Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Creation and Evolution

  • Sermon Today on Genesis 1:1-2:4a

    I want to recommend another sermon from the senior pastor at our new church, Pensacola First UMC, Dr. Wesley Wachob. I should note that they usually post audio from a different service than the one I attend, and he doesn’t follow a precise written text, so there may be some difference.

    There were two reasons I wanted to commend this sermon. I’ll go with the lesser one first. I always appreciate a sermon in which the relationship between science and religion is discussed. Dr. Wachob very clearly stated that Genesis 1:1-2:4a is not science, but theology. He also rejected the term “mythology” and I would agree with him for the precise passage, but there is material in Genesis, 2:4b through the end of chapter 4 in particular, that carries most of the literary characteristics of myth. Nonetheless he also called Genesis 1:1-2:4a liturgy which is what I believe it is. He only spent a minute or two on this.

    The second point is really more important, however, from my point of view. He preached a solid sermon with a spiritual lesson from Genesis 1:1-2 without making it a debate about historical and scientific issues. Some people have a very hard time preaching from this chapter. They spend all their time either affirming or denying it as narrative history. Dr. Wachob makes application to daily life and practical Christian living.

    There’s a link to the audio on the Pensacola First UMC site here. Look at the left hand side of the page toward the end of the pastor’s message.

  • A Remarkable Piece of Anti-Evolutionary Logic

    Via Quintessence of Dust I found this post at Reasons to Believe, with the following interesting paragraph:

    The fundamental problem with evolution as a scientific theory is that it is neither predictive nor falsifiable. Embryologist and geneticist C. H. Waddington says, “The theory of evolution is unfalsifiable… If an animal evolves one way, biologists have a perfectly good explanation; but if it evolves some other way, they have an equally good explanation… . The theory is not … a predictive theory as to what must happen.”1

    What interests me here is that the theory of evolution is criticized for not doing something it was not intended to do. We frequently see this when the theory of biological evolution is criticized for not explaining the origin of life, or for not explaining where matter came from. We don’t expect the theory of gravity to also explain why there is something and not nothing; given that there is something, the various predictions of that theory seem to work.

    In this case, the error is a bit more subtle. The quoted author is apparently saying that the theory of evolution is to be criticized for not predicting just how a particular population will evolve. It predicts general pathways, but not actual results. But that is precisely what a theory that includes random activity will predict. We have essentially random input in variation (well, not totally random, but with random elements), and it is then controlled by environmental factors which are also not totally predictable. We know generally how these will interact, but we do not, and very probably cannot know the actual result with any certainty, other than that variations that improve reproductive success are more likely (not certain) to survive.

    I’m used to this sort of thing from archeology. One can’t look at a particular culture and predict what will happen to it, unless one includes a huge number of “ifs.” Archeology can predict things about what activities will leave what results, but it can’t tell you what will be there ahead of time.

    The criticism posited of evolution, therefore, is a criticism that evolution does not do something it is not intended to do. It is sort of like criticizing my hammer because it is totally useless is sawing boards.

    Note: I am responding solely to the quote as provided by and used by the poster at Reasons. I have not checked its context and do not know if they used it properly in context.

  • Jason Rosenhouse on Evolution and Atheism

    Jason has weighed in on this topic here. He has some interesting points that merit a response, but due to a stack of other things I need to respond to I’ll have to just point you there to enjoy what he has to say.

  • UMC General Conference Endorses Clergy Letter Project

    I’m a little behind the power curve on this one, but I found out about these via an e-mail from Michael Zimmerman of the Clergy Letter Project.

    The first resolution is #80990 (tracking) which includes the line:

    * endorses The Clergy Letter Project and its reconciliatory programs between religion and science, and urges United Methodist clergy participation;

    That one goes in the Social Principles, and the legislative tracking shows it as adopted.

    Even though the letter tells me the following two were passed, I don’t see them adopted or placed on one of the consent calendars according to the tracking. Perhaps one of my more politically savvy UM readers might comment on the procedure or where I may have looked in the wrong place.

    Resolution #80050 (tracking)added the line:

    We find that science’s descriptions of cosmological, geological, and biological evolution are not in conflict with theology.

    … to ¶160 E in the Book of Discipline, amongst other changes.

