Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Science

All posts related to science, including those involving combinations of science and religion and science and politics.

  • Evolution and Continuous Upward Progress

    This is a recreated vector image in SVG. The o...
    Image via Wikipedia-Perhaps not so much with this upward progress

    Peter Kirk has written a post titled The Gospel is not incompatible with theistic evolution, in which he responds to an article by Dr. David Shackelford. Peter’s response covers most of the ground.

    I wanted to add something here, however, regarding “continuous upward progress,” which Dr. Shackelford, as quoted by Peter, says is “demanded” by most “versions of evolution.” I’m in the dark about what he means by “versions,” unless he’s referring to popular conceptions, and especially social evolution.

    For example, an evolutionary view of the early Christian church would have the church “progressing” toward greater order and organization, thus the pastoral epistles must be later than other writings because they refer to such greater organization. On the other hand, if the progress is not so steady, nor unidirectional. I’m no church historian, but I’ve often wondered if the progress toward greater structure was not faster amongst those coming from Judaism with synagogue traditions than for Gentile Christians. All this begs the question of what is “progress” and more particular what is “upward progress.”

    But the biological theory of evolution teaches no such thing. Though there is, I believe, a general trend toward greater variety, simply because there are more creatures to be varied, even that trend is not inevitable, and one can question whether a trend toward greater variety would be “upward progress” in general.

    The tendency of biological evolution is toward suitability for some ecological niche (stated loosely–I’m no biologist), and depending on how you look at it, the tendency could be distinctly downward, for example, when a population of fish living in a cave lose their eyesight. The tendency can be terminal when a population fails to adapt to environmental changes.

    For certain periods of time and using certain defintions of “upward” (people who use this term usually mean upward as leading toward us humans), you will find “upward progress” in evolution, but there is nothing about the theory, nor is there general evidence in the record, to suggest that evolution demands upward progress.

     

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  • Two Science Links – Yellowstone Caldera and Ants

    What do they have to do with one another? Actually, nothing, other than that both are about science and I thought they were interesting. I haven’t written anything on science for awhile and these stories were there!

    The first addresses concerns about the Yellowstone Caldera and whether it’s likely to erupt. The conclusion? It’s unlikely to impact you or me personally. In the course of the post there’s a video of Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana making a rather silly remark about volcano monitoring. I just find the science here fascinating.

    The second illustrates a problem with science writing online. It’s easy for someone to make remarks that turn out to be way off the mark.  Alex Wild at Myrmecos (that’s from myrmecology, the study of ants, something I learned this very day) takes on William Dembski, who thinks that evolution cannot explain the way in which ants find the shortest path between two points. But it turns out that Dembski needed to do a bit more research, or find a specialist in the right field. It turns out there’s no neurological programming involved. Sometimes the simple solution is best! (HT: Why Evolution is True).

  • Troy Britain Tours Young Earth Creationist Dinosaur Park

    He doesn’t like what he sees.

  • On Evolutionary Christians

    The Christian Post has an article on a series of teleconferences that are available via evolutionarychristianity.com. The post uses scare quotes to set off the word “evolutionary” and in some ways I find the title troubling, just as I do the term theistic evolution.

    While I believe acceptance of the theory of evolution will have an impact on some beliefs, and while I do believe religion and science do have overlapping areas of study, the theory of evolution is a scientific theory, and qualifying it with a theological position sounds odd to me. Even so, what’s the alternative.

    Evolutionary Christianity seems troubling to me in the reverse sense. Here we have a theology qualified by a scientific theory. That also seems unjustified with me. Non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) is not entirely accurate in my view, yet one needs to keep one’s categories in some order. Science tells us about the physical world and what happens in it. To the extent that creation tells of its creator, this does impact theology, yet placing a single theory as the qualifier for a view of Christianity … seems odd.

    Just some musings …

     

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  • How Certain is Science?

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    Rationally Speaking has a great article on the uncertainties in scientific research and what they mean about science. I think a good deal of the problem here is that people expect certainty, and science doesn’t provide this. Occasionally one can get near certainty, but absolute certainty is elusive. On the frontiers of medicine, especially, you’ll find lots of uncertainty.

    In the article the problem is dealt with as one of replicability, but I think that in the public’s eyes that amounts to the same thing as certainty. What cannot be replicated isn’t certain.

