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Alleged Evidence for Design within the World

Dialogue II looks at the evidence for design in the world, especially in living things. Evolution by natural selection is doubtless true, but does it eliminate the need for a God? Could divine action in or on the process of evolution, even if it took place, be detected? Does the existence of life, and more particularly of conscious life, suggest a God at work? And can actual altruism (as contrasted with altruistic behavior) be accounted for by natural selection?

leslie

I said I’d try and outline some of the arguments from special features of the world. The most celebrated used to be that associated above all with Archdeacon Paley in the 18th century: the comparison of living things, and the organs that make them up, to artefacts like watches, and hence the conclusion that they, like the watch, must have a Designer. Paley himself was, of course, only one in a tradition of apologists which began long before and went on long after. Indeed, perhaps its finest flowering was in the Bridgewater Treatises, in which some of the best scientists of the early 19th century found evidence of design not just in biology but in other disciplines too, such as geology and astronomy.

myra

Let’s leave geology and astronomy out of it, for the time being at least. Biology will keep us going for the present. For you still meet apologists who point to things like the human eye as evidence of design.

Design and Evolution

geoffrey

Which is ridiculous, so long after Darwin and Wallace. We do not need a Designer to explain facts that natural selection will account for.

myra

But natural selection does not mean that there was no Designer: only that He designed the whole process.

geoffrey

It does not disprove the existence of a God. But it does make it impossible to argue for his reality in the way that Paley and the Bridgewater Treatise authors hoped to do. And what sort of a God does it give us anyway? In the first place, he seems to be rather remote. He is more the God of eighteenth-century Deism than of Christianity: a God who gets the world started and then leaves it to its own devices. And in the second place, a God who leaves things to chance: for it was by no means inevitable that human life should evolve. Our ancestors might have been wiped out by a disaster like that which wiped out the dinosaurs; or, alternatively, the dinosaurs might not have been wiped out, so that our ancestors remained insignificant; and so on. The “Cambrian explosion” of life-forms, 500 plus million years ago, produced not only all the main groups of animals that survive but others as well, which became extinct—and it might quite easily have been they who survived and our ancestors who died out. It was largely a matter of historical luck. We are not the crown of creation but a by-product of accident.

myra

Surely “by-product of accident” is putting it too strongly. The word “chance” can be misleading. It can mean “not predetermined, not produced purely by laws of nature”; in human terms the toss of a coin or the turn of a card is a matter of chance in this sense.

leslie

But they aren’t really undetermined.

myra

Very likely not, but as far as we are concerned they can be treated as if they were. And quantum phenomena surely are. Now evolution may be a chance process in this sense. On the other hand, “chance” may mean something more like “unplanned, unintended,” like that time you and I met on a street in Stockholm without either of us knowing the other was going to be there. And I don’t think it is legitimate to argue from the first to the second.

geoffrey

I see the distinction, but is it relevant? The two overlap, and surely if a thing is “chance” in the first sense it will be “chance” in the second as well. If the human race did not evolve inevitably from the beginnings of life, I don’t see how its emergence can have been planned by God.

myra

Because God could act on the evolutionary process, guiding it towards the emergence of humanity. If He did so, this would not show up as a matter of natural law. It would look like chance in my first sense, even though in my second sense it would quite certainly not be chance at all. Indeed, I suspect it would look like a very improbable chance event (or series of events)—just what you have been saying it does.

Consider the variety of fossils found in the Burgess Shale in Canada, not long after the “Cambrian explosion” to which you referred. This included many wonderful creatures with names like Opabinia or Wiwaxia; and it also included a creature called Pikaia which was a chordate, close to being a vertebrate like us; it was our ancestor, or a relation of our ancestors. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that it really was an ancestor of ours. In that case, its descendants continued to exist when those of many other animals from the Shale became extinct. You call that chance. But suppose that in fact God has acted to ensure that Pikaia survived when Opabinia, Wiwaxia and the rest died out, intending its descendants to become human beings; if that was so, how would it show in the fossil record? You would have exactly the same grounds for calling it “chance” as you would if it really had been chance in both my senses, if God had had no part in the matter whatsoever.

geoffrey

Aren’t you trying to have it both ways? If the process of evolution was wholly determined, that shows God planned it; if it doesn’t, that shows that God adjusted it as it went on.

myra

I wasn’t saying it showed anything at all. As I said at the start, I’m not sure you can show there to be a God on the basis of what goes on in the natural world. I only maintained that it was perfectly possible for a believer to see the hand of God at work in either a determined process or a “chance” one.

I was interested, too, to hear you refer to “historical luck.” History is an excellent example of something that makes sense—it is not mere random happenings—without being determined by law. The explanations historians give are personal explanations. If they say that Henry VIII broke with the Papacy because of his wish to marry Ann Boleyn, this makes perfectly good sense, even though it does not claim that there is a Law of Nature which states that everyone (or even every King) who wants to marry and can’t because of his religion changes that religion. Now I should include among these personal explanations a good many where the Person involved is God. For I believe He was at work in such events as the Exodus from Egypt, the calling of the prophets, and eventually the coming of Jesus Christ. Now if the development of life on earth resembles history rather than mechanics, doesn’t that suggest that its development calls for personal explanations rather than conventional scientific ones?

geoffrey

Possibly—but only, I fancy, if you treat the animals and plants as persons! (For of course I do not see the hand of God in human history.) Actually, the resemblance I had in mind between evolution and history was, as I said, the element of luck. To take your Henry VIII illustration, the fact that he did fall in love with Ann Boleyn was not a matter of personal decision like the steps he took to marry her; it was a matter of luck. Otherwise he might have stayed faithful to Catherine of Aragon.

myra

Yes, I see that. But I should still hold that evolution, like history, leaves room for personal decisions—and these might include decisions by God.

geoffrey

But how are these to be distinguished from ordinary, chance events? Suppose we could trace the descent of the human species in full (which of course we cannot). Along the line there would have been an enormous number of mutations, changes in our genes and DNA, which eventually produced us. There would also no doubt have been lots of other events which enabled these mutations to spread, or which led to the extinction of races like the dinosaurs whose existence prevented our ancestors from developing. You maintain that some of these mutations and other events were the work of God. But how on earth would you—how could anyone—say which these were? There would be no conceivable way of telling them from the genuinely chance mutations and what-nots.

leslie

So what? The reverse holds good too—as Myra was pointing out. Moreover, you have said, and I agree, that we cannot in fact trace the human species’ development in the way you have imagined. I should say—and I am sure you would too—that in fact we never shall be able to. But if we imagine it was indeed possible—that somehow we had information on all the events that led to the appearance of human life on earth—we can equally well imagine that we also had access to all the information that would help us trace what would have happened without any Divine action. If the two were identical, then we should know there had been no divine action, and if they differed, we should know that that was where God had intervened.

myra

In any case, I am not interested in trying to detect just where it was that God took a hand in affairs. That’s more Leslie’s thing. All I want to insist is that for all we know God did take a hand.

geoffrey