Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Creation and Evolution

  • Dealing with the Theological Implications of Evolution

    There are two extremes in how Christians respond to the possible theological implications of evolutionary theory once they are convinced that the theory of evolution is valid. The first is to claim that there are no implications whatsoever. This is represented by the statement: “The Bible tells us that God created; science tells us how he did it.” The second is to grab evolutionary theory and run with it, extracting implications about God all over the place.

    The weakness of the first option, in my view, is that evolution does have implications for theology. Mass extinctions don’t go well with the idea that God created the world, put it in the care of humanity, and expected humanity to exercise responsible dominion over it. I’m not saying the two notions can’t be reconciled, but one has to stop at thing, at the very least.

    The weakness of the second option is the same as for those who draw philosophical implications from evolutionary theory. What is may not be the same as what ought to be. What we observe may not be a sufficient sample of God’s activity to allow us to extrapolate large amounts about his character.

    My inclination, nonetheless, is to the second option. Evolutionary theory has profoundly influenced elements of my theology, including my views of death, of the directness of God’s care and intervention, of the nature of the fall, and even of redemption. I don’t say they are altered to the point of being unrecognizable, though a critic or two might say so, but I don’t think the same thing about them as I did when I was a young earth creationist.

    Is cautious iconoclasm an oxymoron? Perhaps. Some people claim my self identification as a “passionate moderate” is as well. What good is language if you can’t play with it? (Don’t answer that!)

    Steve Martin posts about the problem of death as God’s tool for Christian theology. Let me note that Steve’s blog is a great source of information on theological controversies related to evolution and a great source for theistic evolutionists or evolutionary creationists.

    But I have a bit of a problem with something he quotes. He’s blogging on the book Paradigms on Pilgrimage, which I must surely get my hands on. Here I’m just responding to the single point, represented by this quote, which is Martin’s summary:

    It is not primarily evolutionary mechanisms like genetic mutations, or even natural selection, which is the problem. It is in fact, the limited amount of resources available to God’s creatures.

    (You can read more extended quotes in the post cited above.)

    I’m afraid I really don’t get this one. It’s a nice way of talking around the point, but the fact is that if there wasn’t a differential in the rates of survival, new mutations would not become fixed in the population. (Perhaps some of my more scientifically inclined readers can correct me on this.) Yes, it is the variation that allows creatures to survive changing environments, but it is the limitation of resources, and the changing environments that cause one set of characteristics to persist rather than another.

    In other words, death is a tool, whether inflicted by falling logs, lack of food, or changing environment. You can name the tool something else, but the same thing still occurs. If God was as concerned with the death of creatures as I believed he was when I was a young earth creationist (sparrows falling, though note that the scriptures just say God sees, not that he prevents), then he could not use this mechanism.

    It seems dangerous to me to try to brush past the implications, and on first glance this looks like an effort to do so, or at least an attempt to frame the issue in a more favorable light. The wording sounds nicer, but the creatures are still dying, and evolution would not occur if they didn’t. Similarly, I think, one could look at a hurricane as the cause of new life, and in fact such “disasters” have a role to play in the environment. But looking at them that way doesn’t cause them to leave less death behind.

  • Newbigin: Proper Confidence

    With it’s subtitle, “Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship” this little big sets sail into a rather intense area of debate, and one which is very relevant to recent discussions on this blog. I’m not really going to try to summarize it. It is only 105 pages and those aren’t too terribly intense if you’ve done a bit of theological reading before. I’d suggest getting a copy and reading it. I got mine as a gift from a friend. Giving me books is a great way to get on my good side!

    I’m afraid to summarize. Newbigin boils down a great deal of material into those 105 pages, so setting out to summarize is difficult. But I would say briefly that he holds that all knowledge involves risk, as a subject makes a commitment to some thing. In the same way all knowledge is subjective, as it is known by a subject. There is no point in discussing knowledge without a subject who is doing the knowing. Nonetheless we can be confident of such subjective knowledge, and in fact we regularly are.

