God and Evolution: Fundamental Questions of Christian Evolutionism

Contents

Contents Introduction: Interdisciplinary Dialogue in Place of Pathology 1 Part One 1. Biology and Metaphysics in Charles Darwin’s Conception of Evolution 11 The Sphere of Inductive Epistemology 11 The Co-existence of Science and Faith 14 Theological Motifs in the Thought of Darwin 17 The Search for a Theology of Darwinism 25 2. Fundamentalisms and Evolution 32 The Origin of Christian Fundamentalism 32 Fundamentalist Interpretation of Biblical Texts 36 The Fundamentalism of Phillip E. Johnson 39 Fundamentalism and Catholicism 42 3. Elements of Fundamentalism in Atheistic Evolutionism 45 Elements of Agnosticism and Atheism in Evolutionary Views of Nature 47 Religious Agnosticism and the Principle of Ockham’s Razor 51 Epistemological Clarity in Place of Fundamentalisms 57 4. Evolution and Christian Thought in Dialogue according to the Teaching of John Paul II 60 Evolutionism according to the Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences 61 Philosophical Questions of Evolutionism 64 Scientific Emergentism and Ontological Emergentism 66 The Immanent Divine Logos 70 Part two 5. Ontological Naturalism and the Role of Supervenience in Evolution 79 Methodological Naturalism and Ontological Naturalism 79 Methodological Naturalism and “Theistic Science” 82 Theistic Naturalism? 85 The Role of Supervenience in the Debate about Naturalism 87 Supervenience in Evolution 90 Theistic Implications of Supervenience 92 6. Varieties of Teleology in the Philosophical Interpretation of Nature 95 Beyond Teleology and Determinism 95 Determinism and Teleology in the Laws of Nature 104 The Role of Supervenience in Cosmic Evolution 110 7. Physical Necessity and the Teleological Structure of the Universe 112 The Theory of Regularity and the Necessitarian Conception of the Laws of Nature 112 Anthropic Principles in Cosmology 117 The Weak and Strong Versions of the Anthropic Principle 118 Anthropic Principles and the Structural Directionality of the Universe 122 Who Is the Cosmic Designer? 124 The Cosmic Program and Structural Directionality of the System 125 8. Discontinuity and Non-linearity in Evolution 130 The Evolution of Thermodynamic Systems 130 Dissipative Structures and Evolution 134 Bifurcations in Evolution 136 Chaos and Evolution 138 Philosophical Aspects of Non-linear Evolution 141 Part three 9. The God of an Evolving Nature 147 Between Biblical and Scientific Perspectives 147 The God of the Gaps and of Designs 150 Philosophical and Existential Aspects of the Immanence of God in Nature 154 The Variety of Forms of the Immanence of God in the Laws of Nature 157 God as the Cosmic “Attractor” of Evolution 161 vi Contents 10. The Ontological Interpretation of the Immanence of God in Nature 165 Pantheism and Panentheism 165 The Immanent ‘Deus Absconditus’ 171 The Ontology of Process 175 The World Existing in God 177 11. The Cosmic Kenosis of God 181 ‘Logos’ and Suffering 181 The Cosmos and the ‘Kenosis’ of the Immanent God 186 Cooperation with the God of ‘Kenosis’ 189 part four 12. The Prehistory of Rational Man 197 Reconstructions from Human Prehistory 198 Man’s Genealogical Bush 202 Philosophical Assumptions in the Rejection of Evolutionary Anthropogenesis 206 13. Sociobiological Explanations of the Essence of Human Culture 212 The Cultural Context of Sociobiology 213 The Problem of the Truth of Scientific Theories 217 The Sociobiological Explanation of the Origin of Mathematics 219 Human Culture without the Concept of Truth? 220 The Evolutionary Origin of Morality 223 The Transcendence of Culture in the Face of Biological Determinants 225 14. The Anthropological Meaning of the Truth about Original Sin 230 The Evolutionary Alternative for ‘Homo sapiens’ 231 The Disharmony of Sin 238 The Perspective of Cosmic Hope 241 God and the Future of Evolution 243 Concern for the Ecology of Man 245 Afterword: Solidarity and Meaning 249 Index of Names 253 Contents vii GOD and EVOLUTION ...