Modern evolutionary biology, or “Darwinism,” may be proposed as a defeater for Christianity. The stronger, but less informed, version of the argument states that belief in the Christian God was justified by the necessity of a First Cause to bring about life on earth, but such belief can be discarded now that a superior explanation is in hand. (The strangely pre-Copernican overtones of this account may or may not yield to an appeal to modern cosmology and its requirement of a transcendent Causer.) The weaker, but more reasonable, form states that Darwinism provides a robust naturalistic account of the origin and diversification of life on earth, thereby reducing the likelihood of Christianity with its appeal to a miracle-working God acting detectably in time and space as outlined by its scientifically embarrassing Scriptures.

The account of modern evolutionary biology is that all life on earth originated from a universal common ancestor between three and four billion years ago, and has diversified in the intervening period to produce the millions of species known today.¹ This diversification takes place through random genetic mutations, which are normally deleterious, but occasionally result in innovative phenotypes that provide an organism with some kind of competitive advantage in its ecological niche. Advantaged organisms are more likely to survive, and therefore are more likely to pass on their newly invented genes to their progeny. In this manner, random improvements are retained over time, and weaknesses and inefficiencies are rejected. Repeated a step at a time over billions of years, this process is thought to generate human beings from the first living prokaryotes.²

Christians are not in widespread agreement about what, precisely, is required of their doctrine of creation. Some embrace evolutionary biology as a process under the Providential direction of God, and others hold to a 144-hour creation week only several thousand years in the past. A stable evangelical middle ground seems to require a transcendent God who is intentionally and purposively involved in the creation of the cosmos, the planet, and the life-forms found here, culminating in the special creation of a literal first couple who were set apart from the rest of the creation as vice-regents over it. This proposal is incompatible with the evolutionary scenario.

The scientific claims and counter-claims of the debate are essential to its resolution, but not primarily so. Darwin has not first and foremost defeated Moses as the most successful chronicler of the salient events of creation; rather, epistemological and metaphysical commitments have shifted such that the account of Darwin is accepted, and no account like that given in Genesis could possibly be admissible in respectable courts of elite opinion. Darwinism’s putatively superior account of origins is advantaged only within the context of metaphysical (or perhaps just methodological) naturalism, the belief that only natural states of affairs exist (or that only natural causes may be inferred). Naturalism triumphed first, and Darwin has only rushed in to fill the void. Given naturalism, Darwin will reign undefeated. Absent naturalism, the debate becomes more interesting.

The charge is commonly made against the Christian apologist that her denial of Darwinian evolution is an obscurantist attempt to prop up reactionary religious claims. This is normally accompanied by a mythical retelling of the seventeenth century Galilean controversy in which Galileo becomes a ruthlessly persecuted, agenda-less, honest inquirer dedicated to gaining new scientific knowledge whatever the cost to religious faith, human institutions, or personal freedom. The allegedly oppressive and belligerent history of religion in general–and Christianity in particular–is also put forth to the apologist’s detriment. However, the accusation of obscurantism is unhelpful at best and hypocritical at worst, since entrenched metaphysical naturalism in the sciences now prevents the consideration of alternative proposals altogether.³ It is not we who are reactionary.

The Intelligent Design (ID) movement seeks to provide an alternative by critiquing the account of evolutionary biology and offering an objective means by which to infer design by an intelligent agent. Negatively, it posits that some biological systems are irreducibly complex, or composed of many parts, all of which must be present for the system to function, but for which no credible evolutionary pathway can be conceived.⁴ Positively, it proposes the criterion of complex specified information (CSI), an objectively discernable state of affairs in which a single teleologically privileged state is actualized from among many possibilities. CSI allows us to discern the actions of an intelligent designer from the combined actions of chance and the laws of nature.⁵ These two lynchpins of the program are themselves highly controversial, but the debate between Darwinism and ID is not animated primarily by the search for clever co-option pathways in evolution or ruminations on Kolmogorov complexity and its implications for the validity of CSI.⁶ The issue at hand is whether supernatural causes can be invoked to explain natural phenomena, and whether such explanations can be admitted to the public square.

