A Cautionary Tail

 

A Cautionary Tail

by Lydia McGrew

(Originally published at What's Wrong With the World. Link to original post at 'permalink' below.) 

In case you haven't run into it, there's been a bit of a kerfuffle about theistic evolutionist Karl Giberson's use in a debate of a photoshopped image of a human baby with a tail. Eventually, with a monumentally bad grace combined with silly comments on his public Facebook page about Homer Simpson, Giberson apologized for accidentally using a photoshopped image. We can therefore assume he won't keep using it in debates.

Thus ends Tailgate, at least as regards the image aspect thereof. In the course of following all of this, though, I became rather interested in the claims being made about allegedly atavistic human tails which are, Giberson still insists, evidence for common descent between humans and tailed ancestors.

Here are a couple of things Giberson says on this subject. (Some of these are from a long thread on Nancy Pearcey's set-public Facebook wall.)

Here he says,

I asked the challenging question: “Why does the human genome contain instructions for the production of features we don’t use?” The scientific explanation is that we inherited these instructions from our tailed ancestors but the instructions for producing them have been shut off in our genomes, which is why Shallow Hal is the only person most people know who has a tail. Sometimes the “ignore these genes” message gets lost in fetal development, however, and babies are born with perfectly formed, even functional tails.

On the public Facebook thread he says,

In the discussion I also reference an article identifying the actual human gene for tails (same as the mouse gene, except ours is shut down.) If, for example, I accidentally showed a photo of Plato when talking about Aristotle that would be an irrelevant error. At no point did I imply that the image I showed was evidence. It was illustration.

He also claims that this is "bad design,"

The "common ancestry" and "bad design" evidences go together. It is bad design for our genomes to have dormant DNA that may or may not kick in. Common ancestry explains why.

And metaphorically speaking, shakes his head,

I have no idea how Intelligent Design theorists explain humans with tails.

Well, I'd like to help out. Here, not from Karl Giberson, is a scientific hypothesis about the reason why some human babies are born with tails:

As discussed below in detail, the development of the normal human tail in the early embryo has been investigated extensively, and apoptosis (programmed cell death) plays a significant role in removing the tail of a human embryo after it has formed. It is now known that down-regulation of the Wnt-3a gene induces apoptosis of tail cells during mouse development (Greco et al. 1996; Shum et al. 1999; Takada et al. 1994), and similar effects are observed in humans (Chan et al. 2002). Additionally, researchers have identified a mutant mouse that does not develop a tail, and this phenotype is due to a regulatory mutation that decreases the Wnt-3a gene dosage (Greco et al. 1996; Gruneberg and Wickramaratne 1974; Heston 1951)....[A] mutation or environmental factor that increased dosage of the Wnt-3a gene would reduce apoptosis of the human tail during development and would result in its retention...in a newborn.

Now, there's a big reveal coming up here in a minute, folks, and it's related to the ellipses in that quote and to the fact that I didn't give the link for that quote, so bear with me, here. Nothing will be hidden in the end, but I'd like to tell this in a particular order.

First, what is this WNT-3a gene? From Giberson's description, one would think that it is a "gene for tails" and that it is normally "switched off" in human beings. But if one thought that, one would be wrong on both points. As five minutes' googling reveals, this is the WNT-3a gene. It is not a gene for tails per se, and it is not switched off in humans. Rather, it is an important regulatory gene that, in humans, serves a function "in cell-cell signaling during morphogenesis of the developing neural tube." The neural tube, in case you were wondering, is the embryonic precursor to the central nervous system, including the brain and the spinal chord. Rather an important human gene, that.

The theory given in the above quotation is that some random, individual event in the conception of a particular human embryo results in a higher gene dosage of the WNT-3a gene. Not, mind you, in its being switched on when it was previously switched off. It fulfills an important function in human development, so it isn't switched off at all. Gene dosage, we learn, is "the number of copies of a given gene present in the cell of an organism." So the theory is that some babies are conceived by happenstance with a higher number of copies of the WNT-3a gene in their cells.

