I’ve been reading through Gregory Koukl’s new book Tactics (check back on Tuesday for a review) and came to a brief section dealing with theistic evolution. Theistic evolution is all the rage within Christian circles today and I thought it may be worth discussing the logic he uses to refute it. I’d be interested in your thoughts on it. Here’s Koukl:
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Some people suggest that God used evolution to design the world. They are motivated, I think, by two impulses. The first is a desire to affirm the Bible. The second is a suspicion Darwinism may have merit. Thus, they declare both true.
These two notions, however, seem incompatible to me. It may sound reasonable for God to “use” evolution, but if you look closer I think you will see the problem.
Suppose I wanted a straight flush for a hand of poker. I could either pull the cards out of the deck individually and “design” the hand, or I could shuffle the cards randomly and see if the flush is dealt to me. It would not make any sense, though, to “design” the hand by shuffling the deck and dealing. There’s no way to ensure the results. (I guess if I were really clever I could make it look like I was shuffling the deck when in reality I was stacking it, but that would be a deceitful kind of design called “cheating.”).
In the same way, either God designs the details of the biological world, or nature shuffles the deck and natural selection chooses the winning hand. The mechanism is either conscious and intentional (design), or unconscious and unintentional (natural selection). Creation has a purpose, a goal. Evolution is accidental, like a straight flush dealt to a poker rookie.
The idea that something is designed by chance is contradictory. Like trying to put a square peg in a round hole, this just doesn’t fit.
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So, is Koukl on to something here? Does theistic evolution contradict itself? Does it make God into a cheater? Has God “made it look like he was shuffling the deck when in reality he was stacking it?” Or perhaps neither…