Science, Evolution, and Religion: A Debate about Atheism and Theism

This book presents a thoughtful written debate between two accomplished and congenial philosophers, atheist Michael Ruse and theist Michael Peterson, engaged in an exchange of ideas that is a model of civility and clarity. The book covers nine important issues (the nature of science; cosmic origins; origin of life; Darwin and design; evolutionary directionality; mind and rationality; morality; evil and suffering; and meaning and purpose) in a compact volume of less than 300 pages. I recommend the book highly and learned a great deal from both authors’ contributions. However, I gave it only a four-star rating, as I think it will ultimately be a somewhat more satisfying read for theists than for atheists like myself. The cryptic title of my review refers to the fact that Ruse, the atheist, extends a major olive branch to the theist, Peterson, before the debate even starts, and then fails to go for the jugular in a number of chapters where Peterson’s arguments are weak. Ruse thus leaves what I view as the precarious intellectual fig leaf that Peterson offers to his primary audience (theists who want to believe that their religious beliefs are rational and consistent with science) less tattered than it should be. (Richard Dawkins makes a similar point about Ruse’s “accomodationism” toward religion, but in a more brutal fashion, in The God Delusion). Ruse’s concessions to his theist opponent in this book have several aspects. The most obvious gift to theism is early on when Ruse volunteers that questions about the “why” of existence, the justification of morality, the nature and experience of sentience, and “ultimate meaning” are beyond the province of science to ask or answer, but are reasonable topics for religion to address. Ruse fails to assert that there’s no reason to believe that these questions have answers beyond those found in the empirical world and in human nature, and therefore are suitable subjects for scientific study, but for which theological speculation will prove to be inconclusive and fruitless. A less obvious concession is that Ruse contributes less content on every topic and therefore 25% less to the volume as a whole (93 pages by Ruse versus 124 pages by Peterson). Furthermore, while Ruse knows a great deal and writes well, he meanders a bit, sometimes repeating Peterson’s arguments, using theological terminology and quoting Christian writers to the extent that I checked back to the start of a couple of chapters to remind myself whether I was reading a section by Ruse or by Peterson. Peterson writes in a more forceful and better organized fashion, making and repeating his key debating points and vigorously attempting to refute Ruse’s points. Peterson is vulnerable on many points that are not exploited by Ruse. Overall, Ruse never makes Peterson account for the many untestable assumptions (teleology, etc.) and circular reasoning that underlie theism as a general worldview, so Peterson is free to employ arguments that involve “assuming theism” versus “assuming naturalism” without having to account for the highly dubious epistemological foundations of theism. As a more specific example of a missed opportunity, consider the chapter on morality, where Peterson makes a standard Christian apologist move of assuming that “objective” morality exists. Peterson then constructs a syllogism (p. 187) containing the existence of objective morality as a premise in order to argue against naturalism. Incredibly, Peterson’s “evidence” for the existence of objective morality is the claim that, historically, the “human community” has “the profound conviction that we have true moral beliefs.” In other words, mass belief is held to be evidence of absolute, objective truth. Sure, like the historical mass belief that the world was flat, or the historical profound theological conviction that the sun revolves around the earth. Ruse fails to exploit this incredibly weak position, which allows Peterson’s assumptions and circular-argument worldview to go unchallenged (where the claimed existence of objective morality confirms the existence of God, and God is in turn the authority behind objective morality, a circular argument also employed by William Lane Craig). In the interests of brevity, my only in-depth example about Ruse not going for the jugular where Peterson is extremely vulnerable will be in reference the chapter on evil and suffering. To Peterson’s credit, he presents a strong syllogistic version of the problem of evil, and then forthrightly acknowledges that Premise 1 is true: gratuitous evil and suffering do exist. The formulation of Premise 2 is that a good God would not allow any gratuitous evil to occur; every evil would be connected to the achievement of a specific greater good (or the prevention of an equally bad or worse evil), and therefore each evil would not be gratuitous, a widely-held Christian position Peterson characterizes as God’s “meticulous providence.” Again to his credit, Peterson finds this premise indefensible, in part because it has led some Christians to do hurtful things such as telling a person who has cancer that God gave the person cancer to test the person’s faith (allegedly a greater good). As an alternative, Peterson presents a novel theodicy (a defense of God in the face of evil and suffering) by developing the idea that God exercises “general providence” rather than “meticulous providence.” He claims that free will and physical law entail “risk or contingency in creaturely outcomes” and so forth, and concludes that, on balance, the good outcomes outweigh the gratuitous evils that occur, so God can still be considered