Eddie Asks: Does God Govern Evolution?

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@Eddie

That may not be true of your case. In your answer above, it seemed your hesitation was entirely theological and not at all biological.

Exactly. There are all theological hesitation.

@Eddie

In light of my comment here, you can add in any biological hesitations, e.g., if you think that the open-endedness of “drift” or “variation” or anything other evolutionary mechanism would make it impossible for God to dictate to evolution that it had to produce sulfur-crested cockatoos and duckbilled

No hesitations here at all on this regard.

From the scientific side, I only dispute the notion we could find a way a God’s-eye view of creation. What looks random to us, might be entirely deterministic, and foreknown to God. So it is hard to imagine precisely how science gives us a challenge to providence. Our ignorance is not God’s impotence. So, if it is true that…

@Eddie

In other words, I think it is for purportedly scientific reasons, not for theological reasons, that they express doubts that God intended the particular set of species that actually evolved on earth. I think they believe that when God ordained the evolutionary process, he ordained a process which by its very nature could not produce detailed determinate narrow outcomes , but only very broad ones.

If that is what they mean, I’d say they are making an error on both what science tells us and what science tells us. Science is silent about God, and God can specify whatever he wants, and evolution certainly is no hindrance. He providentially governs all things including the random cast of lots, so why not mutations?

Thought, to be fair, I think there is a range of clarify and consideration on this. Some (perhaps Stump and Venema), seem committed to this view (perhaps, and I hesitate to speak for them). Other seems to be much less considered.

@Eddie

If biological considerations play no part in your doubts over the degree of precise detail which God might have decreed for evolutionary outcomes, then the discussion is indeed a purely theological one, on the level on which you and Jon are conducting it.

Yes that is right. It is purely a theological question for me. Biology plays no part in my hesitance at all. I’m not sure how it could even in principle be a valid reason to doubt providence. God governs the cast of lots, so why not mutations too?

On the theological side, it seems that He does pre-specify many outcomes, perhaps even everything we could possibly observe in biology with ordinary perception. Or maybe less than this. It is hard to know.

My point above is that it not clear why God would care to specify precisely down to atomic detail everything in existence. Of course, maybe He does, in some type of Molinist scenario, but it seems that many possible universes would satisfy the outcome criteria he cares about.

If you can agree with me that God does not care to specify the atomic details of everything, and can allow for flexibility in these things, perhaps there is value is seeing Creation as Call and Response? This model would say God is commanding the creation of things, and the land responds. The commands, however, might be comparable to Thomist forms, specifying the essence of things, but their precise atomic detail. The response of the land and sea, then, is an instantiation of the form, which contains details not specified by the form.

This notion is grounded in the language of Genesis 1, so it seems like it might make sense of Thomism in a modern world as valid theological concept.