Darwin’s God, Evolvability, and Divine Action
Abstract
This chapter examines intelligent design and the concept of “Darwin’s God,” employing the theory of facilitated variation to clarify Darwin’s concern regarding the emergence of biological novelty. The debate on divine action is reframed through semantic information theory, in which quantum field theory elucidates the role of potential information and highlights the complexity of gene mutation beyond the standard Darwinian interplay of necessity and chance. Building on this analysis, the chapter proposes a model of divine action that avoids interventionism and reductive metaphysics, situating concursus, Sabbath, and eschatology within the semantic and temporal dynamics characteristic of living systems.
Introduction
In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited the teaching of the biblical creation narrative as science in public schools. Since then, opponents of evolutionary theory have sought to develop nonreligious critiques by presenting purportedly contradictory evidence as the basis for an alternative scientific research program. This effort, known as Intelligent Design (ID), challenges evolutionary theory on factual grounds, emphasizing controversies and alleged flaws in order to argue that evolution is impossible.
However, ID is not identical with scientific creationism or straightforward anti‑evolutionism. Within the broader spectrum of theories of divine action, ID grants a greater role to secondary causes—the lawful processes of the natural world—than to the primary causes of direct divine intervention emphasized by creationism. Even so, ID remains committed to a model of design that competes with evolutionary explanations rather than integrating them.
This chapter examines the debate surrounding both the proponents of intelligent design and the representative figures associated with “Darwin’s God,” while integrating the punctuated theory of facilitated variation into the discussion. Miller’s account of radioactive effects on DNA mutation is reconsidered in relation to quantum field theory, and Ian Barbour’s critique of quantum theory is contrasted with a semantic‑realist approach—particularly in view of Paul Dirac and David Bohm, whose potential‑information framework plays a central role in understanding living systems and their creative activity. My aim is to illuminate Darwin’s dilemma concerning the sources of biological novelty, variation, punctuation, and the deeper question of prolepsis. The debate on divine action is approached through an autopoietic theory of living systems and the evolutionary meaning of creativity, in which the biblical understanding of God is refined through dialogue with the emergent insights of systems biology. This includes Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s reflections on Earth, evolution, and concursus, together with Moltmann’s account of Sabbath‑related eschatology.
Darwin’s Black Box
Michael Behe’s Intelligent Design proposal, as presented in Darwin’s Black Box, argues that Darwinian evolution cannot account for the biochemical complexity of the cell. While Behe accepts the scientific consensus on the age of the universe and finds common descent “fairly convincing,” [1] he maintains that cellular systems are irreducibly complex—composed of multiple, well‑matched parts such that the removal of any one part causes the system to cease functioning. He defines the meaning of the irreducibly complex as “a single system composed of several well matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.”[2]
Yet this front‑loading hypothesis is contradicted by the semantic coarse‑graining of chromatin architecture and epigenetic science, which show that gene expression is dynamically regulated through nucleosome remodeling, DNA methylation, histone modification, and other context‑dependent processes; in this light, Behe’s front‑loading model collapses, since biological novelty arises from dynamic regulatory accessibility rather than pre‑loaded information.
A concept of irreducible complexity draws upon ID at the initial cause of information and undermines a biological theory of the life‑field, nonlocal active information, chromatin manipulation, life resilience, and proleptic development in autopoietic cybernetic lifelines.
Behe’s claim that contemporary cells could be “sent back” to the early Earth to reveal their original state overlooks the fact that modern cells are deeply shaped by billions of years of evolutionary history. Therefore, Behe concludes that natural selection cannot produce a cell filled with complex protein machines, because an irreducibly complex system cannot arise through successive, slight, and gradual modifications of a precursor system.[3] Complexity must have come from somewhere else. “The result of these cumulative efforts to investigate the cell” at the molecular level “is a loud, clear, piercing cry of “design!”[4] Behe even suggests that his identification of design rivals the great scientific discoveries of Newton, Einstein, Lavoisier, Schrödinger, Pasteur, and Darwin.
A representative scientific response to Behe’s claim is offered by Kenneth R. Miller, whose analysis demonstrates how evolutionary intermediates undermine the logic of irreducible complexity. Miller demonstrates that structures such as the cilium possess functional precursors in simpler systems, providing plausible evolutionary intermediates. The neo‑Darwinian framework, through mutation, co‑option, and natural selection, adequately accounts for the emergence of complex adaptations.
