Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Creation and Evolution

  • It’s One Thing to Lie

    . . . it’s another to lie stupidly when the evidence of that stupidity is right in front of you.

    ID creationists William Dembski gave an account (loosely speaking) of a question and answer by Ken Miller and Francis Collins. Since then an actual transcript has been made that clearly shows the inaccuracy of the account provided by Dembski’s informant. Having dealt with many “eye or ear-witness accounts” of such events, I would never have used such an account without verification. It has the clear signs of the witness hearing what he or she wants to hear. You can read the relevant transcript and Ken Miller’s comments here. (All links, hat tip to The Panda’s Thumb.)

    DaveScot, over on Uncommon Descent has now commented:

    The question and answer as Bill Dembski was given by someone in the audience recalling it wasn’t an unfair paraphrase. The verbage was different but the points were essentially the same.

    That’s not only lying, that’s lying stupidly, and it continues the pattern despicable behavior demonstrated over at Uncommon Descent.

    What DaveScot and William Dembski are trying to paper over is, in fact, the fundamental issue, and the fundamental problem with intelligent design. Intelligent design theory neither argues, nor does it demonstrate that the universe is designed. In fact, one of my strongest objections to ID is that it demonstrates precisely the opposite. If it were true, it would show not that the universe was designed, but rather that if there was design, it is poor design. ID points to the places where design fails as demonstration that design is, in fact true. This is inescapable if one applies any actual thought to the so-called “explanatory filter”–a Dembski contrivance that neither filters nor explains.

    For a Christian who accepts evolutionary theory, such as myself, the most fundamental problem with ID theory is not what it says about nature and science. Apologies to my scientist friends and colleagues, but the scientific answers are not the most fundamental thing to me. The problem with ID is what it says about God. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but from reading Finding Darwin’s God, Ken Miller has a similar problem. ID finds not God the designer, but God the backroom tinkerer, God the perpetual inventor who can never get it right.

    Futher, even if one allowed that God might have intervened precisely at the formation of life, that would not make current ID theory and the explanatory filter any better than they are. In order to show an intervention at that point one would need to design a complete new theory. ID is bad at what it tries to do now, and it would be bad at detecting intervection at the formation of life. Note that just because ID is lousy does not mean God never intervened. It merely means that ID is lousy science.

    What theistic evolutionists are arguing, for the most part, is simply that God made a universe that was well enough designed to work! We argue that it does work, and that science shows us God’s creation actually working. We celebrate God in even the simple things that happen on a day to day basis. For me, the formation of the bacterial flagellum is something God did. He did it in a wonderfully elegant manner, by creating a universe in which such complexity could appear according to natural laws. Because again, as I see it, natural law is simply the consistent result of God’s will. Consistent!

    Nonetheless my expectation is that scientific investigation will eventually show us how non-living matter can produce life under the appropriate conditions. I think it is just a matter of time. And this points again to the nature of ID theory. It is, in fact, a God of the gaps argument. It posits God’s action where we don’t understand the process. As long as it does that it is horrible theology and it says horrible things about God. It says that God is generally a failure, who creates a system that works partially, but requires constant retuning to make it go. It says further that even that retuning is rather poorly done.

    If, as I expect, a natural process leading to the origin of life is found, I will see in that also the work of God. What I will not expect is that we will be able to properly identify God in the parts of the process that we don’t yet understand.

    This is the big difference between the theistic evolutionists and ID creationists. We see God as a competent designer who is successful. They see him as a complete failure. They believe in a small God that they can bring inside a scientific theory as an explanation. We believe in a God who just won’t fit there. We’re not saying God isn’t good enough to be a scientific explanation. We’re saying he’s something completely different, too big to be an hypothesis, too great to fit in their piddly formulas.

    If the ID proponents could just “get” that, they would perhaps understand why their petty little pseudo-theory gets on the nerves of Christian theists who accept evolutionary theory.

  • Science and Religion – Can they be Allies?

    PZ Myers has responded to an interview with Ron Numbers in a post titled I’m proud to be non-human. His main point seems to be that those of us who favor evolution need to go all the way and stick totally with the scientific evidence.

