Theistic Evolution: Oxymoron?

Written by Scott Pruett

Professor Phillip Johnson had just completed his lecture, carefully outlining the scientific and philosophical problems inherent in evolutionary theory. Dr. Johnson opened the floor, and after fielding various technical questions, a final, almost inevitable one came as follows:

I don't think you give God enough credit. Why can't it be that a God who knows the number of hairs on my head couldn't have used evolution as a means of bringing about our present existence? Why do you have to oppose the two ideas of evolution and creation?{1}

This idea, known as "theistic evolution," has become very popular since Darwin's theory first began to take hold of the popular imagination. Since the theory of evolution is accepted as the majority view within the scientific community, those concerned to reconcile their beliefs with the apparent record of nature must wrestle with this issue. And since most people believe in some sort of Supreme Being or higher power, they must find a place for God in this. But is evolution compatible with the idea of a God who "creates," especially the Judeo-Christian God?

The first thing to note is that this may be a non-issue. Dr. Johnson's questioner completely overlooked the theme of his lecture—that evolutionary theory is deeply flawed—and made the assumption that he simply rejected it because he found it incompatible with his theism. However, we won't be explicitly addressing the scientific issues here; our purpose is to explore this idea of compatibility between evolution and theism.

Evolution Defined

First, let's examine the definition of evolution, specifically as it relates to the biological life that we personally experience. Here are a few representative characterizations of the process.

• "Change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual."{2}
• "Any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next."{3}
• "A process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations."{4}

Understand that these are rather minimalistic definitions intended to capture a scientific consensus. And it should also be noted that evolution in the "macro" sense (the ascent of life from one major form to the next) is proposed to have occurred by the continuous application of this mechanism.

Now, what these "heritable changes" generally amount to are mutations in the genetic code{5}. And what the "spreading" within the population cashes out to is natural selection—survival of the fittest breeder. Our two main players, then, are mutation and selection.

Implications and Concessions

So, how are we to understand mutations and natural selection? What forces drive these things?

• "The cellular machinery that copies DNA sometimes makes mistakes. These mistakes alter the sequence of a gene. This is called a mutation."{6}
• "In fact, chance is quite real. It is a concrete fact in evolution."{7}
• "Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparent purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker."{8}

Mistakes? Blind, unconscious, automatic processes? Chance? This is the naturalistic (or materialistic) view that science has determined to pursue. It is hard enough to accept that these things have been effective in a "natural" sense to generate the exquisite complexity of life that we observe; it is even harder to find a theistic connection. There is no suggestion of purpose and design here; this actually turns out to be hostile to such things, and this fact is not lost on some members of the scientific community. As Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins has famously said, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."{9} Are those like Dawkins just embarrassing exceptions to a "neutral" scientific community and "neutral" theory, or are they merely the ones willing to boldly play through to the logical conclusions?

While the personal reflections of various academic elites reveal distinctly anti-religious themes{10}{11}, increasingly, modern academic definitions of evolution skirt the religious implications{12}{13}. In light of the politics, school board controversies, and popular rejection of a non-theistic model of creation{14}, scientists and educators are often willing to make public concessions to theism. Note this striking admission by William Provine, a philosopher of biology:

My observation is that the great majority of modern evolutionary biologists now are atheists or something very close to that. Yet prominent atheistic or agnostic scientists publicly deny that there is any conflict between science and religion. Rather than simple intellectual dishonesty, this position is pragmatic. In the United States, elected members of Congress all proclaim to be religious. Many scientists believe that funding for science might suffer if the atheistic implications of modern science were widely understood.{15}

We hear the claims that theism and evolution are not mutually exclusive, and we may speculate over the motives for allowing a place for God, but we still have yet to see how the two may be reconciled.

