John T. Baldwin
John T. Baldwin, Ph.D., is an associate professor of theology, Theological Seminary, Andrews University, Berrien Springs MI.
Is Darwin invulnerable? Is the evolutionary theory of origins so formidable as to make Christian faith in Genesis weak and obsolete? Not so. Fresh winds blowing across the academic world indicate that scholars are raising new questions on Darwinism.
Samples:
Richard Dawkins in his book The Blind Watchmaker attempted to undercut the argument from perfection. He assumed that the first small incipient stages of a future eye on the way to completion might have had vision. Kenneth T. Gallagher shows how unconvincing this assumption is (1992), pointing out that incomplete stages of a future eye could not have vision, thereby fatally undermining Darwin’s theory of origins. No Darwinian biologist has yet adequately addressed this critique.1
Can life and human consciousness be reducible to the laws of physics and chemistry? No, argues Michael Polanyi (1968).
John Cobb, Jr., asserts that subjectivity cannot arise from objectivity, thus indicating that from its own materialistic resources and without help from a divine power, Darwinian evolution cannot occur.2
After subjecting Darwinian theory to the principles of probability theory, mathematicians Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe expressed surprise how so simple and so decisive a disproof of the Darwinian theory has escaped the attention of social scientists for so long. “There can, we think, be no explanation other than intellectual perversity” (1982: 32–33).
Contemporary German advocate of polymeric chemistry Bruno Vollmert writes:
The stricter my argumentation takes place in the frame of the exact sciences by treating the biological evolution in the sense of Neodarwinism as a process by chance, that is to say (the terminology of polymeric chemistry) as a statistical copoly-condensation, the less I am afraid to understand the world as the creation of an almighty creator as an alternative
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to Darwinism (1965: 26, quoted in Hübner 1992: 406).
Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould challenges the rate of Darwinian developmental theory:
The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips. .. of their branches; the rest is inference,. .. not the evidence of fossils.. .. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and “fully formed” (1977: 14).
Gould, of course, remains an evolutionist, but faithfully reports his findings as problematic as they may be to traditional Darwinian developmental theory.
Pierre Grassé of the University of Paris speaks out on the implications of the lack of transitional forms:
From the almost total absence of fossil evidence relative to the origin of the phyla, it follows that any explanation of the mechanism in the creative evolution of the fundamental structural plans is heavily burdened with hypotheses.. .. We do not even have a basis to determine the extent to which these opinions are correct (1977: 31).
The reference to hypotheses may suggest some form of a mechanism of change, but what are the causes for the orientations and living functions? Grassé’s confession is significant: Perhaps “in this area biology can go no farther: the rest are metaphysics” (1977: 246). In this confession, do we possibly have a beautiful concordist between science and religion? On its own terms biology surveys all its causal options and concludes an inability to account fully for the biological forms studied, implying the need for some form of causality other than the Darwinian paradigm. Faith can supply the needed transempirical causality: the Divine Creator of heaven and earth.
The illustrations can be multiplied, but suffice to note that a fresh scholarly skepticism of evolutionary theory is growing in academic circles. Of even greater interest is the opening of a window of opportunity for a serious academic hearing of creation and science, provided the principles are presented in a scholarly, accountable fashion in light of the most recent research.
A Window of Opportunity
Just as Karl Barth’s Somerbrief is said to have fallen “like a bomb on the playground of the theologians” in 1918,3 so also Plantinga’s When Faith and Reason Clash: Evolution and the Bible (1991) and Johnson’s Darwin on Trial (1991) have fallen like two bombs on university departments of religion. Stunned scholars are scrambling to respond. Strikingly, both studies claim that biological facts interpreted from an empirical standpoint fatally undermine Darwinian theory.
Evoking the probative argument from perfection concerning the development
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of the eye de novo, Plantinga asks: How can one biologically
envisage a series of mutations which is such that each member of the series has adaptive value, is also a step on the way to the eye, and is such that the last member is an animal with such an eye[?]
His point is that on
Darwinian assumptions, none of [these steps] could be the path in fact taken. .. so how could the eye have evolved in this way? (1991: 25).
The answer is that the eye could not have developed in this fashion. Plantinga insists that these considerations suggest that the Christian needs a scientific account of life that is not restricted by “methodological naturalism” (1991: 29). No wonder the academic community is reeling.
Johnson offers an evaluation of Darwin’s theory from the perspective of a teaching trial lawyer at Berkeley. After critically, carefully, and thoroughly surveying the evidence for Darwinian naturalistic biological evolution, he concludes that viewed strictly from the point of view of logic and the principles of scientific research, the Darwinian theory of origins “is not supported by impartially evaluated empirical evidence” (Van Till and Johnson 1993: 39). Thus Johnson asks,
Why not consider the possibility that life is what it so evidently seems to be, the product of creative intelligence? (1991: 110).
Because of the cogently expressed skepticism of Darwinian theory by Plantinga and Johnson, evangelical scholars supporting theistic evolution, such as Van Till and Hasker, are understandably on the defensive. However, in the several exchanges that have been published among the latter three scholars, two significant developments4 need to be noted.
