Theistic Evolution's Implications for the Character of God

Faith & Science Conversation
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I have some questions for my fellow Christians and science believers,

While I personally have no issue reconciling evolution, and the cosmos with a theistic God, I do have some difficult seeing the Christian God in it, much less Jesus.

  1. Where is God’s love in evolution and survival of the fittest, extinction, nonviable mutations, etc. Do you see God’s love in the millions of years of animal suffering before humans existed?

  2. Do you see God’s love in a genetic flaw that leads to early death in a child or a life of misery into adulthood? Was that an accident that God allowed because of the greater good of random, probabilistic evolution, or did he make it so on purpose? If it is designed, why are some traits inheritability to easy to predict (50/50). Does God constrain him to not forget to make a certain amount of people have a trait, or does he just let the dice and the consequences fall wherever they land?

  3. Evolution is ultimately about self reliance and competition. Those organisms that do not complete will not survive. Even those who are altruistic to the extent of decreasing their chances of survival, and thus removing their whatever parts of their genes contributed to altruism. Therefore, there is a feedback loop for selfishness. Of course, the moral law exists, and it is hard to explain in this system, but, even so…

  4. Why go through billions of years of forming the cosmos and millions of years of evolution to end it a few thousands years after human civilization begins, depending on when Jesus comes back?

  5. If, for millions of years, animals have been suffering and struggling to survive, most of which dying off due to various factors or traits the made them less fit for survival, and theistic evolution accepts the idea that factors such as genetics, ‘instincts’, and other immutable characteristics strongly influence behavior, then what about the Fall of Man/Adam was even remotely avoidable? Were we set up to fail? How it our fault? Why do we deserve hell for making use of the selfish tactics and traits our ancestors used more successfully than others? This leaves the unpleasant interpretation that God curses humanity ultimately to Hell for doing what it was programmed to do, and what was necessary to survive in the systems God created. Then, after being forced into this situation, you are then given option to accept salvation or to face whatever Hell is, for a problem created either by God himself directly or the necessity of adaptation to nature.

  6. A dominant theme of the New Testament isn’t just God’s love for his creation, but also the malevolence of Satan and demons, whom make mankind act against their better natures in ways that are, basically, animalistic in nature (selfish, violent, short sighted, paranoid, emotional, etc). While you can interpret the Fall of Adam in many ways, attributing the above tendencies to God and not Satan has even further implications. What exactly is Satan and Demons in theistic evolution?

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Welcome to the forum @Chrischill89 , You bring up a lot of questions, and it may be that the conversation will just focus on a few. If so, feel free to post your questions individually in order to enable better response. They are good questions and deserve attention, though I doubt anyone on this side of eternity can answer them to everyone’s satisfaction.

The problem of disease and adverse mutations does make you wonder, especially when the victims are innocent children. My personal belief is that we live in a universe that runs on the rules of physics, and those physical constraints mean adverse things are going to happen. Hurricanes will blow, fires will burn, and mutations will happen, not because God wills it or Satan causes it, but because it is a condition for existence, and there is really no other way it could be, outside of God’s intervention in a miraculous way. In scripture Jesus speaks of God’s care for the sparrow, yet we and he knows that life for a sparrow is quite a struggle, as it is for us.

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Hi @Chrischill89 . Many complex and challenging questions here that people often wonder about. I will just begin by referring you to a couple of resources on the biologos site that have wrestled with the question of animal suffering that you might be interested in:
Here’s a podcast:

and here’s a short article:

there are several other articles on a similar theme if you want to browse the biologos website.

cheers
K.

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Biblical scriptures do not give easily understandable answers to this question. We are forced to rely on our interpretations of the scriptures and the use of common sense to form guesses that we could call ‘educated guesses’ or ‘hypotheses’.

My guess or ‘hypothesis’ is that humanity is not the only meaningful thing in the universe. It would be selfcentered and narrowminded to think that nothing else than Earth and humans matters to God.

Biblical scriptures are Earth-centered in the sense that they focus on what happens here. Ancient Near East people did not know about the huge universe and there was no need to tell scientific information that was not central to the relationship between God and humans. I assume that the descriptions of what will happen in the future are also Earth-centered in the sense that what will happen here does not impact the whole universe.

