Evolution: a conceptual paradigm

Now that we have spent time discussing the role that a literary text like Genesis plays within our worldview, we can deal directly with the question of biological evolution. I think this is an extremely important topic and one that deserves careful discussion. This is so for several reasons. First, it offers us a rare opportunity to see the life that has existed on our planet from a 'bird's eye view.' That is, we are able to see how life on our planet lives, adapts, and sometimes goes extinct. This is both invaluable and insightful. Secondly, one cannot help but see this larger picture and be moved by it. It is elegant.

Having reflected on this for quite some time, I am more and more convinced that what often hinders us from understanding this concept is that we are woefully ignorant of the 'facts' that it is attempting to explain. Let me clarify. We often presuppose (especially someone from a religious persuasion) that the theory of evolution is an attempt to offer an explanation of life apart from reference to a creator. I sincerely believe that this is not the case. In fact when we are considering a notion like evolution we are not even asking the question of whether or not there is a creator. If there is, or is not a creator, is not what we are trying to address. Rather, we are trying to explain certain data that we find again and again when we investigate living things. From a religious persuasion we may say that we are attempting to address the means by which a creator forms new beings rather than the fact of whether or not he does. The question of how life itself arose is actually a question of something called abiogenesis.

The issue of how to make sense of certain data is precisely what a theory is. Within academic circles we say that a theory is a 'conceptual paradigm.' In other words, within any area of study we are presented with certain brute facts. This is the case in literature, sociology, biblical studies - virtually anything that we are attempting to understand. That data simply is. Perhaps a statement in Dickens, repeated Phrases in Paul's letters, key words in John's gospel. What then happens is that we come along and attempt to interpret that data that is there. We try to make sense of it, try to explain why it is there. We even do this in everyday life: why did a particular person say this or that, are they angry with me? Did I upset them somehow? Putting that data of their anger within the context of their words may help me make sense of it.

With anything in life, some theories are better than others. What makes a theory 'good'? Two things. First, a good theory should make the most sense of the data in a concise and simple way. The more simple the explanation is that best takes account of all the data the better it is. This is basically Ockham's razor. Namely, that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Secondly, a good theory is one that also has predictive power. This simply means that if a theory is correct we should expect to find such and such. If we actually do, then we know we are on to something.

Now does this mean that our conception will be perfect? No, of course not. There will always be a troubling passage in Dicken's here or there or even an anomaly that forces us to revise our conclusions. But as long as the vast amount of data is simply explained and predicted we know that we are on to something; that particular detail, however, may need revising or perfecting.

So to conclude, what then are the data that biologist and natural scientist are confronted with within the natural world? I'll make a short list and then show in my next posting how it is that biological evolution most simply explains these facts. A paradigm that attempts to argue that a creator individually makes each living thing one by one (again, by that means) simply compounds explanations and thus makes it needlessly complicated. In other words, it is way more complicated than it needs to be. So again, what are these facts/data? As follows:

Geographic distribution. All living beings are curiously distributed across the planet. Certain types of animals are indigenous only in certain locations. Marsupials within Australia. Lemurs only within Madagascar. Mammals within continental land masses. Secondly, animals near continents are typically closely related to animals on continental islands but no where else. Thirdly, on oceanic islands we find the curious fact that there is no native mammals, reptiles, amphibians or fresh water fish. Ever. Instead we find flowering trees, and a huge diversity of birds and an occasional smaller reptile like an Iguana or turtle. Why the stranged distribution? Why is there not one mammal on any oceanic island? Fourthly, when we find fossils, typically the current living species in an area is closely related to an animal near the same geographic place - but no where else.

Animal classification. Why are we able to classify animals into groups, subgroups, and smaller subgroups. Why are there 'familes' of animals like reptiles, amphibians, fish, mammals. Canines, cats, etc. And yet the animals within these familes often look very different from each other. So much so that we wouldn't even expect them to be related. How do we explain that a close relative of a dog is a seal, for example? Or that an animal like a dolphin or whale lives in the sea and yet has to hold its breath? That a whale swims in the same way that a dog runs. Weird.

Morphology. Why ado we find the same general layout within so many different species? For example something called homologuous structures falls within this category. The bones in the hand of a human is exactly the same as that of a bat, whale, dog, bird, etc. Why the same number of bones in the hand? Why does a dolphin have an ulna and a radius (typically used to turn your hand) when it has fins and doesn't need them? Why the exact same bones even? Embryology also falls within this category. Why do animals when they are maturing within their parent egg or womb develop such similar traits only to not use them? A tail or gill folds in a human fetus for example.

Rudimentary organs. All living things possess structures that they do not use. For example a Baleen whale has a pelvis (typically used for walking) that is no longer attached to its spine and simply embedded within tissue. It literally serves no purpose in its present anatomy. Whales and horses have teeth while newborn that never push through the gums and eventually fade so much so that in adults they can no longer be found. Boa constrictors have rudiments of a pelvis and hind legs while other snakes do not. Penguins and rheas are one example of birds that cannot fly.

