Despite this usage, most of us know that randomness has something to do with probability, and that it often implies a lack of conscious intentionality. But what do mathematicians and scientists mean when they say something is random? Can a random process lead to an ordered, even predictable outcome? Is there evidence that God makes use of random processes to fulfill his creative purposes?

These are big questions, and we won’t address them all today. But I think randomness is an important topic to cover for two reasons: 1) it is integral to many processes in biology (and math, physics, chemistry, etc.), and 2) it is commonly misunderstood to be incompatible with Christianity.

As I said above, most of us know that randomness has something to do with probability. If you pick a card “at random” from a shuffled deck, you have a small probability of drawing an ace (4 out of 52, or a 7.7% chance). If you flip a coin, you have an equal probability of getting heads or tails.

Randomness also seems to imply a lack of intentionality or purposefulness. After all, you might hope for an ace when you draw a card, but you can’t choose one on purpose. You might call heads when you flip a coin, but you can’t know beforehand what the outcome will be. Thus the outcome is indeterminate, but is it purposeless? Not necessarily. Indeterminacy simply means the result cannot be predicted from the outset.

It should be noted that indeterminacy does not imply that God does not have foreknowledge of future events. Christians ought not to be uncomfortable with the idea of God interacting with his creation through chance. We often describe a seemingly-random (i.e. unplanned by us) sequence of events as being “providential,” or planned by God.

In biology, it is very hard or impossible to calculate precise probabilities for most processes, so when we say a process is random, we typically mean it is extremely unpredictable. Eventually we will discuss randomness within biological evolution, but first we must consider some simpler processes, like the self-assembly of a virus.

Viruses are remarkably efficient entities. Coiled tightly within a protein-based shell is a small amount of DNA needed for self-replication. The shell, called a capsid, is made of many repeating protein subunits and is therefore highly symmetrical (see figure). Important biomedical insights have certainly been gleaned from structural studies of viruses, but viruses also teach us about the emergence of order from non-order.

The virus life cycle has four main steps: 1) enter a host cell, 2) hijack the cell’s replication and translation machinery to make many copies of itself, 3) assemble into many virus particles, and 4) exit the cell to invade another host.

When I first learned about this process, I found it very hard to believe it just “happens.” The idea that a bunch of molecules bumping into each other inside a crowded cell could spontaneously assembly into a fully-functional virus seemed a bit far-fetched. Many viral capsids have over 100 protein subunits that must interact with each other in just the right way, or it won’t work. Surely there must be something driving this process, right?

There is! Random motion. I had to see it to believe it. I distinctly remember sitting in class during my first year of graduate school when the professor demonstrated self-assembly of a virus using a 3D model as shown in the following video. In less than 30 seconds, you can watch a jumbled heap of proteins become a beautifully ordered structure.

As the narrator explains, sub-assemblies form and break apart en route to the most stable structure, the full capsid. As the sub-assemblies begin to form, further associations with free subunits become more favorable and as a result occur rapidly, while the final steps may take considerably longer. While the subunits in the model are rigid, in reality the proteins take on multiple conformations, allowing the capsid to “breathe.”

Amazing as it is, the system we just considered—one virus capsid in a jar—is pretty simple. One wonders how self-assembly can happen in a crowded cell, where there are countless other molecules diffusing around, potentially getting in the way. We can’t directly see how it happens in a cell, but we can reconstitute the process in a test tube using different combinations of constituent molecules.

Consider two viruses, where each protein subunit in one virus is the mirror image of the corresponding subunit in the other. Putting the two viruses together by hand would be pretty tricky, because the constituent parts look so similar. But random motion can do the job in short order:

From this model, we can see clearly, in real-time, how distinct complex structures can arise from their parts randomly interacting with one another. Many large viruses also use special scaffolding proteins to assist in the assembly process, and some even use their own genomes as a scaffold. In addition, two closely-related viruses that happen to infect the same cell can exchange parts to create a new virus. This is one way viruses can evolve quickly to evade the host’s immune system.

Here we have seen how viruses demonstrate a principle inherent in God’s world—that order can emerge out of chaos from random processes. In my next post, we will look at some other biological processes that make use of—rather, depend on—randomness. This will set the stage for us to see that such processes can not only assemble a structure within seconds or minutes, but also generate complex, information-bearing molecules over billions of years. Even though the freedom inherent in nature sometimes produces unintelligently-designed structures (like viruses, which can kill us), we see that God has made, and continues to oversee by his providence, a good creation that, at least in part, is capable of creating itself.

Next weekend, we’ll continue this series about randomness and God’s divine will. Up next: how God created the body to heal itself, and how can random mutations can be both harmful and benign.

Today, as I write, I am no longer in the desert of southern California, nor in the beech-maple forest of New Hampshire, but on a glacial drumlin in Waubesa Wetlands—a large marsh four miles south of Madison, Wisconsin. Here Ruth and I have our home, and here I study creatures whose watery habitats my neighbors and I have worked to save from eventual destruction. While my desert study site now is covered by a city where people live alone in the land—absent the desert creatures—my wetland study site remains occupied by all kinds of native plants and animals. Embracing it is the Town of Dunn, whose land stewardship plan helps people understand, serve, and maintain this and the other ecosystems. Our town stewardship plan encourages restoration of the landscape, protects agricultural lands, and strives to transmit an intergenerational heritage of secure and wholesome homes, livelihoods, and habitats for the animals, plants, and people that live here. We live largely in harmony and accord.

House-building on slabs poured onto desert sands first alerted me to the question of praxis, the third point on the napkin. But it was later, in my work as organizer of the Waubesa Wetlands Scientific and Agricultural Preserve, and as supervisor and later as chair of the Town of Dunn, that I came to realize that science and ethics do no earthly good unless put into practice. In serving my town, I came to apply what I had learned in the desert: praxis uninformed by science and ethics usually creates more problems than are solved.

“How do you put it all together?” those students in New Hampshire wanted to know. For me, it was building a framework for stewardship that simultaneously considered the questions “How does the world work?” “What is right?” and “What then must we do?” This science-ethics-praxis triad is a framework for living, for learning, for teaching, and most importantly for acting. It is a framework for stewardship.

In order to live and act rightly in the world, we need to know how the world works. We need to know how the systems that sustain us work, and how we interact with them. Without such knowledge we could drown in a flash flood, have our homes undercut by desert winds, cross the street in the path of an oncoming car, or get sick from consuming foods with toxic ingredients. As human beings develop more and more of the world, and as the reach of human actions extends regionally and globally, our knowledge must increase accordingly. This knowledge is not limited to what we acquire from a formal education; it also includes the knowledge we gain from family and friends, and from experience and experiment. In order to live and act rightly in the world, we need to know how the world works.

In order to live and act rightly in the world, we need to know what we ought to do. A century ago, this question was addressed in many colleges across America in a course for graduating seniors on moral philosophy. The purpose of this course was to convict students that they should apply their knowledge for the pursuit of good instead of pursuing self at others’ expense. At my university, this aspect of college education is expressed in a quotation from Abraham Lincoln carved in stone on a bench behind Lincoln’s statue at the top of Bascom Hill: “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, dare to do our duty.” The question “What is right?” is represented by the ethics corner of our triad. Moving directly from the Science corner to the praxis corner, or from the ethics corner to the praxis corner, proves problematic, even disastrous. Consider the result of going from knowledge of nuclear fission (science) directly to producing and dropping an atomic bomb (praxis), or moving from the belief that death is bad (ethics) to removing dead wood from forests (praxis); both are examples of these disastrous shortcuts.

But knowing the science and observing the ethics of this stewardship framework does absolutely no good if it is not put into practice—placed into service. By themselves, the very best science and the most substantial ethics are no substitutes for action. We need to act appropriately and deliberately in the light of scientific and ethical knowledge. Praxis by itself, without being grounded in science and ethics, results in mere activism—activism that is unlikely to do good and that may produce harm. All three corners of the triad are essential—but not by themselves. Taken together and working interactively, they provide a framework for stewardship.

But will these three operate in dynamic interaction? Will they interact in ways that preserve and achieve the integrity of human life and the environment? The answer depends on what we know and understand about ourselves and the world (science), what we believe we should do (ethics), and what we in fact do, and how we respond to our successes and failures (praxis). It depends on our will, our motivation, our determination, and our dedication to strive for a harmonious world of creatures before their Creator. What might make us strive for such a world?

Part 3 explores the challenge of translating ideals into concrete actions.

A careful study of this chapter is important because it gives us a beautiful picture of the proper relationships we should have with God, the natural world, and each other. Numerous posts could be written on each of these relationships, but in this post I’d like to focus on how Genesis 2 describes our relationship to the rest of creation. These relationships are given deeper significance when we recognize that the garden is being described as a temple-like “sacred space,” not just an ordinary garden. There are numerous clues in the passage that this is the case. John Walton writes that the Garden/temple parallels “are givens that are simply assumed by the author and audience” ¹ of Genesis, but we completely miss them if we take fail to read the text the way the ancient author and audience would have.

Temples and Gardens

In the Ancient Near East (ANE), all sacred space was conceived of as something like a temple; it was a place where humans would serve God and experience their closest access to Him. Thus in ANE cultures, a temple complex was seen as being the apex and a microcosm of creation and the earthly abode of the god(s). Descriptions of temples often pictured a river flowing from under the temple and flowing out through an adjacent garden, symbolizing the fertile extravagance of the divine provision. A temple garden would be no mere backyard vegetable patch, but rather an elaborate, beautifully landscaped botanical park.

The same temple/river picture can be seen in the description of the eschatological temple in Ezekiel (ch. 47) and Revelation (chs. 21-22, where the final temple is God Himself). Sound familiar? In Genesis 2 we also have a river flowing “from Eden [‘Abundance’] to water the garden” (v. 10).² Not only is the Garden filled with “every beautiful tree with edible fruit” (v. 9), but the area itself is rich with gold, resins, and gemstones (sometimes translated “bdellium and onyx”), the same materials later used to decorate Israel’s tabernacle, temple, and priestly garments. Furthermore, many scholars are convinced that the design of temple’s Menorah (candlestick) deliberately echoes the Garden’s Tree of Life, and some also think that the Ark of the Covenant in the temple parallels the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.³

Made for Sacred Service

As inhabitants of this temple-garden, it comes as no surprise that Adam and Eve enjoyed a special closeness to God’s presence (Gen. 3:8 pictures God taking an evening walk through the Garden). But as inhabitants of the Garden, they had special responsibilities as well; they were told “to farm it and take care of it” (v. 15). The two Hebrew words used here have a broader range of meaning than their English translations suggest. As John Walton writes, the broader meaning of the word here translated “to farm” (particularly when used in a sacred context) “is often connected to religious service deemed as worship (e.g., Ex. 3:12) or of priestly functionaries serving in the temple precinct (e.g., Num. 3:7-10).” ⁴

The usage in Genesis 2 seems to have two layers of meaning: “farm/cultivate the Garden” (since it is an agricultural space) and “serve/worship God” (since the Garden is also a sacred space). The dual meanings are as intertwined in Hebrew grammar as they are intended to be in practice. The second Hebrew word (translated “take care of”) has a deeper religious meaning as well. The word can refer to protecting farmland from external threats, but in a danger-free sacred space like the Garden, the word more generally refers to “performing duties on the [temple] grounds,” that is, to “sacred service.”⁵

Walton therefore translates these two Hebrew words as “serve and preserve.” These same words appear again together several times in Numbers to describe the priest’s duties in the temple. Because of all this, Gordon Wenham describes Adam as “perhaps…an archetypal Levite” with a “quasi-priestly” role in the garden.⁸ Eve was created as Adam’s companion and “helper” in his work, a word which nowhere in the OT refers to a subordinate assistant, but rather to one who is at least equal to the one being helped.⁹

Genesis 2 should banish from our minds any idea that creation care is somehow “secular” work for a Christian, or that it is not even our responsibility. This was the first task given to humanity, to serve and worship God by cultivating and protecting the natural world. The centrality of our responsibility in this regard is even clearer when we back up to the beginning of the chapter. We know there was a river “flow[ing] from Eden to water the garden” (v. 10), symbolizing that “all fertility emanates from the presence of God.” ¹⁰ Nonetheless there could be no cultivated plants in the garden because “there was still no human being to farm the fertile land” (v. 5). With no gardener and no rain, the ground was watered indiscriminately; a human was needed to irrigate the waters and support a garden.¹¹ Therefore, God “formed the human from the topsoil” (Hebrew wordplay equivalent to “human from the humus”) before planting the garden. God certainly could have watered it another way without needing us, but He chose not to, and the resulting collaborative picture here is a beautiful one. All provision flows from God, but He has chosen to give us an essential part in further channeling his provisions in the natural world. Far from countering God’s creative work by destroying nature, we are intended to work with Him to preserve and further it.

Of course, though created primarily to glorify God, the world was also made to provide us abundantly with the food and resources that we need to live (Gen. 2:16). Yet we don’t need to look far to see that we have often failed in our responsibility to properly care for creation. We live in a fallen world, and sin has fractured the intended harmony of our relationships with God, creation, and each other (as described in Genesis 3:14-24).

