Christopher Southgate

God and Evolutionary Evil: Theodicy in the Light of Darwinism

Pain, suffering, death, and extinction have been intrinsic to the process of evolution by natural selection. This leads to a real problem of evolutionary theodicy, little addressed up to now in Christian theologies of creation. The problem has ontological, teleological, and soteriological aspects. The recent literature contains efforts to dismiss, disregard, or reframe the problem. The radical proposal that God has no long–term goals for creation, but merely keeps company with its unfolding, is one way forward. An alternative strategy to tackle the problem of evolutionary theodicy is outlined, with an implication for environmental ethics and suggestions for further work.

Empirical demonstration of environmental sensing in catalytic RNA: evolution of interpretive behavior at the origins of life

BackgroundThe origins of life on the Earth required chemical entities to interact with their environments in ways that could respond to natural selection. The concept of interpretation, where biotic entities use signs in their environment as proxy for the existence of other items of selective value in their environment, has been proposed on theoretical grounds to be relevant to the origins and early evolution of life. However this concept has not been demonstrated empirically.ResultsHere, we present data that certain catalytic RNA sequences have properties that would enable interpretation of divalent cation levels in their environment. By assaying the responsiveness of two variants of the Tetrahymena ribozyme to the Ca2+ ion as a sign for the more catalytically useful Mg2+ ion, we show an empirical proof-of-principle that interpretation can be an evolvable trait in RNA, often suggested as a model system for early life. In particular we demonstrate that in vitro, the wild-type version of the Tetrahymena ribozyme is not interpretive, in that it cannot use Ca2+ as a sign for Mg2+. Yet a variant of this sequence containing five mutations that alter its ability to utilize the Ca2+ ion engenders a strong interpretive characteristic in this RNA.ConclusionsWe have shown that RNA molecules in a test tube can meet the minimum criteria for the evolution of interpretive behaviour in regards to their responses to divalent metal ion concentrations in their environment. Interpretation in RNA molecules provides a property entirely dependent on natural physico-chemical interactions, but capable of shaping the evolutionary trajectory of macromolecules, especially in the earliest stages of life’s history.

Incarnation and Semiotics: A Theological and Anthropological Hypothesis Part 2: Semiotics, Anthropology, and Religious Transformation

Abstract This is the second in a pair of articles in which we draw on C.S. Peirces semiotics (theory of signs) to develop a new approach to the Christian concept of Incarnation. In Part 1 we used Peirces taxonomy of signs to explore what it means to understand the life of Jesus as the embodiment of the quality of God within the fabric of the created order. In this article (Part 2), we explore some ways in which this semiotic approach to the Incarnation offers constructive opportunities in theological anthropology, and suggests some empirically testable hypotheses about human evolution.

Incarnation and Semiotics: A Theological and Anthropological Hypothesis Part 1: Incarnation and Peirce's Taxonomy of Signs

Abstract This is the first in a pair of articles in which we draw on C.S. Peirces semiotics (theory of signs) to develop a new approach to the Christian concept of Incarnation. In this article (Part 1) we use Peirces taxonomy of signs to explore what it means to understand the life of Jesus as the embodiment of the quality of the life of God within the fabric of the created order. In Part 2, we explore some ways in which this semiotic approach to the Incarnation offers constructive opportunities in theological anthropology and suggests some empirically testable hypotheses about human evolution.

The Orientation of Longing

In this article I advance the thesis that longing is one of the most fundamental of human emotions, and has a major part in shaping the world. I distinguish between desire and longing, and consider approaches to the subject in the Christian tradition. I stress the importance of combining ancient insights, such as those of Augustine and Dante, with those of Freud and Darwin, such that the range of human longings is not denied, but properly oriented. Drawing on the work of Wendy Farley and Sarah Coakley, I postulate that the human vocation is to orient our longings by what God longs for, to pray authentically ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done’. Matthew 25 gives an indication of the practical outworking of such conformed longing. Such prayer, the true outworking of human freedom, is ultimately the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer, which leads in turn to the fruits of the Spirit and the virtues of faith, hope and love.

