3.  Lord of Life
================
What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy,
wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature!
  -- Charles Darwin, _in a letter to Joseph D. Hooker,_ 1856

Darwinian evolution is suspected to be accidental, reductionist, and 
quite stubbornly un-theistic.  It keeps company with all the wrong 
sorts of ideas, and is rumored to be capable of befuddling the faith 
of an otherwise upstanding citizen at fifty paces.  This reputation is 
well-deserved.  After Darwin, the creativity we see in nature is no 
longer supernatural, but the result of blind processes.  Special 
creation, a fine example of a religious theory, gives way to 
purposeless trial-and-error.  Evolution accounts for life as we see 
it, warts and all---without a Designer.

1.  Taking Creation Seriously
-----------------------------
Traditionally, God ruled over an earth-centered universe designed with 
humans in mind.  The glory of the heavens and the wondrous harmony of 
nature declared the majesty of their creator.  Everything, from the 
stars above to the various species populating the earth, was specially 
created according to a divine purpose.

The designs of God are no longer so obvious.  Astronomy has demoted
our earth to an obscure planet in a mediocre galaxy; we no longer have
use for "final causes" in physics.  And after Darwin, we have come to
see even the history of life as a product of natural processes, with
no clear plan or purpose.  Before modern science, an occasional
philosopher like David Hume would criticize the argument from Design.
The analogy between human artifacts and living things was shaky, and
nobody had actually seen the divine designer at work.  Still, whatever
its weaknesses, Design explained the intricate functional complexity
in the world.  With nothing to replace this explanation, the natural
world remained evidence for a God.[1]  We now have better theories.

Darwinian evolution replaced intelligent design with an impersonal
explanation.  Belief in God does not lead us to expect life evolved
naturally; our traditional religious stories favor special creation as
a clear sign of God.  Infidels, on the other hand, see evolution as a
model of explaining the world without God.  Christians display a
fish-symbol on their cars, unbelievers a fish inscribed with "Darwin"
and sprouting little legs.

Of course, the debate over creation and evolution does not just pit
infidel champions of science against stalwart defenders of old-time
religion.  Evolution threatens some religions; so in the United
States, many believe in "scientific creationism." But by and large,
our ideas of God have adapted to evolution.  When creationists try to
have their views taught as science, more liberal religious people are
among the staunchest supporters of evolution.  Creationists usually
interpret scriptural creation-stories literally; liberals think this
is a religious mistake as well as a scientific absurdity.[2]  From
misrepresenting scientific literature to encouraging bizarre ideas
like humans and dinosaurs living side by side, creation-science
produces no end of disreputable nonsense.[3]  True or false, God is a
serious idea which should not be saddled with embarrassments like
creation in six days a few thousand years ago.

Still, the creation-evolution debate is relevant to our questions 
about God.  Religion too often modernizes at the cost of demoting God 
to the role of a metaphysical extra never appearing on stage.  If we 
look to traditional and popular beliefs to help us make sense of God, 
creation is at least a starting point.  In a world where life and 
complexity evolve naturally, it becomes difficult to say God created 
life or designed our world.  Theism would be a more comfortable belief 
if evolution was false, or limited, or at least if it was guided by an 
overall purpose.

So let us begin by taking special creation seriously.  To modern eyes, 
creationism looks like an unscientific fantasy, even a bad joke.  But 
there was a time when special creation legitimately explained 
important features of life.

In 1691, one of the founders of natural history set down an argument
which was to exert a dominant influence in science and natural
theology for nearly two centuries.[4]  John Ray's _The Wisdom of God
Manifested in the Works of the Creation_ spoke of divine purpose and
the fixity of species.  This was a static view of nature, in contrast
to the ever-changing complicated mess we perceive today.  As Ray saw
it, the divine plan should be free of the imperfections implied by
large scale or irregular change.  But Ray's picture of nature did more
than satisfy theological needs---it was part of a theoretical
framework which explained the structure of living things by asking
what God might have created them _for._ Birds fly, which means their
wings must be well-designed for that purpose.  Nature must be a
harmonious web of purposes, so the bird also exists in a delicate
balance with its environment.  Furthermore, there is a unity to the
designs of living things.  We can classify creatures in neat
hierarchical groups; we see no abominations like mammals with feathers
or eight legs.  Unity of design and harmony of life is just what we
would expect from a single Designer with a definite overall Purpose.

We now think species change, give rise to other species, and go
extinct.  Species adapt to their environments because genes promoting
reproductive success have a better chance to make it to the next
generation.  We find unity and order when classifying species because
they have a common ancestry.  But though Ray seems mistaken now, it
would be unfair to say he should have known better.  Evolution works
blindly, but it leads to good functional forms.  A bird's wing does
have an aerodynamic "design," even though it was not literally
designed.  When used without implying underlying purpose, design is
still a useful biological metaphor.[5] To understand the common themes
in nature, Ray spoke of a Designer; we look at evolutionary history.
Even the fixity of species was not a baseless assumption.  Modern
views of evolution emphasize the stability and distinct identity of
species; it was once reasonable to believe they were static as
well.[6]

Creationism once made sense of nature.  Indeed, while special creation 
has an intuitive appeal, Darwinian evolution goes against common 
sense.  It is hard to see how random variation can be instrumental to 
achieving complex order, or to understand how humans may be related to 
fish.  And though some of us are experts at holding thousand-year 
ethnic grudges, who has an intuitive feel for a billion years?  We are 
social animals, suspecting purposes behind every falling leaf.  
Darwinian ways of thinking do not come to us naturally.

So common sense and religious tradition combine to make evolution
unpopular.  Some remain strict creationists, still viewing change as a
secondary, degenerative part of the divine plan.  Perhaps after the
first human sin the universe entered a state of decay, and that very
degeneration precludes the formation of more complex order.  On the
other hand, many now accept that new species arise from older
ancestors.  But belief in an underlying purpose in nature lingers
on---only Ray's blatantly static universe has gone out of fashion.  In
the popular imagination, evolution is a progressive process, a ladder
ascending towards humanity.[7]  The popular gods are reconciled only
with a bastardized form of evolution.

Our religions have too much invested in a God who designed the living
world, and a humanity radically different from mere animals.  So
opposition to blind Darwinian evolution usually has religious
reasons;[8] few but religious conservatives wholly deny evolution took
place.  In the United States, where there are many conservative
Protestants, some polls show nearly half the population agrees with a
recent creation of humans.[9]  Islam is no friendlier towards Darwin;
some Muslim apologists even borrow wholesale from the Christian
creationist literature.[10]  The Catholic church has accepted
evolution, but it also insists that however bodies might have
originated, souls are "immediately created by God."[11]

Traditional doctrines of salvation mean the Abrahamic religions will 
continue to resist evolution.  Christians of all denominations have 
trouble fitting Original Sin, the Fall, and the Atonement into an 
evolutionary perspective.  Among Muslims, belief that a Qur'an 
proclaiming the special creation of humans is the literal word of God 
is a stumbling block for evolution.  However, even if we radically 
reinterpret certain doctrines, our ideas of God will clash with 
evolution.  Our religions claim living beings have special properties 
over and above blind natural processes.  In particular, they insist we 
humans are special.  We must be more than an accident of nature: we 
must have souls to save.  Darwinian evolution reduces humans to a part 
and product of material nature, and so it is profoundly disturbing.

Creationism is alive and well because it makes sense within a 
religious view of the world.  We have to struggle, or resort to 
metaphysical tricks, to fit evolution into the religious picture.  
Darwinism makes God superfluous to biology---and beyond.  Furthermore, 
it is hard to see how a perfect God would choose evolution as a method 
of creation.  As a creation-science textbook explains,

    * Evolution is inconsistent with God's omniscience.  The history
    of evolution, as interpreted by evolutionary geologists from the
    fossil record, is filled with extinctions, misfits, evolutionary
    cul-de-sacs, and other like evidences of very poor planning.  The
    very essence of evolution, in fact, is random mutation, not
    scientific progress.  

    * Evolution is inconsistent with God's nature of love.  The
    supposed fact of evolution is best evidenced by the fossils, which
    eloquently speak of a harsh world, filled with storm and upheaval,
    disease and famine, struggle for existence and violent death.  The
    accepted mechanism for inducing evolution is overpopulation and a
    natural selection through extermination of the weak and unfit.  A
    loving God would surely have been more considerate of His
    creatures than this.[12]

Creationists therefore want no compromise with evolution whatsoever.
But the difficulties they see in reconciling Darwin with God apply to
all theistic thought.  Evolution does not suggest an all-powerful
designer choosing the best means to achieve any end intelligible to
us.  Evolutionary change comes about because organisms reproduce in
large numbers, and the new generations compete for the scarce
resources which allow them to reproduce in turn.  There is death in
untold numbers, and a few survive to carry on the cycle.  If a
population finds itself in comfortable circumstances, it will soon
expand to exploit its resources more fully, and end up back at the
edge of starvation.  Where nature is delicately balanced, this is a
balance of suffering, not a happy harmony.  _This_ was the best God
could come up with?[13]

An evolutionary view of life has no use for God; indeed, what we see 
in biology strains our ideas of godly perfection to the breaking 
point.  Evolution is too blatantly naturalistic, too difficult to fit 
in a religious theory of life.  If theists compromise, their God 
becomes remote from the world, no longer the Lord of Life.  If they 
stand firm by creation, they become intellectual embarrassments.  No 
wonder atheists love Darwin.

So non-Darwinian beliefs, from progressive evolution to special 
creation, will remain attractive to theists.  It is tempting, in these 
modern times, to dismiss creation as a relic of an outdated style of 
religion.  But creationists proclaim a God who is active in the world.  
They solve the very real problems evolution introduces for God by 
denying evolution ever took place.  And they use the clearest, most 
obvious form of the argument from Design.  We must take creation 
seriously enough to see how it is wrong.

