Can Something Come From Nothing?

Evolution and Logic

Link: Thomistic Institute

The Thomistic Institute is a great organization run by Dominican priests in Washington, D.C. They spread the immense treasure of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, through videos, podcasts, talks, papers, etc. Recently, the Thomistic Institute has done a series on the consistency of the theory of evolution, and the Christian faith. Can we believe both that evolution is a process that produced humanity from simple life forms that adapted to their environment and successfully reproduced, and also maintain the belief that an all-good God oversaw the creation of the world and has a special plan of salvation for human beings?

The Thomistic Institute has answered this question affirmatively. Some might argue that, with evolution, we can dispense with any intervention of God to account for human life. Evolution is an entirely natural process, so we do not need to appeal to a supernatural creator generating the human form from His thoughts. But, the Dominicans at the Thomistic Institute argue that evolution may have created the human body, through a long process of competition, survival, and extinction of the non-adaptive. However, God inserted into the human body a rational soul. Even if evolution produced the human body, only God can account for the presence of the rational soul.

Aristotle’s Account of the Soul

To understand the position of the Thomistic Institute, we need to understand the account of the soul from Aristotle. All living things, for Aristotle, have souls. Plants have a soul suitable for nourishment and growth. Most basically, the soul imparts life. As we ascend to higher levels of ensoulment, we find things that can move. Animals can not only move, but perceive. But human beings can think. Thought is distinct from perception, because thought can be wrong. Perceptions cannot be wrong—they just present something. Thoughts formulate judgments, though, that can be true or false of the world. So, humans are distinctive in our capacity to formulate judgments about the world that may or may not be true. (De Anima, III.3.427b.13).

Human beings are homo sapiens, because we have sapientia, i.e. wisdom. Atheistic evolutionary theory claims that we can account for our rational soul strictly in terms of natural properties. Intelligence, one might argue, allowed for some animals to survive and reproduce, and so the more intelligent passed on their genes, eventually leading to a transition into the higher species of humanity. But, if this theory is true, why is there still non-intelligent life? If intelligence is so adaptive, and necessary to contend with our environment, why is most life on the planet nowhere close to humanity in intelligence?

The Christian evolutionist might argue, like the Thomistic Institute does, that God may have inscribed even in non-living matter a hidden form. This hidden form had the capacity to develop into a higher life, even the most sophisticated form of life in homo sapiens. So, evolution is true, because there is a long process of change leading from non-living matter to human life. But, also, divine creation is true, because God created humans indirectly, by inscribing in non-living matter a potentiality for intelligent life. Aquinas talks about forms in the divine intellect that plants the seeds of form in matter, which emerge through movement over time. (Summa Theologica, Q.65, Art. 4). The Thomistic Institute is adopting, then, what is known as theistic evolution, i.e. the idea that God used evolution to produce human beings,

We should note that this theory of Christian evolution does not require any discontinuities in natural processes, or miracles. Nature contains within itself the capacity to develop into intelligent life. Since this capacity is potential in nature, there is no need for God to produce intelligent life from nothing. God did not work a sudden miracle of creating a human being out of nothing. Instead, He planted a seed of rationality in the fabric of the cosmos itself that eventually developed through God’s providential care over time. The rational soul is embedded in the cosmos and does not require a miracle to arise.

Through the development of this seed of the rational soul, we are able to see the emergence of the human intellect. The human intellect is distinctive in that it can abstract species (or, general classes) from individual perceptions. Whereas an animal sees only the individual tree, a human intellect can form a general concept of all trees. The human intellect can grasp the essences of things that are irreducible to a particular thing, but apply to entire classes of things.

In our intellection and capacity to grasp essences, we prove the immateriality of our souls. When we contemplate something, our mind is not bound to the material object. We can extract the essence of a thing, that applies not only to the particular material object, but an entire class of things. When we contemplate a tree, for instance, we not only contemplate that particular tree, but the entire class of trees.

This immaterial soul, capable of abstracting universals from material particulars, cannot have arisen from natural processes, according to the Thomistic Institute. The immaterial soul must have derived from the “light” of God. The light of God allows for the grasp of a general class that is not reducible to a particular material object. So, to produce homo sapiens, there had to be an intervention of God, even though the human body arose by a natural process of evolution.

Questions

Has the Thomistic Institute succeeded in dispelling some of the fears about evolution religious people have? Some religious people view evolution as an existential threat to their faith. In fact, many people abandon their faith once they encounter evolutionary theory. Religion holds that God created humanity in an act of direct creation, people think. But, evolution shows that natural processes created humanity. Therefore, religion is false. Once religion is false, we must dispel with the morality religion seeks to inculcate, and we must despair of everlasting life in Heaven.

