In “Dissolving the Fall,” a chapter in his Saving Darwin, theologian Karl Giberson argues that Darwinian evolution created humans selfish; there was no actual fall of man.
Selfishness … drives the evolutionary process. Unselfish creatures died, and their unselfish genes perished with them. Selfish creatures, who attended to their own needs for food, power, and sex, flourished and passed on these genes to their offspring. After many generations selfishness was so fully programmed in our genomes that it was a significant part of what we now call human nature. (P. 12)
Political scientist John West notes in God and Evolution that
Giberson’s repudiation of the traditional doctrine of the fall is obscured by his continuing usage of the term “fallen” in his book and public talks. Yet it is clear that for him the term “fallen” merely means that humans continue to be sinful, just like they were from the beginning. There was no actual “fall” in his view, as he frankly acknowledged during his appearance with me at Biola University in 2009:
John West:Why do you continue to even use the word “fall”? … Isn’t your use of the word “fall” … importing a theology that in fact you reject because there is no fall [in your view]? In your book you seem to say we’re sinful to begin with: Selfishness drives evolutionary process so there wasn’t a fall from anything—that’s how we were originally developed, so the creation was flawed and sinful to begin with. Is that your view?
Karl Giberson: Yeah, no that’s a fair description of my view. I was trying to be sort of consistent with the way theological language is used. There are a great many theologians -I remember reading essays by Karl Barth and Emil Brunner kind of arguing about original sin, and they talk about Adam and Eve and the fall in ways that sound almost fundamentalist, but neither of them accepted Adam and Eve as actual historical characters or the fall as an historical event. But that’s theological language that has a particular meaning apart from what the English word itself entails.
(John G. West, “Nothing New Under the Sun,” in God and Evolution, Jay Richards, ed. (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2010), p. 48-49.)block2
Note: Some members of the Committee for Liturgy Revision have proposed moving the reading from Brother Giberson to form the second reading for Evolution Sunday, but this change is still under consideration.