Book reviewed by Kathlyn Ronaldson, August 2024

On the (Divine) Origin of Our Species
by Darrel R Falk
Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2023; 252 pages
ISBN 9781666757019, first edition, paperback
AUD$56.00

I read this book with increasing delight. The author, Darrel Falk, is an ISCAST fellow and now an Emeritus Professor, having taught biology first at Syracuse University followed by prolonged periods at each of two Christian universities in the US. He made the transition with the specific purpose of addressing the Evangelical Christian opposition to the theory of evolution and was able to exercise gracious persuasion in support of his teaching curriculum. As he points out in the introduction and demonstrates in the remainder of the book, the scientific specifics of human evolution open the door to “largely unexplored spaces that enrich our understanding of what it means to have been lovingly and purposefully created by God” (p. 3).

The book is not polemical, rather the author takes the reader on a voyage of discovery. Along the way, Falk refers to and quotes a wide, rich range of scholars, scientific and theological, from Augustine of Hippo to Charles Darwin, to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Simon Conway Morris, and Richard Dawkins, including many citations from the 2000s and some from the 2020s. It is a scholarly work, distilled from a lifetime of research and reflection, but it is written for the general reader with an interest in biology, evolution, and theology.

Falk begins by presenting some evidence for the historical validity of the Christian faith, particularly the resurrection of Jesus. This then becomes justification for citing biblical material and Christian belief in the remainder of the book.

He explains that two genetic mutations were critical to the development of Homo sapiens. The first mutation resulted in dramatically increased brain size and the second in increased neural connectivity and slower maturation during childhood, with increased capacity for learning and sociality. These Falk describes in terms for the person with no more than high school level biology to understand, but those unable to grasp the detail can nevertheless perceive that a seemingly insignificant event had far reaching implications.

He then describes evidence, from cave art and figurines dated 40,000–60,000 years ago, of the first indications of imagination and awareness of transcendence. The latter, he proposes, had a top-down origin, with God taking the initiative, rather than occurring by a bottom-up process, from human supposition. He acknowledges that such a top-down process is inaccessible to science. This development comes with a greater self-consciousness and an understanding of the thinking of others, and as evolutionary biologists Ajit Varki and Danny Brower (in Denial: Self Deception, False Beliefs and the Origins of the Human Mind New York: Twelve, 2014) have indicated, also awareness that death will be the fate of each individual. Varki and Brower realise that this awareness could be maladaptive and suggest that death denial, with or without an imagination of transcendence, allowed persistence of this feature. Probably anticipating perception of weakness in this hypothesis, Falk indicates that it is supported by many prominent evolutionary biologists, but offers no further explanation. Falk himself has an alternative suggestion, which is that divine engagement conferred a promise of eternity. From Scripture, in support, he cites “Since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen” (Rom 1:20, NIV).

Domestication of hominins is addressed in two complementary ways. The first is by following adaptive pressures on the expression of neural crest cells. These cells reside just above the developing spinal cord of the foetus and influence the formation of face, skull, teeth, exterior pigmentation, and adrenal gland. Softening facial features, reduction of skull ridges, and smaller teeth are associated with domestication. Examples from animals and from hominin skulls are given. The second influence leading to domestication proposed by Falk is the work of the Spirit of God. Those communities responding to God’s Spirit were characterised by “growing wisdom, humility and grace” (p. 154). With greater cooperation, less disputation and violence, more development and creativity occurred and more progeny were born. In addition, selective pressure would have resulted in further genotypic and phenotypic changes associated with domestication. This process could be the reason other groups of hominins died out and only Homo sapiens persisted.

In a chapter on providence, Falk discusses the “countless … low probability, contingent events” (p. 186) leading to the emergence of our species, as recognised by evolutionary biologists. One of these is the development of the first eukaryotic cell (with mitochondria and nucleus) from the merger of two prokaryotic (bacterial) cells. Further, the emergence of placental mammals apparently occurred only once despite tens of millions of years of evolution in the separated land masses of Australia and New Zealand, and apes developed only in Africa despite the presence of monkeys in the Americas and Asia and lemurs in Madagascar. For this material he draws on work by J. Maynard Smith and E Szathmary (in The Origins of Life: From the Birth of Life to the Origin of Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

Given the importance of cooperation between mitochondria and the cellular nucleus and between organs in each organism, as well as in ecological systems, Falk concludes: “goodness is built into creation” (p. 210). Thus, the way forward is through love and behaviour that enhances the welfare of all creation.

Falk is clear that those biologists (and other scientists) who claim that our knowledge of evolutionary development demonstrates that God does not exist have a faulty philosophical position. He does not make the parallel point that Christians perceiving the theory of evolution to be a threat to Christian theism are also suffering from a philosophical misunderstanding. In On the (Divine) Origin of Our Species, Falk has elegantly woven scientific evidence (from the Book of Nature) with Christian belief (from the Book of Scripture), and he has done so without claiming more than is valid for his suggestions of divine engagement, while simultaneously drawing on scientific evidence, which gives reason to praise the Trinitarian God of love. I highly recommend this book.