Normal human embryos go through a transient stage in which the spinal chord extends longer than it will ultimately need to be. This is the famous "tail." This extra-long portion of the spinal chord then normally regresses as part of the process of human development in utero. The theory is that a higher gene dosage of the (important and functional) WNT-3a gene causes a failure of this disappearing mechanism, resulting in a human baby born with a tail-like structure.

So let's help out Karl Giberson, who cannot imagine how ID theorists explain human babies with tails. Here goes: Humans are designed with the very important and functional WNT-3a gene. This is not bad design but good design. This regulatory gene serves an important function in human development of stuff like the brain and spine--stuff we really need. This important and functional gene isn't leftover flotsam from some time millions ago in evolutionary history. Rather, it was designed for a purpose and actually works for that purpose in human beings. That the same regulatory switch also appears to be involved in the development of tails in other creatures is irrelevant, since a designer can use the same switch for different downstream outcomes in different things he designs, and indeed WNT-3a apparently is serving partially different functions in humans and in other creatures. Occasionally an embryo is conceived, by the pure contingencies of biology which we have no reason to believe have anything whatsoever to do with tailed ancestors, with a defect, like any other birth defect. The nature of this defect is that the child has too much of a good thing--too many copies in his cells of this otherwise important and useful WNT-3a gene. This unnecessarily high gene dosage causes a failure of the normal disappearance of the extra portion of the baby's spinal chord in utero. As Casey Luskin points out here, it also usually causes other problems in the child, as one would expect given that human beings were not designed to have tails (or that many copies of WNT-3a).

Now, that's just a theory. It may be that a high gene dosage of WNT-3a is not responsible for the fact that some babies are born with tail-like structures. However, it appears to be the only theory currently connecting what Karl Giberson calls "the gene for tails" (namely, WNT-3a) with babies born with tails. In other words, it's the only visible candidate for the theory about a gene that Karl Giberson is alluding to. The problem is that this theory about this gene is completely different from what Giberson said. It does not require us to describe WNT-3a inaccurately as "a gene for tails." A moment's research shows that it is actually a gene involved in a variety of things, including neural tube development in humans. The theory, contra Giberson, isn't that the gene is switched off (which it isn't). And the theory, contra Giberson, isn't that this gene is non-functional junk that causes babies to be born with tails when the gene accidentally gets switched on or is accidentally "not ignored." In other words, Giberson is just incorrectly describing the whole theory about how WNT-3a is involved in the birth of human babies with tail-like structures. (See also Casey Luskin's discussion of the "switched-off gene" claim here.)

Now comes the big revelation. I just quoted the theory that Giberson is inaccurately explaining concerning WNT-3a from the pro-evolution web site TalkOrigins, where they nonetheless think that the fact that babies are sometimes born with tails is evidence for common ancestry. In fact, one theistic evolutionist and one person highly sympathetic to that view sent me the TalkOrigins link as though it supported Giberson's position rather than contradicting it! Here is the link, and here is the quotation with a little lead-in and without the ellipses:

As with other atavistic structures, human tails are most likely the result of either a somatic mutation, a germline mutation, or an environmental influence that reactivates an underlying developmental pathway which has been retained, if only partially, in the human genome (Dao and Netsky 1984; Hall 1984; Hall 1995). In fact, the genes that control the development of tails in mice and other vertebrates have been identified (the Wnt-3a and Cdx1 genes; Greco et al. 1996; Prinos et al. 2001; Schubert et al. 2001; Shum et al. 1999; Takada et al. 1994). As predicted by common descent from the atavistic evidence, these tail genes have also been discovered in the human genome (Katoh 2002; Roelink et al. 1993). As discussed below in detail, the development of the normal human tail in the early embryo has been investigated extensively, and apoptosis (programmed cell death) plays a significant role in removing the tail of a human embryo after it has formed. It is now known that down-regulation of the Wnt-3a gene induces apoptosis of tail cells during mouse development (Greco et al. 1996; Shum et al. 1999; Takada et al. 1994), and similar effects are observed in humans (Chan et al. 2002). Additionally, researchers have identified a mutant mouse that does not develop a tail, and this phenotype is due to a regulatory mutation that decreases the Wnt-3a gene dosage (Greco et al. 1996; Gruneberg and Wickramaratne 1974; Heston 1951). Thus, current evidence indicates that the genetic cause of tail loss in the evolution of apes was likely a simple regulatory mutation(s) that slightly decreased Wnt-3a gene dosage. Conversely, a mutation or environmental factor that increased dosage of the Wnt-3a gene would reduce apoptosis of the human tail during development and would result in its retention, as an atavism, in a newborn.