In fact, there is no primordial cell containing the entire informational blueprint for irreducibly complex systems. Evolution proceeds from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells through conserved core processes, punctuated innovation, metabolic linkages, and facilitated variation that establish Markov blankets through structural interaction—not through pre‑loaded design.
Thus, the concept of irreducible complexity relies on an ID‑style initial cause of biological information and, in doing so, undermines a systems‑level account of the life field, nonlocal informational dynamics, chromosomal manipulation, life resilience, and proleptic development within autopoietic cybernetic lifelines.
Behe does not introduce a new biological principle; rather, it represents a revival of the classic argument from design, exemplified in Thomas Aquinas’s fifth way, which posits that natural things are directed toward their ends by an intelligent cause. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Reverend William Paley (1743–1805), an Anglican priest, published Natural Theology: Or Evidences for the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature (1802). In this work, Paley introduced his famous watch‑and‑watchmaker analogy: just as a watch implies a watchmaker, so the intricate structures of nature imply an artificer who designed them for a purpose.[5]
Darwin’s Response
Darwin had already addressed the design argument by examining the eye—a complex, multi‑part organ often cited as evidence of intentional design. He demonstrated how the eye could arise through natural selection by tracing a plausible pathway of “numerous gradations,” moving from simple light‑sensitive structures to increasingly complex visual organs. In doing so, Darwin sought to show that complexity does not require an instantaneous act of design but can emerge through cumulative, functional modifications. [6]
Following Darwin’s lead in challenging Paley’s analogy of God as the Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins titled his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker. For Dawkins, evolution operates without foresight, intention, or purpose; the “watchmaker” is blind, driven not by design but by the impersonal processes of natural selection.
According to Behe, the designer must have created the first cell nearly four billion years ago, endowing it with all of the irreducibly complex biochemical systems from the outset. In this view, the designs for systems such as blood clotting were already present in the primordial cell but were not yet “turned on.”[7]
Central to Behe’s speculation is the idea that genetic information already existed in the primordial cell and was simply carried forward through time, waiting to be activated in the distant future. Therefore, he hunches that “biochemists in the future will send back cells to the early earth that contain the information for the irreducibly complex structures we observe today.”[8]
Against this move, there is no primordial “first cell” containing a complete informational blueprint; evolutionary novelty arises through conserved core processes, punctuated innovation, metabolic linkage, and epigenetic modulation rather than through any pre‑loaded design.
Rather, evolutionary history unfolds from prokaryotic cells—small, single‑celled organisms lacking a nucleus and membrane‑bound organelles (Bacteria and Archaea)—to eukaryotic cells, which possess complex internal structures and a nucleus housing DNA. Should bacteria, then, be imagined as containing the entire informational blueprint for irreducibly complex systems?
For example, blood clotting, or hemostasis, is indeed a vital process that stops bleeding when a blood vessel is damaged. It involves a complex cascade of events culminating in the formation of a clot. Central to this process is the fibrin network, a highly conserved three‑dimensional matrix that serves as the structural scaffold of the clot. Fibrin polymerizes spontaneously into protofibrils and laterally aggregates into a meshwork whose structure is influenced by fibrinolytic enzymes, clotting factors, platelets, and flow conditions. To claim that the fibrin network was “designed” in advance—or loaded at the start—amounts to an anti‑evolutionary argument grounded in genetic fantasy, for it implies that genes waited passively for organisms that might someday need them.
By contrast, genes do not wait for organisms to appear. Instead, chromatin biology, as a core conserved process, demonstrates how genes operate within a dynamic network through replication, transcription, and translation—processes regulated and controlled by chromatin‑remodeling structures.
Chromatin remodeling—through nucleosome sliding, eviction, positioning, and broader epigenetic modification—constitutes a dynamic regulatory architecture that renders any static, front‑loaded design concept untenable.
These processes are embedded within broader epigenetic modifications such as DNA methylation and histone modification, forming a regulatory architecture far more dynamic than any static, front‑loaded design. Genes do not wait, since gene expression is network‑regulated and novelty emerges from dynamic, context‑dependent processes.
This systems‑theoretical approach to chromatin remodeling and epigenetic drift engages Ian Barbour’s critical‑realist use of a cybernetic model in his treatment of genetic information. Barbour acknowledges that “systems theory has had only limited success in representing the personal characteristics of human life.” [9] He also distances himself from sociobiology, which has been widely criticized for its genetic determinism. Sociobiology attempts to account for all aspects of human life through genetic codes and programs, effectively replacing ethics, culture, and religion with biological knowledge.