Ghost in the Machine

So, exactly how is it that God could be said to "use" evolution? How would the creator employ chance and blind forces to bring about His intended purposes? The concept of natural selection could certainly fit into a theistic framework. It is easy to imagine God having invested life with a certain amount of genetic diversity, which is why we are able to derive various breeds of dogs, and find humans in all shapes, colors, and sizes. And it is only practical that the established genetic order be maintained through the successful breeding of the most robust members of each species. But natural selection can only deliver so much without an agent of change, and that change agent is mutation, which we have already seen is driven by error and chance. If we insist on pairing chance and purpose, then something in our common understanding must yield.

Now, chance cannot ultimately be counted upon to deliver any particular thing. As the late Stephen Gould said, "Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay."{16} Assuming that evolution is an effective mechanism that God has used to generate life, and that chance is the legitimate driver of change, then we must accept that biological life as we know it could have been very different. And God, with hands tied by His commitment to naturalism, would simply have made due with whatever managed to develop.{17}{18} It just so happens that we are "human," and that we have arms rather than wings or tentacles, and that we reproduce sexually, partner with mates, and have placental offspring rather than eggs or larvae.

But a problem arises in that Scripture seems to indicate that God intended this present creation. Regardless of how we are to understand the Genesis creation account—day/age, young earth, framework, etc.—there are certain things that are agreed upon by all parties: God acted in nature, and the plants, animals, and humans that resulted are exactly what God intended. Theistic evolution may abstract the means by which God created Adam and Eve, but can it assure us that any "Adam" would have ever arisen{19}, or that there would be an Eve by his side?

Scripture is rich with metaphor and maxims that are derived from nature. But if we must surrender things that could have been otherwise, like cloven hooves, locusts, vipers, wheat, yeast, and grapevines, then we must discard our notion that any real "meaning" can be found in the world of nature. Are we to accept that God simply made use of whatever happened to develop? And when Scripture says that all good gifts come from God, are we wrong to think that things like roses, strawberries, and dogs were not specifically crafted and purposed for our enjoyment? We may then only credit God for these fortuitous developments in the sense that He founded this universe, and He has intellectual property rights to all things that develop within it. In affirming a sovereign God, who claims to know and predestine all things from the beginning, some other answer must be sought.

One possibility is that God is behind things, directing the "mutations." In this quote from John Haught we see the door left wide open (perhaps not intentionally) for such a possibility.

The "chance" character of the variations which natural selection chooses for survival may just as easily be accounted for as the product of human ignorance. The apparent randomness of what we today call genetic mutations could be a mere illusion resulting from the limitedness of our perspective.{20}

But if God is in back of these variations then this is no more "chance" than if God directly transformed the genetic code Himself, which would seem far more in character with the sovereign God we know from Scripture. If God is involved in the change mechanism at all, then evolution is nothing more than a description of the progressive creation process of God—naturalism is hamstrung.

In Search of a Synthesis

So now the challenge for the theistic evolutionist is to find a place for God without invalidating naturalism, that is, without collapsing the widely held doctrine that we may only appeal to natural forces in the study of nature.

One such idea suggests that evolution is simply the natural process which God has commissioned to deliver His planned purpose.{21} It is almost seen as a law-driven process that must inevitably bring certain things to pass, similar to the way gravity might bring galaxies and stars into being.{22} I was recently on an Internet message board debating this topic and a billiard analogy was offered to describe this theory. "God," it was suggested, "may have set up the shot perfectly—omnisciently knowing the angles, forces, and obstacles to be considered as He made that first, singular shot." But the problem with this idea is that there is a difference between irresistible, law directed processes, like gravitation and kinetics, and a contingency driven process, like evolution. There is a difference between inert balls necessarily bouncing as law dictates, and the course of biological history, which is dependent upon the breeding habits and internal malfunctions of animate, free agents. And we've already seen that chance is an underachiever.

