Walls of Separation

In A Taxonomy of Evolutionary Views, over in my Beyond Darwin blog, I said that when it comes to evolutionary viewpoints, there are the Special Creationists, the Orthodox Darwinists, the Intelligent Design proponents, and also at least two types of Directionalists. The first group believes in a literal interpretation of Genesis 1, the second in an intrinsically directionless and undirected evolutionary process, the third in an internally directionless yet directed-from-above process, and the fourth in an evolution of living kinds that is inherently and intrinsically directional, favoring "non-zero-sum games" and "self-organized complexity."

Out of such intrinsic biases, say the Directionalists, evolution by natural selection nearly inevitably leads to intelligent creatures such as us. Some of them even say the intrinsic directionality toward intelligence and sentience suggests a God behind evolution.

I favor the Directionalist approach, for reasons I'd like to try to lay out in this post.

My takeoff point is the passage in the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus lays out "the Greatest Commandment":

"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" [a Pharisee asked Jesus]. He said to him, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments." (Matthew 22:36-40, New American Bible)

The Greatest Commandment is actually two commandments. The first is about loving God unstintingly. The second, which Jesus says is "like it," is about loving your neighbor. In other words, Jesus is saying that a spiritual relationship with God is, on some deep level, no different than a proper earthly relationship with our fellow humans.


From that takeoff point I now move unblushingly to note that according to Albert Nolan's Jesus before Christianity, "Jesus extended one's neighbor to include one's enemies" (p. 75):

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I [Jesus] say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. (Matthew 5:43-45, NAB)

"But to you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you." (Luke 6:27-28, NAB)

Jesus, says Nolan, "wished to include all people in this solidarity of love" (p. 75). It is admittedly a commandment which, per Nolan, is "almost unbearably paradoxical."


I would express it thus: there can be no "walls of separation" between us, if we want to follow Jesus all the way down the line.

So, which viewpoint on evolution most encourages us to love our neighbors and even our enemies? I would say it's the Directionalist one. To show why, however, will take me awhile.

Let me start by noting that the Special Creationist view is distinguished by raising the highest imaginable "wall of separation" between the various species of life on earth. These species are, according to a literal reading of the Genesis creation story, fashioned by God at the very outset of time, on the "sixth day." In this narrative, the creation by God of man, made uniquely "in his image" (Gen. 1:26-27), is set apart from the creation of other living kinds (Gen. 1:24-25), over which man is expressly given "dominion."

The lofty, God-founded "walls of separation" implied by this narrative are only marginally reduced in height by the Intelligent Design outlook. According to the IDers, there are steep thresholds of complexity to be traversed in the evolutionary pathways that lead to the higher animals and man — so steep that only a powerful intelligence beyond this natural world can manage to overcome them.

With such high "walls of separation" in God-created nature, it must be all right for humans to create high walls of separation among themselves, if necessary to preserve order and foster a general atmosphere of righteousness. That is a logical implication often drawn from both the Special Creationist and the Intelligent Design outlooks.


Contrast that with the Orthodox Darwinists. They say that natural processes can rather easily traverse any and all complexity thresholds en route to us ... which amounts to holding that the thresholds aren't all that steep, after all. In fact, there are a number of Darwinists who love to point out that our species is by no means the "crown of creation" we like to think we are. That's right; we're not so hot, say those followers of Darwin who note with evident enthusiasm that most of the animals on the face of the earth are not even mammals: they're insects.

In fact, I'd say that the most atheistic of Darwinists are downright allergic to walls of separation. Perhaps this is what motivates Harvard psychology professor, Darwinist, and outspoken atheist Steven Pinker to say these words in a recent TIME Magazine article, Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Four experts with very different views weigh in on the underlying question: "In practice, religion has given us stonings, inquisitions and 9/11."

Pinker is as much as saying that religion is historically bad because it erects towering walls of separation between us as human beings — thus, "stonings, inquisitions and 9/11" — while evolutionary science is good because it quintessentially fosters "a commitment to treat others as we wish to be treated, which follows from the realization that none of us is the sole occupant of the universe."


Only trouble is, the atheistic science which Pinker recommends hasn't brought about that idyllic sort of tolerance, community, and brotherhood Pinker desires.

In fact, I'd say atheistic science has given people who are prone to erecting high walls of separation an excuse to build them even higher!