I recently heard a striking crystallization of this fallen perspective in Spencer Tracy’s narration in the opening scene of the sprawling 1962 western film “How the West Was Won.” As the camera flies over majestic Western fields and mountains, the narrator tells us that “This land has a name today, and is marked on maps. But the names and the maps all had to be won, won from nature and from primitive man.” This is the fallen perspective – advancing our human purpose on earth is done through defeating nature and other people (derogatively labeled “primitive,” as well) apart from God. This perspective perfectly illustrates the conflict-based relationships that sin brings about, already described for us back in the first chapters of the Bible.

Are we doomed, then, to live helplessly in this way? If this is just the way the world is and the way we are, shouldn’t we just accept that? Apart from Christ the answer would be “yes,” but the New Testament makes it clear that though we are still fallen, the saving work of Christ has brought about a profound change in us. As N.T. Wright makes clear in his book Surprised by Hope, Jesus taught (and the Resurrection vindicated) that the Kingdom of God “was and is breaking in to the present world, to earth.” ¹² Christ’s Resurrection was the first act of the future new creation. If we are truly “born again” into this new reality, this new way of living, we must strive (in the Spirit’s power) to live lives of wholeness and right relationships, putting our sinful nature to death (Colossians 3). In doing so, we would be wise to include Genesis 2 as we seek to follow God’s will and God’s Kingdom, “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10).

In part 2 of this series, David describes how Genesis 1, Genesis 2, and modern scientific accounts offer complementary and mutually enriching perspectives in our understanding of God's creation.

Notes

1. John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 125.
2. Biblical quotations are from the Common English Bible unless otherwise noted.
3. Both symbolized divine wisdom that humans had to receive from God obediently, with the proper “fear of God” that the Old Testament wisdom literature stresses as a prerequisite. Disobediently eating the Tree’s fruit would lead to death and disobeying God would lead to expulsion from the Garden. Similarly, disobediently touching the Ark brought death (Num. 4:15, 2 Sam. 6:1-7) and disobeying God’s instruction led to Israel’s exile from their Eden, the land of Canaan.
4. John H. Walton, Genesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 172.
5. Ibid., 173.
6. Ibid., 192.
7. See Numbers 3:7-8, 8:26, 18:5-6.
8. Gordon J. Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of Eden Story,” in “I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood”: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1-11, ed. Richard S. Hess and David Toshio Tsumura (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 401.
9. Walton, Genesis, 176.
10. Ibid., 170.
11. This follows Walton’s illuminating exegesis of this passage in Genesis, 164-65.
12. N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 201.

The first video, “10 Questions with Katherine Hayhoe”, introduces the scientist in a brief and lighthearted interview. Hayhoe is presented with 10 questions concerning her personal life and beliefs. When asked, she explains that one thing people should know about Christianity is that having a relationship with the God of the universe is one of the most incredible experiences that a person can have. As the video unfolds, the viewer quickly begins to realize that, despite her unique profession of two seemingly incompatible beliefs, Hayhoe is a remarkably sane and “normal” individual. Her role model, she explains, is her father-- the person who first introduced her to science and showed her that it could be “really cool”. On a more serious note, the scientist admits that being both a scientist and a Christian can be difficult. The most frustrating thing about her position, she says, is the amount of disinformation which is targeted at her very own Christian community.

In the second video, “Climate Change Evangelist”, Katharine Hayhoe delves into deeper discussion of the perceived conflict between climate change and Christian faith. She explains that admitting her identity as a Christian scientist can be uncomfortable. Since evangelicals are the targets of much disinformation concerning science in general -- and specifically the science surrounding climate change -- many people in the church have a misguided view of the subject and do not look kindly at her career choice. One woman encountered by Hayhoe at a church in Texas, for example, believed that global warming was a lie taught in schools to mislead her children. In an effort to realign misguided views like these, Katharine Hayhoe and her husband wrote a book addressing the deep-rooted emotions often associated with climate change. People fear that addressing the climate issue will bring forth changes in the economy and uproot their way of life. However, Hayhoe encourages her viewers to act out of love, as the Bible calls us to do, rather than out of fear. Acting out of love inspires us to consider the poor and disadvantaged people around the globe when we respond to the reality of a changing climate.

In the final segment of this three part video montage, Hayhoe addresses the question of what climate change means. Specifically, she is concerned about how global warming affects people on a personal level. While global warming generally brings to mind melting ice caps and polar bears, its implications are far more widespread, affecting the lives of everyone around the world- from cotton farmers in Texas to public health workers in Chicago. If nothing is done to change current emission levels, the number of days per year which exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit, for example, will begin to increase dramatically, and if emissions are increased, many areas will even develop extreme conditions like those seen currently in Death Valley. Hayhoe’s goal is to demonstrate clearly that the only way to preserve the world for future generations is to significantly reduce dependence on inefficient means of getting energy and instead transition to cleaner renewable energy sources.

Editor's Note: These videos first appeared on the Nova program "The Secret Life of Scientists & Engineers".

Suppose a man falls among thieves, or wild beasts; is shipwrecked at sea by a sudden gale; is killed by a falling house or tree. Suppose another man wandering through the desert finds help in his straits; having been tossed by the waves, reaches harbor; miraculously escapes death by a finger’s breadth. Carnal reason ascribes all such happenings, whether prosperous or adverse, to fortune. But anyone who has been taught by Christ’s lips that all the hairs if his head are numbered [Matt. 10:30] will look further afield for a cause, and will consider that all events are governed by God’s secret plan.

In this passage, Calvin presents belief in “fortune” as evidence of carnal reasoning, and statements like this one have contributed to a widely-held notion that modern scientific understandings of the role that randomness plays in nature is inconsistent with belief in divine providence. In other words, if “randomness” equals blind and capricious “fortune,” then how can God be said to be working all things to his ends?

But Calvin could not have known of the very different understanding of randomness held by today’s scholars. Physical scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians have not yet agreed on a single unambiguous definition of the term “randomness,” but among these scientists, the term consistently refers to a family of related concepts focusing on unpredictability of the outcomes of single events and the absence of pattern in sequences of outcomes. I like this statement by John Polkinghorne, “Chance doesn't mean meaningless randomness, but historical contingency. This happens rather than that, and that's the way that novelty, new things, come about.” In Polkinghorne’s view, chance is an agent of creativity and can be perceived as being purposeful.

In fact, there are abundant examples of phenomena in nature in which randomness plays a role one could understand as being purposeful. For example, osmosis is a marvelous mechanism that enables all 10 trillion cells in our bodies to be nourished – it depends on the random motion of molecules. The human immune system is able to defend the body against attacks from millions of different microorganisms using a relatively small number of building blocks and random combinations of these to fashion defenses specific to each adversary. We never take a breath and find it to be all nitrogen or carbon dioxide – random motion of molecules keeps oxygen close to uniformly distributed throughout the atmosphere.

In 2007, a British statistician, David Bartholomew published God, Chance, and Purpose in which he argues that God “can have it both ways”—that he can use low level randomness to accomplish divine purposes while simultaneously maintaining order at a higher level. Of course, we cannot prove that God ordained these random processes to achieve divine purposes in the world. But to a person of faith, such an interpretation in both consistent with the observations we make in science and with the Scriptural notion of God’s providential care for the world.

Considerations like these led the John Templeton Foundation to provide a generous grant of $1.69 million to support a new research initiative on the theme of Randomness and Divine providence. Beginning this past summer, the program has the purpose of providing support for solid theoretical exploration of the kinds of ideas and possibilities expressed above—involving theology, philosophy, natural science, mathematics, and statistics. The grant will support individual scholars and teams of scholars who are willing to devote a significant amount of time between March of 2013 and June of 2015 to such work, and the project’s request for proposals suggests the following as questions researchers might pursue:

• How might God work providentially through indeterminate processes? Can recent advances in understanding the nature of randomness offered by algorithmic information theory, physics, biology, and other sciences provide insight into this question?
• Can we bring clarity to the concept of "randomness"? Philosophers and scientists have tried on occasion to give precise definitions of when a process is random, but more work needs to be done on the question. How do (or should) conceptions of randomness vary across academic disciplines?
• What are some possible implications of randomness for hiding or unfolding divine creativity and purpose in the world? Could God use randomness to (1) generate creativity, (2) hide divine actions, or (3) unfold information? Why might God do so?
• How might we identify and come to understand a significant collection of nondeterministic processes in which agents could intentionally employ randomness to bring about purposeful results?
• How might we mathematically and physically model random processes in ways that help us understand how divine providence could be exercised in a "chance-governed" world?
• How do "laws and orders" in nature interplay with "chance and randomness" in bringing about results that can be interpreted as aspects of divine providence?
• Might randomness be evidence of limitations in human knowledge but nothing more? Or might it be evidence of ontological indeterminism? Might this be tested?
• What implications does randomness have for aspects of God’s relationship with the physical world such as God’s relationship to time and God’s role in causation? How might randomness be reconciled with God’s foreknowledge?
• How might an understanding of providence based on an extended Molinism and/or open theology incorporate randomness? For example, could an extended Molinism provide a plausible account of the relationship between quantum mechanics and divine providence?
• What are some theodical implications of randomness, particularly for the issue of natural evil?
• How have the theological traditions of Augustine, Maimonides, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin addressed chance and fortune? In what ways might they incorporate ontological randomness?
• How do or could religions other than the Judeo/Christian tradition understand and incorporate randomness?
• How is the concept of randomness understood by advocates of secularism, naturalism, and new atheism? What are the strengths and weaknesses of these usages?
• How might an understanding of randomness in the world alter our conceptions of divinity, especially our understanding of divine providence?

Despite the range of issues mentioned above, research is by no means restricted only to these topics. In fact, the structure of the program is designed to foster collaboration and build community between scholars, with the end of expanding the range and integration of their work: two conferences will be held to bring scholars together with each other and then with members of the public—one at Calvin College in 2013 and the other at Fuller Theological Seminary in 2015. To get more information and to learn how to submit a proposal, see the project website; then join us in exploring the truth that all creation glorifies God—even randomness!

In my previous essay, I discussed “Darwin’s finches” and how surprisingly little Charles Darwin himself had to say about them. In fact, it was actually the British ornithologist David Lack (1910-1973) who conducted the critical research that immortalized the finches in biology textbooks and popular lore. In 1973, the eminent German zoologist Ernst Mayr wrote:

Already well known among professional ornithologists, his work on the Galapagos finches gave David Lack world fame… There is no modern textbook of zoology, evolution or ecology which does not include an account of his work.¹

Ernst W. Mayr

Decades have passed since Mayr wrote these words, and David Lack’s name has largely faded from public discourse. On the other hand, the Galapagos finches have become one of the most recognized symbols of evolution in the world today. Does it really matter whether Lack or Darwin gets credit for describing the evolution of these remarkable birds?

Insofar as evolutionary theory contrasted with religious belief, it makes a big difference. In a culture that is eager to equate evolution with atheism, it should come as no surprise that these birds are only known as “Darwin’s finches”. Darwin’s personal struggles and ultimate rejection of Christianity are well documented, and people are eager to link his loss of faith to his evolutionary theory. David Lack, on the other hand, began his scientific career as an agnostic, but shortly after publishing his famous book on the evolution of Galápagos finches, he converted to Christianity! ²

A Christian at the forefront of evolutionary biology

Lack’s Christian conversion did not mark the end of his scientific achievements, either. In fact, he continued as a prolific researcher until just weeks before he died. Among his many achievements, he was Director of the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology (1945-1973), Fellow of the Royal Society, and President of both the International Ornithological Congress (1962-66) and the British Ecological Society (1964-65). His fellow scientists held him in great esteem:

He was described as one of the most outstanding among world ornithologists; he was certainly this, but he was also one of the world’s leading evolutionists. All the time one saw developing his use of birds as material for the study of wider, deeper, biological problems.³

David Lack at the International Ornithological Congress, 1962.

Clearly David Lack was an outstanding scientist, and his commitment to Christianity did not tarnish, hinder, or undermine his research on evolution. But we might also ask, what was Lack like as a Christian? Did he keep his faith hidden from view, afraid that it might compromise his reputation as a scientist? Ernst Mayr, who interacted with David Lack professionally and personally for nearly 40 years, had this to say:

I have known only few people with such deep moral convictions as David Lack. He applied very high standards to his own work and was not inclined to condone shoddiness, superficiality and lack of sincerity in others. This did not always go well with those who preferred to compromise in favour of temporary expediency. David had been raised in an environment in which great stress was layed on moral principles and this attitude was later reinforced by his Christian faith. This explains his extraordinary unselfishness and modesty, and his great devotion to his family, to his students, to his friends, and to all the things that he lived for. The equanimity, indeed serenity, with which he faced death after his terminal cancer had been diagnosed is further evidence of the strength which his faith gave him.⁴

Like Asa Gray⁵ before him, and Francis Collins⁶ after, David Lack was an sincere, devout Christian, as well as a leading scientist who employed evolutionary theory to make brilliant discoveries about the natural world. Though Lack did not see any conflict between his scientific and Christian beliefs, he was sympathetic to the concerns of his fellow Christians. Therefore, ten years after publishing his masterpiece on Darwin’s Finches, Lack wrote another book entitled Evolutionary Theory and Christian Belief: The Unresolved Conflict.

Originally published in 1957, this book deals with the very same science and faith questions that Christians struggle with today— topics like randomness and chance, death in nature, miracles, and evolutionary ethics. While it would be unreasonable to expect anyone to completely resolve these matters, Lack offered numerous insights both as a devout Christian and one of the world’s leading biologists.

Let’s take a brief look at how Lack addressed some of these questions.

