The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel [9]
One recent textbook was very clear about this: “By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of life processes superfluous.” 16 Other textbooks affirm that evolution is “random and undirected” and “without either plan or purpose” and that “Darwin gave biology a sound scientific basis by attributing the diversity of life to natural causes rather than supernatural creation.” 17
If this is how scientists define Darwinism, then it seemed to me that God has been given his walking papers. To try to somehow salvage an obscure role for him appears pointless, which Cornell’s William Provine readily concedes: “A widespread theological view now exists saying that God started off the world, props it up and works through laws of nature, very subtly, so subtly that its action is undetectable,” he said. “But that kind of God is effectively no different to my mind than atheism.” 18
Certainly Christians would say that God is not a hidden and uninvolved deity who thoroughly conceals his activity, but rather that he has intervened in the world so much that the Bible says his qualities “have been clearly seen . . . from what has been made.” 19 Cambridge-educated philosopher of science Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, put it this way:
Many evolutionary biologists admit that science cannot categorically exclude the possibility that some kind of deity still might exist. Nor can they deny the possibility of a divine designer who so masks his creative activity in apparently natural processes as to escape scientific detection. Yet for most scientific materialists such an undetectable entity hardly seems worthy of consideration. 20
Even so, Meyer stressed that “contemporary Darwinism does not envision a God-guided process of evolutionary change.” 21 He cites a famous observation by the late evolutionary biologist George Gaylord Simpson that Darwinism teaches “man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.” 22 The ramifications are unmistakable, according to Meyer: “To say that God guides an inherently unguided natural process, or that God designed a natural mechanism as a substitute for his design, is clearly contradictory.” 23
Nancy Pearcey, who has written extensively on science and faith, insists that “you can have God or natural selection, but not both.” 24 She pointed out that Darwin himself recognized that the presence of an omnipotent deity would actually undermine his theory. “If we admit God into the process, Darwin argued, then God would ensure that only ‘the right variations occurred . . . and natural selection would be superfluous.’ ” 25
Law professor Phillip Johnson, author of the breakthrough critique of evolution Darwin On Trial, agrees that “the whole point of Darwinism is to show that there is no need for a supernatural creator, because nature can do the creating by itself.” 26
In fact, many of the evolutionists who have felt the sting of Johnson’s criticism nevertheless find themselves in agreement with him on this particular matter. For example, evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr emphasized that “the real core of Darwinism” is natural selection, which “permits the explanation of adaption . . . by natural means, instead of by divine intervention.” 27
Another leading evolutionist, Francisco Ayala, who was ordained a Dominican priest prior to his science career and yet refused in a recent interview to confirm whether he still believes in God, 28 said Darwin’s “greatest accomplishment” was to show that “living beings can be explained as the result of a natural process, natural selection, without any need to resort to a Creator or other external agent.” 29
When an attorney asked the outspoken Provine whether there