Another idea is dependent on God's foreknowledge: He knew and desired this present outcome. But foreknowledge cannot "produce" any particular result. To get a desired result through chance you must run the chance event multiple times. If I plan to roll five dice to get all sixes, the first roll will probably not succeed, and my knowing the results in advance does not make it any more likely to succeed. So, does God have innumerable universes running in an attempt to generate the one He is after?{23} If He intends exactly what we see, then it must be very many indeed, and this seems suggestive of many wholly unprofitable, scrapped attempts. This would certainly be a new twist on Carl Sagan's sentiment that if there wasn't life elsewhere in the universe "it would be an awful waste of space!"{24} But if God got His result in just one creation attempt, then this implies that either the entire course of natural history is the product of strictly and amazingly determinative forces, or that God has actually condescended to come to till and tend His garden. The former would force a rethinking of naturalism (i.e., "chance" and "randomness" are non-entities); the later would undermine it.

Some would suggest that it denigrates God's glory, or violates His own "laws," for Him to tamper with the natural order.{25}{26} But these are not moral laws, which are reflective of God's nature, but regulative decrees, which serve only temporal purposes. And since we know from Scripture that God has intervened during the course of human history (healings, weather and astronomical manipulations, generating bread and manna ex nihilo, etc.), then it is not unreasonable to allow that He has intervened prior to the creation of man. And, if one can accept that God has originally created all matter, space, time, and energy, then it seems gratuitous to deny His later intrusion upon it, or desire to do so.

Another solution is to cede to God certain key areas in the development of life. Abiogenesis (the appearance of the first biological organism) is usually the entry point for this approach. This is inspired by virtue of it being the clear crossover point from inanimate matter to biological life. It is also due to the fact that it is such a miraculous event with no evidence or sustainable explanation for how it has occurred. But is this concession made out of theological principle, or is it simply an opportunity that scientific shortcoming has presented? I am not suggesting that we cannot find God in the solution to the abiogenesis problem, only that it is a losing and historically embarrassing proposition to call God in wherever scientific understanding is not established. It is not necessary to align with the scientific consensus at any rate, because if one is not predisposed toward naturalism, there is ample reason to question the entire evolutionary model and ample evidence for an unbiased mind to bring against it.

But more relevant to this topic is that permitting God's intervention at any one point in the biological process is a breach in the dam, and an alienation from the formal scientific community, which theistic evolution is disinclined to do. And there is no support for those who do so from this community who are keen to resist a divine foot in the door.{27}

Reimagining God & Man

Unfortunately, theistic evolution is no happy reconciliation of faith and science; there will be unavoidable collateral damage done to Scripture and the classical understanding of it.

First, we may be compelled to yield the notion that we are a special, unique creation of God. As Christian geologist Keith B. Miller suggests, "We have been chosen out of creation as God's representatives ... Our physical unity with the natural world is as vital to our appointed role as image bearers as is our spiritual apprehension of the divine."{28} If we are merely "chosen" out of creation and "appointed" as image bearers, then we are not justified in ascribing significance to our physical nature, or that of any other creature for that matter. It is only the image of God stamped upon us at some indiscernible point of history that is of concern to us. The question then arises as to what human attributes are delivered to us by God and what by evolution, e.g., mating habits, moral urges. Evolution does not confine its explanatory scope to biology alone; its adherents apply its principles to mental, social, and moral disciplines. If evolution has delivered the brain and body, and God the soulish component, then the Darwinists have just as much claim as Scripture does in schooling us on matters of "human nature." And they will certainly resist the burden of maintaining harmony between the two.

Second, the concept of natural theology is undermined, and biblical theology is compromised as well. When Scripture says that God's invisible attributes are clearly seen through the creation{29}, it can only mean that God is a marvelous law creator, or "stuff" enabler; we are not to take any particular item within the creation personally. The God of theistic evolution must be less immediately sovereign and personally involved than historically understood. This threatens a return to the era of deism, and even the concept of miracles comes under suspicion. God is reduced to a distant, impersonal specter with questionable right or desire to interact with a creation He has placed on autopilot. Atheist William Provine summarizes the dilemma quite well when he says, "I think your God is a paper-tiger in evolution, and indeed since the origin of the universe."{30} The other alternative is to join the "process theologians," who take evolution to be reflective of God's own development and mutability.{31} This group seems to have the most systematized view of God based on evolutionary conclusions{32}, but, of course, their theology departs radically from historical Christianity, e.g., Jesus performed no "actual" miracles and certainly did not rise from the dead.

