EVOLUTION AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

"For all men who were ignorant of God were foolish by nature; and they were unable from the good things that are seen to know Him who exists, nor did they recognise the Craftsmen while paying heed to His works; but they supposed that either fire or wind or swift air, or the circle of the stars, or turbulent water, or the luminaries of heaven were the gods that rule the world. If through delight in the beauty of these things men assumed them to be gods, let them know how much better than these is their Lord, for the Author of beauty created them. And if men were amazed at their power and working, let them perceive from how much more powerful is He who formed them. For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator. Yet these men are little to be blamed, for perhaps they go astray while seeking God and desiring to find Him. For as they live among His works they keep searching, and they trust in what they see, because the things that are seen are beautiful. Yet again, not even they are to be excused; for if they had the power to know so much that they could investigate the world, how did they fail to find sooner the Lord of these things?"

- The Book of Wisdom (13:1- 9)

The Author: Fr. Roger Nesbitt is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Southwark. He graduated in chemical engineering at Imperial College London and subsequently did research in nuclear chemistry for the Master's degree. After ordination he taught for 14 years at The John Fisher School, Purley, Surrey as Head of Religious Education as well as teaching chemistry. He is now involved in parish work in South London.

Published by Faith-Keyway Trust. Registered Charity No. 278314

Nihil obstat: Lionel Swain Censor

Imprimatur: Victor Guazzelli V.G. Westminster. 9-VI-71

The Nihil obstat and Imprimatur are a declaration that a book or pamphlet is considered to be free from doctrinal or moral error. It is not implied that those who have granted the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions or statements expressed.

EVOLUTION AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

Rev. Roger Nesbitt MSc ACGI DIC

The Problem of God today

Few men would deny that there exists in our modern world great uncertainty. Society is suffering from the breakdown of traditional values and beliefs with the accompanying loss of a sense of purpose and meaning in life. Centrally this expresses itself in widespread intellectual doubt concerning the very existence of God himself. With the rapid increase in scientific knowledge and technical skill a sense of man's self-sufficiency has grown up just at a time when religious practice and standards are declining.

A small but very vocal minority have declared that the idea of God was no more than a mediaeval myth to placate the `unenlightened'. Now, they say, we can shake off these fairy stories. In an age of `maturity' we can stand on our own two feet. God is dead and Science has made him redundant.

As a result we see, outside the Church, scepticism and confusion everywhere. Even Christian leaders seem to have lost their nerve. Recently an Anglican bishop seriously asked himself: `Can a truly contemporary person NOT be an atheist? 1 Even in our own communion the rational approach to God is severely played down. Hence our faith can become almost irrational and anti-intellectual despite the strong affirmation of both common sense and the teaching of the Church that faith and reason must be complementary, not contradictory. The problem for the Christian today may well be to convince men of God before convincing them of Christ.

There are however no reasonable grounds for this state of extreme scepticism. If the scientific vision of the Universe is really taken seriously then our faith is reaffirmed, not undermined. The question we should really ask is: `Can a truly contemporary person refuse to 'believe in God?' But throughout it will be important to be guided by the facts, the evidence itself, and not by what people may say. Let us now study that evidence.

The Universe has evolved and developed through Time

Evolutionary development is a fact

That the Universe has evolved through time is a fact that few would be prepared to deny. The evidence has come flooding in from many different sciences, predominantly from biology, chemistry and physics. There is the evidence from comparative anatomy, where it is possible for instance to trace the development of the teeth and the feet in the various mammals.2

To look at the embryos of a fish, a chick, a calf and a man reveals an obvious likeness that could hardly be a coincidence. Then again, the likeness in the chemical structure of the cells of living things, combined with the study of genetics and of plant and animal classification linked to the fossil records (palaeontology), provides overwhelming support for the fact of evolution. And when the physical and chemical laws which are found to operate in the living things are the same as those in the non-living world, then the pieces fit together and evolution is seen to be a process that cannot be limited to the living world only but must embrace the Universe as a whole.

Some have said that because there are still gaps to be filled they will suspend judgment. This is rather like saying that the Houses of Parliament had never been built because at this date it is not possible to know precisely all the stages of their construction. Surely our modern world transformed by science and technology is witness to the fact that man's knowledge is real and genuine. It is strange that modern man's attitude to his knowledge varies between a complete scepticism and an almost divine sense of knowing all things. As far as evolution is concerned the overall outline is clear, and so are many of the details, even if there is still a great deal more to learn. What then is the overall outline?

