A G K Y R A

If you haven’t been to the website for Tim Keller’s new book, why don’t you take a look? Make sure your computer audio is turned up so you can hear.

No attempt to define the specific features of human behaviour can disregard the fact that man, as we know him in history, appeared on the stage of this world as a religious being. (Wolfhart Pannenberg, Faith and Reality, 41)

Pannenberg got me wondering this evening how atheistic evolutionists explain the fact that humans have been religious since the very beginning, so far as we can tell. Many atheists like to claim that babies are atheists by nature and will remain so unless they are taught otherwise. This, of course, requires an explanation of how humans became religious in the first place. It is especially problematic since beasts, from whom we are alleged to be descended, are not religious. If the first humans were more advanced than their irreligious beastly ancestors, and if it is now the case that babies are born atheists, then where did religion get its start, and why was it universally adopted? The facile response from the atheist catechism is “out of fear of the unknown.” Unfortunately, this raises as many problem as it solves. If the beasts don’t fear nature or the unknown, why would the more advanced humans? I hope that serious-minded atheists will give this constellation of problems the thought it deserves.

Naturally, this is no problem at all for theistic evolutionists since they hold that evolution is directed toward an end, i.e., that nature has a teleology. The rise of religious consciousness in humans is part of God’s purpose in bringing them into person-to-person relationship with himself. What’s more, this end point provides a reference from which theistic evolutionists can justifiably call the rise of humankind an advance. Atheistic evolutionists can’t do that since there is no goal, no teleology, no purpose. The most they can do is say that it’s an advance from our (human) perspective, which lands them in a whole ‘nother morass: why should that be our perspective? “Should” is such an important word. The inescapable reality of normativity is the most serious problem atheists face. They can’t explain it and don’t know what to do with it. They can’t find a reliable source for it, but they can’t live without it.

As for evolution, I take no position on it. How could I? I’m far from having the specialized knowledge to come to an informed judgment on the subject. I will tell you, though, what I know and what I affirm. What I know is that evolution as a theory about the rise of humankind is not testable and is the product of a lot of speculative inductions. This means that it is liable to being wrong, and so I put no confidence in it. It’s of no practical significance to me, so that’s an easy position for me to take. My interest is less about the process by which humans came to exist than by whom they came to exist, which leads me to what I affirm. The universe was created ex nihilo, and humans were made in God’s image. Whether in a single instant out of dust or through a long process of evolution, I don’t know, and I don’t think Scripture is concerned for us to know.

Pannenberg, incidentally, does apparently believe the theory of evolution with respect to human origins.

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