Third, faith becomes segregated from science and banished to irrelevancy. Since all things have presumably come into being through "natural processes," there are no fingerprints of God to be sought in the creation itself other than the impersonal forces that enable these processes. There is no way for theism to justify any specific claims by appeals to science and nature.{33} Consequently, theology is left with no voice in the world of science; faith and science have their own separate domains of authority.{34} Science graciously (or disingenuously) offers the theologians dominion in the area of values and meaning, but since science is seen as empirical, verifiable, and objective, it inevitably trumps theology when it voices conclusions in these areas.{35} Additionally, in their practice of science, theistic evolutionists become functionally indistinguishable from naturalists, and their insistence of a God behind it all only survives the skeptics on the technicality that God resides outside of their domain of inquiry. With all testimony of nature made resistant to theistic conclusions, the idea of God, itself, stands only on philosophical grounds. This arrangement positions deism as an inviting stepping stone to atheism. But against all this stands the Scriptures, which reveals a God who personally acts in creation and history.

Now, classical Christianity may theoretically be mistaken in any of these areas, but we should at least be willing to make the connection between theistic evolution and such conclusions. It is not a cordial traveling companion of orthodoxy.

Conclusions

Some will say that we are "limiting" God by suggesting that He could not or would not use evolution as His creative mechanism. But it is not enough to simply state that God "could have" done something; one must demonstrate how theistic evolution is logically tenable without violating the common understanding of evolution, or stepping outside the boundaries of classical theism. God does not engage in logical contradiction (He does not make square circles or rocks so big that He cannot lift them). Just as moral precepts are reflective of His very nature, so is logical coherence. And it makes no sense to say the God of the Bible is the one back of creation, while at the same time saying that the clear depiction of the God in that Bible is in error.

A question that comes to mind is, that given the kinds of problems discussed above, why a Christian would propose theistic evolution in the first place. Scripture itself certainly does not suggest it. One answer may be that it is prescribed due to a perceived primacy of evolutionary theory, that is, since evolution is taken to be a "fact," we must then turn to the task of interpreting Scripture in light of it. There seems to be a certain modern spirit of deference among theists to the authority of science—a willingness to assimilate the latest scientific theories merely to avoid the embarrassment of later losing those gaps that we propose that God has filled, or to avoid another Galileo incident. Since I have not labored here to debunk evolution on an evidential basis, I can only suggest that it is not necessary to surrender to evolutionary theory due solely to its current popularity. If our understanding and application of science is legitimate, and our theological objections well principled, then we may have courage to stand against any dogma of secular science.

Another reason that theists might be accepting of evolution is that it is actually made more plausible by the idea that it is underwritten by God. Evolution consists of countless collections of profoundly improbably events, but the skepticism that one may instinctively have for this state of affairs may be eased by the thought that God is, in fact, at the helm. But no one is proposing evolution on the grounds that God makes it a plausible venture; science claims that it is an adequate naturalistic explanation for the origin of life, and some theists are bowing to this conclusion. Unfortunately, it is their very theism that may tip the balance of credulity. In theory, an unbiased atheist (one without a drive to find a surrogate for the creator) might find evolution harder to swallow than the theist.{36}

If God is behind the evolutionary process at all, then it cannot rightly be called "evolution" by accepted scientific standards. A theistic evolutionist in this sense is merely a progressive creationist. But a theistic evolutionist who defers to naturalistic science, and cedes no ground to God in the course of biological history, must either embrace a logical contradiction or surrender an orthodox reading of Scripture. For this reason, declaring oneself a theistic evolutionist ought to be cause for suspicion both among the scientific community, with which one might hope to be allied, and among the Christian community, which is very concerned with scriptural authority and its doctrines of God. Unfortunately, riding the fence leaves you out of both pastures.

Let me close with another quote by atheist philosopher William Provine, who had the following to say in dialog with a theistic evolutionist.

