Introduction

The CTNS-Vatican Observatory book series is the fruit of a multi-year collaborative research project between the two institutions. The project and the accompanying book series focus on the theological concept of divine action in relation to contemporary scientific theories. Featuring an international team of scholars including physicists, biologists, neuroscientists, philosophers, and theologians, this series includes six co-published volumes: five on divine action and an inaugural volume, Physics, Philsophy, and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding (1988).

As Robert John Russell, the General Editor of the Series, writes in his introduction to Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature:

“The overarching goal of these conferences is twofold: to contribute to constructive theological research as it engages current research in the natural sciences and to investigate the philosophical and theological elements in ongoing theoretical research in the natural sciences...A major issue in the debate over theology and science regards the role science ought to play. Too often science tends to set the agenda for the theological discussion with little if any initiative taken by theology. From the beginning it was the clear intention of the steering committee that our research should expand beyond this format to insure a ‘two-way interaction’ between the scientific and theological research programs. To achieve this goal...we looked for an overarching theological topic to thematize all these conferences...The topic of God’s action in the world was quickly singled out as a promising candidate, since it seems to permeate the discussions of theology and science in both philosophical and systematic contexts and it allows for a variety of particular issues to be pursued.”

Chaos and Complexity

This collection of fifteen research papers explores the implications of chaos and complexity in physical, chemical, and biological systems for philosophical and theological issues regarding God's action in the world. After an introduction to chaos and complexity, these essays respond to a series of questions: do these topics in the natural sciences lend support for a philosophy of nature based on metaphysical determinism and indeterminism? In what ways do they shed light on the problem of general and special providence, and in particular on a non-interventionist understanding of objectively special divine action? Are there other areas of science which illuminate these questions more adequately than do chaos and complexity?

Crutchfield, James P., J. Doyne Farmer, Norman H. Packard, and Robert S. Shaw. “Chaos.”

This previously published paper by James P. Crutchfield, J. Doyne Farmer, Norman H. Packard, and Robert S. Shaw is reprinted here to give a broad introduction and background to the science of chaos and complexity.

Until recently scientists assumed that natural phenomena such as the weather or the roll of the dice could in principle be predictable given sufficient information about them. Now we know that this is impossible. “Simple deterministic systems with only a few elements can generate random behavior.” Though the future is determined by the past, small uncertainties are amplified so radically by chaotic systems that, in practice, their behavior rapidly becomes unpredictable. Still there is “order in chaos,” since elegant geometrical forms underlie and generate chaotic behavior. The result is “a new paradigm in scientific modeling” which both limits predictability in a fundamental way and yet extends the domain in which nature can be at least partially predictable.

The article acknowledges the challenge to Laplacian determinism posed by quantum mechanics for subatomic phenomena like radioactive decay, but stresses that large-scale chaotic behavior, which focuses instead on macroscopic phenomena like the trajectory of a baseball or the flow of water, “has nothing to do with quantum mechanics.” In fact many chaotic systems display both predictable and unpredictable behavior, like fluid motion which can be laminar or turbulent, even though they are governed by the same equations of motion. As early as 1903, Henri Poincaré suggested that the explanation lay in the exponential amplification of small perturbations.

Chaos is an example of a broad class of phenomena called dynamical systems. Such systems can be described in terms of their state, including all relevant information about them at a particular time, and an equation, or dynamic, that governs the evolution of the state in time. The motion of the state, in turn, can be represented by a moving point following an orbit in what is called state space. The orbits of non-chaotic systems are simple curves in state space. For example, the orbit of a simple pendulum in state space is a spiral ending at a point when the pendulum comes to rest. A pendulum clock describes a cyclic, or periodic, orbit, as does the human heart. Other systems move on the surface of a torus in state space. Each of these structures characterizing the long-term behavior of the system in state space - the point, the cycle, the torus - is called an attractor since the system, if nudged, will tend to return to this structure as it continues to move in time. Such systems are said to be predictable.

In 1963, Edward Lorenz of MIT discovered a chaotic system in meteorology which showed exponential spreading of its previously nearby orbits in state space. The spreading effect is due to the fact that the surface on which its orbits lie is folded in state space. Such a surface is called a strange attractor, and it has proven, in fact, to be a fractal. The shape of a strange attractor resembles dough as it is mixed, stretched, and folded by a baker. With this discovery we see that “random behavior comes from more than just the amplification of errors and the loss of the ability to predict; it is due to the complex orbits generated by stretching and folding.”

The essay closes with some profound questions about scientific method. If predictability is limited in chaotic systems, how can the theory describing them be verified? Clearly this will involve “relying on statistical and geometric properties rather than on detailed prediction.” What about the assumption of reductionism in simple physical systems? Chaotic systems display a level of behavioral complexity which frequently cannot be deduced from a knowledge of the behavior of their parts. Finally, the amplification of small fluctuations may be one way in which nature gains “access to novelty” and may be related to our experience of consciousness and free will.

Drees, Willem B. “Gaps for God?”

Willem B. Drees argues that theories of chaotic and complex systems have made it clearer than ever before that a naturalistic explanation of the world is possible, even in light of the lack of predictability of these systems. These theories have effectively closed certain gaps in our understanding of nature. He is therefore critical of John Polkinghorne’s suggestion that the unpredictability of natural processes provides a potential locus for divine action. Polkinghorne suggests that God brings about an input of information into the world without an input of energy. Drees claims that this is inconsistent with quantum physics and thermodynamics. In addition, Polkinghorne seems to interpret the unpredictability of chaotic systems as a sign of intrinsic openness, but this ignores the real meaning of deterministic chaos. Moreover, discarding the theory of deterministic chaos would be inconsistent with the very critical realism that Polkinghorne promotes.

However, denying any such gaps within natural processes need not foreclose all options for a religious view of reality. In fact Drees claims that science raises religious questions about nature as a whole and about the most fundamental structures of reality. To make his case, he distinguishes between two conceptions of explanation in contemporary philosophy of science. Ontic views of explanation consider an event explained if it is understood as a possible consequence of a causal mechanism. Epistemic views of explanation consider phenomena and laws explained if they are seen as part of a wider framework. Hence if one adopts an epistemic view of explanation the framework itself still requires an explanation. Along these lines, Arthur Peacocke and others have argued for divine action on the whole of natural reality: God could cause specific events in nature via “top-down” or “whole-part” causation. Drees, however, rejects the attempt to extrapolate from the context of nature as environment to the concept of God as the world’s environment.

Given the various problems with attempts to envisage God’s action in the world, Drees prefers to understand the world as God’s action. Whatever strength explanations have, there always remain limit questions about reality and about understanding which allow us to develop a religious interpretation of “secular naturalism.”

Edwards, Denis. “The Discovery of Chaos and the Retrieval of the Trinity.”

Denis Edwards begins by pointing to a major shift in science: the old worldview is giving way to a new paradigm of an open and self-organizing universe. Similarly, in systematic theology the old concept of God as the individual Subject is giving way to a relational, dynamic, trinitarian concept of God.

The first part of Edwards’ paper explores the general concept of divine action from the perspective of what many are calling a “retrieved” trinitarian theology. In the West, trinitarian theology as inherited from Augustine and Aquinas emphasized an individual and psychological model of the Trinity rather a communitarian one. It focused on divine unity rather than three persons, and on divine being rather than divine love. The newer trinitarian theology builds instead on the writings of Richard of St. Victor and Bonaventure. Edwards outlines a theology of divine action which understands the Trinity as a communion of mutual relationships which are dynamic, ecstatic, and fecund. He argues that the universe is God’s trinitarian self-expression, that there are “proper” roles for the trinitarian persons in creation, and that divine interaction with creation is characterized by the vulnerability and liberating power of love.

The second part of the paper asks what this trinitarian theology of divine action has to say about particular divine actions, such as the incarnation, the Holy Spirit, and divine providence. Edwards explores these questions by assessing the views of John Polkinghorne and Arthur Peacocke. He finds both significant agreements as well as some disagreements between them, particularly over the issue of whether the unpredictability of chaotic systems points towards an ontological indeterminism in nature.

Edwards’ reflections can be summarized in the form of six statements: (1) The trinitarian God works in and through the processes of the universe, through laws and boundary conditions, through regularities and chance, through chaotic systems and the capacity for self-organization. (2) This trinitarian God allows for, respects, and is responsive to, the freedom of human persons and the contingency of natural processes, but is not necessarily to be denied a knowledge of future contingent events. (3) We must take into account not only the divine action of continuous creation, but also particular or special divine acts. (4) If God is acting creatively and responsively at all times and also in particular ways, then this seems to demand action at the level of the whole system as well as at the everyday level of events, and at the quantum level. (5) Particular divine acts are always experienced as mediated through created realities. (6) The unpredictability, openness, and flexibility discovered by contemporary science is significant for talk of particular divine action because it provides the basis for a worldview in which divine action and scientific explanation are understood as mutually compatible, but it is not possible or appropriate to attempt to identify the “causal joint” between divine action and created causality.

Ellis, George F. R. “Ordinary and Extraordinary Divine Action: The Nexus of Interaction.”

In “Ordinary and Extraordinary Divine Action,” George Ellis intends to elaborate the conclusions reached by Tracy, Murphy, and others concerning the role of quantum indeterminacy in a contemporary understanding of divine action. He claims that some account of special divine action is necessary if the Christian tradition is to make sense. However, there are two important constraints to be reckoned with. One is that an ideal account of divine action must not conflict with a scientific understanding of nature; the other is that some explanation must be given of why a God capable of special action would not exercise that ability regularly to oppose evil and ameliorate suffering.

Ellis’ analysis focuses on the nature of bottom-up and top-down causation in hierarchical systems. It is predicated upon the assumption that chaotic dynamics does not provide the required openness in physical systems. Furthermore, his analysis of top-down causation convinces him that this concept alone does not provide for an adequate account of divine action. He distinguishes between generic top- down causation, in which boundary conditions produce a global effect upon all the entities in a system, and specific top-down causation, which involves local interactions with elements of the lower-level system. Special divine actions would seem to entail the latter. However, specific top-down causation seems to require, in turn, that there be an intrinsic openness or indeterminacy at the very lowest level of the hierarchy of complexity. Thus, a study of the possibilities for divine action via top-down causation leads inevitably to a consideration of divine action at the quantum level.

Ellis takes God’s action to be largely through the ordinary created processes. God initiates the laws of physics, establishes the initial conditions for the universe, and sustains the universe and its processes, which in turn result in the emergence of higher levels of order, including, finally, free human beings. Special divine action focuses on providing to human beings intimations of God’s will for their social lives. Thus, the problem of the mode of divine action is largely a question of how God might communicate directly with those who are open to revelation. Ellis speculates that quantum events in the brain (directed by God) might be amplified to produce revelatory thoughts, images, and emotions. If it is supposed that God has adequate reason to restrict divine action to a combination of ordinary action (in and through natural processes) and revelation (such as the Resurrection of Christ) then the problem of evil does not take on the same dimensions as it does when it is assumed that God might freely intervene in any sort of process at any time.