2.  Science and the Supernatural
--------------------------------
Evolution creates a tension between biology and theology.  Of course,
this does not mean outright incompatibility.  While historians of
science do not find that science and religion complement one another
in happy harmony, neither do they paint a picture of heroic
conflict.[14]  Life is complicated; institutions making serious fact
claims will sometimes agree, sometimes not.  If nothing else,
conflicts can often be papered over.  For example, in the decades
following Darwin, even theological conservatives managed to respond
positively to evolution, accepting it as a way of expressing God's
creative will.[15]  However, the evangelical figures sympathetic to
evolution espoused a non-Darwinian view, in which evolution had an
explicit purpose and direction.  This is obsolete biology.

An alternative to conflict and harmony is to separate science and 
religion completely.  Perhaps they should be like ships passing in the 
dark.  If there seems to be a conflict, it should either be because 
someone is using science to address matters science can properly say 
nothing about, or because we have a religion which is attempting to 
teach us about the heavens and not how to get to heaven.  If we put 
science and religion in their rightful spheres, all conflicts will 
evaporate.

Creationism is obviously religious and aggressively against modern 
science, and thus is a thorn in the side of such hopes for 
compatibility.  It would be best if special creation was a proposition 
we cannot legitimately consider within science; if the apparent 
mismatch between evolution and God was just a philosophical mistake.

Americans love to stage a big monkey trial every now and then.  One of 
the recent episodes ended in a resounding victory against teaching 
creation in science classes.  Relying on the testimony of philosopher 
Michael Ruse, Judge William R. Overton declared in his decision that

    the essential characteristics of science are:

    (1) It is guided by natural law;
    (2) It has to be explanatory with reference to natural law;
    (3) It is testable against the empirical world; 
    (4) Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily
    the final word; and 
    (5) It is falsifiable.  (Ruse and other science witnesses)

    Creation science . . . fails to meet these essential
    characteristics.[16]

Unfortunately, this is not quite correct.  These rules do not describe 
science well; neither do they exclude creationism.

Overton's item (5) refers to Karl Popper's idea of using
falsifiability to distinguish genuine scientific claims from those
only masquerading as science.  Science is about explaining the world,
so its theories must have some real content we can put to the test.
These theories can possibly be shown to be false.  In contrast,
pseudosciences produce an excuse to fit every observation.[17]
Scientific explanations _discriminate_ between
alternatives---explanations which cannot fail convey no real
information.

Scientific claims should indeed have some real content.  But this is a
very minimal requirement.  If we make falsifiability the centerpiece
of a philosophy of science, we will not only fail to describe science,
but we will lose sight of what is wrong with creationism.[18]
Creationists assert that beneficial mutations happen too rarely for
life to diversify even in geological time spans.  Biologists think
this claim is mistaken, not unfalsifiable.  Creationists declare that
functional order cannot self-organize without an intelligent designer.
Physicists point out this is false; they do not say it is verbiage
science must be blind to.  There is nothing wrong with the _content_
of creationist claims; science is exactly how we find out they are not
likely to be true.

Outside the company of philosophers and theologians, unfalsifiability
is exceedingly hard to find.  Consider the creation-science claim that
"The whole universe had an `appearance of age' right from the
start."[19]  God created a fully functional order, which means we
sometimes mistakenly infer long ages past when the world is in fact
new.  A breathtakingly ingenious idea, though obviously inane.  We
might as well declare the world sprung into being last Tuesday at 3:04
pm, with full appearance of age.  It looks like an excuse which can
take care of any evidence contrary to creation.  But is it really so
devoid of content?

The last-Tuesday assertion is arbitrary, without context, worthless to
anyone but the sort of philosopher who enjoys proving true knowledge
is impossible.  The creationist claim is set in a cosmology and
history which could have evidence for it.  Creationism is a rather
half-baked theory about our world, but a picture of how the world
works nonetheless.  Creationists take scripture to be literally true,
and find an overall theme uniting scriptural stories.  And evidence
for one story can count for another in a mutually supporting web of
claims.  If we had reason to believe prophets saw into the future,
angels communicated in dreams, or the Tower of Babel story really took
place, we would begin to take the six-day creation story more
seriously.

We can even give creation with appearance of age some scientific
content.  Young-earth creationists say that when we extrapolate
physical processes backwards in time, we end up with contradictions
regarding the state of the universe, which resist reconciliation
within naturalistic cosmologies.[20]  This indicates the world was
supernaturally created, and it started from a more perfect state.
Creationists also have some idea what was created with an appearance
of age, and what was not.  Presumably Adam would have a navel but no
memory of parents.  All this is very half-baked, even ridiculous, but
a half-baked theory is still good enough to rescue creationism from
being empirically vacuous.  We reject special creation because we have
a _better theory,_ not because it is unfalsifiable.

Numbers (1) and (2) in Overton's list tell us scientific explanations
must refer to "natural law."[21]  Science, in this scenario, is
committed to "methodological naturalism"[22]---explaining observations
by means of universal and impersonal regularities in nature.  Nature
may be all there is, or there may be something beyond, but we can only
decide that by making a metaphysical commitment.  Creationists explain
life by the actions of a supernatural power.  Therefore they go beyond
science.  We clap our hands, throw creation-science out of biology
classes, go home and live happily ever after.

Unfortunately, we are interested in whether creation or evolution is 
true, not which side of an arbitrary line between science and 
non-science they fall on.  If creation and evolution are both 
intelligible fact claims, and we must decide which is more likely, 
what good is a science confined to naturalistic explanations?

We all have a rough idea what "supernatural" means, if only that it
has to do with answered prayers, ghosts, or summoning demons.  It is
not just something violating our present understanding of the world;
we do not step into the supernatural every time we revise our physics.
A bleeding Madonna is interesting only if it is a sign from God.  We
invoke the supernatural when we explain something not by an impersonal
cause or pattern but by the intentions of a personal entity with
special power over the mundane world---for example, when we explain
mental disorder as possession by a demon.  A supernatural claim can be
as pedestrian as last night's dream being a message from the
spirit-world, or as metaphysically convoluted as a world-soul, but it
invariably involves a _personal_ force.  And for the supernatural to
be religiously significant, the natural world must be dependent on
such a spiritual reality.  Personality must be more fundamental than
atoms or quantum fields or any conceivable material existence.
Ultimately, we must explain events by understanding God's intentions.

Personal explanations are not the stuff of physics and chemistry.  
However, we are used to explaining events by recounting the actions 
and intentions of our fellow humans.  History, including evolutionary 
history, does not seem to have the sort of laws which allow precise 
predictions about the future.  But we find patterns to explain the 
course of events, and in human history these patterns have a lot to do 
with the decisions people make.  We have a tolerably good idea what 
makes a good personal explanation; after all, it is an important 
survival skill for a social animal.  It is no great leap to think of 
personal forces beyond our mundane world, and reason about whether 
such supernatural explanations are the best we can do.  We can also 
construct analogies like the Great Programmer to help us think of a 
supreme supernatural person.  And we reason about religious theories 
of the world the way we do with scientific theories---the supernatural 
is not some sort of logical barrier science cannot cross.

Creationists bring in supernatural persons to explain what they
believe to be the facts.  They do not use the capricious acts of
spirits as a universal excuse; they rely on quasi-naturalistic
explanations where they think it necessary.  They may say God caused a
worldwide flood to punish human sin, but they also ask questions about
where the flood waters come from, if Noah's Ark was seaworthy, or
whether hydrodynamic sorting helps explain the stratigraphic order of
fossils.[23]  Of course, almost all scientists consider work on such
questions a waste of time, since we do so much better with a
naturalistic approach.  Creationist speculation can also be distinctly
weird, as when Henry M.  Morris wonders whether the deception of Eve
involved "telepathic or hypnotic communication, with Satan using the
serpent as the object to induce a state of transfixed attention in the
unsuspecting woman. . ."[24]  But all this does not mean creationist
hypotheses have a fatal logical flaw.  If we no longer believe that
species were specially created, it is because we have learned
otherwise, not because creation is beyond the pale of science.

Is there nothing, then, to falsifiability or natural law?  Not quite.
Creationists often _do_ react to contrary evidence by producing
excuses; they _do_ take scripture-stories to be non-negotiable truths.
But the faults of those defending special creation are not defects of
the idea itself.  Also, scientists usually _do_ have an aversion to
supernaturalism and finding purpose in nature.[25] But this reflects
our historical experience; it does not mean the supernatural must be
excluded from science.  Supernatural explanations have not fared well
in modern science, so we would need a good reason before we start
paying them much attention.

Of course, criticizing creationism is beating a dead horse; it hardly 
is the best religious theory available.  But the fact we cannot rule 
even special creation out of court as a philosophical mistake is a 
good indication that religious claims are not off-limits to science.  
No religion making serious fact claims can be isolated from scientific 
criticism.  Some religions respond to secular knowledge by retreating 
into metaphysical realms; some, like the creationists, stand firm and 
say modern science is mistaken.  But there is no way of dividing up 
reality so that science concerns itself with one part and religion 
another.

This means _there is nothing inherently wrong with supernatural
claims._ We might, after all, find evidence for them.  Some atheists
draw a sharp line between the natural and supernatural and claim that
a supernatural God makes no sense.  Philosopher George H. Smith
argues:

    If a supernatural being is to be exempt from natural law, it
    cannot possess specific, determinate characteristics.  These
    attributes would impose limits and these limits would restrict the
    capacities of this supernatural being.  In this case, a
    supernatural being would be subject to the causal relationships
    that mark natural existence, which would disqualify it as a
    god.[26]

Perhaps some overly metaphysical concepts of God are flawed in this
way.  But Smith's argument says nothing about a Great Programmer, or
most any sort of fundamental spiritual reality religions proclaim.  If
there is a general argument against supernatural claims, it will not
emerge just by philosophical analysis.  Seeing exactly how a
supernatural theory like special creation fails will tell us a lot
more.

3.  God of the Gaps
-------------------
Two hundred years ago, astronomer John Playfair argued the solar
system must have a divine origin, because of its stability and because
all planets orbited in the same direction and plane.[27] The fact that
the planets were not just haphazardly thrown around called for an
explanation.  This gap in our knowledge could be filled by noticing
the planets had a functional order, which our own existence and
welfare depended upon.  A supernatural being purposing our welfare
could have determined this order.