“Environmental/Ethics” and “Science/Religion”: Converging Streams in Barbour’s Work

Lord’s Cricket Ground, St John’s Wood, London NW6 may seem an odd place to start a tribute to a scholar based at Carleton College, Minnesota. But it was an involved and intense conversation while watching Oxford play Cambridge at Lord’s in 1991—with my then colleague the New Testament scholar Richard Burridge—which led to the idea that I use my background in experimental science to offer a university course on the science-religion debate. The first book on my hastily assembled reading list was T.S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which like so many before me I found a compelling but contentious read. Kuhn described a grand narrative of scientific change very different from the experience of most scientists. He made ingenious use of certain striking examples, but I soon became aware that a different choice of examples would have led to a different and much more complex conclusion. The second book on my list was Ian Barbour’s Religion in an Age of Science, the recently-published first volume of his Gifford Lectures. Here I found a sensitive and judicious account of Kuhn’s vaunted paradigms, as applied both in science and religion. More—and I could hardly believe my luck—here was also, in effect, a complete plan for a course of the sort I was about to offer, beautifully structured and laid out, and comprehensively referenced. (The relative lack of historical treatment in this book Barbour remedied later by revising elements of Issues in Science and Religion and fusing them with an update of the Giffords, the fusion being published as Religion and Science. Like Religion in an Age of Science, this has been an excellent resource for students, a place where they can always find their bearings when the complexities of interdisciplinary study get the better of them.) I shall return later to those texts, and Barbour’s relation to the two British scientisttheologians with whom his name is most often linked, Arthur Peacocke and John Polkinghorne. But I begin by considering the line of investigation pursued by the second volume of the Giffords, published in 1992 as Ethics in an Age of Technology. Like Barbour’s work on the science-religion relationship, this represented a strand of thinking stemming back over 20 years. In 1970 Barbour had published Science and Secularity: The Ethics of Technology. There his thinking about models in science and religion is directly applied to his understanding of the application of technology in the natural world. The book has a fine period ring to it now—Barbour quotes, for example, an advertisement in the New York Times Magazine for March 1 1970 as follows:

Theodicy and Eschatology in Cosmology—from Alpha to Omega

Robert Russell’s contribution to the science-theology dialogue has been immense, in particular through his founding and leadership of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, his oversight of the Center’s collaboration with the Vatican Observatory on divine action and—latterly—natural evil, and his founding of the Ian Barbour Chair, of which he has been appointed the first holder. However, Russell has been so occupied with these initiatives that single-authored booklength work has been largely absent. So it is a very good thing for the subject at large that Bob has produced first this anthology of articles and also a groundbreaking monograph, Time in Eternity, forthcoming from Notre Dame. The present book is an interesting phenomenon. It consists of articles and book chapters from the years 1984–2006, in most cases lightly re-edited to avoid duplication. It is therefore a ‘‘Russell Reader,’’ rather than a brand-new piece of thinking. The topics covered include: Big Bang cosmology; divine action; theodicy in the light of science; and eschatology. One very valuable element of the book is the introduction, in which Russell gives an account of his own intellectual journey since the mid-1980s, and of the issues that have preoccupied him. Someone coming to the science-theology debate for the first time and seeking to understand both its struggles and its development will find this chapter of great value. As a non-physicist, I found my mind bent and stretched by some of the concepts in the debate over the Big Bang, and whether it is meaningful to speak of ‘‘t1⁄40.’’ I find Russell’s formulation of the interplay of science and theology in this area elegant and convincing. He holds that, in a Lakatosian understanding of creatio ex nihilo as a theological research program, ontological origination of the creation by the creator is the unfalsifiable core. That a temporal origin to the universe be discovered would constitute confirmation of an auxiliary hypothesis in re creatio ex nihilo, but is not a ‘‘deal-breaker’’ for the doctrine. This is an elegant example of the ‘‘creative mutual interaction’’ that Russell believes to be possible between science and theology—indeed, it is an example of where advances in cosmology have forced theologians to sharpen their thinking on an ancient position of the Church. But when Russell is distinguishing between finitude, temporal finitude, and past temporal finitude (89), I find myself hankering for a more detailed, layaccessible exposition of these distinctions. I think the same when Russell invokes Theology and Science, Vol. 9, No. 2, 2011