In 1858, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace jointly announced a theory of evolution by natural selection. Since this announcement, data from many fields have consistently reinforced it so that it is a statement of a general principle which is well-supported by observations, experiments, and facts. This theory is today accepted and used by scientists as a scientific fact.
With regard to Darwin’s classic book, Origin of Species, Edward Larson writes in his book Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Idea:
“Origin of Species offered a new way of looking at life, and reached audiences far beyond the scientific community. It sold out its initial printing on the first day and was reissued in six revised English editions and eight foreign translations during Darwin’s lifetime.”
Since humans have long been classified as animals by scientists, it seemed natural to assume that humans, like other species, had also evolved. In 1871, Darwin published Descent of Man in which he saw humans evolving physically from other animal species by natural selection. For many people—theologians, philosophers, scientists, and lay people—placing humans in the broad evolutionary sequence with other species meant that evolution was linear and progressive: humans were surely the most evolved and represented the apex of creation. In an article in Free Inquiry, Adam Neiblum writes:
“From religious literalism and creationist thinking to the more secular minds of scientists and atheists, most of us think of evolution as inherently progressive and improvement-oriented. It is not.”
Adam Neiblum also writes:
“Every species is equally—and literally—unique by definition. Ours only feels especially so, and it feels so because of what is essentially cognitive bias, reaffirmed, encouraged, and perpetuated by outdated pseudoscientific origin stories.”
Some people see humans as a built-in feature of evolution, one that was planned when their god set up the process of evolution. In his book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible, Jerry Coyne writes:
“In other words, big-brained humans, or similar humanoid creatures, were a planned result of evolution, and were therefore inevitable.”
In this view, evolution is seen as progressive with humans—Homo sapiens—as the apex of a planned process. In other words, humans are the goal of evolution.
This process of evolution by natural selection does not require any divine or supernatural intervention. For some people, the idea of evolution as the result of random events threatens their religious beliefs regarding creation. While some people simply reject the entire concept of evolution and science, others see ways in which evolution could be compatible with their religious beliefs. Edward Larson writes:
“In the United States during the late nineteenth century, Asa Gray virtually coopted the term ‘theistic evolution’ for his theory that God guided the evolutionary process by supplying beneficial variations to species. In Britain, the Duke of Argyll and St. George Jackson Mivart separately devised alternative versions of theistic evolution in which a foreknowing God imparted direction into the laws of development themselves, so that species evolved over time to fit changed conditions. As an explanation for organic origins, however, theistic evolution failed the test of methodological naturalism that had come to define science. It had all but run its course as a serious scientific theory by 1900, and survived thereafter mostly as an ill-defined popular belief.”
Asa Gray (1810-1888) was an important nineteenth-century botanist who served as a Professor of Botany at Harvard for several decades. He insisted that there was no conflict between religion and the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. While Gray was a friend of Darwin, he believed that design and evidence of a deity were to be seen throughout nature and therefore that God (presumably, the Christian deity) was the actual source of evolutionary change. In his book Dawiniana, he attempted to fuse science with Christian theology. Susan Jacoby in her book Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism,writes:
“Natural selection could therefore be viewed as the mechanism by which God chose to manifest himself throughout the physical world.”
English biologist St. George Jackson Mivart (1827-1900) attempted to reconcile the evolutionary theory of natural selection with his Catholic beliefs. In 1871, he published On the Genesis of Species and Charles Darwin responded with a point-by-point refutation. In his later books, Nature and Thought (1882) and Origin of Human Reason (1889), St. George Jackson Mivart denied that evolution could be applied to the human intellect.
In 1885, Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), a well-known Congregational pastor, published Evolution and Religion in which he viewed evolution as God’s method of creation. According to Beecher:
“It is the duty of the friends of simple and unadulterated Christianity to hail the rising light and to uncover every element of religious teaching to its wholesome beams.”