Blind Chance or Divine Plan?

Evolutionary theory does not invoke supernatural forces in explaining the history of life on Earth; instead, it relies on naturally-occurring processes to account for the vast diversity of life. Additionally, it explains animal behavior largely in terms of survival and reproduction, without appealing to any higher purpose of life. Taken together, does this imply that God is absent, and that our lives are ultimately meaningless?

David Lack responded,

Behind the criticism that Darwinism means that evolution is either random or rigidly determined lies the fear that evolution proceeds blindly, and not in accordance with a divine plan. This is another problem that really lies outside the terms of reference of biology. It is true that biologists have inferred that, because evolution occurs by natural selection, there is no divine plan; but they are being as illogical as those theologians whom they rightly criticize for inferring that, because there is a divine plan, evolution cannot be the result of natural selection.⁷

When rendering judgment on the ultimate meaning of life, biologists are speaking from their person beliefs, not from scientific authority. Moreover, Lack pointed out that many science enthusiasts have employed the concept of “randomness” in ambiguous and misleading ways:

Mutations are random in relation to the needs of the animal, but natural selection is not. Selection, as the word implies, is the reverse of chance.⁸

In support of his view, Lack pointed out that convergent evolution has produced uncanny resemblances between distantly-related species across the world, notably among marsupials in Australia. Different evolutionary trajectories can lead to very similar results.⁹

Death in Nature

After addressing concerns about the seeming “randomness” of evolution, Lack turned to another great concern, the role of death in natural selection:

Various writers–some Christian and others agnostic–have been troubled about natural selection not only because it seems too random, but also because it is so unpleasant.¹⁰

Image courtesy John Marsh Photography via Flikr

Genetic mutations are generally harmful, and for evolution by natural selection to produce new forms of life, an awful lot of organisms must die. For many Christians, it is inconceivable that a loving and merciful God would allow death on such a vast scale.

But Lack also pointed out that rejecting evolutionary theory doesn’t actually get rid of the problem of death. Regardless of what we think about evolution, the brute fact of mass extinction remains. Fossils of innumerable animals, plants, and microorganisms clearly demonstrate that the vast majority of species that have ever lived are now dead. It may be quite troubling for us to observe that our planet is a giant graveyard of natural history, but rejecting evolution will not change this fact.

Some Christians conclude that death could not have been part of the divine plan; instead, it must be the work of the devil, or the result of human sin. But this interpretation contains an implicit assumption that death is always evil. Is this really true? David Lack offered two intriguing insights:

Blue-cheeked Bee-eater (Merops persicus) pair in
courtship, seen in Basai, Gurgaon, India.
Image courtesy Koshy Koshy.

1. For a population to maintain a stable size, all births must be balanced by a corresponding number of deaths. A world in which no animals die is a world in which no animals are born. That means no reproduction, no courtship, and by implication, no singing birds—much to the dismay of ornithologists and people in love!

2. Some people, taking cues from Isaiah 11:6-7, suppose that in a perfect world, animals only eat plants. But in fact, plants themselves depend on the bacterial decay of dead organisms. If animals didn't die, then essential nutrients would disappear from the ground, and plants could not continue to grow. Eventually, there would be nothing left for animals to eat, and all life would cease.¹¹

Miracles

Many Christians are uncomfortable with evolutionary theory because it denies a miraculous, supernatural origin of life. They fear that if those miracles are denied, it might lead people to reject the possibility of miracles altogether, including the central feature of the Christian faith—the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

As a devout Christian, David Lack certainly affirmed the fundamental tenets of the gospel. But at the same time, he explained to his readers that invoking miracles to account for unusual features of the natural world is not particularly helpful when trying to deepen our understanding of God’s great multitude of creatures:

[The biologist's] research depends on repeated observations. It need not, as popularly supposed, consist solely, or even mainly of measurements and experiments, but unless events are repeated, they cannot be assessed by science. Hence truly unique events come outside the domain of science, though biologists are not usually convinced when told they must, therefore, leave such problems as miracles to others. For one of the chief ways in which research has advanced is through the discovery of apparent exceptions to the known rules, and if further study shows the exceptions to be replicable, new regularities are revealed from which modified rules can be propounded. This method has been so successful that the biologist tends to doubt whether there are any types of irregularity, or seeming irregularity, that will not yield to it.¹²

But just because a scientist cannot repeat a particular event doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Both natural history and human history contain unique events that only happened once. As we peer into the past, the difficulty of discerning fact from fiction inspires us to further investigate the mysteries that surround us.

Conclusion

David Lack’s book Evolutionary Theory and Christian Belief was quite insightful, but his enduring achievements took place in evolutionary biology, a place where many Christians are afraid to tread. While it is significant that he himself found no contradiction between his faith and his science, perhaps the greatest testament to the compatibility between Christian faith and evolution is the life he led as a believer in both. As we saw in Ernst Mayr’s candid praise, Lack reflected the light of Christ through both his personal and his professional relationships.

Today, many voices in our culture still insist that evolution is incompatible with a sincere faith in Jesus, but a careful look at history demonstrates otherwise. In the future, perhaps more people of faith will have confidence to study biology knowing that one of the most iconic symbols of evolution—the Galapagos finches—owe their fame in large part to a devout Christian named David Lack.

Notes

1. Mayr (1973) “David L. Lack.” Ibis: 433.
2. Larson, E. J. Evolution's Workshop: God and Science on the Galapagos Islands. New York, Basic Books, 2001: 218. See also Lack, David. (1973) “My life as an amateur ornithologist.” Ibis: 431.
3. Alister C. Hardy (1973). "David L. Lack." Ibis: 436.
4. Mayr (1973) “David L. Lack.” Ibis: 433.
5. For more about Asa Gray, see the BioLogos FAQ “How have Christians responded to Darwin’s Origin of Species?”
6. See Francis Collins’ autobiography The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for his Belief (New York: Free Press, 2007) (book info)
7. Lack, David. Evolutionary Theory and Christian Belief: The Unresolved Conflict. Methuen & Co., 1957: 67.
8. Lack, p65.
9. For more on convergent evolution and the possibility that evolution could be compatible with some form of divine purpose, see the work of Simon Conway Morris, especially The Deep Structure of Biology: Is Convergence Sufficiently Ubiquitous to Give a Directional Signal? Templeton Press, 2008.
10. Lack, p72.
11. Lack, pp75-76.
12. Lack, p82.

For more, be sure to read Randall Pruim's recent series Randomness and God’s Governance, Kathryn Applegate's post That's Random: A Look at Viral Self-Assembly, and our FAQ How Do Randomness and Chance Align with Belief in God's Sovereignty and Purpose?.

Author's Note

I am so thankful that I grew up in a Christian environment, which both kindled and nurtured my relationship with Jesus Christ. The Biblical instruction I received from my parents, pastors, and teachers has been invaluable as I walk out my love for the Lord from day to day. However, there was one specific topic growing up which was not fully addressed, namely evolutionary theory.

Coming from a conservative Christian background, evolution was given little or no thought because of its seeming contradiction to the creation story in Genesis. To me, evolution meant a monkey became a human, and as far as I knew, I had never seen that happen! So, of course, it appeared too improbable to hold any truth. When it was discussed, an inadequate picture of its ideas was often painted, which caused immediate suspicion and rejection of the theory. I don’t think this was intentional, but most Christians have never learned an unbiased, in-depth theory of evolution that is completely detached from societal agendas and philosophical conclusions. Therefore, their explanations of the theory are often misinformed.

My senior year of high school, I took AP Biology, and finally learned the scientific reasoning supporting this theory. I was surprised by how logical and obvious the mechanisms of change (such as mutations, natural selection, genetic drift, and so on) were that gave rise to new species. My subsequent response was, “No wonder people believe evolution occurred.” At that point, I was convinced that microevolution (evolution within a species) existed, but I was still questioning macroevolution.

Now, being at Point Loma Nazarene University as an undergrad in the Biology-Chemistry major and a year-round, student intern at BioLogos, my understanding of evolution has expanded enormously. I have enjoyed critically thinking through the evidence for evolution and reading articles that tackle difficult issues at the interface of science and Christian faith. Ultimately, I know that God has created all things, but the processes he used surpass my small understanding.

My personal wrestling with evolution and quest for truth has led to times of prayer and studying God’s Word, which has deepened my love for him in ways I cannot express. The first chapters of Genesis, in particular, have come alive. My whole life, the creation story was a straightforward list of facts about the creation of the world; I never searched further. I didn’t even perceive the truths Genesis declared over my very identity and God’s character. The more I study his Word and handiwork, I glimpse the awesomeness and majesty of the Creator, who loves me much more than I know. There is still so much to learn, but I am confident that he will lead me into all truth as I seek him out.

I desire to give others the opportunity to see evolution accurately and to distinguish it from the traditional, philosophical, and personal conclusions that too often cloud the scientific theory. I believe these conclusions alienate Christians from evolution more than the scientific theory itself. Ultimately, I do not mean to convince someone about evolution, but simply to give them the freedom to understand it.

Therefore, my goal for this podcast is two-fold:

• First, to offer a new perspective on randomness within natural processes that removes its negative connotations (especially as it relates to evolution).
• Second, to expose why evolution is powerless to support conclusions beyond the physical realm.

This will hopefully encourage others to study evolutionary theory and draw their own conclusions about its meaning in the framework of their faith.

Along the side of our patio in front of our family garden, I grow grapes. I was inspired to grow them from the tradition of my mother's homeland in Cyprus, where grapes, olives, figs and lemons adorn the patios of each house. I was challenged to grow them well by the words of Jesus in John 15: "I am the vine, you are the branches, I will prune you to produce much fruit." Pruning is the secret to successful grapes, but that's another story.

The point is that in tending that grape arbor and our family garden, and exploring the beautiful landscapes we are blessed with in Virginia, my wife Elizabeth and I, along with our three daughters, are in communion with the Creator and Sustainer of heaven and earth. That may sound like a lofty statement, but for me, nature, His created order, is where I find Him most personally. I have known and recognized this since I was a boy.

Though born in Richmond, I was raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, where my father and I would fish along the Elizabeth River and the Chesapeake Bay. With my friends, I hunted in the Great Dismal Swamp. My father grew up on my Grandpa's farm in Tennessee near Bristol and he took our family back there often. My grandfather was one of those vanishing breeds of men who had fidelity and love for the land. He was dependent on the land for his food and a few cash crops for income. He was intimately tied to the rhythms of the seasons and his work in the fields.

My grandfather and my aunts and uncles looked at this work as a partnership with the Lord. They taught me how to care for the land, as well as the names of plants that grew in the forests and along the streams that surrounded their farms. They also taught me skills that made me appreciate their way of life. Through these early experiences, I became fascinated with an essential question: What makes nature tick? I also developed an interest in the spiritual relationship between God and His creation. And so the journey began.

I took up the study of biology at Virginia Tech focusing on stream ecology, and then worked as a field biologist surveying rivers throughout the Southeast. Eventually, I returned to graduate school to study forest ecology in the Shenandoah National Park. My faith in the biblical account of creation was challenged by professors who taught evolution as the mode of creation of living things.

This challenge I brushed aside until I began teaching biology at a community college in Clifton Forge. The words in the textbooks and the words of Genesis took on new meaning. Did they contradict each other? Could all forms of life really evolve by chance? Weren't we created in His image? My students questioned me about this conflict and I started a search for the answers.

For several years I wrestled with these questions as an intellectual exercise. I began to make progress only when I started answering with my heart along with my head, aided by that other gift received from my parents, trust in the power of prayer. Looking back, this doubt and questioning, this need to have all the answers, made my faith real exactly as it taught me that I don't need to have all the answers: that is where faith comes in.

I do know with certainty that God created the heavens and the earth, and manages and sustains His creation even today. I cannot know with certainty how He did it with such precision and beauty. How God created is still a mystery that science, by its methods, tries to discover and cannot fully explain, and one that the Bible is mostly silent on.

To me, there should be no contradiction between science and the Bible. In the beginning, God was there and science cannot speak to that. It is by faith that I know that God created the world not by chance, but for his purposes and glory. The precision of natural order and its beauty have always focused me on the Creator, just as Paul states in Romans that all creation bears witness to God. The more I study nature and natural sciences, the more it drives me back to God who made all things.

In time, I was hired by The Nature Conservancy in Richmond as the ecologist and director of a new biological inventory for Virginia. Then another faith question came. Why did the Church not speak to the Christian practice of stewardship as it relates to creation? Why did many in my profession worship the creation and not the Creator?

I stumbled upon the work of Wendell Berry, who has since become one of my favorite authors. In a short essay he wrote in 1988 entitled God and Country, he said we must deal with the true meaning of Genesis 1:28 where God told Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it." He was right. Berry noted that many people use the words "dominion" and "subdue" as "unconditional permission to use the world as they please." I came to realize, like many, that such an interpretation is contradicted by the rest of the Bible.

The ecological teaching of the Bible is clear. God made the world and it pleased Him. It is His and He loves it. He has never given up title to it. He wants us to take excellent care of it. In Genesis we see it in His instructions to Adam and Eve in the Garden; in Leviticus 20, we see it in the Sabbath year and the Jubilee—laws governing land use, land rest and God's ownership of the land; in Psalm 24 David affirms "the earth is the Lord's and everything in it"; Jesus, in Matthew 6, tells us not to worry, for if God cares for the birds and plants, he'll also care for you; and in Romans 8:19, Paul says the creation eagerly awaits freedom when right relationships will be restored.

