Moms and Evolution

KEVIN HARRIS: Hey, there! A very warm welcome to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. It's Kevin Harris. Just a quick word about what's coming up on future podcasts. Many of you have asked for Dr. Craig's impressions of a debate that took place at Rice University between Dr. James Tour and Professor Dave Farina. The topic was “Are we clueless about life's origins?”^[1] Well, Dr. Craig has a lot to say about this debate. He's not only eager to comment on the topic and some of the issues that came up, but he also has a lot to say about the intense and often uncivil nature of the debate. In fact, I think we'll probably do at least two podcasts on it just to cover everything. But it will be something you don't want to miss, so stay close. Let me say one more thing. I know that the craziness of today's world can be rather disturbing. Sometimes it seems like each day brings a new battle against the truth found in Christ, the stability of the family, and peace in our lives. So it's really encouraging when you support the work of Dr. Craig and Reasonable Faith financially and prayerfully. You can give online at ReasonableFaith.org, and please pray without ceasing. Thank you for your partnership and your support. Let's get to today's podcast. Dr. Craig recently had a chance to speak to moms, and today you're going to hear all about it.

Bill, let’s play some excerpts from what I think was a special opportunity for you – your interview with the #MomLife podcast.^[2] It gave you a chance to speak directly to ladies who are raising children or conducting family life. You've done this with your children's series on the attributes of God – What is God Like? with Red Goose and Brown Bear. While most of your work is not specifically geared to family life, how do you hope Reasonable Faith will ultimately benefit families?

DR. CRAIG: I'm convinced that if you begin to put apologetics input into your kids when they're in high school or college, you're too late. The horse is already out of the barn by that time. I'm convinced that we need to be training our children in Christian doctrine and apologetics from the earliest age on up presenting it simply at first (such as in this Red Goose and Brown Bear series) and then with increasing sophistication as they grow older. So when I got this invitation from Cynthia Blase to do this #MomLife podcast I thought, “Whoa. This is really breaking the mold for me.” I'm not used to this sort of a podcast. But what intrigued me was the subject that she wanted to talk about. She wanted to talk about the theory of evolution, and that is precisely the subject that I'm currently working on for my systematic philosophical theology. I suspected that she would probably have a lot of misconceptions that are rampant in the Christian subculture and that we could talk about, and that certainly did prove to be true. So I'm actually very, very enthusiastic about the podcast that Cynthia and I did together. I think we had a great conversation.

KEVIN HARRIS: Yeah, you did. You know that's one of the main reasons Cynthia Blase interviewed you. It came out of questions that her teenage son was asking about evolution at a back to school meeting with his science teacher; which any school meetings are not for the faint of heart. Evolution was on the curriculum, and she wondered whether it would be treated as a fact or a theory, she said. What do you think is behind her concern?

DR. CRAIG: I think that what sticks behind this distinction is the attempt of many Christians to discount evolution by saying it's just a theory, it's not a fact. And I think what they fail to appreciate is that a scientific theory is a complex model or explanatory hypothesis for certain data that can be very, very well confirmed and so widely believed. So, for example, the special theory of relativity or the general theory of relativity are called “theories” but no one would say general relativity is just a theory, not a fact. I think that this is a false dichotomy. The question really is: How well-established is the theory of biological evolution?

KEVIN HARRIS: Cynthia wanted to know about fine-tuning, but she said something that I hear a lot of Christian laypersons say. She's convinced by the alleged balance of life in our solar system – that we're the just-right distance from the sun, just-right oxygen levels. And you explained to her the difference between that and fine-tuning. Do you discourage the use of these solar system apologetics we often hear?

