Calculus and Evolution

I teach calculus.  I love it.  The concept of calculus changed society.  The ideas of Newton and Leibniz, applied by others like the Bernoullis and Euler, ushered in the scientific age and provided the  principles undergirding the industrial revolution.

The concepts of calculus also hit hard against old religious ideas.  Those who believed in the laws of calculus could use them to model the laws of physics and from there one could model the universe.  There was no longer a need for angels to push the planets around in their orbits.  Prayers could no longer change the path of the moon or the sun.

Indeed, after Newton, one could be an intellectual and not believe in a supernatural being at all.  It is an interesting story (but surely false) that when Laplace gave his great work on Celestial Mechanics to Napolean, Napolean said, "I see no mention of God in your work," to which Laplace replied, "I have no need of that hypothesis!"

Newton was a deist.  Although certainly not an orthodox Christian, he seemed to believe that the universe had been designed, with physical laws.  Euler, after Newton, was a fairly outspoken Christian.  Other scientists in the centuries after Newton held to a variety of religious beliefs.  Among the mathematicians in the last century, Bertrand Russell and mathematician G. H. Hardy were prominent atheists.

Bishop George Berkeley (for whom Berkeley, California -- and its famous campus -- is named) was an opponent of Newton's mechanical philosophy and struck an early warning about Newton's physical philosophy.  It was Berkeley who called Newton's fluxions, "ghosts of departed quantities", pointing out the illogic of keeping fluxions unequal to zero during parts of a computation and then making them equal to zero at the end.  Only the later "black magic" of limits (as precisely described by Cauchy) saved the principles of calculus.

In this philosophical battle between Newton and Berkeley, eventually Newton's viewpoint won.  Modern physics, based on the mathematics of calculus, assumes the universe is deterministic, at least above the quantum level.

Despite the deterministic view of modern math and science, Christianity has survived.  Yes, there are scientists who are proudly atheistic or agnostic, but there are quite a number of scientists whose worldview is Christian.  (And, of course, there are scientists who are devout Jews or Muslims.)  Newton's mathematics did not end belief in a Creator.  There are many of us who shrug and say, "So God created physical properties and principles that run the universe, without requiring routine intervention?  How is that a problem?"  Indeed, many Christians I know (in the sciences) find the details of the universe beautiful and attractive.  To echo Francis Collins, "God is an awesome mathematician and physicist!"

That has been the opinion of thousands of scientists since Newton's time.  Despite the philosophical underpinnings of calculus, it is not in conflict with orthodox Christianity (or Judaism or Islam.)  One may attempt to claim that modern physics, undergird by modern mathematics, removes God from the universe.  But that statement is a philosophical "leap of faith" that science neither supports nor denies.

So, as a Christian, I can teach calculus!

So what about evolution?   There is supposedly a conflict between Christianity and Evolution.  I don't get it.  I never have.  When I became a Christian, science formed a backdrop to my enthusiasm for learning about the Creator.  When I read Genesis, I thought, "Wow, this is awesome!  Big bang! ('Let there be light.')   Deliberate creation of fish, birds, animals, humans."  It made sense and encouraged investigation into this creation.

Yes, there are some people with innovative interpretations of Genesis, who play games with Hebrew grammar, who can make Genesis contrary to modern science.  And on the other side, there are scientists with a philosophical bias who make a leap to claiming that evolution has a philosophical component that requires that the universe be meaningless.  But in their basic unbiased forms, neither the first few chapters of Genesis nor the theory of evolution are in conflict.  (I recommend, for those interested in exploring Christianity and Biology, the BioLogos website.)

There is, within twentieth century Christianity, a pseudo-religious pseudoscience, Young Earth Creationism.  Young Earth Creationism not only violates every corner of modern science but (more importantly?) violates straightforward Bible hermeneutics as applied to Genesis 1-3.  It is both unscientific and unbiblical!   I'm sure I'll want to say more about Genesis at some other date.  (Yes, there are answers in Genesis -- but don't let Ken Ham tell you what to believe!  smile.)

A century from now, Christians may look back on the "Evolution" conflicts of the last century and shrug.  "So God created biological properties and principles that created life.  How is that a problem?"

Newton's philosophy was more of a threat to Christianity than Darwin's.

Now, back to grading those calculus papers....