Biblical ecology is really a moral understanding of what God expects of us in relation to the natural world, but also in relation to the other people with whom we share it. This kind of stewardship has only been recently talked about in the Church. It means careful management, not destruction and abuse. It is infinitely practical because a healthy planet is in our best interest (we depend on its fruitfulness, after all), but biblical stewardship is also an act of loving our neighbors as ourselves, of loving even our children and grandchildren, by leaving them a decent place to live.

Psalm 8 lays out a mystery that, with the rest of Scripture in mind, invites a response in action as well as praise: "When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars you have ordained, what is man that you are mindful of him?" After more than 20 years with The Nature Conservancy in Richmond, Elizabeth and I have made a home for our family and have a church home, as well—all places in which we can respond to that mystery by bearing fruit. And though my answering the call to use my talents and time in each of those realms branches in many directions, it is always rooted in my awe of God, who created and sustains the universe and seeks a relationship with us. It is a call I live out in my vocation of protecting and restoring the lands and waters in Virginia, and a call our family lives out in our garden, in our frequent excursions in the outdoors, our worship of the Lord in church and at home, and, yes, even in growing grapes.

It didn’t seem right to deposit such a gift unreflectively into our bank account, allowing it to be swallowed up anonymously into our daily expense fund. My wife Sarah and I talked about a symbolic way we might use the money to honor John’s mark of grace on both of our lives. We very quickly settled on our decision: an SLR camera with a fine telephoto lens.

Many people remember John Stott for his books and preaching, but fewer remember him for his love of creation, his ornithological passion, and his knack for bird photography. On the very first day of my job working as his study assistant, I found on my desk a brand new set of binoculars and a copy of “Birds of Europe,” by Lars Johnson (the definitive guide). No study assistant was to work for John unless we shared in his love for birds, or at least could ably feign it. I soon discovered how seriously he took this avocation. In London he would stop whatever meeting we might be rushing off to in order to catch a look at a passing Kestrel. At his writing cottage in Southwest Wales we would begin every Sunday morning at Pickleridge Pools to see the Loons and Cormorants. Wherever we traveled, whether Uganda, India or Hungary, we would always schedule an extra few days to visit the local bird life with the accompaniment of a local expert.

But I also discovered that his love for birds was an extension of his love for creation and for its Creator. Uncle John took seriously the Psalmist’s words, “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them” (Ps 111:2). Taking “the works of the Lord” to include both God’s work of creation and redemption, he would often say that nature study and Bible study must go hand in hand. He was ahead of his time in calling Christians to have a more robust doctrine of and appreciation for Creation, and he viewed having at least one pursuit in the realm of natural history as an outflow of Christian discipleship. Indeed, it is striking that in his very last book, The Radical Disciple, in which he reflects on “some neglected aspects of our calling,” he includes “Creation Care” among Christian responsibilities like Christlikeness and Dependence.¹ And as remarkable as his accomplishments were in authoring such influential books as Basic Christianity and The Cross of Christ, it was his much less well known book The Birds Our Teachers,² which includes over 150 of his own photographs, that he would most often pull out to show visiting guests.

Some criticized John for his theistic evolutionary position and even his appreciation for Darwin, who John viewed as a man genuinely conflicted with how his discoveries could be integrated with his personal Christian faith. But Stott saw no contradiction between his own commitment to the authority of Scripture and his openness to God’s use of evolution in His creative process. He was of course unequivocal in his assertion that “One cannot be a Christian and not believe in creation.”³ Yet believing that Genesis 1 speaks more to the “why” rather than the “how” of creation, John also affirmed, “Those Christians who believe in evolution…mean that the huge variety of animal and vegetable forms can best be accounted for not by the independent creation of each, but by a gradual process of ‘descent with modification’, whether or not Darwin’s ‘natural selection’ is the best explanation of its mechanisms.”⁴ If anything, for John the possibility of God’s implementation of the evolutionary process was a striking example of the way God does not simply create but is also actively involved in sustaining and ordering His world.

So on the date of John’s birthday, April 27, we used his gift and bought our new camera. Laying it out on the table, I realized I needed a spacious and protective carrying case to hold the various lenses and equipment. I climbed up into the attic and retrieved John’s old camera bag, which he passed on to me after he had his second embolism and could no longer see well enough to take photographs. As I opened it up and examined the various lenses and mounts inside, now too old to adapt to any of the modern equipment, I realized I was holding in my hands the tools of one man’s passion and an expression of his love for his triune creator God. Deeply moved, I picked up my own camera, a new tool for my own stewardship of created life, and headed outside.

Notes

1. John Stott, The Radical Disciple (IVP, 2010).
2. John Stott, The Birds Our Teachers: Biblical Lessons from a lifelong bird-watcher (Angus Hudson, 1999).
3. Ibid.
4. John Stott, People Our Teachers (Angus Hudson, 2002), 110.

Many of the games I enjoyed playing involve a combination of strategy and randomness: card games of various sorts, backgammon, and board games like Monopoly and Parcheesi. Some games that rely exclusively on chance (like War and Candy Land) or too heavily on chance (like Sorry) quickly became uninteresting to me. In fact, for Sorry, War, and several other games, I introduced additional rules to change the balance of strategy and luck—for example, by allowing each player to hold a hand of cards rather than merely flip a card and follow its bidding.

When my children were young, I played many games with them, especially those involving some amount of chance. I always play to win, so games of pure strategy like chess gave me too great an advantage—at least when they were still young. I still remember the first time I played the German game Mitternachtspartie with my children and some of their cousins. The game uses a die on which the number 5 has been replaced with the image of Hugo the ghost. Each player rolls the die and moves one of his figures the specified number of squares, unless Hugo is rolled, in which case Hugo moves instead.

I quickly worked out the expected distance Hugo would move for each of my turns and the expected number of squares I would get to move my own figures each turn. Using that information, I could strategically place my figures in the opening portion of the game. I fully expected to win this first game, since my young children were going to have to learn from experience what I already knew by the mathematics of probability. I lost—badly. As it turned out, the die had two Hugos on it. So compared to my expectations, Hugo moved twice as often, and my figures moved slightly less far. That combination turned the carefully calculated positioning of my figures into a disaster.

From Fun and Games to Science

I still enjoy playing games, including games that involve chance. But these days I encounter randomness even more often in my profession. I was trained as a mathematician and now work at the intersection of mathematics, statistics, and computer science. Like many scientists, I use randomness on a daily basis as part of our toolkit for modeling and investigating all sorts of phenomena. Models known as stochastic models, which explicitly incorporate random components, often via simulation in computer software, are used to model everything from diffusion to genetics to quantum mechanics. Insurance companies and financial institutions use stochastic models to manage risk. If we include all the applications of statistics, then almost no area of science is untouched by the use of randomness.

Most of the time, scientists and game players alike don’t devote much thought to just what makes randomness tick. But they both know that the better they understand the probabilities, the more successful they are. Nevertheless, if you ask many of them what it means for something to be random, they may struggle to put it into words. I won’t try to give a precise definition either, but it is important that we have some idea what we are talking about, so let’s consider one of the prototypical examples of randomness: the tossing of a fair coin.

If I flip a coin, the result could be heads or tails. Until I flip the coin, I don’t know which it will be. In this sense, the coin toss is unpredictable. If the coin is fair, each result is equally likely, so while I cannot say in advance whether a particular result will be heads or tails, I can say something about a large number of flips: approximately half should be heads and the other half tails.

A little mathematics even allows me to determine a range around 50% in which the percentage will almost surely lie. For example, if I flip a fair coin 1,000 times, the percentage of heads will most likely be between 45% and 55% (where “most likely” means a 99% chance). If the percentage of heads lies outside this range—especially if it is quite far outside this range—I am going to be suspicious that the coin flipping process is not fair. That’s one of the key ideas in statistics: not only can we calculate the frequency with which an event occurs, but we can compare data to a stochastic model to see if they are compatible or incompatible.

There are several interesting things we can learn by considering a coin toss. First, probability calculations rely on assumptions. If the assumptions are incorrect, then the probability calculations will also be incorrect. For example, if the coin is biased (such as one that is heads 60% of the time), but we assume it is fair, then the probability calculations given above will be wrong. Of course, if the assumptions are not too far from correct, the results may still be sufficiently accurate for scientific conclusions. If we have an appropriate way to collect data, then we can test our assumptions by comparing data to projections made based on the assumptions.

Second, “random” does not imply “equally likely.” A fair coin should have equal probabilities of heads or tails, but a biased coin is no less random. It’s just different. It is not as simple to handle arithmetically as a situation in which all outcomes are equally likely, but it is not otherwise special. It is a common mistake to assume random events are equally likely when they are not (or when that assumption is not justified).

Third, randomness is about the process. It is a fun experiment to flip a penny 100 times, then spin a penny 100 times and record the side that is showing when it finally tips over, then to stand the penny on end (this takes a steady hand and a little practice) and record which side is showing after pounding the table. These are three different processes, and they do not yield the same results.

Fourth, random processes produce patterns. I sometimes ask my students to mentally flip a coin and record the results as a sequence of letters (e.g., “HTTHHTHT”). Then I have them actually flip a coin and record the results. If the sequences are long enough, I can almost always tell them which is which. The sequences imagined by the students tend to have too few runs of consecutive heads or tails. The sequences based on real coin flips usually include several heads in a row. People not familiar with randomness are often surprised at the patterns that result and assume that the process must not have been random when they perceive a pattern. Our eyes and minds are drawn to similarities and patterns—even those that are produced purely randomly. This can lead us to draw false conclusions from coincidences of all sorts.

Consider the image in Figure 1. It was constructed using a computer to randomly throw 300 darts at a square board. Every position on the board was equally likely to be hit by a dart. This does not, however, mean that the dots are evenly spaced. There are 100 smaller squares. The average is three dots per square. But your eye is likely drawn to some clusters and voids. My eye also catches a graceful downward swoop in the lower part of the upper left quarter. All of this is exactly what we should expect from this random process. If we repeated this experiment, we should expect similar results. Several of the smaller squares would be empty and some others would have two or three times the average number of dots, but these clusters and voids would appear in different places.

Finally, randomness can be used to produce patterns intentionally. Consider the two pictures in Figure 2. You may think the two pictures are identical, but they are not. However, they were each constructed using the same random process:

1. Start at the lower left corner of the big triangle.
2. Randomly choose one of the three corners of the big triangle.
3. Move half way to that corner, placing a dot at the new location.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3, 50,000 times.

The first few steps of this process for each image are illustrated in Figure 3. Although the final images look very similar, the route taken to get there is very different. In fact, the only point the two images have in common is the starting point. As the creator of the program that generated these images, I knew full well that the result would resemble a fractal image known to mathematicians as Sierpinski’s Triangle, even though I did not know or exercise any control over how the individual points would be selected.

Despite our familiarity with children’s games and the importance of stochastic models throughout the sciences, many Christians have a reaction to randomness that falls somewhere between uneasy and antagonistic. And yet, those same Christians may well watch the evening news to learn about public opinion polls forecasting upcoming elections, take prescription drugs approved by the FDA based on statistics found in clinical trials, obtain electrical power from a nuclear power plant that uses random fission reactions, and insure their cars with companies that rely on stochastic models to set the rates. The foundation of each of these activities is a thorough understanding of randomness that begins with the simple description above.

So where does the uneasiness come from? Likely it comes from the feeling that taking randomness seriously means not taking God seriously. Or put more strongly, it comes from a fear that believing in randomness means not believing in God. Next week we’ll address that problem by asking the question, “Could God use randomness to achieve his purposes?”

In the 1950s, Cage began using various methods of “casting lots” to determine how elements of his music would be chosen and arranged—principally the Chinese system of I Ching. His controversial program was to distance himself from his own creative process, and he explored many additional strategies to transform the role of “creator” into one of “observer.” Most famous of these was his musical composition, “4.33,” which consisted of a pianist sitting at the instrument doing nothing at all for four minutes and thirty-three seconds, while musician and audience listened to the ambient sounds of the concert hall. Yet contrary to that main thrust of Cage’s work, a description of the activities during the week-long residency at the Mountain Lake Workshop where the New River Watercolor Series were made suggests that choice, constraint, and intention were integral and inescapable tools in putting randomness to work for creative ends.

Here’s art historian and theorist Howard Risatti’s description of Cage’s plan of action for the New River Watercolors, from the website of artist Ray Kass, who runs the Mountain Lake program and was Cage’s collaborator for his work there:

Following upon [a previous (1983) Mountain Lake workshop] “painting experiment,” stones collected from the New River were sorted into three groups according to size, which were separately numbered; numerous and varied brushes were divided into two separately numbered groups; likewise, feathers to paint with, colors and washes, and papers were also divided and numbered. In this way, chance procedures using pages of random numbers that were now generated by a computer program could be used to determine the specific materials utilized for each painting (e.g., which painting instruments, what type of paper and which colors, how many washes, which stones to paint around, where to locate the stones on the paper).

While this list enumerates all the specific variables that Cage and his team submitted to chance, there was an incredible level of personal engagement with the materials: Cage didn’t just show us drawings of where the I Ching said the rocks ought to be, he (or his assistants) placed them on the paper and used them as guides to paint around. Large custom brushes were constructed to lay on washes of color, and even the paints were hand mixed, combined, and diluted according to his desires.

