Is evolution true? Did life arise out of blind, gradual, purposeless and apparently randomized evolutionary force? Can we confidently tell our children that God created us in an evolutionary fashion? Do Adam and Eve have belly buttons (this would imply that they were not the first humans to exist)? Was Genesis 2 just a spiritual creation or both a spiritual and a physical creation? Except for the first question, I think we will never empirically know the answers to the rest of the questions. In other words, there are no scientifically verifiable tests or studies that are able to provide an intellectually satisfactory answer to the rest of the questions. Theists will have to accept by faith that God is the sole creative force in the universe and atheists will have to accept otherwise. Never the twain shall ever meet, I guess. But maybe a quote from the grandfather and founder of the evolution theory may shed some light on the enduring and heated debate between the two camps. This conclusion from Charles Darwin is very instructive, “I am convinced that natural selection has been the main but not the exclusive means of modification.”
Okay, I hope we are making some tiny progress in the swirling controversy between the theists and the atheists. Darwin’s conclusion makes it clear that natural selection is an important molding force of life as we see it today. But it is not the only force. There are of course other forces at work as implied in that quote. At this point, no one knows for sure what the other forces are. Many theists will want to fill in the gap by crediting God for these forces. Some may even go as far as to attribute God as the main enabler of creation with evolution being just one of the strings in His creative bow. Atheists would of course cry foul and demand that we stick to verifiable scientific proof and leave wishful thinking to folklore and fable peddlers. But however we fill the gap with our own biased views, there will inevitably be loop holes or gaps in our theories/beliefs.
If we say that God created the universe and everything in it, we will be hard pressed to furnish material evidence of this since God is beyond scientific proof. Theists or fervent Christians cannot summon God or any of His ministering angels to materialize before an unbelieving and skeptic audience to remove all lingering doubts. At best, we can only provide indirect evidence, which are largely subjected to numerous interpretations that can swing either ways. We can say that the awe-inspiring beauty of this world suggests a creator. But atheists can rebuff that by crediting evolution as the sole cause. We can say that the immutable laws of physics and chemistry hints to an intelligent designer. But the atheists will scoff at our ignorance because our interpretation is naïve and self-serving. To the unbelievers, the natural laws came into existence by random chance, more like a lucky break. There is therefore no intelligent design involved. Neither was there ever an intelligent designer.
In the end, the two camps will only remain farther apart in their already entrenched positions. So, what can we do about this ever-increasing gap between them, which in recent years have become even more intense and intractable? Well, we can bridge the gap (and not close it completely) by suggesting that both camps are right to some extent. In this modern scientific age, the theists should accept that evolution plays a crucial part in the development of life. At this cross-junction of science, believers can safely accept that evolution is true to a large extent. The evidence is incontrovertible. Evolution is happening everywhere, at every moment. From cell dividing in my body as I type these words to the recent emergence of various mutated viruses like SARS and H1N1, evolution is as prevalent as the air we breathe. Life’s diversity attests to the tireless exuberance of evolution at work. So, should school teach evolution to account for the ebulliently lush variety of nature and its bio-diversity? I say amen to that. I see no harm in teaching our young minds that which cannot be denied as universal truth.
Let’s not get too paranoid about the subject of evolution. Stripped of all its controversy and “demonized” features, evolution is all about changes on a cell-by-cell level - without which, no organic life would emerge or thrive. If theists want to see evolution at work right before their very eyes, they just have to leave a pot of cooked rice exposed in the kitchen sink. After just one day or two, the rice would be covered in an algae-like sheen. Scoop off this layer and examine it under a microscope and we can see a blizzard of new organisms, multiplying manifold, dynamically striving to survive in a hostile environment. That’s evolution in a pot! I therefore do not see any reason to deny something that cannot be denied, however strident our dogmatic upbringing and theological prejudices may cry out. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God.”
At this point in my faith, I subscribe to these chosen words uttered by a physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne. “God created something more beautiful than a ready made world…a world with an inborn capacity to become and create itself.” Just like physical pain is our neuro-sensory system telling us to take our finger off a heated iron, evolution is God’s way of creating nature and life as it has always been and is today. Surely God does not play dice with creation and His multifaceted and complex laws are set from the very beginning to ensure, with sniper-like precision, that we are the end product of this creative process. At least, this is what I believe by extension of the many dead-ends that science has reached in explaining the wonders and mysteries of life and the universe as a whole.
In this debate, the atheists should take Darwin’s lead when he wrote affirmatively that natural selection is not the exclusive means of modification. This means that evolution is a team player or leader. It is no doubt a crucial force. But it is also, in my view, a directed one. It is therefore not a blind and random process (I use “random” to account for the early development of life or the first cell to counter what Richard Dawkins once wrote that evolution is a “non-random survival of a random process” Well, I’ll leave this difficult discussion for another day).
I guess this is where I depart from the atheist’s position. The atheists will say that evolution is a blind force, undirected and unsupervised. There is no intelligent agent involved. But then, one must pause to consider Darwin’s admonishment that natural selection does not work alone. In other words, by extension, evolution does not account for everything. There are other forces at play. This is where the atheist should stop and reflect. If we study the complexity of a cell, the constituents of DNA and RNA, how a cell multiplies, and how proteins within a cell are produced and assembled, we have to admit that science falls short in explaining it all. Of course, the theists are equally mystified.
Next mystery is our brain. What accounts for all our subjective thoughts? How do we explain why we are driven not only by simple biological necessities like the urge to eat, sleep and shit, but also by our need to aspire, to perform altruistic acts, to give ourselves for others, to create and shape into reality what floats nebulously in our mind as the vigor of our imagination, and to become aware of what we are becoming aware about. We are the only creature on world who is able to focus and redirect our attention and efforts for purposive ends. Our modern civilization is built on realizing our dreams, fulfilling our goals, and actualizing our aspirations. We are unique not because nature has mandated it so by blind, random and purposeless evolutionary process. We are unique because we are created for a purpose. I cannot accept that a blind and purposeless process happens to stumble by chance upon a way to create a sentient and purpose-driven humanity. There is curiously something more than evolution that accounts for us as its end-result.
Now I am not calling the atheists to take the “fill-in-the-blank” approach by electing a deity of their choice to account for everything. This would put all of us, theists and atheists alike, back to where we first started, back to square one where the heated contention first originated. You can say that I am not evangelizing to them but merely trying to engage them in a mutually respectful and amiable discussion.
Considering that there is so much that we do not know, and so much that I think we will never get to know, we should be mindful of the maxim which says, “He who is living in a glass house should not be the one to throw a brick.” The “glass house” of a theist is that of the mystery of faith as a subjective assurance only he who professes can subscribe to. We cannot show God in human flesh to our unbelieving friends as and when they want proof of His existence. We only can live our lives as best as we can to demonstrate the authenticity of our belief and faith. In like manner, the “glass house” of an atheist is the shortfall of science to explain the first cause of the cosmology, the complexity of a living cell, and the inscrutableness of our human consciousness.
Instead of throwing bricks, we should all get along despite our differences. This would be easier said than done but it is not impossible. Considering that we all have our own prejudices and rose-tinted glasses when we come together for a debate, we should therefore first suspend our judgments and take off our glasses as a precondition for any meaningful discussion on the subject of God and evolution.
In the end, we may not be able to convince each other of our beliefs; but at least we will be able to understand why the other party believes what he/she believes and this understanding, I believe, is the first step to establishing what I call a University for All Humanity, that is, a harmonious Unity in the face of Diversity. And the unifying motto for this world school is in these words of Albert Einstein, “Science without religion is lame. And religion without science is blind.”