    And finally, #800839 (tracking) added the following to the Book of Resolutions:

    WHEREAS, the United Methodist Church has for many years supported the separation of church and State (paragraph 164, Book of Discipline, 2004, p. 119),

    THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the General Conference of the United Methodist Church go on record as opposing the introduction of any faith-based theories such as Creationism or Intelligent Design into the science curriculum of our public schools.

    I should probably pay more attention to my own church’s politics, especially since I regard church politics as necessary. But to be honest, I’m just terrible at keeping up with these things. Nonetheless, I am pleased by this result, even if it is only the first of the three.

  • Ken Miller on Expelled

    Dr. Kenneth Miller has a review of Expelled! in the Boston Globe, and it’s a good one. It’s short and to the point. (Hat tip to Dispatches where I also commented.)

    Dr. Miller goes directly to the issue of associating the theory of evolution with atheism, a piece of propaganda work that the movie accomplishes by failing to interview key theistic evolutionists.

    Puzzled, the editors of Scientific American asked Mark Mathis, the film’s co-producer, why he and Stein didn’t interview such people, like Francis Collins (head of the Human Genome Project), Francisco Ayala, or myself. Mathis cited me by name, saying “Ken Miller would have confused the film unnecessarily.” In other words, showing a scientist who accepts both God and evolution would have confused their story line. [emphasis mine]

    To translate the bolded portion: The truth would have gotten in the way of our lies.

    I want to emphasize again that the reason I work to dissociate the theory of evolution from atheism is not that I believe atheists to be immoral, nor do I believe thoughts that atheists think are somehow inferior. The theory of evolution is science. It should be judged be scientific methods. Whether it works best with the theological systems of theists or with atheists is quite irrelevant. The only relevant thing is how well confirmed it is as a scientific theory.

  • Science vs. ID Redux: Lampreys

    One characteristic of creationist debate over the last few decades has been moving the goal posts. Every time a new fossil is discovered that fits into the evolutionary pattern for some lineage we hear the “it’s still an X” litany, followed by pointing to yet more gaps. Each new fossil, it seems, creates new gaps rather than filling them, according to creationist logic. Those are goalposts on wheels–motorized, no less.

    Well, intelligent design proponents carry on this characteristic as well. (Is it any wonder so many of us just call them creationists?) In the case of “irreducible complexity” the goal posts also continue to move. If one supposedly irreducibly complex thing is explained, ID proponents do three things. First, they claim they weren’t really certain that one thing was irreducibly complex. Second, they try to claim it really still is. Third, they point to other irreducibly complex things that have yet to be explained.

    Enter the Lamprey, cause of tap-dancing in the halls of IDism. Ian Musgrave has posted on this on The Panda’s Thumb (Behe vs Lampreys), and it’s very interesting. It seems that in nature–you know, the place where we observe what actually happens rather than what we wish would happen–there are a number of simpler clotting systems. The complexity is quite reducible.

    Those who have read Darwin’s Black Box will appreciate this line:

    To put it in Behe’s imagery, the clotting system of the Lamprey is a mousetrap without a spring.

    Hmm! Just so!

    Guess who did all the work? The evil, conspiratorial evolutionary scientists who always insist on messing things up by looking at the data. Can’t let that happen, can we? [/sarc]

  • How it Happened vs. Probabilities

    I may be hopelessly naive in the matter of probability, though it is the one area of math that I have actually studied, but I am simply not terribly impressed with probability arguments. That’s probably (!) a major reason why I’m not impressed with intelligent design (ID). I’m particularly not impressed with probabilities calculated for processes that are not yet understood. If you don’t know all the factors, how can you calculate a probability?

    On the other hand, it appears that many creationists are much more impressed with probabilities that are largely guessed, while they are not terribly impressed with extrapolation in historical studies. For them, it often doesn’t matter how much detail you get for the development of various structures in the past, it’s not enough, because it would only be testable if we could see every stage and explain everything.

    Thus when an ID writer claims something is highly improbable, even though he hasn’t a clue how it actually happened, it impresses his fellow creationists, while when a scientist extrapolates development between existing specimens, the same creationists are totally unimpressed. Yet which of these is operating on the greater level of evidence?

