I was discussing with a friend the notion that God might have used evolution to complete the creation.
We were talking about Wilder-Smith’s wonderful book “God: To Be or Not To Be” and came to the conclusion that for God to have used evolution he would have had to make it do that which it is not able to do.
That is, he would have to use change processes not to produce chance outcomes, but purposed outcomes. He would have to inject teleology into that which is purely stochastic.
But that means he would have made a thing (chance) which could not achieve his ends (a creative purpose) and so work against the thing made (chance); which is to say, that he couldn’t have used chance at all, because chance leads to dissolution, not creation!
So God could only conceivably use chance to create by not using chance at all, but by over-riding (guiding, people might like to suggest!) it. The very notion breaks down under the weight of its own incoherence.