Notice several things about this. First, the lead-in sentence, taken in conjunction with what the theory actually is in the rest of the paragraph, gives us a garbled picture. The lead-in sentence implies that a "developmental pathway" in humans for tails is somehow inactive and needs to be "reactivated." Giberson has tried to spell this out by saying that there is a "gene for tails" that is "switched off" and has to be "switched on," which as we have seen is false. But the lead-in sentence, though less explicit than Giberson and hence less subject to outright falsification, is also in tension with the rest of the paragraph. What is this "inactivated developmental pathway," precisely, if the actual mechanism of human babies' birth with tails is an excessive cellular dosage of a needed and functional human gene? It seems quite misleading to call such an accidental excessive dosage (and the description itself makes the accidental nature in the individual quite clear) a "reactivation" of anything whatsoever, unless of course one is already committed to the proposition of common ancestry. But on that construal, the argument from babies born with tails to common ancestry is circular.

Similarly, the passage refers to "these tail genes" as being discovered in humans, and refers to this as "predicted by common descent." Perhaps this is where Karl Giberson got his ideas. But as one reads on, one learns that the gene in question is WNT-3a, which, one can discover by a small amount of research, is not per se a tail gene and is not deactivated in humans but is rather a functional gene in humans.

The reference to the "genetic cause of tail loss in the evolution of apes" is pure speculation based upon the assumption of common ancestry. There is nothing in the hypothesized cause of occasional human tail-like structures (extra-high gene dosage of WNT-3a) that supports this as a conclusion as over against common design using WNT-3a for the variety of functions that we know it presently has. Similarly, the use of the terms "atavistic" and "atavism" play no explanatory role as regards why a particular baby's extra spinal chord segment does not regress in utero. The passage already conjectures that this is caused by a chance mutation in recent time or even an environmental cause--in other words, by a random event connected to that embryo that is not caused by the past evolutionary history of humans as the authors conjecture it.

So what we have here is an actual scientific hypothesis concerning how particular human babies might come to be born with tail-like structures, but it is mingled with random references to conjectural evolutionary claims that are doing no explanatory work. This mingling produces a weird hodge-podge that the unwary might take to mean that WNT-3a has no function in humans and is just leftover flotsam and jetsam. Even a short googling turns up the falsehood of that claim, which the TalkOrigins author doesn't explicitly make in any event. Karl Giberson fleshes all of this out into far more explicit, but flatly wrong, claims that we humans have a leftover "gene for tails" from our species' evolutionary past that would be "bad design" if it were designed and that is "switched off" or "ignored" in human development and occasionally gets accidentally "switched on," causing babies to be born with atavistic tails!

If we strip away all the misleading talk about "reactivation" and the outright falsehood that the relevant gene is a leftover piece of junk that is switched off in humans, what is left of the argument for common descent from the fact that human babies' extra spinal chord section sometimes doesn't regress before birth? Precious little. In fact, almost nothing but the morphological resemblance of the resultant structure to a tail. As in, "Hey, look, a human baby with a tail! Gee, I wonder if that means we were descended from an ancestor with a tail! Because, see, it's a tail!" By itself, this is an exceedingly weak argument, to put it charitably. What if an occasional human baby were born with a third arm? Let us say, even, that it were a functional arm that could be moved. Would that give us any reason at all to believe that we were descended from ancestors with three arms? The negative answer should be evident. Weird, abnormal glitches happen in embryonic development all the time. Thalidomide babies are born with no arms, but that doesn't mean we were descended from ancestors with flipper-like hands attached directly to their shoulders.

