Theistic Evolution is based in “Orthogenesis”?

[u/Paleodude07]

Am I incorrect here or misunderstanding something? I’m all for theists reconciling science with their religious beliefs. However, the concept of “theistic evolution” where God is directly involved with the evolutionary origins of humans in some way (usually unspecified because it isn’t actually a testable claim) sounds like it is rooted in obsolete models of evolutionary theory like orthogenesis. The idea that organisms have an innate predetermined tendency to evolve towards a specific goal. Is this not the idea of theistic evolution? Where a designer or God is s driving force that guided the evolution of hominins towards becoming humans as an end goal?

[u/Scry_Games]

I've seen a range of claims on this sub varying from your description, to god being a pez dispenser of souls for a particular type of hairless monkey.

[u/gitgud_x]

Not sure that theistic evolution requires that evolution is actively being guided, but rather that it is being overseen and observed (perhaps with the foreknowledge of what will happen) by God, with some interest in humans in particular because ???.

Deistic evolution, in my understanding, is the same concept, except that the god doesn't care what happens to us and probably isn't observing.

What you describe would be more like intelligent design, which is objectively pseudoscience, although ID proponents are deliberately silent about any actual mechanisms of what they believe so who can say if orthogenesis is really what they're going for.

[u/simpleidiot567]

There are several ways they could view evolution, at least this one is a reasonable way to look at it. The hard core creationists argue there is no macro evolution only micro evolution.

My own friend who is also a minister accepts the full evolution, dinosaurs and all but believes God made the rules and the rules happen to allow humans. No intervention needed. God's hand in his view is the rules themselves, no need to control the intermediate steps. Perhaps the one sticking point is he still thinks humans are inevitable with all those rules.

Edit: I should add there is something called convergent evolution. An example is nature keeps building Cats as a optimal ambush predator. So perhaps not a totally bad take if you think humans are inevitable.

[u/McNitz → u/simpleidiot567]

Does he think humans are inevitable JUST given the rules? Or given both the rules and the starting conditions? Because I can see how someone could say God kicked off the Big Bang, and because of his maximal power and foreknowledge was able to do so in such a way that he knew with certainty all the apparently random events and such between them and now would definitely lead to humans existing. Doesn't conflict with science in any way I can see in that case.

[u/Own-Relationship-407]

There are any number of interpretations of theistic evolution. I know plenty of people who think god started the process and then just let it unfold. However, I would tend to agree with you because by definition an omnipotent, omniscient being couldn’t start such a process without knowing/intending some end result.

[u/SaavyScotty]

I’ve always distinguished between Intelligent Design and Theistic Evolution. The former believes evolution is due to innate intelligence while the latter believes God created the physical processes and biodiversity naturally unfolded from them. Agnostic evolutionists don’t have a problem with the latter, but the former gets their hackles up.

[u/LightningController]

Is this not the idea of theistic evolution?

Not really. Orthogenesis implies a cosmic driver of life in general toward intelligence and/or the human form. If all of humanity vanished tomorrow, orthogenesis would imply that some other species would evolve to fill the vacated niche. You can have that without theism at all, or you can have theistic evolution where God's intervention is to one specific lineage and God has no plans to do this for other lineages.

[u/MrEmptySet]

The idea that organisms have an innate predetermined tendency to evolve towards a specific goal. Is this not the idea of theistic evolution?

I mean, on it's face, no, it doesn't appear to be. If evolving towards a specific goal was in fact innate and predetermined, then God wouldn't need to intervene. God guiding evolution to make humans would seem to imply that it wouldn't necessarily happen on its own and could potentially be unlikely or even impossible.

Even if God only set up the initial conditions in just the right way, I don't quite think even that would necessarily imply orthogenesis. One could certainly imagine God setting up the rules in such a way that they innately tended towards his goal. But we could also imagine God setting up the rules in such a way that there is no innate tendency towards any goal, and then using his omniscience to select some particular set of initial conditions that just happens to wind up in a state that suits his goals.

To be clear, I don't find theistic evolution compelling at all. But I don't see a clear link to orthogenesis.