Transcript things - Calvin College

Creation, Evolution &
Intelligent Design
Uko Zylstra
Biology Department
Calvin College
Introductory question
• What is a thing, event, or phenomenon?
– For example:
• a glass of water
• a housefly
• human birth
• an ecosystem
• life
What is Life?
THE HUMAN BODY CONTINUOUSLY SELFREPAIRS:
• EVERY FIVE DAYS YOU GET A NEW
STOMACH LINING
• YOU GET A NEW LIVER EVERY TWO
MONTHS
• YOUR SKIN REPLACES ITSELF EVERY
SIX WEEKS
• EVERY YEAR, 98% OF THE ATOMS OF
YOUR BODY ARE REPLACED
From Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, What is Life, p. 23
Is life matter?
• “Living matter” is an oxymoron
• Matter is not “alive”
The crux of the matter:
• Is “matter” autonomous? Self existent?
• Does (can) matter bring forth life?
• This is connected to how we are to
understand the God-nature relationship
The status of created reality
• “meaning is the being of all creaturely
beings”
H. Dooyeweerd
• How does our understanding of
such “things” relate to our
understanding of God? Do they
help us know God
• How does that relate to the
meaning of nature?
• To the meaning of miracle?
Dualism of God’s actions?
Supranature
nature
What is the relation between these two?
Major Questions for Christians
• what is the relationship of created world
to God?
• how are we to understand the sovereignty
of God? (Col. 1:17)
• must God be left at the laboratory door
for a Christian?
• can a Christian leave God at the
laboratory door?
A major tension for Christian
scientists
• affirmation and role of divine action
• tension for the Christian scientist
• deism
• dualism
• How does a Christian avoid these options?
Central Question for
Biology:
• what accounts for complexity?
• what is the causative agency for
complexity?
What accounts for those qualities that
we typically associate with living
things?
Issues Relating to Discussion of
Intelligent Design
• philosophical naturalism (materialism) is the
reigning worldview for natural science
• Carl Sagan: “matter is all there is , ever was, or
ever will be”
• methodological naturalism as the paradigm for
doing science even for those who don’t accept
the worldview of philosophical naturalism
Causative Agency in
Philosophical Materialism
• self-organization
• emergent properties
• natural selection
These are considered to follow “natural laws”; thus
natural causes are invoked
Natural laws are “reduced” to physical/chemical laws
Darwin's “long argument” against natural theology
Natural selection is the designer
ID as Causative Agent
• how does ID function as a cause?
• does ID continue to work as a causative agent
for each irreducibly complex structure?
• how does ID differ from causative laws?
• does ID as cause introduce a scholastic
dualism: nature/supranature?
Basic question: what does this have to do with God?
Or, how does God relate to the world?
How does God reveal himself?
Dualism of God’s actions?
Supranature
nature
What is the relation between these two?
God
World
Human
Human
Stewardship
Servanthood
God
Law
Christ
Word
World
Human
Human
Stewardship
Servanthood
Philosophical materialism:
God is irrelevant, non existent!
World
Human
Human
A Thing
God
Christ
Law
Side
Subject
Side
What
We
Experience
A Thing
God
Law
Side
What
Subject
We
Side
Experience
God
Law
Modal Aspects of Things
Human
pistic / faith
Beings
moral
juridical
aesthetic
economic
social
lingual
historical
logical
sensory
Animals
Plants
morpho. / differentiative
biotic
Protista
Physical / chemical
Non-living
things
kinematic
spatial
numerical
Christian faith and evolution:
is this an inherent conflict?
• Need for distinguishing evolution from
evolutionism
• Need for distinguishing among different
meanings of evolution
• Need for distinguishing between worldviews
• Evolutionism as a worldview is in conflict with
creationism as a worldview
• Evolution as a theory of unfolding in God’s
creation is not necessarily in conflict with the
worldview of creationism
Central thesis of evolutionism
• All things came into being by some
natural causes without the action of any
divine being
• Darwinian evolution is considered one of
the chief natural causes for the
appearance of living things
Central theses of creationism
• God is creator; all else is creature
• Relation of creation to God is through
God’s laws
• Things may evolve; laws don’t’
• Evolution of living things is subject to
God’s laws for such evolution
Conflict between a creationism
evolution and evolutionism evolution
• The belief that God works through some
evolutionary process conflicts with a belief in a
Darwinian evolutionary process
• If the evolutionary process is directed by God
through his laws, then it can’t be considered to
be due to chance and necessity, involving
merely chemical and physical laws of an
autonomous universe, a universe that is self
existent
Meanings of evolution
• Evolution as pattern
• Evolution as process
• Evolution as mechanism
It’s important to keep in mind in what sense we are
speaking of evolution
Abundant evidence of pattern of evolution
Much less evidence for process of evolution
Mechanism of natural selection inadequate to account
for many structures and phenomena
A basic question:
• Is God’s Word infallible in both
Scripture and Creation (Nature)?