If you cannot even see in evolution a hint of the designer that made you, most probably your faith is ethereal. Does it make your faith stronger the more it is pushed away into the background? By backing so far off what the Bible says about humans and miracles, seems to me you are throwing out the God with the bathwater. . . . Why is toothless Christianity so appealing? Tell me again why you believe in modern evolution and are given any satisfaction about your divine origin from that? "God is present in everything"? That is not enough—that approaches atheism to me.{37}

Even the critics of Christianity understand the discord in this position, and they are not impressed.  Theistic evolution is a philosophically and theologically bankrupt idea, and should be rejected as such.

References

1. Dr. Phillip Johnson, "The Grand Metaphysical Story of Science", Veritas Forum lecture series, University of Michigan, 1995
2. Douglas J. Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology, (Sinauer Associates, 1986)
3. Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes, Biology, 5th ed. (Worth Publishers, 1989), p.974
4. Laurence Moran, "What is Evolution?", Talk.Origins Archive, 1993
5. "Mutation is the central player in the Darwinian theory of evolution – it is the ultimate source of heritable variation, providing the necessary raw material for natural selection."
   Dmitri A. Petrov, "DNA loss and evolution of genome size in Drosophila," Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, 2002
6. Chris Colby, "Introduction to evolutionary biology," The Talk.Origins Archive, 1996
7. John F. Haught, Ph.D., Science and Religion: From Conflict To Conversation, (Mahwah and New York: Paulist Press, 1995)
8. Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1986), p. 5
9. ibid., p.6
10. "Of course, it is still possible to believe in both modern evolutionary biology and a purposive force, even the Judaeo-Christian God. One can suppose that God started the whole universe or works through the laws of nature (or both). There is no contradiction between this or similar views of God and natural selection. But this view of God is also worthless…. [Such a God] has nothing to do with human morals, answers no prayers, gives no life everlasting, in fact does nothing whatsoever that is detectable. In other words, religion is compatible with modern evolutionary biology (and, indeed, all of modern science) if the religion is effectively indistinguishable from atheism"
    William B. Provine, review of Trial and Error: The American Controversy over Creation and Evolution, by Edward J. Larson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, 224 pp.), Academe, vol. 73 (January/February 1987), pp. 51-52
11. "He succeeds admirably in showing how natural selection allows biologists to dispense with such notions as purpose and design and he does so in a manner readily intelligible to the modern reader"
    Michael T. Ghiselin, New York Times, endorsement for The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, by Richard Dawkins, 1986
12. In 1995 the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) issued the "Statement on Teaching Evolution" that contained the following text: "The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments." In response to intense public and professional pressure the words "unsupervised" and "impersonal" were deleted by action of the NABT Board on October 11, 1997.
13. "Professors should teach evolution in a religiously-neutral fashion, thus allowing religious students to accommodate their religious views to science."
    Eugenie C. Scott, "Problem Concepts in Evolution: Cause, Purpose, Design, and Chance," National Center for Science Education, 1999
14. Only 10% of Americans believe that creation occurred through evolution, wholly apart from God's participation.
    Gallup poll, 1999
15. William B. Provine, review of Trial and Error: The American Controversy over Creation and Evolution, by Edward J. Larson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, 224 pp.), Academe, vol. 73 (January/February 1987), pp. 51-52
16. Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989)
17. "A minister once told me that his theology required that intelligent life aware of a God should evolve; that it took the form of a pentadactyl featherless biped was immaterial. To him, God’s purpose could be realized regardless of the physical form of humankind; we could still be "made in the image of God" whether we had four fingers, scales, or cryptic coloration. To say that the contingencies of evolution disprove the theological idea that God created with a purpose is to misunderstand theology — and probably evolution as well."
    Scott
18. "And, to ask the big question, do we have to assume that from the beginning he planned intelligence and consciousness to develop in a bunch of nearly hairless, bipedal, African primates? If another group of animals had evolved to self-awareness, if another creature had shown itself worthy of a soul, can we really say for certain that God would have been less than pleased with His new Eve and Adam? I don't think so."