The evolutionary ascent

The vast scope of the process through time is estimated at around fifteen billion years. Initially there was a great expansion of primitive particles, those `building blocks' such as protons, neutrons, electrons of which all matter is constituted. Rapidly the first atoms were formed, conglomerates of these particles such as hydrogen, the first and the lightest, closely followed by helium. There followed the cooling and condensation of these gases into clusters of galaxies, the formation of heavier atoms, by the grouping together and nuclear change of the smaller ones. Then there emerged our own solar system with its planets, the cooling down of the earth with its special atmosphere of nitrogen and oxygen, the synthesis of water from hydrogen and oxygen into the seas, and the combination of atoms into simple and now more complex molecules. All is now ready and prepared for the next stage forward, the emergence of life.

This combination of atoms into larger and larger molecules eventually made possible the synthesis within the seas of the first living cells. From these, the higher and still higher forms of life have evolved, leaving the seas and conquering the land, at the same time transforming it with the teeming forms of life from the tiniest amoeba and bacteria to the large mammals such as the elephants, and the lions. Within this richness of plant and animal life there has been a gradual and progressive ascent, finally reaching its climax in man, unique in creation.

This development is ordered, not random

The first thing to notice about this evolutionary process is that each stage is dependent and consequent upon a previous stage or synthesis. The higher forms of mammals have evolved and are built upon the previous forms of amphibians, these upon the fishes, and these upon the first cells. Moreover, each stage is intimately dependent upon the correct conditions of temperature, pressure, the presence of the atmosphere, and so on all the way through.

There are no anachronisms, or random changes. Monkeys do not suddenly come from fishes and start swinging through the trees, nor do DNA molecules suddenly emerge from hydrogen or helium. There is a steady and strictly ordered ascent from the first poising of matter in creation.

An analogy

Consider the manufacture of a motor car from roughly 20,000 parts. It is noticeable that each part needs to be designed precisely and accurately. The smallest nuts must fit exactly. They must have the correct diameter. The timing of the sparking plugs must be correct. The carburettor has to be designed to provide just the right amount and concentration of fuel. The car as such only exists when these parts are ordered in a particular way.

If these parts were tumbled about in a heap for some time, would a car emerge? By chance?

In fact the car is assembled in progressive stages and each stage is vital. But each man on the shop-floor need not know the other's job. Joe Bloggs does his small part on the assembly line. He need not know what Fred Smith will be doing at the next stage. But somebody must know, and must plan each stage in the light of the final product.

The analogy of the car is genuine but limited. How limited it is becomes clear when the brain of one man alone is considered. This brain is a product that has been evolved over billions of years. It contains ten thousand million neurons or interconnected nerve cells, and each nerve cell itself contains millions of highly complex molecules. The ordered complexity of the Universe as a totality becomes staggering to the mind in the face of such evidence, and the key question becomes more and more urgent.

The key question

Evolutionary development then is ordered, not random. It is dynamic and patently purposeful. More and more complex and sophisticated forms of matter have emerged in a progressive and stepwise fashion through time. Does not this magnificent process force us to acknowledge that there must be a Centre of Control and Direction which can foresee and plan these future developments all the way up the ascent from the initial equation of matter? The answer must be in the affirmative. We are logically led to say that without this Centre of Control and Direction then the process as we know it would be an impossibility. But the process is a fact, and so therefore must be the Centre of Control and Direction. (See Figure 1.)

Evolution through Dynamic Interplay of Many Parts

The mechanism of evolution

In the past, prior to the advent of modern science, things were seen very much as individual, separate realities. There were trees. There were animals. There were stones. They were seen as largely independent of each other. But science has in fact revealed to us how very dependent upon each other things really are - the immense and very real interplay.

Consider for example a rabbit in a field. It lives and moves in a state of dynamic equilibrium through and with its environment. For a rabbit the environment consists of a multiplicity of factors: oxygen from the atmosphere for breathing, warmth from the sun, moisture and water, grass to eat, trees to provide shelter, the earth to burrow into, the sounds and smells, and so on, and so on. It lives and moves and is in harmony with this total interplay of matter. `In fact an organism isolated from its environment is no more than a convenient abstraction. It exists in a complex web of relationships with other living and non-living things.’3 One has only to imagine what would happen to the rabbit were it released onto the surface of the moon. It would suffer instant death due to the totally unsuitable environment.

This interplay and harmony is co-extensive with the whole Universe

Reflect now on the environment of the rabbit. Each part is also relative and dependent. Each blade of grass has its own various needs, such as special salts in the soil, the light and warmth from the sun, the moisture, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for photosynthesis.

The plant and animal kingdoms are completely interlocked and interdependent upon each other. `It has been stated, for example, that a saltspoon of soil may contain five or six thousand million bacteria, double the estimated human population of the world, besides even greater numbers of other smaller organisms. This population gets its air and water, which contains nitrogen as well as oxygen, by a purely physical process through the minute crevices which exist in all soils. Its food comes from plants, or from the excreta of these plants. Thus there will be certain types which cannot exist if the plants are not there to produce their food.'4

But the two great kingdoms of living things are also closely interlocked with the non-living world. An example would be the atmosphere itself. The overall amounts of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide in the air depend upon the total animal and plant populations of our planet. On a larger scale the precise harmony and balance of the earth around the sun is an important factor in the temperature of the rabbit. Then there is the equilibrium of our own solar system with the other galaxies.

