Thunder Rolled
Jan. 7th, 2005 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alfvaenFor some reason, recently, I was thinking of whether theism could be compatible with evolution, despite my continuing lack of theistic tendencies myself.
See, the thing is that evolution is entirely contingent. Living beings reproduce, sharing their genetic code to create variations on themselves, or getting mutated. The reason that natural selection seems to produce "progress" is based on statistical tendencies. It's conceivable for every carrier of a beneficial mutation to die before producing any offspring. It's conceivable, if history were rerun, for eukaryotic life to never arise before the planet gets engulfed by the sun. It's also conceivable for every human born for the next hundred years to have no Y chromosomes, entirely through random chance. But enough of that.
Let's say that an omnipotent deity didn't just want to populate the earth from spare parts over seven days. Let's say it saw some potential in genetic inheritance, and decided to build everything that way. Being omnipotent(and I've always presumed that omniscience was part of omnipotence), it could conceivably manipulate every single genetic interaction that ever took place on the planet, picking which genes combine with which genes, which random mutations happen, which strategically-placed carbon-14 atoms decay to nitrogen right in the middle of a strand of DNA. It could manipulate every step of the process until it arrived at the precise bipedal sentient form it was looking for. At which point the thorny issue of free will enters the picture.
I'm not saying this is going to convince any of the "intelligent design" people...but it could be that all God does is play dice. Except that he always knows where they're going to land.
See, the thing is that evolution is entirely contingent. Living beings reproduce, sharing their genetic code to create variations on themselves, or getting mutated. The reason that natural selection seems to produce "progress" is based on statistical tendencies. It's conceivable for every carrier of a beneficial mutation to die before producing any offspring. It's conceivable, if history were rerun, for eukaryotic life to never arise before the planet gets engulfed by the sun. It's also conceivable for every human born for the next hundred years to have no Y chromosomes, entirely through random chance. But enough of that.
Let's say that an omnipotent deity didn't just want to populate the earth from spare parts over seven days. Let's say it saw some potential in genetic inheritance, and decided to build everything that way. Being omnipotent(and I've always presumed that omniscience was part of omnipotence), it could conceivably manipulate every single genetic interaction that ever took place on the planet, picking which genes combine with which genes, which random mutations happen, which strategically-placed carbon-14 atoms decay to nitrogen right in the middle of a strand of DNA. It could manipulate every step of the process until it arrived at the precise bipedal sentient form it was looking for. At which point the thorny issue of free will enters the picture.
I'm not saying this is going to convince any of the "intelligent design" people...but it could be that all God does is play dice. Except that he always knows where they're going to land.