    I’m pretty certain I’ll be dissatisfied with that summary later, and I’m sure someone who has read the book will come back and point out how I have oversimplified everything, lost all the nuances, and perhaps even misrepresented some aspect. I guess I will take the risk of choosing to believe it will do to lay the groundwork for my response.

    I agree with Newbigin in broad outlines, but find myself coming to a different point on the spectrum as a result, always providing that I am correctly reading where he comes out within the outline. A key point here is simply that all knowledge is subjective to some extent. We do not know absolutely or from a perspectiveless framework. We know from who we are and where we are.

    In some postmodern thought, this results in the claim that all ideas are so subjective that we shouldn’t make truth claims between them at all. In the creation-evolution controversy, many people who would probably forcefully reject any idea that they are postmodern nonetheless use the “all stories are equal” approach to denigrate science and thereby make their own story look better. If scientists might be wrong and creationists might be wrong, then why privilege the results of scientific research over young earth creationism? (Note that the example is mine, not Newbigin’s.)

    Newbigin doesn’t leave us there, however. He does believe that there is a reality to be perceived, and that we do our best to perceive it, and in doing so take a risk through the commitments that we make. There is a certainty, not that we are right, but that we are going toward what is right, or so I interpret page 67, separated from its specifically Christian commitment.

    But the whole cannot be separated from its Christian commitment, because that is ultimately what Newbigin is talking about–the commitment to the one who is truth, a subjective commitment because it is a choice taken with risk, but not something of which one cannot be confident at all.

    I certainly agree that all knowledge is limited and subjective. The results of scientific research are not complete, and my theological wanderings are certainly not absolute. (I do believe there are things that are absolutely true, but they are so far from our perception that we have to be satisfied with doing our best to head that direction. It’s sort of like navigating by the north star. You’ll never get there, but if you keep on, you’ll arrive somewhere in the vicinity of the north pole.

    So in the sense that all knowledge is subjective and that one makes choices, takes risks, and can (indeed will) have confidence in things one does not know absolutely, I agree with Newbigin. Where I perceive that I differ is in the relative levels. I think it is very easy to overemphasize how relative certain elements of physical knowledge are, and to underemphasize just how relative certain spiritual issues are. The idea that all stories are equal results from such a confusion.

    In practical terms most of us treat “objective” as something that can be similarly perceived by multiple people. A scientific experiment that can be repeated by anyone with the proper supplies and equipment is considered objective. Fantasies in my own mind are subjective because nobody else can perceive them. While there is a subjective element in the most objective fact, and there is an objective element in the most subjective (neurons fire when I fantasize, I would imagine!), there’s a very valuable distinction there. I don’t think Newbigin misses that point; I do think he emphasizes is somewhat less than I would.

    As an example, let me relate three experiences, two of them singular and one that has been repeated many times. In the first, a couple of days after our son died, I was in my wife’s home office with her when I clearly heard our son speaking in the next room. It was clear enough to me that I actually got up and started to head over there to talk to him before I was jolted by the reality that he was dead. My wife heard nothing, of course, and a recorder would have recorded anything. In fact, the only evidence you have or can have of this event is that I relate it. I didn’t even tell my wife what happened at the time. She simply noticed me leave the room and decide to come back, and since such inconsistent behavior is not uncommon for me, she never noticed.

    In the second, we were both in the living room and I heard water running. I got up mumbling about having left the tap running in the bathroom (though it did sound oddly different). My wife starts laughing and says, “No, that’s my new screen saver with sounds of running water.” In this case there is an objective event, but I misperceive it.

    In the final case, which happens commonly, I hear the dog barking, and I assume something has happened. This is objectively demonstrable, as in anyone who goes to where the dog is will likely perceive him barking and almost as likely notice why. He generally only barks for some reason. It may not be a good one, but there will be a cause!

    My point in all those words is that there are many levels of confidence that we have in our knowledge, and the question here would be where we place certain matters of spirituality on this continuum. I think that on a day to day basis I rank them much more subjectively than does Newbigin, but we both rank them somewhere.