The apologist is advised to remember the philosophical issue at the heart of the debate. While bickering scientists are not a surprise to any regular viewer of PBS’ Nova, the ire raised by the claims of the ID movement betray the profound human import of the issues under consideration. The scientific establishment seems to fear that the heavy hand of theocracy–oppressed women, systematically persecuted homosexuals, and heresy trials in the public courts–will follow close on the heels of ID being taught in public schools. The wise apologist should therefore balance his approach to include some treatment of the relevant scientific issues, a rigorous philosophical critique of naturalism, and his most authentic assurances that we do not seek to gain political domination over our unbelieving fellows. ID needs intellectual freedom, not despotism, in order for it to be tested. Given that chance, we can hope to see it prosper in the coming decades.

---

¹Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth (New York: Copernicus Books, paperback edition, 2004), 57.
²Ibid, 107-112.
³William Dembski, Unapologetic Apologetics (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 238-244.
⁴ Ibid, 252-254.
⁵Ibid, 244-251.
⁶Dembski, The Design Revolution (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 83.

The New Age worldview is a partially Westernized adaptation of Eastern pantheistic monism.¹ What is not marketable in authentic Eastern monism is recast in terms of Western pop psychology and capital borrowed from Theism and other worldview streams present here.² To wit, rather than seeking to subsume the self into the infinite-impersonal, ultimate Brahmin or Nirvana as Eastern monisms would require, the New Age worldview elevates the self to the position of the ultimate, while otherwise attempting to maintaining the monistic metaphysic. The sundry putatively ultimate, unified, divine selves that seem to populate reality are hindered not by inborn sin, but by ignorance of their god-like capabilities; Shirley McLaine said of the New Age anthropology, “You are unlimited; you just don’t realize it!”³ New Agers are ethical relativists who ultimately deny that distinctions between good and evil exist.⁴ Moreover, they attempt to harmonize all religions by claiming that all are valid paths to be utilized by various seekers in their quest to experience oneness with God, making liberal modification to key religious tenets in the process. They deny the uniqueness of Christ and the necessity of his death on the cross, viewing him instead as “a great Master or Teacher or Adept or Guru.”⁵ They look forward to the imminent dawn of a new era of higher human consciousness, solving the political, military, economic, and cultural problems that plague us today.⁶

In contrast, Christianity posits an infinite-personal, eternal God as ultimate reality.⁷ Created in God’s image and likeness, human beings bear an alien dignity that stands in stark contrast to the depredations of their fallen condition which they continuously realize as cosmic rebels against God’s just rule. To restore human beings to fellowship with himself after their transgression of his absolute moral claims on them, Good took on a human nature in the person of Jesus Christ, lived a life of perfect obedience to his own Law, and gave up his life as a substitutionary sacrifice for the sins of his people. He rose from the dead in the prototypical form which all redeemed people will take when he returns to consummate his perfect rule over all creation.

Two substantial critiques of New Age thought present themselves. First is the well-known logical failure of monism as a viable answer to the one-and-many problem: if all is one, then why do distinct selves and objects exist? It is normally answered that distinction is illusory, but if this is so, then who is having the illusion? The reality of individual, personal minds seems incontrovertible. Second is the New Age insistence on the essential unity of all religions. Only the most superficial examination of Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism would claim that they agree on their key tenets; indeed, it is only in superficial matters that some of them agree. Even more interestingly, the typical New Age claim is not merely that all religions agree, but that they all agree with New Age thought, particularly in their supposed orientation towards the goal of discovering oneness with an impersonal God. Shades of Eastern pantheistic monism are somehow found in the monotheistic religions that have shaped the West for centuries. This theory of the unity of religions–a reasonably robust apologetic for New Age thought if true–fails utterly.

This is not a comprehensive critique of New Age thought, but monism and the unity of all religions are sufficiently central elements of the worldview that their successful critique should pave the way for positive apologetics in support of the truth of Christianity.

---

¹James Sire, The Universe Next Door, 4th ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 162.
²Ibid, 178-179.
³Douglas Groothuis, Confronting the New Age (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 25
⁴Ibid, 114.
⁵Ibid, 119.
⁶Sire, 166-167.
⁷Ibid, 26-29.

When an unbeliever raises the problem of evil as an objection to theism, the apologist is faced not just with a singularly daunting intellectual challenge to Christianity, but also a potentially difficult pastoral problem requiring Spirit-led sensitivity. This is no puerile sophistry about God being unable to create a rock he cannot move. It is a real question, often rooted in authentic personal suffering and in the angst that attends God’s sensitive image-bearers as they are forced into contact with a cursed and fallen world.