With a few more centuries of physics and biology under our belt, we
are now used to explaining order by blind natural processes.  However,
Design arguments survive in a slightly mutated form.  Creationists
say, "A new structural or organic feature which would confer a real
advantage in the struggle for existence---say a wing, for a previously
earth-bound animal, or an eye, for a hitherto sightless animal---would
be useless or even harmful until fully developed."[28]  What good is
half a wing?  It seems useless for flight, and a hindrance on the
ground.  Looking at living things, creationists find many organs which
would be worse than useless unless full-formed.  Mere chance or blind
mechanisms cannot gradually build up these structures.  We have a gap
in our naturalistic explanations, which can be filled by intelligent
design.

Indeed, most supernatural beliefs rely on gaps in our ordinary ways of
explaining things.  Unless natural explanations fail, a bleeding
Madonna is a poor candidate for a divine miracle.  Unfortunately, this
"God of the Gaps" is out of favor today.  For one thing, it has failed
too often.  All we need to answer Playfair is a half-decent theory of
planet formation; evolution bridges the creationists' gaps.  If
history is anything to go by, the bleeding Madonna is a pious fraud.
Another problem with gaps is knowing where to stop.  If we call
everything we have trouble explaining an act of God, "God" is nothing
but a placeholder for ignorance.

The remedy is to find a theory which tells us which gaps we should 
expect, and why they are significant.  God must legitimately account 
for some facts naturalists are forced to leave unexplained.  A gap 
standing alone tells us nothing, since a purely natural world is full 
of brute facts.  We can shrug off bare gaps.  But a pattern of gaps 
explained by the purposes and acts of a God is just what a religious 
theory needs.

Traditional religion already has the rudiments of a gap-theory.  For
example, not every gap in our knowledge is supposed to be a sign of
God.  If our current physics turns out to be incapable of explaining
high-temperature superconductivity, theologians will not start dancing
in the streets.  Whether superconductivity calls for new physical
principles does not stroke the human ego one way or another.  The
significant gaps are those separating order from chaos, animate from
inanimate, life from non-life, humans from other animals, and
consciousness from non-conscious matter.[29] Many of us feel we cannot
start from a lower stage like a lifeless universe, and get to a higher
level without an outside intelligence giving the process a push.  In
fact, we often have an even stronger sense of gaps.  Many of us think
life, mind and so on are wholly special.  These need a special
spark---just throwing dead matter together in a complex configuration
will not do the trick.  Perhaps such gaps separate different stages of
being from one another.  There might even be a spiritual hierarchy
culminating in God, who is pure spirit and ultimate intelligence.

Religion can make good use of stages of being separated by 
unbridgeable gaps.  Christian philosopher J.P. Moreland points out:

    Throughout the history of the church, the classic understanding of
    living things has included the doctrine that animals, as well as
    humans, have souls.  Christians have maintained this because the
    Bible teaches that animals have souls (Gen. 1:30, Rev. 8:9).
    Furthermore, Christians have believed that animals are not merely
    automatons, capable of exhaustive description in terms of the laws
    of chemistry and physics.  Rather, animals are living things with
    a principle of life in them (an animal soul), and they have
    sensory awareness, feel pain, and enjoy a certain form of sentient
    life.[30]

If it is impossible to animate a living creature by bringing the right
chemicals together in the right arrangement, the Abrahamic God who
breathes life into mere matter becomes more respectable.  If life
requires an "animal soul" or vital essence, we may need the
supernatural to explain how life came to exist where once there was
nothing but chemistry.  And if we superbly rational and sublimely
spiritual humans have an even more rarefied soul, we have to wonder if
a God infused us with these souls.  Of course, from an evolutionary
perspective, any kind of soul is an unlikely and unnecessary
discontinuity in nature.  But if life or mind were properties we could
not reduce to complex material processes, we may have to limit the
scope of evolution and reinstate God in our theories about life.[31]

Science is no stranger to irreducible properties.  For example, so
far, the electric charge of an electron seems irreducible.  We know of
no way to determine an electron's charge in terms of its other
properties.  We cannot construct a charged object by combining
uncharged objects, no matter how complex their non-electromagnetic
interactions.  On the other hand, science often progresses by reducing
the terms of one theory to that of another.  We understand the
thermodynamics of macroscopic objects fairly well, so engineers have
no problem calculating how their devices handle heat flow or changing
temperatures.  But at the microscopic level, there are only particles
bouncing around; atoms have no temperature.  We explain temperature by
reducing it to a quantity depending on the average speed of the
particles making up an object.  Physicists still dispute some details
about how to derive thermodynamics from statistical physics,[32] but
few think there is something irreducibly special about properties like
temperature.

Electric charge is not the sort of irreducible property which could
support a God of the Gaps.  And modern science has no use for
irreducible properties outside of elementary particle physics.  We
have a good idea of how molecules form and interact, so it looks like
chemistry is reducible to physics.  Molecular biology goes a long way
towards reducing life to chemistry.  We connect our sciences to one
another without inventing souls for molecules or animals.  In particle
physics, irreducible properties are still useful; for example, when
physicists had to explain how atomic nuclei held together.  A nucleus
contains many positively charged protons, which somehow do not fly
apart with their mutual electrical repulsion.  This sort of thing was
clearly impossible unless our physics was incomplete.  So there had to
be a "strong nuclear force" which bound protons and neutrons to one
another.  But physicists do not invent new forces to explain
superconductivity.  We know that the interactions fundamental physics
already allows for can produce phenomenally complex systems with
strange and unforeseen properties.  No serious physicist would propose
that superconductivity is a magic property appearing in some complex
materials---this is too obviously a fake explanation.

Life appears in systems vastly more complex than superconductors, and
it is also not a magical entity beyond physics.  Almost no biologist
believes in vital essences or animal souls any more.  Still, some
biologists are suspicious of reductionism.  Biological objects are not
the same as the particles of physics; and evolution is a historical
explanation, not a timeless physical theory.  Biologists even think
differently; a feel for the organism is not the same as the intuitions
physicists develop.  This is all true, but physicists do know a few
things about complexity and history.  In the last few decades our
understanding of complex dynamical systems has grown immensely, and so
physics and biology have drawn closer.  As physicist and biologist
Mikhail Volkenstein observed, "The anti-reductionism of a number of
biologists can evidently be explained in a simple way.  These
scientists, among whom there are outstanding individuals such as Mayr,
are not acquainted with modern physics."[33]  We understand biology
_and_ physics better by connecting them to one another.

This does not mean our sciences do nothing but work out the 
implications of fundamental physics.  Molecules, species, and persons 
have legitimate identities of their own; no sane scientist studying 
zebras would begin by writing down equations of motion.  But we would 
prefer zebras to be one of the consequences of physics---if it so 
happens that our physics cannot account for zebras, we have to look 
for a better physical theory.  Physics constrains zebras, and zebras 
test our physical theories.  Reductionism means our sciences are 
interdependent; it does not collapse all knowledge onto microscopic 
physics.

A world reducible to physics also does not mean everything interesting
happens in the microscopic realm.  The Roman poet Lucretius explained
everything by atoms; he even said special, exceptionally small and
light atoms made up the soul.[34]  But saying, for example, that
disease is caused by Lucretius's "toxic atoms," is not much of an
explanation at all.  This merely reproduces a mysterious
disease-causing property in the atomic world, it does not _reduce_ it
to physical terms which do not include toxicity.[35]  In contrast,
modern medical science legitimately explains how a toxic substance
disrupts biological systems.  This does not mean reductionist medicine
must ignore the patient's psychology or social environment, and attack
every problem with a drug designed to alter biochemistry---getting rid
of a local toxic waste dump may well be the best way to prevent a
biological problem.  Reductionism is a way of understanding
complexity, not denying it.

Of course, plenty of philosophers think reductionism is a dirty word.
Vital essences are out of fashion, but the belief that life exhibits a
unique "sensitivity" irreducible to physics lingers on.[36] Many think
there is something "irreducibly mental" about our inner life, though
the soul is not as popular as it once was.  So defenders of mind and
meaning keep battling the philosophers of "reductive materialism."[37]
But whether there is anything irreducible in our world beyond physics
is not a matter for philosophy to decide.  There is much we do not
know, but we can extrapolate from what we have learned so far.
Molecules, zebras and so on seem to be complex arrangements of
physical objects.  As far as we can tell, there is nothing like an
essence of zebraness which binds to a collection of atoms to turn it
into a genuine zebra.  We connect our sciences to one another without
magic, without bizarre discontinuities in nature beyond physics.
Moreover, there are fruitful research programs trying to explain
"gaps" like life or human intelligence.  We work on artificial life,
on how nonequilibrium statistical physics helps us understand complex
systems, on reducing the gulf between life and chemical soup to
smaller and smaller gaps.  Biology studies more than reproducing and
eating, but when we grasp the physics of self-replicating entities
exporting entropy to their environment, we have come closer to
understanding life.

Claiming irreducible gaps does not work; it ends up denying we can 
learn about the world, rather than using God to actually explain any 
gaps.  A theory which depends on life or mind being a magical property 
is just waiting to be overrun by progressing science.

4.  Building Bridges
--------------------
Even in a world reducible to physics, there can be plenty of gaps.  
There still is the question of how we end up with the complex 
arrangements we see.  Consider John Playfair's belief that the solar 
system was a result of divine Providence.  There is no hint of 
irreducible properties in his argument, only the conviction that we 
have no reason to expect order in a purely natural universe.  We could 
just as well have planets cavorting in unstable orbits, rotating any 
which way in orbital planes with no relation to one another.  Blind 
chance would have produced just such a haphazard arrangement; what we 
actually see is highly improbable.  Bring on the Designer.

Creationists also love improbability.[38]  Even the simplest cell
depends on a very precise arrangement of proteins in order to function
at all.  The number of possible protein configurations is staggeringly
large, and those which are biologically useful are a miniscule
proportion of these.[39]  The probability of creating life by randomly
throwing proteins together is practically nil; we have a better chance
of setting a monkey to bang at a typewriter and watching it type out
the works of Shakespeare.  To produce one animal by altering the
genetic code of another, we would have to make a large number of
coordinated changes.  A series of chance mutations could bridge this
gap, but the probability is again vanishingly small.

