Audio only:
In this episode, Karlo Broussard responds to thinkers like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, challenging the claim that evolution’s randomness eliminates the need for God by showing that chance actually presupposes an underlying order or design. Drawing on classical philosophy and Thomas Aquinas, I argue that evolutionary processes can fit within divine providence, rather than undermine it.
TRANSCRIPT:
In his 1986 book, The Blind Watchmaker, popular atheist Richard Dawkins famously wrote,
“Although atheism may have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist” (pg. 6).
Now, there are a lot of reasons why atheists think this. But for today’s episode, I want to focus on two of them—and I’m going to explain why I don’t think either one actually justifies the claim that evolution makes atheism a viable option.
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So, as I said, we’re going to look at two reasons that are commonly given for why evolution supposedly explains the world without any need for God.
The first—and probably the most common—is the claim that evolution eliminates the need for an intelligent designer.
Some atheists think this because the genetic mutations involved in evolution are random and blind. And the idea is that chance and design are mutually exclusive. If it’s chance, so they say, then it’s not designed. And if there’s no design, then there’s no designer—no God.
One famous voice to made this case is Christopher Hitchens.
In his 2009 debate with William Lane Craig, “Does God Exist?”, Hitchens said,
[VIDEO]
[I]t’s not very much contested any more, 37:15 that we are not designed as creatures, but that we evolved by a rather laborious combination 37:22 of random mutation and natural selection into the species that we are today.
Later in the debate, Hitchens doubled down, saying:
[VIDEO]
“I don’t believe that we are here as the result 42:53 of a design.”
Both of those statements were aimed at blocking any appeal to design as evidence for a Creator.
But why?
Because, as Hitchens sees it, evolution is driven by “random mutation”—in other words, chance. And if things happen by chance, so Hitchen’s argument implies, then they’re not designed. And if there’s no design, then why think there’s a designer, like God?
Now here’s a second concern some atheists raise.
If new beings emerge by chance in through the evolutionary process, then it looks like there’s something in the universe that escaped divine providence—something that wasn’t part of God’s plan. And if that’s true, then God wouldn’t be the universal cause and governor of all things, which is a core part of the classical definition of God.
So, in both objections, chance is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It’s treated like the nail in the divine coffin.
But do these objections really hold up?
Let’s walk through them.
Let’s start with the first objection—the idea that evolution eliminates the need for an intelligent designer because the genetic mutations are random and blind.
Philosophers have pushed back on this idea by challenging a key assumption” that chance and design are somehow opposed to each other.
In fact, going all the way back to Aristotle, philosophers have pointed out that chance isn’t actually a thing that does stuff. It’s not an existing thing out there producing effects all on its own.
Instead, chance happens when different causes come together in a way that none of them specifically intended.
Here’s a down-to-earth example.
Let’s say I head to the grocery store to grab some milk so my kids can have cereal in the morning. At the same time, my colleague and friend at Catholic Answers Joe Heschmeyer goes to the same store to pick up bread for his kids’ toast. We bump into each other—and naturally—we start nerding out about theology and philosophy in the cereal aisle.
That meeting was by chance.
But notice what’s going on here: I had a goal. Joe had a goal. Both of us were acting intentionally. The “chance” meeting was a byproduct of two purposeful or designed actions crossing paths. In other words, chance presupposes design.
Here’s another classic example. Imagine someone digging a grave and unexpectedly discovering buried treasure. The person digging had one goal—to make a hole. The person who buried the treasure had another—to hide something valuable. The discovery wasn’t intended by either person, but it resulted from two separate, directed actions intersecting.
The takeaway is this: chance doesn’t stand on its own. It’s not something basic or fundamental. It only makes sense within a world where things are already ordered toward goals—that is, where there’s already design or order at play.
And the same is true with evolution.
Sure, genetic mutations might be random. But randomness doesn’t happen in a vacuum. For mutations to occur at all, there must be living organisms already striving to survive and reproduce. Mutations don’t just pop out of nowhere—they depend on a whole biological system of life, physical laws, and stable conditions—all of which are already in motion with design.
Also, mutations follow tendencies. A dinosaur might evolve into a bird under the right conditions, but it’s not going to turn into a daisy. There’s a particular directionality built into the process.
And when one thing acts on another—say, like a chemical interacting with DNA—it produces a specific kind of effect. Philosophers explain this by saying things have built-in tendencies toward certain outcomes. An acorn, for instance, doesn’t randomly grow into just anything at all. It grows into an oak tree, not a banana tree.
That kind of directed behavior is what we mean by “order”—or “design.”
So here’s the bottom line: chance doesn’t cancel out design. In fact, you can’t have chance unless design is already there.
If that’s true, and design points to a supreme designer (as theists argue), then the random elements of evolution don’t eliminate the need for God. They unfold within a system that’s already ordered or designed.