Against this reductionist move, Barbour advocates a model of cultural evolution that emphasizes new ideas, institutions, and forms of behavior as creative and imaginative responses to social problems and crises.[10] His information theory draws upon the central dogma, which assumes that the linear message of DNA produces a linear protein chain—message leads to structure, and structure leads to function. He interprets information flow within a cybernetic system that requires a two‑way exchange between hierarchical levels.[11]
In doing so, Barbour interprets information flow within a mid‑century cybernetic system requiring a two‑way exchange between hierarchical levels, a model that does not yet engage chromatin remodeling, epigenetic drift, or the dynamic regulatory architectures that render biological information semantic and emergent rather than linear. Semantic realism, however, moves beyond a two‑level cybernetic model. It is grounded in fourth‑order observation, informed by coarse‑graining theory, the Markov blanket, and synaptic processes as the hub of meaning.
Thus, God is not a distant engineer who “loaded” genetic information at the beginning, waiting for genes to perform the work of irreducible organisms. This position aligns not with front‑loaded design but with a theology of concursus, in which divine action accompanies and empowers the dynamic processes of life, and with prolepsis, in which creation anticipates and realizes God’s future promise through emergent novelty.
In the theory of ID, Kenneth R. Miller argues that God is reduced to “a biochemical mechanic,” [12] a form of divine occasionalism in which God becomes an all‑predetermining reality at the initial state—blocking divine sabbath, concursus, and the open field of emergence.
Miller argues that cilia and flagella across diverse microorganisms are entirely consistent with Darwin’s theory of gradual, successive pathways from the simple to the complex. Miller demonstrates that many components of the cilium have functional analogues or partial roles in simpler systems, thereby providing plausible evolutionary intermediates. As a result, Behe’s central thesis—that no functional precursors exist—is empirically disproved.[13]
The Box Opened
Behe argues that Darwin’s “black box” of the cell has now been opened by modern biochemistry. Yet Darwin himself had already acknowledged the difficulty long before the molecular age. In Chapter 6 of On the Origin of Species, Darwin famously admitted: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”[14]
Miller maintains that the neo‑Darwinian framework adequately accounts for the emergence of complex adaptations through the well‑established processes of mutation and natural selection. The explanatory power of evolutionary theory lies not in invoking external design but in demonstrating how incremental variation, genetic co‑option, and functional intermediates generate biological complexity over time.[15]
John Polkinghorne approaches design differently, emphasizing the intrinsic potentiality and generative structure of the cosmos rather than a front‑loaded blueprint. While he integrates Kauffman’s self‑organization theory and finds the Anthropic Principle suggestive of divine intention, his synthesis remains oriented toward cosmological teleology[16] and does not fully engage the biological realism disclosed by autopoietic inquiry—where novelty arises from dynamic, self‑organizing processes rather than predetermined cosmic architecture.
Even so, Polkinghorne is acutely aware of Michael Behe’s notion of irreducible complexity, which Behe defines as “a single system composed of several well‑matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function.”[17]
In Polkinghorne’s dual-aspect monism, he proposes an integration of matter, energy, and information, within which consciousness is treated as an irreducible mystery and time itself as a created entity. He also maintains that this framework is compatible with modern relativity theory by unifying space, time, and matter, thereby yielding an image of metaphysical oversight over the universe’s temporal structure.[18]
Polkinghorne interprets the Anthropic Principle as indicative of a Creator whose intention is disclosed in the deep rationality and fine-tuning of the cosmos. He further incorporates Kauffman’s theory of self-organization and complex systems, treating these not merely as products of historical contingency but as manifestations of an “ahistorical” necessity embedded in nature’s fabric. In effect, the science of complexity appears to support a universe predisposed toward the emergence of intelligent life.[19]
Yet this hybrid model risks collapsing the distinction between fundamental physical processes and the actual historical processes through which life evolved, thereby reinforcing classical natural theology and forms of religious naturalism.
Against metaphysical inflation, the fine‑tuned fundamental parameters for life—such as the strength of gravity, the mass of the electron, or the propagation of light—when interpreted through systems field theory, indicate that dynamic patterned fine‑graining is inherent within the local excitation of particles in quantum fluctuation. Within this field, potential active information becomes temporally localized through a perturbed distribution that modifies the discrete Hamiltonian energy carried in the Fourier mode.