It is possible that there are other creatures, even civilizations, somewhere in the billions of star systems and galaxies. God may well have relationships with these aliens and have plans on what happens there. Because of the huge distances we may never find signs of these other civilizations or be able to contact them. In this sense, they are not important in our context, even if they would be loved by God. What matters to us is our life and relationship with God here and now.

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I would not say that Satan or demons play a central role. The scriptures suggest that there are spiritual entities that have rebelled against God, as we humans have also done. It is not evident whether they have decided to stay in rebellion, or if the possibility to repent is now closed from them. Anyhow, they appear to cause evil by leading people astray or even by possessing some persons. Much of the evil done by humans is intrinsic in the sense that there is no need for any evil spirits to be involved - we humans can be evil without help.

I assume that satan or demons do not normally play any role in evolution that is an entirely natural process.

I believe that God may interfere with the process when needed to ensure that the direction of the development goes according to His plans - a tiny nudge would be enough. I do not have any idea of how often such an act is needed. If the evil spirits would try to modify the process, God has the power to negate any changes they do.

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THis has been an assertion of mine for come time.

If you are trying to justify YEC then I am afraid my agreement ends.

Suffering and death are a different subject from Evolution (IMHO). I will come back to this.

Trouble is, that is a reality rather than a theory, and again only vaguely related to evolution.

It could be part of the mechanism for developing humanity from a single cell life form but it does not necessarily need to be connected to randomness… IOW the weakness is part of the mechanism for change. The fact tqat is can produce detremental as well as beneficial may be god’s way of allowing some lattitude, rather than dictating every single chage.I have had long discussions with others over exactly hpw much God “controls” evolution.

That is back to point one and it describes the scientific understanding (ToE) not theistic or God involved evolution.

Have you ever made a curry from scratch? It can take several hours. Perhaps there are somethings within creation that needed time to develop before humanity arrived?

YEC is based on Scripture, not biology. (or physics0

I am afraid that I do not accept that humanity was corrupted by a single act. or that The garden narrqtive is based on any sort of reality. The truth in that narraqtive is more to do with their refusal to accept whaqt they had done than any longlasting consequence (IMO)

Which is why I do not think it happened.

Spiritual warfare is not relevant to creation. It existed already. we are just caught up in it.

Then we have the problem of suffering, that I postponed.

There is a beleif, as part of the Fall that humanity caused all suffering, and it could be read so in Paul’s letters, but…

Suffering and death are ned=cessary for the cycle of life in the Universe we dwell in (as opposed to where God is). If you damage yurself, pain is a way of reminding you to care for the wound. When the body is fighting disease, sweating and suffering are the results and restrict how much we can do tht ight slow down our recovery. Death is necessary for life. Everything we eat comes by killing something be it animal or vegetablre. If there was no death we would either starve or over populate. It is a part of our freedom to live. To be free to live you have also got to be free to die (ofr be injured)

Suffering is hard to accept. Watching someone suffer is heartbreaking. Watchng someone die can be worse, but we have the promise of God that it is not the end. Jesus removed that particular pain.

To summarise.
I, like many do not dismiss Evolution completely but consider it part of the way God created us. If you remove the randomness, at least in part, you have a place for God.

Suffering and death are not related to the reality of evolution. There are within it, but they would exist however we were created

Richard

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From what I can see, the majority of what you discuss would apply equally to even young Earth creationism, and even more so to old Earth creationism and Intelligent Design. Disease causing mutations do occur spontaneously in current, living humans. For example, children are born with mutations that causes hemophilia even though neither parent carries the mutation. Living populations are also competing and being shaped by natural selection which is why even YECs accept that natural selection does happen.

The Problem of Suffering, or Theodicy, has been a topic of Judeo-Christian theology since the beginning, well before Darwin or modern science. From my understanding, this problem has never been “solved” to everyone’s satisfaction, but no one has ever said that all questions in Christian theology require answers. Mystery and faith are a part of Christianity as well.

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The same place as it is with gravity and momentum despite the high numbers of people who die everyday because of these ("killing people far faster than evolution – i.e. because of some genetic defect). It is the love of a God who chose love and freedom over power and control, giving us a life of our own to learn and make our own choices. You only do that because it IS about love, for such a thing serves no purpose whatsoever in the creation of tools or means to an end.

