PamBG quotes a letter that using some wonderful phraseology with regard to the process of creation, but also related to theodicy. I can’t access the letter itself due to a subscription requirement, but the part Pam quotes is quite good.
I like these two sentences particularly well:
Suppose instead that he made the world make itself.
. . .
Be the incarnation suggests that, in Jesus, God knew by experience, not just observation, what it was to be rejected, and hunted down; . . .
Yes!
Continuing to work through this book, chapter 6, “Magnificent Molecular Micro-Machines” presents a great deal of the complexity of the cell, and its form and structure. I’m going to start this time with a quote:
At first glance, it would seem impossible to generate such increidble diversity from such a small pool of amino acid building blocks. However, in living organisms where random design has been effectively operating for billions of years, the task is actually quite simple. ( p. 54)
One of the serious problems, I think, for Christian readers of books like Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box, is that they may have learned just how complex cells are in the book for the first time. That leaves those who are uninformed with the impression that scientists are kind of ignoring all this complexity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Scientists are constantly working on learning just how all of this works. This chapter in Colling’s book will put the incredible complexity into some perspective, and show how it is quite workable within evolutionary theory. In fact, Dr. Colling calls this “incredibly productive.”
Chapter 7 continues with a basic description of RNA and DNA, and their functions. This is fairly routine stuff, though critical, of course, and again Dr. Colling lays it out in a way that the lay reader can easily understand.
I’m going to conclude this entry by looking at chapter 8, “Trial and Error-or is it Trial and Success.” The production of many options and a selection of only a few was introduced earlier concerning the production of various complex molecules. Generation of random options with selection of working results looks very interesting when we’re talking about molecules, but when it comes to living creatures. We’re OK with molecules falling apart. Few of us are even concerned about the death of bacteria, but what about puppies? Or people?
Dr. Colling makes the strong case that the principle of Random Design applies everywhere, even to human beings. Human beings may be more than physical beings–he believes we are–but we are also biological entities and the laws of biology act upon us fully. Whatever spiritual nature we possess, it doesn’t exempt us from the same rules that apply to all other life.
This is probably the hardest thing for a Christian to present regarding evolution. Dr. Colling presents it very positively, as his optimistic chapter title indicates. But if Christian readers are going to stumble, they’re probably going to do it right her in this one chapter. But the bottom line is that the evidence is too overwhelmingly strong that random design does apply to all living creatures, including human beings, and if one believes in God the creator, it must be God’s product.
I’m continuing to blog through this interesting book by Dr. Richard Colling, and I’m enjoying it a great deal. I want to note that this isn’t a review; rather, it’s simply journaling the experience of reading the book. I’m doing this because this book appears to me to be a powerful experience in itself. It’s not about being a microbiologist, accepting evolution, and incidentally being a believer. It is clear throughout that Dr. Colling takes his faith seriously.
In fact, I get a bit of a feeling of retelling Genesis. That may sound odd to many readers, so let me digress. There are many positions on how to interpret Genesis, from taking it as narrative history, which results in the young earth creationist position, to a symbolic interpretation, such as taking each day as a long period of time, but trying to fit the days into the scientific facts. My own position is that Genesis expresses God’s message of involvement in the creation in the context of that era’s cosmology. God is not trying to convey cosmology; the writer provides the cosmology from what he knows. God’s message would come through clearly to those who accept that cosmology.
Modern Christians interpreters can be compared, I believe, to someone who receives a letter and gets all his information out of the envelope and the paper, missing the actual message. Now please be aware that this is my position. I do not know what Dr. Colling’s position is on Genesis. Perhaps he expands on that in later chapters, but I’m blogging as I read. In today’s reading I got the distinct sense of a writer perceiving God’s presence everywhere, and conveying that in modern terms. You can take that for what it’s worth, but that’s my impression thus far.
At the end of my previous blog on this topic, I mentioned that chapter 3 (I accidentally said chapter 2) discusses the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and describes this not as a problem for evolution, and it is sometimes presented by creationists, but rather as the driver (that’s the title of the chapter).
I vaguely recall when I first encountered this issue, and someone explained how evolution could not possibly work, because everything tends towards maximum disorder, and evolution has it going the other way. My own thought was, “and yet here we are,” since living creatures, when they’re growing, certainly do appear to go the other way. Later I read some explanations that clarified things for me quite a bit.
In chapter 3, Dr. Colling discusses the second law in layman’s terms. The explanation is the simplest and most straightforward that I’ve ever read, and yet I don’t see any omissions of things that should be expected at this level. I’m sure this isn’t ready for a physics text, but it works for this Bible teacher! He continues (p. 27) with constructive synthesis reactions and their required input–energy, and finally describes these reactions as creative.
That really doesn’t do justice to the chapter, but I don’t think I am capable of boiling it down and still getting in the essentials. The next chapter is titled “Upon this foundation” and subtitled “The Universe is Born.” Together those pretty much tell the tale. This chapter goes from the big bang approximately through the formation of the earth, looking at how the various elements are formed and why.
I’m going to conclude by discussing chapter 5, in which we find a discussion of the ins and outs of the formation of life (abiogenesis, though Dr. Colling doesn’t use the term). This is the first time I’ve found a good introduction for the layman to this complex topic. Normally folks distinguish abiogenesis from biological evolution, and well the should. Biological evolution, starting with the presence of at least a living cell is much better understood, and one can assume the miraculous appearance of the first life, and yet accept the theory of evolution.