Finally, Ellis addresses the question of support for his view. He claims that while individual moves made in the paper (such as the focus on divine action at the quantum level) may not appear to be justified, the combined constraints imposed by the need to make sense of the Christian tradition and by science actually limit the possible acceptable positions quite severely; thus, the view herein presented is, in Ellis’ opinion, highly credible relative to the broad range of data.

Gilkey, Langdon. “The God of Nature.”

Langdon Gilkey’s paper considers two questions: whether nature’s processes suggest the existence of a God, and if so, what sort of God. However, he emphasizes that the traces of God that may be found in nature are not the main source of religious belief; for Christians, God is encountered primarily in history.

Science, including chaos theory, provides a picture of reality that combines both order and novelty; the ascending order can well be described as an order of increasing value. Reflection on this scientific picture of reality, along with the wider data of human experience (history) leads to ontology or metaphysics - the effort to understand the structure of being qua being. This level of reflection is crucial for both the scientist and the theologian. For the scientist it provides the rational grounding for science itself. Metaphysics is crucial for the theologian, since “proofs” of any sort for the existence of God are always conditional upon a particular metaphysical structuring of experience.

Consequently, the aspects of nature suggested by the sciences must be represented in ontological categories. Beyond and through the abstractions of the scientific understanding of nature, nature’s reality has manifested itself as power, as spontaneity or life, as order, and as implying a redemptive principle, a strange dialectic of sacrifice, purgation, redemption, and rebirth. In nature each of these appear as vulnerable and ambiguous as well as creative. Each of these characteristics, therefore, raises a “limit question,” and thus represents a trace of God. For example, what is the deeper, more permanent power that makes possible the transitory appearance of power in nature? ‘God’ is the name for that ever-continuing source of power. To know God truly is to know God’s presence in the power, life, order, and redemptive unity of nature; to know nature truly is to know its mystery, depth, and ultimate value - to know it as an image of the sacred.

Happel, Stephen. “Divine Providence and Instrumentality: Metaphors of Time in Self-Organizing Systems and Divine Action.”

According to Stephen Happel, Christian theology in the thought of Thomas Aquinas has a coherent understanding of the interaction between God and creation. By developing a clear theory of transcendence and of universal instrumentality, Aquinas was able to articulate the basic ways in which inanimate, animate, and human secondary causes cooperate or conflict with the divine act of love for the universe (i.e., providence). These terms can be transposed into an historical ontology and a language of mutual mediation such that all levels of reality have their relative autonomy. Contemporary science, with its analysis of self-organizing systems, provides an understanding of the regularities and contingencies of inanimate and animate created realities. Its language permits us to understand how an open, flexible universe can provide the conditions for cooperation with one another and with divine action without conflict or violence to the integrity of creation.

Happel’s analysis is basically optimistic. It is born of a religious conviction that though the cosmos (whether human or non-human) is flawed and finite, its internal logic is not vitiated, malicious, or deceptive. Images, the body and the non-verbal are no more (and no less) prone to sin than reason. Within the temporal being of “nature,” self-organizing, living, self-conscious beings can engage with their environments in a cooperative way. Ultimately, Happel argues that self-conscious creatures may learn that cooperating with the ultimate environment, an unfathomable Other, will not do violence to their own complex teleonomies.

The Christian claim, however, goes further. It maintains that this mysterious enveloping environment is involved in a mutual self-mediation with creation. When one is in love, one mediates oneself in and through an other who is discovering, planning, negotiating his or her personal identity in and through oneself. That is mutual self-mediation. Christians claim that they are not merely projecting themselves abstractly into an alien environment to mediate themselves, but that the Other has chosen out of love to mediate the divine subjectivity in and through natural self-organization (because God is ultimately a community of mutual self-mediation). The story of the Christ could have been quite different than it was. Jesus could have mediated himself in some other fashion, but he did not. He chose to offer his life for others in self-sacrificing generosity. In this action, he operated as though neither the natural nor the human environment nor God were an enemy. In loving creation, entrusting his own life to others, even in death, faith claims that there is here a divine love. This is what Happel has called elsewhere the “double dative of presence.” We are present to the divine who in that same movement is present to us. What we discover in this fragile and stumbling process of mediating ourselves and our world is an antecedent lover and friend.

Heller, Michael. “Chaos, Probability, and the Comprehensibility of the World.”

“The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.” This is, of course, Albert Einstein’s famous claim, and it serves as the point of departure for Michael Heller’s paper. According to Heller, this mystery is present in our prescientific cognition, but it reveals itself in full light only when one contemplates what Eugene Wigner called “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences.” It is not a priori self-evident that the world should be “algorithmically compressible,” that is, that many of its phenomena should be captured by a few mathematical formulae.

There have been attempts to neutralize this wonder by reducing all regularities in the universe to the blind game of chance and probability. Heller briefly reviews two such attempts: the so-called chaotic gauge program and André Linde’s chaotic inflation in cosmology. If complete anarchy is the only law of nature (“laws from no laws”), then the fundamental rationality of the world is lost. The problem is important from a theological point of view. At the most fundamental level, God’s action in the world consists in giving the world its existence and giving it in such a way that everything that exists participates in its rationality, that is, is subject to the mathematically expressible laws of nature. If the ideology of the “pure game of chance and probability” turns out to be correct, then God’s action seems to be in jeopardy.

Heller responds by arguing that such attempts to neutralize the “mystery of comprehensibility” lead us even deeper into the problem. Probability calculus is as much a mathematical theory as any other, and even if chance and probability lie at the core of everything, the important philosophical and theological problem remains of why the world is probabilistically comprehensible. The probabilistic compressibility of the world is a special instance of its mathematical compressibility. Heller clarifies this point by reminding us that there are two kinds of elements (in the Greek sense of this word) in the universe - the cosmic elements, such as integrability, analyticity, calculability, predictability; and the chaotic elements, such as probability, randomness, unpredictability, and various stochastic properties. The chaotic elements are in fact as “mathematical” as the cosmic ones. If the cosmic elements provoke the question of why the world is mathematical, the same is true of the chaotic elements. In this view, cosmos and chaos are not antagonistic forces but rather two components of the same Logos immanent in the structure of the universe.

Kuppers, Bernd-Olaf. “Understanding Complexity.”

According to the paper by Bernd-Olaf Küppers reprinted here, the reductionistic research program “is based on the central working hypothesis that all biological phenomena can be explained totally within the framework of physics and chemistry.” It assumes that there is no essential difference between non-living and living matter; life arises as a “quasi-continuous” transition requiring no additional epistemic principles other than those of physics and chemistry. Restrictions in our current understanding are merely the result of the complexity of the problem and its computability. Epistemic reductionism leads to ontological reductionism in which “life is nothing but a complex interplay of a large number of atoms and molecules.” Even consciousness must ultimately be reducible to physical laws.

To counter this program, some biologists and philosophers of science appeal to “emergence” and “downward causation,” claiming that genuinely novel properties and processes arise in highly complex phenomena. According to this view, physics is a necessary part of the explanation but it cannot provide a sufficient explanation on its own. Küppers summarizes the claims of emergence and downward causation, respectively, as follows: “(1) The whole is more than the sum of its parts. (2) The whole determines the behavior of its parts.”

Since these concepts seem “vague and mysterious” to scientists in physics and biology, Küppers focuses here on a general problem concerning the transition from the non-living to the living: can we adequately characterize the emergence of life in terms of the concept of complexity. Küppers thinks not, since non-living systems may themselves be extraordinarily complex. In addition, one may find evidence of emergence even within a field, such as within physics, and not just between fields.

In a similar way, those supporting intratheoretical reduction (e.g., reductionism within physics) frequently appeal to “bridge laws,” while defenders of emergence deny their availability and their fruitfulness. Arguments such as these also apply to the question of downward causation. In Küppers’ opinion, both emergence and downward causation are to be found within physics. Since no “non- physical principle” is involved, apparently, in the transition to life, Küppers concludes that “both (emergence and downward causation) must be thought of as characteristics of self-organizing matter that appear at all levels when matter unfolds its complexity by organizing itself.” Still, there are examples of biological systems, such as the DNA macromolecule, which are immensely more complex than complex physical systems. Do they point to a limitation in physical method or in the reductionistic research program, or will physics undergo a paradigm shift as it seeks to encompass these phenomena within its domain?

To understand these questions better, Küppers begins by distinguishing between laws and initial or boundary conditions in physical theory. His central claim is that “the complexity of a system or a phenomenon lies in the complexity . . . of its boundary conditions.” Following the analysis of Michael Polanyi, Küppers argues that in a human construction, such as a complex machine, the design, or boundary conditions, governs the physical processes but cannot be deduced from them. In this way a machine, by its structure and operation, is an emergent system, a whole which is “neither additive nor subtractive,” whose properties cannot be reduced to those of its components, and whose boundary conditions represent a form of downward causation. A similar case can be made for a living organism.

Now the question becomes, what determines the boundary conditions? For a machine, the answer is a blueprint. For the living organism, however, the “blueprint” lies in the organism’s genome which, in contrast to the machine, is an inherent part of the living system. Küppers then distinguishes complex from simple systems in terms of both their sensitivity to small changes in their boundary conditions and the uniqueness of these conditions, given all possible physically equivalent conditions.

The concept of boundary conditions thus becomes the key to understanding the paradigm shift that is occurring within physics regarding the problem of complex phenomena. This shift is not of the Kuhnian type, with its revolutionary change in the fundamental laws and the theoretical framework of a field. Instead it is an “internal shift of emphasis” within the given explanatory structure of the paradigm. As Küppers sees it, the shift of emphasis within the reductionistic research program consists in the move to regard the boundary conditions of complex phenomena as that which needs explanation. He calls this shift of emphasis the “paradigm of self-organization.” It entails a sequence of explanations, in which boundary conditions at one level (such as the boundary conditions of the DNA molecule) are ex plained by those of another level (such as the random molecular structures), which themselves need explanation. In effect, the nested structures found in living matter are reflected by the nested structures of the paradigm of self-organization.

Finally, Küppers points out that biological self-organization is only possible in the context of non-equilibrium physics. Still, though the existence of specific boundary conditions can be understood within the framework of physics, their detailed physical structure cannot be deduced from physics. “The fine structure of biological boundary conditions reflects the historical uniqueness of the underlying evolutionary process” and these, by definition, transcend the powers of natural law to describe.

Moltmann, Jurgen. “Reflections on Chaos and God’s Interaction with the World from a Trinitarian Perspective.”