DR. CRAIG: I don't discourage them at all, but I think of them as just icing on the cake. I think you lay the foundation in the cosmic fine-tuning, and then any additional indications of design from our solar system and our biosphere here on Earth simply layer on more and more improbability. But I don't think that these are stand-alone arguments. I didn't say this in the interview (I didn't want to be critical of her) but I think one of the weaknesses of what you call “solar system apologetics” is that it is open to the retort that no matter how improbable it is that a planet should be just the right distance from the sun and have just the right planets in its solar system to enable life and all the rest of that, that if the universe is big enough then that increases the odds that this will happen elsewhere. So it's more difficult to show that this is really improbable and cries out for some sort of explanation apart from chance. But if you have eliminated the chance alternative through the fine-tuning argument then, as I say, appeal to solar system apologetics goes through much more cogently.

KEVIN HARRIS: Yeah, and it's so open to the criticism that if we weren't this distance from the sun, if we were a different distance from the sun, then maybe we would look different. If we were further away and it was colder, we'd be hairier; or if the oxygen mix wasn't right, our lungs would be bigger or different or things like that. So it's not very convincing unless you put it, like you said, I guess in a really big cumulative package. Other than that it’s just . . .

DR. CRAIG: What you're expressing there has been called the anthropic principle, and people have tried to use that to discount fine-tuning as well. If the universe weren't fine-tuned for our existence, we wouldn't be here to be surprised about it. But the problem is that this anthropic principle is powerless to explain why a highly improbable situation like this exists unless you presuppose the existence of a sort of multiverse or world ensemble in which we are just one randomly chosen universe in this ensemble. So it's the sort of cosmic equivalent of what I said about solar system apologetics – the weakness of that is that our solar system is just one tiny part of this vast universe where there may be many, many such solar systems and some of them would then by chance permit life. So these anthropic theorizers (or multiverse proponents) try to say the same thing to discount fine-tuning – that we are just part of this wider multiverse of universes, and therefore we shouldn't be surprised at observing our fine-tuning. In my published work, as you know, I've responded to that. There is a devastating objection to that use of the anthropic principle and the world ensemble hypothesis from Roger Penrose that has to do with the problem of the Boltzmann Brains; that on that sort of hypothesis we could never know that we are not a Boltzmann Brain (that is to say, a single brain who fluctuates into existence with illusory perceptions of the universe around us). But here we're getting very, very far afield from our #MomLife podcast, but you do see the connection, I think, between these issues.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's the first clip. Cynthia says more in this clip about what led her to contact you. Let's go to the first clip.

My son said, “What do you mean? What's the problem with evolution?” It was a genuine question on his part. He's been raised in our home where we talk from the perspective of a Christian worldview. He knows God created the world and everything in it. But what's the problem with evolution? He was asking for facts, not feelings. I realized I needed to arm myself and dove into a number of books trying to answer this question. Is the theory of evolution anti-God? Is there a difference between Darwinianism and evolution?

That's a daunting task that she undertook. She's trying to find answers. Her research apparently led to you, and that says a lot for the widespread work of Reasonable Faith, but it also brings up what resources are available to moms.

DR. CRAIG: I really take my hat off to this woman. I think it is so commendable that she's so invested in the lives of her children that when they bring home these difficult questions she undertakes herself to begin to read and study to find answers. I hope that all of us who are parents will be that proactive in trying to minister intellectually to our children. It was interesting to me that the question she wanted to ask was “Is evolution anti-God?” I think there are two broad questions that you can ask about evolutionary theory. One would be theological, the other would be scientific. The theological question would be: Is biological evolutionary theory somehow theologically problematic? Is it incompatible with Christian commitments? Or is it theologically neutral? The other question would be a scientific question: Is it a scientifically well-established theory? Does the evidence indeed go to support the theory? Those are two very different questions, and you could answer one question in the affirmative and the other question in the negative. Most of my discussion with Cynthia revolved around the theological question. She was mainly concerned with the theological acceptability of evolutionary biology. And here there are resources. During the course of the interview I mentioned just a couple of books, but there is a vast, vast amount of literature on this subject that could be read.

KEVIN HARRIS: This next clip is a compilation of her questions revealing something that she was really trying to grasp. Let's go to that compilation. Here's clip number two.