GOD
is revealed in and through
the WORD
(Christ)
in
CREATION
SCRIPTURE
interpreted by
SCIENCE
(fallible)
THEOLOGY
(fallible)
An example of God’s revelation
of “evolution” as pattern
• Comparison of amino acid sequences in
cytochrome C
• Cyt C is a necessary component of the
respiratory process in living things
• Sequence of amino acids in a proteins is
important for their overall structure and
function
Model of
Cytochrome
C
Cytochrome C
amino acid
sequence
Cytochrome C phylogeny
Hemoglobin
sequence
comparison
Concluding question concerning
the pattern of evolution:
• How do we read (interpret) this revelation
of God in such sequence analysis in the
similarity of proteins, universality of
genetic code, etc?
• Does it point to some degree of common
ancestry of living things?
• Does it indicate that perhaps God
unfolded the creation through an
evolutionary process?
DISCONTINUITY IN CREATION
• CREATION
• UNFOLDING
• CREATIVE ACTIVITY
• PROVIDENCE
• ORIGINS
• APPEARING
• OUTSIDE OF TIME
• IN TIME
Genesis account
History
Implications of the discontinuity of
God’s activity in creating and unfolding
• How do we read the Bible, especially Genesis
1-2 in light of God’s revelation in creation
• God’s Word as proclamation or
description
Illustrative questions:
• What is the shape of the earth? How do we
know? What does the Bible indicate?
• Job 28:24 “he views the ends of the earth”
• Ps. 19:6 “it (sun) rises at one end of the
heavens”
• Is. 40:28 “the creator of the ends of the earth”
• Is. 11:12 “he will assemble the scattered people
of Judah from the four quarters of the earth”
• Rev. 7:1 “four angels standing at the four
corners of the earth”
• Is the earth stationary in space, with the sun, moon,
planets and stars in motion around the central earth?
How do we know? Or is the earth rotating as it travels in
an orbit around the sun? How do we know?
– Ps. 93:1 “the earth is firmly established; it cannot be
moved”
– Ps. 104:5 ‘He set the earth on its foundations; it can
never be moved”
– Ps. 19:6 “It (sun) rises at one end of the heavens and
makes its circuit to the other”
– Eccl. 1:5 “the sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries
back to where it rises”
– Matt. 5:45 “he causes his sun to rise on the evil and
the good”
• Why does the Bible “describe” the relationship this
way?
Some questions
• Is the Genesis account really descriptive?
More so than the language of Revelations
or the passages quoted above?
• Did God create all things de novo? Out of
nothing?
• What really is the intent of Genesis?
Genesis 1:1-5 – the first day
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was
over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was
hovering over the waters.
3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the
light from the darkness.
5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called
"night." And there was evening, and there was
morning-the first day.
What is the meaning of “light” in these passages?
Genesis 1:6-8 – the second day
6 And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the
waters to separate water from water."
7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under
the expanse from the water above it. And it was so.
8 God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening,
and there was morning-the second day.
Water
Sky
Water
Earth
Genesis 1:9-13 – the third day
9 And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered
to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so.
10 God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered
waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.
11 Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seedbearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with
seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so.
12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed
according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed
in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was
good.
13 And there was evening, and there was morning-the
third day.
Genesis 2:4-6
In what form were plants created?
4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they
were created.
When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens- 5 and
no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and
no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had
not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work
the ground, 6 but streams came up from the earth and
watered the whole surface of the ground- 7 the Lord God
formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a
living being.
Genesis 1:14-17 – the fourth day
14 And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the
sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as
Signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them
be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth."
And it was so.
16 God made two great lights - the greater light to govern the
day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made
The stars.
17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on
the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate
light from darkness. And God saw that it was good.
19 And there was evening, and there was morning-the
fourth day.
Genesis 1:20-23 – the fifth day
20 And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures,
and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky."
21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every
living and moving thing with which the water teems, according
To their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.
And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said,
"Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the
seas, and let the birds increase on the earth."
23 And there was evening, and there was morning-the fifth day.
Genesis 1:24-25 – sixth day part one
24 And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures
according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along
The ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind."
And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to
heir kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the
creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds.
And God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:26-31 – sixth day, part II
Creation of man: male and female
26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our
likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds
Of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over
all the creatures that move along the ground."
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God
he created him; male and female he created them.
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
And there was evening, and there was morning-the sixth day.
Genesis 2:18-22 – creation of Eve – On what day?
18 The Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone.
I will make a helper suitable for him."
19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the
beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them
To the man to see what he would name them; and whatever
the man called each living creature, that was its name.
20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of
the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no
suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the
man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he
took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with
flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib
he had taken out of the man, and he brought
her to the man.
Conclusion
• Genesis is primarily a proclamation that God is
the Maker of heaven and earth!
• Genesis 1-2 is proclaiming a message of God’s
activity which is incomprehensible to human
beings. The proclamation is put into human
language and images to accommodate the
limitation of human understanding as finite
creatures.
• To attempt to read Genesis 1-2 as some form of
description is putting God’s activity within the
limitations of human comprehensibility. This
violates the very proclamation message of the
creation account