More mysteries of evolution, cont.

Following up on the recent thread, “More mysteries of evolution,” James M2 writes:

In recently sequenced animal genomes, biologists have discovered sections of inactive DNA which are purported to describe defunct ancestral traits. The chicken genome in particular contains a dormant portion which, if activated in the lab, causes the embryonic chicken to grow teeth. Naturally, the teeth-making DNA is assumed to be leftover from dinosaur ancestors.

If true, these discoveries gel well with your speculation regarding various non-Darwinian avenues of creation, but not with your ideas of the creation of man. How would you rationalize the presence of ancient primate traits, if found in the genome of man, being that he is the result of direct creation, and created in God’s image? I’ve been trying to reconcile this question in my mind but I can’t think of anything that isn’t silly to the same degree as “God put fossils in the earth to test our faith.”

Please note that I’m not gleefully rubbing my hands together as I type this.

LA replies:

Well, we already know that there are many genetic similarities between man and apes, as well as between man and orchids. All living things on earth share the same basic genetic building blocks. If we assume for the sake of discussion that man is the result of special creation by God, then it stands to reason that God in creating man was still using those same building blocks. Therefore special creation does not mean that man doesn’t have genetic similarities with apes and other living beings. It doesn’t mean that physical, biological man was created out of absolute nothing. It could mean that God took the genetic code of the animal most similar to man and either added new genes to it or activated previously inactive parts of it, while de-activating other parts of it that had been active, and created man as a new being. So man has the same basic building blocks as other species, and thus is “related” to other species in that sense, but he is not descended from other species.

How does that work for you? :-)

James M2 replies:

That works well.

To be clear (though I think you understood this) my problem was not with the idea that we share portions of active genetic material with other life on the planet. What was giving me trouble was just my own imagined scenario in which some dormant DNA is discovered in our genome, which if activated, causes us to have the brain of a chimp, or some other unequivocally non-human feature. My thought was: “what’s the point of God leaving that information inside of us?”

A possible supplement to your explanation occurred to me. Perhaps we must retain some amount of defunct DNA from our predecessors because not to do so would be too conspicuous? If our genome were the only one on the planet not structured in this way, maybe it would point too obviously towards the existence of a God/Creator. I was always taught that our relationship with God was supposed to be based upon trancendental or spiritual belief, or faith, as opposed to materialistic proof revealed to us through science or other first hand observation. (He does not show up at our door and announce himself.)

LA replies:

That’s clever. And it makes sense.

And, no, I didn’t realize that your concern was as you describe it. I thought what was bothering you was the apparent contradiction between genetic similarity and special creation, and that’s what I set out to attempt to explain, to show that it’s not necessarily a contradiction.

Mark P. writes:

To answer James M2 and to add to your article, the basic building blocks of all living things is carbon. But this commonality does not mean that one species comes from another.

Jim N. writes:

Mark K. writes:

“Your idea that there are different types of creation, some evolutionary, others instantaneous, may be borne out by the first chapter of Genesis.”

It’s not that there are different types of creation. It’s that people don’t generally take into account the distinction between creating and making. Genesis 1 says that God “created” the world, where the word “creation” means a bringing into existence out of nothing. But Genesis 2 says that God “made” or “formed” man, “made” meaning the bringing into existence of something from pre-existing parts (as a cake is made from flour, water, and other things).*

Scripture records that God made man from “the dust of the earth,” but then blew the breath of life into him as a separate act (Genesis 2). This can be understood as the body of man evolving over time in the form of an animal, followed by the instantaneous infusion of a human soul. Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas following him, teaches that there are three kinds of soul corresponding to the three kinds of living things. The lowest form is called the nutritive soul. This soul has only the power of nutrition and growth. It is the kind of soul possessed by plants. Up from that is the sensitive soul. This soul possesses the powers of the nutritive soul, plus the power of sensation (there are other powers, too, but I can’t recall all the details off the top of my head; sensation is the most obvious and important, however). The sensitive soul is the kind of soul possessed by animals. At the top is the intellectual soul. The intellectual soul possesses all the powers of both of the lower souls, plus the power of intellection. This is the kind of soul possessed by man and man alone among the creatures of the earth and is the reason why man is said to have been made in God’s image: man alone among earthly creatures has the power to know.

