to keep in mind in light of what follows its articulation in the book.

The most powerful argument that Dr. Lamoureux makes in this section is based on a survey done about a decade ago that, taken to its logical conclusion, deals a death blow to the idea many Christians have that scientific researchers are predominantly atheistic and trying to impose a godless worldview upon millions of hapless schoolchildren.

In 1997, Karry Witham and Edward Larson issued a report called “Scientists Are Still Keeping the Faith,” in Nature (a prominent scientific journal). To a large sample group of scientists and other researchers, the following question was posed:

I believe in a God in intellectual and affective communication with humankind, i.e. a God to whom one may pray in expectation of receiving an answer. By ‘answer’ I mean more than the subjective, psychological effect of prayer.

40% of those polled expressed belief in God as defined above, 45% expressed that they did not believe in God so defined, and 15% expressed no definite belief.

Let us come back to the teleological sub-categories mentioned above, because something important must be noted about the respondents who answered in the negative to the given question. Deists, pantheists, and other pagans — despite not being atheists — would have been caught up in the negative-responding group, despite the fact that all accept teleology to one degree or another. Deists are, as I understand it, given to believing that God is not intimately involved in the day-to-day function and structure of creation…but still generally accept that He had something to do with it, and that He may have had an eye toward its design. Pagans believe in various divine forces, or pantheons of gods, who exert varying degrees of control over the course and shape of creation. Pantheists believe that creation is itself divine, and thus reflective of a will and a design.

And of course, 15% of the respondends expressed an agnostic view. Here again, categorization is important: agnosticism and dysteleology are not synonymous. As such, an interesting conclusion emerges from the results of this admittedly limited survey: a majority of scientists are probably teleologists, or at least are not dysteleologists.

Which is more than a bit of a shot in the arm to the notion that scientsts are part of some atheistic cabal or conspiracy seeking to undermine the good faith of the world’s youth.

This brings us to the end of the first part of my review of Chapter 1. It should be noted that the above all comes out within the first 7 pages of the book, which, overall, starts slowly and yet covers much ground as it goes. Thus far, Dr. Lamoureux’s presentation is written in an engaging and accessible manner, but readers will nevertheless likely be surprised at the steady stream of information coming at them as they progress up to, and past, even this early point in the book.

Stay tuned for Part 2, which looks at — and debunks — popular notions concerning creation.

It’s perhaps pretty to think, for some, that we could just do away with Religion and order/govern society on the basis of strict reason. The problem with doing that, however, is that reason, so very often, can be — and is — tainted by that pesky human element:

Saying that correcting misinformation does little more than reinforce a false believe is a pretty controversial proposal, but the claim is based on a number of studies that examine the effect of political or ideological bias on fact correction….a pair of political scientists, Brendan Nyhan of Duke and Jason Reifler of Georgia State, have shown a similar effect, this time concerning misinformation surrounding the presence of WMDs in Iraq, tax cuts, or stem cell research. Participants were shown news reports that contained inaccuracies, followed by a correction. The news reports were not real, but were presented to the volunteers as coming from either the New York Times or Fox News. Again, the findings suggest that facts that contradicted political ideology were simply not taken in; if anything, challenging misbelief with fact checking has the counterintuitive effect of reinforcing that misbelief.

I always laugh when atheists attempt to suggest that their belief in God could be motivated with the presentation of proper evidence, when in truth the opposite would tend to happen: even good, solid evidence would be greeted by most of modern atheism with either ignorance or a collective “that’s it?”

My friend, also a professor with whom I took classes, Dr. Denis O. Lamoureux has finally had his book — Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution — published. I helped out with this tome in my own little way, as I was one of the committee of students he put together to proof-read a draft copy, and I also supplied some artwork for it after a previous arrangement fell through.

It’s an important work, for one simple reason: it demonstrates that faith and reason, science and Religion, can go hand in hand without any kind of conflict. That may sound pedantic to say…but there aren’t many authors that attempt to seamlessly bridge Christian Theology, as it pertains to human origins, with the theory of evolution without needing to make use of some kind of caveat.

Denis doesn’t do that. He doesn’t look at the dialogue between “evolution” and “creation” as one that must inherently be a debate. Instead, he argues that there can be — and is — an intimate connection between the Book of God’s Words (the Bible, faith) and the Book of God’s Works (science). Evolutionary creationism, then, is the position which asserts that God — Father, Son, and Spirit — created life here (and possibly elsewhere in the Universe; let’s face it, we don’t know) through “an ordained, sustained evolutionary process.”

It’s a volatile work, to be sure, especially given that Denis is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society (though for how long is, perhaps, something to be debated). But it’s also a necessary work, and I encourage the theologically and/or scientifically minded Reader to buy a copy and give it a read.

The book can be purchased online, either through Amazon.com or through the publisher, Wipf and Stock. It may also be available in various bookstores.