I suppose one might add, to try to wring as much as possible out of the remaining data, that we do not know why humans go through a transient phase in utero in which their spinal chords are extra-long and then regress. But talk about "Darwinism of the gaps"! "We don't know why this happens, so maybe it has something or other to do with evolutionary history!" Considering that we do know that the WNT-3a gene is functional and important in neural tube development, it would be the height of folly to assume that having less of it would be a good thing on the grounds that (maybe) down-regulation of WNT-3a would result in a shorter human spinal column in utero all along rather than the normal, transient "tail" development phase. This point fits well with the fact that evolutionary reasoning has already been medically harmful, as Casey Luskin points out: Assuming that babies born with tail-like structures have merely a harmless atavism and are otherwise perfectly healthy has led to a failure to look for other medical problems, which usually do turn out to be present.

The cautionary tale here is not hard to find: When an evolutionary theorist, even a theistic evolutionist, tells you as an assured fact that some human structure is caused as an atavism by a leftover and normally switched-off gene from our evolutionary past, don't be in too much of a hurry to believe him. In this case, it turns out that Giberson's characterization is wrong even by comparison with what his fellow evolutionists are saying. As for his rush to infer "bad design," what is one to say? When the gene in question is, in fact, working just fine, thanks very much, in human neural tube development, the characterization of its existence as "bad design" cannot stand up for a moment. But of course that characterization is of a piece with the inaccurate claim that the gene is normally "switched off" and "ignored."

I am not claiming that there are no segments of the human genome that do not have presently known functions. These are the segments that scientists have recklessly been calling "junk DNA" for quite a while, though a variety of recent developments may be teaching them a little more humility and caution. I'm not even claiming to know for sure that there is no actual, non-functioning junk in the human genome, were all known. In this case, however, the gene in question is not even alleged by mainstream science to be non-functional. It would be the sheerest conjecture to try to figure out where Karl Giberson got that idea. For the rest of us, I would just say: Checking these things out for yourself often pays off handsomely.

Posted by Lydia McGrew on June 23, 2014 9:38 AM | Del.icio.us | Permalink

Would progressive creation undermine the existence of an order of nature?

Would progressive creation undermine the existence of an order of nature?

by Lydia McGrew

(Originally published at What's Wrong With the World. Link to original post at 'permalink' below.)

Suppose that God intervened multiple times, prior to the advent of man (presumably by some kind of special creation as well), to create species or to make it probable that a new species would come about where this would not have happened absent divine intervention.

For now, I want to set aside the question of the empirical affidavits of this suggestion. I also want to set aside arguments about the age of the earth. I hear that some Christian groups have had to ban, explicitly, arguments about the age of the earth, because they are a kind of Internet black hole. Also, the criticism I am going to answer would apply to both old-earth and young-earth versions of creationism.

So I'd like to set aside the question of whether this scenario is in fact probable and ask instead whether we should be closed to it and not investigate it on the basis of a particular theological concern.

The concern goes roughly like this. (This is my reconstruction.)

There has to be an order of nature in order for even miracles to have any meaning. If one could never know what was going to happen next, if the natural world had no order or meaning, not only would science have no subject of study, but miracles would have no backdrop against which to occur. Therefore, God can't just be keeping nature going by continual bumps and tweaks, or the entire notion of an order of nature is out the window. Therefore, anything like progressive creation or repeated divine intervention in the creation of animal species is enormously improbable even from the theistic or Christian perspective, and we should be highly resistant to such scenarios and should look instead for species to appear by a smooth operation of secondary means, i.e., by the order of nature.

Since readers will know that I have been discussing intelligent design theory with Ed Feser at Extra Thoughts, I hasten to add that I am not (repeat, not) attributing this objection to Ed. In fact, as far as I know, this is not one of his objections to ID.