    If anyone is wondering why I see strong evidence for evolution, here’s the answer. I’m used to and respect historical methods. If you find a pottery type developing, and then you find several examples of stages, sequentially arranged by date, you can extrapolate a path from one style to the next. You don’t need an example of every pot. If you see writing develop from one style to the next, you don’t need every stage. You can extrapolate.

    For me, the simple fact of large numbers of sequences in the development of complex structures suggests that such things have developed naturally. Extrapolating the intermediate steps is not terribly difficult for those who study these things, and it is a quite proper procedure. Challenging the observed sequence by indicating that it is improbable strikes me as absurd. The only proper challenge would be to say, “Here! This is where the intelligent designer intervened.” But of course, ID advocates do no such thing.

    NCSE has produced a video, which I will embed below, that shows such a sequence on the development of the eye. It’s very clear, but it lacks some steps. I don’t know whether the video produced all the steps we know of, or just a sampling, but if these were the sum total of examples we have in a sequence of eye development, we would have good cause to believe that the eye evolved.

    This video comes from the truly excellent site Expelled Exposed, sponsored by NCSE. Hat tip goes to The Panda’s Thumb.

  • Distinguishing Freedom and Ability

    I have always preferred our classic statements of rights, such as the bill of rights, to such statements as Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms.” What interests me is that while our classic statements of rights indicate things that the government is not permitted to prevent you from doing, the latter two freedoms from Roosevelt’s list, and especially the third, indicate things that you get to have.

    The four freedoms Roosevelt mentioned are:

    1. Freedom of speech
    2. Freedom of worship
    3. Freedom from want
    4. Freedom from fear

    This ambiguity comes up in plenty of discussions of rights. What precisely does “freedom from want’ require, who gets to decide just how much want is permissible, and who gets to decide who has to produce all of that? I, for example, would like a much better computer. It would help me in my creative activities. Perhaps someone should give me one in order to improve my mental health.

    Of course I’m not serious about that. Nobody has any duty to give me a computer. I will have to earn the money and buy one. People often assume that we will all have a reasonable definition of “want” in place, but the fact is that we don’t agree on such things.

    That, however, is not my main point. I would like to focus on the distinction between these two types of rights. The first, freedom of speech, is provided by the government failing to take certain actions–not suppressing speech. There is, of course, the positive action of maintaining a lawful framework, but that is a requirement for the existence of any right. Freedom from want requires some positive action on someone else’s part, namely to produce the particular goods.

    While I believe I have an obligation as a Christian, individually and in community, to care for those who are less advantaged, I have a distinct problem with many of the government programs that do what I believe I must do privately, because they tend to make one person have an inherent, legal right (I think those are oxymoronic, but they are commonly used together) to that which someone else must go out and produce. I advocate certain safety net welfare programs in any case, not as a right of those who receive them, but as part of maintaining a workable society.

    But I want to apply this now to speech and to the controversy about intelligent design. There’s a regular chorus going on right now about suppression. I think that chorus is based on a confusion of their rights with someone else’s production.

    I have a right to free speech. I do not have a right to any particular medium. If I can find no publisher for my writing, then my writing will not get printed. Since I am a publisher, I have the right to refuse to print someone else’s drivel, or even their masterpiece, and I am not suppressing free speech, even if they find no other way to publish.

    Besides forcing someone else to produce what they believe is a right, people who make such claim try to take away the rights of others. Again, illustrating with myself. As a publisher, were I required to print the works of someone even though I chose not to, then my right of free speech is abridged. My right of free speech does not require a carpenter to build a stage, an electrician to wire the sound system, a newspaper to print an ad for my event, nor any person to come an listen to me.

    My belief that I have important things to say does not require a college or university to gather students to hear it. There are things that are of value under those circumstances, and other things that are not. If I were the chair of a religion department, for example, I would consider it quite appropriate to refuse a place on the faculty to a KJV-Only advocate, even if he could produce the appropriate accredited degrees.

    In High School curricula, we have the need to cover a great deal of material, and some things are in while others are out. We have groups whose job it is to decide which is which. Subject matter needs to meet a threshold of validity and usefulness in order to merit a place in such a curriculum, otherwise you are forcing students to spend time learning that which will not work to their benefit.

