Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist

then read this book!

I have never ever read something that so twists scripture into saying what they want it to say. I really wanted to like this book, but I have never been so appalled as I was reading this.

A poor attempt to reconcile the author's beliefs with the scientific reality she works with every day. She clings to biblical inerrancy with desperation, despite the realities of the world she professes to study and teach.
Not really worth the read.

Joan Roughgarden, Evolution and Christian Faith (Island Press, 2006).

Joan Roughgarden is an immensely talented and creative Stanford University evolutionary biologist who, like millions of other people, is a practicing Christian. Like many scientists of all faiths, Roughgarden finds God in nature, and rejoices in the diversity, beauty, and charm of the natural world. "We can rejoice as Christians in the ethical meaning behind what evolutionary biologists are increasingly finding. I've be exhilarated by this personal realization, and I hope you will be, too." (p. 5) Roughgarden is most critical of the fundamentalist Christians who see evolution as the enemy of faith, and the "selfish-gene" biologists, who view evolutionary biology as proving the non-existence of God. "I believe scientists need more sympathy and willingness to accommodate people of faith," says Roughgarden, "to offer space for seeing a Christian vision of the world within evolutionary biology and not force people to accept a doctrine of universal selfishness as though established scientific fact." (p. 12)

Roughgarden describes evolution as saying (a) all life belongs to one huge family tree; (b) species change over generations; and (c) animal behavior is more about cooperation helping than competition and conflict. She stresses the harmony of this view with the Christian Bible, noting St. Paul's stress on the sacred significance of the material unity of all life, the absence of anything in the scriptures that denies the mutability of species, and the Christian ethic of community. She closes the book with a passage from Matthew 22: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind... That shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

One of Roughgarden's aims in this short book is to develop evolutionary theory in a more detailed way than is usually done by those who address the science vs. faith issue. She identifies the central evolutionary dynamic in the phrase "natural breeding leads to an improvement of the stock" (p. 50) She uses the term "natural breeding" rather than Darwin's term "natural selection," because she wants to stress that the process of transmitting genes from one generation to the next is a product of the care of the parents as much as the competition among offspring. Roughgarden explains Fisher's Fundamental Theorem, which she interprets as expressing the basically progressive nature of evolution, as expressing a natural tendency for the improvement of populations over time. Roughgarden does mention the critiques of Fisher's theorem, which she attributes to "biologists skeptical of the idea that evolution has a direction." (p. 51) I find this attribution of philosophical "ulterior motive" to the critics to be an excess of proselytizing zeal that compromises her commitment to science. I do not know if Moran's classic 1964 paper criticizing Fisher was motivated by skepticism or not, but I am sure that Moran was correct and the subsequent efforts of brilliant population biologists in qualifying Fisher's Theorem and setting it right was not motivated by philosophical concerns surrounding the "progressive" nature of evolutionary dynamics. Roughgarden expresses the belief that the exceptions highlighted by the critics rarely occur in nature. I believe she is incorrect in this assessment because of the ubiquity of non-additive genetic interactions. Nevertheless, I would not deny that there is a progressive thrust to natural selection.

Roughgarden is duly critical of the intelligent design movement, on the grounds that intelligent design and evolution are compatible theories: both could be right, both could be wrong, or either one could be right and the other wrong. Because intelligent design does not present any evidence in favor of its theory, and because even if its critique of evolution were correct this would not increase the probability that intelligent design is correct, Roughgarden rejects intelligent design. I find this a very ingenious and attractive treatment of the intelligent design movement.

Of course, Roughgarden does not believe there is any truth to the intelligent design movement's critique of evolution whatsoever, but she presents her own laundry list of critiques of contemporary evolutionary theory, all of which are interesting and possibly valid. Her general problem (see Chapter 9) is that Darwinian evolution overemphasizes the "individual" and "competition" and underemphasizes the "community" and "cooperation." This critique does not ring true to me. I learned evolutionary theory when I was already a seasoned social scientist, and saw immediately that it provided the tools for understanding both human cooperation and competition. I do not feel that I have ever been misled into a Social Darwinist direction by the careful study of evolutionary biology at all. Of course, my work has been bitterly criticized by the "selfish gene" and "anti-multilevel-selection" school that is the object Roughgarden most serious barbs, but I do not find that evolutionary theory lends any particular support to the position of these critics. I suspect that their criticisms of me, when untrue, are a desperate and almost comical attempt to defend an indefensible biological tradition in which altruism was a dirty word.

