Did God or Evolution Create Us?

One question that constantly plagues me as I read Miller's more theological chapters is "where does he stand, exactly?" As we have noted, he offers two main windows of opportunity for God to have created us. The first being the creation of a universe which has laws specifically designed to support life. This doesn't really work too well in the Mormon context, in fact I'm not at all sure how well it works in an ethical monotheisic context either. After all, did God choose the physical laws, or did they choose Him?

His second window is that of quantum mechanics wherein small and inherently unpredictable fluctuations can be ampliphied into major biological changes. Thus God could direct evolution, but here is the problem, Miller doesn't seem to think that God DID direct evolution. Not too much anyway:

No question about it. Rewind that tape, let it run again, and events might come out differently at every turn. Surely this means that mankind's appearance on this planet was not preordained, that we are here not as the products of an inevitable procession of evolutionary success, but as an afterthought, a minor detail, a happenstance in a history that might just as well have left us out. I agree...
Do we have to assume that from the beginning he planned intelligence and consciousness to develop in a bunch of nearly hairless, bipedal, African primates? If another group of animals had evolved to self-awareness, if another creature had shown itself worthy of a soul, can we really say for certain that God would have been less than pleased with His new Eve and Adam? I don't think so...
If a Creator were to fashion a world in which the constants of matter and energy made the evolution of life possible, then by forming millions of galaxies and billions of stars with planets, he would have made its appearance certain. With a sample size of only one, we can hardly look at earth's natural history and be assured that the evolution of intelligence and consciousness is the unavoidable outcome of life here or anywhere else. But given the size of the universe, it is easy to imagine that there may be many such experiments in progress. For all we know, God has revealed Himself to us, according to our many religious traditions, because we were the first of these experiments to be ready; or because we were merely the latest of His many encounters with creation. (272,274,275)

In other words, God created the universe according to astronomical creationism and basically let it fly. He might have done some 'fudging' here and there, but the target He was shooting for wasn't very small, and relatively easy to hit. Now while we have suggested that we should get too literal in interpreting "in God's image", we certainly cannot be as lax with it as Miller. Surely the God of Mormonism, while He might only have four fingers, does not have horns, feathers and twelve arms with thousands of deadly needles sticking out the ends.

Remember Joseph's King Follet discourse? God was once a man like us. He had to have experiences something at least remotely similar to what we are experiencing. Edward O. Wilson has a marvelous and very creative account of how intelligent and conscious life could have evolved. He delivers what could been a "state-of-the-colony" speech had termites progressed to be worthy of souls in Miller's sense:

Ever since our ancestors, the macrotermitine termites, achieved ten-kilogram weight and larger brains during their rapid evolution through the late Tertiary period, and learned to write with pheromonal script, termitic scholarship has elevated and refined ethical philosophy. It is now possible to express the imperatives of moral behavior with precision. These imperatives are self-evident and universal. They are the very essence of termitity. They include the love of darkness and of the deep, saprophytic, basidiomycetic penetralia of the soil; the centrality of colony life amidst the richness of war and trade with other colonies; the sanctitiy of the physiological caste system; the evil of personal rights (the colony is ALL); our deep love for the royal siblings allowed to reproduce; the joy of chemical song; the aesthetic pleasure and deep social satisfaction of eating feces from nestmates' anuses after the shedding of our skins; and the ecstasy of cannibalism and surrender of our own bodies when we are sick or injured (it is more blessed to be eaten than to eat). (Consilience, Large Print ed. 288-9)

These vast differences in morality would have resulted from the vastly different epigenetic rules which are at the heart of "termitity" such as celibacy, non-reproduction of the workers, the exchange of symbiotic bacteria through eating eachother's feces, the use of chemical secretions for communication and the eating of shed skin as well as dead or injured family members. Is anybody willing to accept that God might have attained exaltation in accordance with a morality based in such epigenetic rules? I doubt it. While other Christians might be willing to embrace a suitably modified version of this predicament, Mormon's simply don't have this option.

For Mormon's consciousness is not enough. If God created anything which He could call His children in anything but the most anagorical and meaningless way, they would have to possess certain qualities. They would probably have to have two legs and two arms. I'm not sure they would have to be mammalian, but surely they wouldn't be birds, or even plants (there is no guarantee of animals in evolution, though there is a large likelyhood). They would also have to evolve at least somewhat similar epigenetic rules, largely based around their method of reproduction. Would man have to naturally be the more dominant gender? Could there be more than two genders? Could there be only one gender? Do the female to male ration have to be approximately even? Can they have sense which we are not familiar with such as ecolocation, sonar, phermonal secretions or even eletric senses similar to that of some deep water fish?

It is not inaccurate to say that the Mormon target for God to hit in accordance with evolution is much, much smaller than the target Miller's God is aiming for. Thus our answer to the title question may not be the same as Miller's answer at all. But then, Miller's question is different than ours. "Did God or evolution create some form of intelligent and conscious life?" The answer to this, is pretty much evolution, not God, and he even seems to say so himself in the above quote.

Our question, however, is "Did God or evolution create us?" This is precisely where we wax a bit creationistic. We were a small target, and such a target could have been reached by blind chance, but could not have been reached by blind chance on our world, as well as God's past world, as well as all the other worlds which are supposed to be home to God's other children. We answer, "Yes, we are products of evolution, but God played a significant part in it." This is a total faith claim, which should not pass for science by any respectable definition.

Our answer here is probably analogous to how we believe God created the earth. Do we really believe that He created each planet as if they were snow balls and then sent them flying like a bunch of billiard balls? I doubt it. I imagine that, similar to what Miller says in this matter, God probably started with a planet which was already mostly formed in its current conditions and went from there. Personally, I believe that the most likely scenario involved God choosing this planet after the seeds of life had already appeared on their own, though I imagine many will want to push the commencement of His involvement here back a bit.

Lastly, I would like to address one final flaw in Miller's reasoning. He quotes a particular speaker who explain the evolutionary God as follows:

If you deny evolution, then the sort of God you have in mind is a bit like a pool player who can sink fifteen balls in a row, but only by taking fifteen separate shots. My God plays the game a little differently. He walks up to the table, takes just one shot, and sinks all the balls. I ask you which pool player, which God, is more worthy or praise and worship? (283-4)

Nice try. Which pool man in more powerful? The one who builds the pool and then fills it up right there, the one who builds the pool and waits for the rain to come and fill it in or the one who simply waits for some kind of hole to appear somewhere and happen to get filled with water? This last pool man is the one Miller is suggesting. This pool man isn't the pool man of Mormonism.

Summary: Mormonism's views regarding life of other planets, both previous, future and contemporary, forces them to consider God's contribution in our creation to be rather significant. Miller's views, on the contrary, reduce most, if not all, creative work to mindless evolution.