This systems field framework understands time as emergent within localized active information rather than created ex nihilo. Consequently, consciousness is approached through biological time, which elaborates a neuronal consciousness‑meaning field operating within the global neural workspace and epigenetic complexity.
This perspective reinterprets modern relativity through quantum field theory and Lorentz invariance, integrating space, time, and matter in terms of potential-active information underlying attractor basins and the emergence of consciousness in punctuated transitions.
God acts as structural concursus through biological time, embodiment, and punctuated emergence, within which consciousness is constituted as irreducible complexity in the noesis–noema correlation and the lived embodiment of life.
Miller on Darwin’s God and Divine Action
Miller presents Darwin as both an agnostic and a theist, arguing that God’s action in the world is not expressed through direct intervention but through a constant divine care and love. Striking, however, is Miller’s confidence in drawing Augustine into conversation with Darwin’s God. Augustine even interpreted the primordial light of Genesis as spiritual rather than physical, and he did not regard the “days” of Genesis 1 as literal twenty‑four‑hour periods.
According to Kenneth Miller, the Genesis narrative does not contradict evolutionary theory. He highlights Genesis 2:7—“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”—as a text that resonates with evolutionary insight. For Miller, the claim that human life is formed from the dust of the earth is not only poetic but scientifically accurate, since the elemental composition of the human body is indeed derived from the earth’s materials.[20]
From my perspective, however, the biblical story resonates more deeply with the anthropology of nephesh—the ensouled body—grounding human life as an autopoietic, ecological bricolage graced as body‑subject within the web of life and dynamically constituted through divine concursus. God is transcendent and pan‑en through a Sabbath mode: present within all living systems as relational animation, while all living beings exist within God’s sustaining horizon. In this sense, the biblical idea of ontological emergence has far less to do with “Darwin’s God” and far more to do with the emergence of embodied subjectivity within an earth‑bound, relationally animated ecology of life.
At any rate, Miller affirms the ongoing force of evolution; he also insists that God remains as creatively active in the present as in the past. This resonates with Darwin’s well‑known closing reflection in the first edition of On the Origin of Species. In that passage, he evokes a world in which life, once “breathed by the Creator,” continues to unfold in beauty and complexity:
“There is grandeur in this view of life; with its several powers having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most wonderful and most beautiful have been, and are being evolved.”[21]
For Miller, this line suggests that Darwin did not see evolution as a godless mechanism. Instead, he viewed it as a dynamic, unfolding process compatible with a theistic vision of creation.
Miller therefore interprets evolution as the arena of ongoing divine creativity. It is a fertile and open history in which life diversifies, adapts, and emerges through natural processes that he sees as gifts of God. In this model, divine action is not episodic intervention but the sustaining, empowering presence that enables the evolutionary drama to unfold.
To support this noninterventionist account, Miller cites Ian Barbour’s concern that an all‑determining divine omnipotence would compromise both creaturely agency and divine goodness. Barbour writes, “If all power is on God’s side, what powers are assignable to humanity?…But if omnipotence is defended, and everything that happens is God’s will, then God is responsible for evil and suffering and God’s goodness is compromised.”[22]
For Miller, God accomplishes divine purpose through the unfolding of natural processes and accepts vulnerability and precariousness as intrinsic to the gift of creaturely freedom. If carried forward consistently, this line of thought gestures toward a form of critical realism. This is often expressed through process metaphysics or through hybrid models that combine classical natural theology with fine‑tuning cosmology. Fully developed, Miller’s position would situate him within the spectrum of “Darwinian” critical realism.
Yet Miller attempts to reconcile the biblical God with Darwinian natural selection—Tennyson’s ‘nature red in tooth and claw.’ This hybrid inevitably forces him into a moral ambiguity in which cruelty, greed, and exploitation risk appearing as evolutionary virtues.
To escape this implication, he abruptly appeals to sociobiological accounts of altruism. Yet this maneuver only exposes the zigzag character of his argument.
The deeper problem is methodological. Miller’s framework remains tied to deterministic reductionism and never reaches the autopoietic, cybernetic, or ecological levels at which living systems generate meaning, resilience, and proleptic orientation. These are precisely the levels that cut across the limitations of natural selection and resist any simple conflation of Darwin’s God with the God of Scripture.