Roughgarden also criticizes the standard depiction in evolutionary theory of females as "coy" and highly concerned with the quality of their sexual partners and males as "promiscuous" and concerned only with maximizing their total number of inseminations. Her argument is quite worth reading and she may be correct. But I think she has it mostly wrong.

For most sexually reproducing species in which anisogamy holds (i.e., the female gamete--the egg---is many orders of magnitude larger than the male gamete---the sperm) the cost of gamete production is much lower for males than females, so it is likely that the former will value the number of copulations more than the quality of each mate's gamete contribution. Moreover, in mammals, the extent of female contribution to the offspring is generally much higher than that of the male, so this asymmetry is even more pronounced than in other sexually reproducing classes. Of course, there are several species where the males care for offspring rather than females, but these are almost exclusively in fish, and less often in birds.

As a result of their greater investment in gamete production and offspring care, females look for males with high quality genes, and males attempt to pass themselves off has having high quality genes by hook or by crook. This is an inevitably competitive interaction among males for access to females, and involves a conflict of interest between males and females: the female wants the highest quality sperm, and the male (rare cases excepted) is willing to impregnate females independent of the quality of their genes. Roughgarden stresses the cooperative nature of the breeding relationship between male and female once they have mated: they then have a common interest in having their offspring live to reproductive age. However, she undervalues the conflictual character of mate choice. In addition, except is certain species, after impregnation, males do better by abandoning their mates in favor of seeking new mating opportunities rather than participating in raising offspring.

Roughgarden directs her criticism of mating behavior to what is known as "sexual selection" theory, which attempts to account for that fact that males of a species are often highly decorated (Darwin's peacock' tail) by a theory of "runaway selection" of the following form (elaborated upon analytically by Fisher): females come to prefer males with decoration for no fitness-relevant reason, but once this preference exists, it is better to mate with a colorful male because the male offspring will be more colorful and hence have enhanced mating chances, even if the cost of decoration to males is fitness reducing. I have done a fairly thorough study of this phenomenon and as far as I can tell, it does not exist, either in a plausible theory or in empirical observation. Moreover, most population biologists do not believe in runaway sexual selection at all, but rather believe that male decoration is a costly signal of possessing high quality genes. Thus, I do not thing there is much to Roughgarden's critique of sexual selection that we do not already know.

I should add that the general public finds runaway sexual selection extremely attractive, and there are numerous authors who have asserted that humans have this or that characteristic (e.g., musicality and intelligence for males, big breasts and wide hips for females) because of sexual selection. There is little support for such notions in the serious professional literature, and Roughgarden is rightly exasperated with such arguments.

I should also add that the fact that in many species the "coy" female and the "promiscuous" male stereotype is fairly accurate does not mean that it holds for all species. It certainly does not. There has been some attempt to claim that it holds in humans, and to use this difference between human masculinity and femininity to account for the sex differences in human society (especially the fact that women prefer rich and powerful men and men prefer young and nubile women). I do not find this argument at all persuasive. The problem is that there is an equally plausible explanation in terms of patriarchal culture and the remnants thereof. There may of course be differential innate predisposition in men and women concerning nurturance, family values, and the like, but observed difference are most likely do to acculturation and male/female status differences rather than genes. I would not be surprised if it turns out that most male-female behavioral differences in human society are highly attenuated or eliminated in the context of a gender-neutral culture. However, if differences remain, I suspect they will be in conformance with the relative investment in gamete theory which, although of doubtful relevance in today's world, was of prime importance in our evolutionary history.

I think the most valuable aspect of this book is Roughgarden's demonstration, through a sort of low-tech biblical exegesis, that a belief in the teachings of Jesus, as laid out in the New Testament, is not in conflict with evolutionary theory. She throws in for good measure (though limited relevance) that homosexuality, bisexuality, trans/ambiguous gender, and other aspects of modern life that liberate us from gender stereotypes are neither modern, nor prohibited by the Bible, nor absent from the non-human animal world. All that for only $15.00. Pretty hard to beat.

Many who don't find their own particular brand of theology or scriptural exegesis reflected as prominently in this book as they would like will rush to criticize it for not being what they would have written.

Nevertheless, this slim, focused book is well worth reading: for anyone with an interest in either Christianity or biological science.

It is a working life-scientist's thoughtful, careful consideration of how the core principles of evolutionary biology and the core truths of Christian faith can not only coexist in the same mind and heart, but actually complement and enrich one another.

It's not to be missed.

Excellent and honest with plenty of biblical references.

Very well written