In his paper, Jürgen Moltmann first describes five models of the God-world relation: (1) According to the Thomistic model, God is the causa prima of the world. God also acts through the causae secundae which serve as God’s instruments. (2) The interaction model postulates a degree of reciprocal influence between God and the world. This model can include the Thomistic model, but not vice versa. (3) The whole-part model, taken from biological systems theory, emphasizes that the whole is more than and different from its parts. In complex and chaotic systems this difference shows up in the form of top-down causality. The whole-part model is more inclusive than the previous models and sheds light on God’s indirect effect upon the world as a whole. (4) The model of life processes emphasizes the open character of biological systems. The present state of a living system is constituted by its fixed past and its open future or, more generally, by what can be called tradition and innovation. Here the world process is open to God as its transcendental future. (5) Finally, Moltmann considers two central theological models: creation and incarnation. Here God creates by a process of self-limitation (or tzitzum). The limitation on God’s omnipresence creates a habitation for the world; the limitation on God’s omniscience provides the world with an open future. God’s self-limitation allows God to be present within the world without destroying it. Moltmann believes this model is the most inclusive of the five.

Moltmann next offers three comments on how these models function in current theological discussions about chaotic, complex and evolutionary systems.

(1) He is critical of the interaction model, seeing it as a theistic model in which God is the absolute Subject who may intervene at will in nature. In the modern period it was replaced by two even more problematic models: deism and pantheism. In their place Moltmann commends to us a trinitarian model in which “God the Father creates through the Logos/Wisdom in the power of the Holy Spirit. . . . God not only transcends the world but is also immanent in the world.” According to this model God acts upon the world through God’s presence in and perichoresis with all things.

(2) Next Moltmann discusses eschatology, the new creation of all things. For Moltmann the future is not a state of completion but a process of continuing openness, in which all finite creatures will participate in God’s unending and open eternity even as God participates in their temporality. The openness of chaotic, complex, and evolutionary systems is suggestive of this vision, and seems inconsistent with a future conceived of as completed. “The future of the world can only be imagined as the openness of all finite life systems to the abundance of eternal life. In this way they can participate in the inexhaustible sources of life and in the divine creative ground of being.”

(3) Finally Moltmann asks whether the universe as a whole should be thought of as an open system. The growth of possibilities for such systems, their undetermined character, and their dependence on an influx of energy suggest that the universe itself might be open to energy. “In this case the world would be a ‘system open to God’ and God a ‘Being open to the world.’”

Murphy, Nancey. “Divine Action in the Natural Order: Buridan’s Ass and Schrödinger’s Cat.”

Nancey Murphy directs our attention away from chaos and complexity to the arena of quantum physics. In her paper, Murphy argues that the problem of divine action will be solved by nothing less than a revised metaphysical theory of the nature of matter and of natural causes. Her proposal is that we view the causal powers of created entities as inherently incomplete. No event occurs without divine participation but, apart from creation ex nihilo, God never acts except by means of cooperation with created agents. Her paper attempts to show how this account can be reconciled with contemporary science, focusing on divine action at the quantum level.

First Murphy proposes criteria, derived from both theology and science, which any satisfactory theory of divine action must meet. She claims that it must allow for objectively special divine acts, yet not undercut our scientific picture of the law-like regularity of many natural processes. Then she surveys changes in metaphysical views of matter and causation from ancient to modern philosophy. The historical survey is intended to put in question current metaphysical assumptions about the nature of matter and of natural causes, as a prelude to considering the consequences of recent developments in science for these metaphysical issues.

Murphy’s proposal is that any adequate account of divine action must include a “bottom-up” approach: if God is to be active in all events, then God must be involved in the most basic of natural events. Current science suggests that this most basic level is quantum phenomena. It is a bonus for theology that we find a measure of indeterminacy at this level, since it allows for an account of divine action wherein God has no need to overrule natural tendencies or processes. This cooperation rather than coercion is in keeping with God’s pattern of respecting the integrity of other higher-level creatures, especially human creatures.

Consequences of this proposal are spelled out regarding the character of natural laws and regarding God’s action at the macroscopic level. One of these consequences is that the “laws of nature” must be descriptive, rather than prescriptive; they represent our human perceptions of the regularity of God’s action. In the end, she replies to some of the objections that have been raised against theories of divine action based on quantum indeterminacy and explains how the essay’s proposal meets the criteria of adequacy set out in the beginning.

Peacocke, Arthur. “Chance and Law in Irreversible Thermodynamics, Theoretical Biology, and Theology.”

Arthur Peacocke’s topic in this reprint is the general relationship between chance and law in thermodynamics and biology, and its implications for belief in God as creator.

Chance may be the means for actualizing the possibilities of the world, but it need not be seen as a metaphysical principle opposed to order or undercutting the meaning of life. Chance actually has two quite distinct meanings: it can refer simply to our ignorance of the processes which underlie an event, or it can refer to unpredictable intersections of previously unrelated causal chains. Recently, the interplay between chance and law has come to be seen as crucial to the origin and development of life, particularly through the work of Jacques Monod in molecular biology and Ilya Prigogine in irreversible thermodynamics and theoretical biology. As Monod emphasizes, evolution depends on chance, in the sense of two independent causal chains, operating in living organisms: one is at the genetic level, including changes in the nucleotide bases of DNA; the other is at the level of the organism, including interactions between the organism expressing these changes and its environment. Chance also arises here in the sense that we cannot now (nor may we ever be able to) specify the mechanisms underlying genetic mutations.

Though agreeing with him this far, Peacocke challenges both Monod’s generalization of the role of chance from the context of evolution to include all of human culture, and his subsequent conclusion to the meaningless of life. Instead, Peacocke sees chance as the means by which all possibilities for the organization of matter are explored in nature.

Peacocke then turns to irreversible thermodynamics and theoretical biology. Thermodynamics is “the science of the possible” which prescribes how nature can behave. Classical thermodynamics, with its focus on systems in equilibrium, centers on the second law of increasing entropy in closed systems. Through the statistical thermodynamics of Boltzmann this came to be seen as increasing disorder or randomness in closed systems. How, then, do living organism maintain themselves in a high state of organization and a low state of entropy, given the second law? The answer, as Peacocke points out, is that living systems are open to their environment. By exchanging energy and matter with it they can decrease in entropy as long as there is an increase in the net environmental entropy.

But does thermodynamics help us to understand how more complex organisms come to be in the first place? The answer comes only with the extension of classical thermodynamics, first to linear, and then to non-linear, irreversible processes involved in what are called dissipative structures. According to Prigogine, if fluctuations in these non-linear, non-equilibrium structures are amplified, they can change the structures and result in new, more ordered states. The answer also includes the key role played by multiple and relatively stable strata in the hierarchy of biological complexity. These intermediate strata enhance the rate of evolution of more complex organisms from very simple ones, in effect directing evolution towards increased complexity. In essence, the evolution of chemical, pre-biological, and biological complexity is seen as probable, perhaps even inevitable, although the particular path taken in nature is unpredictable. Still, detailed kinetic and dynamic requirements, as well as thermodynamic ones, must be met for evolution to occur.

Peacocke then turns briefly to theological reflections. God is creator of the world through a timeless relation to it in two ways. God is totally other than the world, its transcendent ground of being. God is also immanent in the world, continuously creating all that is through its inbuilt evolutionary processes. These processes, revealed by the natural sciences, are in fact God’s action in the world, and eventually include the evolution of humanity. Thus, all-that-is is in God, but God is “more” than nature and humanity. The complex interplay of law and chance is itself “written into creation by the creator’s intention and purpose,” to emerge in time by the explorations of nature. Here Peacocke suggests the metaphor of God as a musical composer and nature as God’s composition, perhaps like a rich fugue.

But does this metaphor carry deistic overtones, as H. Montefiore claims? Not according to D. J. Bartholomew, who sees chance as conducive to the production of a world in which freedom can operate purposefully. Still, the best response to the charge of deism, as Peacocke emphasizes, is to see God’s action as immanent within natural processes. Moreover, as Rustum Roy points out, the interplay of chance and law in nature means that we should accept a similar interplay as characteristic of God’s creativity in human life and society, and we should be critical of belief in a God who “intervenes in the natural nexus for the good or ill of individuals and societies.” Peacocke concludes that just as it takes a stream to have eddies, it is the existence of the universe, flowing as it does towards overall increasing entropy, that is required if there are to be eddies of biological life.

Peacocke, Arthur. “God’s Interaction with the World: The Implications of Deterministic “Chaos” and of Interconnected and Interdependent Complexity.”

According to Arthur Peacocke, the long-established aim in science of predicting the future macroscopic states of natural systems has recently come to be recognized as unattainable in practice for those systems capable of manifesting “deterministic chaos.” The possibility of prediction has also been closely associated with the conviction that there is a causal nexus which scientific procedures will unambiguously ascertain. In this paper, Peacocke surveys the applicability of these concepts with respect to relatively simple, dynamic, law-obeying systems; to statistical properties of assemblies; to Newtonian systems which are deterministic yet unpredictable; and to “chaotic” and “dissipative” systems. In doing so he also analyzes the limitations to predictability stemming from quantum theory.

Chaotic and dissipative systems prove to be unpredictable in practice, primarily because of the nature of our knowledge of the real numbers, and possibly (and more problematically) because of quantum uncertainties. The notion of causality still proves to be applicable to these systems in an unambiguous, even if only in a probabilistic, fashion. However, for many significant interconnected and interdependent complex systems the concept of causality scarcely seems applicable, since whole-part constraints operate, whereby the state of a system-as-a-whole influences what occurs among its constituents at the microscopic level. Peacocke acknowledges that in the past this phenomenon has also, perhaps somewhat misleadingly, been denoted by himself and others as “downward” or “top- down” causation, in particular in relation to evolution and to the brain-body relation.

Peacocke then considers how to conceive of God’s relation to the world in the light of modifications in the scientific concepts of predictability and causality which the phenomena of deterministic chaos and dissipative systems on the one hand, and of “whole-part constraints” on the other hand, have induced. Consideration of the former has to take account of the possible, and as yet unclear, effects of quantum uncertainty on chaotic and dissipative systems. Peacocke concludes that, whatever is decided about those effects, the unpredictabilities for us of non-linear chaotic and dissipative systems do not, as such, help us in the problem of articulating more coherently and intelligibly how God interacts with the world, illuminating as they are concerning the flexibilities built into natural processes. The discussion is based in part on the assumption that God logically cannot know the future, since it does not exist for God to know.

However, Peacocke argues that the notion of “whole-part constraints” in interconnected and interdependent systems does provide a new conceptual resource for modeling how God might be conceived of as interacting with and influencing events in the world. This is particularly true in conjunction with a prime exemplification of the whole-part constraint in the unitive relation of the human-brain-in-the-human-body - in fact, this model of personal agency is the biblical and traditional model for God’s action in the world.  He evokes the notion of a flow of information as illuminating this ‘whole-part’ interaction of God with the world, which could then be conceived of as a communication by God to that part of the world (namely, humanity) capable of discovering God’s meanings. 