So that first objection—that evolution removes the need for an intelligent Creator—doesn’t really work.
Now let’s turn to that second reason some give as to why they think evolution eliminates God when explaining the world: if new beings emerge by chance, then something has escaped God’s providential plan.
Philosophers who believe in God usually respond by pointing back to what we’ve already said: chance occurs when causes converge in a way they didn’t intend. But in the traditional theistic view, those causes themselves exist and act because of God. Their activity—the very reason they act at all—traces back to divine causality.
St. Thomas Aquinas puts it this way in his Summa Contra Gentiles, bk. 3, chap. 67:
[READ #1]
“All power of any agent whatsoever is from God, as from the first principle of all perfection. Therefore since all operation is consequent to some power, it follows that God is the cause of every operation.”
In other words, God isn’t competing with the created causes It’s not an either/or situation. Created causes are real and meaningful because God is at work through them. cause.
Aquinas helps clarify this by explaining two aspects of divine providence in his Summa Theologiae, first part, question 22, article 3. He writes,
[READ #2]
Two things belong to providence–namely, the type [idea] of the order of things foreordained towards an end; and the execution of this order, which is called government. As regards the first of these [that is the idea of the order], God has immediate providence over everything, because He has in His intellect the types [ideas] of everything, even the smallest; … As to the second [governance], there are certain intermediaries of God’s providence; for He governs things inferior by superior, not on account of any defect in His power, but by reason of the abundance of His goodness; so that the dignity of causality is imparted even to creatures (ST I:22:3).
So, first, there’s the plan—the ordering of all things toward an end. God holds this in His intellect, down to the smallest detail. This is technically called “providence.”
Second, there’s the execution of that plan—how things actually play out through chains of created causes. Aquinas calls this “governance.”
So, if God is the ultimate source of every cause and effect, then He would know—and include in His plan—the convergences of causes that we call “chance.” Even in evolution, what we see as randomness still fits within both parts of God’s providential plan: His providence and governance.
This leads to one more helpful point: what chance is relative to created causes is not chance relative to God.
Aquinas says this explicitly in his Summa Theologiae, fist part, question 116, article 1. He says this:
[READ #3]
It happens sometimes that something is lucky or chance-like, as compared to inferior causes, which, if compared to some higher cause is directly intended (ST I:116:1).
Aquinas expounds on this idea elsewhere, explaining that while an effect might escape the order of a particular cause, nothing escapes the order of the universal cause—which is God.
Here’s what he writes in question twenty of the same first part of the Summa, article two, reply to objection 1:
[READ #4]
For nothing escapes the order of a particular cause, except through the intervention and hindrance of some other particular cause; as, for instance, wood may be prevented from burning, by the action of water. Since then, all particular causes are included under the universal cause, it could not be that any effect should take place outside the range of that universal cause. So far then as an effect escapes the order of a particular cause, it is said to be casual or fortuitous in respect to that cause; but if we regard the universal cause, outside whose range no effect can happen, it is said to be foreseen. Thus, for instance, the meeting of two servants, although to them it appears a chance circumstance, has been fully foreseen by their master, who has purposely sent to meet at the one place, in such a way that the one knows not about the other.
What Aquinas is getting at in these passages is that the occurrences we identify as chance may be truly beyond the natural activity of the converging causes, but not beyond a cause, like God, that directs those causes.
Let’s go back to that buried treasure example. Suppose the person digging the grave is a poor laborer hired by a wealthy man.—the same man who buried the treasure years earlier. The employer hired the laborer hoping he’ll find it, but without telling him.
From the laborer’s point of view, finding the treasure was a total fluke. But from the employer’s point of view, it was fully intentional. The chance occurrence, therefore, ultimately reduces to the directing activity of the employer—the intelligent cause.
The same logic applies to the world.
Events might be random to us, but from God’s perspective—the ultimate vantage point—they’re fully known and intended within His plan.
Even genetic mutations that drive evolution may exceed what the natural causes “expect,” but they don’t exceed what God intends through those causes, since he’s their ultimate directing cause in the first place.
So the idea that something “escaped” God’s plan because it happened by chance just doesn’t hold up.
In the end, there’s no need for believers to feel threatened by evolution.
Chance doesn’t rule out God. In fact, without design, there wouldn’t even be chance. And since design points us to God, chance doesn’t eliminate Him—it actually depends on Him.
If you’re interested in reading these arguments in written form, check out my article “Why Chance Can’t Eliminate God” over at catholic.com.
Well, my friends, that’s it for today! If you found this video helpful, make sure to like, subscribe, comment below, and share it with someone who might need to hear this. And for more resources, check out our website at catholic.com and my website at karlobroussard.com.
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