Yes, see above. Not an accident because this comes from living our own life and making our own choices not by some design of God. If we can predict them, then it is our responsibility to look for a solution. God limits Himself to the laws of nature He created because these are a necessity for the process of life. Without them an all powerful God dominates completely and we become mindless extensions of Him, which is very limiting I would even say pathetic in having a relationship with others. It can seem random because we rarely know all the consequences of our choices.

The most powerful evolutionary strategy is cooperation. Altruism and morality are important parts of this strategy.

Everything was avoidable with numerous chances to avoid or fix it. First we could have heeded God’s warning. Then we could have taken responsibility for the mistake instead of blaming everyone and everything else for it. And then we could have responded to God numerous efforts to correct the problem (starting almost immediately with Cain and Abel). The fall of man wasn’t just a single unfortunate mistake but a long slide into an increasing number of self-destructive habits – a slide with some momentum to it for sure.

Nope.

How is it not our fault? Asking that question is big part of the problem frankly – trying to dodge our responsibility. But that can only lead to slavery – enslaved to our own bad habits.

Why does a person deserve being splattered on a sidewalk simply for making one little step in the wrong direction on a tall building? Life is about learning how the world works and making our own choices. Without this, without fixed rules, there is no life. But having such choices means we can create hell for ourselves and God has nothing to do with it.

This is frankly the essence of the separation between man and God. There is only one thing which can break a parent-child relationship and that is when the parent’s presence in the child’s life does more harm than good. This interpretation/thinking represents the transformation of an all-powerful God from being our greatest helper/teacher to being our greatest scapegoat – someone so easily blamed for everything wrong in our life. When that is the role we give to God, it is better not to believe in God at all.

The choice is to accept God’s help to overcome our self-destructive habits or to let these habits grow within us until everything good within us has been consumed.

Power and responsibility go hand in hand. If we refuse responsibility then we hand the power over our life to others.

Theistic evolution is not a comprehensive theology. It is merely an assertion that theism and science are compatible. How people answer this question thus depends on their own theological framework. In my theology, Satan was given the role of our adversary (logical because we blamed him for the fall). He is portrayed with goat-like features because he is a scapegoat – an alternative to making God the scapegoat. In this way, God could take up the role of helper and teacher with those of us who were open to this. In his role, Satan and his angels (created by him) represent evil, and sympathy for him cannot serve any good purpose. Is perhaps better, simply to take responsibility for our lives ourselves and give Satan and demons no belief at all.

IOW… it is better to blame Satan and demons than it is to blame God. But I think it is even better to blame nobody and to take responsibility for things ourselves. Science, in essence, does this by identifying natural causes like disease for many of the things attributed to demons in the Bible. …but then which is it really… disease or demons? Causality isn’t that simple. Most of the time, things have many different causes. But the fact of the matter is… we have been far more successful in dealing with diseases than in dealing with demons.

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This is a very sensible, modern, scientific viewpoint. Yet, he is powerful enough to tempt the Son of God himself and antagonistic enough to be the reason for him to ‘appear’.

1 John 3:8

“The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.”

I think the issue is here is that the theory of evolution assigns much of the evils that theology, religion, and doctrine assigned to Satan (or its equivalents) and give it directly to God. It seems apparent to me that the gist of the Old Testament is that the primary cause of suffering is disobedience, and, in the new testament, Satan himself is a primary cause.

I am a firm disbeliever in YEC.

True, but what if you are an infinite God who designed the process to make curry in the first place?

I do not either, and I believe many observable facts refute this claim. Howver, Paul did believe it was from a single act, and once you start doubting Paul…

Sounds more in line with pantheistic, Hindu/Buddhist/Eastern philosophies. The Bible is clear that when Jesus comes back the Lion will lay down with the Lamb. I assume that means there will be less death, and suffering. Therefore, death and suffering is at least somewhat avoidable.

I agree that theism is the best explanation for existence. However, what does it say about God’s character? Let’s say, for example, the systems of life require and maintain a general suffering and downward spiral for less fit and less desirable organisms. What then do we say of Jesus commandments to care for the poor, weak, and meek? By the laws of nature, theses are organisms marked for death so that superior traits can flourish instead.