Polkinghorne, John. “The Metaphysics of Divine Action.”

In “The Metaphysics of Divine Action,” John Polkinghorne notes that any discussion of agency requires the adoption of a metaphysical view of the nature of reality. He claims that there is no “deductive” way of going “from epistemology to ontology,” but the strategy of critical realism is to maximize the connection. This leads most physicists, he claims, to interpret Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle as implying an actual indeterminacy in the physical world, rather than an ignorance of its detailed workings.

Polkinghorne is critical of physical reductionism, which makes unsubstantiated and implausible claims for the explanatory power of the idea of self-organizing systems. Moreover, it focuses strictly on the generation of large-scale structure rather than the temporal openness necessary to accommodate agency. A theological appeal to divine primary causality is too vague to yield an understanding of providential action. We need not be stymied by the problem of the “causal joint” that makes this possible. Top-down causality is a valuable idea, but it is not unproblematic and its plausibility depends upon exhibiting intrinsic gaps in the bottom-up description in order to afford it room for maneuver.

Polkinghorne believes that such gaps might originate from indeterminate quantum events. However, there are problems about amplifying their effects, and the idea also leads to an episodic account of divine agency. Polkinghorne prefers an approach based upon interpreting the unpredictabilities of chaotic dynamics (in accord with the strategy of critical realism) as indicating an ontological openness to the future whereby “active information” becomes a model for human and divine agency. He interprets sensitivity to small triggers as indicators of the vulnerability of chaotic systems to environmental factors, with the consequence that such systems have to be discussed holistically. It is not supposed, however, that such triggers are the local mechanism by which agency is exercised.

The resulting metaphysical conjecture Polkinghorne calls a complementary dual-aspect monism, in which mind and matter are opposite poles or phases of the single stuff of created reality. This scheme is antireductionist, stressing instead a contextualist approach in which the behavior of parts depends on the whole in which they participate. Polkinghorne then discusses some of the consequences of adopting this point of view, including the insight that divine agency has its own special characteristics and that God’s knowledge of the world of becoming will be truly temporal in character.

Stoeger, William R.. “Describing God’s Action in the World in Light of Scientific Knowledge of Reality.”

The approach to divine action taken by William Stoeger is to accept with critical seriousness our present and projected knowledge of reality from the sciences, philosophy and other disciplines, including theology which has already developed in response to the sciences. By “critical seriousness,” Stoeger means that this knowledge, though critically assessed by the disciplines themselves, by philosophy and by the other human sciences, does indeed indicate something about the realities it talks about. Stoeger then integrates these results into a roughly sketched theory of God’s action. Implicit here is the methodological problem of how the languages of science and theology are to be integrated.

Next Stoeger employs a philosophical presupposition which he calls a “weakly critical realist” stance. Included are elements of Aristotelianism and Thomism, particularly the notions of primary and secondary causality. These seem to him more adequate to both the scientific and the theological data. They also lead to fewer difficulties in explicating the essential differences between God and God’s cre ation, the relationships between them, and the ideas of divine immanence and transcendence. Stoeger uses the term ‘law’ in the context of both physical processes and free human actions to mean any pattern, regularity, process, or relationship, and its description. ‘Law’ is thus used to describe or explain order. It does not necessarily imply determinism.

Stoeger concludes this section by saying that there are aspects of divine action which we are able to understand better by letting science and theology critically interact. There are other aspects which seem thoroughly resistant to our understanding, particularly the nexus between God and the secondary causes through which God acts, or between God and the direct effects of divine action, such as creatio ex nihilo. The analog of human agency is of some limited help here. However, the principal barrier is that we could only know the critical nexus if we ourselves were divine, or if God revealed such knowledge to us.

Turning to the problem of God’s action, Stoeger argues that if God acts through secondary causes it would seem to require the injection of information, and therefore energy, from outside the physical system. Though we cannot rule out such injections, they have never been observed and are unattractive from many points of view. Some scholars try to evade this problem by allowing God to influence events at the quantum level. Stoeger admits that this is a solution, and may in fact be the case, but he finds it unattractive. God’s working through secondary causes is almost always a function of God’s invitation, or response, to persons. To locate such divine action at the quantum level removes it from the level of the personal. It is also unclear whether its intended effects can surface at the level of the complex and the personal.

Stoeger provides no answer to this issue, but he believes that the framework he has established may move us in the right direction. Either there is some injection of information and energy at the level of personal relationships, or God works within what is already given to make the recipient more receptive to what is available. Stoeger prefers the latter, though something of the former may be involved as well. The difficulty with higher regularities subsuming those at the lower-level is that we usually experience the lower level laws as constraining what can be done on a higher level while not being supplanted by them. Nevertheless there is a great deal left under determined by the lower-level constraints within which agents, including God, can function.

Tracy, Thomas F. “Particular Providence and the God of the Gaps.”

Thomas Tracy’s paper takes up a persistent modern problem in relating scientific descriptions of the world as a natural order and theological claims about divine action. Do some traditional ways of speaking about divine action require “gaps” in the causal order and therefore incompleteness in scientific explanations? This appears to be the case, for example, if we claim that God acts in the world at particular times and places to affect the unfolding course of events. Must this kind of theological claim compete with scientific descriptions of the world, so that we cannot both explain an event scientifically and affirm that it as a particular divine action?

Tracy considers three strategies which reply to these questions. The first avoids conflict between scientific and theological claims by insisting that, strictly speaking, God does not act in history but rather enacts history as a whole. Its paradigmatic modern development comes from Friedrich Schleiermacher, who holds that every event both stands in a relation of absolute dependence upon God’s immediate agency and is integrated into a complete system of natural causes. On this account, particular events can be singled out as acts of God only in the sense that they especially evoke in us a recognition of God’s universal activity, or play a distinctive role in advancing divine purposes “built into” the causal processes of nature. This eliminates any risk of conflict between science and theology, but it does so at the cost of imposing significant limits on the claims that can be made, for example, about the person and work of Christ, about the divine-human interaction, and about human freedom and the problem of evil. Tracy considers a contemporary and widely influential version of this strategy developed by Gordon Kaufman. Unfortunately, Kaufman’s proposal, Tracy argues, leaves us with a series of questions about how God can be understood to enact history without acting in history.

The second strategy affirms that God does act in the world to affect the course of events, but holds that this does not require any gaps in the causal structures of nature. There are at least two recent proposals that take this form. Brian Hebblethwaite contends that God acts in and through the causal powers of creatures, so that the whole network of created agencies is “pliable, or flexible, to the providential hand of God” without any gaps in the natural order. This leaves the crucial puzzle un solved, however; for if God affects the course of events once they are underway, then an explanation of those events that appeals strictly to other finite causes must be incomplete. John Compton has suggested another way to pursue this second strategy. Just as we routinely describe certain movements of the human body both as a series of physical events and as intentional action, so we can describe events in the world both as part of a causally complete natural order and as acts of God. Compton’s proposal hinges on the claim that the language we use in discussing physical events, on the one hand, and intentional actions, on the other, are not interdependent. But this claim, Tracy argues, cannot be sustained even within the terms of Compton’s own discussion. These two versions of the second strat egy, then, are undone by internal inconsistencies.

The third strategy grants that theologically motivated talk of particular divine action carries with it a commitment to the causal incompleteness of the natural order, and then argues that this is at least consonant with contemporary physical theory. Two key issues must be addressed by any such proposal. First, a case must be made that the natural sciences now describe a world whose causal structure is “open” in certain respects. Second, it must be shown that this openness is relevant to the theological concern with divine action. Tracy argues that chaos theory, for all its power to demonstrate the limits of predictability, does not provide the needed openness, since it presupposes an unbroken causal determinism. More promising are interpretations of quantum mechanics that acknowledge the role in nature of indeterministic chance. With regard to the second question, Tracy contends that such chance (whether at the quantum level or elsewhere) will be theologically interesting if the determination of such events by God can make a macroscopic difference. If so, then God could affect the course of events without disrupting the structures of nature, since they will provide for both novelty and regularity in the world. 

Wildman, Wesley J. and Robert John Russell. “Chaos: A Mathematical Introduction with Philosophical Reflections.”

Wesley J. Wildman and Robert John Russell’s article surveys the mathematical details of a single equation, the logistic equation, which has become a hallmark of this field, at least within the circles of “theology and science.” The logistic equation displays many of the generic features of chaotic dynamical systems: the transition from regular to apparently random behavior, the presence of period- doubling bifurcation cascades, the influence of attractors, and the underlying characteristics of a fractal. They then raise philosophical questions based on the mathematical analysis and conclude with possible theological implications. 

The logistic equation is a simple, quadratic equation or “map,” x_n+1 = kx_n(1-x_n), which iteratively generates a sequences of states of the system represented by the variable x. The tuning constant k represents the influence of the environment on the system. One starts from an initial state x₀ and a specified value for the tuning constant k to generate x₁. Substituting x₁ back into the map generates x₂, and so on. Although incredibly simple at face value, the logistic map actually displays remarkably complex behavior, much of which is still the focus of active scientific research.

The behavior of the iterated sequence produced by the logistic map can be divided into five regimes. The constant k determines which regime the sequence occupies as well as much of the behavior within that regime. In Regime I, the sequence converges to 0. In Regime II, the sequence converges on a single positive limit which depends on k. In Regime III, bifurcations set in and increase in powers of two as k increases. Moreover, the initial conditions have a significant permanent effect on the system in the form of “phase shifts.” Chaos sets in in Regime IV. Here chaotic sequences are separated by densely packed bifurcation regions and there is maximal dependence on initial conditions. For most values of k, the sequences seem to fluctuate at random and the periodic points found in previous regimes appear to be absent. Nevertheless, for almost all values of k we actually find highly intricate bifurcation structures, and the sequences fall within broad bands, suggesting an underlying orderliness to the system. Finally in Regime V, chaos is found on the Cantor subset of x. 

There is no universally accepted mathematical definition of chaos capturing all cases of interest.  Defining chaos simply as randomness proves too vague because this term acquires new and more precise shades of meaning in the mathematics of chaos theory.  Defining chaos in terms of sensitive dependence on initial conditions (the butterfly effect) results in the inclusion of many maps that otherwise display no chaotic behavior.  The definition adopted here requires a chaotic map to meet three conditions:  mixing (the effect of repeated stretching and folding), density of periodic points (a condition suggesting orderliness), and sensitive dependence.  Interestingly, in the case of the logistic map and many similar chaotic maps, mixing is the fundamental condition, as it entails the other two. 