    He says:

    There is a strong cultural aspect to this struggle that is independent of the facts, I won’t deny that. But calling the science “irrelevant” is throwing away the sharpest tool in our toolbox. We are going to win people to the side of science and reason by promoting, well, science and reason. Stop running away from it! Stop being ashamed of the fact that the evidence is on our side! We aren’t going to win by engaging in theological debates, or by getting the right legislation, or by winning court battles

  • Basis of Faith and Meaning

    A number of people over the years have suggested that because of some doctrinal position or another that I hold, I no longer have a basis for my faith. Those who express themselves a bit less forcefully see it as a weakening of faith, a distancing from God, and a lessening of belief in God’s power. Two doctrines in particular tend to bring this response: 1) My rejection of Biblical inerrancy, and 2) My acceptance of the theory of evolution. In the second case, it seems also that people feel that an acceptance of the theory of evolution robs life of all meaning. If human beings were produced by a process of descent from the smallest form of life, somehow God no longer has a purpose, or no longer has control.

    I’ve been thinking about these things recently, and asking myself just what is the basis for a meaningful Christian life, a question that seems to me to combine these two issues quite nicely. Since I rarely have difficulty finding meaning in any particular day of my life, these aren’t questions on which I spend lots of time.

    Let me list some of the places from which people say they get meaning and find a basis for their faith:

    1. A certain set of historical events, such as the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus
    2. Certain spiritual experiences or encounters with God or the divine in some way.
    3. Don’t know, it just happened.
    4. A deep internal need for God.
    5. God made me specifically, and intended me for a specific purpose.
    6. Community, being part of a church or spiritual family
    7. I make my own meaning.
    8. I became convinced that the Bible was true for logical and historical reasons.

    That list is not exhaustive, but I think it illustrates this adequately. I would have to say that for myself, there are elements of the first, second, third, sixth, and seventh. The focus of my own meaning in the world, however, combines my personal encounters with God with making my own meaning. My encounters with God, however, mean that when I make my own meaning, I do so in relation to God, which doesn’t mean quite the same thing as it does by itself.

    So what would it take to shake my faith or even to make me abandon it? I really can’t think of anything. The classic question for Christians is what would happen if someone found a clearly identifiable body of Jesus, proving he was not physically resurrected. Since I do believe in the physical resurrection, that would be troubling and would require some rethinking of elements of my faith. At the same time, I believe I would simply adjust to the other possibilites in the resurrection. If I had never experienced the risen Christ, I would not find the historical evidence anything like sufficient to convince me of the resurrection. If the physical evidence got worse, I would still have the experience of the risen Christ.

    Similarly, at one time I believed something very much like a hard version of inerrancy–there could be no errors in the Bible of any type, including in historical and scientific matters. Through study I became convinced that this was not the model of inspiration displayed by the scriptures. At the same time I knew that I heard the voice of God through the scriptures. So despite a substantial shift in the method by which I believe God communicates (and it’s quite possible I’ll again change my mind with further study!), I don’t doubt that God does communicate.

    I never had the problem that some people claim with evolution, which is the loss of meaning. I went from believing that God literally formed the first human being from dirt and then literally breathed into this statue so that it became a living creature (Genesis 2:7), to believing that God formed a human being through the process of descent with modification, and when that being was the human being he intended, he saw that it was good. Notice that I don’t see God as ever getting further from the formation of man. The method changed; the result was the same.

    In a conversation with my wife I was searching for an analogy for this difference in the method by which a person was formed. I proposed the difference between a mother laboring and giving birth to a child versus a C-Section. She suggested more the difference in the connection between a parent by birth or by adoption. I still feel a little closer to the first analogy; there really is no difference in how connected the mother is to the child in either birth. I will admit that if adoption (or step-parenting) is done properly, I agree with my wife’s point. The tie should be created and should exist just as tightly as a blood tie. But I’m not sure people understand it that way. The key is that God’s parent-child relationship with human beings is not changed by the method by which he produces those children. It has always interested me that many are happier being descended from dirt than with the idea of being descended from a small life form that lived in dirt–or water.