    Which leads to the point on which the preceding paragraph is completely wrong–or is it? Both Newbigin and I make a very fundamental choice, the choice to believe in the incarnation. This provides at the foundation of our thinking the believe in God as creator, in other words, that the universe makes sense, and second that we have placed our final confidence in a person. In my personal thinking, and as I read Newbigin in his as well, this becomes a central axiom in our way of thinking. Subordinate facts may fall wherever on the spectrum, but this choice remains at the core, and is the one to which we give our true confidence.

    To quote from page 66-67, and do so more faithfully to its context than my previous allusion:

    If we are to use the word “certainty” here, then it is not the certainty of Descartes. It is the kind of certainty expressed in such words as those of the Scriptures: “I know whom I have believed, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me” (2 Tim. 1:12). . . . The weight of confidence rests there and not here with us. Secondly, the phrase “until that day” reminds us that this is not a claim to possess final truth but to be on the way that leads to the fullness of truth. . . .

    That’s a pretty good expression, I think.

  • Science with Pre-Ordained Conclusions

    One problem for creationists has been the lack of publications in peer-reviewed journals. In a typical attempt to bypass reality with labels, Answers in Genesis has duly produced a “peer-reviewed journal,” the Answers Research Journal.

    A major problem, of course, is that “peer-reviewed” tends to imply more than simply that there is a panel that reviews submissions. One can quite easily gather a panel of one’s family and friends and get them to “review” what one has written. Those who have tangled with the process of publication knows the difference between friendly and agreeable reviewers, and those not selected such as to favor your cause.

    In addition, peer-reviewed journals are generally associated with some center of the academic activity in question or some professional society that supports it. Thus publication in peer-reviewed journals also implies a level of acceptance in the community involved in that particular type of research. Other members of that community read the articles in such journals and might even cite them in their work.

    Of course, peer review could also result in censorship and elimination of good ideas that are out of the mainstream, but might become mainstream later. In that one point reside the hopes and dreams of intelligent design (ID) advocates everywhere. “Our day will come,” they say, “And you will all realize how right we were.” That view might have had some validity a few decades ago, but today if you have a truly good paper it will be very hard to suppress. Get it on the internet and someone or other will see it. If it’s of such good quality that it “shifts the paradigm,” then you’ll be able to show up all those stuffy peer reviewers.

    The creation of a “special” journal for a “special” group of researchers who aren’t acceptable to the broader scientific community doesn’t respond to the underlying problem. What it does is provide creationist debaters who are facing the general public with some ammunition, “smart PR bullets” if you please, targeted at those who don’t really understand the issues. “No peer-reviewed papers? I have five citations here, all from Answers Research Journal. See! It’s peer reviewed. It says so right here.”

    Once the PR point is scored, who cares what science is accomplished? I note the interesting line in the requirements for papers, mixed in with a bunch of format requirements:

    Papers should be no more than 10,000 words long. Color diagrams, figures, and photographs are encouraged. Papers can be in any relevant field of science, theology, history, or social science, but they must be from a young-earth and young-universe perspective. Rather than merely pointing out flaws in evolutionary theory, papers should aim to assist the development of the Creation and Flood model of origins. Papers should be submitted in a plain text, single-spaced Word or RTF file. Formatting should be kept to an absolute minimum. Do not embed graphics, tables, figures, or photographs in the text, but supply them in separate files, along with captions. [emphasis mine]

    Translation: Take that you scientists! You don’t want creationist papers? We don’t take any evolutionist papers, nor papers from folks who believe that the earth is old. We have our conclusions pre-ordained!

    One obvious thing that young earth creationists seem to miss is that not assuming that the earth is 6,000 years old is not the same type of bias as assuming it is. The age of the earth is not an assumption, rather it is the result of considerable research which one can review, challenge, and correct if one wants to.

    In the meantime, Answers in Genesis is also producing some “semi-technical” research. ERV reviews some of this over at the Panda’s Thumb and it doesn’t come out so well. She does a much better job and goes into greater detail than I possibly could. It is, after all, in her field.