The creationist improbability-argument looks very similar to
Playfair's Design argument, but there is an important difference.
Playfair's improbability vanishes when a theory of planetary formation
tells us how planets are physically constrained.  Now, a constrained
system can be described simply, with very little information.  But a
code can only convey information if it can also express gibberish.  A
chain of DNA may code a chemical "message" which is biological drivel,
yet be as physically stable as any real genetic code.  This property
is precisely what makes DNA suitable to express a genetic code.  So
physical constraints are not enough to understand life.  Creationists
believe that the complex information embodied in living beings could
only have been programmed into them by a Designer.

Darwinian evolution overcomes this problem by ratcheting up complexity
step by step.  We first need some self-replicators, however
pedestrian, which pass information down to further generations.  Then
we need a world operating by Murphy's Law---ensuring things will
occasionally go wrong in copying.  Accidental errors which change our
replicators in a way which promotes better replication will be
retained in successive generations.  This is a simple idea, yet it is
a general purpose gap-destroyer.[40]  We can even build bridges with
it.

Imagine a planet with lots of streams, and dimwitted natives.  They
need to cross their local streams very often, jumping from one stone
to another, using the occasional fallen tree, and so on.  But these
natural "bridges" have keepers, who take tolls from users.  Since this
is a decent living, there is competition for bridge-keeping.  Every
now and then, a rival keeper sets up a new bridge close by, copying a
bridge which seems to be earning well in a neighboring village, or
even copying the bridge she hopes to supplant.  She tries to copy the
design as closely as possible; cutting stones from the quarry to have
the same sort of shape and felling trees that look similar.  But the
copying process is not perfect.  The stone will be just a bit
different in size, have a protrusion where the original had a
concavity, and so on.

Now, bridges have to support their keepers.  Unless a bridge keeps up
with the local competition, it will be abandoned and decay.  More
importantly, others will not copy the unsuccessful bridge.  But
accidental improvements in bridge design will tend to survive in the
next generation, displacing earlier versions.  For example, a natural
bridge might contain a log wedged between stones, partially under
water, and impeding the flow of water by gathering all sorts of
floating debris.  In some copies of this design the log will be lifted
further up out of the water, in some sunk further below.  Some copies
have the log wedged slightly more securely, some less.  Bridges which
are slightly more stable and less flow-impeding will also be slightly
more convenient for the customer and need less maintenance, and so
have a more comfortable keeper.  Aspiring keepers will be slightly
more likely to copy her bridge.  Eventually there will be bridges
containing segments where a log is wedged tightly between large stones
and lifted clear from the water.  In time there will be bridges
consisting entirely of such segments.  Older designs will be replaced,
but some will survive in certain environments.  On streams which flood
violently and frequently, the log structure will be swept away too
often to be viable.  Bridges there will be big boulders set at
intervals people can step across.

The bridges will keep improving.  For example, structures where a 
protrusion on a rock happens to meet a depression in a piece of wood 
will be slightly more stable.  This will evolve into interlocking 
structures allowing more complex bridges, raised higher off the level 
of the water.  Some of these, originating over milder waters, will 
migrate to regions with flooding waters.  Having overcome the 
deficiencies of the wedged-log bridges, they will replace the old 
boulder-bridges.  Eventually, many bridge species will be quite 
sophisticated.  They will be adapted to their local conditions, have 
an efficient distribution of loads, and be well designed against wind 
and flood.  Different designs will be successful in different 
environments: there will be some suspension bridges, some arched stone 
bridges with no wood at all.  In fact, the planet will produce some 
very good engineering designs, though the project will be way over 
budget and a million years past deadline.  But there will be no 
designer.  The dimwitted natives will know no more about engineering 
than a million years before; all the keepers do is copy other bridges 
and collect tolls.

Darwinian evolution is a broad enough principle to build bridges in a
science fiction story.  Functional bridges are a miniscule portion of
all physically possible arrangements of stones and wood, yet they
originate and complexify vigorously.  But the improbability argument
is not quite dead yet.  To get from fallen logs to the Golden Gate we
need a path of continual gradual improvement.  At each step of the
way, we must have a better bridge.  What if no such path exists?  For
example, what sort of gradual improvement in flight capability would
give rise to a wing?  Functionally, half a wing seems worse than
useless.  Perhaps living things are located in widely separated
"islands of function," and there is no gradual path connecting these
islands.  Once again, evolution becomes enormously improbable.[41]
Without functional intermediates, we need massive coordinated change
to obtain even simple living creatures.  And this sort of thing is
exactly what a Designer is good at accomplishing.

Recall the frequently flooding streams from our bridge story.
Log-bridges were less successful than sturdy boulders, and so there
was no intermediate between primitive bridges and structures raised
high above the waters.  But we did not need a series of bridges all
gradually better at crossing _flooding_ streams.  Elevated bridges
developed in a different environment, and then migrated to other
places where they worked well.  The bridges need not always get better
at a single function in a single environment.  With life, the idea of
gradual improvement in a single direction is even more misleading.  An
organism has no fixed function; being able to replicate its genes is
all that matters.  Under some circumstances, an ability to fly will be
selected for; under others, losing flight will be advantageous.  This
possibility of being functional in many ways strongly increases the
likelihood of there being functional intermediates.  A species'
evolution can be roughly thought of as a population moving on a
"fitness landscape."[42]  This landscape is quite mountainous; there
are few low fertile valleys in which species can flourish.  Now,
imagine a blind robot in a rugged countryside, who wants to move to
low ground as much as possible.  There is a lower valley just west of
the one it lives in, but there is a hill in between.  Our robot tests
the ground in its immediate vicinity, and keeps moving to lower spots.
If constrained to move between East and West, the robot will never
find the valley.  But if there is another dimension it can
explore---moving North-South as well---it can go _around_ the hill,
eventually ending up both West of its starting point, and at lower
ground.  The more dimensions, the better the chance of there being a
path.[43]  And life is nothing if not multidimensional.

With insects, for example, there are at least two evolutionary
scenarios proposing uses for half a wing.  Proto-wings may have been
useful at first for heat regulation alone, and later became gliding
implements, then flying wings.[44]  A more recent theory suggests
rudimentary wings were useful at first to skim across water surfaces,
as a form of locomotion intermediate between swimming and flying still
seen in some primitive insects.[45]  Or consider one of the more
prominent gaps in biology---between prokaryotes and eukaryotes.
Prokaryotes are primitive cells, not much more than genetic material
and some chemical soup wrapped in a membrane.  Eukaryotes are highly
complex, containing many specialized organelles, some even with their
own genetic material.  Conventional pictures of evolution lead us to
expect gradually increasing complexity within a lineage of originally
prokaryotic cells.  But the path actually taken may have been more
interesting.  A eukaryote is probably a result of symbiosis---a
partnership between different prokaryotes which evolved into a
union.[46]

The multi-dimensionality of the fitness landscape means discovering
the path evolution took can be very difficult.  Solutions like
symbiotic evolution are not intuitively obvious.  Of course, there are
always clues to history in the present; organelles with their own
genetic material certainly suggest past symbiosis.  And since
evolution is not a mechanism for perfection, we see "senseless signs
of history" in life.[47]  But without very detailed evidence, it is
hard to figure out exactly what happened.  We do not always have a
reasonably rich fossil record to guide us.  So the sheer complexity of
life means we will always have gaps.  But these are gaps in our
knowledge, not the sort of gap a supernatural theory requires.

Creationists feel cheated at this point.  Is this not using complexity
as an excuse?  Are evolutionists just expressing faith that a
naturalistic bridge over their gaps must exist?  Not at all.  First of
all, life on earth fits a pattern of common descent.  Evolution does
not produce mammals sprouting feathered wings on their shoulders, even
though this is physically possible, and perhaps adaptively
advantageous.  We do not see multiple radically different
biochemistries in living things.  A Designer could pick out arbitrary
spots on a fitness landscape; evolution explores connected valleys.
We do not expect to be able to reconstruct history in every case.
Both our evidence and our ability to theoretically imagine the fitness
landscape are limited.  But often what we can do is good enough to
understand evolutionary histories.  In cases where we do have enough
information, we succeed; in others, we keep making progress.  If we
came upon a burnt-up truck by the road, saw some blue balls scattered
around, many half-burnt blue balls, and even more so badly damaged we
couldn't tell their color, we would conclude it very likely that the
original cargo consisted of blue balls.  Similarly, what we have
learned about evolution is a _sampling_ from the history of life.  All
fit a naturalistic pattern, which is excellent reason to believe that
where we are still in the dark there is a lack of knowledge, not real
gaps.

Consider, for example, the origin of life.  This is a difficult
problem, exacerbated by our lack of anything like a fossil record of
prebiotic history.  We may never find out exactly what happened, yet
chemical evolution is an exciting area of science making real
progress.  At the origin of life, Darwinian explanations and
physical-constraint explanations meet one another.  The Darwinian step
is to look for simpler replicators as precursors to present-day
biochemistry.  For example, a good candidate to explain how genetic
information came to be DNA-based is that it evolved out of a simpler
"RNA world." On the other hand, certain properties of life suggest
physical constraints.  Life is composed of asymmetric amino acids and
sugars, of which somehow only one form appears and not the mirror
image.  This may be a historical accident, but physical asymmetries
may well have something to do with it.[48]  As with the origin of
species, we understand the origin of life by reducing yawning gulfs to
smaller gaps.  Again, we have every reason to believe the "gaps" we
see are a lack of knowledge, not signs of a Designer.

Modern science explains life in a relentlessly naturalistic fashion.
This is not because supernatural forces are against the rules of
science; it just so happens that we do not need a God in biology.  The
traditional theistic gaps have been bridged.  Order exists at the edge
of chaos, and life emerges from dead chemicals.  Strict special
creationism is mistaken, but evolution cuts deeper.  However absurd
their position may be, creationists use very typical arguments in
support of Design.  Others will also try to make God the Lord of Life
once again.  They may concede a lot more to evolution than a
creation-scientist, but they will try and limit Darwin in much the
same way.  They will set aside domains inaccessible to mere physics,
produce improbability arguments, find gaps of "irreducible complexity"
unbridgeable without supernatural intervention.[49]

After Darwin, we need very good reasons to believe a gap-candidate is 
not just an accident or another gap in our knowledge.  A strong theory 
could provide these reasons, explaining the gaps rather than just 
declaring naturalism fails.  Creationism is a legitimate hypothesis, 
but it is still woefully half-baked as a theory.  And traditonally 
Design has been a rather weak argument, supported mainly by a lack of 
natural alternatives.  Nothing in the Design tradition suggests it can 
be developed into the kind of theory capable of replacing the 
naturalistic presumption modern science has established.  So there is 
not much hope for the God of the Gaps.  That God is dead; not because 
of theological defects, not because of philosophical criticism, but 
because science has removed it from serious consideration.