The paper also addresses the question of the predictability of chaotic systems.  On the one hand, a chaotic system such as the logistic map is predictable in principle, since the sequence of iterations is generated by a strict governing equation.  On the other hand, chaotic systems are “eventu ally unpredictable” in practice, since most values of the initial conditions cannot be specified precisely, and even if they could, the information necessary to specify them cannot be stored physically. Yet these systems are also “temporarily predictable” in practice, since one can predict the amount of time which will elapse before mathematical calculations will cease to match the state of the system.  This leads to a definition of ‘chaotic randomness’ as a tertium quid between strict randomness (as in one common interpretation of quantum physics), and the complete absence of randomness. 

What implications does mathematical chaos have for a philosophy of nature?  It is superficial to say that the mathematical determinism of chaotic equations requires metaphysical determinism in nature, because of complexities in the experimental testing of the mathematical models used in chaos theory. In particular, it may be very difficult to distinguish phenomenologically between chaos, sufficiently complicated periodicity, and strict randomness, even though these are entirely distinct mathematically. There are additional practical limitations to the testing of chaotic models of natural systems, including sensitivity to the effects of the environment (such as heat noise or long-range interactions), and the fact that the development of the physical system eventually out paces even the fastest calculations.

Two philosophical conclusions are drawn from this.  On the one hand, the causal whole-part relations between environment and system, the causal connnectedness implied in the butterfly effect, and the fact that much of the apparent randomness of nature can now be brought under the umbrella of chaos, are best seen as supporting evidence for the hypothesis of metaphysical determinism.  On the other hand, however, there are profound epistemic and explanatory limitations on the testing of chaos theory due to the peculiar nature of chaotic randomness.  In this sense, chaos theory places a fundamental and unexpected new limit on how well the hypothesis of metaphysical determinism can be supported.

On the basis of these philosophical conclusions, what relevance does chaos theory have for theology? On the one hand, it will be “bad news” to those who simply assume that nature is open to the free actions of God and people, and particularly bad news to those who mistakenly appeal to chaos theory to establish this.  On the other hand, chaos theory will be irrelevant to theologians operating with a supervening solution to the problem of divine action, such as Kant’s, that is able to affirm human freedom and divine action even in the presence of strict metaphysical determinism.  At still another level chaos theory is “good news” to the theological project and “bad news” for “polemical determinists.”  Due to the fundamental, new limitation in the testability of chaos theory, one can never fully exclude the possibility that classical physics as we now have it, including chaos theory, will be replaced by a better model of the world at the classical level which allows for divine causality in some way. This “opens a window of hope for speaking intelligibly about special, natural-law-conforming divine acts, and it is a window that seems to be impossible in principle to close.”

The article includes an extended bibliography of textbooks, key technical articles, experimental applications, useful introductions and surveys, and selected works on chaos theory and theology.

Evolutionary and Molecular Biology

This collection of twenty-two research papers is the result of the third of five international research conferences co-sponsored by the Vatican Observatory in Rome and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences.  The papers explore the creative interaction between evolutionary and molecular biology, philosophy, and theology.  The topics addressed in the papers include an extensive introduction to the scientific background; evolution and divine action particularly in terms of teleology; religious interpretations of biological themes especially as related to evolution; and the problem of evil from a biological and ethical perspective.

Ayala, Francisco J. “The Evolution of Life: An Overview.”

According to Francisco Ayala, the evolution of organisms, that is, their descent with modification from a common origin, is at the core of biology. Though evolution is universally accepted by biologists, its mechanisms are still actively investigated and debated by scientists. Darwin’s explanation was essentially correct but incomplete, awaiting the discoveries and power of genetics and molecular biology. Ayala then distinguishes between two questions: whether and how evolution happened.

Ayala briefly traces historical sources and then focuses on Darwin, who proposed natural selection to account for the adaptive organization of living creatures and their apparent purpose or design. Missing in Darwin’s work was a theory of inheritance that would account for the preservation of variations on which selection could act. Mendelian genetics eventually provided the “missing link.” In addition, Weismann’s germ-plasma theory helped counter the Lamarckian alternative to Darwin and contributed to the neo-Darwinian theory that emerged out of the nineteenth century. Further progress came from Dobzhansky in the 1930s. In 1953, Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA. In 1968, Kimura’s work on “molecular clocks” made possible a reconstruction of the evolutionary history of life with its many branchings. Finally, the recent techniques of DNA cloning and sequencing have provided additional knowledge about evolution.

Next Ayala discusses three related issues: the fact of evolution, the details of evolutionary history in which lineages split, and the mechanisms by which evolution occurs. The first, that organisms are related by common descent with modification, is both fundamental to evolution and heavily supported by the evidence. The second and third are mixed, with some conclusions well established and others less so. Before delving into the details, Ayala briefly comments on the mix of responses to evolution from the religious communities. It can seem incompatible to those holding to a literal interpretation of Genesis, the immortality of the soul, or humans created in the image of God. To others, God is seen as operating through intermediate, natural causes, including those involved in evolution. Here Ayala cites Pope John Paul II’s recent comments on evolutionary biology. Ayala then turns to a detailed exposition of the evidence for evolution, drawing on paleontology, comparative anatomy, biogeography, embryology, biochemistry, molecular genetics, and other fields. He focuses on the question of speciation, including models such as adaptive radiation for how reproductive isolation arises. After giving a reconstruction of evolutionary history, Ayala concludes his essay by discussing gradual and punctuated evolution, DNA and protein evolution, the molecular clock of evolution, and human evolution.

Ayala, Francisco J. “Darwin’s Devolution: Design Without Designer.”

According to Francisco Ayala, Darwin’s achievement was to complete the Copernican revolution; biology could now be explained in terms of universal, immanent, natural laws without resorting explicitly to a Creator. The result was to bring biological organisms into the realm of science. Many theologians have seen no contradiction between Darwin and Christian faith, both at the time of Darwin’s writings and in the century since. Natural selection is creative: in a “sieve- like” way it retains rare but useful genes. But natural selection is not creative in the Christian sense of creatio ex nihilo. Instead it is like a painter mixing pigments on a canvas. It is a non- random process that promotes adaptation, that is, combinations useful to the organisms. By proceeding “stepwise,” it produces combinations of genes that otherwise would be highly improbable. It lacks foresight or a preconceived plan, being the consequence of differential reproduction. Thus, though it has the appearance of purposefulness, it does not anticipate the environment of the future. It accounts for the “design” of organisms, since adaptive variations increase relative survival and reproduction. Aquinas and Paley understood that purely random processes will not account for biological nature; but they could not recognize, as Darwin saw, that these processes could be “oriented” by the functional design they convey to organisms. In this sense they are not entirely random. Chance is an integral part of evolution, but its random character is counteracted by natural selection which preserves what is useful and eliminates the harmful. Without mutation, evolution could not happen. Without natural selection, mutations would bring disorganization and extinction. Thanks to Darwin we can view the process of evolution as creative though not conscious. The biological world is the result of natural processes governed by natural laws, and this vision has forever changed how we perceive ourselves and our place in the universe.

Ayala next develops a complex conception of teleology. An object or behavior is teleological when it gives evidence of design or appears to be directed toward certain ends. Features of organisms, such as the wings of a bird, are teleological when they are adaptations which originate by natural selection and when they function to increase the reproductive success of their carriers. Inanimate objects and processes, such as a salt molecule or a mountain, are not teleological since they are not directed towards specific ends. Teleological explanations, in turn, account for the existence of teleological features. Ayala then distinguishes between those actions or objects which are purposeful and those which are not. The former exhibit artificial or external teleology. Those resulting from actions which are not purposeful exhibit natural or internal teleology. Bounded natural teleology, in turn, describes an end-state reached in spite of environmental fluctuations, whereas unbounded teleology refers to an end-state that is not specifically predetermined, but results from one of several available alternatives. The adaptations of organisms are teleological in this indeterminate sense. Finally, teleological explanations are fully compatible with efficient causal explanations, and in some cases both are required.

With this in mind Ayala argues that Darwin’s theory of evolution and his explanation of design are no more “anti-Christian” than are Newton’s laws of motion. Divine action should not be sought in terms of gaps in the scientific account of nature - although the origin of the universe will always remain outside the bounds of scientific explanation.

The essay concludes by acknowledging the success of science as a way of knowing, a major source of economic growth in the United States, a bringer of essential technologies, and a mode of accumulating knowledge that spans generations. Still, science is not the only way of knowing; we also have the arts, common sense, religion, and so on, all of which far predate science. Science is universal in scope but hopelessly incomplete. Much of what is left out, such as meaning and value, may be considered more important than what science includes.

Barbour, Ian G. “Five Models of God and Evolution.”

In the first part of his paper, Ian Barbour describes the evolution of Darwinism over the past century. Charles Darwin actually shared many of the mechanistic assumptions of Newtonian science. By the early twentieth century, population genetics focused on statistical changes in the gene pool and the “modern synthesis” took a gradualist view of evolution. The discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 led to the central dogma of molecular biology: information flows from DNA to protein. Recent theories have explored selection at a variety of levels including gene, organism, kin, group, and species, as well as punctuated equilibrium. Other biologists have noted that mutation and selection are not the only sources of novelty. While these new theories can be seen as extensions of Darwinism, a few scientists, such as Stuart Kaufman, claim they are moving beyond Darwinism by invoking principles of self-organization and holism.

Barbour then outlines four philosophical issues which characterize the interpretation of evolution. Self-organization is the expression of built-in potentialities and constraints in complex hierarchically-organized systems. This may help to account for the directionality of evolutionary history without denying the role of law and chance. Indeterminacy is a pervasive characteristic of the biological world. Unpredictability sometimes only reflects human ignorance, but in the interpretation of quantum theory, indeterminacy is a feature of the microscopic world and its effects can be amplified by non-linear biological systems. He also argues for top-down causality in which higher-level events impose boundary conditions on lower levels without violating lower- level laws and he places top-down causality within the broader framework of holism. He distinguishes between methodological, epistemological, and ontological reduction. Communication of information is another important concept in many fields of science, from the functioning of DNA to metabolic and immune systems and human language. In each case, a message is effective only in a context of interpretation and response.