In the twentieth century, the Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) proposed another version of theistic evolution. Daniel Dennett, in his book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life, writes of de Chardin:
“He proposed a version of evolution that put humanity at the center of the universe, and discovered Christianity to be the goal—‘the Omega point’—towards which all evolution is striving.”
He sees Christ as a new stage of evolution. The Catholic Church, however, viewed his ideas as a form of heresy. Since he was not allowed to teach in Paris, he went to China where he spent the rest of his life studying fossils. He died in 1955 and, in 1959, his book The Phenomenon of Man was published. Neither the scientific world nor the Catholic Church was impressed by this work. Daniel Dennett writes:
“The problem with Teilhard’s vision is simple. He emphatically denied the fundamental idea that evolution is a mindless, purposeless, algorithmic process.”
Some people see Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man as an example of natural theology while others feel it can be more accurately described as a theology of nature. Ian Barbour, in his book Religion in an Age of Science, writes:
“His unifying vision is indebted to both evolutionary biology and the Christian tradition, and this informs all his writing.”
In 1990, Pope John Paul II of the Roman Catholic Church, declared that during evolution, when the human lineage separated from other animals, God had inserted a soul into humans, thus making them distinct from other animals. Jerry Coyne writes:
“With respect to evolution, the position of the Catholic Church differs from biblical creationism only in the amount of God’s intervention.”
Evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci, in an entry in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, summarizes theistic evolution this way:
“Theistic evolution comes as close to a completely materialistic view of the universe as is possible for a religious person: God exists and he did create the universe, but afterward events unfold through the action of natural laws (put in place by the Creator, of course). Evolution by natural selection, therefore, is the way God decided to have things work in the biological realm.”
In his book Deception by Design: The Intelligent Design Movement in America, Lenny Flank summarizes it this way:
“There is another school of thought, the ‘theistic evolutionists’, who argue that evolution is simply the method which God used to create life, and that there is no conflict between science and the Bible. Nearly all mainstream religious denominations (as well as most scientists) are supporters of theistic evolution. Although they could be considered ‘creationist’, since they do assert that the universe was made by God, theistic evolutionists are viewed by the fundamentalists as ‘the liberal enemy’ who is doing the work of Satan.”
Theistic evolution is not a unified hypothesis but has a number of variations. In some approaches to theistic evolution, people see their god interfering sporadically with evolution, guiding it toward the emergence of humans. Jerry Coyne writes:
“Divine interventions are deemed necessary to ensure both the initial appearance of life and the eventual appearance of humans, for such matters simply couldn’t be left to naturalism.”
There are some people who feel that their god has constantly guided or tweaked evolution to ensure the evolution of human. Jerry Coyne writes:
“These could involve preserving endangered species, creating new mutations, or tinkering with genes or environments. These interventions have two features: they are undetectable, rendering them immune to scientific investigation, and they are invariably used to give God a way to ensure the evolution of humans.”
For people whose religious beliefs are based on a creator-god who created all living things at one time just as they are today, the basic idea of evolution, including theistic evolution, is frightening and intolerable. For others, the idea of evolution per se is not the real problem, but rather the idea that humans evolved in the same way as other species. For these people, theistic evolution—the idea that evolution and particularly human evolution—is part of a divine plan of creation makes evolution acceptable. The various versions of theistic evolution, however, are not really supported by scientific findings. For this reason, theistic evolution, along with intelligent design and creationism, are considered to be religious beliefs rather than scientific hypotheses. Jerry Coyne puts it this way:
“The biggest problem with theistic evolution, as with all attempts to twist theology to fit new facts, is that it’s simply a metaphysical add-on to a physical theory, a supplement demanded not by evidence but by the emotional needs of the faithful.”
More Human Origins
Human Origins: Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin
Human Origins: Lamarckian Evolution
Human Origins: Sexual Selection
Human Origins: Bipedalism
Human Origins: The Large Brain
Human Origins: The Great Chain of Being
Human Origins: Humans as naked apes
Human Origins: Transitional Humans