5.  Higher and Higher
---------------------
Finding a pattern of gaps explained by some supernatural purpose would 
be the best way to establish Design.  But a world without the 
traditional gaps might still manifest divine purpose.  Perhaps there 
is a Purpose behind the progressive course of evolutionary history.  
First there were subatomic particles, which came together to produce 
atoms and molecules.  Then complex macromolecules and primitive life 
arose.  Cells joined together, made eucaryotes, which again joined to 
make complex animals.  Finally, conscious, spiritual animals emerged, 
at the top of the evolutionary ladder.

Perhaps evolution is a process by which the universe ascends through 
the levels of a spiritual hierarchy.  The mechanisms of evolution seem 
blind and all too material, but in the big picture we once again see 
Purpose.  The history of life is underlaid by a progressive force 
producing higher and higher complexity and consciousness.  Perhaps 
this is even a metaphysical necessity, so theism is not only 
compatible with evolution but actively demands progressive 
development.  As theologian John F. Haught puts it,

    if God is infinite love giving itself to the cosmos, then the
    finite world cannot possibly receive this limitless, gracious
    abundance in any single instant.  In response to the outpouring of
    God's boundless love the universe would be invited to undergo a
    process of self-transformation.  In order to "adapt" to the divine
    infinity, the finite cosmos would likely have to intensify, in a
    continuously more expansive way, its own capacity to receive such
    an overflowing love.  In other words, it might endure what we know
    scientifically as an arduous and dramatic evolution towards
    increasing complexity, life, and consciousness.  In the final
    analysis, it is as a consequence of the infusion of God's
    self-giving love that the universe is excited onto a path of
    self-transcendence, that is to say, evolution.[50]

It takes a theologian to see evolution as an outpouring of _love_, of
all things.  It might have made some sense if the biological world
were a benign place; a sunlit meadow with butterflies flitting
harmoniously around, occasionally given a gentle push by divine magic
in the direction of further improvement.  But if nature is not always
red in tooth and claw, there is still plenty about evolution which is
positively disgusting.

German theologian Gerd Theissen has an ingenious way around the
difficulty.[51]  He suggests natural selection is a process which
ensures that only structures more compatible with an underlying
reality survive.  Widespread human religiosity is perhaps an
adaptation to a fundamentally spiritual reality.  Evolution is
progress, now in the direction of more refined monotheistic faith.
But what about the fact that selection is a rather nasty engine of
progress?  Theissen's God is revealed in an ethical principle of
equality, of kinship that goes beyond genetic affinity.  God is
unconditional tolerance of variation, against the cruelty of
selection.  Human progress towards God also is against selection and
death, made clear in the message of Jesus.  Culture insulates
individuals from the usual selective pressures; evolutionary history
is also progress toward ethical ideals.  Original sin is the
competitive biological condition from which we are still struggling to
emerge.

Whatever one might think of the theologians' efforts, evolution as a 
progressive force is an enormously attractive notion.  Liberal theists 
get rhapsodic about it, New Agers dream of a planetary transformation 
as the next stage of evolution.  It seems a creative force permeates 
reality at its deepest levels, gradually coaxing order out of chaos, 
spirituality out of brute material existence.  The God of progressive 
evolution is more amorphous and elusive than the creationist Lord, but 
that is a small price to pay.  History is the stage for a grand 
purpose after all, though the drama is acted over billions of years 
and not the traditional thousands.

Progressive evolution is also a mystical idea, inspired by the unity
of creation.  Creation-scientists see God in majestic gaps requiring a
supernatural power to bridge; progression gives us an intimate God
revealed in a fundamentally purposeful world.  This was perhaps best
expressed by the paleontologist and Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin.
His God is the source of the progressive evolutionary processes in the
universe, _and_ its final goal, its "Omega Point." Teilhard's progress
is not just a metaphysical gloss of the kind so beloved to
theologians.  It is a real claim:

    . . . evolution has a precise _orientation_ and a privileged
    _axis_ . . . I believe I can see a direction and a line of
    progress for life, a line and a direction which are in fact so
    well marked that I am convinced their reality will be universally
    admitted by the science of tomorrow.[52]

Teilhard sees life as a movement towards spirit and personality; in
fact, this is so regular as to be summed up in a "law of consciousness
and complexity."  As in the days before evolution, we are the crown of
creation.  And there is potentially even better to come, as life
progresses ever higher and higher.


Purposive evolution is an attractive idea, but it is very 
un-Darwinian.  To begin with, Teilhard's privileged axis is not there.  
Drawing the relationships of descent which connects living things to 
one another, we get a bush branching out every which way.  Not a 
linear progression, not a tree with a thick trunk standing for an 
evolutionary mainstream.  Cockroaches and bacteria are as much the end 
point of evolution as a bunch of self-important primates.  Far from 
being universally admitted, Teilhard's ideas are irrelevant to modern 
biology.  Biology today is thoroughly Darwinian, understanding life 
without invoking grand purposes.

Curiously, the Darwinian revolution did not take place in Darwin's
lifetime.  Darwin rapidly convinced biologists that evolution had
occurred, but natural selection and a purely naturalistic approach did
not take hold.  In the decades after Darwin, many different
evolutionary theories took the stage, and almost all made room for a
purposeful direction in the history of life.  Many biologists took a
developmental view, believing evolution was an unfolding of
potentialities intrinsic to the structures of living things.  Life
complexified by a progression which was in the nature of being---not
through Darwinian accidents and blind trial-and-error.  A God could
well be the force guiding this progress, though it would be a deity
more like that of a Hegelian philosopher than a Hebrew prophet.
Darwin got eclipsed, selection was treated as a minor, conservative
factor in evolution.[53]  Nature could still satisfy moral hopes and
supply religious meaning, and philosophers found much in biology to
erect their deep purposive metaphysics on.[54]

Between the 1930's and 50's an "evolutionary constriction" took place,
which radically reduced the number and kind of theories in play.
Modern genetics had much to do with this, along with other maturing
biological disciplines.  Biologists did not reach a tidy consensus;
open questions on matters like the significance of genetic drift, the
details of speciation, how much of large scale change is concentrated
in speciation events, and so on are still with us.  But after the
constriction, these were the important issues.  The debates were about
only blind, Darwinian mechanisms.  Purposive theories disappeared,
evolutionary biologists no longer talked of guiding aims or
progressive forces manifesting themselves in biological
structures.[55]

Purpose is gone; progress is another matter.  Evolution does, after
all, produce directional, cumulative changes.  The history of life is
not dominated by any single direction, of course---the superabundant
diversity among insects is as much of a part of the story of evolution
as increasing cognitive capabilities.  We are more interested in the
latter, because it is _our_ story.  While increasing complexity and
brain power is a biological trend, it is not central to evolution like
Teilhard imagined it to be.[56] Still, we would like to know where the
trend comes from.

Some trends are purely random.  Imagine a drunken man wandering down
city streets.  After each block, he randomly heads left, right,
forward, or backward.  Over time, his statistically expected distance
to his starting point will continually increase.  One can go places by
a random walk, and it seems many trends in evolution are like
this.[57]  But there is more.  Evolution produces some _irreversible_
changes.  For example, speciation.  New populations may go extinct,
but they will not, once they branch out, evolve back into the
ancestral form.  The problem is, evolutionary mechanisms seem
reversible.  A textbook example is how a moth population during the
Industrial Revolution developed a darker color, blending better with
the newly soot-covered bark of trees.  After the air got cleaner,
light color was selected for, and so the moths got whiter again.  So,
as creationists love to ask, how do we get irreversible
macroevolution?

This is a problem familiar to physicists.  Our dynamical laws are
almost all time-reversible.  No one can tell if a movie of a collision
between billiard balls is being run in reverse, just by watching it.
Of course, to be completely general, we have to replace everything
with their anti-particle, go to a mirror image world, and reverse
time.  But this "CPT" switch is still a simple symmetry.  Our
macroscopic world is a very different place.  A dropped glass
shatters.  Watching a movie of a thousand shards gathering to make an
intact glass and rising to someone's hand, we know it is in reverse.
Going to a mirror-image antimatter world still will not make the glass
come together.  Macroscopic physics, particularly thermodynamics, is
full of irreversible processes.  And this irreversibility is in the
direction of increasing entropy, or disorder and loss of information.
Yet all this is a result of directionless microscopic laws.

Consider a system with reversible, deterministic dynamical laws.
Given exact knowledge of the system's present state, we can calculate
its state arbitrarily far into the future or back in the past.  But we
never know the exact state---even with a system of a few particles, we
know their positions and velocities only approximately.  Now, our
dynamical laws are often chaotic, meaning that any uncertainty in our
knowledge of a state will grow with time.  In calculating the
trajectory of a cannonball, we can afford small errors in our
knowledge of the initial state.  This only translates into a small
error in our knowledge of where it will land.  But in chaotic systems,
trajectories which are very close together separate exponentially fast
with time.  To track a chaotic cannonball, we need a constant flow of
new information updating our knowledge of its current state.  Our
original information quickly becomes useless.  So, as might be
expected, systems with chaotic microscopic laws are described by
irreversible macroscopic equations.[58] And chaos is ubiquitous---even
celestial mechanics is chaotic, though our rate of information loss on
planetary orbits is very slow.