Now, I've heard that specifically Darwinian evolution is counter to Christianity. Do you think that's true? I guess what I had heard is that at its core Darwinian evolution is materialistic. So that's why it would be counter to Christianity. I think that's sort of what I was trying to maybe get at. I had, I guess, understood that people who espouse Darwinianism are also espousing naturalism – that they connect those two. And that's, I think, where I was going. I guess I had just heard there's a difference between Darwinian evolution and theistic evolution in the sense that Darwinian was materialistic (believing that origin came from random chance) and the theistic came from God. . . . What are the problems, if any, with materialistic evolution? . . . So the only incompatible piece from a Christian perspective would be that God was not involved; that it just happened out of nothing randomly.

You can see her struggle there and, like you said, that was her theological struggle. She wanted to know the theology behind evolution.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. She mentions here two things about evolutionary biology that trouble her. One is the claim that it's materialistic, and the other was that it proceeds by random variation or random mutations. When I heard her say that evolutionary theory is materialistic, immediately what I was thinking of was philosophical materialism. Does it commit you to a naturalistic view of the world; to a materialistic or physicalistic view of the world? Or is it neutral and therefore open to non-material realities? And so I told her, no, the theory is not materialistic. It just says nothing about the existence of supernatural entities. Now, in another sense, of course, the theory is materialistic in the sense that it only considers material causes. But that's unobjectionable. I mean, in that sense chemistry is materialistic. It studies the various elements and their combinations into chemical compounds. It's a material science. So in that scientific sense it's unobjectionable to be materialistic. It only considers the materialistic causes that contribute to evolutionary development. It would be in a philosophical sense objectionable if it were wedded to naturalism and materialism, but fortunately it's not. If anything, the implication goes the other way. If you are a materialist and a naturalist then you've pretty much got to be an evolutionist because as Alvin Plantinga has put it, “If naturalism is true, evolution is the only game in town!” But it doesn't follow that if you believe in evolution you've got to be a materialist or a naturalist. As Cynthia herself recognized, there is such a thing as theistic evolution where a good number of Christian theologians and scientists believe that God has used the biological process of evolution as his means of creating life on this planet. With respect to randomness, I thought it was really important in our interview to correct her misunderstanding that when evolutionary biologists say that mutations are “random” they mean undirected or occurring by chance. That's not what it means. What “random” in this context means is that the mutations do not occur with a view toward the benefit of the host organism in which they occur. There is no physical constraint upon mutations to make them occur for the benefit of the host organism, but that's entirely compatible with saying that God has directed the evolutionary process, indeed even causing mutations to occur along the way that will eventually lead to humanity. So when you understand the proper use of the word “random” in evolutionary biology you can see I think that it's theologically unobjectionable.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next up she asked about the moral argument. Let's go to that clip – clip number three.

I know one significant issue is that we as humans all have an inherent moral code. Why is that? Why could that be a problem from a materialistic-evolutionary perspective? I've heard that one thing that's common among people is that we all do have the same inherent moral code, that we all see the violations – you know, that killing is wrong, that taking someone else's stuff is wrong, that sleeping with a neighbor's wife is wrong – because we all have the same inherent moral code. Obviously there are lunatics throughout history who do their own thing, but in general [we] have the same inherent moral code that that itself testifies to being created in God's image.

Again, this is something that we hear a lot. A widespread similarity in moral values points to God. Do you refer to anything like that in your moral argument?

DR. CRAIG: No, I don't at all. I don't find this to be a very persuasive argument. I do think that it's largely true as I indicated in the podcast. Anthropologists seem to have shown that there is a kind of underlying moral code that all societies and peoples believe in. But the evolutionary biologist can respond that this is the result of biological evolution and social conditioning. In certain social animals like elephants and pigs and baboons you see reciprocity and cooperation and parental care and so forth developing because it's beneficial in the struggle for survival. Organisms that exhibit that kind of behavior will have a better chance of surviving than the loner and the maverick. And so the evolutionary psychologist can try to explain away the unanimity of our moral beliefs by saying that it is the byproduct of our evolutionary background and the social conditions in which we were raised. Fortunately, I just don't think this is relevant to the moral argument for God's existence which depends upon the objectivity of the moral values and duties that we apprehend, not upon the process by which we came to apprehend them.