The necessity of a careful, pastoral approach to this kind of apologetic interaction is difficult to overstate. Few will adduce this argument merely out of a desire to gain the tactical advantage in a debate. The apologist must discern whether the objection is made through veiled tears, and be willing to encounter the suffering soul not just with the good news of the Gospel, but with empathy and with the love of Christ. It is not inappropriate for the apologist to mourn with those who mourn while at the same time giving a defense of the veridicality of the Apostolic faith.

Fortunately, the foundation of our empathy puts down deep intellectual footers. When the doubting soul says, “I cannot believe in the God of the Bible because of all the evil in the world,” we must understand the implied syllogism and how to blunt its impact or defeat it altogether. The unstated argument holds that God as conceived by Christianity is omnipotent, and therefore able to prevent evil; and omnibenevolent, and therefore should desire to prevent evil. Yet evil exists, so God must not.¹

Short of embracing atheism, there are several bad solutions to this dilemma, and no shortage of apologists have affrirmed them. Gaining some currency in recent years is the tacit denial of God’s omnipotence in Openness theology. Building upon considerable theological scaffolding whose edifice we will not describe here, Openness proposes that God is powerless to control a future which does not yet exist; hence he cannot be blamed for the wicked choices made by his utterly free creatures.² Short of Openness, one might posit the classical free will defense. In this scenario, God knows and has absolute power over all future events, but grants libertarian freedom to his creatures; thus he does not in any sense ordain or interfere with the exercise of their wills, and he is exculpated from any evil actions undertaken by them. This approach fails adequately to deal with the reality of natural evil (e.g., floods, volcanoes, hurricanes, etc.) and makes questionable philosophical, theological, and exegetical claims on the relationship between the human will and divine sovereignty.

Further one might attempt to deny the existence of evil. This approach owes more to Eastern monism than it does the flawed approaches of wayward Christian apologists,³ and its heterodoxy is as evident as its existential impotence. It is to be avoided, and fortunately in the scope of evangelical apologetics, it usually is.

A robust intellectual framework for dealing with the problem of evil acknowledges the reality of evil yet carefully avoids assigning responsibility to God for creating it. It views evil as a state of privation, the absence of the good, not as a created substance.⁴ It acknowledges that the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the universe and ordainer of all things that come to pass has ordained evil outcomes under the terms of relative, instrumental dualism as a means to good ends not otherwise achievable.⁵ This blunts the force of the deductive form of the problem-of-evil syllogism, establishing that God sought to cause good effects through the instrumentality of evil–good effects that would not otherwise have obtained in the presence of eternal, unmixed good.⁶

J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendary trilogy is not known for reflecting a scrupulously orthodox Christian theology (at least it should not be), but in the opening pages of the companion mythological history, The Silmarillion, Tolkien provides a cogent metaphorical answer to the problem of evil that matches precisely the theological and philosophical claims we seek to make. In the first act of the Middle Earth creation myth, Iluvatar, the creator, answers his rebellious creature, Melkor, who has been playing wickedly discordant musical themes in rebellion against what Iluvatar would have him and the other angelic Ainur play. Finally silencing Melkor with a deafening blast, Iluvatar says to him:

Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Iluvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.⁷

This is the Christian’s answer to the problem of evil.

---

¹Winfried Corduan, Reasonable Faith (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1993), 126-127.
²Douglas Groothuis, Defending The Christian Faith class notes, Denver Seminary, 14 December 2004.
³Corduan, 130.
⁴Corduan, 132.
⁵Douglas Groothuis, Defending The Christian Faith class notes, Denver Seminary, 14 December 2004.
⁶Ibid.
⁷J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, ed. Christopher Tolkien (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1977), 17.

Here’s an idea:

I’m a large. If you’re feeling generous, throw in a small for Zach, who happened to see the picture on my monitor and found it quite funny.

And while I’m posting, let me give you the obligatory apology for the slow blogging. I am working against a deadline at work, which has been imposing to say the least. But hey, sign up and you’ll get an email when we’re open for business. SpotComponents.com: For all your passive component needs!