Category: Science and Religion

The Wall Street Journal recently featured essays by Richard Dawkins and comparative religion scholar Karen Armstrong titled “Man vs. God:  Two Prominent Thinkers Debate Evolution, Science and the Role of Religion.”  Dawkins’ contribution was his usual blend of scientism and utter misapprehension of theology.  Armstrong’s supposed defense of theism was even worse.  According to Armstrong,

The fossil record reveals a natural history of pain, death and racial extinction, so if there was a divine plan, it was cruel, callously prodigal and wasteful. Human beings were not the pinnacle of a purposeful creation; like everything else, they evolved by trial and error and God had no direct hand in their making.

Armstrong goes on to conclude that religion nevertheless is valuable because it makes us feel nice.

What a shame that the Journal didn’t find space for the many contemporary — and ancient — thinkers who have endeavored to take both science and faith seriously.  It seems that neither Dawkins nor Armstrong realize that the problem of evil was not invented by contemporary science.  Great Jewish and Christian minds have wrestled with it for millennia.  Contemporary theologians continue this tradition and extend it to our amazing knowledge of natural history.

For example, consider Christoph Cardinal Schonborn’s Cathechetial lecture on “Suffering in a World Guided by God.”  As Schonborn notes,

St. Augustine wrestled intensely with this question: “I inquired into the origin of evil but found no solution” (Confessions, VII, 7). After long searching and after making various detours and false starts he found the One who alone has conquered evil, sin, and death (cf. 385).

The ultimate end point of any Christian discussion of evil is the cross.  Armstrong simply ignores this long tradition in Christian thought.

Worse yet, Armstrong distorts the Christian understanding of “creation” by converting “natural evil” into a kind of genocide.   Consider Amrstrong’s anthropmorphic and loaded term “racial extinction” as a description for the replacement of species in natural history.  Are we to hold that the insectoid predecessors of today’s mosquitos perished in a holocaust?

Finally, Armstrong naively buys into the claim that only a “perfect” creation could have been made by God.  Unfortunately, this kind of argument is often promoted by well-meaning Christians who lack sufficient grounding in either the natural sciences or historical theology.   Cardinal Schonborn handily dispels this kind of misconception in his cathechetical instruction:

I notice again and again how widespread a certain deep-rooted misunderstanding is: if God has created this world, He can only have created it as perfect. Any defect that is noticed seems to speak against an “intelligent creator” and His intelligent plan. The chaos in the genetic code is an example of this. One likes to say that no reasonable engineer would construct a machine in this way. A classic example of this argumentation is the human eye. Naive believer in creation that I am, I would say that it is an incomprehensible wonder which makes us marvel at the Creator. Not at all, say the experts in evolution: no oculist would construct the lens, the reflection, etc. as we find it in the present human eye. Before I go in to the underlying misunderstanding let me offer one retort. It may be that the human eye could be put together better. But it is thanks to this construction that we can become oculists, engineers, and the like, indeed that we can all experience of marvel of seeing (unless the defect of blindness hinders us). And further: in spite of all our splendid technical prowess, no one is capable of constructing a functioning, living human eye.

But let us come to the heart of the matter: must God, when He creates, create a perfect world free of any defect? Do we face this alterative: either there is a perfect creation or else there is a world that is the product of sheer chance? When God creates does He have to create a world that is already completely finished, a world in which everything possesses from the beginning its perfect form, its unchangeable state of actuality?

But what if creation involves a beginning that is followed by a process of becoming and that finally reaches an endpoint? In this case the Creator who “in the beginning made” the world has set it in motion along a path on which it is still moving towards a goal that is not yet reached. In such a world there would have to be constant becoming, which would also involve a constant passing away. For nothing material that comes to be and develops is able to last; it always passes away. It necessarily follows that in a world of becoming there is perishing, destruction, and death. The Catechism puts it like this: “With infinite power God could always create something better. But with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world ‘in a state of journeying’ towards its ultimate perfection. In God’s plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection (310).”

The problem of evil, including the problem of “natural evil,” is no small problem for theology.  Christians need to acknowledge this, rather than trying to invent alternative “scientific” theories in which all natural evil somehow is entirely a very recent and immediate result of human sin.  Yet, like many “problems” in theology, the question of natural evil has spurred beautiful reflection about God’s providence, the ultimate purposes of creation, the meaning of the cross of Christ, and redemption.  The very least people such as Armstrong could do is to engage with this deep tradition.