According to Barbour, each of these has been used as a non-interventionist model of God’s relation to the world in recent writings. If God is the designer of a self-organizing process as Paul Davies suggests, it would imply that God respects the world’s integrity and human freedom. Theodicy is a more tractable problem if suffering and death are inescapable features of an evolutionary process for which God is not directly responsible. But do we end up with the absentee God of deism? The neo-Thomist view of God as primary cause working through secondary causes as defended by Bill Stoeger tries to escape this conclusion, but Barbour thinks it undermines human freedom. Alternatively, God as providential determiner of indeterminacies could actualize one of the potentialities present in a quantum probability distribution. Selection of one of the co-existing potentialities would communicate information without energy input, since the energy of the alternative outcomes is identical. Does God then control all quantum indetermi nacies - or only some of them? Barbour comments on the way these options have been discussed by George Ellis, Nancey Murphy, Robert Russell, and Thomas Tracy. God as top-down cause might represent divine action on “the world as a whole,” as Arthur Peacocke maintains together with his “whole-part” models. But these are problematic according to Barbour since the universe does not have a spatial boundary, and the concept of “the-world-as-a-whole” is inconsistent with relativity theory. Grace Jentzen and Sallie McFague view the world as God’s body but Barbour is concerned that this model breaks down when applied to the cosmos. God as communicator of information would act through the pattern of events in the world, in human thought, and in Christ’s life as God’s self-expression, but this model does not capture God’s intention in creating loving and responsible people.

Process theology offers a fifth model of God’s action in the world by providing a distinctive theme: the interiority of all integrated events viewed as moments of experience. Rudimentary forms of perception, memory, and response are present in lower organisms; sentience, purposiveness, and anticipation are found in vertebrates. But process authors maintain that consciousness occurs only at the highest levels of complex organisms. There is great diversity in the ways in which components are organized in complex systems, and therefore great differences in the types of experience that can occur.

The process model resembles but differs from each of the four models above. God as designer of self-organizing systems is a source of order, but the God of process thought is also a source of novelty. God acts in indeterminacies at the quantum level, but also within integrated entities at higher levels. God acts as top-down cause, not through the cosmic whole but within each integrated system which is part of a hierarchy of interconnected levels. Communication of information can occur through events at any level, not primarily through quantum events at the bottom or the cosmic whole at the top. God is persuasive, with power intermediate between the omnipotent God of classical theism and the absentee God of deism. God is present in the unfolding of every event, but God never exclusively determines the outcome. This is consistent with the theme of God’s self-limitation in contemporary theology and with the feminist advocacy of power as empowerment. Process theology has much in common with the biblical understanding of the Holy Spirit as God’s activity in the world. Barbour concludes by considering some objections to process thought concerning panexperientialism, God’s power, the charge of being a “gaps” approach, and the abstract character of philosophical categories in the context of theology.

Birch, Charles. “Neo-Darwinism, Self-organization, and Divine Action in Evolution.”

According to Charles Birch, most biologists now accept neo-Darwinism as the methodological basis of their understanding of biological evolution, supplemented by the concept of self-organization. 1) Research areas in neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory include differences in the object of selection, the problem of deleterious mutations, subtleties concerning the role of chance, the genetic assimilation of environmental effects, influences on natural selection by modification of the environment, and both neutral and punctuated theories of evolution. 2) Self- organization refers to the production of complex order without a centralizing agency and is usually invoked to explain the evolution of the pre-biotic world. It may also help to explain complex processes in developmental biology, including cell differentiation. Stuart Kaufman applies the mathematics of chaos theory to some aspects of biological evolution without appealing to natural selection.

Birch acknowledges that both neo-Darwinism and self-organization draw on strictly mechanistic models, but insists that this does not imply that biological entities are in all respects machines. On the one hand, a mechanistic analysis seems to provide all that we need for modern biology from a purely physical perspective. On the other hand, it has little, if anything, to say about the mental experience of biological creatures, namely their experience of freedom, choice, and in the human case at least, self-determination. Such analysis has even less to say about the possibility of divine action in the living world. Birch believes this problem stems from the fact that the organism is treated methodologically by neo-Darwinists as an object and not as a subject. Compounding the problem, the mechanistic methodology has led many Darwinists to argue for an underlying mechanistic metaphysics. As a result, the evolution of mind and consciousness, and the functions which they uniquely serve in nature, have remained an enigma for Darwinism.

In its stead Birch suggests a metaphysics for biological organisms which includes their mental as well as physical aspects. The proposal is drawn from the philosophy of Whitehead, in which all individual entities from protons to people are considered to be subjects. Biological evolution is not simply a matter of change in the external relations of objects, but also one of change in the internal relations of subjects. This includes a subject’s relation to its immediate past, analogous to memory, and its relation to its possible future, analogous to anticipation. There is an ever-present urge in life which can be called purpose. Process thought thus posits mentality or experience in some form as an aspect of nature down to the level of fundamental particles. Only at the higher levels of complexity is experience actually conscious. Birch cites David Chalmers, Galen Strawson, and Henry Stapp as non-process scholars who support the validity of experience as universal in nature. The key argument is that mentality did not emerge from the non-mental at some point in the evolutionary sequence.

He then contrasts process philosophy with two alternatives: emergence and reductionism. Emergence involves a category mistake (that the “mental” emerges from the “physical”) as well as a scientific problem (drawing the line between sentience and non-sentience). Reductionism, although it is fruitful and represents most scientific analysis, is inadequate because it cannot account for the fact that the whole has properties which the parts do not; moreover, the parts become qualitatively different by being parts of the whole.

In its place, Birch claims that the best answer to the whole-part problem and the strongest argument for rejecting reductionism is the doctrine of internal relations. This process approach is compatible with a lower-to-upper causality, and it has important implications for scientific research, too, offering support for the idea of top-down causation. Theologically, the potentiality of the universe is held in the mind of God. Divine potentiality becomes concrete reality in the universe by means of persuasive love. God interacts with individual entities in three ways. First, the future is open, and God persuasively confronts entities with creative and saving possibilities for their future. Next, the entities of the world are created by God and respond to God’s feelings for the world. Finally, God responds to the world with infinite passion, taking actual entities into the divine life.

Cela-Conde, Camilo J. and Gisele Marty. “Beyond Biological Evolution: Mind, Morals, and Culture.”

Camilo Cela-Conde and Gisele Marty focus on models of human evolution that account for the development of traits in individuals, including morphological traits such as large brains and functional traits such as speech. They also consider the development of collective traits in human populations, such as language, culture, and moral codes. These models raise important theological questions regarding divine action.

Most theological attempts to address human evolution treat the development of culture separately from, or in contrast to, the evolution of morphology, but these attempts run into serious problems since cultural evolution presupposes and builds on biological evolution. Interactionist models are thus needed. Such models must also address the question of when and how such traits as a complex brain and human language emerged during the past 2.5 million years. Some scientists hold for an almost instantaneous and isolated emergence of language, but since language does not fossilize, the conjecture is hard to test empirically. Others argue for a long, gradual, and early development of language going back to Homo habilis, and relate it to the slow development of the brain, an idea which is easier to test. Another question is how to differentiate the evolution of our species from other hominids and even from other primates. The theological task, in turn, is how to relate such an understanding of human evolution, especially of language and cognition, to divine action, taking into account the elements of continuity as well as discontinuity between humans and other hominids as well as between hominids in general and other primates.

Darwin was the first to speak of both a biological mechanism for moral behavior and a distinctive “moral sense” which he attributed uniquely to humans. He explained the evident diversity of moral codes in terms of adaptation to varying environments. But how does human moral sense (or “moral altruism”) differ from the kind of biological altruism shared by so many species, and what are its genetic roots? This question leads the authors into a discussion of sociobiology as it has developed over the past two decades. In their view, it has focused on four key issues: the phenomena implied by human morality; the analogs to it at the animal level; the phylogenetic explanation of the emergence of these analogs; and the development of human morality within this framework. Though the debate has waned somewhat, Cela-Conde and Marty hope to show how it might now be reinvigorated.

Part of the challenge, in spite of the reductionism inherent in the debate, is the actual complexity of the phenomenon of human morality. A variety of approaches are being pursued. Some scientists point to the distinction between the capacity for, and the content of, moral thought. Others focus on group selection and kin selection models of altruism. Some argue for a strict separation between biological and moral altruism, while others stress their intimate connection. The authors note that, even if a strong connection is granted, reductionism can at least be partially avoided by appealing to the supervenience of moral language. Some sociobiologists have developed theories of reciprocal altruism, ultrasociality, and sociocultural fitness. Still the authors know of no model which includes all the elements required, from innate tendencies to empirical moral norms. Moreover, the complex cognitive processes implied in evaluating and making decisions suggest that the usual distinction between motive and criterion is inadequate.

Instead, in their model, Cela-Conde and Marty consider both the motive to act, the personal ethical criterion, and the set of collective values and norms. Individuals accumulate and actualize these values during the apprenticeship process, giving to the collective complex an evolutionary, changing character. They propose a phylogenetic argument that places biological and moral altruism as two successive stages in human evolution. Biological altruism is closely associated with the genetic code and belongs to the area of motivation; moral altruism is related to the personal ethical domain or the values of the group. Neither taken alone is able to explain the whole of human moral conduct. The combined development of cognitive capacity and moral behavior is sometimes called “co-evolution.” They also draw on the cognitive sciences. Here, internal rewards to the individual may be available through religious rituals, acting before public crowds, integration into small communities, and so on. They conclude by exploring the idea of universal norms directing moral behavior as typified in the first stages of sociobiology, and the idea of universal tendencies to accept moral codes as found in later, more sophisticated sociological arguments. These results and their problems point, in turn, to the need for a more complete theory linking the biological substratum to moral conduct, the influence of social groups, and the role of emotions in maintaining moral behavior.

Cela-Conde, Camilo J. “The Hominid Evolutionary Journey: A Summary.”

It is Camilo Cela-Conde’s central claim that “no straight line can be drawn from our ancestors to the modern human species.” Instead evolution depicts a much more complex picture of human evolution. A basic question is that of taxonomy: how are we to define a hominid? One way is by discovering an exclusive trait that might serve to distinguish hominids from other primates. Cela-Conde discusses but rejects such candidates as bipedalism, a large brain, an articulated language, a large coefficient of encephalization, the ability to create tools and thus culture, etc. He then takes a different approach, describing in some detail the variety of species that are considered as belonging to the hominid family. He begins with the appearance of early hominids some 4.4 million years ago and points out the many subtleties involved in attempting to classify them. He describes the complex issues surrounding the evolution of Homo erectusR, Homo neanderthalensis, and finally Homo sapiens, citing arguments against a direct link between Neanderthals and morphologically modern humans. He concludes his essay with a careful discussion of morphological and genetic studies of the origin of human beings, including two opposite models: multiregional transition and mitochondrial Eve. Although he disagrees with the widespread idea that all humankind shares one ancestral grandmother, he does support the theory of the “out-of-Africa” spread of modern humans.

Chela-Flores, Julian. “The Phenomenon of the Eukaryotic Cell.”