    I think that if the meaning of your life is shaken by any change in the method of your creation, that meaning may be pretty loosely attached in the first place. You may need to look at your experience of God and your connection to God. I’m often accused of putting more weight on science than on the Bible and faith, but in a most fundamental way I think it is creationists who put a greater weight on science than I do. The methodology of science is, for me, a way of learning about the physical world, with results that are tentative and subject to change at any moment. They have to be, because we learn new things. My meaning doesn’t come to me from my understanding of the function of the physical world, and it isn’t shaken when new things are discovered about the physical world. I’m really placing much less weight on science in my spiritual life than the creationist who feels that he must find a scientific basis for everything in Genesis in order to uphold the faith.

    1Now faith is the substantial nature of things we hope for, the clear conviction of things we don’t see. 2By this means the elders were approved.

    3By faith we understand that the universe was made by the word of God, so that things which are seen didn’t come out of things already visible. — Hebrews 11:1-3 (TFBV)

    It’s my faith–my belief in, my confidence in, and my trust in God that gives substance to my spiritual hopes and gives me clear conviction. This is a different category of “knowing” than knowing that the earth orbits the sun, or accpetance of common descent. Even using the word “knowing” is deceptive, because it is entirely subjective. I can’t prove it to you, I can’t make you hear me. I have good friends who think I’m irrational because of it, and I understand their point of view. But I have the firm conviction.

    This is a conviction that worked from Abel, Enoch, Abraham, and Moses, who had no scriptures at all. They couldn’t believe that scriptures were without error, because they had no such option. They only had their belief that they had encountered and communicated with the living God. That gave them enough to work with, and gave them meaning in their lives. They didn’t have the doctrine of the incarnation or the resurrection. But they were faithful nonetheless.

    39And these all, having received approval of faith, did not receive the promise, 40since God concerning us foresaw something better, so that without us they would not come to completion. — Hebrews 11:39-40 (TFBV)

    Their belief was without seeing, without scripture, and yet they received approval and remained firm. I’m not against facts as part of your faith. But the foundation had better be deeper than the details.

  • The Dog DID my Homework

    We’ve all heard the traditional excuse for missing homework: The dog ate it. Well, intelligent design creationists (IDCs) now have a better one. The dog did their homework. Well, it’s analogous to that in any case.

    Thanks to Pim van Meurs of The Panda’s Thumb in his entry Eugenie Scott: The Big Tent and the Camel’s Nose for calling my attention to this quote from William Dembski:

    As for your example, I’m not going to take the bait. You’re asking me to play a game: “Provide as much detail in terms of possible causal mechanisms for your ID position as I do for my Darwinian position.” ID is not a mechanistic theory, and it’s not ID’s task to match your pathetic level of detail in telling mechanistic stories. If ID is correct and an intelligence is responsible and indispensable for certain structures, then it makes no sense to try to ape your method of connecting the dots. True, there may be dots to be connected. But there may also be fundamental discontinuities, and with IC systems that is what ID is discovering.
    Source (ISCID Forum)

    Now you can go to the original discussion (linked above) and to Pim van Meurs’s comments to get more discussion of the details, but I must confess this one really struck me funny. It’s something that many have been saying about IDC and creation science for some time. The IDCs really aren’t bothering to do their own homework. There is no model, no predictions, nothing testable, and yet we’re supposed to admire the great discovery. IDC is most like the older creation science on this major point: They have nothing positive to contribute. This is the student who says, “The dog did my homework, thus there really wasn’t anything to see [the dog can’t write], so I can’t show it to you, but trust me, it was done. But Mary’s homework is really lousy, disorderly, doesn’t have enough detail, and there are actual questions that she failed to answer!”

    Creationism was at one time clearly based in the Bible. That Biblical basis was the only thing it had going for it. If one assumed that Genesis was a literal account of the origin and early history of the world, young earth creationism fit. One fought for the integrity of the scriptures. I think this particular view of Genesis 1-11 is incorrect, and takes the materials as the wrong type of literature, but nonetheless that was a fixed position. Certain things had to be correct in order for that position to be accepted as true. Such a position is currently advocated by Dr. Kurt Wise in his book Faith, Form, and Time. While this view does not, in my opinion, present a fully testable scientific model, it does give some predictions, and it has form.

