Herein, we continue, from part 1, part 2, considering a discussion between Gary Gutting (professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame) and Michael Ruse (philosopher of science who specializes in the philosophy of biology of Florida State University) that was published as “Does Evolution Explain Religious Beliefs?,” New York Times, July 8, 2014 AD
GARY GUTTING: Do you think that evolution lends support to the atheistic argument from evil: that it makes no sense to think that an all-good, all-powerful God would have used so wasteful and brutal a process as evolution to create living things?
MICHAEL RUSE: Although in some philosophy of religion circles it is now thought that we can counter the argument from evil, I don’t think this is so. More than that, I don’t want it to be so. I don’t want an argument that convinces me that the death under the guillotine of Sophie Scholl (one of the leaders of the White Rose group opposed to the Nazis) or of Anne Frank in Bergen-Belsen ultimately contributes to the greater good. If my eternal salvation depends on the deaths of these two young women, then forget it.
This said, I have never really thought that the pains brought on by the evolutionary process, in particular the struggle for survival and reproduction, much affect the Christian conception of God. For all of Voltaire’s devastating wit in “Candide,” I am a bit of a Leibnizian on these matters.
If God is to do everything through unbroken law, and I can think of good theological reasons why this should be so, then pain and suffering are part of it all. Paradoxically and humorously I am with Dawkins here. He argues that the only way naturally you can get the design-like features of organisms — the hand and the eye — is through evolution by natural selection, brought on by the struggle. Other mechanisms just don’t work. So God is off the hook.
Gutting’s is, in a certain way, a good point as evolution as the origin of species is, if God is all-good and all-powerful, a wasteful and brutal process. Indeed, the Bible implies the theory of devolution with originally created kinds and subsequent deterioration from their genetically pristine make up to natural selection based on death and survival—but this portion of it was due to the fall into sin and entering of entropy into creation.
This fall is why, after the fact and as a side effect, the corrupted creation involves pain and suffering. Of course, on an Atheistic-evolutionist-materialist-naturalist-reductionist view: pain and suffering are merely the interpretations of bio-chemical neural reactions occurring within the haphazardly evolved gray matter of a temporarily existing organism that is alive as a result of a long series of random, blind and unguided happy accidents which sits upon a spinning rock, orbiting an average star in the universe’s backwaters.
Note Ruse’s presupposition based on personal preference, “I don’t want it to be so.” Now, on a theistic worldview philosophy, Ruse does not “want an argument that convinces me” that the deaths of Sophie Scholl, Anne Frank, et al. contributes to the greater good. Of course, his assertion that a theistic worldview philosophy results in the conclusion that his “eternal salvation depends on the deaths of these two young women” is simply unfounded since we are saved by grace through faith.
This is, partly, why “the pains brought on by the evolutionary process, in particular the struggle for survival and reproduction, much affect the Christian conception of God.”
However, on an Atheistic evolutionist worldview philosophy the deaths of Scholl, Frank and the millions upon billions upon trillions of death of humans, animals, insects and all sorts of other bio-organisms are, indeed, to our benefit. Evolution’s engine is the survival of the fittest which means the death of the less fit. If one were actually consistent to such a worldview philosophy one would say, that arbitrarily/accidentally evolved and temporarily existing bio-organisms who were named Scholl and Frank failed to survive—period, end of story.
On this view absolutely anything and everything that has happened, is happening and will happen is for our collective good and benefit as the weak died off and the strong survived. This is why so many Atheists evolutionists argue that rape plays a beneficial role in human evolution—see the articles here and video playlist.
Ruse is right to note that according to Richard Dawkins “design-like features” occur naturally, brought on by the struggle—mein kampf (for an elucidation see From Zeitgeist to Poltergeist, Part 12 of 13 wherein is considered Hitler’s and Nazism’s Darwinism and Use, Abuse and Misuse of Darwin).
The next section will consider religion as a Darwinian survival mechanism.