The upshot is that, on the evolutionary reading, when Scripture says that God blew the breath of life into man, it means he was taking a pre-existing animal (i.e. a creature possessing only a sensitive soul) with the body of what we now call a man and changing its nature by replacing the sensitive soul with an intellective soul. Man, in his spiritual aspect, was created in an instantaneous act, but bodily he was made, or formed, over time.

* I’m well aware that both creation stories (Genesis 1 and Genesis 2) seem to use “creating” and “making” interchangeably much of the time. My point here isn’t that evolution (meaning the gradual appearance of new life forms) is correct and demanded by Scripture, but only that it is, in principle, reconcilable with Scripture.

LA replies:

It seems to me that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 describe the creation of man from two distinct aspects. In Genesis 1, God simply says the word and creates man, male and female, in the image and likeness of God.

In Genesis 2, it is very different:

But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

The whole process is involved in matter: mist, the ground, water, dust. Far from the pristine creation of man from God’s word in Genesis 1, man is formed and sculpted out of all these messy ingredients.

Do these two distinct creation stories contradict each other or complement each other? I would argue the latter. Genesis 1 describes God’s creation of the form or idea of man, man as the being made as the image and likeness of God. Genesis 2 describes the creation of man’s physical body out of the materials of the natural world. So in Genesis 2, while man is created in God’s image and likeness, he is not the same type of being as God, Without the materiality of Genesis 2, the man made in the image and likeness of God of Genesis 1 might seem an entirely spiritual being virtually identical with God. So both creation accounts are needed.

If we look at it this way, it also more or less fits Mark K.’s interpretation of the two modes of creation in Genesis 1: direct creation by God, and creation by God through the medium of nature.

Jim N. writes:

Sage McLaughlin writes: “One last thing: if Darwinism is true, and atheism is also true, and if Andrew Stuttaford is right when he says there is no meaning and we “just are,” then what do they care whether we believe them? If Darwinism is absolutely true, and if it entails the rejection of both God and meaning, then it literally doesn’t matter whether anybody believes or even knows about Darwinism.”

This is why I can’t help but laugh at Dawkins et al and their superior attitude: if I’m not a freely thinking being, but merely a product of evolution with no volition of my own (acting mechanically according to “memes” and whatnot), then Dawkins is too. So where does he get off insulting me for being stupid when I have no control whatsoever over it? It’s in my genes. Indeed, by the same token, why should he feel superior for something he can take no credit for?

Finally, in accordance with what Mr. McLaughlin writes, what difference does it make? “Knowing” about evolution may not ultimately be a trait of the victor in the struggle for survival anyway. Maybe fundamentalist Christians are in the end the best adapted to survive…

LA writes:

I wrote: “Without the materiality of Genesis 2, the man made in the image and likeness of God of Genesis 1 might seem an entirely spiritual being virtually identical with God.”

That is the way Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, understands it in Science and Health. She says the man created in Genesis 1 is the true man, who is spiritual, not material, and that the creation in Genesis 2 reflects man’s false understanding of himself as a material being. In other words (I’m not sure if Eddy ever said this, but it would seem consistent with her interpretation) the fall of man begins, not with Adam and Eve’s disobedience of God later in Genesis 2, but with the description of man as a material being at the beginning of Genesis 2. This, for Eddy, is already the fall from the perfect, spiritual man created in Genesis 2, into a material man who, by the fact that he is material, has ceased to be the image and likeness of the spiritual God.

Of course mainstream Christianity and traditional Western thought reject the Christian Science idea of man as wholly spiritual, and instead sees man as both spiritual and material.