Scientific Respect for Creation
Perhaps for the first time in recent history, proponents of some form of special creation are being treated with respect rather than with the usual opprobrium. This is an important new development. For example, Ernan McMullin, director of the Program in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Notre Dame, and a colleague but an outspoken critic of Plantinga, admits that it is worthwhile to consider Plantinga’s argument because he [standing in the Calvinistic tradition] not only is a well-known philosopher of religion, but also presents a very “sophisticated sort of defense of special creation” (1993: 300).
Van Till salutes Johnson and Plantinga by saying that when compared to traditional scientific creationists, their cases are “more persuasively formulated” (1993: 381), rendering them worthy of being addressed. In a lecture delivered in February 1993 Michael Ruse, Darwinian philosopher of science, surprised an audience of evolutionists when he complimented Johnson by saying that he correctly shows that
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evolution akin to religion involves making certain a priori or metaphysical assumptions which at some level cannot be proven empirically.5
These illustrations indicate that the wall of defiance against serious consideration of creationism may be cracking in segments of academia. However, the most significant current development is that occasioned by the comments of William Hasker.
In his response to Johnson, Hasker (1993), a severe critic of Johnson until now, welcomes his proposal for a new research agenda to include a call to “paleontologists to interpret their evidence without Darwinist prejudice” (Johnson 1993: 303, n. 7). Hasker magnanimously allows that Johnson’s research proposal “could produce a genuinely viable special creationism alternative” (1993: 308). Then Hasker articulates a window-opening challenge:
I hope [Johnson] will find scientists who are willing and able to undertake the research he has in mind.
There it is, an opportunity flung wide open by the scholarly community itself to be informed by the latest science and religion research.
This means that a time of unequaled possibilities lies open before colleges and universities with graduate programs in science to rise to the glory of God in making major contributions, some perhaps of epoch-making significance, concerning issues of origins and neo-catastrophism, indicating that true science and inspiration are harmonious after all.
In this volatile environment of contemporary Biblical and theological reexamination of the role of inspiration and the natural sciences, responsible strict concordist scholars will surely discover additional new harmonies between Scripture and science about which to write, not only with breathless excitement but above all with deeply compelling academic power. This effort can continue to show that concordist is not an anachronistic effort, but is very relevant indeed in the post-Darwinian age.
In view of these possibilities, John Woodbridge is so right when he observes:
It is ironic that some evangelical scholars are discounting the Bible statements about nature and history at the very time evolutionary thought is in such flux (1985: 205).
Now is the time to tremble at the word of the God of creation and not to tremble at the words of Darwin, whose theory is in crisis (Denton 1986). Strict concordism’s day in court may have come. At least the academic ball is in its court. What will we speak in response? The general community, for the time being at least, is listening.
Reprinted by permission from Ministry, Vol. 68, No. 8 (September, 1995), pp. 6–8.
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References
Baldwin, J.T.
1992 God and the World: William Paley’s Argument From Perfection Tradition – A Continuing Influence. Harvard Theological Review 85: 109–20.
Denton, M.
1986 Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. Bethesda MD: Adler and Adler.
Gallagher, K.T.
1992 Dawkins in Biomorph Land. International Philosophical Quarterly 32: 501–13.
Gould, S.J.
1977 Evolution’s Erratic Pace. Natural History 86.
Grassé, P.
1977 Evolution of Living Organisms: New York: Academic Press.
Hasker, W.
1992 Mr. Johnson for the Prosecution. Christian Scholar ‘s Review 22: 177–86.
1993 Reply to Johnson. Christian Scholar’s Review 22: 305–08.
Hoyle, F. and Wickramasinghe, C.
1982 Why Neo-Darwinism Does Not Work. Cardiff, Wales: University College Cardiff Press.
Hübner, K.
1992 Genesis and Modem Theories of Evolution. Man and World 25.
Johnson, RE.
1991 Darwin on Trial. Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press.
1993 Response to Hasker. Christian Scholar’s Review 22: 297–304.
McConnachie, J.
1931 The Significance of Karl Barth. New York: R.R. Smith.
McMullin, E.
1993 Evolution and Special Creation. Zygon 28: 300.
Plantinga, A.
1991 When Faith and Reason Clash: Evolution and the Bible. Christian Scholar ‘s Review 21.
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Polanyi, M.
1968 Life’s Irreducible Structure. Science 160: 1308–12.
Van Till, H.J.
1993 Is Special Creation a Heresy? Christian Scholar’s Review 22: 380–95.
Van Till, H.J. and Johnson, P.E.
1993 God and Evolution: An Exchange. First Things 34: 32–41.
Vollmert, B.
1965 Das Molekül und das Leben: vom makromolekularen Ursprung des Lebens und der Arten: Was Darwin nicht wissen konnte und Darwinisten nicht wissen wollen. Reinbek bei Hambrug: Rowohlt; reprint 1985.
Woodbridge, J.D.
1985 Does the Bile Teach Science? Bibliotheca Sacra 142.