Cage’s use of chance, then, was not a “hands off” process, but neither was it a matter of total control: Cage selected processes to create a space of play between himself and the materials he used: the feather between himself and the paper, for instance, introduced variability of resistance and spring, its ability to hold paint, the width of the line. All of these things were elements of material ‘freedom,’ areas in which Cage asked the stuff he used to make the paintings to take part in the process—to contribute its own identity to the intentional, purposeful, and determined work of creating “based on chance.” This should not be surprising, as all art, all creation that we can observe, happens as a dialectic between materials and the creator, and such engagement and interaction in no way lessons the purpose of making, the end in sight.

Kass’ book The Sight of Silence: John Cage’s Complete Watercolors, gives a much more complete account of the tools, processes, and interpersonal reactions between Cage, Kass, and the team of student assistants who helped at almost every stage of the creation of the works. The book goes to great length to honor Cage’s ideal of being present in but not controlling the outcomes (not least by nearly always putting words like “choice” in quotation marks), but the description of his process makes the centrality of Cage’s personal aesthetic and artistic motives inescapable, even more than his physical engagement. What comes through perhaps even more than the way Cage intended to allow chance to ‘guide the creative process’ is that way Cage, himself, not only set the parameters of the chance he allowed into the system, not only engaged directly with the materials during the process, but also exercised judgment over the results, both in process and at the end:

“Cage decided he didn’t want the images of the stones to overlap or go off the sides of the paper. To guarantee this restriction, he created conditions and rules to limit their possible placements.” (p. 51)

“For this single painting [Series IV, #1, pictured above] Cage chose to confine the images of the rocks to a lower area of the paper that represented the proportion of the “golden rectangle. . .” (p. 57)

“While “choice” established much of the work’s nature, “chance” highlighted the intrinsic nature of the materials to reveal a refreshing presence.” (p. 59)

“[H]e initially decided to remove [the first painting of Series III] from the group, and then, liking it more, changed his mind and returned it to the group that would be signed.” (p. 56)

This last note is particularly interesting in that it highlights the fact that Cage was claiming these paintings, naming himself as their author, and was attentive to which ones he approved of enough to call his own. There is no way around the fact that Cage was subjectively as well as objectively the maker of these works: the author of the procedures by which they came to be, but well as the judge (and sometimes redeemer) of the results. For Cage, randomness was a tool, no different than the brushes or rocks or paints is that its specific parameters were chosen at the outset, and always used within the context of his over-arching vision. Perhaps we may likewise think of God’s use of chance—constrained by and tuned to the material conditions he established at the birth of the cosmos—as a way to both engage with and allow freedom for the creation itself.

With any work of art it is reasonable to ask, “Is it beautiful?” or more tellingly, “Would I hang this on my wall?” Seeing Cage’s watercolors for first time without any knowledge of the process or the relative fame of Cage himself, some might be intrigued by the structure of the work (the proportions of the golden rectangle, the overlapping stone shapes, the colors of the paint) while others would be completely uninterested, perhaps even after hearing about how they were made and seeing them in the context of the rest of the New River Watercolor series. But if you had been there in the shop as an assistant, or even observer, if you had been party to the relationships that developed even over the few days Cage spent at the Mountain Lake Workshop, your sense of the beauty of these paintings (and perhaps even scraps of paper Cage used to try out brushes or washes), would take on a different meaning, in much the way we treasure the crayon drawings of our children not because they are spectacular art, but because they are tokens of our relationship.

I make that observation to emphasize one other aspect of Cage’s creative process: that Cage was the instigator first and foremost of relationships of creation. His process created not only paintings but the fellowship that developed as the work was being done. That social, interpersonal dimension is what gives the objects a depth of meaning beyond their material composition, and suggests the particular roles humanity has been given by God. One role is to join into the creative process as lesser, but not unimportant co-creators with him; the other is to observe, recognize and celebrate his activity in the world. Where some will see randomness as evidence of an absent God, our knowledge of this most personal and participatory aspect of creation points us to the God who is with us.

With God’s creation as with human art, we may (or may not) marvel at any one particular “work,” or even think the specifics of how it was made are interesting or attractive; but knowledge of and fellowship with the artist transforms our appreciation of the process as well as its results. When we know the maker, we come to recognize and treasure even the most “random” bits of his handiwork, and name them as his, nonetheless.

For Further Reading:

Ray Kass. The Sight of Silence: John Cage’s Complete Watercolors, 2011.

Website for John Cage Centennial Festival, Washington, DC. September 2012.



]]> Sun, 13 May 12 12:53:04 -0700 Mark Sprinkle http://biologos.org/blog/series/science-as-an-instrument-of-worship?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/series/science-as-an-instrument-of-worship?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication In this brief series (taken from a 2009 paper), Jennifer Wiseman uses an excerpt from the famous hymn “How Great Thou Art,” to explain why the study of God’s creation can lead Christ’s followers into meaningful worship and overcome the obstacles which impede true praise. Creation as encountered through our senses is pondered by our minds, which flows into wonder-filled songs from the soul. She further explains how knowledge of creation will help Christians to address the moral dilemmas of science, and she encourages all to see the process of scientific inquiry as a means to discover God’s truth. Today's entry was taken from an article written by Jennifer Wiseman for the 2009 Theology of Celebration conference and published originally on our website in 2010; we are reposting it here. Here she shared her personal Christian perspectives on how churches can better incorporate science as a positive element of worship, service, and celebration.

Jennifer Wiseman’s 2009 white-paper explained how a renewed engagement with science can enrich the church’s life of worship. Part 1 of our series taken from that paper discussed stumbling blocks to such a renewal. Part 2 began to describe how the Creation itself reflects the nature of God by displaying his power, creativity, beauty, patience, and faithfulness, all tied up in his character of love. This series concludes by connecting the knowledge of the world we get through scientific investigation with humanity’s Biblical mandate to exercise stewardship of God’s Creation.

Science can inform us of what we need to do, as stewards of God’s Creation.

Humanity faces tremendous moral dilemmas today, and science has relevance to most of them. As followers of Christ, we understand that our lives are entrusted to us for a short time, and that we will give an account for the things we do. So as stewards of our lives, and as disciples entrusted to build God’s Kingdom on Earth, it is essential to have knowledge and wisdom to shape the impact of our lives. Are we polluting the environment by our lifestyles? Clear studies of the relationship of how we live and the environmental impact on others are vital for God’s people. What about service? A well-intended project to provide irrigation or livestock for one needy people group may well end up polluting and destroying an ecosystem downstream.

Scientific understanding can foster wisdom for the best choices of lifestyles and service. And informed Christians can lead the pack in helping “science to inform science” when it comes to difficult ethical dilemmas. For example, farming systems that intensively confine animals may offer a promise from agricultural science of more food production to feed more people. But informed Christians can rightly cry foul, because the sciences of animal behavior and medicine clearly show that such confinement is inhumane and thwarts even minimal natural social and physical needs of animals, and environmental science shows that pollutants from such “factory farms” are devastating. The Biblical mandate for compassion for both people and animals is violated. Thus by combining compassion and prayer with broad scientific understanding, wisdom and clearer discernment will equip the Church for effective discipleship and social leadership.

There may be strong differences of opinion, between equally committed believers, as to the right use of science and technology. Should we genetically modify plants and animals, to provide a more abundant food supply? Should we design sophisticated weapons that can unintentionally destroy innocent lives? Should we use medical technology to prolong life at all costs? Such challenging issues can be an exercise in teaching God’s people how to be informed, how to articulate a viewpoint, and how to weigh respectfully the opinions and concerns of others, without necessarily condemning alternative points of view. In this way the Church can also set an example to the nation and the world of how healthy, respectful dialogue can foster productive progress in addressing difficult public issues. But how important are these issues, if the return of Christ is eminent? This is a realm of theological understanding that can affect whether some churches consider stewardship of technology and environmental protection as an important mandate of God, or even relevant to the future, if in fact there may be no long-term future of the present Earth. This requires careful teaching on the balance between embracing Godly stewardship principles with the intent to bless the world now and for many, many generations to come, while at the same time becoming spiritually ready to join the Lord however soon that may take place.

There is yet another realm of Christian discipleship in science, and that is simply the joy of exploration for its own sake, or rather, as a means of discovering and sharing what God has done. Sharing the wonders of Creation, as scientific discovery reveals them, is a great service to others.

(Earthrise: our beautiful, fragile planet, as seen from lunar orbit. Credit: NASA/Johnson Space Center)

Since I am an astronomer studying distant star-forming regions, and I work for our nation’s space exploration agency, I am sometimes asked by citizens of the public why we should spend any time or money on studies of outer space while there is so much human suffering on Earth: shouldn’t we solve the world’s problems first, before we spend money and effort exploring the oceans or the forests or distant galaxies? I have seen good people get very angry over what can appear to be completely unethical priorities; for instance should we send a probe to study Saturn when we could instead feed hungry children here on Earth? These dilemmas will always be present, and they are not simple. But I believe that God has called us to do BOTH: that is, to serve the poor and the suffering, AND to explore and study his Cosmos. In fact, it is those moments of great discovery and exploration, such as the first moon landing, or the Voyager images of Jupiter’s moons, or the historic first images from the Arctic explorers, that lift the human spirit and give us pause to contemplate the larger context and meaning of our lives. I have found kindred spirits, excited to learn about space, in both the western academic world and amongst the youngsters in impoverished, developing nations. Curiosity and wonder bring us together. We get a Biblical glimpse of this in Genesis, when God asks Adam to name all the animals. The text gives the sense of God’s pleasure as Adam sees the wondrous variety of creatures, and descriptively names each one.

And how should Christians view science and scientists? Since science is a systematic search for truth, and Christians believe that all truth is God’s truth, then there should be true appreciation for these “messengers” who devote their lives to understanding the details of God’s creation and who share their discoveries of scientific truth. Of course as human beings, scientists are sinful and fallible like everyone else. But the portrayal of science and scientists in the church should be a positive one. In fact, historically a great many leading scientists have done their work as explicit service to God (e.g., Blaise Pascal and Johannes Kepler). It should be no different today. Our congregations should encourage young people to go into science, and to see this (and all noble careers) as service to God. Imagine the difference it could make to the whole world if Christians would lead the use of science in a path compelled by love, compassion, and service!

Perusing the writings of atheistic scientists and philosophers like Daniel Dennett, one could easily get the impression that arriving at a simpler explanation for something equates to a revelation that things are “lower, cruder, and more trivial.” But at the heart of Barr’s critique is the observation that in fundamental physics and advanced mathematics, “simpler” does not mean more chaotic and inchoate, but rather more elegant and beautiful. Those who hold to a philosophical reductionism “overlook the hidden forces and principles” that govern the processes of cosmic evolution.

Barr’s article lays out the way that the work of scientists and mathematicians exploring the fundamental principles of physics (from Kepler to Einstein to those currently running the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland) actually suggests “that order does not really emerge from chaos, as we might naively assume; it always emerges from greater and more impressive order already present at a deeper level.” This excerpt gives his first example, the starting point from which he guides us into strangely beautiful world of particle physics, and towards the discovery that “matter, although mindless itself, is the product of a Mind of infinite profundity and infinite simplicity.”

Fearful Symmetries

“Let’s start with a simple but instructive example of how order can appear to emerge spontaneously from mere chaos through the operation of natural forces. Imagine a large number of identical marbles rolling around randomly in a shoe box. If the box is tilted, all the marbles will roll down into a corner and arrange themselves into what is called the “hexagonal closest packing” pattern. (This is the same pattern one sees in oranges stacked on a fruit stand or in cells in a beehive.) This orderly structure emerges as the result of blind physical forces and mathematical laws. There is no hand arranging it. Physics requires the marbles to lower their gravitational potential energy as much as possible by squeezing down into the corner, which leads to the geometry of hexagonal packing.

At this point it seems as though order has indeed sprung from mere chaos. To see why this is wrong, however, consider a genuinely chaotic situation: a typical teenager’s bedroom. Imagine a huge jack tilting the bedroom so that everything in it slides into a corner. The result would not be an orderly pattern but instead a jumbled heap of lamps, furniture, books, clothing, and what have you.

Why the difference? Part of the answer is that, unlike the objects in the bedroom, the marbles in the box all have the same size and shape. But there’s more to it. Put a number of spoons of the same size and shape into a box and tilt it, and the result will be a jumbled heap. Marbles differ from spoons because their shape is spherical. When spoons tumble into a corner, they end up pointing every which way, but marbles don’t point every which way, because no matter which way a sphere is turned it looks exactly the same.

These two crucial features of the marbles—having the same shape and having a spherical shape—should be understood as principles of order that are already present in the supposedly chaotic situation before the box was tilted. In fact, the more we reduce to deeper explanations, the higher we go. This is because, in a sense that can be made mathematically precise, the preexisting order inherent in the marbles is greater than the order that emerges after the marbles arrange themselves. This requires some explanation.

Both the preexisting order and the order that emerges involve symmetry, a concept of central importance in modern physics, as we’ll see. Mathematicians and physicists have a peculiar way of thinking about symmetry: A symmetry is something that is done. For example, if one rotates a square by 90 degrees, it looks the same, so rotating by 90 degrees is said to be a symmetry of the square. So is rotating by 180 degrees, 270 degrees, or a full 360 degrees. A square thus has exactly four symmetries.