The tension is that I think many people, even church fathers, and others, are of the opinion that the vast majority, if not all, suffering was the result of disobedience due to sinful nature and/or the devil, not the inability to say no to God given, nature ingrained, evolution sorted, strong impulses. Since these are basically given by God himself.

I suppose you could say our actions can shape our evolution, but I’m not aware of any way in which being a good person alters the genetic traits you pass on over extended periods of time. I suppose generation after generation of choosing more ‘moral’ mates might cause higher amounts of good morality, but, then again, that could easily mean that their less survivable because they aren’t as aggressive or something similiar.

I suppose you can see death from some natural laws as inevitable, but is it necessary that animals suffered for being weaker and less adapted (through no fault of their own) to various external stimuli for millions of years before humans supposedly disobeyed and messed things up? If disobedience isn’t the cause of most of life’s suffering (since animals cannot rebel), then what is the cause? Where is God’s love in making weak animals, in particular, suffer for undesirable traits then commanding humans to take pity on the weak just because they now possess empathy?

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Looks like you have been reading The Selfish Gene. Some believe evolution can actually lead to altruistic behavior that benefits the population and thus gets passed down to future generations. Evolution may well have lead to the very early humans learning to cooperate in hunting and gathering.

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@Chrischill89 is actually partly correct about altruism. “True Altruism” defined as decreasing one’s own fitness to increase the fitness of another can never be selected by natural selection. The cooperation we observe in nature is always the result of a mutual benefit to both parties, or a reciprocal “tit-for-tat” sort of relationship.
So yeah, natural selection doesn’t always select for traits that are overtly violent, but it will only select for traits that bring a net benefit to the individual.
And by the way, traits are not selected because they “benefit the population”, they are selected because they benefit an individual (i.e., it is the individual that survives and reproduces and is the unit that natural selection acts on)
cheers
K.

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Good observations. To look at it through a theologic lens, in human experience to behave altruistically and to not bend to the evolutionarily derived pressure innate to our animal nature, which the Bible calls “the flesh,” but rather to act out of love, as Christ taught, is perhaps what sets us apart from the other animals and what it means to live in the image of Christ.

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But that is incorrect. It most certainly can be selected. This because it is never about individual survival. It is about the survival of our genetic heritage. And the tremendous promotion of cooperation by examples of “true altruism” is of great advantage in the survival of that genetic heritage.

Of course the thing about cooperation is it is less exclusive in its advantage for survival. It promotes the survival of many genetic lines rather than just your own. But since it does its work even when it is rare, the advantage remains.

This is really not so strange because the survival advantage of another trait has some similarities with this. I am talking about genetic diversity. We know many mechanisms for increasing genetic diversity have been selected and thus evolved. This is because diversity makes a species more adaptable to changes in the environment. Obviously this is a trait that not only has disadvantages for individuals but naturally must be a part of a wide range of genetic lines.

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But natural selection acts on the phenotypes of individuals, it does not act directly on genes, correct? This is what first year biology teaches. Hence, biologists say that individuals are the units of selection. To the extent that phenotypes of individuals are linked to their underlying genotypes, alleles will then be passed on at certain frequencies to the next generation (ie, “biological fitness” = number of progeny relative to alternate phenotypes in the population.

So, explain to me how “true altruism” as I defined it above can be favoured by natural selection. The general public often uses the term indiscriminately, equating it with cooperation, but biologists have specific definitions for these terms. “True altruism” as defined by biologists involves reducing one’s own fitness (the number of progeny one has) to increase the other individual’s fitness (increasing the number of progeny for the other). This means that an allele for “true altruism” will decline in frequency in the population because the altruist leaves fewer offspring relative to non-altruists, and so a trait for “true altruism” will be eliminated over time. Note that “true altruism” is different than “cooperation”…see next point.

This reads like word salad to me because biologists define “cooperation” and “true altruism” as different things.“Cooperation” is defined as an activity that brings a net fitness benefit to both parties. An example might be group-hunting in lions. A pride can bring down larger prey than a single lion hunting alone, so all members get more meat than they would do if they hunted as singles. So, in this case, all individuals in the pride have a net gain in their own fitness by participating in the group, hence it is easy to see how cooperation can be selected for in nature. In a sense, cooperative individuals are still “selfish” because they behave in a way that increases their own net fitness. In contrast, “true altruism” is defined as self-sacrifice of one’s own fitness, and so there are no examples of that being selected for in nature that I am aware of.