The focus of Julian Chela-Flores’ paper is the possibility of the evolution of life elsewhere in our solar system. He first reviews Big Bang cosmology, including its modifications by Guth and Linde. Next he turns to the origin of life on Earth from the 1920s to the present. Although scientists view organic matter as inexorably self-organized according to the laws of physics and chemistry, the complete pathway from the inanimate to life on Earth has not been reproduced experimentally, nor has the importation of organic molecules from space been ruled out. Meanwhile research is now underway in exobiology and bioastronomy via the ongoing space missions. Issues include cross-contamination of either Earth, Mars, or Europa, comparative planetology, the search for extraterrestrial homochirality (SETH), the search for extraterrestrial eukaryotes (SETE), and, since the 1960s, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). He concludes this section with speculations on the future of evolution on earth.

Next, Chela-Flores describes recent topics including chemical evolution in the universe, the pathways from precursors to biomolecules, modern taxonomy, the terminology for single- celled organisms, and the evolution of prokaryotic cells in the Precambrian period. He then discusses the evolution of eukaryotes, including the role of oxygen and iron in their first appearance, and the identification of eukaryotes that are morphologically similar to prokaryotes. Next Chela-Flores takes us from eukaryogenesis to the appearance of intelligent life on Earth. Here he presses his case for the inevitable increase of complexity in the transition from bacteria to eukarya. Physics and chemistry imply an “imperative” appearance of life during cosmic evolution which he formulates as a bold, but in principle testable, hypothesis: “once the living process has started, then the cellular plans, or blueprints, are also of universal validity.” In short, prokaryotes lead to eukaryotes, and they do so universally. Provided that planets have the appropriate volatiles (particularly water and oxygen), Chela-Flores argues that not only life, but eukaryogenesis, is bound to occur. Within the next two decades, a new generation of space missions could test his hypothesis. Moreover, the hypothesis bears on the question whether these missions should search for Earth-like life or something entirely different. Chela-Flores gives various responses to this question, including the relevance of SETE to SETI and the significance of the discoveries of the Murchison and Allan Hills meteorites that originated on Mars.

In closing, Chela-Flores maintains that there is a second environment in our solar system, the Jovian satellite Europa, in which the eukaryogenesis hypothesis may be tested. He first describes other possible sites for extremophiles and other microorganisms, including the atmospheres of Europa, Io, Titan, and Triton, and possible hot springs at the bottom of Europa’s (putative) ocean. Then he identifies parameters that may characterize the degree of evolution of Europan biota both at the ice surface and its ocean. He concludes again that a space mission could test these ideas in the near future.

Clifford, Anne M. “Darwin’s Revolution in the Origin of Species: A Hermeneutical Study of the Movement form Natural Theology to Natural Selection."

Anne Clifford examines Darwin’s The Origin of Species in relation to nineteenth-century British natural theology. Though the latter was considered a form of science it actually offered a union between science and Christian belief in a creator. Its primary text was nature, not Genesis, and it attempted to provide evidence from nature for God’s sovereignty and purposeful design. Clifford warns us not to let the hegemony that Darwin’s theory now enjoys undercut our interest in natural theology, partly because we would not fully appreciate what Darwin’s revolution accomplished. She sets out to trace that accomplishment, being mindful of the way language in both science and theology, with its metaphorical character, shapes our claims about reality.

Her first move is to challenge the “warfare” model of the relationship between Christianity and Darwin’s theory fostered by Andrew Dickson White and John Draper. Wilberforce’s attack on evolution was actually based primarily on scientific grounds, not on concerns about biblical revelation. He accepted natural selection as a process that weeded out the unfit within a species, but he felt Darwin had not provided sufficient evidence for the evolution of new species. Wilberforce’s argument drew implicitly on Francis Bacon’s earlier distinction between the book of revelation and the book of nature. Though God was the author of both books, the distinction provided scientists freedom from forcing their results to conform to biblical texts. Darwin too drew on the two-books tradition and on a close reading of William Paley, who argued from nature to an intelligent designer. Paley went further than Bacon, though, by discussing nature’s purpose and by moving from purpose to a personal designer and thus to a personal God. He rejected randomness in nature as well as the extinction of species. The Bridgewater Treatises continued this argument, insisting on the fixity of nature and on divine sovereignty which maintains nature and natural laws. These are the actual positions that Darwin’s theory of natural selection would reject.

Data gathered from his voyage on the Beagle triggered Darwin’s “conversion” from natural theology to his theory of natural selection as an account of the variety and mutability of species. Recent discoveries in geology enhanced his account, including the ancient age of the earth and the possibility of sequencing the fossil record. Also contributing was Darwin’s knowledge of animal breeding as well as Malthus’ work on population and resources, with its focus on the struggle for existence. Darwin’s theory of natural selection and its theme of the survival of the fittest broke with natural theology not only in the concept of God as special designer of each separate species, including their direct creation and their immutability, but also with the benevolence of God. Natural theologians, it seems, had been particularly blind to the abundance of suffering and death in nature.

Clifford then analyzes the role of metaphor in science, drawing on the writings of Janet Soskice, Paul Ricoeur, and Sallie McFague. She focuses on two of Darwin’s key metaphors: “the origin of species” and “natural selection.” Darwin’s theory in effect shifted the meaning of “origins” by describing the emergence of new species while bracketing the question of the origin of life as such. He also transformed the meaning of species; rather than fixed and discrete, they came to be seen as fluid, possessing the capacity to evolve. Darwin’s metaphor, “natural selection,” combines meanings drawn from animal breeding by humans and from nature in the wild. It suggests that nature “chooses” and, though Darwin rejected vitalism, he has been read as deifying nature. Clifford also points out that Darwin considered his theory compatible with belief in God, though his personal position seems to shift from belief to agnosticism.

According to Clifford, then, Darwin did not intend a warfare against Christianity, only against natural theology, and here only in the form of a highly rationalistic Christian theism coupled to a limited body of scientific data. He challenged Paley’s watchmaker analogy that assumed a God of radical sovereignty and a passive and static world. What might we find to replace it? McFague proposes the metaphor of the universe as God’s body. Clifford modifies this by suggesting the metaphor of a mother giving birth. It brings together in dynamic tension the reproductive and evolutionary character of nature with the biblical doctrine of God as creator. It is panentheistic, rather than pantheistic, and is, according to Elizabeth Johnson, the “paradigm without equal,” drawing on a wealth of biblical texts for God’s relation to the world. Finally it is compatible with Darwin’s rejection of God as designer, the immutability of species, and it takes up his concern to acknowledge the extent of suffering in nature.

Coyne, George V., S.J. “Evolution and the Human Person: The Pope in Dialogue."

George Coyne presents an interpretive article for John Paul II’s preceding statements on evolution and the human person. Coyne sets the context by starting with the historical background of the Pope’s statement which he describes in terms of three approaches to science and religion. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Church attempted to appropriate modern science to establish a rational foundation for religious belief. Paradoxically, this led to the corruption of faith and contributed to the rise of modern atheism. The founding of the Vatican Observatory in 1891 signals the second approach. Here the Church attempted to combat anticlericalism by a vigorous, even triumphalistic, agenda. Finally, the twentieth century has seen the Church come to view science as offering rational support for theological doctrine. Coyne cites Pope Pius XII who, in 1952, took Big Bang cosmology as “bearing witness” to the contingency of the universe and to its creation by God.

Still, in three prior statements and in the current one, John Paul II has taken a new approach. Though the Galilean controversy was important to the first two approaches, what Coyne takes to be the key element is John Paul II’s call for a genuine and open-ended dialogue in which science and religion, though distinct and marked by their own integrity, can contribute positively to each other. Dialogue sets the context for John Paul II’s discussion of evolution.

The discussion is, in fact, mostly scientific, drawing first from research in the life sciences, next from molecular chemistry to life in the evolving universe, and finally to the possibility of early primitive life on Mars and the discovery of extra-solar planets. John Paul II stresses that, though evolution is an established scientific theory, philosophy and theology enter into its formulation, leading to several distinct and competing evolutionary world-views. Some of these - materialism, reductionism, and spiritualism - are “rejected outright.” Instead a genuine dialogue begins as the papal message struggles with two views which may or may not be compatible: evolution according to science and the intervention by God to create the human soul.

Thus dialogue risks dissonance between science and religion. Revelation is given an antecedent and primary role compared with scientific discovery. Yet the religious message struggles to remain open, perhaps through a reinterpretation of what science tells us. One possibility would be the body-soul dualism taken by Pius XII. Instead John Paul shifts from an ontological to an epistemological interpretation of the appearance of what he then calls the “spiritual” in humanity. The message closes by indicating that the dialogue should continue. Here Coyne adds that in doing so we think in terms of God’s continuous creation through the process of evolution. Rather than intervening, God gives the world freedom to evolve and participates in the process through love. Perhaps this approach can preserve what is special about the emergence of spirit without resort to interventionism.

Davies, Paul. “Teleology Without Teleology: Purpose through Emergent Complexity."

Paul Davies offers us a modified version of the uniformitarian view of divine action. In selecting the laws of nature, God chooses specific laws which allow not only for chance events but also for the genuine emergence of complexity. He claims that the full gamut of natural complexity cannot be accounted for by neo-Darwinism, relativity, and quantum mechanics; one must also consider nature’s inherent powers of self-organization based on, though not reducible to, these laws. Still the emergence of complexity does not require special interventionist divine action.

Davies begins by classifying divine action into three types: interventionist, non- interventionist, and uniform. He rejects the first, since it reduces God to nature and involves theological contradictions. The second is a new possibility which appeals to quantum indeterminism and bottom-up causality or to the mind-body problem and top-down causality. Davies considers several possible objections and responds to them before turning to his own view, a modified form of uniform divine action. This emphasizes God’s continuing role in creating the universe each moment though without bringing about particular events which nature “on its own” would not have produced. Davies illustrates this via the game of chess, in which the end of a given game is determined both by the rules and by the specific sequence of moves chosen by each player. Thus God selects the laws of nature; being inherently statistical, they allow for chance events at the quantum or chaos levels as well as for human agency. God need not violate these laws in order to act, and there is room for human freedom and even for inanimate systems to explore novel pathways.

The existence of these very specific laws raises the question of cosmological design. Davies acknowledges that “anthropic” arguments like his might be countered by a cosmic Darwinism, such as the “many worlds” view provided by inflationary cosmology, but he gives several reasons why he rejects these accounts. He then argues that quasi-universal organizing principles will be found to describe self-organizing, complex systems. They will complement the laws of physics, but they would not be reducible to or derivable from physics, nor would they refer to a mystical or vitalistic addition to them.

Davies sees his view of divine action as going beyond ordinary uniformitarianism. Chance in nature is God’s bestowal of openness, freedom, and the natural capacity for creativity. The emergence of what he calls the “order of complexity” is a genuine surprise, arising out of the “order of simplicity” described by the laws of physics. He calls this “teleology without teleology.” The acid test, according to Davies, is whether we are alone in the universe. If the general trend of matter toward mind and culture is written into the laws of nature, though its form depends on the details of evolution, we would expect that life abounds in the universe. This accounts for the importance of the SETI project. Finally, Davies is open to the possibility of combining his view with a non-interventionist account of divine action.