Miller also appeals to quantum unpredictability and even affirms the religious significance of the anthropic principle.[23] Yet these gestures remain at the level of cosmological speculation. Quantum unpredictability—manifest in cosmic ray interactions, stochastic radioactive decay, and molecular copying errors—drives many mutations. It reveals the profound openness of evolutionary history, where a single quantum event can redirect the trajectory of life.[24]
By grounding biological novelty in quantum indeterminacy, Miller collapses the organism into a subatomic ontology. In doing so, he undermines the fact that living systems operate through their own lifelines shaped by Markov blankets, dual coarse‑graining processes, and epigenetic factors. Miller concurs with Gould’s argument in Wonderful Life that evolution proceeds in unforeseeable ways. Replaying the tape of life would yield radically different outcomes.
As Gould writes, “any replay of the tape would lead evolution down a pathway radically different from the road actually taken.” [25]
If Miller incorporates punctuated equilibrium as a component of Darwinian evolution, Francisco J. Ayala goes further. He aligns himself with Gould in acknowledging that both gradual and punctuational modes are represented in the fossil record.
For Gould, however, the punctuational mode appears with much higher frequency at the level of macroevolution. Ayala, by contrast, maintains that the punctuational pattern is also predictable on the basis of the small and gradual genetic changes studied by population geneticists.
In this sense, punctuated change can be evidenced within microevolutionary processes occurring in living organisms. Gould himself concedes in The Structure of Evolutionary Theory that population genetics is compatible with both gradualism and punctualism. Even so, he insists that the issue should ultimately be decided at the level of macroevolutionary patterns rather than microevolutionary mechanisms.[26]
Quantum Mutation Thesis and Critical Realism
Kenneth Miller treats quantum indeterminacy while maintaining that the physical world exists independently of divine will. Even so, he affirms the religious significance of the Anthropic Principle and interprets it as evidence that the universe is finely tuned for life and consciousness.[27]
He follows Erwin Schrödinger, who argued in What is Life? (1943) that events within living organisms can ultimately be explained by physics and chemistry. Schrödinger suggested that living matter—such as genes—might involve physical laws not yet known in his day. At the time, biologists only knew that genes were located on chromosomes.
When a mutation occurs—a mistake in copying DNA—that change can have a direct or even permanent effect on the gene’s code-script. Therefore, according to Miller, events characterized by quantum unpredictability—such as cosmic ray interactions, radioactive disintegration, and molecular copying errors—can influence the sequence of bases in DNA.
Mutation and variation are inherently unpredictable in evolution and can sometimes turn on the quantum state of a single subatomic particle. [28]
By contrast, DNA damage caused by radioactive disintegration is often repairable by cellular mechanisms, while double‑strand breaks are difficult to repair properly and can lead to genetic mutations or cell death. Yet mutations arise primarily from chromatin remodeling, transcriptional instability, replication stress, metabolic imbalance, and epigenetic drift.
If quantum indeterminacy directly generates biological novelty, the claim collapses biological emergence into subatomic fluctuation and overlooks the layered buffering that defines living systems.
Miller relies on Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which states that we cannot know everything about a particle because of correlations among its momentum, position, and energy. The uncertainties inherent to quantum theory give rise to the probabilistic order of the physical and chemical world. Quantum indeterminacy does not produce universal chaos, and God’s universe is not locked into a determinate future. Rather, uncertainty may be attributed to indeterminacy in nature, a point that is crucial in Barbour’s critical realism.[29]
The seemingly self‑contradictory claims involving the anthropic principle, radioactive decay, or the uncertainty principle must be reframed more coherently within systems field theory. Under the general principle of superposition in QFT, any ‘initial state’ of a system must be understood as a superposition of multiple possible field states. Each state corresponds to a distinct particle–wave configuration.[30] An electron is not a classical particle but a localized excitation of a quantum field.
In Paul Dirac’s reading of the Heisenberg transition law, the frequency of radiation corresponds to discrete quantum transitions rather than to a continuous wave. Radiation therefore functions as an external perturbation composed of independent quantum events. Its scattering by an atomic electron is effectively independent of the atom’s internal field because the photon wavelength exceeds atomic dimensions. This implies that probability must be treated together with time as a dynamic variable within a Hamiltonian system governed by superposition and the uncertainty principle.[31]
This perspective implies that radiation should not be understood as a continuous field directly acting on microscopic structures or inducing genetic mutations. If localized active information within the field indicates potential energy for the living system, mutation still remains a molecular drift internal to the organism. It is shaped by epigenetic influence rather than by quantum excitation.