This list can go on and on but I think this is a safer place to start.

Excursus: the war in Afghanistan, international politics, and fundamentalism

Tonight President Barrack Obama announced the United States' intention to increase troop levels by 30,000. At this point the U.S. and other Western nations have been embroiled in an arduous struggle with groups like Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and others. The clarion call for the majority of the western world was the attacks on the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001. These are difficult and painful realities that all of us in one way or another are forced to presently deal with.

These current political realities, however, betray a cultural war that has been going on for at least five hundred years - perhaps even two millennia. This cultural war is a struggle of ideas and broad disagreement on how truth is discovered. It is a disagreement on what role reason plays in an individual's life and what place should things like religion and revelation play within society. Beginning with Greek rationalism in the sixth century BCE western civilization began to undergo a significant shift in its orientation to the natural world and to the intellect. Prior to this the Greeks conceptualized nature as the expression of various deities and as events in history as expressions of their various and capricious wills. This shifted, though, with the advent of philosophy in both the pre-Socratic and post-Socratic period. Democritus for example argued that all living things were composed of atoms (discreet instances of matter that could no longer be broken down) and that things like people, animals, and other organisms were merely the composite of these particles. Death was simply the dissolution of these particles and birth was their recombining in new forms. Socrates too, in his various dialogues, questioned the logic of divine worship, and of grounding morality in the will of a deity ('Eutrypho' is one example). He argued instead that these things could be discovered through reason; the careful and slow task of asking questions of one's self, and the physical world around us. Our knowledge would always be limited to some degree but we could at least know some things.

The chief antagonist to ancient philosophy was the nascent Christian church. Early Christians argued that God's revelation in Jesus had preeminence over human reason. Reason's role was important, but subservient to what God had made known to us through revelation. If reason posed serious questions to what had been revealed, than it must be misguided. An expression of mankind's desire to not submit to their creator. Anything that agreed with the Christian revelation was a pre-cursor to the Gospel. The early father's of the church like Irenaeus, Origen, Ambrose, Gregory of Nyssa and others argued for something known as 'appropriation.' Since Jesus was God's word, they argued, all that is found by human reason and agrees with the Gospel was actually an expression of God's revelation in pre-Christian cultures. In this sense, people like Socrates were viewed as 'Pre-Christian christians' and could thus be 'appropriated' by the Church. One example of this perspective is Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel in which biblical Hebrew prophets are alternated with Greek Oracles who also foretold the coming of Jesus. This perspective in which revelation has preeminence and reason a subservient role was consolidated in the West when Emperor Justinian ordered Plato's Academy closed in 529 AD and the study of philosophy apart from revelation was outlawed.

This was not to last forever, however. Beginning in the thirteenth century western Europe underwent a Renaissance in which classical Greek and Roman literature was rediscovered. Emphasis slowly began to shift and society again began to view reason differently. People began to re-read the works of Plato, and other philosophic treatises that had survived. The result was the emergence of nascent Science: studies in anatomy, medicine, and more. Emphasis began to be placed on learning the original languages in order to read texts in their original context. An emerging sense of history as 'other' began to appear. This eventually led to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Religion increasingly had a more and more marginalized role within western Europe. By the time the nineteenth century was coming to a close the inroads had gone so far that religious institutions began to react. The early twentieth century saw the creation of religious groups that insisted upon the 'fundamentals' of their religion. These groups increasingly saw themselves as in reaction to the dominant culture who had largely undercut religion's importance in every day life.

Now at the beginning of the twenty-first century this same war of ideas continues. The battles of the past century in the West has become the battle of the current century among Islamic communities. Muslims like Abul Ala Muwadudi, a Pakistani journalist and politician in the 1950's feared that Islam itself was under threat and about to disappear. The result was a united attack and mobilization against secular modernism throughout the 60's and 70's. A man by the name of Sayyid Qutb took this even further. He argued that not only the west but also Islamic society itself had become permeated with secularism and had to be purged. It was men like this who inspired Ossama Bin Laden and others to form the Islamic fundamentalist coalition against western nations like the U.S. They feel as though their very religion and way of life are at stake.

In the end only history will tell us how this will end and where it will all lead. What is clear, however, is that the issues we are facing are not simply geo-political or militaristic. They are ideological. What is needed is a broad cultural education. We need to learn our current place in history and we need bright people in our universities to write and educate. Again, no one knows where this will all lead but personally I think there is a 'Brave new world' ahead and this current issue is another expression of fundamentalism's reaction to religion's increased marginalization. The religious traditions that have nurtured us for the past 2500 years cannot remain as they have; they will need to evolve as they always have. Refusal to adapt is simply to court further marginalization. Religion must meet our needs and fears: ones now shaped by stem cell research, cloning, and genetic engineering. Again, only time will tell.

If this topic interests you, read the following to get started out: The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism by Karen Armstrong