Not surprisingly, the hexagonal pattern the marbles form has six symmetries (rotating by any multiple of 60 degrees: 60, 120, 180, 240, 300, and 360 degrees). A sphere, on the other hand, has an infinite number of symmetries—doubly infinite, in fact, since rotating a sphere by any angle about any axis leaves it looking the same. And, what’s more, the symmetries of a sphere include all the symmetries of a hexagon.

If we think this way about symmetry, careful analysis shows that, when marbles arrange themselves into the hexagonal pattern, just six of the infinite number of symmetries in the shape of the marbles are ex-pressed or manifested in their final arrangement. The rest of the symmetries are said, in the jargon of physics, to be spontaneously broken. So, in the simple example of marbles in a tilted box, we can see that symmetry isn’t popping out of nowhere. It is being distilled out of a greater symmetry already present within the spherical shape of the marbles.”

In the full essay, Barr gives a richer description of how this most basic kind of symmetry is just one sort of order, and how even this form points to other much more complex kinds of symmetry whose properties may be described only through the tools of complex mathematics. As he says, “the symmetries that characterize the deepest laws of physics are mathematically richer and stranger than the ones we encounter in everyday life.” But even more important than the fact that such mathematical concepts exist and are beautiful, more important even than the way such esoteric mathematical symmetries have suggested imminently practical experimental projects, is the way they point to a universe that is anything but brutish and trivial, though its elegance may be hard to see:

“It is true that the cosmos was at one point a swirling mass of gas and dust out of which has come the extraordinary complexity of life as we experience it. Yet, at every moment in this process of development, a greater and more impressive order operates within—an order that did not develop but was there from the beginning. In the upper world, mind, thought, and ideas make their appearance as fruit on the topmost branches of an evolutionary tree. Below the surface, we see the taproots of reality, the fundamental laws of physics that shimmer with ideas of profound simplicity.”

This essay appears with the permission of First Things. To read Barr’s complete essay, please click here.

Vox Balaenae, or “Voice of the Whale,” was composed by American composer George Crumb (b. 1929) and was first performed by the New York Camerata in 1971. It was only four years before that, in 1967, that biologists Roger Payne and Scott McVay discovered that humpback whales “sing” and published recordings of the whales’ complex vocalizations, after which “whale song” quickly entered the popular consciousness and helped propel the “save the whales” environmental movement forward. (In 1970, Folk singer Judy Collins even put out a version of the traditional melody "Farewell To Tarwathie" over a background of recorded humpback whale songs.) For many, the fact that the massive creatures might share the human capacity and desire to engage in music as a social activity only made their wholesale destruction at our hands more egregious.

Though he was himself inspired by hearing those early whale song recordings, Crumb’s work does not utilize tapes of real whales or attempt merely to reproduce the effect in the context of an ordinary musical form. Instead, he asks three chamber musicians with modified and electrically amplified instruments (piano, flute and cello) to create sounds that evoke the entire natural history of the sea. The piano is played and strummed from inside the case and with a glass rod or plate on the strings, the cello part emphasizes a string’s abilities to produce high harmonic tones, and the flautist sings into her instrument as she plays. Many of these effects are intended to suggest natural sounds—as in the cello’s "seagull effect" (audible at 5:59 in the video linked blow), and the whale-like beginning cadenza by the flute—but not always in a direct way. In addition, all three players perform wearing half-masks, which, according to Crumb help “effac[e] the sense of human projection,” especially when they play under blue stage lighting as he envisioned. (Most of these features can be seen and heard in this April 2011 performance in Montreal by Philippe Prud'homme, piano; Stephane Tetreault, cello

; and Camille Lambert-Chan, flute, though it omits the blue stage lighting.)

In this multi-sensory impressionistic scene, the whales become representatives of a natural world that predates humanity, yet whose fate is inextricably bound up with the will of mankind. Indeed, the tension between the measured vastness of geologic time and the “Age of Man” is written into the score, as an opening prologue is followed by variations on the initial “Sea Theme” (beginning at 4:20), each named after geologic epochs: Archeozoic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and finally, the Cenozoic. It is in this last age—when mankind arrives on the scene—that the sometimes atonal and harsh combinations of sound reach a dissonant climax that the score indicates should be played as “dramatic, with a feeling of imminent destiny” (beginning at 11:26). Finally, the piece moves towards its conclusion with a haunting restatement and renewal of the Sea Theme (at just after 13:00), with the musicians gradually playing more and more quietly until ending with a pantomime, as if creating sounds beyond the limits of human hearing. Again, the sense of resolution in the music is named by Crumb in the score’s instructions to the players: “serene, pure, transfigured.”

So what do we make of this musical narrative and what Crumb seems to be saying about both whales (standing—or swimming—for the natural world) and humankind? Is it truly an anti-human statement, a “whales vs. people” image in response to environmental damage we were only really beginning to understand (via science) at the time the piece was written? There is certainly a skepticism here about human hubris, made explicit at the end of the prologue section by a “parody” of the opening phrase of Strauss’ Thus Spake Zarathustra (at 2:40). Contemporary listeners then and now will likely recognize that borrowed theme as the music from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), but before that it was a musical homage to Nietzsche’s view of ascendant Man. In this ironic re-use of Strauss’ work, Crumb seems to say that against the span of geologic time and a vast (musical) world previously unknown to human ears, our claims of knowledge and technological mastery seem laughable.

Yet there are several clues that that sort of reading misses the mark, or that it is, at best, incomplete—beginning with the experience of playing and hearing it in person. I first heard Vox Balaenae in about 2002 with my then 6-year-old son. It was played in a small hall (under blue lights) at our local art museum by the Quadrivium Players, a group that included my friend Mary Boodell on the flute. While the masks were surprising at first, they did, indeed, de-emphasize the personality of the players as individuals, while emphasizing the atmospheric, world-creating power of art-forms, especially music.

Rather than a symbolic effacement of the human presence in the world (in keeping with the anti-Nietzschian not above), the effect was to move away from the ritualized performative aspect of modern chamber music and bridge the divide between players and observers, creating a more participatory community. Because of the piece’s distinctive, impressionistic kind of narrativity, one isn’t so much as “carried away by” the music as submerged and suspended in the world created by it, and Boodell describes the effect (especially at the end of the piece) of feeling like the audience is holding it’s breath to hear the silences Crumb has written into the score.

But Boodell also recounts the story of being drawn into the conceptual frame of the piece in a very physical, way when she found herself alone in a swimming pool in the weeks leading up to a performance. Though hesitantly at first, she couldn’t help but wonder how the sounds she made in Vox Balaenae would sound underwater, and so went under in the pool to find out. While the image makes one smile and probably reminds most of us of similar, less technically-proficient underwater experiments of our own, it also suggests how the piece helps hearers make a connection in addition to that between player and listener—that between humanity and the rest of the natural world. If the unexpected flow and soundscape created by Crumb helps audience and players achieve the kind of connection music scholar Jeff Warren has elsewhere on this site discussed as “entrainment,” it is also an invitation to a similarly compassionate state with the rest of creation, based on the new-found knowledge that other creatures have complex, even musical relationships with each other, and that we are privileged to discover and begin to understand them.

Clearly, then, Crumb’s Vox Balaenae touches on scientific knowledge of the world both in its genesis in recordings of whale songs and its structure keyed to geologic, evolutionary ages. But does it have more to say to us here than that we should avoid killing whales because they sing? While we can recognize that the biblical call to have dominion over the earth guides us towards cultivation and care for its creatures and remember that Jesus exemplified such a shepherding role, we should also remember his priestly one, and ours. For just as he remains the High Priest of heaven, holding our prayers in the presence of the Father, we have similar joy in being between heaven and earth, “a little lower than the angels.” Thus we can hold up the great whales (and their songs) as monuments to the depth of God’s creative activity in and through nature—and even revel in our musical, creaturely fellowship with them—without denying the special place of humanity. On the contrary, we affirm that special place when we humble ourselves to listen, seek to understand the native tongues of creation, and then, through Christ, present its songs before the throne of the Almighty Creator and King.

Today's video is courtesy of filmmaker Ryan Pettey, director/editor of Satellite Pictures and features physicist Ard Louis.

In today's video, Oxford physicist Ard Louis discusses the famous debate between renowned evolutionary biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Simon Conway Morris. Gould believed (and wrote in his book Wonderful Life) that if the "tape" of evolution were rerun, the chance that anything like human intelligence would emerge is essentially zero. In other words, humanity is here through random accident. Gould pointed to the work of Morris and fellow scientists in their research of the Burgess Shale as evidence for this view.

However, Morris himself disagrees, pointing to what is called evolutionary convergence. As Morris notes, there are numerous examples of identical features evolving multiple times throughout the history of life independently. Morris believes that if the tape of life were replayed, we would see something like humans emerge. A Christian might say, it looks like we were planned.

Some Christians might find Simon Conway Morris' viewpoint, with its implicit teleology, more attractive. Others, perhaps motivated by a high view of providence, may find Gould's emphasis on contingency equally congenial to their faith. What do you think?

"Reply the tape a million times ... and I doubt that anything like Homo sapiens would ever evolve again" (Stephen Jay Gould from "Wonderful Life", 1989 p. 289, Harvard University Press.).

With his standard panache, the late Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould argued strenuously that evolution had no inherent directionality. It was a cosmic crapshoot - in no way destined to produce anything complex, self-conscious or human. We are mere accidents; a "tiny twig on an improbable branch of a contingent limb on a fortunate tree" ("Wonderful Life" p. 291). Highly fortunate indeed! Eons ago, a dinosaur-dominated earth held little promise for mammalian ascendancy (let alone primates or humans). Our distant ancestors might have remained little more than scurrying nuisances nipping at the feet of giants if not for a most unlikely calamity - a massive meteor strike which swept away the dinos and forever altered the earth's bio-saga. Who would have guessed?

Evolution's capricious nature seemed to represent a severe stumbling block for the Abrahamaic religious traditions. In their narrative, humans represented the culmination of God's creative work - the very purpose for creation itself. But evolution is an awfully shoddy way of enacting a divine plan. Gould delighted in annoying the faithful by emphasizing this very point:

"Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution - paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a natural process, constrained by history, follows perforce" ("The Panda's Thumb", 1980, pp. 20-1).

Theologians, however, were quick to point out that the chance element in evolution was neither new nor necessarily contrary to the Judeo-Christian view of God. Human history was replete with chance; evolution only extended the theme. Moreover, chance allowed for freedom - a virtue high on God's agenda. However theologically sound these retorts may have been, their force was often lost on the average believer. The accidental nature of human existence provided just another reason to reject evolution altogether in order to preserve God's special concern for humanity.

Gould was a talented science writer, but he overplayed evolution's whimsy. Increasingly, science is showing that the evolutionary process has many built in constraints which limit its possibilities and bias its pathways. Take, for example, the ubiquitous phenomenon of convergence - the tendency for highly diverse species to independently evolve similar adaptive (analogous, not homologous) traits. Most of us are familiar with the saber-toothed tiger, the scourge of our hominin ancestors. Less familiar are a group of South American marsupials called the thylacosmilids who independently evolved similar protruding saber-teeth. Convergence can also be seen in a number of specifically human traits. For example, we share a mode of locomotion, bipedalism, with birds, kangaroos, and some dinos. The lateralized and convoluted structure of our brains can also be found in octopi, this despite the fact that vertebrates and cephalopods diverged from one another over 450 million years ago.

In his book "Life's Solution" (2003, Cambridge Press) Cambridge Palaeobiologist Simon Conway Morris documents scores of examples of convergent evolution from insect body designs to the social systems of dolphins and chimpanzees (both fission-fusion). The important lesson is that there are only a limited number of ways that evolution can solve the adaptive problems posed by the earth's ecosystems. Time and again, evolution stumbles upon the same general design features from which to fashion adaptive traits.

Now add to this the Baldwin effect - an idea originally proposed in 1896 wherein organisms are posited to actively shape their own selective forces. For example, suppose some fairly intelligent primates begin fashioning tools, giving them access to new resources and a competitive advantage over non-tool users. Any genetic predisposition facilitating tool use would also be positively selected.

A severe limitation on Baldwin effects has always been the unpredictability of genetic mutation. For any heritable genetic changes to occur (so the thinking has always been) our tool wielding primate would just have to wait around and hope for a lucky "tool use" mutation to pop up. But maybe not. Two recent books, Jablonka and Lamb's "Evolution in Four Dimensions" (2005 MIT press) and Kirschner and Gerhart's "The Plausibility of Life" (2005, Yale University Press) discuss connections between recent work in genetics and Baldwinian processes. What if the primate's tool use actually raised the probability that a tool-relevant genetic change would take place which could then be passed along to offspring?

Recent genetic research (in a field called epigenetics) shows that experiences occurring over one's lifetime can produce heritable genetic changes. For example, mice exposed to two weeks of environmental enrichment (more social interaction, activity, novel objects to explore) show evidence of enhanced memory function (not surprising). More surprising is that their offspring also show evidence of enhanced memory even though they were never exposed to environmental enrichment (Journal of Neuroscience, 29, p. 1496). Thus, the increased environmental stimulation created a genetic change in the parents that was then transmitted to offspring. This change appears to involved altered patterns of gene regulation (how genes are turned on and off during development). Similar effects have been noted in humans (see European Journal of Human Genetics, 14, p. 159).