    Now there is a little glitch in the educational plan. What about state sponsored institutions of higher learning? Shouldn’t they have to provide a platform for anyone in the name of free speech? They are the government, after all. I would say rather than if we allow a government to operate an academic institution, that is precisely what we should expect them to run, and that will mean making choices, discriminating against bad ideas (it isn’t prejudice if you studied it ahead of time!), and allowing some in and not allowing others.

    I say to the intelligent design advocates: You don’t have a right to access to scientific journals and faculties. Your presence in such places must be earned. Your ideas should not appear in curricula by right, but rather because they have proven themselves in the appropriate arena.

    ID is trying to create a welfare state for ideas. It’s a bad idea economically, and it’s no better of an idea in the realm of ideas.

  • My Advice for Florida Creationists

    Which, for those in doubt, includes advocates of intelligent design (ID). I know they won’t take it, but here it is:

    Just tell the truth.

    John West, over at Evolution News and Views, has written a quite disingenuous post in which he wonders about the motives of advocates in the Florida House who insisted on passing a measure that differed from the one in the Florida Senate and one which would most likely be rejected. Personally I don’t think there was any certainty that the Senate would decide to reject the House bill in the end, but that’s how it worked out.

    West thinks this “smacks of classic back-room politics by politicians who are trying to play both sides of an issue.” I’m sure back-room politics is alive and well in Florida, despite sunshine laws, but the real “sunshine” problem here is with ID advocates themselves. You see, if you stick with the truth, you only have to remember one story, but if you decide on lies, then you have to agree on your lies, and you have to keep the various stories coordinated.

    What the Florida creationists want is religion taught in public schools, but they can’t write a law to do that directly, so instead they have to write some other scenario, and that’s when things get difficult. The real effect of each of these bills would be to refer the issue to the courts, and the main issue then is just what do you want to take to court with you, considering the truth absolutely won’t do.

    That was the problem in Dover. The people who pushed intelligent design really wanted religion in the classroom, and ID was just the means to an end. Once you get one set of materials in you start working on the next one. As long as you are trying to get something that you can’t admit you want, you’re going to have confusion of strategy.

    I have been astounded at the number of ID advocates who have told me here on this blog, in e-mail, or in person that I am horribly misunderstanding their position because I think ID has to do with religion. But there is simply no possibility that ID, without any religious overtones, has any audience at all. If the whole argument is about the possibility that some form of alien life is interfering with earth life, perhaps a roomful of weirdos would be interested. The fact is that “intelligent designer” is heard (correctly) as a codeword for God, and that is what gives this traction.

    Whether ID advocates are creationists or not–and I think they are–it is certainly creationists in the older sense (YEC or OEC) who are carrying the torch for this movement. What happened in the Florida legislature is that conservative Christians who believe that their particular faith position should be taught in public schools tried to get some portion of it allowed in the curriculum of Florida public schools. There was no back-room deals needed to kill the legislation; differences in the particular form of the lie that should be told in order to reap the greatest benefit spelled doom for the bills.

    I cannot prove there were no back-room deals. If there were, I wish I knew who was involved so I could vote for the people responsible. In the legislature I’d prefer crooks who are in favor of good education to crooks who want to lie for God.

    One more thing from West:

    . . . More importantly, we still live in America, and although Darwinists are doing their best to shut down and intimidate anyone who raises questions about Neo-Darwinism, we still have free speech, and they can’t prevent people from hearing about the debate in the public arena, no matter how hard they try.

    I’m wondering if West is even aware of what this bill was for. This was about High School curriculum. It wasn’t about “the public arena.” The ID movement is the noisiest bunch of “suppressed” people in history. If their voices are cut off, there sure is no evidence of the fact.

  • Faith and Imagination

    I haven’t been blogging here for the last couple of days. Even though I only do network management/maintenance work part time, every so often I end up with full days away from my computer, and thus likely to write much less. I must confess that my market value in technical work (I have my own company) is substantially higher than as a writer or lecturer. Thus I keep doing it.

    As always I was collecting ideas for blogging. I found the Rapture Ready site through Exploring Our Matrix, and my plan was to post something about my Revelation study guide on my company blog–and I still plan to do so. (How’s that for sneaking the commercial into the intro?)