    Creation science, on the other hand, is without form and void (Genesis 1:2). Advocates try to claim that one can teach creation science without reference to the age of the earth and that the flood is a separate issue. But a worldwide flood is hardly a separate issue. If there was one, there will be significant differences in the geological record than would be the case if there was no such disaster. Consider the results left by various meteor strikes. Compared to a global flood covering the highest mountains, those meteor strikes would be very minor issues. The geological record would be different if the earth is very young than if it is very old. Creation science, without dealing with those issues, could not be a coherent model of anything. The only clearly identifiable notion that linked advocates of creation science together (in their statements specifically about creation science, not what they told church congregations) was their statements that evolution was wrong, summed up in various ad hoc criticisms.

    Now here come the IDCs, or rather they’ve been yelling for some time, enough time to have some substance to present. They keep criticizing Darwinists for lacking 100% detailed histories of each evolutionary transition. Critics like Berlinski keep making silly demands of the fossil record (The Deniable Darwin), expecting fully formed explanations of everything at once, with fossils representing every step.

    And then what does Dembski claim? Well, because ID isn’t mechanistic, we don’t have to explain it. Evolutionists have explained some things, even many things, and are going on explaining more things, but Dembski, who has explained absolutely nothing tries to criticize others for having done only some work. The dog did the homework, the dog ate the homework, there really wasn’t any homework to do in any case, but your homework isn’t good enough.

    Look at this part of the quote again: “True, there may be dots to be connected. But there may also be fundamental discontinuities, and with IC systems that is what ID is discovering.” So if there are dots to be connected, don’t IDCs need to go about connecting them? If there are discontinuities to be found, can they be discovered without doing the hard work of connecting the dots that can be connected? How can any of this be discovered without actually identifying the intelligent designer, and determining his/her/its goals, methods, and capabilities?

    In a post on the Compuserve Religion Forum, I wrote the following:

    I imagine the first expedition to a planet in another system, made up, of course, of IDCs, since they are such revolutionaries in science. They come upon something that just must be designed. They run it through the explanatory filter. No, it’s not a natural regularity. No, it’s too complext to be the result of chance. Conclusion: It must be designed.

    So having made this wonderous discovery, they pack up, jump back in their spacecraft, and begin the long journey home.

    I’m sure many will regard this as unfair, but please tell me in what way the behavior of IDCs differs from this. Can’t the “Newton of information theory” or the discoverer of irreducible complexity manage to discover some little thing about the designer? Did the dog not leave just a corner of the homework page uneaten?

    There is nothing that would commend ID to anyone except for a presumption that it must be so. Just admit it, IDC advocates, you just believe God has to get his fingers in the pie all along the way, you somehow can’t comprehend a God who could actually get it right in one pass, so you have to find a theoretical basis for that view.

    It’s bad theology, it’s bad science, it drives dishonest politics. The real discussion is between people who have done their homework.

  • Misrepresenting Science in God’s Name

    The Smithsonian magazine online has an article Dinosaur Shocker, talking about the work of Mary Schweitzer who has found preserved soft tissues in fossilized dinosaur bones. The topic has been picked up by young earth creationists and used as an evidence for a young earth. This has already been discussed on the web, but if you have not read it, here are a couple of key articles:

    Though I was interested in the article, I was more interested in the way in which the material had been used and I want to comment on that briefly, because I have seen it done very often.

    The Smithsonian article made the follow comments on this use of Schweitzer’s material:

    Young-earth creationists also see Schweitzer’s work as revolutionary, but in an entirely different way. They first seized upon Schweitzer’s work after she wrote an article for the popular science magazine Earth in 1997 about possible red blood cells in her dinosaur specimens. Creation magazine claimed that Schweitzer’s research was “powerful testimony against the whole idea of dinosaurs living millions of years ago. It speaks volumes for the Bible’s account of a recent creation.