In fact, since this is a blog post rather than a book, I'm not attributing it to anyone in particular, but I have a sense that it is "in the air." It's one of those things that you hear quite a lot, and I could probably find plenty of examples both in books and on-line. I remember quite definitely that one friend brought it up to me in e-mail discussion of this very topic, and I seem to recall that I've seen it in comboxes as an objection in the past when I've discussed ID. It also seems related to the objection that is much more common, which one sees in the combox here, that there must have been something wrong with the creation at first if God had to keep intervening to do new things in it. All of that will do for my purposes, because I think it's interesting enough to answer.

I myself tend to think that the ID arguments "sit well" with some kind of progressive creation of the sort sketched. By this I do not mean that they require or entail it. In fact, I find that most of the high-profile ID theorists are concerned to emphasize the possibility of front-loading, presumably because repeated literal intervention for purposes of creation is so repugnant to so many people, both Christian and secular. So even as a lay camp follower, I'm a bit of an outlier in saying, "The heck with all that" and leaning in the direction of a more robust interventionism. But there are reasons to think that progressive, interventionist creationism does sit well with the ID argument. Since the ID arguments are best understood (see this post of mine) as using special intention of an agent, and some sort of act or other to carry out that special intent, as an explanation, it is quite natural that all of this should parse out in terms of creation involving acts to carry out the special intent to bring into being some biological entity that otherwise would not have come about by secondary processes.

In a sense one can regard the young earth position in this same philosophical light, with the acts occurring within a short time period of six literal days. The above argument from the natural order is at least as much of an attack on a young earth view as on a more leisurely form of progressive creationism.

I think it is partly because ID arguments do "sit well" with some kind of progressive creationism that the above criticism of ID comes up. Is there something "off" or "wrong," theologically, about the picture of God's "reaching down" and "doing things" to the world that wouldn't otherwise have happened in order to bring into being the species we see today? Does such a picture erase the very notion of an orderly creation or an order of creation?

There are several reasons to reject this criticism. First of all, as I have said before, the natural order is a tough fabric. It would take a lot to break up our reasonable reliance on it, which is based on an overwhelming mass of daily evidence. Christians already believe that there have been periods of rather furious miraculous activity, during the ministry of Jesus and of the apostles, for example. Yet somehow this didn't make people rationally worry that their corn flakes, or the Greco-Roman equivalent, were going to disappear randomly off of the kitchen table.

Second, this is about origins. This is about where at least some biological natural kinds came from in the first place long ago, not about where individual horses and bacteria come from today. In the unlikely event that an ID proponent were to produce an argument purporting to show that a Designer individually creates each animal embryo, all the time, by something other than the operation of secondary causes, I would raise the concern that such a view is not consonant with the existence of a natural order. But arguments for the deliberately designed origin, before the existence of man, of types of animals that then reproduce for thousands or even (depending on your view) millions of years by natural processes hardly seems like a challenge to the existence of a natural order! Of course these types of creatures have to come from somewhere in the first place. Once they are here, they are part of the natural order from then on out.

Third, this concern seems to me to be a result of a kind of temporal parochialism. If we combine highly interventionist views such as arise in both old-earth and young-earth creationism, for nearly two thousand years I would say that the majority of Christians, including educated as well as uneducated Christians, believed that God specially created many animal species, but none of them took this to be a challenge to the existence of a natural order. No, I'm not saying that every Christian thought that, nor even every prominent Christian, but only that a majority did. It seems to me a post-Darwinian prejudice that leads people to think that there is some philosophical prima facie case that the origin of species (!) "ought" to occur or "must occur" by entirely secondary causes. On the contrary. The reason that Darwin's ideas and arguments, as scientific and empirical arguments, were so revolutionary in the religious world is because the opposite was more generally assumed. If we say that there is some a priori theological reason to think that the origin of species ought to be or must be by natural processes, we seem to be arguing that all intelligent Christians should have been Darwinists (at least in broad outline) prior to Darwin. This seems, to put it mildly, to smack of chronological snobbery.