If we have either chaos or true randomness in a system, it will evolve
by a haphazard exploration of its possible states.  An orderly state
will become disorderly, because that is the direction open to the
system.  Imagine a game with n=10 players seated in a circle.  One
player starts with m=100 chips, others have none.  Each round, players
must roll a die for each chip they possess.  If they roll a 6, they
pass the chip to their left; a 1, to their right; anything else, they
keep it.  These dynamical laws---the rules of the game---are
reversible by a simple symmetry transformation.  But they give rise to
irreversible consequences.  Over time, the highly ordered state of all
100 chips being in the possession of one person will evolve to one
where each has m/n=10 chips on average, with some small fluctuations
around that number.  Extremely rarely, a huge fluctuation will take
place, placing all 100 chips in one hand again.  Increase m and n to
make them comparable to the number of particles in a macroscopic
object, and such spontaneous order becomes ridiculously unlikely.
Irreversibility, in this case, is entirely the consequence of an
asymmetric starting point---we began with order.  Physical
irreversibility can be explained the same way.[59]

Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould has a very similar
explanation for directional trends in evolution.[60]  Consider a
lineage of marine species originating in shallow water.  On average,
more and more species will be found inhabiting deeper waters over
time.  But this is because new species are free to branch out only in
one direction---away from the already occupied shore.  Deep water need
not be intrinsically advantageous, it is just where newcomers can eke
out a living.  Examples of evolutionary progress like an increase in
cognitive capabilities are also due to an asymmetric starting point.
Life conducts a haphazard exploration of a fitness landscape; we see
irreversible trends towards complexity because, and only because, life
started out simple.  The bacteria already have the good spots,
latecomers must get by through developing brains and whatnot.  And
even if ours is a good spot, we have stumbled on it accidentally, not
because of a cosmic force impelling life towards improvement.

Creationists will now cry foul.  Thermodynamic irreversibility is in 
the direction of increased disorder, while evolution increases 
organization.  This is again a problem physicists have had to deal 
with.  The second law of thermodynamics suggests the universe is 
getting increasingly disorganized.  Creationists extrapolate 
backwards, and say the world is gradually degenerating from a more 
perfect creation.  Some even say increasing entropy is the result of 
God's curse on Adam, when sin infected the nature of the material 
universe.  Yet not only does life evolve, but stars form, galaxies 
cluster, and so forth.  How does all this structure exist?

Present cosmological theory suggests the universe expanded from a very
small volume, in the Big Bang.  This starting point is completely
random---we cannot say anything about its precursor state, or what
sort of universe it will produce.  It is a state of maximum entropy,
or complete and utter chaos.  However, when spacetime expanded after
the Big Bang, this increased the maximum possible entropy.  An
informal example of the second law is how a desk gets more messy over
time.  But imagine we suddenly double the size of a messy desk.  Now
the desk is actually somewhat orderly, because the mess is confined to
the previous area of the desk.  Our mess will gradually creep to cover
the newly available space.  But now imagine that the area continually
increases, at a rate faster than the rate the mess can spread.  Now,
the mess always increases, but it always decreases in _relative_ area
occupied.  We have an increasingly sharp idea where the mess is
concentrated in the overall desk area.  Something similar happened
after the Big Bang.  The maximum possible entropy increased faster
than the physically realized entropy.  The difference in between is
space for order to spontaneously form.[61]

The principle is quite general.  Thermodynamically, the order of a
system can increase along with the disorder, as long as the possible
states of a system increase even more rapidly.  Life behaves the same
way.  Physically, the universe is driven far from equilibrium,
allowing local pockets of increasing organization to form.  There is
also a closer biological parallel, relying on the fact that entropy is
a measure of information.  With evolution, the number of possible
genetic codes increases rapidly.  Our actual life forms diversify, but
what we see lags behind their ever-increasing possibilities.
Evolution _is_ in the direction of increasing entropy.[62]

"Progress" in evolution is a natural consequence of thermodynamics, of
a process blindly blundering its way through the possible states of a
system.  We have more intelligent life now only because there was none
starting out.  We need no progressive forces, no cosmic purpose, no
underlying design.  It could have been otherwise.  Evolution could
have proceeded in a way more appropriate for a loving God.  Teilhard's
privileged axis might have existed.  Developmental views of evolution
might have been correct, beyond an emphasis on structural and
embryological constraints which is easily absorbed into Darwinism.
There could have been evidence for a force controlling the course of
evolution, say if beneficial mutations did not occur haphazardly but
in a directed fashion.[63] But we find none of this.  So deep-seated
purpose in life recedes to a metaphysical gloss, another item of
theological obscurantism.  Ours is a world with directions, and thus a
history.  However, nothing in biology allows us to infer a Lord of
Life behind it all.

6.  An Accidental World
-----------------------
Evolution is among the greatest theoretical accomplishments of modern
science.  Yet it has been very difficult to accept.  Creationists deny
it, more liberal-minded people often try and confine it to non-human
biology.  Part of the reason is the moral bleakness of a Darwinian
world.  Our hopes, our moral convictions become nothing more than
_our_ hopes and convictions, without cosmic underwriting.  If so,
perhaps it is unfortunate, but truth need not be pretty.  However,
many people also see something intellectually offensive in Darwin.
The evolutionary world is infected by randomness, by the inexplicable
twists and turns of history.  It is an accidental world.  Even the
human intellect is something coughed up by blind forces, transient,
with no special role in the structure of reality.  Many of us would
like a deeper reason behind it all.  Among philosophers, the desire to
have an ultimate reason for everything is usually satisfied by God.

Accidents are an essential part of a Darwinian world.  Natural
selection can build bridges, but not without the accidental novelties
generated by Murphy's Law.  In fact, accidents have effects at many
levels.  Mass extinctions, for example, decimate life so badly that
survival is as much a matter of sheer luck as of fitness.  Survivors
diversify, but they are constrained by history.[64] We are causing a
mass extinction right now; let us say we manage to kill off all
mammals along with ourselves, but are careless enough to let a few
birds live.  Many of their descendants will lose flight and exploit
the new opportunities for life on the ground.  But they will not have
two forelimbs which might easily evolve into manipulative members.
Bird-descendants are constrained by their past; this lineage will
probably not explore the primate way of life.

Accidental constraints are not just a feature of biology.  Which side 
of the road we drive on is an arbitrary choice, but once we have 
decided, it is very difficult to change.  Sometimes priority is all 
that matters.  Computer programmers in the business world often use 
COBOL, scientists use FORTRAN.  Both are terrible languages, designed 
in the 1960's when computers were new.  They are difficult, 
impractical, unsuited to modern computers.  But they survive because 
so much was done with them in the past---who wants to rewrite those 
million lines of data analysis code?

From physics, we expect a world full of such "frozen accidents" and
processes blindly exploring different possibilities.  Dynamical chaos
in complex systems means we have to keep looking for more information
to find out what they are doing.  We can, in principle, increase our
predictive ability without end, but this quickly becomes a practical
impossibility.  We can forget about exactly predicting the weather,
the politics of the twenty-second century, and the course of
evolution.  Worse, physics also gives us true randomness in quantum
mechanics.  Quantum measurements have random outcomes---unlike with
chaos, there is a limit beyond which no amount of information we
acquire will improve our predictive ability.  This randomness has
macroscopic effects as well, since chaotic systems can amplify small
differences, even quantum fluctuations.  The world, it seems, is in
large part a game of dice.

Randomness offends common sense.  To survive in a complicated world,
we must continually find patterns in our experience.  It is better to
mistake order in sensory chaos than risk missing a vital
pattern---better to see a hungry lion in a trick of the light than to
mistake a real lion for a trick.  Indeed, humans are notoriously
unable to deal with random data, habitually interpreting it to conform
to transient or nonexistent patterns.[65]  Humans are also great
anthropomorphizers.  The most important part of our environment, and
the part which takes most intelligence to cope with, is other humans.
We are experts at perceiving design and purpose behind haphazard
information, since other humans produce a wide variety of ambiguous
signals.[66] There are good Darwinian reasons for our aversion to
accidents.

So someone will always ask how the world is such as to allow humans at 
all.  Now, theists expect their God to create human-like life; for 
infidels it is an improbable accident.  Is it not better to have a 
reason than to invoke mere chance?

No.  The precise arrangement of stars in the sky is extremely 
improbable.  Still, while astronomers can explain some patterns of 
star clustering, they are perfectly happy to leave a lot to accident.  
If an astrologer came up with an improbability argument, saying that 
therefore there must be some astrological cause to what we see, do we 
take her seriously?  Or imagine that the head of the Institute for 
Creation Research wins the biggest lottery of all time.  Do we believe 
him if he announces this was a blessing from the Lord for their work?  
Astrologers and creationists can produce deep reasons behind what 
naturalists think are accidents.  Such reasons, however, are entirely 
superficial.  They are like the classical cosmological argument---no 
better than fire demons to "explain" fires we find no cause for.

Accident is a perfectly legitimate, even inescapable, form of
explanation.  Take true randomness.  Flipping a perfect coin, we get a
sequence of heads and tails like *thhththhhthhttht*. . ., continuing
indefinitely.  This is a completely haphazard sequence; there is no
rhyme or reason in it which allows us to predict anything about it.
An orderly sequence like *thththththththth*. . .  has a pattern; there
is a short recipe---an algorithm---to generate each symbol in the
sequence.  Randomness can be rigorously defined as a complete lack of
pattern, or maximal nonalgorithmicity.[67]  With the sequence
alternating *th*, we can infer what the next toss will show.  With the
random sequence, we cannot infer anything.  To get the sequence of
coin tosses, we have to specify the result of each toss individually.

No one knows how to determine when a radioactive atom will decay.
Such atoms are described very well by quantum mechanics, and we can
predict the statistical behavior of large numbers of atoms.  But
within this pattern, there is randomness.  The only way to find out
when an individual atom will decay is to watch it and see when it
does.  There are no causes we can infer behind the decay.[68]  An
evolutionary accident is, of course, more complicated than a random
decay.  All our evidence fits a pattern of common descent, though we
do not have any recipe to determine the precise course of life's
history.  Part of our inability to predict is due to lack of
knowledge, as when we do not know how a gene functions, and so cannot
predict the consequences of a mutation.  But much of our
unpredictability comes from accidental processes, from the mutation
itself to the incalculable effects of a comet hitting the earth.  In
Stephen Jay Gould's words, evolution exhibits "historical
contingency"---to find out what the course of events were, we have to
look at what actually happened.[69] Historical events are individual,
similar to a random decay.  They are not foreordained, captured by
algorithms or principles of cosmic progress.