“Therefore, the influence of radiation must be interpreted only as potential quantum tunneling. The living system responds to quantum perturbations according to its own internal complexity, minimizing tunneling through decoherence and maintaining its own biological temporal dynamics.
In living systems, DNA damage activates a multilayered network of repair pathways—such as base excision repair, nucleotide excision repair, mismatch repair, chromatin remodeling, and replication stress responses—that work to restore genomic integrity. Consequently, mutations arise not from the physical impact of radiation itself but from the indirect, context‑dependent outcomes of how cellular repair, metabolic state, and epigenetic regulation respond to stress.
Radiation therefore cannot be understood as a continuous field directly inducing genetic mutations. Localized active information within the quantum field may indicate potential energy available to the organism. Even so, mutation remains a molecular drift internal to the living system, shaped by epigenetic modulation rather than by quantum excitation.
Any quantum‑level influence must be interpreted only as a potential tunneling event. The organism’s biological complexity minimizes such tunneling through decoherence and responds to quantum perturbations according to its own temporal dynamics.
Bohm introduces a super information field permeating the entire universe—a super implicate order—from which nonlocal active information at the first implicate order originates. This higher‑order field organizes the first level of reality, which draws upon a theory of the pilot wave and hidden variables at the deterministic level. In this light, the super implicate order functions as a higher‑order wave field quantized as quantum active information. It informs and shapes the implicate order through an informational field known as the quantum information potential.[32] Because the super wave function is quantized as discrete, nonlocal, and potential information, even phenomena such as radioactive emission cannot be straightforwardly described as exerting direct, one‑to‑one causal influence on genetic variation.
In Barbour’s reading, however, Bohm appears merely as a defender of a realistic nonlocal theory built upon a quantum potential functioning as a pilot wave that guides particles. Barbour interprets Bohm’s implicate order as a holistic background from which information unfolds into the explicate order, yet he concludes that Bohm’s theory cannot be distinguished from standard quantum mechanics. Mind and matter thus become two projections of an undifferentiated, timeless whole—an ultimate monism reminiscent of Eastern religious metaphysics.[33]
By contrast, Bohm refined the pilot wave within the quantum field at the level of the super implicate order. This refinement must be understood through Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and the transition‑frequency structure of quantum events. The quantum potential is not a classical guiding field. It arises from nonlocal active information within the quantum field—including vacuum fluctuations—through which the energy and momentum of the particle’s self‑movement ultimately originate.
In this reading, Bohm’s ontology is not a monistic holism but a dynamic, information‑bearing field structure. Discrete quantum transitions, temporal indeterminacy, and nonlocal correlations jointly shape the organism‑like behavior of the particle.[34]
Furthermore, Barbour’s critical realist position accepts the Anthropic Principle and fine‑tuning in a manner that closely resembles natural theology or Intelligent Design. He insists on differentiating a “theology of nature” (grounded in religious tradition) from natural theology or ID, as though his own use of fine‑tuning were exempt from the same methodological problems. He also describes nature as a dynamic evolutionary process with a long history of emergent novelty, characterized by the interplay of chance and law. [35]
Yet he simultaneously accepts the modern synthesis of the central dogma, according to which the linear message of the DNA molecule produces a linear protein chain. In this view, information about the environment enters the gene pool only through natural selection.
His cybernetic interpretation further emphasizes the large amount of unused information stored in DNA, [36] but this does not resolve the tension between his evolutionary claims and his reliance on a rigid central‑dogma framework.
More significantly, Barbour appeals to quantum field theory through Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, treating it as evidence for an inherent indeterminacy in nature. He uses this claim to support a critical‑realist model of representation over against Aristotle.
Yet this move misreads Heisenberg, who did not regard uncertainty as a limitation of knowledge. Rather, he understood it as the structure of ontological potentiality (dynamis). Drawing on Aristotle’s concepts of dynamis and energeia, Heisenberg interpreted reality as an ongoing process of potentiality and actualization—a generative, not representational, model of truth. [37]
Epilogue: Darwin’s God and Prolepsis
For Miller, God remains the personal Creator affirmed within the Abrahamic traditions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—whose reality transcends ordinary categories of chance and causality. Drawing on Thomas Aquinas, Miller affirms that God is a nonmaterial, spiritual reality whose transcendence exceeds the physical order of nature.
