I understand (or think I do) the idea that survival of a species is an underlying driver for evolution as we understand it.

“Survival of a species” is not a driver, underlying or otherwise, for evolution. To a first approximation, all species are extinct — the species alive today are a tiny fraction of all that have existed.

What I really don’t understand is how organisms that are “not conscious” or “self aware” can anticipate that they should “survive”. What ultimately compels survival?

In a word, nothing. Organisms do not anticipate that they “should survive.” Some do, most don’t, depending on their traits and features (and a fair helping of chance). But none do so on account of some urge to perpetuate the species; that some species persist is a by-product of the different reproductive success of individuals that are more or less well adapted to their circumstances.

Put another way, what “compels survival” is the fact that those organisms that survive had traits that enabled them to more successfully reproduce than their conspecifics. Across the spectrum of life the great majority of both individuals and species fail at that. Evolution is an incredibly wasteful process.

As one who takes the scientific story of evolution on board (though not without an intelligent design a la Mike Gene’s Design Matrix) I heartily agree with your sentiment.

On this subject, I highly commend to you David Hart’s The Doors of the Sea. It is by far the best thing I’ve read on the problem of evil (including C. S. Lewis). I agree that to deny this problem is to deceive ourselves, and be in immanent danger of blasphemously calling evil good.

This seems to me an unanswerable question that ultimately limits evolution as a theory of origin. It is possible that evolution is responsible for our origin – but I don’t know how you come up with a compelling scientific reason for why it is that survival is sought after as a positive trait and how it is that organisms came to “understand” that or even how the impetus came about.

Henry, thanks for your thoughtful response.

Let me respond to a couple more points here. There is a significant difference, I think, between my theological starting point and yours. I am coming from a fairly liberal derivative of Wesleyan theology, and I’m guessing you are more to the (reformed?) evangelical perspective. Though I prefer “passionate moderate” those who call me liberal do not do so without some warrant. As a result, the main value in my commentary on your material may be more to point out the difference in our starting points. I think that is an adequate reason to comment.

But further, I quite agree that we don’t need to win the argument on theodicy. In my view, if we truly do believe that God is the creator, i.e. we are placing our faith in a creator God revealed in Jesus Christ, we must also believe he is revealed in creation, and thus that the way to determine what has happened in the natural realm is through studying the natural realm–science. (That sentence may deserve a wordiness award!) Thus nothing theological impacts the acceptance or rejection of evolution other than my conviction based on theology that the natural sciences should work.

I also agree with you that all players have a similar problem. In my current series on theodicy, I’m trying to point out that there are many actions, such as the flood, that are derived from scripture that present much more difficulty for theodicy. Everyone other than the young earth creationists share the “death over long periods” problem.

That is why I think the best thing to do is to face up to it. God apparently doesn’t like a universe that is as orderly as I might prefer. God has less concern about death than I do. What does that mean? I think it is an issue in theology to tackle head on.

I hope I’m getting clearer hear than I was at the start!

–Henry

What evidence, Kathy? I haven’t seen any real scientific evidence linking consciousness to anything biological, although I know that Roger Penrose has published some speculations in this area.

Here are links to six web pages arguing that there was, or even must have been, death before the Fall.

I wonder if we sometimes take too critical a view of life processes, focusing on the negative aspects without considering the positive. Its easy to try and project human emotions and feelings onto all life, and say the futility we sometimes feel must be felt by the struggling organisms that have come before. To use a crass analogy, my dogs always seem happy or complacent, even when ill. They don’t know that with each breath their life is getting shorter, and don’t seem to worry about it. Is their life not worth living because they will be viewed, in 2 million years or so, as just one of the struggling organisms that lived solely to contribute to the gene pool at that future time?

The problem really comes with self-awareness; I know the system is built upon death, and I must die. I don’t want to die. Knowing that I must is the basis of Pain, as fear and dread enter into the equation. Perhaps only a cruel god would allow a creature to develop who knows its fate. It seems certain that only a loving God would provide an antidote for that most difficult situation in something as simple as faith.

Our observation of the natural world informs our view, and must inform our theology as Henry points out. But our natural world is bigger than our observations, and the implications of certain theoretical concepts (string theory, parallel universes, etc.) will modify our understanding more once they are proven. Until that time, using theology and theoretical cosmology to reconcile what seems irreconcilable is certainly acceptable.

I classify myself as a conservative Christian, so there is a bit of trepidation proposing what might seem to be “malleable doctrine”. But Christianity has always been about truth, and reasoning toward the truth (our founder never wrote anything down, so from the beginning, we had to debate and decide even the most basic aspects of our faith). Theology, our “observation” of God, must evolve just as our cosmology evolves.