Convergence, epigenetic inheritance, and Baldwin effects are only a few of the mechanisms serving as directional constraints on evolution's pathways. In his review of the various factors affecting the evolutionary process, anthropologist Melvin Konner concludes:

"There are no intrinsic driving factors in evolution, but there are intrinsic constraints and canalized paths along which either evolution or development may more easily proceed" ("The Evolution of Childhood," Harvard Press, 2010, p. 59, emphasis in original).

Of course, none of these constraining factors guarantee our arrival on the evolutionary stage. They do, however, raise the odds that in time a complex, rational, self-aware creature capable of entertaining both scientific and religious ideas might emerge.

The more we understand evolution, the less it seems like neither the bogeyman that creationists fear nor the universal God-dissolving acid some atheists crave.

While these are indeed complex questions, some of the problems do stem from misunderstandings about what randomness means in a scientific sense and what role it plays in evolution. To help clarify some of these details, we offer these resources.

The “Randomness” installment of our Distinctions series (first posted earlier this year) looks at some of the basic misconceptions about the role of randomness in evolution. While it is understood by many simply to mean blind, undirected and purposeless, in truth, randomness is far more complex and awe-inspiring than this overly-simplified definition. Whether through genetic mutations or the combinations that occur between sperm and eggs, these processes can be seen as the continual unfolding of something that is decidedly not random--creation itself. Randomness, in essence, generates certainty. This is further illustrated in the second video.

In the clip “Randomness” from the upcoming film A Leap of Truth by Ryan Pettey, Richard Colling, Ard Louis, and John Polkinghorne offer several examples of random processes leading to order rather than disorder. As Dr. Louis points out, the scientific definition of “randomness” is quite different from our everyday understanding of the word. In fact, random generation is the most efficient way to generate complexity. Polkinghorne further notes that we live in a world where the balance of random mutations is almost perfectly tuned for fruitful life on Earth. This, we learn, is God's process: Randomness given time, can lead to that which is nearly certain.

This is beautifully illustrated in the following re-post from last year. Here, in a blog called "That's Random," Kathryn Applegate offers two examples of random motion leading to certainty in the process of assembling a virus. Because random processes can lead to that which is almost certain, it is not at all surprising that this has frequently been used by God over billions of years to create order out of chaos--God's creation, by God's way, in God's time.

That's Random

You hear it all the time: “That’s so random!” When used by people of my generation, the word “random” can simply mean “cool” or “surprising.” Or it can mean something like “disconnected,” as in the phrase, “I had a random thought” (which returns 189,000 hits on Google, by the way—random!).

Despite this usage, most of us know that randomness has something to do with probability, and that it often implies a lack of conscious intentionality. But what do mathematicians and scientists mean when they say something is random? Can a random process lead to an ordered, even predictable outcome? Is there evidence that God makes use of random processes to fulfill his creative purposes?

These are big questions, and we won’t address them all today. But I think randomness is an important topic to cover for two reasons: 1) it is integral to many processes in biology (and math, physics, chemistry, etc.), and 2) it is commonly misunderstood to be incompatible with Christianity.

As I said above, most of us know that randomness has something to do with probability. If you pick a card “at random” from a shuffled deck, you have a small probability of drawing an ace (4 out of 52, or a 7.7% chance). If you flip a coin, you have an equal probability of getting heads or tails.

Randomness also seems to imply a lack of intentionality or purposefulness. After all, you might hope for an ace when you draw a card, but you can’t choose one on purpose. You might call heads when you flip a coin, but you can’t know beforehand what the outcome will be. Thus the outcome is indeterminate, but is it purposeless? Not necessarily. Indeterminacy simply means the result cannot be predicted from the outset.

It should be noted that indeterminacy does not imply that God does not have foreknowledge of future events. Christians ought not to be uncomfortable with the idea of God interacting with his creation through chance. We often describe a seemingly-random (i.e. unplanned by us) sequence of events as being “providential,” or planned by God. A good introduction to the way divine action could drive physical processes can be found in this Question.

In biology, it is very hard or impossible to calculate precise probabilities for most processes, so when we say a process is random, we typically mean it is extremely unpredictable. Eventually we will discuss randomness within biological evolution, but first we must consider some simpler processes, like the self-assembly of a virus.

Viruses are remarkably efficient entities. Coiled tightly within a protein-based shell is a small amount of DNA needed for self-replication. The shell, called a capsid, is made of many repeating protein subunits and is therefore highly symmetrical (see figure). Important biomedical insights have certainly been gleaned from structural studies of viruses, but viruses also teach us about the emergence of order from non-order.

The virus life cycle has four main steps: 1) enter a host cell, 2) hijack the cell’s replication and translation machinery to make many copies of itself, 3) assemble into many virus particles, and 4) exit the cell to invade another host.

When I first learned about this process, I found it very hard to believe it just “happens.” The idea that a bunch of molecules bumping into each other inside a crowded cell could spontaneously assembly into a fully-functional virus seemed a bit far-fetched. Many viral capsids have over 100 protein subunits that must interact with each other in just the right way, or it won’t work. Surely there must be something driving this process, right?

There is! Random motion. I had to see it to believe it. I distinctly remember sitting in class during my first year of graduate school when the professor demonstrated self-assembly of a virus using a 3D model as shown in the following video. In less than 30 seconds, you can watch a jumbled heap of proteins become a beautifully ordered structure.

As the narrator explains, sub-assemblies form and break apart en route to the most stable structure, the full capsid. As the sub-assemblies begin to form, further associations with free subunits become more favorable and as a result occur rapidly, while the final steps may take considerably longer. While the subunits in the model are rigid, in reality the proteins take on multiple conformations, allowing the capsid to “breathe.”

Amazing as it is, the system we just considered—one virus capsid in a jar—is pretty simple. One wonders how self-assembly can happen in a crowded cell, where there are countless other molecules diffusing around, potentially getting in the way. We can’t directly see how it happens in a cell, but we can reconstitute the process in a test tube using different combinations of constituent molecules.

Consider two viruses, where each protein subunit in one virus is the mirror image of the corresponding subunit in the other. Putting the two viruses together by hand would be pretty tricky, because the constituent parts look so similar. But random motion can do the job in short order:

From this model, we can see clearly, in real-time, how distinct complex structures can arise from their parts randomly interacting with one another. Many large viruses also use special scaffolding proteins to assist in the assembly process, and some even use their own genomes as a scaffold. In addition, two closely-related viruses that happen to infect the same cell can exchange parts to create a new virus. This is one way viruses can evolve quickly to evade the host’s immune system.

Here we have seen how viruses demonstrate a principle inherent in God’s world—that order can emerge out of chaos from random processes.

1. From Scot: Could you explain the difference between creationism, intelligent design, and "evolutionary creationism"?

“Creationism” is one of those words that almost always needs clarification. For many, “creationism” is synonymous with Young-Earth Creationism, the view that the Genesis narratives are to be taken literally. This view holds that the entire cosmos is around 6,000 years old, that the fossil record was laid down almost in its entirety during a literal, global worldwide flood, that God created humans directly out of dust, and that Adam and Eve are the progenitors of the entire human race. The organization Answers in Genesis is probably the best-known proponent of this view.

Old-Earth Creationism typically holds to a local flood, and accepts Big Bang cosmology. Despite agreeing with mainstream science on these issues, they deny evolution: they believe that the vast majority of species (and especially humans) were independently created by God during earth’s long history. Old-earthers also hold to a literal Adam and Eve as the progenitors of our entire species. Reasons to Believe is the best-known organization that promotes this view. You can read one of my (somewhat technical) critiques of their anti-evolutionary genetics arguments here.

Intelligent Design (ID) is a view that many feel is a form of creationism, though the ID Movement itself often rejects the label, claiming that it is strictly an alternative scientific view. The ID Movement is a “Big Tent” approach for all and sundry who reject at least some part of evolutionary biology. As such, there are Young-Earth Creationists, Old-Earth Creationists, and others within the movement. The main ID view is that some features of life are too complex to be the result of evolution, thus indicating that they were “designed” – a word that functions as the equivalent of “created” within this group. The Discovery Institute is the best-known organization for promoting ID. I’ve spent a lot of time critiquing the ID movement, and you can find much of that material on the BioLogos web site (do an author search there using my name).

Despite their (large) differences, all of the above positions deny some aspect of modern science. The only Christian perspective on origins that fully accepts mainstream science is the Evolutionary Creation / Theistic Evolution view. This view holds that science is not an enemy to be fought, but rather a means of understanding some of the mechanisms God has used to bring about biodiversity on earth. This view accepts that humans share ancestry with all other forms of life, and that our species arose as a population, not through a single primal pair. There are different views within the EC community on whether there was a historical couple named Adam and Eve – some hold that there was, and that they were selected by God from a larger population as representatives. Other folks in the EC community feel that Adam and Eve are typological figures, such as a representation of the failure of Israel to keep the covenant. The science (human population genetics) is clear that our species arose as a population, and that is what I have focused on (since that is my area of expertise). I try to leave the theology to others, but often folks want to talk theology on these points, not science.

2. From Paige: What has been the most compelling evidence for you personally that has solidified your position as an evolutionary creationist?

Well, the evidence is everywhere. It’s not just that a piece here and there fits evolution: it’s the fact that virtually none of the evidence we have suggests anything else. What you see presented as “problems for evolution” by Christian anti-evolutionary groups are typically issues that are taken out of context or (intentionally or not) misrepresented to their non-specialist audiences. For me personally (as a geneticist) comparative genomics (comparing DNA sequences between different species) has really sealed the deal on evolution. Even if Darwin had never lived and no one else had come up with the idea of common ancestry, modern genomics would have forced us to that conclusion even if there was no other evidence available (which of course manifestly isn’t the case).

For example, we see the genes for air-based olfaction (smelling) in whales that no longer even have olfactory organs. Humans have the remains of a gene devoted to egg yolk production in our DNA in exactly the place that evolution would predict. Our genome is nearly identical to the chimpanzee genome, a little less identical to the gorilla genome, a little less identical to the orangutan genome, and so on – and this correspondence is present in ways that are not needed for function (such as the location of shared genetic defects, the order of genes on chromosomes, and on and on). If you’re interested in this research, you might find this (again, somewhat technical) lecture I gave a few years ago helpful. You can also see a less technical, but longer version here where I do my best to explain these lines of evidence to members of my church. For those wanting even more info, a few years ago I recorded a series of lectures given to my non-majors, intro biology class that explored evolution and Christian responses to it in depth.

3. From Rob: I have trouble with randomness in natural selection. Why is it essential in scientific terms that evolutionary development is random? How does that fit with the notion of a God who is involved in the world? …Random evolution would not be theism (or it wouldn't Biblical Christianity). It would be deism; the Great Clockmaker who set everything in motion and then kept hands off. Why is randomness essential scientifically, and how does a Christian accept it theologically?

I think you mean randomness in mutation: natural selection is anything but random (it’s a process whereby certain variants in a population reproduce more successfully than others). Evolution has a random component (mutations arise that may be detrimental, neutral or beneficial) and an emphatically non-random component (the different variants within a population do not all reproduce at the same frequency, meaning that the next generation will not be exactly like the previous one). So, as a whole, evolution is not random since it has a strongly non-random component. Evolution is actually remarkably good at producing similar results over and over again: consider how similar ichthyosaurs (descended from terrestrial reptiles) and dolphins (descended from terrestrial mammals) are. That’s the non-randomness of evolution at work. Some evolutionary creationists have argued that this non-randomness of evolution is a way that God uses evolution to shape His creation (the best work on this topic is Life's Solution by noted Cambrian paleontologist Simon Conway Morris).

4. From HMV: I agree with you that the evidence seems to point to evolution being true. I've read Biologos and the old Evolution and Evangelicals blog. I've read books where people try to rework theology in light of this scientific knowledge. And yet, I'm left feeling confused and unsatisfied about doctrines like sin, the Fall, salvation, etc. What about you--have you found a satisfying way to maintain your evangelical theology in light of evolution?

This is a tricky question, because it hinges on the inherently subjective term “satisfying.” What I might find satisfying you might not – and in order to answer the question I have to guess at what you mean by it.

Personally, the concept of Divine accommodation has been helpful to me. This is a theology that has a long heritage in Protestant circles (e.g. Calvin). In a nutshell, it’s the idea that God, in his grace, brings himself down to the level of the audience he is communicating with. For Genesis, that audience is an ancient near-eastern culture, not our modern scientific one. For Genesis, my view is that God wants to communicate that he is the Creator of all that there is, that he has given humanity a special image-bearing role within it, but our sinfulness has broken that relationship, et cetera – but that he doesn’t see a need to give them a science lesson first. I would recommend Denis Lamoureux’s book I Love Jesus & I Accept Evolution and, though not directly related to science, Peter Enns’ book Inspiration and Incarnation may also be helpful to you (it certainly was to me).

5. From Chris: From the perspective of an evolutionary creationist, what meaning and value do you extract from the creation accounts in Genesis and why would they be important for the Christian faith if they can't be taken literally?

See the answer above – I see the Genesis narratives as God graciously reaching down to an ancient culture in order to communicate to them that he is their creator, that they are alienated from him, and that he desires that they be restored to fellowship through his offer of covenant with him (ultimately pointing to the need for God to step into history himself as the One who can keep the covenant on our behalf).

6. From Paige: I'll never forget sitting in one of Dr. Charlie Liebert’s classes several years ago and hearing him ask the question: "What came first, death or sin?" If we believe that there was no death before sin, it causes a wrinkle in our ability to hold to the theory of evolution. As a scientist, this question caused him to reexamine the evidence. How have you personally dealt with this "wrinkle?"

