A Darwinian dilemma for the theist who accepts evolutionary theory

I've been recently reading some work by theistic philosophers and theologians who accept evolutionary theory. They seek to interpret scripture in such a way that it is compatible with the evolution of humans and other animals. One promising recent strategy is to read Genesis 1-3 through the theology of Irenaeus rather than through Augustine, trading one patristic author for another. Here, I want to examine whether this is a reasonable strategy for the empirically-informed theist.

According to Augustine, the earliest humans (Adam and Eve) were in a state of original righteousness and perfection, there was no death, sin or pain in the world.  Original sin caused these things to happen. Women got stuck with painful childbirth, men and women had to toil, animal predation began and we became mortal. This picture is still remarkably popular with current philosophers of religion, like Van Inwagen or Plantinga. 

However, paleobiology and other evolutionary disciplines indicate that suffering and death predate the emergence of the earliest hominids by billions of years, so it's hard to see how a single human action could have caused these things. Moreover, given that a lot of our baser motivations (such as hunger for status in a group) are continuous with those of other animals (like chimps), it's hard to maintain that the first humans were in a state of moral perfection (also, if they really were, how did they get tempted by the snake?) 

The rival Iranaean picture does not argue that humans were created in a state of initial perfection, but rather, as immature beings (Irenaeus likens them to children): "man was not made perfect from the beginning" (Against Heresies, 2nd century, book V). God's plan was for humans to gradually grow toward perfection. John Schneider, a former theologian at Calvin College, has argued vigorously for this Irenaean picture. According to Schneider, the Irenaean view of the original immaturity is much more plausible on an evolutionary understanding of creation, than the rival and dominant Augustinian perspective, which proposes that humans were in a state of perfection prior to the Fall. In a recent paper in Zygon, Schneider writes: 

The Irenaean original person—Iranaean Adam—fits remarkably well into the larger narrative of a Darwinian world and Darwinian Adam. With a little imagination, the Irenaean figure can adapt to the part naturally in unforced fashion (Schneider 2012, 967)

This dynamic view on human nature is more in line with paleoanthropological and primatological data than the Augustinian view. We see some continuity between the moral behavior of humans and altruistic tendencies in other animals. Gradually, we see evidence for moral behavior in hominids, like neanderthals and the transitional Homo heidelbergensis from Sima de los Huesos, for ethically relevant actions that go beyond what is observed in primates, such as the sustained care of severely injured members of the group, and of disabled infants.

But a problem remains with this Irenaean picture. It is inherently teleological. However, evolution doesn't appear to be a teleological process (early evolutionists like Haeckel thought it was, but we know it is not). So we have the following dilemma:

1. Either the apparent stochasticity in natural selection is only apparent to us. Mutations aren't really unguided. They only seem to be random for us
2. Or, the apparent stochasticity in natural selection is real.

I am pessimistic about (1). Plantinga defends it in his recent Where the conflict really lies (2011). He denies that stochasticity is a central element of evolutionary theory, but rather, regards it as a mere philosophical gloss. Suppose for a moment that's true, and God guided every single mutation (for instance, by choosing what happens at the quantum level),"In this way God can exercise providential guidance over cosmic history; he might in this way guide the course of evolutionary history by causing the right mutations to arise at the right time and preserving the forms of life that lead to the results he intends." (p. 121).

We are then left with an unacceptable amount of animal suffering that predates human evolution. If God exists and he has the classical divine attributes (like omnipotence, omniscience), he could have created a world without animal suffering, since he knew all along what he wanted. There are numerous responses to this worry, e.g., animals don't really suffer (neo-Cartesianism) which I won't go into here. Even if that's plausible, the point remains. Those mutations that still are at work in human evolution today cause a lot of harm in human beings - for instance, there is increasing evidence that the prevalence of Alzheimer's in older humans is the result of the evolution of higher cognitive functions in humans.

So it seems that a theist who accepts evolutionary theory is left with horn (2). This second horn is what we see in authors like John Haught or Elizabeth Johnson. They provide an open theistic view where God takes risks, and where chance plays an inherent role in divine providence. While this picture sounds attractive, we may still wonder whether it can be wedded to an Irenaean interpretation of Genesis. If God intended to create beings immature, growing towards communion with him in Christ, how could he make sure that this happened? By intervening occasionally in an otherwise stochastic process (the sort of God of the gaps that Pope Jean Paul II seemed to endorse)? By sitting back and hoping for the best? Humans are now the only member of the genus Homo on the planet, but shared it with beings as diverse as the Denisovans, the Red Deer Cave humans, Homo floresiensis, and Neanderthals over the past 40,000 years.

Michael Ruse proposes the following solution:   If one is a Christian then one cannot allow that the appearance of humans—or human-like beings, with intelligence and a moral sense—is just contingent. For Christians, humans are part of God’s plan. Here I think you need a theological rather than a scientific solution. Don’t try to smuggle progress back in. Rather, be Augustinian. God stands outside time. For him, the thought of creation, the act of creation, and the product of creation are as one.

The problem with this tack is that it lands on the first horn again - why would God choose this mode of creation, rather than opt for a prefab paradise where all of the good he wants obtains without the messiness of evolution? In sum, the Darwinian dilemma I outlined indicates that the Irenaean Adam cannot neatly fit into evolutionary theory in an unforced fashion, as Schneider claims. But I think that nevertheless, it is a more reasonable way for the theist who accepts evolutionary theory than the Augustinian picture.