    But I could help mentioning a couple of little problems with logic. Consider this paragraph:

    Antibiotic resistance is certainly an example of change, but it is hardly a fact of macroevolution (bacteria remain bacteria). Creation microbiologist, Dr. Kevin Anderson, states that such variation in bacteria is beneficial for their survival outcome in a clinical environment, but not a beneficial mutation. Anderson (2005) goes on to demonstrate how some “fitness” cost is often associated with mutations, although reversion mutations may eventually recover most, if not all, of this cost for some bacteria. A biological cost does occur in the loss of pre-existing cellular systems or functions. Such loss of cellular activity cannot legitimately be offered as a genetic means of demonstrating macroevolution. [all emphasis mine]

    Look at the first bolded portion: “Bacteria remain bacteria”? When are these people going to bring some sort of focus to the idea of a “kind”? The only definition I can see is that if one thing changed into another while somebody was watching they must be the same kind, otherwise not.

    Consider the second bolded portion. Here we are told that a mutation might be beneficial in a clinical environment, but it’s not a “beneficial mutation.” What would make it a beneficial mutation? I would suggest that the fact that more of the bacteria survive in a “clinical environment” than would otherwise is beneficial from the point of view of the bacteria involved. You see, they don’t live in this other theoretical environment, the non-clinical environment with which they are apparently supposed to be concerned.

    Is there some sort of ideal environment where bacteria should want to live and where they should desire to be most fit to live. “Unfortunately we have to survive here in this clinical environment,” say the bacterial philosophers, “but the mutation that allows us to do so isn’t really beneficial, because it doesn’t prepare us for our real home in a non-clinical environment.”

    So then we come to the conclusion of the paragraph where we’re told that because this other loss of functionality occurs, this can’t possibly be used as a case of macroevolution. I’d like to know what that has to do with the case at hand. In the clinical environment, you know, the one where the bacteria with antibiotic resistance have to live, it is a beneficial mutation.

    Go read ERV’s entire post at the Panda’s Thumb.

  • Perhaps it’s Time to Give Up

    . . . when you have to cite the Flintstones.

  • Getting to the Biblical Side of Evolutionary Creationism?

    Steve Martin lists ten books that have been written since 2003 (and pretty much none before that) on evolutionary creationism, starting with my favorite, Richard Colling’s Random Designer.

    The good news is that there are so many new books looking at evangelical Christianity and evolutionary theory from a positive perspective. The bad news is that it is all coming from scientists.

    This comes as slightly surprising news to me since my own journey from young earth creationism to theistic evolution started from a change in my understanding of the Biblical materials, a change that resulted from things I learned form conservative professors in Biblical studies classes. They may not have intended the result, but it happened.

    But on thinking about it further, I’m wondering if the problem if the problem is not in how much about Biblical studies actually gets taught in churches, to lay members. Many of those involved in Biblical studies have no problem with evolutionary theory, but it is simply not their major area of interest. They don’t feel like discussing it because they don’t have time.

    I do it because I’m a popularizer and am not working professionally in the same field for which I trained. But one runs the risk, or more likely the certainty, of saying very embarrassing things from time to time, because one lacks training in many of the fields. I feel very uncomfortable when I write a post that discusses the science in any sort of detailed way, because it is very hard for me to do.

    Teaching Biblical studies broadly in the pew would be a very difficult thing, especially in American protestantism because we don’t exactly do Biblical studies in the same way as we profess. There is a large amount of tradition and experience in the way we apply the Biblical text, and one doesn’t get truly consistent results. What I mean by that is that the road to doctrine is not quite as direct as many of us would like to believe. It’s difficult to get people to take Genesis 1-2 figuratively if you want them to take Leviticus 18 literally, for example, if for no other reason than that the categories “literal” and “figurative” don’t directly apply in any case. They are dangerous oversimplifications.