Of course, none of this is etched in stone.  If there are any
astrologers impressed by the improbability of the heavenly
configuration, they might be able to find a pattern astronomers
overlooked.  But until that happens, the big bad improbability is
meaningless.  If our hypothetical head of ICR demonstrated that
statistically lotteries favor conservative Christians, he would have
the beginnings of a real claim.  If religious apologists think humans
are special, they might be able to discover a biological pattern
indicating this.  But all we get are causes they attach to accidents
after the fact.  Some place God behind the scenes, directing the
action so that intelligence arises in a universe in flux.  We can only
see accidental directions, but then many theologians have called God
inscrutable and unpredictable.  Does then randomness itself reveal
God?[70]  This is a peculiar idea indeed.  Randomness is a lack of
pattern, not Mystery writ large.  An accidental world at best reveals
Tyche, the Greek personification of capricious chance.  A God
permanently hidden behind randomness is like a Santa Claus who never
brings gifts.

Does evolution then banish God to the outer darkness of ideas only 
metaphysicians take seriously?  It certainly takes us part of the way 
there.  As historian of biology William B. Provine observes:

    Modern science directly implies that the world is organized
    strictly in accordance with deterministic principles or chance.
    There are no purposive principles whatsoever in nature.  There are
    no gods and no designing forces that are rationally detectable.
    The frequently made assertion that modern biology and the
    assumptions of the Judaeo-Christian tradition are fully compatible
    is false.[71]

We can quibble with Provine.  Since randomness is an absence of
pattern, it is not surprising that science should explain the world
through a combination of physical constraints and accidents.  What
else?  A purposive principle would be manifested in a particular sort
of pattern, like special creation or progressive evolution.  We
disbelieve in purposive forces because we do not see this
pattern---not because determinism and chance logically leave no room
for gods.  But this is, after all, a quibble.  Provine is right: after
Darwin, there is no more argument from Design.  Theology has to
retreat, coming up with ingenious but implausible excuses about how
evolution does not threaten God.

Still, the accidental world of natural history is not the whole story.
There may be other reasons weighty enough to reveal a God, even
alongside a Darwinian view of life.  Some theologians say God acts in
the world indirectly, through "secondary causes." The ordinary causes
we see in the world and grasp through science are themselves caused by
the divine will.[72]  God, then, can use evolution to shape the world.
At face value, this is the worst sort of metaphysical excuse-making,
another confusion of Tyche for Yahweh.  But there is a way of giving
it content---the Great Programmer, after all, determines the causes
operating in the program.  If we had reasons to believe in such a
programmer, we could conclude that our world was only apparently
accidental.  Metaphysics will not do the trick, but physics might.
Perhaps a God designed the laws of nature in order to allow our
existence.  If so, we might see intricate order not as a product of
blind natural processes, but as a manifestation of a deep creative
force underlying the world.  The accidents of evolution would be part
of a larger pattern involving God.

In 1691, John Ray put forth his vision of a majestic, specially
created world.  Even at the beginnings of modern science, such views
had rivals.  Ray was especially insistent on avoiding the new ideas of
"mechanick theism" which made God set the stage, and then disappear
behind the scenes.[73]  This diminished God, confining it to a remote
act of creation.  And though the divine creation was grand, it still
was like a spiritless machine blindly going through its rigid motions.
Ray would have none of this, and modern creationists agree.  But
today, evolution has so undermined the Lord of Life that, if there is
a God to be revealed by natural science, "mechanick theism" is the
only starting point left.

Notes
-----
[1] Hume stops short of disagreeing with Design as an explanation of
the world.  David Hume, _Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion,_ Part
XII; reprinted in David Hume, _Writings on Religion_ (Antony Flew,
ed., La Salle: Open Court, 1992).  On how Darwinism leads to a
critique of Design superior to Hume's, see James Rachels, _Created
From Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism_ (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1991), pp. 118-120.

[2] For a collection of religious essays against scientific
creationism, see Roland Mushat Frye, ed.  _Is God a Creationist?  The
Religious Case Against Creation-Science_ (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1983).

[3] Laurie R. Godfrey, "Scientific Creationism: The Art of
Distortion," in Ashley Montagu, ed., _Science and Creationism_
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 167-181.  As an example
of creationist weirdness, see Duane T.  Gish, _Dinosaurs by Design_
(El Cajon: Master Books, 1992).

[4] John C. Greene, _The Death of Adam: Evolution and its Impact on
Western Thought_ (Ames: The Iowa State University Press, 1959), p. 5.

[5] See Elliott Sober, ed., _Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary
Biology_ (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1984), part 5.

[6] Niles Eldredge, _Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian
Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria_ (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1985), pp. 32-34 & 185-188.

[7] See Stephen Jay Gould, _Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the
Nature of History_ (New York: W.W.  Norton, 1989), pp. 27-45; for
progressive evolutionary iconography within popular perception _and_
biology.

[8] There are exceptions, e.g. Jeremy Rifkin's _Algeny_ (New York:
Viking, 1983).  The anti-Darwinism here is strangely linked to
concerns about biotechnology.

[9] Belief in a recent creation of humans has remained at about 45-50%
since 1982, according to a series of Gallup polls.  National Center
for Science Education _Reports,_ <13>:3 (1993) p. 9.

[10] This borrowing (with official sanction) is prompted by the
perceived threat of secular education to Islamic teachings.  Taner
Edis, "Islamic Creationism in Turkey," _Creation/Evolution_ <14>:1
(1994) pp. 1-12.

[11] _Humani Generis,_ par. 36.  Encyclical by Pius XII, 1950.  This
encyclical expresses doubt about evolution; it took till 1996 to
officially agree life had a history of descent by modification.
Orthodox Catholic ambivalence about evolution has included
creationism; a classic example is Patrick J.  O'Connell, _Science of
Today and the Problems of Genesis: The Six Days of Creation, the
Origin of Man, the Deluge and the Antiquity of Man_ (2nd edition,
Christian Book Club of America, 1969).  It accepts minor elements of
modification and new species, and interprets the days of creation as
long ages.

[12] Henry M. Morris, ed., _Scientific Creationism_ (Second (General)
Edition, El Cajon: Master Books, 1985), p. 219.

[13] Evolution also undermines traditional theodicies, such as
attributing evil to the freely chosen disobedience to God of moral
agents.  Furthermore, natural selection goes a long way towards
explaining the nastier aspects of life, while theists must make
excuses.  James Rachels, _Created From Animals,_ pp. 103-107.

[14] John Hedley Brooke, _Science and Religion: Some Historical
Perspectives_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

[15] David N. Livingstone, _Darwin's Forgotten Defenders: The
Encounter Between Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought_
(Grand Rapids: William B.  Eerdmans, and Edinburgh: Scottish Academic
Press, 1987).  Livingstone believes "The anti-evolutionist movement,
as it crystallized in the mid-1920's, represented a more or less
radical departure from the tradition of mainstream evangelicalism as
it had developed throughout the previous century." (p. 169).

[16] William R. Overton, reprinted in A. Montagu, ed., _Science and
Creationism,_ p. 380.  For criticism, see Larry Laudan, "Commentary on
Ruse: Science at the Bar---Causes for Concern," in Marcel C.  La
Follette, ed.  _Creationism, Science, and the Law: The Arkansas Case_
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983), pp.  161-166; and Michael Ruse,
"Response to Laudan's Commentary: Pro Judice," p. 168.

[17] Karl R. Popper, _Conjectures and Refutations_ (New York: Harper &
Row, 1968), chap. 1.

[18] For a critique of Popperian falsificationism, see W.H.
Newton-Smith, _The Rationality of Science_ (New York: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1981), chap. 3.  On why falsificationism is inadequate
where creationism is concerned, see Philip Kitcher, _Abusing Science:
The Case Against Creationism_ (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), pp. 36-46.

[19] Henry M. Morris, ed., _Scientific Creationism,_ pp. 209-210.

[20] Henry M. Morris, "Cosmology's Holy Grail," _Back to Genesis_ 74,
February 1995.  (Publication of _The Institute for Creation
Research._)

[21] Accounts based on "natural law" are not the only way to restrict
science to naturalistic explanations.  However, laws have a special
attraction to metaphysicians.  Some, for example, believe that a
special ontological status for natural laws, e.g. as relations between
universals, is a good defense against inductive skepticism.  That is,
ascribing some strong metaphysical reality to laws gives us more
confidence in our expectations that they will continue to hold in the
future.  Mere regularities, in contrast, give us no basis to expect
the regularity will continue---without laws, the sun may or may not
rise tomorrow morning.  See D.M.  Armstrong, _What is a Law of
Nature?_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 103-107.
I do not believe this approach really solves anything.

[22] Eugenie C. Scott, "Science and Christianity are Compatible---With
Some Compromises," _The Scientist,_ January 9, 1995, p. 12.
Interestingly, creationists have their own, Baconian view of science,
which they use to exclude evolution from science.  See George M.
Marsden, "Understanding Fundamentalist Views of Science," in A.
Montagu, ed., _Science and Creationism,_ pp.  97-98.

[23] The modern classic of flood-theory is John C.  Whitcomb and Henry
M.  Morris, _The Genesis Flood: The Biblical record and its Scientific
Implications_ (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1961).  On its
influence, see Ronald L.  Numbers, _The Creationists: The Evolution of
Scientific Creationism_ (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1992), pp. 201-204.

[24] Henry M. Morris, _Biblical Creationism,_ p. 26.

[25] Barry Barnes, _Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory_
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), p. 45.

[26] George H. Smith, _Atheism: The Case Against God_ (Buffalo:
Prometheus, 1979), p. 41.

[27] John C. Greene, _The Death of Adam,_ p. 83.

[28] Henry M. Morris, ed., _Scientific Creationism,_ p. 53.

[29] See, for example, the discussion of "missing links" in Arthur C.
Custance, _Science and Faith_ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978),
pp. 134-149.

[30] Gary Habermas and J.P. Moreland, _Immortality: The Other Side of
Death_ (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1992), p. 51.

