Evolution-based theology and the problem of evil
John Scanlon offers an understanding of the kind of evil that results in abuse and concealment of abuse and mass murder such as we have seen recently in New Zealand and Sri Lanka. [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]
Several years ago I wrote an article for The Swag titled Human Evolution and ‘Original’ Sin. The article explored the differences in treatment of the topic of Original Sin by two theologians who in essence accepted the truth of the theory of human evolution; Jack Mahoney S.J., who taught at the University of London, and the recently deceased Australian Denis Edwards. In that article I sided strongly with Mahoney on the point of the mythical nature of The Fall and the misinterpretation of Paul’s Romans 5 by Augustine, which between them remove all possible justification for Augustine’s definition of Original Sin. Further, I quoted Mahoney in the following passage: Why has sin become so central for many people in the life of faith? One thinks of extreme instances such as Augustine, Calvin, Pascal, and even in modern times, Reinhold Niebuhr, not to mention the countless nameless individuals who have placed, and who place, such emphasis on the prevalence of sin and the corruption of human nature.
That quotation was directed by Mahoney at people whose consciousness of all-pervading sin is so crushing that it damages their ability to respond to God’s love. However I accepted in that article, and still do, that human sinfulness exists in the life of virtually every human individual. I still believe that much of what the church calls sin is a consequence of the spiritual immaturity and weaknesses of beings who at any time are the current embodiment of an evolutionary progression from our animal antecedents to our ultimate destiny. Nobody can know how far along that progression humanity has so far moved, but it cannot be disputed that we now behave as a blend of the pre-human animal and the conscious, reasoning being who is in that respect the imago Dei. However two instances of evil have forced me to examine again the nature and causes of human sinfulness; the ongoing crisis of clerical sexual abuse, including the monstrous attempts to conceal it, and the recent
mass killing in New Zealand.
Instinctual and Reasoned Behaviours
A fair amount of sexual sin, as defined by the Church, is not far removed from non-human animal behaviour; e.g. autoerotic acts, and unthinking but highly consensual sexual stimulation and intercourse before marriage. It is hard to see this kind of ‘sinfulness’ as being very far along the scale of evil. Of course sexual sin becomes much more serious when there is no consent, particularly when it includes force or violence. Some might argue that rape is not primarily a sexual act but more a way of degrading the victim, but in any case the behaviour is largely driven by animal instincts that can and should be controlled but have been given free play by the attacker. Still it is my view that the violence is more important than the sexual nature of the attack in determining the seriousness of the crime and sin.
Sexual sin is even more serious when there is a significantly unequal status of the two parties and therefore there is an abuse of position, power or trust. It is this last condition that makes the sexual abuse of minors by clergy or religious (and by senior family members) so revolting. The abusive sexual acts in themselves might be driven by animal instincts, but the grooming of the victim and the conscious planning of the scenario in which the abuser gets to achieve his purpose must be seen as coldly reasoned behaviour. In my view, this evil use of the God-given faculty of reason is the factor that determines the high seriousness of this sinful and criminal behaviour.
Concealment of Abuse: The Sin against Trust
When we move on to consider the concealment of abuse, the first point to make is that this is in essence an offence committed by persons who hold a position of trust; bishops and religious superiors who cover up clerical abuse, and relatives of perpetrators in the case of familial abuse. In my view there is little to choose between the two groups with regard to the seriousness of the offence. In the case of concealers of clerical sexual abuse, the offence is magnified by the fact that not only the actual abuser, but even more the concealer, is supposed to be, and is assumed by the victim to be, a teacher and exemplar of moral virtue. In the familial sexual abuse case, there is a particular obscenity in the fact that the abuser or concealer or both are normally close blood relations, and quite often are the parents or siblings of the victim.
In both cases the concealer has committed an offence that cannot be explained away as a weakness rooted in our pre-human beginnings. He or she has committed a sin that follows from cold- blooded calculation by a rational being; a person who has weighed the consequences of speaking out against those of concealment, and has decided to sacrifice the victim of abuse in the interests of some other perverted loyalty. Unfortunately this sin of concealment is not presently recognised in every country as a crime under the law of the state. Nevertheless it is a serious offence against the proper use of that God-given faculty of conscious reasoning which is the basic differentiation between the animal and the human.
Ideological Murder
The killing of another member of one’s own species is not confined to human beings. There are many instances of this in the animal world. There are some species in which the father of newborn animals is apt to kill them, and the mothers therefore try to conceal the newborn. In many others, including those most closely related to us, adult animals can contest for dominance within a social group with a fatal outcome. This animal urge for dominance could be seen as the source from which springs the human urge to wage war.
It is easy to see such intra-species fatal violence as an inevitable legacy of our animal origins, which we are still as a species learning to control. But as we have developed away from our animal origins, our capacity for conscious reasoning has enabled some of us to conceive of an aggravated form of murder in which the perpetrator divides humanity into two groups – those accepted as the perpetrator’s in-group, tribe or race, and those whose full humanity is denied and who therefore can be killed without remorse. Our rational nature has given us the ability to construct a conceptual framework, an ideology, which inherently values one group of humans over another. A tendency towards ideological differentiation does not inevitably lead to murder, but in extreme cases, psychopathic ideologues can bring about genocides and mass murders such as occurred recently in New Zealand.
Such mass murders are committed by people who have perverted their rationality to the extent that they consider they know better than God. The world view out of which they act is a grotesque parody of the true creation, in which the human perpetrator assumes the place of God. This is the ultimate offence against that essence in humanity that makes us human.
What is the Source of Evil?
Earlier I used the word ‘psychopathic’ to characterise mass murderers. However this is a description, not an explanation. I think it is generally accepted that mass murderers are not suffering from an illness that would diminish their moral responsibility for their actions. Instead they behave in a manner that follows logically from their ideological premises, if there is no barrier in their minds between intellectual conviction and lethally violent action.
An atheist seeking to explain mass murderers would probably talk about the biochemical ‘wiring’ of their brains being different from, and defective in comparison with, that of normal people. A theological structure built on an acceptance of evolutionary theory as fact cannot of itself take us much further than the atheistic position, in the search for the source of evil. We therefore need to contemplate the possibility that, as Christian faith teaches, our minds are the battlegrounds in which the personification of evil, that we call the devil, contends against the goodness of God. Evolution is a phenomenon that is limited to that part of God’s creation that we human beings can experience and comprehend. It cannot speak to the possibility that a spirit created by God could turn against its creator and attempt to destroy the rest of God’s creation.
Only faith can guide us here. [/s2If]