    I was raised in a medical family. My father was a doctor (general practitioner and proud of it), and my mother is a registered nurse. We talked medical things around the dinner table, so I got used to the terminology. One of the things I learned from my father, in particular, was uncertainty. He was fanatical, I believe, about knowing the latest research, yet he emphasized to me the uncertainties of science, especially his science.

    That balance between awareness of the uncertainties, and yet full use of the best knowledge we have, is something that escapes many of us. We either want to worship science or deride it. We choose historically to view it as a series of dominant theories overthrown, or a series of triumphs of new knowledge. In fact, those two views are not incompatible.

    I recall early in my time in the U. S. Air Force I was referred to the dietitian to straighten out certain numbers having to do with my cholesterol and triglycerides. I would note that I was quite a number of pounds lighter then than I am now, and didn’t look like I had a problem with fat. So I followed some good dietary advice and got the numbers under control.

    A few years later at my annual flight physical, I noticed the numbers from my blood test and was disturbed by one of them. (I always looked through all the test results myself. I found them interesting.) At the end of my consultation with the doctor, who had said nothing of this particular number (and I now forget which it was), I mentioned the number and that perhaps I should do something about.

    He said, “Oh, that’s no problem, we have new guidance, and the range for your age is …” The new number put me just within the permissible range. Oh! New study. My old numbers from back in training would have fallen within the range he gave me. (I’m telling this all from memory, so don’t hold me to which number of just how far it changed!)

    My personal choice at the time was to do a little more diet watching because I was close to the line, and it seemed a good thing to do. In fact, even now, more than 20 years and an unfortunate number of pounds later, my lab results still don’t scare the friendly family doctor.

    My point is that even though the science changed, the general idea of what was a good way to live and eat didn’t change all that much. I was able to work with it, and under either set of criteria, I was better off after I did some work on my diet.

    I would suggest that it’s important to realize two things simultaneously: 1) Science is not perfect, and in some cases is very imperfect; and 2) Science is still better at all of these pesky fact things than any other approach we have.

    In other words, while my doctors may have had some differences of opinion over the precise levels of certain substances in my blood, they were all much better at giving me guidance than someone from times past who might have told me that fat was a sign of good health.

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  • Another Note on Design

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    Since I hadn’t commented on the Intelligent Design controversy for some time, I want to add a couple of notes to what I said yesterday.

    I absolutely believe in design. I believe everything is designed by God. I believe God is involved in everything. In teaching on this subject I have occasionally simply started dropping my pencil on the podium. Someone will surely ask me why I’m doing it. I then ask why the pencil always falls. The 20th or 21st century answer is, of course, gravity. Duh! “No,” I like to say, “The pencil falls because God wants it to.”

    What do I mean by that? Do I not believe in gravity? Oh absolutely! Like everything else, I do so because I believe in God. God’s desire is expressed so consistently that we can write it as a law.

    I followed the suggestion in one of the comments to the Science and the Sacred post I linked yesterday, and went and read the entire essay in PDF, thus avoiding the wait for the second half. I want to quote a couple of paragraphs.

    The first is this:

    The point is, different chance hypotheses give different results. Dembski writes, “…opposing chance to design requires that we be clear what chance processes could be operating to produce the event in question.”2 Dembski is very explicit about the necessity of the design inference eliminating all chance hypotheses. But this is a fatal flaw: except in very unusual cases, it is impossible to identify all possible chance hypotheses simply because finite human beings are unable to identify every chance scenario that might be operative. [link added]

    This is what I meant in my fumbling, non-mathematician’s statement that I reject the design inference on the grounds of garbage-in garbage-out. We don’t know how the creation of life or certain biological structures occurs, and thus it is not possible to determine the probability of such events.

    Again:

    Also, suppose an intelligent agent designed a natural process that incorporated chance. Human beings do this frequently …

    Even if we accept, as I do, that God is the creator, we don’t know the process, so how precisely to we identify God’s fingerprint? I would also suggest that the claim that God cannot design a process that includes chance is just as limiting to God as any of the many other limitations we try to put on him.

    Dr. Bradley further argues that design is one of those points where theology can legitimately contribute to our knowledge of the world. It’s a great essay. I suggest reading it.