Within this framework, divine transcendence is upheld alongside evolutionary continuity. God is not reducible to natural processes, yet neither does God intervene in ways that violate them.
Miller thus seeks to maintain a classical theistic understanding of God while fully affirming the scientific account of evolutionary history.
Although the miraculous lies beyond scientific explanation, Miller maintains that genuine knowledge arises from the interplay of faith and reason. His classical theism affirms that “God is active in the world in a personal sense,” [38] even if such activity does not take the form of direct intervention in natural processes.
Yet Miller lacks a theology of divine concursus, the cross, God’s universal reconciliation with the world, and prolepsis. Dietrich Bonhoeffer deepens this perspective. In Creation and Fall, he argues that the biblical witness to creation is more radical than Darwin—not because it rejects evolution, but because it grounds the emergence of life in God’s ongoing, relational, life‑giving activity. Humanity is formed “from the earth,” drawn from the dust of the ground; the earth is our mother, the womb from which life emerges. [39]
Human existence is embedded within the ecological matrix of creation and dependent on God’s sustaining concursus. To be created in the image of God is to exist in freedom—yet a freedom inseparable from embodiment, earthliness, and relationality.
Moreover, within evolutionary and biological theory, it is difficult to find any account of a Sabbath‑mode emergence of life through punctuational innovation.
According to Moltmann, the Sabbath of creation built into the initial creation is more than “very good.” The first creation is already finished in God’s Sabbath because it is hallowed, sanctified, and oriented toward its future glory—the eschatological indwelling of God (God’s menuhah) in the new heaven and the new earth under the presence of God’s Shekinah.
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (Jn 1:14), and this divine menuhah fulfils God’s Sabbath and Shekinah. Through the Easter event, God already dwells in the godless world, anticipating the universal Shekinah of the new creation.[40]
Within this horizon, the eschatological attractor functions as a directional pull—analogous to gradients in biology and physics. It describes divine concursus as a future‑oriented force shaping autopoietic becoming without collapsing God into nature.
Dialogue between science and religion requires a creative language and conceptual framework capable of honoring their differences while enabling constructive engagement. Such a framework resists collapsing theology into cosmological metaphysics or reducing scientific insight to doctrinal confirmation. Instead, it seeks a field‑relational, emergent, and analogical structural grammar at the geometry of life—one that allows science and theology to illuminate one another without erasing their unique modes of meaning.
[1] Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, 5.
[2] Ibid., 39.
[3] Miller, Finding Darwin’s God, 133.
[4] Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, 232-233.
[5] Peters and Hewlett, Evolution from Creation to New Creation, 102.
[6] Darwin, The Origin of Species (6th ed.), 187.
[7] Behe, Darwin’s Back Box, 228.
[8] Ibid., 249.
[9] Barbour, Religion and Science, 292.
[10] Ibid., 257.
[11] Ibid., 228.
[12] Miller, Finding Darwin’s God, 163.
[13] Ibid., 143.
[14] Darwin, The Origin of Species, 187.
[15] Ibid., 146.
[16] Polkinghorne, Faith, Science & Understanding, 74.
[17] Cited in ibid., 75.
[18] Ibid., 97–98.
[19] Ibid., 72.
[20] Kirschner and Gerhart, The Plausibility of Life, 257.
[21] Cited in Miller, Finding Darwin’s God, 292.
[22] Ibid., 241.
[23] Ibid., 197.
[24] Ibid., 207.
[25] Cited in ibid., 211.
[26] Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, 1023.
[27] Miller, Finding Darwin’s God, 229.
[28] Ibid., 207.
[29] Ibid., 201; Barbour, Science and Religion,173.
[30] Dirac, The Principle of Quantum Mechanics (4th ed.), 10-13.
[31] Ibid., 112, 245.
[32] “The Super‑Implicate Order (1986),” The Essential David Bohm, 142–143.
[33] Barbour, Science and Religion, 177.
[34] Bohm and Hiley, The Undivided Universe, 38.
[35] Barbour, Science and Religion, 99-101.
[36] Ibid., 228.
[37] Ibid., 110. Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, Chapter IV.
[38] Miller, Finding Darwin’s God, 223.
[39] Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 76.
[40] Moltmann, The Coming of God, 262-267.