Finally, to affirm the existence of a natural order that includes things with their own powers is to say nothing, I repeat, nothing, in itself about the level at which the natural order operates or about what those powers are vis a vis the origin of animal species. The claim that the biological species developed entirely by natural processes is one possible position about what the natural order is like. It is not, by a long shot, the only possible position consistent with the existence of a natural order.

This should be obvious. We can construct a future scenario in which some aspects of history have been forgotten and people erroneously believe that some weaponized germ form developed entirely by natural processes when in fact, in that form, it was partially bioengineered. In that scenario, one can imagine clever theologians telling Christians who believe that they have evidence for bioengineering that they must instead affirm the entirely natural origin of that germ or else they are denying the existence of a natural order with "its own real causal powers." It should be clear that such a rigid stance blocks the course of inquiry and, in the scenario in question, blocks access to the actual truth of the matter. The fact of the matter should be investigated by reference to the empirical evidence available. Again: To believe in the natural order is not ipso facto to believe that the natural order gave rise to this or that particular type of thing. We discover the workings of the natural order by investigation, not by armchair assumption-making.

If God specially created some species, which came into existence after the origin of the larger universe, there was already a natural order before that time and continued to be a natural order after that time. It's just that that natural order didn't happen to have the inherent causal powers to give rise to that species by those natural causal powers alone. That's all. To say, "There is a natural order" tells us precisely nothing about whether intelligent intervention is a better explanation. That has to be found out empirically or perhaps by reference to revelatory texts. But it is highly implausible (to put it mildly) that philosophical theology alone is going to tell us either "yes" or "no" to the highly specific question of whether such-and-such a species arose in the first place from the order of nature alone.

That brings us around to the empirical considerations I set aside at the outset. It will hardly be a secret after all this time (not just in this post but in others) that, as an interested layman, I think a great many of the ID arguments do succeed on their own terms, empirically. But the course of inquiry is often blocked, even among Christians, by what seem to me extremely strange a priori objections to taking that evidence on its own terms. The one I address here is one I have run across on more than one occasion, and I think a lot of people are indeed influenced by it. Therefore, it needs to be cleared away so that we can get back to examining the evidence, both Biblical and empirical.

It's a sociologically interesting fact that often people who are trying to block an examination of the ID evidence will cast their position as, "Christianity is consistent with Darwinism." But that isn't really the question at issue in such conversations. The question they are really tacitly answering "no" to is, "Is Christianity consistent with design, and evidence thereof?" I get weary in personal conversation, reading web sites, etc., running into what seems to me, perhaps unintentionally, a kind of passive aggressive move: "It's okay, you can be a Christian and a Darwinist" becomes a kind of code for, "You can't be a smart, theologically and philosophically informed Christian, and be anything but a Darwinist."

The theistic evolutionists (and by that I mean the very strong, anti-ID types) have been very successful rhetorically with this passive-aggressive move. They have been very successful, too, at marketing the proposition that it's okay to be a Christian Darwinist. At this point, I think it's important to make the opposite point: It's okay to be a Christian anti-Darwinist! There is nothing what-so-ev-er about the Christian affirmation of a divinely ordained order of nature that entails or even implies that species originated without special creation. It has always seemed to me that this shouldn't need to be said; it's so obvious. But I'm realizing that, sociologically, it does need to be said, so this post is an attempt to say it, and argue for it. Once these kinds of a priori blocks are cleared away, honest inquirers will be free to look into the detailed arguments that others have made much more ably than I ever could.

Posted by Lydia McGrew on May 14, 2014 10:34 AM | Del.icio.us | Permalink

Tags: (intelligent design) (philosophy of religion)

The apologetic value of the fall and the tension with theistic evolution of man

I have long thought that there is an argument to be made for the Judeo-Christian teaching of the fall of man quite independent of more direct arguments (such as for the resurrection of Jesus) for Christianity as a whole.