    Of course, not being evangelical, I have my own perspective on this, but I would say that any hermeneutic that allows Genesis 1-2 to work with evolution will also allow a certain freedom with reading the rest of scripture. I think this is a good thing, and that the same freedom is necessary, if for no other purpose than to read Leviticus 18 in a more humane manner, or to realize that while genocide may have been a common goal in the ancient near east, fortunately not very efficiently accomplished, it is not an eternal principle.

    On the more liberal side, I would commend the work of John Haught in relating theology to evolution, but for evangelicals, I agree there will be more work.

  • When Neutrality isn’t Neutral

    The news of Chris Comer’s suit against the Texas Education Administration claiming she was forced out illegally should come as no surprise to anyone. The reasoning behind the dismissal clearly silly, and the explanations did not ring true as the real reasons she was asked to resign.

    But as a moderate who likes to see not just both sides of an issue, but all the various gradients between, I want to comment on the idea of neutrality as it applies in this case. While I like moderation, there are some very definite cases where the “right” position will be at one end of the spectrum or another.

    The essence of moderation as I use the term is to identify the full width of the spectrum of possibilities, and then intelligently select the appropriate point. I see at least two types of spectra one might find in such a case. One is a spectrum that balances several valid claims, with varying priority given to these various options. The other is a spectrum that may lead from valid to invalid, with the only necessary choice being to identify the valid end.

    I see health care policy as an example of the first kind of spectrum. There are a wide variety of ideas and you can even divide them up into various spectra, considering costs, who are the providers, who are the payers, and so forth. You have valid goals (providing health care to those who need it, making sure that finances are adequate, not forcing one person to pay for the foolishness of another) that need to be balanced, and you might find many positions for which good arguments can be made, but you have to decide on one policy. I think this is a good place to exercise moderate thinking.

    For a possibly non-controversial example of the other kind of spectrum, I would suggest an aircraft wing. Now I realize that more than one shape can produce lift, but if one assumes a particular general design there are going to be very few workable shapes, and there will be one that will provide the best lift in combination with other factors in that set of circumstances. You can create a spectrum from a large rock to a carefully shaped wing, but you wouldn’t want to be “moderate” or “neutral” about your choice.

    And therein lies the problem for the “neutrality” of the Texas Education Administration in this case. The issue is not between multiple equally scientific (tested, validated, published, etc.) ideas that might be taught. The conflict is between teaching mainstream science, the consensus scientific view of those who work in the appropriate fields, as opposed to picking up a variety of offbeat ideas.

    Now some will say this is not the case. It is a conflict between two equally scientific views, and they are only asking for this one view to be given equal time.

    But on what basis should a view that claims to be scientific be given a place in the public school science classroom? Should it be true if one guy with a PhD claims it is true? In that case we’d have a rather wild assortment of things to teach. There’s a guy who teaches geocentrism who has a PhD. Should it be anyone who has written a book on the topic? That wouldn’t exclude anything.

    How about a certain level of acceptance in the scientific community, specifically by those scientists working in the field in question? Without conducting scientific surveys, that is actually how we work, and if we apply to this topic (ID/intelligent desing vs. evolutionary theory) we will reject ID in the high school classroom and teach evolutionary theory.

    The “neutrality” that Chris Comer was expected to maintain was between teaching science and not teaching science, and all things considered, I would have to commend her for making the choice to advocate teaching science. Anything else seems horribly irresponsible.

    Which leaves one to wonder about the rest of the Texas Education Administration. One must assume that those in authority want those who coordinate science education in Texas to teach something else. That should make Texas residents–and Americans in general–very concerned.

  • Creationism and the Science Curriculum

    With a number of misnamed “academic freedom” bills proposed in various places, and passed recently in Louisiana, it might be a good time to consider some issues other than religion that are related to the science curriculum.

    I have argued repeatedly that these bills are religiously motivated, and that the idea is to create as much of a loophole as one possibly can in order to let creationism sneak into the classroom. I think this would be enough reason to vehemently oppose such bills.