KEVIN HARRIS: It's just like the fine-tuning argument. There's something further up and higher back that does an end run on so-called solar system apologetics. And then moral values and duties are something further back and higher up as C.S Lewis says. It does an end run.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. I like that “solar system apologetics!” I may use that. This would be another example of where you have a kind of low-level argument and you want to go to a higher level – in this case a meta-ethical level at which you ask are the moral values and duties that we apprehend objective?

KEVIN HARRIS: She asked two more questions. She asked about resources for Christian moms on evolution, and you said that most books are not very accessible to lay people. You gave her a couple of suggestions. And many in the apologetics community complain that Christian resources are not very good. I just wonder what needs to happen to rectify this? One thing is, like you told her, check out the animated videos from Reasonable Faith. And Defenders is also a good resource. But what do we do to rectify this?

DR. CRAIG: I don't know. We need to hold each other accountable as Christian scholars and correct one another's work. We need to be participating in conferences where we read papers and have critique by colleagues, to be publishing in journals where we'll get referees’ reports as well as critical feedback. That can help us to see the shortcomings of our argument. It's funny because just today I was reading a Christian-written article on universal common ancestry, and it was very clear that this author was quoting people out of context and giving a very misleading impression about what these sources were saying. In fact, I looked up some of the original sources to check out the quotation because I suspected that this wasn't being forthrightly portrayed, and sure enough what the original scientist was saying was, in fact, very, very different from the impression that this Christian author gave. So you've got to be really careful about the things that you read. I know as a Christian when I read a book by another Christian scholar I have a kind of implicit trust in him that he's going to fairly present the evidence and that he can be relied on. He won't be prejudiced by naturalistic or atheistic presuppositions. And yet one will often be disappointed in the work of other Christian authors on some of these subjects. So we've got to hold one another accountable, and that includes being accountable ourselves to our peers.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here is her last question. We're also going to listen to your response in this clip. Here it is – clip number four:

CYNTHIA: Last question. Do you just have any last words of wisdom or encouragement for any moms that would be listening?

DR. CRAIG: Well, I think that moms need to encourage their husbands to be involved in the education and preparation of their children. It's one thing for mom to go to church and take the kids to Sunday school, but if they see that dad is committed to Christ and believes this stuff and lives it out and tries to teach it to them that will help them to persevere in their faith like nothing before. Now, I understand that for many moms it's difficult because their husbands have abdicated their God-given role to bring up their children in the nurture and instruction of the Lord, but if there's anything you can do to try to encourage your husband to get involved and take this role I would urge you to do so because that is the best way to bring up your children to have a solidly-based Christian faith that they will not abandon when they go to high school and university.

CYNTHIA: Amen. Thank you for that word. That was good.

Now, you were talking to a lady in San Diego, California. And that little laugh of yours as you began to answer the question – I think it shows that you didn't want to be misunderstood or come across as misogynistic. But nevertheless she agreed with you. But was there just a little bit of . . . what was that little laugh of yours?

DR. CRAIG: I felt so awkward at that point because I knew what I wanted to say and yet I needed to be saying it to her husband, not to her. She's doing all she can. What I wanted to say is get your husband off the couch and involved in doing these things. For all I know, he is. I'm not judging Mr. Blase at all. But it was really awkward to give advice to these women – these moms – saying, “Go motivate your husband to get involved in doing this” because I really do believe that that is just vital for our children's spiritual health and well-being.

KEVIN HARRIS: Good job, Bill, on this podcast for ladies. Can we expect more of this from you? Maybe some cooking tips? Shopping tips? Some things like that?

DR. CRAIG: No, I’m hopeless in those domestic chores!

KEVIN HARRIS: We’ll see you on the next podcast.^[3]