    Kenneth Miller, Finding Darwin's God, (Cliff Street Books, 1999)
19. "Humans arose, rather, as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently and sent history on an alternative pathway that would not have led to consciousness."
    Stephen Jay Gould, from: "The Evolution of Life on Earth," Scientific American (October, 1994): pp. 85-86
20. Haught
21. "It is possible that if there is an omnipotent, omniscient deity, it was part of its plan to bring humans and every other species about precisely in the rather zig-zag, contingency-prone fashion which the fossil evidence indicates."
    Eugenie C. Scott, "Creationism, Ideology, and Science", National Center for Science Education, 1996
22. "...finely tuned physical laws which have in fact rendered the process of evolution possible"
    Dr. Denis R. Alexander, "Does Evolution Have Any Religious Significance?", Lecture, 1998, Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK
23. "But given the size of the universe, it is easy to imagine that there may be many such experiments in progress. For all we know, God has revealed Himself to us, according to our many religious traditions, because we were the first of these experiments to be ready; or because we were merely the latest of His many encounters with creation."
    Miller
24. Carl Sagan, Contact, (Doubleday Books, 1997)
25. "It is because God is involved with the world in a loving rather than domineering way that the world evolves. If God were a magician or a dictator, then we might expect the universe to be finished all at once and remain eternally unchanged."
    Haught
26. Regarding a quote from Saint Basil intended to demonstrate early Christian support for theistic evolution, Van Till says, "From this it follows, of course, that the Creator need make no special adjustments at some later date to compensate for inadequate provision at the beginning."
    Howard J. Van Till, "God and Evolution: An Exchange," First Things 34, June/July 1993
27. "It is not that the methods and institutions of the science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."
    Richard Lewontin, “Billions and Billions of Demons,” New York Review of Books, January 9, 1997, p. 31
28. Keith B. Miller, "Theological Implications of an Evolving Creation", American Scientific Affiliation, 1993
29. Romans 1:20
30. William Provine, dialog with theistic evolutionist Howard Van Till, ASA message boards, March 1998
31. "In process thought the universe is actually 'in the making,' and God is incomplete in his concrete nature. If there should come a time when there would be no more 'making,' then the adventure of God would be at an end. The only escape from this conclusion seems to be in terms of a basically transcendental God. This alternative is categorically denied by process philosophy."
    Bernard M. Loomer, "Chapter 4: Christian Faith and Process Philosophy," Process Theology and Christian Thought, (The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. 1971)
32. "One can make a historical case that Whitehead’s [the father of process theology] metaphysic is in some sense a systematic metaphysical description of evolution. Whitehead’s philosophy would certainly be less intelligible if the idea of evolution were not generally known and accepted."
    Ralph E. James, Jr., "Chapter 21: Process Cosmology and Theological Particularity," Process Theology and Christian Thought, (The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. 1971)
33. "The oft-heard claims that natural science either confirms or discredits a theistic concept of divine governance or validates some particular concept of the status of the physical universe in a relationship to deity is careless talk that exposes a failure to honor the boundaries of the scientific domain."
    Van Till, Young, and Menninga, Science Held Hostage, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1988)
34. "The net of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value. These two magisteria do not overlap . . . we [scientists] study how the heavens go, and they [theologians] determine how to go to heaven."
    Stephen Jay Gould, "Nonoverlapping Magisteria," Natural History, March 1997
35. Note that it is scientists who are looked to for answers to questions such as: whether we "ought" to clone humans, why our youth are killing their classmates, if homosexuality is a sin, or if the fetus is a "person" with all the rights that would entail.
36. "the small probabilities bother me less than they would bother an atheist, because I believe in more than just a tinkering God. I believe in a God who knows and cares for even the sparrows (Matthew 10: 29-31). Yahweh is always directing and caring for His creation. He does not show up only when evolution needs a boost"
    Carl Drews, "Theistic Evolution," Theistic-Evolution.com, 2000
37. William Provine, dialog excerpt from ASA message boards, March 1998

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