The challenges of evolution and the metaphysics of creation

Summary

For as long as human beings have reflected on nature and their place in nature, they have been fascinated with questions of origins: their own individual origins, the origins of their family, of the human race, the origin of life and, ultimately, of the universe itself. We move carelessly at times among different senses of what we mean by "origins," resulting in ambiguity and confusion. We can speak of origins in terms of cosmology, biology, philosophy, and theology, but, if we fail to keep distinct the different senses of "origin" and the different modes of analysis with respect to various disciplinary inquiries, our understanding is seriously compromised. To speak of the origin of life – or, perhaps better, the origins of life, we need to be attentive to recent developments in biology, especially evolutionary biology, and the relationship of these developments to broad themes in the philosophy of nature, metaphysics, and theology...