    So this is my “Sunday morning, I got up early enough for work, but have time before church” blog! What caught my attention as I worked my way through the Rapture Ready site was a paragraph on evolution, and even there it was not what it said about evolution, but what it says about faith and imagination that really caught my interest:

    In my opinion, it takes less faith to believe that Almighty God created the earth in six days—He could have done it in six minutes if He chose to—than to believe that some cosmic explosion is responsible for the life and beauty all around us. The creation story is not in conflict with science; it is in conflict with any worldview in which God is absent. When I look at a newborn baby, I cannot imagine a big bang, but I can imagine a loving creator.

    “It takes less faith . . .” I’ve heard that one plenty of times. Someone explains some ridiculous conception of origins, and then says that it takes more faith than believing whatever they believe about origins. Now whether you agree with me on the theory of evolution or not, I’d like you to consider whether that is an argument you’d like to use.

    Is there some benefit somewhere in believing the thing that takes less faith? “1Now faith is the substantial nature of things we hope for, the clear conviction of things we don’t see.” — Hebrews 11:1, my translation. There are really two elements here, the first is faith and its value, and the second is “things we don’t see.” I’ll get to that in a moment.

    Regarding faith, however, I have a second question. If you believe God did it, how can there be a difference in the amount of faith it requires to believe in a particular way in which God did it? Apparently for the author of the Rapture Ready web site, it is much easier to believe in a literal creation week. But somehow he finds the Big Bang difficult to comprehend. (Since I’m not really trying to debate evolution here, I’ll ignore the fact that the Big Bang is not a part of the theory of evolution, well, at least mostly ignore it.)

    But if God could make the world in six minutes if he chose, why not six seconds? Why not a fraction of a second? Why not in no time at all? The point I’m trying to make is that if God is omnipotent, or something so close to it that we can’t tell the difference, then there is no difference in the probability that he might use any particular way. If I see a complex creation of human ingenuity, I will assume that it was assembled one part at a time in some logical order. That’s because humans are limited. But if I assume a device that can create whole machines instantly, I would no longer be able to look at an assembled machine and make such an assumption.

    There are no probabilities with God. We can’t say, based solely on theology, what God can or can’t do. That’s what omnipotence is all about. So theologically it truly shouldn’t take any different amount of faith to believe that God accomplished his will through one means or another. God can do it in whatever manner he chose.

    In addition, there is certainly no value in believing the thing that takes less faith. Bluntly for me the “low faith” option is to just accept that the world is, and not worry about its origins. I’m actually quite capable of doing that. Christians might ask if I’m not really defaulting to a “high faith” option of believing that everything came into existence by pure chance. No, I would not be. Some people seem to have problems with unanswered questions. I’m fine with saying, “Here’s the universe. I’m clueless as to why it’s here, but here it is.” It happens that my faith goes beyond that, but that’s another thing. Amongst the various ways in which God could have done it, I see no difference in the faith required to believe any particular one.

    But then we get to imagination. I think spirituality requires some imagination. I don’t really know all that much about any spiritual realm. I frequently disappoint atheist or agnostic friends with my lack of effort to prove any of the things I believe–by faith. You see, they are “not seen” and I don’t try to pretend that they really are seen. So in that gap there is some room for imagination.

    People have imagined things in the spiritual realm for millenia. Descriptions of angels and demons, of God’s home in heaven or the place of torment in hell, and all the various ways God accomplishes things–all these are products of imagination. I believe that there is a spiritual something–we often use “spiritual reality” but that sounds like an oxymoron to me–behind the things that I imagine, but I suspect (or imagine?) that what is, in a spiritual sense, is so much beyond my imagination that I would find it not only hard, but impossible to imagine. MercyMe may only be able to imagine (I love the song), but I can’t even do that.

    I think these are two arguments that should be dropped from our vocabulary. We can’t measure the faith required to believe God did things a particular way, because he is equally capable of using any way he chooses. If we could measure the faith, there is no reason to believe that the means requiring less faith would be better. Our imaginations aren’t the measure of what is true or what is possible. We can only imagine, and we do it poorly.

    I have faith because, well, I just do. I imagine because it’s a great joy to do so. Neither prove anything.