Writing about creation is a tricky business because it is an issue that some people have very fixed views on. So before embarking on the main topic of this blog let me say a few general things. Roughly speaking, there are three positions that Bible believing Christians can take on creation:
- Young earth creationism (YEC), taking the 6 days of Genesis as six 24-hour days.
- Old earth creationism/intelligent design (OEC), accepting that the universe is billions of years old, but have a strong belief in God being directly involved in creation.
- Theistic evolution (TE), accepting the theory of evolution, but seeing it as a process used by God.
For what it is worth, the old earth creationism/intelligent design is probably closest to my own opinions, but I have Christian friends who are in each of the above camps.
I am going to address a couple of arguments that are sometimes used by Young earth creationists in attacking particularly theistic evolutionists. What I am writing is not intended as an attack on YEC’s. Moreover, I consider neo-Darwinian evolution to be scientifically suspect, so it is most definitely not intended to support TE. Rather I am writing this to encourage us to think more clearly.
Two of the arguments sometimes used by YEC’s against an old universe and, in particular against theistic evolution, are that
- God would not use a random process.
- Evolution is a very wasteful processes and so God wouldn’t use it.
Both these views are mistaken. Let’s start with the randomness question.
The thinking behind the randomness objection seems to be that creation is a purposeful process, with God having a clear goal in mind, and therefore randomness cannot be involved. Such thinking is mistaken and demonstrates a lack of understanding. The first part of this blog will consider a mathematical technique (without any equations, so don’t panic), but then we will move on to sex, so hang on in there!
Genetic Algorithms
One technique in optimisation is something called genetic algorithms. Let’s consider this method.
A population is generated randomly. Then pairs of individuals mate and produce offspring. When two individuals mate there is crossover of “genetic” information, there is also an element of random mutation. All this creates a new population. A fitness function is then applied and the fittest members survive, the others don’t. This is just a basic description, there are numerous variations. This process is repeated many times and after many generations the optimum solution, or something close to it, is arrived at.
So you can probably see the affinities with evolution, especially the fitness function (survival of the fittest) and random mutation. Let’s consider the process a little.
First, it is a mixture of design and randomness. The initial selection of the population is random, mutation is random. However, there is also much design. The initial structure of the members is designed, the fitness function is designed.
Secondly, the outcome is, to a large extent at least, predetermined. If we consider a mathematical function which we are trying to minimise (consider a curve), then the outcome of the process, if the algorithm is designed properly, is predetermined. It will converge on the minimum point of the curve. So even though the process is random the outcome is not.
Thirdly, processes involving randomness can sometimes be more effective than more guided processes. The most popular optimisation methods use “hill-climbing” methods. You start from a point on a curve, calculate the gradient and then move in that direction to a new estimate. This process is repeated until the minimum (or maximum, depending what we are trying to do) is reached. For a simple curve this works well, but suppose the curve has lots of local minima. What will happen? The hill-climbing methods have a habit of getting stuck a local minima. Algorithms with a degree of randomness built into them tend to be better at reaching the true (or global) minima.
So what do we learn from this? It is that a process can have a significant element of randomness built into it, and even rely on this randomness, and yet be purposeful, lead to a specific outcome and be better at doing so than a more direct method.
Now the point of all this is not to say that God used some form of genetic algorithms, but simply to demonstrate that the idea of it being impossible for God to use a process that involves a significant degree of randomness is simply without foundation.
Sex
Now let’s consider something a little less esoteric, and much more interesting. If you are a Christian I assume that you believe that you were created by God, and “fearfully and wonderfully made”, created on purpose. If you have children I take it you also believe that they were purposefully created by God. Now when a man and woman have sex tens of millions of sperm are released. If the woman becomes pregnant one of these millions of sperm fertilised the egg. Now from a scientific point of view there is an enormous amount of randomness in this, and while no doubt our scientific knowledge will increase as time goes on, I take it we accept the current biological understanding as being broadly correct. Yet we still believe we were purposefully created by God.
So what are we to make of this? Is our biological understanding wrong? No. It means that the biological understanding is not the whole story, and here is the fundamental point that Christians should be focused on when considering creation, and it is not whether God did it in 6-days of billions of years. The key issue is materialism. The atheistic view is that the material is all there is, and this is where they are oh so wrong.
The millions of sperm issue also knocks on the head the “evolution is wasteful therefore God would not have done it this way” argument. We know that a man produces millions, even billions of sperm, yet only a minute fraction of these actually fertilise an egg cell. Even Rehoboam only had 28 sons and 60 daughters! God actually seems quite prepared to use “wasteful” processes. So the wastefulness argument is another argument without foundation.
Conclusion
So what are we to learn apart from the falsity of the randomness and wastefulness arguments? It is that we need to be very careful about how we think. All of us, whether YEC’s, OEC’s, TE’s or atheists, can fall into the trap of thinking “God must have done it this way”, or “God would not have done it this way”. We should ask ourselves one question, “how many universes have you created?” We need to recognise the limits of our understanding.
