Earlier this week, my colleague Jacob Evans wrote an insightful article imploring Americans to wake up to the scientific truths of evolution. He brought up many valid points, namely that we are not a static creation; we are constantly changing, constantly evolving.
Although this is true, after deeper consideration, there is more to living things than the strict evolutionary process. While it is true that evolution is inherent in created matter, it is also true that evolutionism is a result of a genesis, a first act by which the created world was born.
If there exists a being who was able to draw something out of nothing, or as Genesis 1:2 puts it, “formless wasteland,” then surely this being is intelligent. In fact, this being is the ultimate intelligence to which all living things owe their design and origin.
Although not all things were necessarily created in one instant, or in six days according to classical creationism, it is true that all living things derive their existence from an intelligent being who was at work before the universe’s genesis and whose guiding hand is still at work via the physical evolutionary process.
It is important to consider that all material things ought necessarily to have evolved from some first mover. The great theologian and philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas asserted as much in his five proofs of the existence of God.
In the first, and arguably the most accessible proof, Aquinas draws the distinction between things that are in actuality and things that are in potentiality, which are the mover and the moved. Things cannot move or evolve unless they are moved by another. A fan cannot oscillate unless it is put into motion by the flipping of a switch. So is it with creation.
Things cannot randomly spring into being; rather, all things that are put in motion must trace their origin back to a first mover, whom some men call God. This conclusion is necessary because the process would otherwise extend to infinity, which is logically impossible. The notion of a first mover is paramount to evolutionism.
This Darwinist idea has shed light on amazing developments that further prove the influence of a pre-existing being. Take for example, the very notion that life still exists in spite of the various diseases and disasters that permeate our universe. The fact that humans have found cures to previously incurable diseases is a testament to an underlying idea: that humans received their ability to innovate from a greater reality beyond them.
My colleague makes the assertion that “life is neither static nor intelligently designed.” While I would agree that life is not unchanging, I would argue that the existence of a first mover implies an intelligent design at work in the universe.
This notion may be disturbing for some, but that is merely because of the polarized culture in which we live. In truth, evolutionary science and the idea of a created world that is being shaped and formed by a divine presence are mutually compatible. Strict evolutionism and strict creationism by themselves are not enough to understand the awesomeness of the created order.
By applying the spirit of both teachings, we can more fully digest the richness of our universe.
Reach the columnist at mrrich2@asu.edu or on Twitter at @cshmneyrichard