  • A Step for Abiogenesis?

    In a short article, ScienceNOW Daily news discusses some new research that may shed light on how life first emerged on this planet. I want to call attention to the article for a couple of reasons, but primarily because this, in my view, is how real science is done, and how it sounds when announced. No, they don’t know that this is an element of the formation of life, no, they don’t have the rest of the process, even the next step, figured out. What they have done is provide one more option, and filled in one more blank in the unknown.

    Michael Behe, in his book Darwin’s Black Box describes structure after structure and process after process, recounting how we have discovered new complexity as we continue to learn more about how the function. What is a black box at one point in the history of science will not necessarily remain so. Unfortunately, Behe uses all this skillful writing to produce an ode to ignorance, and complains that evolutionary pathways have not been found. He believes they never will be. But as things get more complex, one simply has to work harder to learn the details that are part of the complexity of nature. In this case, there is now a new reaction that opens up possibilities for study. Does it resolve the problem? No! But it suggests new research and provides more options for continuing the search. That’s how science works.

    Some may be wondering how I, a “theistic evolutionist” got onto the topic of abiogenesis. After all, the expected method of argument for theistic evolutionists is to distinguish evolution of life from abiogenesis. I do believe they should be regarded as distinct. But I also believe that abiogenesis will be solved, and an pathway for the origination of life will be formed. How then can I relate this to my belief that God is the creator of life? Actually, I believe God is the creator of everything. I believe God created the universe as a system, a system that works.

    Let me use the analogy of my car. I don’t regard periodic maintenance requirements for my vehicle as a sign of the wisdom of the engineers. Sure, they did well to warn me of those requirements, but I would be happier if they were less frequent, and if it were practical to produce a vehicle that never required maintenance, that would be even better. I also don’t look at the simple parts of my car and determine that they did not require an engineer, while the more complex parts must have been designed. I know that each element was put there as a part of the design strategy of the car. That they work together (mostly) seamlessly, and that I cannot find parts that are “more designed” than others is not a defect.

    Now as all analogies, this one has it’s limitations. My car is very little like a universe. But I think it does illustrate my point. If God designed the universe correctly, then it should work. If it requires periodic maintenance, like my car, it gives evidence of manufacture by a less-than-perfect creator.

    I don’t like the idea of tinkering, whether it comes at the time of speciation or when life first came into existence. I creidt life to God whether intervention was required or not, but I suspect a competent God of getting it right the first time (A “fully gifted universe” to borrow Howard Van Till’s phrase).

    So folks, I think this one will be solved in the next few years, and if you hooked your faith in God to the impossibility of life being formed from non-living matter without special miraculous intervention, you will be disappointed.

    But make no mistake, no matter how thick the gloves are on God’s hands, no matter how many processes supposedly separate him from his handiwork, it is still God that does it. An omnipresent God is not less present when working through process (and consistent processes at that), than he is working directly. The evidence suggests that he prefers working through consistent processes.

  • An Evolutionary Understanding of Kinds

    One of the key issues in the creation-evolution controversy is the extent to which Genesis 1-2 should be understood as narrative history, and whether its statements with regard to the physical world should be taken as scientific statements, or at least as statements that carry some scientific content.

    I was just reminded of the importance of this issue by an essay by Alvin Plantinga, “When Faith and Reason Clash” in the collection Intelligent Design Creationism and its Critics, edited by Robert T. Pennock. In answering the question of what we do when our scriptural position and that of science clashes, Plantinga says (p. 121), “. . . I don’t know of any infallible rule, or even any pretty reliable general recipe. All we can do is weigh and evaluate the relative warrant, the relative backing or strength, of the conflicting teachings. We must do our best to apprehend both the teachings of Scripture and the deliverances of reason; in either case we will have much more warrant for some apparent teachings than for others. . . .”

