Evolutionary and Molecular Biology: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action Series

Christian Century, Jan 19, 2000 by Philip Clayton

Evolutionary and Molecular Biology: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action Series (Vol. 3)

Edited by Robert J. Russell, William Stoeger and Francisco Ayala. University of Notre Dame Press, 552 pp., $24.95 paperback.

WHEN CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANS take a stand against evolutionary theory, everyone notices. When biologists such as Richard Dawkins or E. O. Wilson claim that evolutionary biology excludes faith, disproves God or shows how much human beings are like other primates, the religious community becomes irate and newspapers spread the story across their front pages,

But the real work on evolution and faith is being done by two sets of scholars whom the popular press would rather ignore. One group consists of Christians who are attempting to combine the idea of God's providential design with evolution. The other is made up of nonbelieving or agnostic biologists who eschew radical antireligious claims in favor of sober assessments of genetic influence. The books by Holmes Rolston and Michael Ruse and the collection of essays edited by Robert Russell, William Stoeger and Francisco Ayala represent the best recent thought of both camps.

Rolston, whose mediating position is signaled by his book's subtitle, is one of the sober and intelligent Christian voices in the discussion. He cares deeply about preserving the nonbiological aspects of culture, ethics and religion. He searches for the "brooding Spirit of God" in the world, and believes that religion is about "the finding, creating, saving, redeeming of ... persisting sacred value in the word."

Yet Rolston is willing to embrace the results of the scientific study of the biological world: "This has been Darwin's century, and we have more understanding than any people before us of the evolutionary natural history by which we arrived," he states. Our genetic makeup results from an evolutionary process; we share most of our genetic structure with other animals, particularly with the higher primates; and this genetic code influences vast areas of human behavior. The strength of the influence results in the strong pull to "naturalize" and "socialize" the domains of culture, ethics and religion. Yet Ralston finds good reasons for rejecting a reduction of these domains to natural causes. Biological evolution, he proclaims, leaves room for religious truth.

Is Rolston's apologetic successful? Consider his central arguments. One is that cultural history rises above genetic influences: "With the coming of humans there appears the genesis of ideas; encultured thereafter, ideas are perennially generated and regenerated." For him biology and culture are ultimately separate, parallel aspects of the human person: "The self is not simply biological and somatic but cultural and ideological," he argues. "The self is expansive and finds an entwined destiny with many other persons." Cultural evolution renders genetic evolution relatively powerless. "One does not have to have ... Darwin's genes to be a Darwinian, or Jesus' to be a Christian."

The notion that our biological equipment is "like a computer hardware, as a given to work with," is crucial for Rolston's case against genetic determinism. An extremely large number of software programs can be run on a given piece of hardware. You can use your home computer to write about shagging or Shakespeare, to play games or search the heavens, to buy stocks or solve differential equations. The same degree of freedom, Ralston contends, characterizes the whole realm of human culture and thought.

Though some have argued that ethics and values have their roots in evolution, Ralston thinks that only religion puts them in an adequate context. Ethics involves altruism, the placing of the interests of others above one's own. Many biologists have found that animals sometimes behave altruistically. Indiscriminate altruism--acting for the good of all and not merely for those who carry our genes--contributes to a healthy society, and thus, indirectly, to biological fitness. But Ralston maintains that altruism and other forms of ethical behavior must be measured not only for their biological survival value but also for their contribution to the flourishing of culture. Morality is emergent: our species has risen from "is" to "ought." In the end, Rolston insists, the "ought" that is basic to ethics cannot be derived from the descriptive "is" of biological research. To be a person is to be "moral, valuable, and evaluating." Only the language of transcendence can grasp the human mind, which is able "to reach truths about realms that it does not inhabit, extrapolating and reasoning from the realms it does."

In making his case for Christianity, Ralston's starting point is our ability to transcend ourselves, our social or historical context and even our biology. This, he states, is strong evidence in support of religion and of a personal, transcendent God. Ralston argues not only that theism has a positive biological function for human culture and survival, but also that there is good reason to regard it as true. Tribal religions are "nonexportable" (and therefore false?); "only the universalist synoptic creeds have proven exportable, globally functional, because they speak to the common condition of humankind."