Evolutional Integrity

“Let me try to make crystal clear what is established beyond reasonable doubt, and what needs further study, about evolution. Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of the earth can be doubted only by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or to plain bigotry. By contrast, the mechanisms that bring evolution about certainly need study and clarification. There are no alternatives to evolution as history that can withstand critical examination. Yet we are constantly learning new and important facts about evolutionary mechanisms.” -Theodosius Dobzhansky

Theodosius Dobzhansky was not only a leading biologist of the twentieth century but also a devout Eastern Orthodox Christian. To me, this, along with the reality that many who accept evolution also embrace Christianity, says that evolution is not the grand conspiracy theory against God that many conservative Christians would have people to believe.

That evolution- complex forms of life arising from less complex forms via certain selective pressures, and ultimately extending to an original common ancestor- happened is as close to an established fact as you can get, falling not far behind gravity and heliocentrism. I am acutely aware of the resistance to this idea by many religious individuals on the grounds that it challenges some portions of their current understanding of the world and the divine. If this is you, please consider the words of Francis Collins laid forth in his book “The Language of God”:

“If God created the universe, and the laws that govern it, and if He endowed human beings with intellectual abilities to discern its workings, would He want us to disregard those abilities? Would He be diminished or threatened by what we are discovering about His creation.”

Collins was the head of the Human Genome Project (the organization responsible for mapping out the entire human genome- all 3.1 billion letters of the DNA code!) and is both an evolutionist and professing evangelical Christian. His point is valid and worthy of consideration- if you do believe in a transcendant, all-knowing God, then do you really think that attempting to understand a profound truth about our world will challenge Him in the least? That said, it is astonishing to me that so many religious individuals refuse to even consider the evidence (and believe me, volumes upon volumes exist) for evolution.

The truth of the matter is that 95% of scientists embrace an evolutionary understanding of life- one that links all life together by extending everything back to a common ancestor. This statement of scientific consensus often comes under harsh rebuke in the public arena amongst accusations of elitism and secret concealations of the evidence. The once prevalent (and probably still so, though not in as great of force) argument that evolution is just a tool contrived and perpetuated by amoral individuals in order to dismiss the responsibility of answering to a higher authority, or God, has been dismissed and disposed of by the great number of evolutionary theists (both scientists and members of the general public) among the population today. Since the major discoveries of science do take place among a rather small percentage of the population, there has unfortunately, yet understandably, arisen a widespread ignorance as to the nature of science itself. Francis Collins, again in “The Language of God,” does a remarkable job in revealing the internal workings of science:

“Science is progressive and self-correcting: no significantly erroneous conclusions or false hypotheses can be sustained for long, as newer observations will ultimately knock down incorrect constructs. But over a long period of time, a consistent set of observations sometimes emerges that leads to a new framework of understanding. That framework is then given a much more substantive description, and is called a theory… One of the most cherished hopes of a scientist is to make an observation that shakes up a field of research… In that regard, any assumption that a conspiracy could exist among scientists to keep a widely current theory alive when it actually contains serious flaws is completely antithetical to the restless mind-set of the profession.” -p. 58 “The Language of God”

The reality is that evolution as an explanatory device, though understandably modified over time, has managed to not only stand but thrive over the past 150 years. In fact, many diverse fields of science- physics, molecular biology, ecology, biochemistry, astronomy, geology, anthropology, and paleontology- all dramatically converge in agreement upon a general evolutionary framework of the world. Moreover, any scientist who could overturn this central tenet of modern science would quickly become the next Einstein…and what more could any scientist ask out of his or her professional life? All of this is simply to say that far from being falsified, evidence of our world has rather strengthened and empowered evolution as both a historical time line of the past and a useful understanding for the future.

It is not my intent to argue evolution with anyone (though controlled discussions about the matter are both necessary and insightful, though rarely possible) or win converts to my view of the world. In fact, I’ve found that such encounters- and there are more than I care to relate- are not only futile but also an extreme source of frustration to both parties involved. Either you are willing to honestly consider the evidence or you’re not.

The important issue is not who’s right or wrong, but rather that we all possess the most accurate understanding of reality as possible, as our beliefs about the world profoundly impact all of the ideas we hold, which in turn, determine the actions we perform. In dealing with those of different opinions, many Christians love to trot out the line of Psalm 2 that proclaims “only the fool says in his heart there is no God”- if this means that he has not considered the evidence, then I agree. The utmost folly we can ever commit is to hang upon delusional truths in order to “cushion” our prior held beliefs, as these unexamined prior beliefs will most likely be much less than accurate. This is nothing less than a conscious evasion of the truth due to fear and laziness. Given our limited minds, all that we understand as true must be held with a grain of humility- humility coupled with integrity. We are charged with nothing less than the duty to look honestly at all evidence and follow wherever it leads.