    I would note another issue I have with intelligent design, which is simply that it is detecting instances of design in a universe that is, I believe, designed. Thus, in some sense it is detecting “more” design in some portions of the universe than in others. This is the problem I have with the design argument going back to Paley. The watch is designed, yes. But the sand is also designed in some sense. (Note that I’m aware the analogy is between the watch and living organisms, not sand. That is, in fact, my problem with it.)  One could almost infer that the design argument tests for the absence of God’s designing work in other places in the universe. Almost, but not quite. This is, of course, a theological argument on my part, but then I have always thought this argument should be theological and philosophical, rather than scientific.

    Incidentally, it is my belief that God is involved at all points in the universe that makes theistic evolution a difficult thing for me. For many people it is simply a matter of saying that the Bible tells us God created but science tells us how God created–evolutionary processes. This said, we move on without examining our theological views based on the result. But the idea that the earth is old and that death occurred before before the fall seems to display a God who is quite willing to let sparrows, amongst many other things, fall. That is a challenging gulf to bridge. I cannot agree with many of my friends who say that evolution doesn’t really make much theological difference.

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  • On the Design Inference

    I’m definitely going to follow this new series on Science & the Sacred. The first post is Why Dembski’s Design Inference Doesn’t Work. Part 1.

    I’ve rejected the design inference on the grounds of garbage-in garbage-out. You can’t determine how likely a chain of events is when you don’t know what events constitute the chain. The probability of unknown events is, well, unknown, or so it seems to me.

    James Bradley is Professor of Mathematics emeritus at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, and is addressing the heart of the matter.

  • Common Ground on Genesis

    On the Spectrum blog there’s quite a lot of discussion of the age of the earth and a search for common ground. The problem with the phrase “common ground” is that it can mean many different things. Two recent articles on the age of the earth had quotes that caught my attention. As far as I can tell (my specialty is Biblical languages, not any of the various sciences involved), the discussion of the various dating methods is quite good.

    This material comes from members of the Seventh-day Adventist church, my former denomination, and one that is pretty firm on the young age of the universe and a literal seven day creation week. Watching this discussion unfold amongst SDAs is something I find fascinating.

    The first article, Genesis Literalism and the Temple of Doom – I, after summarizing some of the methods, concludes:

    Even if the message is not one we want to hear, recognizing the validity of these tools of science should be the basis for common ground.

    Sounds good thus far. Then we continue with the second article, creatively titled Genesis Literalism and the Temple of Doom – II, and after some more dating methods are summarized we have another conclusion:

    The obvious question, then, is, “how should the Church respond to this evidence?” As suggested previously, perhaps the best way to deal with this evidence, given a predisposition in favor of YEC, is simply to say nothing about age. Taking this approach would act as a hedge against further compelling scientific confirmation of a very old age. To proceed in this way would preserve the Church’s credibility, and would seem to be the only approach to common ground.

    This one doesn’t strike me right at all. Essentially keeping silent about age when you’ve just admitted that the scientific evidence is entirely against young age seems very odd, and doesn’t seem any basis for common ground at all. Common ground between what groups or positions? In essence, by its silence, the church would say “We were wrong, but we don’t want to admit it, so now we’re going quiet.” Or so it seems to me …

    I see two options for someone convinced that the earth is old, yet who espouses some form of biblically based Christianity: 1) Take a new look at the biblical evidence or role in the discussion or 2) Admit science is against you, but uphold what you believe the Bible teaches. The first approach is mine, looking both at how we understand certain passages of scripture and also looking at the role God intended scripture to play in scientific discussions. I’ve written on that before. Dr. Kurt Wise and Dr. Todd Wood are examples of folks who take the second approach.

    I don’t think silence is going to work long term. I hope I will see in future installments that I have misunderstood the intent of the writer. I will certainly continue to read the series.

  • Five Sites I Read Because I Disagree

    These are five significant sites I read because of the things on which I disagree with the writer(s). That doesn’t mean I disagree with everything, but rather that I was attracted to the site and continue to read primarily because of my disagreement.

    I read a number of news sources and some individual blogs on major sites (Huffington Post, Townhall.com, etc), but I’ve avoided those in this list.

