(This discussion is primarily meant for Mr. Ucci, who showed an interest in debating this. Feel free to jump in, just remember; as a Christian, I am primarily concerned with Natural Selection within an Orthodox Protestant conceptual scheme. I realize most of you don’t believe in God: fine…we can discuss that later. In this thread, as you will see by the reasons I give, I am presupposing a Christian worldview at the outset. If you are well-informed about orthodox protestant theology, and would like to critique these reasons from within that framework, great. If not, then we would have to discuss these reasons in light of whether the Christian God exists or not, and thus, we’d have to debate His existence…and for that, I’d suggest another thread. Keeping all this in mind, here are 3 reasons why I do not hold to evolutionary theory or natural selection…even when natural selection is utilized in some popular young earth models:)
Reason 1:
Various people have pointed out an epistemological problem with natural selection (I.E.: C.S. Lewis, and Alvin Plantinga*). Supposing God uses natural selection to bring about states of affairs, then man’s thoughts are brought about by natural forces in accordance with survivability, and not in accordance with truth. It could always be arbitrarily asserted that God uses natural forces to bring about true beliefs, but this cannot be known with any certainty given the truth of the Natural Selection model. This is a problem for the secularist as well…especially since he cannot allude to God to try and escape the dilemma. Everything we know could simply be false beliefs that have helped select us for survival.
Reason 2:
Natural selection is trivial. Dr. Bahnsen points this out in his critique of Darwinism (during his lectures on the history of western philosophy). If all X’s are Y’s by definition, then we are forced to make the facts fit into the pattern. Dr. Bahnsen uses this illustration: If all cooks are also basketball players…then there can be no such thing as a cook who is NOT a basketball player. So, if one day, someone drags some guy up to us and says, “here is a great cook,” then we automatically have to assume he is a basketball player as well! But, this is trivial…and ultimately worthless bias: All animals that survive have been naturally selected. All X’s are Y’s by definition! This is nothing more than trivial bias…and the fact that it convinces people en mass is sad. It certainly can’t be called “Science.” (No one can empirically verify that all animals that survive are naturally selected…it’s an arbitrary belief.) We cannot legitimately extrapolate to the past or future based on this trivial principle.
Reason 3:
In short: If God uses natural selection to bring about states of affairs, then mankind is no longer the responsible causal agent in nature…natural forces are. God would no longer be able to consistently punish man! Here is an illustration: no one drags bullets to court and tries them for murder, even though in reality, the bullets are ultimately responsible for the victim’s death. We could take it a step further and say that the bullets aren’t responsible either, but rather, the sudden appearance of holes and fissures within the victim’s vital organs caused them to shut down. But, the organs are never blamed**. Nor are the bullets…nor (usually) is the gun. Given natural selection…the man shouldn’t be to blame either…but rather the natural forces that brought the man to use the gun to fire the bullet that pierced the organs!
There is a hierarchy in nature such that man is sovereign over nature (not the other way around) making us the responsible causal agents within nature. That’s why Christ died for us! Natural selection destroys Christianity by making the death of Christ absurd.
[i]* Neither Lewis nor Plantinga intend for their arguments to specifically highlight natural selection per se, however, I find them relevant. I’m not going to argue about what Plantinga or Lewis may have meant. That detracts from the argument I’m making. I cite them here to demonstrate that the type of critique I’m offering is common. Lewis and Plantinga are certainly not the only ones who make this sort of observation.
** I’m talking colloquially here. Traditionally, there are distinctions made between different sorts of causal chains. For instance, a genetic causal chain deals with X producing Y. For instance: A father giving birth to a son, or more practically; one CD giving birth to multiple copies. When I say that organs are never blamed, I mean in the sense of legal causation. While it is true that a doctor may cite organ failure as a cause of death, no one drags organs into court. This sort of legal causation is vital to discussions of the problem of evil and man’s responsibility. As such, it is this sort of causation I mean to discuss here.[/i]