    But not all bad science is religiously motivated. Some of it is motivated by the simple human desire to bypass reality. Many examples of such attitudes exist in alternative medicine. It’s not impossible that a good idea might turn up in such venues, but the very attitude and process is such that bad ideas will tend to predominate.

    We sometimes decry the scientific attitude as closed minded. But I like a certain amount of “closed mindedness” in science. I return to my frequent illustration of the airplane. I only want to fly in an airplane designed by someone whose mind was closed to anything that couldn’t prove itself as part of a successful aircraft design. I simplify this to: Don’t trust any epistemology that you wouldn’t want your aircraft designer to use.

    Having said that, religious motivations illustrate the problem very effectively, not because they are religious, but because they are motivations other than aiming for the best approximation of the truth that is possible. When someone is motivated by something other than accuracy and effectiveness, whether that motivation is religion, laziness, money, or anything else that distracts, that person will produce some bad science.

    If there is bad science and good science, which should be taught in the high school classroom? We debate academic freedom and freedom of speech, but we really don’t want that type of freedom in most areas of the high school curriculum. Why? Well, we want our children to get a good, high quality education. Christian conservatives become justly annoyed when “feel good” programs get in the way of solid academics in public schools. Yet when it comes to creationism they’re willing to play with the same type of ideas, weakening the curriculum in order to provide a place for ideas that haven’t passed must in their field. Those who wish to defend science need to watch out for both.

    I read an excellent illustration of how this works following a link from Dispatches from the Culture Wars to this article by Howard J. Van Till. Now Van Till is professor emeritus of Physics and Astronomy at Calvin College. He goes over a series of young earth creationist arguments regarding the “shrinking sun.”

    It all starts with an abstract by two scientists who were basically trying to get others working on the data. Amongst the things that follow are:

    • Creationists taking the preliminary data and running with it, making unwarranted extrapolations from it
    • Creationists continuing to cite the data even after it has been called into question by further research. A minimum that a scientist would normally do in such a case would be to cite the research that has called the results into question and explain why he still accepts that data.
    • Creationists continuing to cite one another and the original study years afterward
    • Creationists predictably failing to go to the trouble of doing research for themselves
    • Creationist magazines, both popular and supposedly professional going ahead and publishing all this

    Now in all of this, these creationists are not citing religious grounds. They don’t say, “the earth must be about 6,000 years old according to the Bible so we believe this.” What they do is take a single study and use it for all it’s worth, and then considerably more. They do bad science.

    Now should such flawed work be used in the high school curriculum merely because it doesn’t cite anything religious? Even if it were not religiously motivated–which it clearly is–it should be rejected simply because it is sloppy. We’re working on improving education, we shouldn’t waste the students’ time on trash. The time available to give students a sound scientific education is short enough.

    Academic freedom is a good idea in its place. In higher education, one gets to the point where students are supposed to be working through various ideas. There, the range of ideas of controlled to some extent by the fact that professors, students, and publications must pass review processes appropriate to their roles. In high school the students, and often the teachers, are not prepared to deal with the sheer mass of misinformation that is available in any field.

    Academic freedom bills for high schools are a bad idea. They work directly against the need to provide a sound, basic curriculum to students that will prepare them for careers, further education or life.

  • The God Exception – Opening Shot

    I’m going to try to divide this one up, because the topic promises to get a bit long. Also, objectors please note that I am aware of various approaches to theodicy and am not discussing them here. My point is simply that we assume some good explanation will be available for certain things, while do not do so for one particular topic.

    One of the regular objections I hear to a Christian believing in evolution is the violent nature of the process. And indeed many creatures have died in the course of the evolution of life on this planet including more than one major extinction. It seems to be a very bloody process.

    The objection then may take one of two directions. The first is that the example of survival of the fittest (the expression most commonly used in these cases) provides a violent and bloody example, and thus that those who think they are the product of such a process will feel justified in being violent, weeding out the week as nature does, and generally doing a bunch of other unloving things.

    The second is that if we believe God is love–and we know from the Bible that he is–then we cannot imagine him using such a violent process in creation.

