Evolution as God's Methodology

I find myself irritated by "religious" people who want to argue that their faith tells them to reject the clear findings of science and the theories that reason constructs from those. Do you have to believe that fossils are the work of the Devil in order to accept what the Bible says? NO! Too many supposedly intelligent people argue that humans, and life in general, did not evolve, because the Bible says God created them.

One guy even quoted the dictionary definitions of evolution and creation and declared them irreconcilable. For me, this is nothing but a "straw man" argument, proposed by someone who doesn't want to think too much. Honestly, science and faith CANNOT be irreconcilable, because, quite simply, they are speaking different languages. Science is looking at material facts and drawing theoretical conclusions. But any decent religion is talking about meaning and purpose, so that people can live better. The central points of either discourse are unrelated. They have different aims.

Put as clearly as possible, purpose and causation are not mutually exclusive terms. If I'm building a house, I use a hammer, and where the nails go depend on two factors, my skill with a hammer, and my planning and drawing a blueprint of the structure. The blueprint reflects my aim and purpose, but the immediate causation of its growing construction in four physical dimensions is the repeated striking of my hammer. So now, the distinction between purpose and causation should  be nice and clear.

We shall assume that God is outside of this universe, so speculation as to why He exists is moot, as being outside of the scope of argument, but it leaves open the question of why He would want to create a universe to begin with.

As for the atheists who insist that life is only an emergent property of plain physics and matter, I answer simply: "How do you think any God would do it? Anything else would be magic, and incompatible with faith." So, yeah, life, and humanity evolved. But evolution is not only a gradual iterative process; it is also stochastic in trying to adapt to a niche, and teleological under the guidance of divine intention.

God uses the material at hand, which He created according to his design and choice of physical constants. Everything since the Big Bang has followed from the way He started it. Hydrogen and helium, stars and galaxies, planets and moons, the origin of life, etc. All of these run as He intended, without too much interference or divine meddling. If you think we can build good machines, God can do even better.

God imposes evolutionary changes through genetic mutations via the impact of "hammers," e.g., cosmic rays. Genetic drift is the result of many successful adaptations to the stochastic influence of the environment and the species' niches, which He also planned. And sexual selection only reinforces the intentional factors of adaptation, or the domestication of the species. The culling of some undesirable individuals only removes those who failed to adapt, either to natural or social conditions. Clearly, God is trying to work from behind the curtain, so as not to give away the game. The development of faith is apparently also one of those things He wants us to grow, so He doesn't want to force us to admit his too obvious involvement in the process.

The argument that this materialistic process takes millions of years, instead of the few thousand spoken of in the Bible is just another straw man, set up to be easy to knock down. Think. The 6,000 years from the beginning of the Biblical story up to today very nearly matches the period beginning with the first cities that our archaeologists have found. The story isn't about the creation of the Cosmos, it's a record coming from the creation of human civilization. Every story needs a beginning, and a good one will tell some kind of truth. God created the Cosmos, and everything in it.

Now, I just know someone is going to complain about genetic mutations that are flaws, instead of improving the species. Even an all powerful God has to accept the qualities of the materials He has to work with. Matter is pretty tough stuff. And the system has to be able to run on its own. So, not everything happens because of intervention. When was the last time you built anything that just went perfectly? No slightly off measures, no slips of your tools, no sloppy drips of glue, no cleaning up afterwards? The best creative people still have to deal with these. Just look at the complexity and difficulty of making a Cosmos capable of supporting life! It's totally amazing!

So, creation and evolution are two sides of the same coin, and definitely not mutually exclusive. And of course, if you don't believe in God then you don't believe in eternity either, so ... nothing lost, I might suppose. But if you do believe, then it would be a good idea to figure out what He wants. Why would God want to create a universe, and people to talk to, in the first place? Maybe the purpose of having "people to talk to" would be one good reason.