wholly good (and omnipotent and omniscient, of course) despite the presence of gratuitous evil in the world. This solution is ad hoc and extremely weak. Ruse does not exploit this weakness, so I will make an argument against Peterson’s theodicy, to illustrate a major missed opportunity in the debate from an atheist perspective. Peterson holds that God did not (or could not?) exercise “meticulous” providence against natural and human-caused evil and suffering in His evolved creation. The opposite of “meticulous” is “sloppy,” so as a counterweight to Peterson’s bland theological euphemisms, I will refer to his position as “Peterson’s Sloppy God Theodicy,” or PSGT. One of the major points of agreement in the book is that both authors accept that evolution occurred by natural selection over billions of years. Peterson attempts to subsume evolution under his theistic position by claiming that God set up the initial conditions of evolution to produce the world he wanted, including human beings. In other words, Peterson’s God is one who can meticulously set up the initial conditions of a vast and staggeringly complicated evolutionary process spanning 3.5 billion years to produce the exact type of human beings that God intended. So why couldn’t Peterson’s otherwise meticulous, omnipotent God also exercise “meticulous providence” over nature-caused gratuitous evil? Peterson’s own assumptions in the debate make PSGT a question-begging position. Things only get worse for PSGT when we consider the agreed-upon details of the process of evolution by natural selection. Natural selection relies largely on random genetic mutations to produce variability within species, where these variabilities may have differential survival value and therefore be naturally selected and passed to future generations. These genetic mutations occur at such a regular rate that they can be used to date such events as the separation of the hominid line leading to homo sapiens from other lines of hominids several million years ago, and so on. On Peterson’s view, God chose evolution by natural selection to produce all evolved life on earth; the mechanism of random genetic mutation is an essential feature of evolution, not some “contingent” outcome that can be rendered unaccountable by placing it under the vague rubric of “general providence.” It’s axiomatic in evolutionary biology that random genetic mutations are indifferent to the needs and survival of each individual organism, and are often harmful. Therefore, it’s hard to see how God could have picked a mechanism for producing the variety of life on earth that would be certain to produce more suffering, and over a longer period of time, than evolution by natural selection. A long period of time is required because natural selection is a weak force, requiring many generations to accumulate small changes into something significant, like a new feature or a new species; therefore, like genetic mutations, the lengthy time requirement is an essential feature of evolution by natural selection, not some excusable “contingency.” The long period of time maximizes the number of generations and therefore the amount of gratuitous suffering required to produce a species (which might then go extinct anyway due to competition and/or environmental changes). Consider that human beings became anatomically modern 150-200,000 years ago; the preceding thousands of generations of various types of doomed hominids didn’t get the benefits of being in God’s homo sapiens club, but you can bet that they suffered plenty during their short, brutal lives. It’s remarkable that theism is unable to answer such simple, intuitive questions as why a good, omnipotent God couldn’t just create the world as it appeared 200,000 years ago, and spare a vast number of organisms and protohumans the gratuitous pain of the torturous process of evolution by natural selection. At this point, Peterson’s Sloppy God is starting to look like Peterson’s Sadistic God, or at least Peterson’s Completely Indifferent to Suffering God. A final point makes PSGT look even worse, if that’s possible. Genetic mutations, God’s chosen mechanism for the lengthy evolution of the diversity of life according to Peterson, are the gift that just keeps on giving, right up to the present day. A recent paper (Tomasetti et al., Science, 24 March 2017, pp1330-4), summarizing data from 69 countries concerning risk factors for 17 types of cancer, concluded that, on average, 2/3 of cancer risk is due to genetic mutations; in other words, most cancer is caused by the effects of random harmful genetic mutations occurring within the DNA of individual human beings, not by controllable factors such as lifestyle. So God’s chosen evolutionary mechanism of random genetic mutations, still occurring today at a slow but steady rate set by God’s initial conditions for evolution, is causing almost seven out of every 10 cases of cancer occurring in humans in the world today. A great deal of nature-caused human suffering in the form of cancer is therefore a direct result of a central feature of evolution by natural selection, not the result of some minor, unfortunate “contingency” beyond God’s control. I think these points are decisive against PSGT, Peterson’s ad hoc defense of God’s goodness in the face of admitted gratuitous suffering. In conclusion, I’d like to reiterate that I recommend this book, and obviously found it highly engaging, since I couldn’t keep myself from participating in the debate via my review. Despite my critical tone, I admire both authors for their scholarly learning and commitment to a civil, productive debate on an important set of topics.

Good book, need for college class!