    He then proceeds to divide “evolution” into five claims, two of which are the Ancient Earth Thesis and the Common Ancestry Thesis. The reason I list just these two is that the difference between them is the focus of this short essay. I think also that the handling of these two elements by creationists of all varieties will emphasize the problems with any notion of “theistic science.” Plantinga regards the scientific evidence for an ancient earth to be so strong, and the scriptural evidence for a young earth to be weak enough that we can accept an ancient earth. Common ancestry, on the other hand, he interprets differently. He sees the scientific evidence as much weaker, and the Biblical evidence much stronger, and thus he feels justified in rejecting it.

    Let me note first that I don’t think that the Bible makes scientific statements, and thus there should not be an issue of conflict between what the Bible teaches and what one learns from science, since they are talking about different topics. Nonetheless I want to look at the difference between these two issues on the assumption that one might extract some scientific information from Genesis. Is the Ancient Earth Thesis or the Common Ancestry Thesis better supported scientifically? Is either of them more forcefully contradicted by scripture? How would one deal with this approach?

    Old earth creationists (OEC), and many intelligent design (ID) advocates see the evidence for an old earth as extremely strong, but in general they want to maintain some sort of historical and scientific truth claims for the early stories of Genesis. For a recent example, see William Dembski’s Christian Theodicy in the Light of Genesis and Modern Science in which he attempts to reconcile the idea that physical death is the result of human sin with an old earth in which death occurred prior to the existence of human beings. I hope to respond to that article some time soon. It’s really quite interesting. Here, however, I am simply noting that it takes the scientific evidence for an old earth seriously, seeing it as solid enough to effectively require that one deal with it, and thus requiring a somewhat complex interpretational solution.

    Ignoring Dembski’s new view for the moment, however, let me look at just how difficult it is to reinterpret Genesis so that it will support an old earth, based on previous claims. In this way I’d like to outline just how solid the Biblical evidence is for each position, since according to Plantinga we should apparently judge each of these elements and relate them to the validity of the scientific evidence.

    Read as narrative history, Genesis 1-11 teaches several things:

    • a young earth, in the neighborhood of 6,000 years old
    • special creation in the course of a week
    • a specific incident resulting in a fall of humans from their relationship to God which resulted in their expulsion from Eden, commonly interpreted as the source of all physical death
    • moral deterioration of humanity to a point beyond redemption except for a few
    • a universal flood that destroyed all those not in the ark, including all human and animal life, but apparently not plant life
    • the formation of multiple languages from an original universal language at the Tower of Babel

    In reinterpreting these elements, old earth creationists do the following:

    • In some sense regard the creation days as long periods of time. (There are multiple ways of doing this, but I’ll regard it as just one element of interpretation.)
    • Deal somehow with the sense of “special creation” in the passage, when this creation is accomplished over long periods of time and with significant detours (extinction events, for example)
    • Find a way to understand physical death before the fall narrated in Genesis 3. (Again, there are a variety of explanations, but they are all more complex than the narrative history reading of Genesis 3.)
    • Dealing with moral deterioration and the flood as one element, they need to restrict the range of the flood so that it does not completely disrupt the geological record, as a universal flood surely would.
    • Relate the apparent history of language and patterns of migration with the Babel story. (I have really never seen anyone address this issue, but I think it would come up if the others were to be solved.

    Note that I’m not particularly singling out any of these elements as wrong, or even extremely improbable. I’m simply looking at the weight of scriptural evidence that must be reinterpreted in order to accept an old earth view under Plantinga’s idea of theistic science. If one is to read Genesis as narrative history with scientific content, then I think the young earth folks have the inside track on straightforward exegesis.

    Now let’s turn to common descent. At the risk of oversimplifying, since I’m not a biologist, let me state this simply as the descent of all life from a single life form by descent with modification. To reconcile such a picture with Genesis we need to deal with at least two elements of the old earth scenario, time and physical death prior to the fall. But the reconciliation already provided by the young earth advocates already cover those points. In addition, we need to deal with the issue of reproduction after their kind. And that is where I would really like to discover what the great problem is.

    In the good old days of George McCready Price, whose books were part of my early education, creationists tended to believe that species were very closely fixed. A “kind” was a rather tight package and corresponded closely to species. Over time, that has changed, and with good reason. But creationists of all varieties are still trying to find the boundaries of “kinds.” Why are they doing that? Most importanly why are people who can accept an old earth hung up on the issue of kinds?