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Yes, I think you’ve nailed it there. Humans have an (apparently unique) power of self-conscious reflection about their behavioral options and can choose to act truly altruistically in love, “against the tendency of the flesh”, as Christ taught.

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Which is consistent with Jesus as moral teacher. No one can deny that Jesus’ teachings (or whoever wrote the Sermon on the Mount) laid the foundation for ethics of Western civilization. However, there are also other great moral teachers that teach things similar. We clearly have something akin to a moral law, and Jesus excelled at identifying and disseminating it.

For the insight to be more than enlightened, it must be godly, and I find some difficulty reconciling God creating a universe where you are programmed to do one thing, but then commanded to do another, and if you do what you are programmed to do, you are cast into Hell, unless God himself saves you from a problem he created. Although altruism proves we are more than our genes, and we have developed intelligence beyond simply a machine responding to stimuli to survive, it also could just be that our awareness of our plight makes us sympathetic to our own struggles or the struggles of the people in our group.

I think Biblical authors also felt this tension which is why there seems to be the concept (picked up on by Church fathers) that mankind is responsible for sin and suffering, and that ultimately that is due to mankind’s rebellion influenced by Satan. More so than simply we just make bad decisions and have bad consequences. More in line with we should expect that sin causes disease and other forms of death, or at least someone else to the fundamental workings of the life.

If all we’re doing is replacing Satan and demons with genetics, how seriously are we taking the Bible?

I fear that some day science will be able to explain true altruism either from a cognitive perspective or even a biological perspective. As we all seems to agree, secular science has been remarkably successful at removing more and more features of the universe from God’s responsibility. If our cognition and our altruism are next, then what do we have other than a “feeling” to pursue God?

I have not, and as he states that religion is a disease that needs to be eradicated, I do not take him in good faith, and would rather have more even minded atheists and biologists argue their points.

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Usually yes but there are two ways how the sacrifice of individual fitness may be favoured in natural selection.

One is kin selection. For example, that is the basic explanation for eusocial behaviour.

The other is group selection. I do not know how common true group selection is, as what is classified as group selection may be driven by more or less mislead kin selection (individuals in the group are on average more closely related than the individuals in the other groups) or by an expectation of mutual benefits (tit-for-tat). For example, self-sacrificing behaviour for the group, tribe or nation may be explained by the two latter explanations, without a need to rely on pure group selection.

Gene-culture coevolution is another attempt to lift up group selection. Also in this case, it is not obvious that it is pure group selection, as kin selection and reciprocal altruism may be involved.

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The Bible does not really approach any of those answers because it was not questions that they had. So to begin with I believe in science because it’s factual. Religion plays absolutely nothing in my scientific understanding, it can just affect how I apply what I learn. For example, and this is dark and hyperbolic on purpose to quickly make the point. Science has taught me the quickest way to end another person’s life is to the brain. However, my faith tells me it’s quite evil to just randomly for no reason kill a person. But nothing in the Bible from sword fights, spears, stones or anything dictates my scientific understanding of ending a life. I don’t look at the story of David and Goliath, or at least the story where he does kill him, and then decide that the way to kill someone is to sling a stone at their head. So in the same way nothing else in the Bible reshapes my scientific understanding.

One question you asked is about Jesus and the end of time. God spent billions of years making and will presumably end it upon the return of Jesus. First of all, that’s merely one modern futurist interpretation of the events. There are dozens of other interpretations of the events.

For example, I think Jesus had already came back. I don’t think we even have another physical body. I don’t think Jesus’s body actually rose from the dead. What happened? I don’t know and I don’t care. Should have written a better more timeless Bible if God wanted better understanding. Now, you may instantly be shocked at those statements and you may not even think someone could be a Christian by rejecting those beliefs. However, I don’t care. I’m more than confident enough in my beliefs for dozens of reasons including being heavily influenced by snippets of biblical scholars spread out over hundreds of books and thousands of hours of podcasts and reading the Bible numerous times.