[31] _Ibid,_ pp. 46-48.  Moreland is incorrect, however, in saying
"the evolutionary argument begs the question against the
dualist"---evolution does make dualism highly suspect, and there is no
good reason to give Moreland-style metaphysics priority over science.

[32] For example, the debate over ergodicity, or dynamics (Boltzmann)
vs. inference (Gibbs) based views of statistical physics, and the
connection to thermodynamic irreversibility.  See papers in R.D.
Rosenkrantz, ed., _E.T.  Jaynes: Papers on Probability, Statistics and
Statistical Physics,_ for a historical view and defense of the
Gibbsian view which is less dominant today.

[33] Mikhail V. Volkenstein, _Physical Approaches to Biological
Evolution_ (transl. A. Beknazarov, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1994),
p. 37.

[34] See Lucretius, _On the Nature of Things_ (transl. and ed. Anthony
M.  Esolen, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); and
Richard C. Vitzhum, _Materialism: An Affirmative History and
Definition_ (Amherst: Prometheus, 1995).

[35] Ironically, "reductionism" is sometimes used to describe the
tendency to reify properties of complex systems at a lower level, as
in trying to find specific genes for complex social behaviors.  For
example, see R.C.  Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon J.  Kamin, _Not in
Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature_ (New York: Pantheon,
1984), chap. 10.  On the errors of "greedy reductionism," see Daniel
C. Dennett, _Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of
Life_ (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), pp. 80-83.

[36] A peculiar example is Jeffrey S. Wicken, _Evolution,
Thermodynamics, and Information: Extending the Darwinian Program_ (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1987).  Wicken's work is valuable in
connecting life to physics, and as such is conventionally Darwinian
and reductionist.  But he is also impressed by anti-reductionist
philosophy emphasizing the wholeness and purposive functionality of
organisms.

[37] The philosophy of mind is where the reductionism battle really
rages.  In defense of reduction, see Patricia S. Churchland,
_Neurophilosophy: Towards a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain_
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986), part 2, and Jaegwon Kim, "The Myth of
Nonreductive Materialism," in R.  Warner and T. Szubka, eds., _The
Mind-Body Problem: A Guide to the Current Debate_ (Oxford: Blackwell,
1994).

[38] Henry M. Morris, ed., _Scientific Creationism,_ chap. 4.

[39] Creationist probability estimates are inflated by many orders of
magnitude; Matthew Landau and BJ Landau, "Random Protein Formations
and the Origin of Life," _Creation/Evolution_ <11>:2 (1991) pp. 22-25.
Still, they are good examples of improbability arguments.

[40] For extended arguments in favor of this view, see Daniel
C. Dennett, _Darwin's Dangerous Idea,_ and Richard Dawkins, _The Blind
Watchmaker._ Dennett likens Darwinism to "universal acid" against
mind-first Design ideas.

[41] Michael Denton, _Evolution: A Theory in Crisis_ (Bethesda: Adler
& Adler, 1985), chap. 13.

[42] Mikhail V. Volkenstein, _Physical Approaches to Biological
Evolution,_ chap. 8, 9.

[43] This is analogous to a task of finding minima of a complicated
energy surface, with only local information available at any step.
Increased dimensionality makes it easier to find trajectories which go
around barriers, so that "relaxing the dimensionality" is sometimes an
effective optimization technique.  See G.M.  Crippen, _Journal of
Computational Chemistry_ <3> (1982), p. 471.

[44] Stephen Jay Gould, _Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in
Natural History_ (New York: W.W.  Norton, 1991), chap. 9.  The usual
biological term for this is the somewhat misleading "preadaptation,"
Gould proposes "exaptation" instead.

[45] James H. Marden and Melissa G. Kramer, "Locomotor Performance of
Insects with Rudimentary Wings: Sailing on Water versus Gliding in
Air," _Nature_ <377> (1995), pp. 332-334.

[46] Lynn Margulis, _Symbiosis in Cell Evolution: Life and its
Environment on the Early Earth_ (San Francisco: W.H.  Freeman, 1981).

[47] Stephen Jay Gould, _The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in
Natural History_ (New York: W.W.  Norton, 1980), chap.  1-3.

[48] On the RNA world, and the origins of chirality, see contributions
in Cyril Ponnaperuma and Julian Chela-Flores, eds., _Chemical
Evolution: Origin of Life_ (Proceedings of the Trieste Conference on
Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life, October 1992; Hampton:
A. Deepak, 1993).  For a brief recent review, see A. Lazcano and
S.L. Miller, "The Origin and Early Evolution of Life: Prebiotic
Chemistry, the Pre-RNA World, and Time," _Cell_ <85>:6 (1996),
pp. 793-798.

[49] See, for example, Michael J. Behe, _Darwin's Black Box: The
Biochemical Challenge to Evolution_ (New York: Free Press, 1996).

[50] John F. Haught, _Science and Religion: From Conflict to
Conversation_ (New York: Paulist Press, 1995), p. 71.  Unfortunately,
substituting mushy assertions for argument is all too common in
compatibilist theology.

[51] Gerd Theissen, _Biblical Faith: An Evolutionary Approach_
(transl. John Bowden, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985).

[52] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, _The Phenomenon of Man_
(transl. Bernard Wall, New York: Harper & Row, 1959), p. 142.

[53] Peter J. Bowler, _The Non-Darwinian Revolution: Reinterpreting a
Historical Myth_ (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1988).

[54] For an overview, see H. James Birx, _Interpreting Evolution:
Darwin & Teilhard de Chardin_ (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1991), chap. 2.

[55] William B. Provine, "Progress in Evolution and Meaning in Life,"
in Matthew H. Nitecki, ed., _Evolutionary Progress_ (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1988).  Developmental ideas are not
completely dead; e.g. Mae-Wan Ho and Peter T. Saunders, eds., _Beyond
Neo-Darwinism: An Introduction to the New Evolutionary Paradigm_
(London: Academic Press, 1984) owes a lot to the developmental
tradition.  Ho and Saunders's "new paradigm" has not much affected
biology, however, let alone redirected it fundamentally.

[56] See Francisco J. Ayala, "Can `Progress' be Defined as a
Biological Concept?" in M.H. Nitecki, ed., _Evolutionary Progress._

[57] David M. Raup, "Testing the Fossil Record for Evolutionary
Progress," in _Ibid._

[58] Pierre Gaspard, _Journal of Statistical Physics_ <68> (1992),
p. 673.

[59] See Joel L. Lebowitz, "Boltzmann's Entropy and Time's Arrow,"
_Physics Today_ September 1993, p. 32.  In fact, increase in entropy
depends on the order of information transfer, and not temporal order.
E.T.  Jaynes, "Information Theory and Statistical Mechanics II,"
_Physical Review_ <108> (1957), p. 171.

[60] Stephen Jay Gould, "On Replacing the Idea of Progress with an
Operational Notion of Directionality," in M.H.  Nitecki, ed.,
_Evolutionary Progress._

[61] See Victor J. Stenger, _The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in
Modern Physics and Cosmology_ (Amherst: Prometheus, 1995),
pp. 227-230.

[62] The discussion here is based on Daniel R. Brooks and E.O.  Wiley,
_Evolution as Entropy: Toward a Unified Theory of Biology_ (Second
Edition, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988).

[63] Recent research indicating possible Lamarckian evolution or
directed mutation can in fact be explained in a Darwinian manner.
Donald G. MacPhee, "Directed Evolution Reconsidered," American
Scientist, <81>:6 (1993), pp. 554-561.  For an example of a theistic
context for directed development, see Arthur C.  Custance, _Science
and Faith,_ part 4, on "dauermodification."

[64] David M. Raup, _Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck?_ (New York:
W.W.  Norton, 1991); Stephen Jay Gould, _Wonderful Life._

[65] Thomas Gilovich, _How we Know What Isn't So,_ chap. 2.

[66] Stewart Elliott Guthrie, _Faces in the Clouds,_ chap. 3, 4.
Guthrie argues anthropomorphism is central to religion.

[67] Gregory J. Chaitin, _Algorithmic Information Theory_ (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987), chap. 7.  For a brief non-technical
discussion, see G.J.  Chaitin, _Scientific American,_ July 1988,
p. 80.

[68] Some physicists, particularly David Bohm, postulate causes behind
quantum randomness.  This takes the form of hidden variables; or
permanently inaccessible information which is moreover propagated
superluminally!  This approach may occasionally be of value in
addressing conceptual problems in quantum physics (see contributions
in F. Selleri, ed., _Quantum Mechanics versus Local Realism_ (New
York: Plenum, 1988)).  However, it does _not_ restore any meaningful
determinism to physics.  Quantum mechanics remains formally the same
under Bohmian interpretations, and hence still harbors true randomness
in the sense of patternlessness.  There are no causes we can _infer_
behind quantum randomness, we can only declare them to exist if such
is our metaphysical taste.
 
[69] Stephen Jay Gould, _Wonderful Life,_ chap.  5.  Gould contrasts
contingency and randomness, saying "Individuality and randomness are
opposing, not complementary, concepts.  They both oppose the idea of
clockwork determinism, but they do so in entirely different ways"
(_Bully for Brontosaurus,_ p. 501).  He is mistaken---individuality
and randomness are intimately related.  Also, Daniel C. Dennett
believes Gould overstates the implications of contingency (_Darwin's
Dangerous Idea,_ pp. 299-312).

[70] Popular apologists discover God even in quantum randomness;
e.g. Charles P. Henderson Jr., _God and Science,_ pp. 21-23.

[71] William B. Provine, in M.H. Nitecki, ed., _Evolutionary
Progress,_ p. 65.

[72] Classical Muslim theology leans this way in order to give God
total sovereignty; see Majid Fakhry, _A History of Islamic Philosophy_
(2nd Edition, New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), pp. 46-48.
For a Christian defense, see William Lane Craig, _Divine Foreknowledge
and Human Freedom_ (Leiden: E.J.  Brill, 1990), chap. 13.  The usual
motivation for secondary cause theologies is to reconcile free will,
divine justice, and omnipotence.  But it is applicable to evolution as
well: Darwin himself used the idea in some of his early thoughts about
evolution.  John C.  Greene, _The Death of Adam,_ pp. 265, 271.

[73] John C. Greene, _The Death of Adam,_ pp. 8-13.

