I’ve previously expressed my reservations about theistic evolution. Recently, I was interested to hear some new reasoning against it in this interview with Jay Richards
Jay Richards (who co-wrote the Privileged Planet) has recently edited a book (God and Evolution) dealing explicitly with theistic evolution. While I haven’t yet read the book (although it looks quite good), I listened to this short interview with him in which he gives a number of reasons. Near the beginning he says:
“I often hear Christians say ‘I think evolution is Gods way of creating the world’, but when you ask them, ‘well, OK now wait, what do you mean by evolution?’ they kind of have some vague idea about God doing things slowly, but God is still doing things, and they don’t realize, you know, that what they are talking about is not what the average darwinist means when he is referring to evolution. He means that life’s complexity is the result of a blind process of natural selection and random genetic mutations and it’s blind, it’s purposeless – thats kind of the whole point of the theory and it’s always been the point of the theory since Charles Darwin proposed it in his book ‘The Origin of the Species’. I mean it is basically to get God out of the life business, more or less, and so when you define evolution that way it doesn’t make a lot of sense to try to combine it with theism because then what you’ve got is God guiding an unguided process. Whatever you think of the orthodoxy of that idea, it doesn’t make a lot of sense logically.”
The idea of God guiding an unguided process makes little sense. I appreciate how he makes this point. He also makes the point regarding the redefinition of terms that tends to take place in some theistic evolutionists:
“When you get to the meaning of the word [evolution] that most people mean in biology you’re really talking about Darwinian evolution. So if someone wants to be a theistic evolutionist, either they end up redefining the word in their heads so they mean ‘I’m going to use the word evolution to mean that God providentially guides things’, but then they’re using the word the way almost no one else uses the word. Or they really redefine their theism. So that maybe God sets things up at the beginning but then other than that blind process works everything out. Well then their really being deists rather than being theists…”
I recommend listening to the interview yourself (even if you can’t get to read the book) if you are interested in more. Otherwise, you could always purchase the book.
(via Apologetics 315)