    If we can accept a range of variation within a population and still call that reproduction “after their kinds,” then where in the Biblical text is this absolute warrant for a hard coded boundary? By shifting the distribution of characters in a population, you can move the population anywhere you wish without any single creature ever failing to reporduce “after its kind.” It seems to me that rather than being the most difficult element of the picture, “after their kinds” is actually the easiest one to deal with. Once any variation is permitted within the definition of such reproduction, there is no inherent limit on such variation.

    Thus with much less effort than is required to allow an old earth we have an explanation for common descent that is in accord with scripture. What is more, many of the difficulties inherent in spreading special creation over a period of time are removed. Many people question the idea of special creation that takes long periods of time simply because it hardly seems “special” any more. The OEC tells the evolutionist that God took the same amount of time, permitted the same amount of death and destruction, allowed the same number of species to become extinct, only the creation is more personal and special. The question is why? If, on the other hand, God was using variation and natural selection as the process of creation, then the time factor and the “after their kind” explanation make perfect sense together.

    It seems to me that there must be some other issue here, and with that issue we’re headed straight back toward the dreaded “God of the gaps” theology. The real point is that OECs can still see specific, identifiable acts of creation by God with an old earth, but if we allow creation of all life forms via descent with modification, this evidence for the existence and activity of God disappears. I think that is the real reason why there is so much greater resistance to common descent than there is to an old earth (though one shouldn’t underestimate remaining Christian resistance to an old earth). But I think scripture can be interpreted to support common descent with greater ease than an old earth. In fact, the greatest barriers have already been eliminated by the old earth argument, and indeed, common descent helps make some better sense of some of the difficulties that the old earth view introduces.

    I can’t leave this subject without noting that I believe that either set of interpretations, young or old earth, are misguided. We need only look at the nature of the “after their kinds” statement to see the problem with reading science from Genesis. There is no definition here to determine just how descent with modification would occur. There is no limit on the “kinds.” Evolution by this standard could wander anywhere. We know that in actuality, evolution is constrained in its pathways by the existing form of the creature. There is simply no statement in Genesis 1-11, and I would suggest in the entire Bible, that is defined in such a way that it could be used directly in science. Further evidence for this is provided by the large number of alternate interpretations applied to the text. I used just one general set, but any OEC could challenge me on any point and claim he has a better interpretation. But that would simply show that the original statement was not well-defined in a scientific sense.

    Theistic science is a non-starter, at least from the Biblical point of view. The Bible fails to provide such knowledge.

  • Uncommon Descent and a Bad Report

    I earlier commented (Christians and Defamation) on the behavior of the folks over at Uncommon Descent in their treatment of Eric Pianka. I still regard what was done as completely contrary to Christian principles. Nothing that developed in that story in any way justified their behavior.

    They, on the other hand, have started in on a new target: Kevin Padian, of the National Center for Science Education. Apparently it is not sufficient for them to consider him wrong; they have to be able to call him wicked. In a post titled Kevin Padian – The Archie Bunker of ID Critics, they accuse him of being a racist. Their basis for doing so is ridiculous. I cannot imagine from reading what they have written that they even believe the charge themselves. It appears that they prefer to start the rumor and hope they’ll get some people to believe it. In addition, they post A Suitable Image of Kevin Padian. To see the history of this, and the previous KKK related image they used, follow the link below to the Panda’s Thumb.

    Nick Matzke discusses the details on The Panda’s Thumb, here, and the comments get fairly humorous.

    Not content, however, with one rumor, these guys have to go and start another one, and this time they have a letter. This one’s most interesting because with the context provided one can tell without reading beyond the bounds of their own post that their charge is bogus.

    This behavior is not only morally wrong, it’s a good warning sign that we’re dealing with supporters of a theory without merit.

    (For the record, I’m providing a trackback, though based on prior experience, I doubt it will be posted.)

  • Does the Explanatory Filter Explain?