Look at what we know of human beings--man, the "glory, jest, and riddle of the world." Man is (pace those who say bonobos can talk) the only creature on earth able to use natural language, the only creature able to use abstract reasoning. Not only does man have unique abilities, man also has a unique capacity both for good and evil. Some human beings give their entire lives to altruistic endeavors, while others give their entire lives to figuring out how to torment and harm others. The former way of living one's life seems to most of us like a call to our "higher selves," while the latter seems to us twisted, not the way it ought to be, a perversion of human nature.

Where did this being come from, so different from all the other animals? And how does it come about that we have this notion of what human beings should be doing and should be like, that some people seem to fulfill (or come close to fulfilling) this ideal, while in so many ways we also fall short of this ideal?

The traditional Judeo-Christian explanation of these facts is that man was originally made in the image of God. He was specially made and is truly different from all the animals. Moreover, man was made good. Man was made with a human nature that was originally turned or oriented toward God. But there was a catastrophe at a real, historical time, and man fell, and now every human being (with perhaps only one exception--Jesus Christ--or if you are a Catholic the two exceptions of Jesus and his mother Mary) is born with a sin nature. A sin nature, at a minimum, is an innate bent or inclination to sin.

This set of historical claims does quite a good job explaining the data I brought up to begin with. Why does man seem so different from animals? On the traditional Judeo-Christian view, because he is different, and is so intrinsically, and was made so. Why does man have a yearning towards good? Because he was made originally for God and still retains the natural light and the image of God. Why does man inevitably commit evil? Because man fell and now has a sin nature. Why is there such a strong feeling that "it shouldn't be that way"? Because it was not originally meant to be that way, and because man realizes, deep down, that he was not made for evil and destruction.

It is much more difficult to explain these facts if we assume the Judeo-Christian account to be false.

To some extent, then, I think it can be justly said that the "glory, jest, and riddle" argument confirms the Judeo-Christian story of the history of mankind.

But if one accepts full-scale theistic evolution for mankind, one undermines this apologetic point. What I mean by "full-scale" theistic evolution for mankind is that one accepts that, to all appearances, mankind evolved by natural processes from non-human animals, with at least the appearance of full physical evolution. At most, the "full-scale" theistic evolutionist may allow some kind of invisible, indetectable "ensoulment" to have occurred, but for the most part the full-scale TE accepts the Darwinian's emphasis upon continuity between man and animals. I discussed some of this here.

It is highly debatable that the full-scale TE can make any forceful use of the "glory, jest, and riddle" argument I have outlined. For one thing, the whole doctrine of the fall is lessened. As I discussed here, the TE view is that there was never a time when man as a race was immortal. Physical death was a part of not only animal but (given full biological continuity) human fate from the outset. Indeed the very notion of mankind is blurred on the full-scale TE view, giving serious problems to the meaning of the imago dei itself. John H. Walton believes that mankind always killed and committed other acts which we would call "sin" now but that they were not accounted as sin prior to God's "choosing" Adam, because previous hominids were not regarded as accountable.

Insofar as such a view has a place for any sort of "fall" at all, it cannot be a sharp cataclysm followed by a radical change in human nature. It therefore becomes extremely difficult for such a view to make explanatory use of the claim that man was "originally not intended to be this way," that man was made good by God from the outset, and that the evil that man now does is a result of a severe, negative change in what mankind innately is like.

Sometimes those attracted to TE will say that they accept it (not being experts in science, etc.) for apologetic reasons, in order to avoid or remove obstacles to reaching secularists who take the full Darwinian story as gospel.

But such accommodation, ironically, cuts off the TE from using important apologetic resources. The most obvious of these are the resources provided by the empirical, scientific evidence for the intelligent design of nature, since one who is trying to accept as much Darwinian biology as possible must also accept the idea that any activity of God in the realm of biological design is indectable. My argument here is that the attempt to accept TE for apologetic reasons also cuts one off from the apologetic argument from the nature of man (both good and evil) and from the shock and wrongness of evil.

It is not in general a good idea to pursue strategy at the expense of pursuing truth. Often enough, one succeeds at neither. The "strategic" acceptance of theistic evolution is a notable case in point.