Classical Theism, Philosophy, and Religion Forum / Philosophical Critiques of Evolution

**Posted by Evander** 8/13/2018 9:09 am

I was listening to a radio interview of John Haldane (I don’t have a link), and he stated that he believes in God in part due to the inability of science to adequately explain three things:
1. How life arose from non-living matter
2. The process of speciation
3. The presence of rational animals, aka humans

Unfortunately he didn’t go into depth about those three points, however it got me thinking. Are there others who criticize evolutionary theory not based on empirical finding but instead based on principles (I mean philosophically) that would make the theory untenable? About two years ago I had a bit of a crisis of faith due to growing up in a well meaning, but fundamentalist Protestant church, mostly due to believing that evolution and Christianity (I suppose theism as well) were incompatible. I’ve since changed my views, however this area does interest me still.

Last edited by Evander (8/13/2018 9:09 am)

**Posted by Brian** 8/14/2018 3:56 pm

The classic Platonic argument against evolution is that it is metaphysically incoherent to assert that some instantiation of Form x could produce an instantiation of Form y. The only time this seems to happen is when rationality is involved (I, a human, created a statue or whatever) but 1) it's uncertain wether artifacts participate in Form the same way natural kinds do and 2) what's involved here is rationality which has the ability to think any form, so this isn't the same sort of thing. Along these same lines it is argued that the greater can never proceed from the lesser, so evolution can't occur this way.

I used to be active in a (now baron) forum of Traditionalists who largely thought this way. There was a long ongoing thread that discussed evolution in detail. I can post a link if you are interested.