    • Why Evolution is True
      No, I haven’t changed my mind about evolution. Jerry Coyne is strongly anti-accommodationist, and I believe that acceptance of the theory of evolution is compatible with faith. I don’t believe it’s always easy, but I do believe it’s necessary and right. In spite of disagreements on other issues, this post on past-life regressions is definitely worth a read.
    • Adrian Warnock
      I haven’t responded to Adrian as frequently as I used to, but I still read and I still disagree. Adrian is charismatic and Calvinist. I disagree on Calvinism, his view of women in ministry, and generally on the way he defines the essentials of the atonement. I find it worthwhile to be challenged by all those things.
    • Pursuing Holiness
      I agree with Laura on most matters of faith, but often disagree on politics. She has the ability to annoy me but still keep me reading. People who annoy me are a valuable resource!
    • Pseudopolymath
      This is much more a mixed case of agreements an disagreements. Mark is Eastern Orthodox, and I have a sneaking admiration for the eastern church. He’s conservative politically, on which I very often differ, and on theology and biblical studies things are a bit more mixed. But it’s the disagreements that are the most fun.
    • EvolutionBlog
      Again, my disagreement here isn’t regarding evolution as such, but rather with the combination of atheism and anti-accommodationism. I enjoy the style, and am often set to thinking along new lines by reading it.

    There are a stack of “also-rans” in my Google reader, and if I wrote this list tomorrow I would probably choose some different blogs, but these will do for now! I’m so disagreeable, there are plenty to choose from.

  • Of ID, Evolution, Christianity, and Blasphemy

    There’s quite a bit of discussion amongst the blogs that cover creation and evolution regarding the claim that ID is blasphemy. I got started on this with Jason Rosenhouse on the Evolution Blog, but he got started with an article in the University of St. Thomas Journal of Law and Public Policy by Peter M. J. Hess of the National Center for Science Education.

    There are quite a few topics in the article and in the responses, but I want to address just one issue. First, however, I want to note that while Hess calls the idea that early opposition to evolution was essentially religious the “warfare myth”:

    Since the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859,11 in which Darwin laid out a meticulously substantiated case for his theory of evolution, the debate about design has taken some fascinating turns. The reception of On the Origin of Species was not as the “warfare myth” portrayed it, with godless volutionary scientists ranged against biblical literalist theologians and bishops. Darwin‘s theory met a mixed reception, with some theologians enthusiastically endorsing it as compatible with religious belief, and some scientists vigorously opposing it on scientific grounds.12 Darwin himself gradually abandoned Christianity as he found its teleological presuppositions to be incompatible with empirical evidence supporting natural selection, although John Brooke has inferred that Darwin‘s loss of traditional faith had more to do with his emotional response to the tragic death of his daughter Annie.13 Although the theory of
    evolution was in some respects consonant with Darwin‘s agnosticism, it was not necessarily the cause of Darwin‘s beliefs.

    I don’t know the history well enough to comment on this in detail, but I think it is clear that modern opposition to evolution comes primarily from a religious foundation, as Dr. Michael Zimmerman (of the Clergy Letter project) notes in a recent blog post. It’s valuable to break down early opposition to evolution so that we can see that not all theologians were opposed at the time, but then again, not all theologians are opposed now.

    There is a particular set of religious beliefs, however, that must be in opposition to evolution, and that is a belief that the Bible in its early chapters provides a form of narrative history. In addition, even those who take some of that text figuratively may see certain aspects, such as a literal first Adam and a literal fall based on the sin of the first couple, as necessarily literally true. In turn, a number of other theological points regarding soteriology hang on those elements.

    We’ve seen the importance of these points to some in the evangelical community with the resignation of Dr. Bruce Waltke from RTS Orlando (regarding which I blogged on Friday), and of Dr. Tremper Longman from his reformed seminary (via Michael F. Bird). I must note that while I admire both these men tremendously, I do understand how folks in their theological stream can have a problem with their beliefs. Agreement is not necessary to understanding, in my view.