You mentioned how could a god of love have allowed all the suffering done through natural selection. Well in the same way he’s not prevented rapes, kids starving to death or getting cancer, dogs being hit on the road, billions of pigs in pens screaming as they get their throats slit and been bleeding out get their skin boiled off while being flipped around and around on top of hot water or oil. Same way as not stopping covid, natural dissenters. I would say, he has been very consistent in not doing very much of anything throughout any point in history. Can he stop it? Maybe. Don’t know. Don’t weee any evidence in the Bible that he’s all knowing or all powerful. Might not be one god. Seems like many gods were merged into god by people. This myth taken from here, this story reimagined there and etc.

So why do I believe in God and specifically believe in Jesus? Because I simply have faith. It’s just there. There is no logical reason to why I believe in god or the supernatural stories in the Bible. I have had three things happen in my life that seemed to coincidental to be per chance and so I attribute it to God. I follow Jesus because I believe Jesus was a man who the god of the universes chose to reveal his love through. Was Jesus God? Don’t know and don’t care. Was he possessed in a sense by the Holy Spirit? Don’t know and don’t care.

I don’t struggle with the nature of evil, or gods work in it because I don’t think I trees gods duty to be a genie. I think the power of god called the Holy Spirit interacts with all life in all the universes ( if there are more than one ) without controlling any of them.

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You mentioned selfishness as a drive in evolution. So what. That’s also a red herring way to place it. Why do you want a partner? Because you don’t want to be alone. You like intimacy. They showed interest back. They most likely were not the first you desired these things with. You eat because you don’t want to die, despite some people starving to death. For fact, in America where most people are overweight, almost everyone could eat half as much food and give the rest to others. Buy less so more goes into other markets and so on. When you get a job, you’re stopping someone else from getting that job. We could argue that you do all of these things because you don’t want to die or life miserably, or even more so than you feel it happens now. Would I call all of that selfish? No. I don’t think it’s selfish that we want to survive and be happy. So I also don’t think it’s selfish that all other animals want the same. For a fact, they probably are doing it in a far less selfish way.

You mentioned demons. Well there are debates over demons versus fallen angels. There are debates over if demons exist or if they are myths including stories in the Bible. That they are metaphorical for our own struggles with goodness. There are also beliefs that they did exist, and now cease to exist.

So Iput it like this. I’ll worry about demons/fallen angels or anything that is evil and supernatural when I meet one or someone provides concrete proof they exist. Show me a 140lb man speaking with a dozen voices, telling me my past and future who then repeatedly snaps chains that pulls trucks and I’ll be concerned. Otherwise, the most concerned I’m going to be is why is this person behaving strangely.

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Hi,
But it comes down to proper definitions again. Kin Selection is not classified as true altruism because it is just an indirect way of transmitting “ones own genes” into the next generation, i.e. “indirect fitness”. This is something you know as a fellow biologist so I won’t elaborate. Similarly, parents giving resources to their own offspring are not considered to be behaving altruistically, they are just increasing their own fitness (their own genetic representation) in the next generation.

And, yes, as you muse above, all purported instances of “group selection” in nature have turned out to be more parsimoniously explained by individual selection or kin selection. All except for one that I am aware of. Group selection can only theoretically exist if there are very strict parameters of high relatedness in the group, and low levels of gene transfer among groups. I recall reading of one example in a eusocial insect (I think it was a type of ant?), where the researchers were arguing that these very strict parameters were met and they were seeing group-level selection. This is still disputed. So, unambiguous cases of “group selection” in nature are very rare, if they exist at all…

Yes exactly. But tit-for-tat (or reciprocity), because it brings mutual benefit to both participating individuals, is considered to be an example of “cooperation”, not of true altruism. That was my point in the previous post, that these terms “cooperation” and “altruism” get conflated and confused whereas biologists distinguish them based on differences in fitness results to the individuals. And yes, you are correct that such behavior is better explained by benefits to the individual, not to the group. This is because individuals live, reproduce and die at much faster rates than groups, and so the strength of selection will always be greater at the individual level than at the group level.

Yes, this is true. The problem is that many social anthropologists have not been trained in population genetics so they just don’t know the mechanics of how alleles are selected and how traits spread in a population through natural selection. There have been a couple of good reviews of the gene-culture literature that show that all purported cases of “group selection” fail to rule out kin selection or individual benefits (reciprocity or mutual cooperation) as possible explanations…

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