    There is a third angle, but it is not as closely related to my topic. The [partially] random nature of the process is said to remove our sense of purpose, and thus make us into immoral beings. I’m not addressing this last point, though it is closely related.

    The question that comes to me in these cases is this: In what way is the God potentially portrayed by evolution (the God who would do things that way) any less loving than the God portrayed in scripture? After all, in scripture we have a God who decides to destroy all of his creation except for eight human beings and selected pairs of varies animal groups (Genesis 6-9). Further on, in Numbers 31, we have the same God dissatisfied with the amount of killing carried out by the Israelites in battle, and ordering them to kill many more. In Joshua we have the depiction of the invasion of Canaan, with the command to kill everyone in the country. Finally, we have a God who is willing to throw a substantial portion of the people he created into hell. Just how many we’re not told, but lots.

    Now the issue is not whether there is any way to read these chapters in a way consistent with a loving God. There are in fact, quite a number, with quite variable degrees of plausibility. The issue, rather, is why it is that we feel that we should construct such explanations for these Bible stories, but somehow if evolution is true, it is an indelible stain on God’s reputation.

    Whether evolution has taken place or not, and I’m convinced it has, there are quite a number of violent events that need to be explained, always presuming we can explain them at all. Theodicy is alive and kicking, even if often not in such good health. I do have to say that the concept of theodicy occasionally amuses me. What can we do with God if we find we can’t justify his behavior?

    It seems to me that evolution is one of the most minor issues of theodicy. The flood (even if it didn’t happen as such) or the Canaanite genocide (even if that didn’t happen either), require much more explanation in the light of God’s character.

    What I’m calling the God exception here is this: There are a group of violent events that are part of the Christian scripture and tradition that we tend to protect from blame in influencing evil events. We do not allow the process of evolution such a free pass, or assumption that there is, somewhere, an adequate explanation. We make exceptions for some of the most difficult material, and then get hung up on the relatively easy.

    (I describe this as an opening shot because I expect to say more on the topic.)

  • Evolution as God’s Tool

    A post on the Panda’s Thumb today calls attention to this post from Uncommon Descent, which claims that theistic evolutionists must believe contradictory things:

    I would not have a problem understanding evolution as God’s “creation tool,” if TEs conceived of evolution as a “tool” in the strict sense. A tool in the strict sense is fully in the control of the tool-user, and the results it achieves (when properly used by a competent user) are not due to chance but to intelligence and skill. . . .

    I immediately thought of the six sided “tool” that might be encountered in a casino or in a role playing game or other simulation. Of course, there are many other “tools” used to generate random or pseudo-random results. But those tools, used properly, produce random results, or nearly so. One may, of course, have the goal of cheating, in which case one tries to prevent the tool from functioning correctly.

    There are a number of failures of logic in the referenced article from UcD, but I want to focus on just this one. There seems to be a tendency both on the part of advocates and opponents of Christianity to assume that all elements of the faith must remain static. If one doesn’t adjust to a new scientific discovery, one is stubbornly clinging to outdated ideas, and if one does adjust, one is obviously abandoning the faith.

    But I believe that God created the universe and I believe that as an obvious corollary of that belief whenever we discover new things about God’s creation, we may discover new things about God. There is no direct information. Science is ill-equipped to study God. Yet the process of science is admirably suited to discovering information about the physical world. If I tie to that the belief in creation I must also acknowledge that the created thing can say something about the creator.

    Unfortunately, many Christians have tried to do precisely the opposite. Because they assume that certain things are true about God, they believe that there are certain things that must be true about the created universe. When one [seems to] discover something that contradicts this point, one challenges the data based on the assumption of what must be. In effect, this argument tells us that what must be, is.

    The universe does not seem to bow to this logic. It does not conform to what I expected it to be when I was a child. I thought that God had created the universe specifically for human beings, that the earth was the center of the spiritual universe. (I studied astronomy almost as soon as I could read, and realized that we were not physically the center of the universe.) I thought that each kind of plant and animal had been lovingly designed by God’s hand to have a precise set of features.

