A Sterile Universe?

This is part three of a four-week series expanding on my review of Stephen Meyer's book Return of the God Hypothesis. Subscribe to get the next installment in your inbox!

Stephen Meyer and the intelligent design movement emphasize that laws of physics cannot explain the development of complex life. This argument is both empirical and analytic. Empirically, they draw on the lack of demonstrable explanations for the emergence of life from non-life, or more complex body plans from less complex ones. Analytically, Meyer appeals to the very definition of a "law of physics" to argue that such laws cannot – even in principle – bring about the development of complex life.

I discuss Meyer's (dubious) claim in my review. Here I want to expand on a question that underlies this part of the intelligent design program: what would it mean if natural laws could explain the development of complex life? What would this mean for theism – and for our theology?

Contra Meyer and the intelligent design folks, it seems to me that a universe in which natural laws can produce complex life is compatible with theism. More than that, it even seems to capture the ethos of the Christian theism communicated in the Bible. Of course, there will always be questions about how best to interpret the biblical account of creation. But, at minimum, we will see that the creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2 show that God has created a fruitful world that is designed to bring forth life.

I'm not alone in thinking that evolution by natural laws is compatible with theism. I first got the idea a few years back from a piece written by Simon Conway Morris entitled "Evolution and the Inevitability of Complex Life." Conway Morris argues that intelligent life in particular is inevitable. Evolution, as he describes it, is a "search engine" which inevitably produces conscious, intelligent life. Conway Morris's views are somewhat heterodox from a scientific perspective. For example, he holds that mind is a distinct substance that comes to interface with matter at some point in the evolutionary process. And I don't want to sign on to every detail of his proposal. But I think that one of his basic insights is correct.

Conway Morris takes the opposite approach to intelligent design. Rather than arguing that complex life is very improbable, he argues that it is overdetermined. The building blocks for more complex life – including precursors to intelligence – can be found everywhere, and at every stage of the tree of life. Amino acids form the building blocks of life, and they existed in abundance before life came to be. Developments that led to eukaryotic and multi-cellular organisms came about in different species at different times in history. Intelligence is recognizable not only in primates and birds, but even in slime molds!

Even if you don't buy the part of the argument that privileges intelligent life, you might still be able to sign onto the following part of his argument. If the evolution of intelligent life were improbable, this would actually be evidence against the existence of a Creator who created life for communion with himself. If God created the world to be inhabited, why would he have made it so inhospitable to biological life? So, evidence that the emergence of intelligent life was overdetermined is actually evidence for God. This turns the intelligent design argument on its head, and I think in a helpful way.

But we can go further than Conway Morris did, and make the more specific case for Christian (and Jewish) theism. The world that Conway Morris paints is one that's designed to produce life. Life from non-life, intelligent life from non-intelligent life. "Endless forms most beautiful," in the words of Charles Darwin. This is a surprisingly similar world-picture to the one recorded in the first two chapters of Genesis.

Genesis 1 records God's creative activity in the world across six days. It uses two different expressions to describe that activity: God saying, "Let there be...", and God saying "Let the earth/sea bring forth..." Even in this second form of speech, we see that the God of Genesis 1 didn't create a dead, sterile universe in which the emergence of life was astronomically improbable. He created a world in which the earth and the sea are fruitful – ready to give birth to the fish, the creepy crawlies, and the plants.

Genesis 2 zooms in on the creation and history of humankind, but it begins with this description of the primordial earth:

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up – for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground. (Genesis 2:4–5, ESV)

Although the creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2 seem to differ at points, here's one thing they agree on: the missing ingredient for the existence of plants – wild and cultivated – is rain and farmers. The ground of Genesis 2:5 is ready to "sprout sprouts" (Genesis 1:11, my translation) – just add water.

As I said at the beginning, there are many questions we can ask about the historicity and the literalness of the Genesis creation accounts. But my concern here is philosophical and theological. Proponents of intelligent design want to distance their theistic position from a deistic position that sees the universe as a mere machine destined to produce life. To do this, they seek to prove the need for supernatural intervention in the history of life. But the biblical account takes a third way. The natural order described in Genesis is not mechanistic. God is clearly at work throughout the history of life on Earth. Yet God often works through the natural order that he establishes, empowering his creation to produce and reproduce.

From a biblical-theological perspective, I find myself more in agreement with Conway Morris than with Meyer. A universe designed to produce life seems more in accord with biblical theism.

This is part three of a four-week series expanding on my review of Stephen Meyer's book Return of the God Hypothesis. Subscribe with your email, or follow on Bluesky to get the next post in a convenient place!