Creation and Evolution: Two Simultaneous Orders

Deacon Douglas McManaman

After all these years, some people still speak about evolution and creation as though the two stand face to face on a level field, so to speak, and that the two are mutually exclusive. Many also have a tendency to think that stochastic processes and creation are incompatible and thus irreconcilable, insofar as creation is planned, while randomness appears to be unplanned. The following is an attempt to show that this is a misconception.

Evolution and creation are two ideas that belong to two different orders, if you will. Evolution belongs to the essential order while creation belongs to the existential order. Allow me to explain. We speak of the essence of a thing, and the essence describes “what” a thing is, and this includes how it acts and thus how it manifests itself, that is, how it reveals its nature (science is a study of the natures of things). For example, an organism is a living kind of thing, because it self-ambulates, and presupposing evolution we can say that organisms are the kinds of things that evolve via a process of random mutation and natural selection. We can say more about specific organisms than this, but whatever we accurately say about them along scientific lines simply allows us to understand “what” they are more deeply. 

However, we can know “what a thing is” (essence) without thereby knowing “whether or not it exists” (existence). The very act of existence of a being is not included in that thing’s essence–we can know what a dinosaur is without apprehending its existence outside the mind. This is true because whatever belongs to a thing’s nature or essence belongs to it necessarily. For example, the ability to reason belongs to the essence of a human being, and so if there is a human being on the other side of this door, then we can say that he or she necessarily has the ability to reason, at least to some degree. If the act of existing belonged to the essence of a being, such as the being behind this door, then we’d have to say that this being, whatever it is, exists necessarily, and thus could not not exist, and thus would have always existed. We would then say that such a being is a “necessary being”. But if we are talking about a being whose essence is really distinct from its act of existing, then such a being need not exist and can indeed “not exist”, such as this cat, or that person, or that tree, etc. We refer to such beings as contingent (may or may not be), as opposed to necessary.

Aquinas argues that even if we suppose that the universe always existed, it would still require a creator, and the reason is that the universe is the sum of the contingent beings that make it up. In other words, every being in the universe is a contingent being, a being whose essence is really distinct from its act of existing. Furthermore, no contingent being can bring itself into being, for that would require that a being exist before it actually exists, which is absurd. And no contingent being can impart the act of existing on what simply does not exist (creation ex nihilo) because a contingent being can only act within the limited powers of its nature, and existence does not belong to the nature (essence) of a contingent being–otherwise it would not be contingent, but a necessary being (eternal and having always existed). And so it follows that only a non-contingent being, that is, a necessary being, can impart the act of existing and thus bring into being what simply does not exist. 

To impart the act of existing is not the same as reproduction or generation. In order for an organism or two to reproduce or generate offspring, that organism must exist, and it must be sustained in existence–for a contingent being (i.e., an organism) cannot perpetuate its own act of existing any more than it can impart the act of existing. To perpetuate or sustain the act of existing is not the same as sustaining one’s life; I can sustain my life by eating and drinking, but in order to eat and drink, which are activities, I have to first exist and be sustained in existence. Only then can I act. 

This is why creation is not to be thought of as something that occurs at the beginning of time, and thus at the beginning of a horizontal timeline. The evolutionary process began at some point on a horizontal timeline, but not creation. Creation is to be thought of vertically, not horizontally. For example, I decide to run from point A to point B, and that can be depicted horizontally. But in order for me to complete the change from point A to point B, I must first exist and be sustained in existence throughout the change, because activity presupposes being or existence, for it is always a “being” that acts. So too with evolution. In order for an organism to evolve–which tells us something of the essence of the thing–, it must first exist, and an organism is not its existence; rather, an organism “has” a received act of existing. And so evolution requires creation (essence depends on existence). An evolving organism is a contingent being that is a determinate kind of thing (essence), but one which also has a received act of existing, an act of existing that does not belong to that thing’s nature.

Finally, stochastic processes belong to the essential order, not the existential order. For example, popcorn is a certain kind of food, but think of a bag of popcorn kernels spread out on a table. It is not possible for you or me to know which kernel is going to pop first, which one second, third, etc. Their popping is going to be entirely random. However, randomness is order–it is only a disorder relative to us (epistemic disorder, not a real disorder). The reason we say this is that real disorder is unintelligible; it cannot be the object of study, but the random popping of the kernels will follow a normal frequency distribution, which is an ordered and intelligible distribution, and so although we do not know which popcorn kernel is going to pop at any one time, we do know that there is a 68% chance that it will pop within a certain time span, and a 95% chance of popping within a slightly larger time span, etc. Or, we can put it like this: 68% of the kernels will pop within this specified time frame, 95% of the kernels will pop within this wider time frame, etc.[1] If the whole bag of popcorn is nothing other than the sum of its parts and the behavior of the whole is ordered, then the parts are also ordered, but in a way that exceeds our ability to understand at this point–perhaps even forever. 

And so it is perfectly coherent that God (the Necessary Being) would bring into being a universe that includes organisms that evolve as a result of stochastic processes. There is nothing disordered in this. The difficulty in conceiving this results from regarding the two orders, essence and existence, as mutually exclusive or merely on the same plane. The two orders are simultaneous, with the one depending on the other–essence depending on existence. 

Notes

1. If we listen to popcorn popping, we can hear the distribution, which when plotted on paper, looks like a bell curve. After a short time, one kernel will pop, then another, then two others in rapid succession, then three, four, and soon it will begin to sound like machine gun fire, and then it will slowly die down in the same way it began. The standard deviation is calculated using the following formula: √ [∑ (X1 – X)2  +  (X2 – X)2 + (X3 – X)2 + …..  /n], where X stands for the mean (i.e., 73 seconds), while X1, X2, X3, etc., stand for each observed result; for example, X1 is the first popcorn kernel that popped, and this took place at the 30 second mark. So, (X1 – X)2 is (30 – 73)2 + (30 – 73)2 + (35 – 73)2 + etc.,. /173. The standard deviation is the square root of the sum of each observed result minus the mean squared, divided by the total number.