    When I became a man–and after much struggle–I put away such childish things and realized that the universe is what it is, irrespective of what makes me feel better. And therein lies my major beef with the term “theistic evolution,” because that phrase suggests that theistic evolution is a different theory regarding the diversification of life than just plain evolution. For some, it implies that one must somehow shape one’s understanding of evolution in view of one’s belief in God. Theism becomes the means of making evolution more palatable.

    But evolution is what it is. The theory of evolution is the best explanation we have at this point for a large and varied array of physical observations–the sort of stuff that science does well. The important issue is whether the theory of evolution is valid or invalid, not whether it is troubling or comforting, demeaning to human beings or affirming, or whether it is too bloody to be the tool of a loving God.

    So could evolution be the tool of the God posited by orthodox Christianity? Well, that depends on just what one calls orthodoxy. Personally, I accept it, and I repeat the apostle’s creed without my fingers crossed, one definition of orthodoxy that I sometimes use facetiously, though I do have a point. Often we are dealing with embellishments to the creeds when we find objections to scientific data, not the creeds themselves.

    There are some problems, however, and some adjustments to be made. If you want to make human beings, as such, the intended result of evolution, then you’re going to have to play with the randomness somewhere. If you even believe that God intended to create sentience, and did not have even the contingency that it might not happen, I believe you are talking about a process that is not entirely random.

    Now there’s a perfectly good theological fall back point here, even though it is one I choose not to use. One can suppose that at the most basic level–some theists use the subatomic level–God intervenes, but in a way that cannot be detected. I think it is fairly likely that one could conceal quite a lot in the masses of random movements of particles. If that gene over there is mutated rather than this one here, and the two were of equal probability, who is to detect that God interfered?

    For me, however, this seems a little odd. Why is it that God wants to make things happen a certain way, but pretends that they are happening a different way? Why make things appear to have a strong random component, while actually accomplishing a predetermined result? I don’t see any contradiction in this, simply because we are talking here about a personal God who chooses, and while I may find the choice weird, it doesn’t contradict anything except my sense of aesthetics.

    But I suggest a different option–a God who actually does take chances, one who does, in fact, play dice with the universe. I suggest that evolution is much more like the random tool I describe at the beginning than like a fabrication device. To truly create free creatures, I think God had to allow all options.

    As I have noted before, I do remain open to interventions, provided those interventions are designed to communicate with free creatures in a non-coercive manner, in other words, they do not change the way the universe functions. I’m actually much more comfortable with a resurrection, which happens once, is clearly contrary to the laws of nature, but doesn’t alter the way the physical universe works in general, than I am with the idea that God provides an appearance of randomness, but guides it to a predetermined goal. The resurrection seems more blatant, but actually has substantially less effect.

    This may not be very comforting. It means that human beings might not have existed. Perhaps there was a moment when if a landslide had gone a different way, some essential line of development would have been cut off and humans would never have appeared. Just for fun, think of giant, intelligent cockroaches digging up the fossilized remains of our potential, but doomed, ancestors.

    I think it would be quite easy to imagine an earth than went through it’s entire life cycle as a planet without producing intelligent life. For the entire universe, it would be vanishingly unlikely that no such life would develop anywhere, but I suspect that is a contingent possibility.

    Does it make you feel insecure? It did me when I first read about the possibilities and thought about them. But if there is one thing that the study of the universe should teach us, that is that physical life is risky and ephemeral, on the universal scale of things, and even when we look at it very locally. It seems to me that the nature of the universe suggests that God likes freedom much more than he likes security.

    (I’m working on another post dealing with the bloodiness of evolution and the implications of that, which I will hopefully post yet this week.)

  • Louisiana Coalition for Science

    I’m a bit behind on this, but a group of citizens in Louisiana have formed the Louisiana Coalition for Science, which is responding to similar legislative efforts to the one that died at the end of the legislative session here in Florida this year. Both personally and as a board member of Florida Citizens for Science, I would like to express my support for their efforts.

    I will also be adding their site to my blogroll and continuing to watch.