Carol Iannone, whose post started it all, writes:

This has been a most interesting thread. I would bring out two things. First, to emphasize what Mr. Auster has said, the argument that the natural world could not have been designed by an intelligent being because species went extinct is a non sequitur. Religious believers persist in believing despite many awful things happening in the natural world. They undersand that we are not seeing God’s creation plain, but through a glass darkly, that is, in a fallen state, with fallen eyes, so to speak, so of course we are not seeing the perfection that we read about in First Genesis.

Second, regarding Alan Roebuck’s explanation for how evolution could have created animal life, I’m assuming he means more complex species growing progressively out of previous species. It is an intriguing interpretation, and gives food for thought. But First Genesis says that each plant, fish, bird, animal, etc. emerged after its own kind, after his kind, and this is repeated again and again. So I would have to disagree with Genesis supporting macro-evolution.

Carol Iannone continues:

In regard to E’s questioning why we continue debating these issues, this is from a 1997 statement on human cloning from the International Academy of Humanism, which includes such luminaries as Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Isaiah Berlin, W.V. Quine, and Kurt Vonnegut:

What moral issues would human cloning raise? Some world religions teach that human beings are fundamentally different from other mammals—that humans have been imbued by a deity with immortal souls, giving them a value that cannot be compared to that of other living things. Human nature is held to be unique and sacred. Scientific advances which pose a perceived risk of altering this “nature” are angrily opposed…. [But] as far as the scientific enterprise can determine … [h]uman capabilities appear to differ in degree, not in kind, from those found among the higher animals. Humanity’s rich repertoire of thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and hopes seem to arise from electrochemical brain processes, not from an immaterial soul that operates in ways no instrument can discover…. Views of human nature rooted in humanity’s tribal past ought not to be our primary criterion for making moral decisions about cloning…. The potential benefits of cloning may be so immense that it would be a tragedy if ancient theological scruples should lead to a Luddite rejection of cloning.

This was cited in an article, “Science, Religion, and the Human Future,” in the April 2007 issue of Commentary. Leon Kass counters the assault with weapons from that “tribal past” and proposes scientific alternatives to such abject materialism, but warns, “No one should underestimate the growing cultural power of scientific materialism and reductivism.”

LA writes:

E. wrote in the preceding thread:

Like I said, you folks seem to go on endlessly about this. I’m quite content as is. If Chris Hitchens needs to chatter that’s his issue. I’m guessing most atheists could not care less.

Now I understand E.’s point that he personally he has no need of a God and so this whole issue of God versus a material view of man doesn’t matter to him personally. But does he also feel that the issue doesn’t matter to the country, to America, that E. believes in and wants to preserve?

I would ask E. to consider what the humanists said:

Human capabilities appear to differ in degree, not in kind, from those found among the higher animals. Humanity’s rich repertoire of thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and hopes seem to arise from electrochemical brain processes, not from an immaterial soul that operates in ways no instrument can discover…. Views of human nature rooted in humanity’s tribal past ought not to be our primary criterion for making moral decisions about cloning….

And Leon Kass commented: “No one should underestimate the growing cultural power of scientific materialism and reductivism.”

To which I would add that it is not only moral decisions about cloning that are at issue here, but all moral issues. In the America and the West being advanced and increasingly established by the secular humanism movement, all moral issues, all cultural issues, will be decided on the basis of a philosophy which explicitly states that our very humanity is nothing but an epiphenomenon of electrical impulses.

So here’s my question. Does E. regard it as a matter of indifference to the future and the survival of America if the materialist reductive view of man becomes the established view driving out the traditional religious, philosophical, and transcendent views of man? Does he think the existence of America as a recognizable, culturally distinct society, including its Constitution and laws, including limited government, including the very idea of liberty under law, is compatible with the belief that humans are not different in kind from animals, that there is no human soul, and that the totality of human thoughts, feelings, and consciousness arise from electrochemical brain processes?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 13, 2008 02:02 AM | Send