    I stopped by Uncommon Descent the other day and found scordova talking about Genetic-ID, which he thinks is an application of the so-called explanatory filter. This looked pretty unlikely to me, but I figured that surely someone more intelligent that I am had gotten to the issue first, so I looked around. Seek and ye shall find! Steve Reuland on his Sunbeams from Cucumbers had already dealt with it pretty thoroughly in a post titled How to Really Detect Design. In the process he reviews the explanatory filter. His post is worth a read.

    The only thing I have to add is that the explanatory filter, which does not explain and does remarkably little filtering, could actually be reduced a bit. The first two elements are instances of “I know how it happens,” while the final one is “I don’t know.” Thus the EF could easily be summarized by the question, “Do I know?” “Yes” means we exit the filter, no means we assume design.

  • Is Theistic Evolution a Bad Term?

    I have a serious problem with the term “theistic evolution.” I’m a theist. I accept the theory of evolution as the best explanation for how life diversified on earth. I also accept the theory of gravity. I’m not a theistic gravitationist.

    Now I do understand the difference here. Evolution has become the center of a theological debate, and many people are accused of being atheists because they believe in evolution. The term “theistic evolutionist” makes it clear that someone believes in God and also accepts the theory of evolution. Then there is the additional confusion introduced by the term “desitic evolution” or “deistic evolutionist” which would technically refer to a person who is a deist and also accepts the theory of evolution. Since deism refers to a God who does not intervene in creation, there is the suggestion that deistic evolution differs from theistic evolution. Presumably deistic evolution would refer to unguided evolution, while theistic evolution would refer to some sort of guided evolution. Guided evolution could take on quite a number of forms, including potentially intelligent design (ID) theory. But that is not what is normally meant by theistic evolution.

    My mind was brought back to this subject by a discussion on Dispatches from the Culture War. Ed Brayton got into a discussion with one poster in particular on whether theistic evolution and ID are compatible (ID and Theistic Evolution). One poster has apparently “discovered” that they are, despite the fact that practically everyone who claims either title holds that the two views are not compatible. There really isn’t any kind of controlling body that can tell us who is a theistic evolutionist and who is not, thus the confusion grows.

    I would like the term “theistic evolutionist” to refer to someone who is a theist and accepts the theory of evolution. For example, I accept essentially the neo-darwinian synthesis (to the extent that this has meaning for someone who is not a scientist), and I’m a theist. I can be properly called a theist because I believe that God intervenes in the universe, though in a very limited sense. (For details, see The Hand of God, and its two succeeding essays.) I don’t believe God intervenes in the universe because it isn’t working properly. In other words, I hold that such miracles as occur are in the nature of communication, which can involve incidental physical effects, but that they are not a correction to the functioning of natural law.

    The evolution that I accept is no different than that which an atheistic evolutionist would accept. It is my theological position that theology does not provide the tools to study origins, nor does my own discipline of Biblical studies. These disciplines are simply not equipped to provide that information. I do not and cannot contribute to the development of the theory of evolution. I can work what other people discover into my own worldview to whatever extent that is necessary. So the “theist” and the “evolutionist” are substantially separate. I’m simply a theist who accepts a particular theory. The use of the combined term suggests that my theism is in some way an element of evolutionary theory, but at least for me it is not.

    Because of the problems I listed at the beginning of this post, I still use “theistic evolutionist.” It’s much more convenient than “theist who also happens to accept the theory of evolution.” But at the same time I find the need to make it clear that my theism is never an explanation for any natural process. Natural processes are to be studied naturally, and as of now, that’s via the scientific method.

    There are many variations between an old earth creationist position, and my own variety of theistic evolution. I see old earth creationism as starting with those who see the days of creation as long periods of time and thus phases of God’s creation. Such old earth creationists need to explain the boundaries past which they believe variation and natural selection cannot take changes (baraminology, in young earth parlance). Views then move through various types of progressive creationism to guided evolution. Those who believe that the correct answer to a science question is “God did it” do indeed hold a theory compatible with intelligent design. But that is not my position, nor is it the position of most theistic evolutionists I know or have read.