Yes, if you believe that no death of any kind (plant, animal, bacterial) occurred before human sinfulness, then this precludes an evolutionary view, since the fossil record is (obviously) a record of things, well, dying. If you hold that no human death came before sinfulness, then it depends on what you call human (there is a gradation of forms leading up to the modern human skeleton in the fossil record, as well as the overwhelming genetic evidence that we arose through an evolutionary process) and what you consider sin (i.e. when did we become accountable to God for our actions?). There is also the long-standing observation that God decrees that Adam and Eve will surely die the day they eat of the fruit – and then they live for several hundred years after the fact. I’d also recommend reading through Romans 5:12 – 8:17 (which, as you know, is all about Adam, sin and Christ as the second Adam) and making a mental checklist of how Paul uses the term death in this passage. References to physical human death are in the minority – suggesting that Paul’s understanding of what is going on in Genesis has a lot more nuance than a simple literal reading would imply.

7. From Jane (from her husband, an atheist): All of the questions posted so far approach the topic from the viewpoint of assuming belief in a god. As an atheist, I don’t share that assumption. (For those who might not appreciate it, evolution offers a mechanism for understanding the existence of living organisms that doesn’t require the existence of a god.) If you transitioned from an anti-evolutionary/pro-intelligent design view to an evolutionary creationist view a few years ago,” why didn’t you keep going and just embrace evolution and drop the theistic aspect?

Your question implies that there is a natural trajectory from accepting evolution to rejecting God. As a theist, specifically an evangelical Christian, I don’t agree with this point, though I understand where you are coming from. Let me explain.

Your assumption, that “evolution offers a mechanism for understanding the existence of living organisms that doesn’t require the existence of a god” holds weight only if one has the view that “natural explanations” and “theistic explanations” are a zero-sum game. This is a God-of-the-gaps approach, where God has less and less to do as we understand more and more how nature works (and a view I reject). Logically, if I held this view I would view science as an inherently evil activity, since any natural explanation diminishes the activity of God from this viewpoint. Your view is also one that science cannot establish as correct, since science cannot speak to the absence of divine action in an observed phenomenon.

If, on the other hand, one believes that “natural explanations” reveal the means by which God ordains and sustains his creation, then “natural explanations” are not a threat to theism at all, but rather a window into the ways God acts in the world. This is the view I hold, and it too is a view that science cannot establish. Both theistic evolution and atheistic evolution are philosophical / theological interpretations of what science can establish: evolution.

As for “drop(ping) the theistic aspect” – this would imply that my faith was based on a particular understanding of creation such that I would question my faith when I questioned the mechanism of creation and/or my interpretation of Genesis. This wasn’t really an issue for me, since my faith was, and is, based on believing that Jesus of Nazareth is in fact the resurrected Lord of the entire world (to roughly paraphrase how N.T. Wright puts it) and that the resurrection is God the Father’s vindication of Jesus’ messiahship (as a sinless, suffering servant that, mystery of mysteries, turns out to be God Himself, incarnate). None of that belief was ever predicated on a specific interpretation of Genesis with respect to scientific details, and as such, accepting evolution as a mechanism by which God creates did not alter those beliefs. (If you’d like to see a rational, historically-rooted investigation of the credibility of the resurrection, N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God is the standard by which others are judged.)

Though some may believe that moving the science/faith dialogue forward is best left to scientists, scholars, and theologians, we at BioLogos recognize that our pastors play an invaluable role in the conversation. Across the globe, pastors are helping their congregations work through difficult issues of science and faith with honesty, insight, and a gentle spirit. To this end we present an ongoing series recognizing sermons (and the pastors who give them) that are helping to promote the harmony of science and faith. Today's sermon comes from Rev. Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Click above to hear an excerpt. Below, is a brief summary written by BioLogos editorial staff. The full sermon, which we highly recommend can be purchased from Redeemer’s sermon store. Finally, if you know a sermon or podcast related to science and faith that has especially spoken to you, please let us know.

Genesis 2:2-17 places an interesting emphasis on work—not only does God work to bring about all creation, but also, man is called to the task of caring for God’s world. Dr. Keller believes this passage provides an important assumption, a purposeful direction, a resulting burden, and a necessary provision concerning the work.

First, because God is described as working, one can conclude that work reflects a significant aspect of God’s character. Therefore, when humans perform various tasks, they are reflecting the image of God. If working does indeed reflect his image, Dr. Keller states, then there is an intrinsic dignity to manual labor no matter what the occupation. This concept reveals the goodness of ordinary life. Whether simply gardening to produce food or cleaning a space to produce order, people are meant to rejoice in the responsibilities that daily life brings.

Then, Dr. Keller explains that the duty of humankind to care for God’s garden reveals the aim of all work. In order to garden properly, one must meddle with the natural state of things to bring about fruitfulness and prosperity. This may include clearing the ground to expose it to sunlight or trimming back plants to stimulate growth. The gardener cannot simply standby like a “park ranger” and let things freely develop—he or she must creatively order the garden in such a way that all plants thrive. In the same way, all work involves, as Dr. Keller puts it, “rearranging the raw material of a particular domain [in order] to draw out its potential for the flourishing of everyone.” He strengthens his point by applying this definition to the work of writing music. Music, he says, is created when the raw material of sound is structured in such a way that it brings meaning to human life. Overall, God has given all people the ability to express creative energy in the service of others, and that is the intended goal of work.

Next, the Genesis text reveals the burden of work. When the curse of the Fall came upon Adam and Eve, death entered the world. According to Dr. Keller, this is more than just a physical death that came to humanity. He compares the human condition to the second law of thermodynamics (which states that the universe is becoming more disordered) in order to demonstrate that people are falling apart physically, culturally, spiritually, vocationally, etc. People are constantly caught in the tension between their efforts to accomplish tasks and the unstoppable force of death that causes all things to degrade. Furthermore, he says that one can neither have a cynical view nor a romantic view of work. A person must recognize the goodness of work, yet keep in mind that it is still difficult and laborious. Although each person has a specific vocation through which to serve the world, he or she cannot always fulfill this calling because he or she must work to survive as well. This is the very heart of the frustration and burden of humanity’s calling to work in this fallen world.

Finally, in the midst of this struggle and tension, God has given humans this provision: rest. Genesis 2:3(NASB) puts forth the statement that, “…God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” The Bible shows that this rest has been given as a free gift to all people, and it is not a provision that needs to be earned. According to Dr. Keller, this gift is the rest of peace and the rest of hope. It is the rest of peace because Christ has offered his love that assures believers in their significance. People no longer have to bear the burden that somehow their performance in their job or career determines their value as a human being. Likewise, it is the rest of hope because believers will one day have the ability to realize their dreams—an invention, a painting, a novel—when God makes the new heavens and the new earth. Therefore, a Christian need not be dismayed by the broken dreams in their heart during this lifetime, for one day, those things too will be accomplished. Now, through Jesus Christ, all can enter into the deep peace that their soul so desires and find true rest in work.

ADDENDUM: Please note, although we do invite your comments as we explore the theological richness of God's word in the sermon series, the comments will be restricted to Christians who are genuinely seeking to enter into a deeper and more meaningful relationship with God. Those who are not Christians but are seriously seeking to explore the Christian faith as a possibility for their own lives are also very welcome to raise questions and make comments. However, this will not be a place to belittle Christianity. We ask that our atheist friends respect our purpose here. We realize that you think Christianity is irrational and we are willing to engage the profound rationality of our faith, but this is not the place to discuss that with you.

A week ago, two of my sons and I got to spend several hours as part of a group looking for red cockaded woodpeckers at The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in Virginia’s Piney Grove Preserve near Wakefield, Virginia. Invited by State Director Michael Lipford and introduced to the bird and its habitat by TNC biologists and land stewards Brian van Eerd and Bobby Clontz, we were hoping to see the endangered birds at the northernmost limit of their present range, and to help count and identify individuals as they returned to their roosting trees for the night. But while we came on account of the woodpeckers—and protecting and encouraging their local population was the initial aim of assembling the contiguous tracts of pine forest that make up Piney Grove Preserve—it quickly became clear to us that the ongoing project of restoration was not about a single species, but an interconnected system.

As I wrote in a previous post, one assumption shared within the BioLogos community is that the natural world as revealed through scientific investigation provides signposts that point us to the Creator. Sometimes this means attending to the symbolism of specific creatures like the coelacanth or the red cockaded woodpecker (or RCW, as it’s sometimes called) in terms of qualities of God or the individual believer, but in other cases it means looking carefully not just at individual kinds but at the synergy between plants, animals and the land itself—looking at an ecology, in other words. Such a view can also heighten our appreciation of the ideal the Scriptures set forth for the whole human community, modeled first and foremost by the Church. Thus, while the red cockaded woodpecker is the “marquis species” in the restored pine savanna, understanding how the bird is integrated with many other kinds of living things (and even forces of nature) is suggestive of the interrelation between God’s providence and grace, and our own call to cultivate His world.

With that in mind, let me briefly suggest three of the elements in the pine savanna ecology that Christians may take as prompts for meditation on life in Christ: first, the pine trees in which the woodpeckers nest; second, the birds’ cooperative social structure; and third, the fire that enables both to thrive.

Alone of North American woodpeckers, the RCW carves out its home in the hearts of mature, living pine trees, generally at least eighty years old. It is on account of this habitat requirement that they became endangered by human appetite for pulpwood in the twentieth century, as a shift in logging practices to meet a changed demand meant that few mature trees were left standing. It was easier and more profitable to clear-cut swaths of young trees for paper than to grow old trees for timber. As our Conservancy guides and other sources attest, it is not just the size and age of the trees (making soft heartwood more likely) that is of benefit to the birds, but the fact that they are still living and producing sap.

Black rat snakes are a principal predator of creatures nesting in tree cavities, as the snakes are adept at climbing even the fairly limb-free lower reaches of pines. Red cockaded woodpeckers not only carve their brooding and roosting cavities into the trees, but in response to this danger also peck into the sapwood above and around their nests, causing a flow of the sticky pinesap to coat the area around the holes. These sap-flows form a physical and chemical barrier to the snakes, and give trees in which the woodpeckers nest a distinctively pale, candle-like look from the ground. Peering at a tree “grayed” by the birds that live within it, I could not help but consider that the tree offered sanctuary to the very creatures that wounded it, and granted them a sacrificial shelter exactly by spilling its life-blood.

The red cockaded woodpecker’s cooperative social structure is the second aspect of its life in the pines that offers an image worth consideration by Christians. These are not solitary birds, but ones that build their homes in clusters with several roosting trees for the non-breeding members of the group arrayed around a central tree that serves as home for the breeding pair and the chicks. The birds in the cluster are typically related, but there is considerable diversity in how the relationships between the birds plays out over time in terms of which birds become part of the breeding pair each year, how long the helper birds remain in that role and how they move off to form new clusters of their own. But all the birds in a given cluster contribute to cavity excavation and help provide food for the growing chicks.

While we can certainly take a more or less direct lesson in sociability and community interdependence from the woodpeckers, what is perhaps more instructive about this arrangement in terms of the science/faith dialogue is not its novelty, but that, any more, it is an example of what contemporary evolutionary biologists expect to find. As biologists gain increasing knowledge of the way the natural world operates as much by cooperation and interdependence as by a vulgar “survival of the fittest” model, evolution can be recognized as a tool by which some of the human values God has ordained for His people (including self-sacrifice, as above) are written into the rest of creation, as well.

Finally, a few words about fire. One of the principle duties of the Nature Conservancy’s Bobby Clontz at Piney Grove is to burn the woods, for the ecosystem that he and others in pine savanna settings across the Southeast are trying to restore depends on fire to maintain its distinctive park-like appearance and its specific diversity of species, both in the canopy and on the forest floor. While restoration of the original and especially fire-friendly longleaf pine is a slow process, even the now-dominant loblolly pine is safe from the smaller fires that result from regular burning of the under-story and, when mature, provide the same sort of safe haven for woodpeckers and all manner of other creatures.

Similarly, many of the native grasses that carpeted Southern forests two centuries ago also depend on fire not only to set seed and reproduce, but to keep down the bushy, mid-story plants that compete for sun and space and provide abundant fuel for larger, more destructive fires that reach into the crowns of the trees. Without fire there is no hope of recovery for the red cockaded woodpecker, because without fire the complex community of the forest cannot be restored, much less maintained. In this ecology, then, fire is not principally a force of destruction, but rather an indispensable source of renewal.

If the task here is to take note of signposts to the Lord that He has provided in the natural world, it is especially appropriate that we end by speaking of fire, as this is the Sunday on which the Church celebrates Pentecost, when the Spirit was bestowed upon Jesus’ disciples in the outward form of tongues of flame. Certainly that particular fire is no less critical to the health and life of the church than regular “controlled burns” are within the forest, but it may also be worth pointing out that in both the forest and the church, fire has often been pointed to principally as something to be feared—a harbinger and means of “the end”— rather than as a constant source of refinement and new beginnings.

As we consider the complex web of interrelations in the pine savanna, and how careful stewardship is bringing restoration not just to the red cockaded woodpecker but to the whole living community of which it is only the best known example, may God grant by the fire of his Spirit a similar revival within the church, for the blessing and renewal of the whole human community.