Theism, Natural Selection, and Teleology: Toward a Theology of Evolution

Abstract

This thesis examines the concept of natural selection and argues that the traditional, causal interpretation contains implicit teleological assumptions. It further maintains that, when coupled with a classical theistic model of the Good, one can generate a fruitful theological interpretation of Darwinism. I begin by investigating the concept of the Good as it was understood in premodern thought, particularly in the metaphysics of Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. I then shift to an examination of natural selection, dividing between what I regard as two competing interpretations. The first, labeled externalism, regards natural selection as an extrinsic force operating on gene frequencies via selective environments. Through the work of Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, I demonstrate the conceptual difficulties of this model and its implicit teleological assumptions. The second, which I label reciprocalism, grants a more active role to organisms in the evolutionary process. I analyze this view through contemporary debates in the philosophy of science on biological fitness. I argue that standard interpretations of fitness fail and offer, instead, an Aristotelian-Thomistic interpretation of fitness (ATTIF). The ATTIF consists of a fourfold hierarchy of teleologically-ordered aims determined by the organism/ population. I then examine the four aims and corresponding biological models and concepts that reveal the teleological nature of each aim. These include evolutionary landscapes, Hutchinsonian niches, homeostasis/metabolism, homeorhesis, and biological functionality. Interpreted through the lens of the classical theistic model, these biological and evolutionary concepts can be understood as a participation in and a striving towards the Good. I then answer two possible objections—namely, whether essentialism/Thomism is compatible with Darwinism and whether it is rational to invoke theism to explain natural teleology. Finally, I schematize past theological interpretations of evolutionary teleology and embrace a Moorean, conatist model of evolution.