The Universe of matter is like one vast cloth, woven without seam. There is total mutual interdependence of each part upon every other part, of each being upon every other being.

The Universe is a cosmos, not a chaos

The evolutionary ascent as we know it, then, has taken place through the co-operation of billions of parts in a harmonious and meaningful way. It must be emphasized once more that to explain all this in terms of chance or chaos is quite unscientific. The Universe is an ordered harmony, ruled above all by law.

Chance means that anything can happen at any time and for any reason. On this basis it is clear that our Universe is not a Universe of chance. Nor is it correct to say that it is `explained' or `ruled' by chance. This is a contradiction in terms, since chance explains nothing. The idea that chaos, disorder, or chance transforms the Universe into order puts the whole process outside the boundaries of reason. It is an irrational explanation. A world of chance would be a complete and utter bagatelle of unruly and anarchic forces. Our Universe is manifestly not like this.

Reflection on the science of chemistry, for example, shows that without the concept of definite law the science would just cease to exist. Definite reactions give definite products. If, on one occasion, hydrogen and oxygen when burned gave water, on another occasion they gave carbon dioxide, on another hydrogen sulphide, all operating by `chance', then chemistry as we know it, as an exact science, would be quite impossible.5

It is also worth reflecting that if the Universe were in fact a chaos, Apollo moonshots would be inconceivable. They are successful because the Universe does operate in terms of definite order and laws, and that it is possible for man to grasp that order and those laws so as to predict precisely and accurately the spacecraft velocities, the fuel needed for take-off, the exact splashdown point and so on.6

All the sciences are merging

It is a commonplace today that all of the physical and biological sciences are tending to merge into each other - physics into chemistry into biology into biophysics, biochemistry, and physical chemistry. The fragmentation of knowledge is rapidly going with the immensely detailed discovery of laws of interdependence, of equations. All the separate laws are seen to overlap into each other. Each relationship or equation is no more than one partial aspect of one overall equation of matter. To explain this process of unification one is led logically to the conclusion that there must be a `Unity-Law of Control and Direction', embracing the whole Universe of matter from electrons to galaxies, from amoeba to monkeys.7

And once again the mind is led on with urgency to ask the key question.

The key question

When the mechanism of evolution is considered the question is this: How could these billions of entities co-operate in one overall dynamic and meaningful law of control and direction, without a Centre, a Focal Point, a Unity which, standing outside of the interplay, foresees and plans the mutual co-operation of these billions of parts? (See Figure 2.)

The Existence of God

A Centre of Control and Direction necessary

The facts then are clear: (1) the Universe has evolved and developed through time as an ordered ascent to ever more perfect forms; (2) this upward ascent is achieved through the interplay of each entity, whether living or non-living, and its environment in a dynamic way. Ultimately the whole Universe of matter has been involved in this vast process.

From these facts we have been led logically to that Centre of Control and Direction, outside of the process, which is the cause of the unified development through time and the co-operation through space. Without this Centre, that is without

God, the process would be an impossibility.

Atheist ambiguities

Atheists deny the existence of the Centre of Control and Direction. To explain the evolution of the world some of them fall back upon an explanation based on chance. They say the process is simply `caused by Chance'. But it is an irrational contradiction to `explain' the harmony and order in the cosmos by a principle of disorder or chaos, namely Chance. By definition, Chance can never be God, and it makes no sense to speak as if it were.

Nor is the Marxist logical with his so-called `scientific atheism'. Official Marxist philosophy, in its attempt to explain the world in terms of the `law of contradictions' (the `dialectic'), begins more and more to embody mind in matter unwittingly,

and to divinize it. For example: `Matter is inexhaustible in depth', 8 `Matter is eternal, endless, and unlimited'.9 Wherever these expressions come from, they certainly do not come from science. They are more like wishful thinking.

In its effort to be logical in the face of an ordered and developing Universe, Marxism tends inevitably towards a form of cosmic pantheism, and matter itself begins to take on almost Godlike attributes. To say that `Matter contains within itself the cause of its development', 10 and that "Nature has eternally existed', 11 shows up the basic flaw in the Marxist philosophy. By analogy, are we to believe for example that a motor car could `manufacture itself'? Does the Marxist really believe that these mindless energies, whether atomic or molecular, at the beginning of evolution, in the initial flash actually foresee and plan the higher and later forms of life? Can atoms or molecules inevitably locked within the process itself, plan their own mutual overall co-operation?