However, I do believe that the Thomistic Institute has shown that it is nonsensical to think that evolution is incompatible with Christianity. Even if evolution is true, it is amazing that it produced humanity. This progression towards humanity suggests divine guidance. Evolution was much more likely to produce some other form of non-intelligent life, or just dysfunctional critters that ended up dying off long ago. The idea that there are seminal forms in matter suggests that God is necessary to dispose natural processes to produce the human form. Without this divinely imposed human form, natural processes would just churn out randomness. Also, the recognition of the immateriality of our souls requires the intervention of God, even if evolution produced our bodies.

However, I would like to raise a couple questions about the idea that evolution can produce new species. The idea that a natural process can take a given species, and produce a different species that is not capable of breeding with its ancestral species, seems to violate some basic logical and metaphysical principles.

First, there is the principle that from nothing nothing comes. In Latin, the phrase is ex nihilo nihil fit. This principle holds that nothing cannot produce something. If something arises, it does not arise without precedent, from nothing. Instead, arising presupposes a pre-existing basis. When a magician appears to pull a rabbit out of a hat, we know this is an illusion. Things do not simply pop into existence out of nothing.

In the theory of evolution, though, it does seem as though new things arise from nothing. How can a new species emerge from an ancestral species, without violating the principle of ex nihilo nihil fit? A new species is a fundamental change, not a mere modification. A lion developing sharper teeth and running a bit faster is not a shift into a new species. Is it possible for a creature to change so drastically as to become an entirely new species?

Imagine yourself becoming a new species. You are human, but you are going to transition into a canine. Where is the material for this radical change originating? Can you as a human undergo so many modifications that you become canine over time? Or does this require a leap into a new form of being, that requires something—i.e. a new species—to come from nothing—i.e. an ancestral species that contains now material basis for the new species?

So, perhaps there is a weakness in the idea that non-living organisms could evolve into new species. This sort of development into something new requires something to come from nothing.

Another question I have about the progression of evolution has to do with a metaphysical principle that changes in accidents do not cause a change in substance. Accidents are always in a subject. Whiteness, for instance, cannot exist on its own, but has to characterize something. Substances, on the other hand, do not exist in anything else. Substances are individual things, not features of things. An individual man is a substance, and his hair color is an accident. (De Interpretatione 5.2b1.15.

In the idea of evolution, the presupposition is that changes in accidents can lead to fundamental changes in substance. Evolution works through incremental modifications. The beak of a bird grows a little longer, the wings get better at buoying up the body, etc. Soon, the bird has transitioned into a new kind of thing—a different species! At some point, a bird laid an egg, from which emerged a new kind of substance altogether!

But, can changes in accidents lead to changes in substance? If I change the color of water, it is still water. If I heat it or freeze it, water is still water. How could I cumulatively change water by its accidents in order to produce a new substance?

Transubstantiation

It may seem metaphysically impossible to introduce an entirely new substance through changes in accidents, but nothing is impossible for God. In the doctrine of transubstantiation, the idea is that God, through the invocation of the priest, changes the bread of the Eucharist into His body. In transubstantiation, there is a conversion into a new substance (conversio substantialis), but a continuation of accidents. The bread continues to appear as bread, with all the qualities of bread, but it is now, in its substance, the body of the Lord. This change into a new substance cannot occur but for a miracle of God. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Only God could produce a new substance, His body, from bread that contains no basis for the emergence of bodily flesh.

But, aren’t evolutionists claiming a transubstantiating power in nature? If nature can produce new species, isn’t it able to produce new substances, i.e. not just features of things, but new things? Is the transition from one species to another a kind of transubstantiation, since a new thing is emerging, which is more than just a modification in qualities? A dog without fur is still a dog. Even a freakish dog that is six feet tall can still be a dog. How do we change the accidents of a dog so that it ceases to be a dog?

Perhaps it is God who facilitates the jumps to new species, so as to nurture the rational seeds he planted in non-living matter from the beginning. We encounter in the Bible various tales of God generating pregnancy in a woman who is well past the age of childbearing (Gen 21:2), or even in a virgin (Lk 1:26-38). God is capable of producing effects that are inexplicable in terms of natural processes.

Question: Do you think these questions pose a serious problem for evolutionary theory? And do you think it is possible to be religious, while believing that evolution accounts for the emergence of human