    Which leads me back to the issue of ID and blasphemy. Quoting again from Dr. Hess:

    What are the central theological failings of intelligent design? First, it is blasphemous. Intelligent design constrains God to work within the limits of what its adherents can understand about nature. In so doing, it reduces God from the status of creator to that of mere designer, and a not very competent one at that, … [text continues with a quotation-HN]

    I have previously called intelligent design (ID) bad theology. But I need to clarify what I mean by bad theology. Most often when used in conversation, “bad theology” simply refers to “theology with which the speaker disagrees,” and thus is just another way of saying “I disagree.” I think there is are only a very few ways in which one can apply the label “bad theology” with any objectivity. First one can apply it to a self-contradictory theology, with the caveat that some theology embraces contradiction. Second, one can apply it to theology that is not precisely what it claims to be.

    I think ID suffers from its roots as more of a political strategy than an attempt to be either pure science or pure theology. It’s part of a distinctly American attempt to get creationist ideas past the wall of separation of church and state as understood by American courts. So it has ideas that sound like theology, some that sound like philosophy, and some that at least attempt to sound like science. I don’t see ID as being good science, but that’s not my point here.

    Where I encounter ID in person is from lay people in the church who have read one or another of the books or articles on the subject. Without exception, those I have talked to believe, after reading such material, that science has proven that God exists and that God created. Most ID advocates would not claim explicitly that they have done any such thing, and many would go out of their way to deny it. To me that is a sign of bad theology–it seems to do one thing, yet it does another.

    The problem with tying this sort of thing down comes from the hybrid nature of ID. I believe in intelligent design myself, not ID the theory, but intelligent design, the classical theology. God is the designer, and the entire universe is designed. One basis on which I would reject ID the theory is simply that I don’t believe that one part of creation is more or less designed than another–God is ultimately the cause of all things, whether he moved directly or indirectly. But that is a theological view, not a scientific one. So I can call ID bad theology from my perspective, but only in the sense that I disagree.

    I do indeed believe it is God of the gaps theology, in which things not scientifically explained are claimed as proofs of the activity of some intelligent designer. Once this gets into church, as I’ve noted, the designer is automatically assumed to be God. I think it is quite proper for folks in church to assume the designer is God. Any blame I would place on those who try to present intelligent design with some other designer. I really think very few take that seriously except as a political side-step. So if your theology opposes God of the gaps, then I think you should oppose intelligent design (ID the theory).

    In one sense, ID says too much, but in another too little. God’s creative activity is, in my view, all encompassing. I believe that is in accord with the biblical view as well. God is also infinite, and thus doesn’t have to pay less attention to one thing than another. Such prioritization is the result of limitation. Because I am finite, I cannot pay full attention to all of my grandchildren at one time. God could create a mechanism that produces a mechanism that produces a mechanism, for any length of chain he desires, and still have his full attention available to every part of the process.

    But again, that is comparing my theology to the theology of ID advocates, thus calling this bad theology is simply another way of saying that I disagree.

    I think that saying that ID is blasphemous is an instance of this latter usage of “bad theology.” It seems blasphemous under my theology to discover that God is more involved one place than another or that God is more the designer of life than another.

    The ID advocate, however, would likely simply claim that he is arguing that God’s design is more detectable in one place than another. While I would not think it correct, I would hardly call it blasphemous to assert that God chose to show his fingerprints more in some cases than others. I don’t think so, but I don’t think it’s blasphemy to suggest it.

    Any problems that are brought up by less than optimum design in nature, as cited by Hess, are problems for theistic evolutionists as much as for any ID advocate, I believe. In my view, that is none at all. I would suggest it is necessary to see God giving a certain freedom in nature to explain the process of creation in any case, whether or not God interferes in the process. I find it much more elegant to think that the form of creation comes through seamlessly, that God does not play with the rules along the way, but that is just my view, not an example of good theology vs. bad.

    I think it is valid to point out theological difficulties with ID in the first sense I have mentioned. Do people really understand the implications? What does it say about God? Is it, in fact, theology at all? Those are valid points of discussion. But in all such discussions we need to acknowledge that theology is not a body of knowledge with a single standard for what is right and wrong, and what is good and bad. We need to ask “Bad in what way? Why? In reference to what theological system?”

    One last note on compatibilism. Is evolution compatible with Christian theology? Again, one has to definte that theology. Not only is such compatibility dependent on a certain understanding of texts in Genesis (or perhaps not holding a certain understanding), but it does depend on certain concepts in soteriology. I think the two can be compatible, but I do not think the issue is trivial.