Here is the real dilemma for the Marxist. There is a real need for an eternal principle to foresee and to plan the Universe, but this must be outside of space and time. It is God. It is no solution to attribute matter with the properties of God. Marxism, like all forms of atheism, in denying God, inevitably falls back upon a fundamental and real contradiction.

Could it all have just ‘happened’?

Confronted with the fact of the highly complex evolutionary process through space and time, a common attitude is often a shrug of the shoulders with the remark that `Well, it just happened like that'. This approach might well be called `unthinking atheism'. In many ways it is of course closely related to agnosticism. If this attitude were to prevail in everyday life it would destroy all science and human endeavour. A reaction, for example, after the Aberfan disaster of `Well, it just happened' is not adequate or human. There must be an enquiry to find out how it happened and why it happened, in order to find the causes and to prevent further disasters. Any Government which did not initiate such an enquiry, would be failing in its duty.

Common though it may be, unthinking atheism is neither rational nor truly human. It is a failure to face up to the facts. But the facts remain and these need to be impressed upon the agnostic as much as upon the atheist. The world is there for us to see in all its magnificence, splendour and harmony, and the human mind is led logically on to ask some basic questions and to receive but one logical answer.

Conclusion: Evolution impossible without God

The evolution of matter through time as an ordered ascent to ever more perfect forms would be impossible without a Centre of Control and Direction which can foresee the future developments in terms of the initial poising of the elements. This upward ascent is only achieved through mutual interdependence spanning the whole Universe from the least particle to the largest star. This Unity-Law of development is not by `chance' or by a `law of contradictions'. It is ordered and harmonious. To explain this process we are led once more to the fact of a supreme Centre of Control and Direction, which planned the meaningful co-operation.

We can now go further. This Centre must be outside of time and change, outside of the evolutionary ascent, to plan it. It must be beyond space and matter to direct it.

We are led logically to an Eternal Being, non-material and distinct from matter. The Centre of Control and Direction must be then a Supreme Spirit. It must also be a Mind, a principle of order, to plan the ordered process, and a Will to desire its execution. This Eternal Spirit of Mind and Will we call GOD.

The conclusion therefore is clear that without a personal God the Universe as we know it would be inconceivable. God is an absolute necessity of evolution, and all types of atheism, in denying a Centre of Control and Direction, in denying God, end up by being self-contradictory and absurd.

More than ever before in the history of man it is possible to vindicate anew the existence of the living God in his creation. The beauty, the harmony, the goodness, the intelligibility of the Universe, revealed more and more by modern science, leads us once more to agree with St Paul when he wrote to the Christians living in pagan and godless Rome:

`Ever since God created the world his everlasting power and deity, however invisible, have been there for the mind to see in the things that he has made' (Rom 1: 20).

1 John A. T. Robinson: The New Reformation (S.C.M., 1965), p. 106.

2 Many books contain the evidence for evolution. There is a good account in P. G. Fothergill's Evolution and Christians (Longman's, 1961).

3 Richard Palmer: Living Things, An Introduction to Biology (Allen & Unwin, 1959), p. 356.

4 H. G. Cannon, F.R.S.: The Evolution of Living Things (Manchester Univ. Press, 1958), p. 38.

5 One might add here that the more sophisticated Marxist theory of a `law of contradictions' finds no basis in scientific fact either. The law of development is essentially one of complementaries, not of contradictions. Or else how could the Universe evolve in the way it has done in a harmonious and progressive fashion? There is a basic `contradiction' in the very idea of a `law of contradictions' which is certainly not rational.

6 A clue may be found here, but cannot be developed in this pamphlet, which could lead to a solution of the problem of man. Unlike the animals he is not a slave of the environment. He has `freedom' therefore and also a grasp, almost `Godlike', of the harmony in the Universe, i.e. `intelligence'. The moonshots show both of these properties. One finds it hard to envisage rabbits making it to the moon. Certain philosophers have suggested that there is a `psyche in every corpuscle' of matter, but there is no scientific evidence for this. Hence the human soul, a principle of freedom and intelligence, cannot emerge from, or be reduced to, something which is not free and not intelligent even in its most complex form, viz. matter. In which case one is led to say that each man is both a special creation and a product of matter at the climax of the evolutionary process.

7 For a development of this idea see: Edward Holloway, Catholicism: A New Synthesis (Keyway Publications, 1969), especially chapter 4.

8 J. M. Bochenski: The Dogmatic Principles of Soviet Philosophy (D. Reidel Publ. Co., Dordrecht-Holland, 1963), p. 7. This book is a translation of the official Soviet Marxist theses in philosophy.

9 J. M. Bochenski, op. cit., p. 7.

10 J. M. Bochenski, op. cit., p. 20.

11 J. M. Bochenski, op. cit., p. 1.

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