In his final section, Davies addresses biologists who, he expects, will find the concept of “teleology without teleology” favorable for two reasons. First, biologists have already incorporated elements of self-organization and emergent complexity into the neo-Darwinian account. Second, some biologists see evidence of complexifying trends in biological phenomena. Finally, the theological interpretation he advances would in no way be obligatory on others.

Drees, Willem B. “Evolutionary Naturalism and Religion."

According to Willem Drees, at least three issues arise from an evolutionary view of nature. One is the challenge to a literalist understanding of Genesis. Another is that evolution may leave no room for divine action in the world. Finally, evolution can radically modify our understanding of human nature and morality. The latter is the focus of Drees’ paper. Rather than seeking an alternative to, or a modification of, evolutionary ideas, Drees intends to stay as close as possible to insights offered and concepts developed in the sciences. He call his position “naturalism” and asks what the consequences are if a naturalist view is correct. His central theses are: 1) upon a sufficiently subtle view of science, evolution can do justice to the richness of experience and of morality, but 2) not to the cognitive concerns of religion; nevertheless 3) there is still room in a naturalist view for religion as a way of life and as a response to limit questions concerning the scientific framework.

Drees first distinguishes between soft or nonreductive naturalism, whose context is ordinary human experience and language, and hard or reductive naturalism. The latter includes epistemological naturalism (a universal application of the scientific method without an ontological commitment) and ontological naturalism (Drees’ position). Within ontological naturalism there are three varieties: reductive materialists, who hold for type-type identity, nonreductive materialists, who opt for token-token identity (Drees’ position), and eliminative materialists, who would reduce away the higher level of discourse.

In Drees’ view, the natural world is all that we know about and interact with; no supernatural realm shows up within the world. All entities are made of the same constituents. Still naturalism (or physicalism) can be non-reductive in the sense that higher level properties may require their own concepts and explanatory schemes. Evolutionary explanations are primarily functional. He argues that such a naturalism need not be atheistic. Instead, physics and cosmology form the boundary of the natural sciences and raise speculative, limit questions about the naturalist view as such, questions about which naturalism can remain agnostic. The integrity, coherence, and completeness of reality as described by science does not imply its self-sufficiency. Contrary to Peter Atkins, Drees sees religious accounts in which the natural world as a whole is dependent on a transcendent Creator as consistent with, though not required by, naturalism. What Drees rejects is a view of God as altering the laws of nature or as acting within the contingencies of nature since, again, nature is complete and the integrity of nature is affirmed.

Next Drees turns to evolutionary explanations of morality. If morality, such as pro-social behavior, is given an evolutionary explanation, can it still be considered “moral”? Drees first argues that evolutionary naturalism as a whole should not be dismissed because of the claims made by those whom Daniel Dennett calls “greedy reductionists.” Instead Richard Alexander, David Sloan Wilson, Elliot Sober, Michael Ruse and Francisco Ayala give serious consideration to the importance of cultural and mental aspects in the evolutionary explanation of morality. He describes four reasons why such accounts need not undercut the validity of seeing morality as genuinely “moral.” For example, sociobiology undermines the claim that values originate in a supernatural source, but people are still free to choose from among competing values. Morality can go beyond our emotions, as E. O. Wilson argues, and the contingencies of our evolutionary history, as Michael Ruse proposes, to reflect a genuine distinction between is and ought.

But what happens to religion when it becomes the object of scientific study and explanation? Whereas morality and experience seem to survive an evolutionary understanding, the implications for religion are more serious. In effect, a functional and immanent understanding of morality need not be as problematic to moral persons as a similar understanding of religious language may be to believers, since religious language typically refers to transcendent realities. Thus, some of the fears by believers seem warranted. However, Drees holds that the grounds for accepting a naturalistic evolutionary view of reality, including ourselves, are strong. Hence, rather than backing away when a conflict threatens, he prefers to reflect on the options for religion within an evolutionary framework.

According to Drees, naturalism rules out objective reference to divine action in the world and it offers an evolutionary account of how such ideas arose. Thus naturalism renders their cognitive content “extremely unlikely” without claiming absolute proof. Religious traditions can be studied as complex entities and ways of life, each within its own environment. They embody regulative ideals and forms of worship, and they undergird moral and spiritual commitments. Though their cognitive claims may need revision, religions confront and challenges us with these ideals and values, offering a vision for a better world. Moreover, they encourage us to raise limit questions which naturalism alone cannot answer and they in turn offer answers to such questions. The openness expressed in limit questions can induce wonder and gratitude about the world, and this mystical function of religion can be complementary to its more prophetic, functional characteristics. Finally, evolution has bequeathed us the capacity for imagination and thus for transcending any one particular perspective or regulative ideal. This in turn leads us to the notion of divine transcendence.

Edwards, Denis. “Original Sin and Saving Grace in Evolutionary Context."

Denis Edwards is concerned with rethinking the doctrine of sin and grace in light of biological evolution. He begins with the insights of Gerd Theissen, Sallie McFague and Philip Hefner. According to Edwards, Theissen argues that the common features of science and theology can be articulated through evolutionary categories. Religion manifests the “central reality,” God. Christianity offers the principle of radical solidarity which runs counter to natural selection. The pull in us towards anti-social behavior has a biological foundation, while the work of the Holy Spirit is in the direction of pro-social behavior, helping us see strangers as kin. Theissen supports these points by referring to the three great “mutations” of Christian faith: biblical monotheism, New Testament Christology, and the experience of the Holy Spirit. Edwards then criticizes Theissen’s work in terms of both biology and theology: for example, are natural selection and culture, and natural selection and the way of Christ, each so sharply opposed?

Sallie McFague finds the pattern for divine immanence in creation in the story of Jesus: the universe is directed toward inclusive love for all, particularly the oppressed. As Edwards sees it, her “Christic paradigm” extends God’s liberating, healing, and inclusive love to non-human creatures. McFague understands nature as the new poor. She finds consonance between natural selection and Christianity, since evolution is not only biological but cultural, and since it is essential that human culture contributes to the welfare of all life on earth. But she finds dissonance between natural selection and Christianity, because neither cultural nor biological evolution includes solidarity with the oppressed. Instead, God suffers with suffering creation, since the world is God’s body. But, Edwards asks, is McFague too negative, even moralistic, about natural selection? Is the Christic paradigm opposed to natural selection or does it define God’s creative action in and through evolution?

According to Edwards, Philip Hefner sees the human being as a symbiosis of genes and culture. Religion is the central dimension of culture. In view of the ecological crisis we have brought about we need a theology of the human as created co-creator. Hefner views original sin in terms of the discrepancy in the information coming from our genes and our culture, including a clash in us between altruism and genetic selfishness. He also suggests that original sin can be understood in terms of the fallibility and limitation that are essential to human evolution and freedom. Though these are good, they are always accompanied by failure. The religious traditions carry altruistic values, particularly trans-kin altruism, and the biblical commandments ground altruism ultimately in God.

Edwards believes that Hefner’s evolutionary insights genuinely illuminate the human condition and the Christian understanding of concupiscence. He argues, however, that discrepancy and fallibility are not in themselves sin. Instead, following Rahner, he distinguishes between the disorder of sin and the disorder that is intrinsic to being human. The former comes from our rejecting God. The latter results from our being both spiritually and bodily finite; it is a form of concupiscence that is morally neutral and not in itself sinful. Our existential state is constituted by both disorders. Edwards finds Hefner’s insight as bearing on our natural, but not our sinful, disorder: the structure of the human, though a fallible symbiosis of genes and culture, is not in itself sin. In addition, Edwards suggests that our genetic inheritance can carry messages essential for human life while culture and religion can carry messages of evil. This means that selfishness and sin cannot be identified strictly with our biological side, and unselfish behavior cannot be identified entirely with our cultural side.

With regard to grace, Edwards writes that, while altruism is a radical dimension of divine and human love, it does not express the ultimate vision of that love. Indeed, indiscriminate calls to altruism and self-sacrifice can function to maintain oppression, as feminist theologians have stressed. Moreover, in a trinitarian doctrine of God, love is revealed most radically in mutual, equal, and ecstatic friendship. So, though Hefner sees altruistic love as holding the status of a cosmological and ontological principle, Edwards sees persons-in-mutual-relations as having this status. Drawing on the writings of John Zizioulas, Walter Kasper, and Catherine Mowry LaCugna, Edwards suggests that if the essence of God is relational and if everything that is springs from persons-in-relation, then this points towards an ontology which he calls “being-in- relation.” Moreover, such an ontology is partially congruent with evolutionary biology, including its stress on cooperative, coadaptive, symbiotic, and ecological relations. Contrary to Theissen and McFague who tend to oppose natural selection and the Gospel, Edwards wants the “Christic paradigm” to view God as continuously creating through the processes of evolution.

Still the struggle and pain of evolution leads Edwards to face the challenge of theodicy. Following Thomas Tracy, he first suggests that natural selection needs to be considered in non- anthropomorphic and non-moral terms as an objective process in nature, like nucleosynthesis in stars. Theodicy is no more intense a problem for natural selection than it is to all such processes, including death when understood as essential to evolution and life. The trinitarian God who creates through natural selection needs to be understood not only as relational but also as freely accepting the limitations found in loving relationships with creatures. The Incarnation and the Cross point to a conception of God related to natural selection through unthinkable vulnerability and self-limitation. The God of natural selection is thus the liberating, healing, and inclusive God of Jesus. This God is engaged with and suffers with creation; at the same time, creatures participate in God’s being and trinitarian relationships.

Ellis, George F. R. “The Thinking Underlying the New ‘Scientific’ World-views."

George Ellis analyzes arguments by a number of contemporary scientists that either

support atheism or offer a science-based religion. He claims that they are based on scientifically unjustified assumptions and rely on rhetorical or emotional appeal. They ignore the limited scope and method of science, contain an implicit metaphysical agenda, rely on the authority of science while addressing issues outside its scope, and occasionally misrepresent or ignore opposing views.

First, Ellis reminds us that scientific theories are provisional, open, limited in scope, partially supported by evidence, and inherently incomplete. Cosmology in particular takes for granted the laws of physics, but it cannot explain why they exist, why the universe exists, or whether there is an underlying purpose and meaning to the universe. Nor can science provide a foundation for values, although values are essential to the conduct of science. Issues such as the existence of God lie forever outside the competence of science to adjudicate, although the weight of data and experience can influence one’s opinion. Ellis acknowledges that the argument from special design has been undermined by evolutionary theory. His concern, however, is with those who construct a “scientific religion” out of either a physically based metaphysics or a scientifically motivated system of values, and who deny the fact that the metaphysical interpretation of science is ambiguous and