For that's what religious fundamentalists do (see Wherefore Religious Fundamentalism? for more on that). Fundamentalists are believers who proudly consider themselves "separate unto Christ" — even to the extent of walling themselves off from other believers who have an even slightly different theological outlook.

Fundamentalists are the elect who, in some interpretations of biblical end-times prophecies, will be "raptured" up into heaven before the final war against the Antichrist takes place here on earth, and God's wrathful judgment of the wicked puts a final wall between sinners and believers.

Fundamentalists are the religious right who rail against the "godless" United Nations and hate anything which suggests that this country ought to trade off any of its precious sovereignty in favor of global arrangements, treaties, and institutions.

Fundamentalists are the folks who say that science, done Pinker-style à la Darwin, is a tool of Satan.


Such people don't want to lower their guards or raze their walls of separation ... not unless all the people outside the walls can be converted to being just like them in thought, word, and deed.

In fact, walls of separation are fundamental to their worldviews. Living species, after all, are so separate from other species that only God can bridge their gaps. Humans are so separate from other life forms that only we are in God's "image" and only we can claim "dominion" over the others. And, extending th eanalogy, other groups of humans are so separate in their belief systems that, failing conversions to our way of belief, the only alternatives are either radical separatism or (per Pinker) "stonings, inquisitions and 9/11."

Can Orthodox Darwinism, all by itself, say anything to such believers who so love their walls of separation?


Actually, yes. Denis Edwards' The God of Evolution: A Trinitarian Theology presents an interpretation of Christian belief in the light of Darwinian evolution theory which is entirely consistent with lowered walls of separation. (See Relationalism and Caritas in my Beyond Darwin blog for more on this book.)

God is, according to traditional Christian theology, actually three persons in one being, Edwards notes. The Holy Trinity consists of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three persons are said to "abide with" one another eternally. The three divine persons are, shall we say, "relatants" whose relationship is said to be one of pure, unadulterated love.

When the divine godhead or Holy Trinity "empties itself" (to use a well-known theological expression alluded to by Edwards) and "makes room" for the physical universe to appear and evolve, the principle of "abiding with in love" carries over to material reality. Edwards theologically unpacks that notion in such a way as to make clear that he's on the side of the wall-tearer-downers. He takes with utmost seriousness Jesus' extension of the "love your neighbor" commandment to apply universally to all humankind.


But Edwards treats of Orthodox Darwinism only. He stops short of taking seriously the evolutionary viewpoint which I'm calling Directionalism. He doesn't take note of, for instance, the science of Stuart Kauffman, as presented in At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity. Kauffman propounds a concept, "self-organization" — natural selection's "handmaiden," he calls it — which biases evolution toward producing greater and greater complexity. There will accordingly be new, emergent instances of "order for free" that piggyback upon one another in a multi-tiered, evolving arrangement that can produce, eventually, creatures for whom the word "love" has far richer overtones than it ever could have at earlier, lower levels of biological organization.

Nor does Edwards mention the viewpoint of Robert Wright, in his book Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, that evolution by natural selection favors the playing of "non-zero-sum games" — with the result of a similar bias or directionality toward ever-increasing cooperation among (eventually) intelligent, sentient creatures, and even toward "enduring global concord" (p. 332). Of course, Edwards has a pretty good excuse here: his book came out before Wright's.


Directional evolution is intrinsically relational, I'd say. (Again, see Relationalism and Caritas in my Beyond Darwin blog.) You can't build an aspect of directionality into Darwinian evolution by natural selection without incorporating ideas about something extra-special emerging from the "good" relationships that exist among entities.

Darwinian natural selection chooses between entities. Thus does it decide whether individuals (or species, or genes) will live long and prosper. Thus does it determine which will die off and leave no posterity. It's as simple, and as blind, as that.

But as soon as you add to those "bad" — or at best neutral — entirely zero-sum games the "good," non-zero-sum interactions that can bias evolution "upward," you begin to underwrite two of the primary three Christian virtues: hope and love.

As soon as you amplify that upward, hopeful aspect by noting, with Edwards, that God's very being is loving and relational, you do even more to show that evolution need not contradict your heartfelt faith ... unless your faith happens to be of the ultra-high-walls-of-separation type. In this way, evolution can bolster the third primary virtue listed by St. Paul, faith.

This is so, that is, as long as you don't treat your faith as an excuse for building ever higher walls of separation!