Why Is God Better Than Evolution?

I find myself linking to stories posted at Pharyngula more frequently than to other sites. This is not because I find P.Z. Myers' posts more interesting or relevant than what anyone else posts, or because I agree wholeheartedly with Myer's zero tolerance response to religious expression (I don't). It is simply that Myers' posts tend to deliver the most jolting full arm slaps to my brain. For example, see this recent post on an abstract with unconventional views on gene expression in venomous animals.

It is easy to just make fun of this kind of stuff, but it is far more fascinating for me to crawl inside of the headspace of someone who thinks about reality in a fundamentally different way than I do. The human brain's capacity for generating its own reality is absolutely mind-boggling. How vividly our perception of reality feels or appeals to us has little impact on how likely it is to be true (the reason why science uses evidence, critical thinking, and peer review), but I have no doubt that Mr. Wilson sees God flipping on the "evil" switch in poisonous animal gene expression in his head just as vividly as I see the evolution of Mesozoic reptiles and the deposition of fluvial and lacustrine deposits over millions of years.

However, the things about the abstract that really interest me are:

1) How well-written it is. In spite of his scriptural blinders, Wilson seems to be a reasonably bright guy, and clearly spent some time refining the text. The abstract is very clear, tightly written, and articulate.

2) How thoroughly he explores the various possible explanations behind the origin of "evil" genes, and how logically he tries to deduce the correct answer in light of what he "knows" about the Biblical creation story.

2) How completely he fails to explore the significance of his own conclusions towards God. Wilson concludes that "evil" genes must have been created by God due to a lack of "creative power and intelligence" on the part of Satan (and of course, the inadequacy of natural selection), even if they did not find expression until after the Fall. What he does not explore, however, is that his means that God intentionally incorporated tendencies into his designs that Wilson considers "evil." What does this tell us about God? Wilson falls short of one of the important steps that I think separates the good scientists from mediocre ones: he doesn't fully explore the significance of his own conclusions. God deliberately created "evil" genes, and every person that dies of a snake or spider bite does so because of a deliberate design choice on the part of God.

This brings me to one of the most interesting (to me) aspects of creationist opposition to evolution: the complete lack of any logic behind their moral horror of non-directed natural selection, given that, in their view, God is directly and deliberately responsible for the cruelty of the natural world.

Creationists are terrified of the idea that not only our bodies and brains, but our moral and cultural institutions, might have developed (and continue to develop) without the input of a higher power. However, this perception makes absolutely no sense when looking at the world that exists around us. According to creationists, this world was created by a being who is supposed to be our moral compass. Violent, callous, and cruel things irrefutably happen every day in nature...and according to creationists, God deliberately designed things this way.

Evolution doesn't see the prehistoric history of the human species, or any species, as being any worse than the modern natural world. It simply says that the same sort of things that are irrefutably happening every day have been going on for a long time, and that they have had long term effects. Moreover, no one has consciously caused these things to happen.

The irony of creationist moral opposition to evolution is that evolutionists do not blame the cruelty of nature directly on God, and creationists do. Moreover, they justify it as being part of some really great but incomprehensible plan. I find this morally permissive attitude toward God ironic given creationist accusations that evolution is leading society down a moral toilet.

LNJ