Mark I. Vuletic

Last updated 21 March 2008

Analysis

Even if one takes evolution to be an entirely naturalistic process which proceeds on its own with no supernatural input (as one does with the operation of organs and ecosystems, the rotations and revolutions of celestial bodies, and so forth), evolution still does not preclude the existence of a god; it is consistent with atheism, but does not entail atheism.

(i) Since evolution cannot take place until a certain kind of replicator exists (one that can vary in a manner that affects its success at self-replication), even a strictly naturalistic history of life cannot rule out the activity of a deity at any point in time from the origin of the universe to the origin of life.

Creationists commonly respond that this makes evolution compatible at best with deism (the view that god creates the universe but never intervenes thereafter). But, in the first place, one should not need to be reminded that deism is not atheism. Second, nothing in evolution rules out the possibility that the first replicator was created. Third, not even naturalistic evolution and a naturalistic origin of life together rule out the possibility of a deity who intervenes miraculously in human affairs (say, by parting a sea for his chosen people, raising from the dead a crucified Mediterranean Jew, or revealing counsels and maxims to a camel trader in the Hijaz).

(ii) Many believers follow Pope John Paul II in accepting that evolution accounts for the physical forms of all organisms, including humans, but deny that it can account for the existence of minds, or, if not minds, at least souls, one or both of which would need to be created by the direct activity of a god. Such believers introduce exceptions into the evolutionary process without doing it the violence that creationists do when they refuse to admit any link at all between humans and other animals.