Dr. Colling details the major elements that have been studied, those cases in which we have possible pathways, and being very clear that this is not a field in which anyone has solid answers, or is likely to have any soon. Yet there is a good deal of material available that suggests that natural processes may be found given time. I like the enumeration of the pieces we need, those we have, and those we need, along with the caution that just because we have a possible pathway to the formation of certain molecules doesn’t mean that’s the only one, or the one that actually occurred.
This is a chapter that those who have problems delineating the boundaries of science. Many criticisms of evolutionary theory simply involve pointing out stuff we don’t know yet. But “stuff we don’t know” is the sort of stuff that excites real scientists, and sets them off on the path of discovery. I would say that a good way to distinguish a scientific attitude is by one’s reaction to the unknown. The person who views the absence of knowledge as a stop sign does not have the attitude of a scientist.
On that note, let me use a brief quote. After describing some of the complexity of biomolecules, Dr. Colling says (p. 39):
But obstacles like these do not discourage scientists. They have a profound belief, based upon experience, that the physical world will ultimately make sense. Therefore, just as a skilled detective pieces together the various elements of a crime scene to recreate past events, modern scientists are using he growing wealth of scientific information to knit together a relatively coherent picture of how life on earth developed.
Now that’s a scientific attitude. In addition, creationist criticisms of evolutionary theory are often based on the expectation that an answer will answer everything at once. Perhaps this expectation is based on the overwhelming breadth of “In the beginning God …” But in studying complex topics scientists often have to spend years studying minute portions of the puzzle, knowing that a broader answer will only result after their work has been combined with that of others.
For example, back in chapter 4, Dr. Colling cites the work of Stanley Miller. I have heard this experiment criticized over and over because, as some folks say, he did all that work and he still couldn’t create life. This assumes, of course, that he was trying to create life. Perhaps we’re also inclined to this kind of expectation by the movies. The hacker sits down at a computer keyboard, and in 30 seconds has hacked his way into a major government installation. The scientist clones a human in his basement, solving the question of cloning in one big package. But in fact each of these processes involves many complex steps. Miller provided one pathway. As I understand Dr. Colling’s summary, it’s not likely to be the right one, but he still provided the knowledge that there were conditions under which such complex molecules could form.
I’ve read a couple more chapters, but my normal tendency to be long winded is getting ahead of me, and I should probably not make this any longer. I’ll be continuing with chapter 6, “Magnificent Molecular Micro-Machines.”
Yesterday I wrote about the significance of the theory of evolution for the view of evil, particularly whether physical death is the result of human evil. Understanding Christian views on this topic requires some knowledge of the doctrines of creation and the fall, and secondarily of redemption.
One of the most contentious issues in the creation-evolution controversy amongst Christians involves specifically the creation of human beings. When surveys ask whether humans were specially created by God recently (6-10 thousand years), they may get skewed results because of this. There are a number of Christians who believe the universe and the earth are old, and that life on earth is old and may well have developed via evolutionary processes, but believe that human beings are specially created. Thus, they would affirm that all life is related except for human beings.
This may seem very odd from a scientific point of view, but I’m dealing here with theological objections to evolution. While I’m primarily presenting this material as background for understanding the previous objection, there is also the simple objection that because of their special place in God’s plan, human beings must be a special creation. This objection is often misunderstood, and is also often misstated. The major theological problem is not whether the first human was directly formed from dust rather than developed from a prior form, but more that the development must be special and a direct intervention of God. (Note that this is not my view, but rather I’m trying to represent a range of views that require a separate, special creation.)
There are three elements here. First is the creation of human beings, however accomplished. What was the moral state of these creatures, and how did they attain “the image of God?” Second is the fall. Assuming that humanity original carried God’s image and was on good terms with God (as presented in Genesis), what happened and when? Finally, these two elements will combine to impact one’s view of redemption. The result of redemption depends on what the original state actually was.
I’m not going to try to name these views. I’m going to describe them and present them in three columns. These views range from a fairly literal one (but not necessarily young earth), to a completely evolutionary view.
| Element | View 1 | View 2 | View 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Creation | Human beings are specially created, either separately or individually, or on a plan similar to existing apes. They are formed precisely according to a detailed, divine plan. | Human beings evolve physical, but receive or become a soul through action of God at a specific point. At that point they are morally innocent and what God would want them to be, even though their bodies are the result of evolutionary processes. | Any self-aware, intelligent creature should be regarded as “in the image of God.” The means of forming such a creature are irrelevant. Such a creature would be innocent, but also morally limited based on heredity and environment. |
| Fall | The fall resulted from a specific violation of a specific, known command of God. Eating the fruit may be symbolic, but it is symbolic of a particular event that occurred chronologically after the creation of human beings, i.e. it is not a part of their state as physical creatures. | As a general rule, similar to the first view, though the specific nature of the rebellion may not be specified so precisely. | The fall expresses something inherent in the state of a finite creature. There may be a moment of stepping away from innocence, but this is more a matter of recognizing and consciously making moral choices than specifically violating a specific command or even rebelling generally against divine authority. |
| Results | Physical death resulted from the fall. Young earthers will generally hold that all physical death results from this act. Old earthers may believe simply that human beings suffer death because of the rebellion. | Physical death is simply part of the state of being a physical creature. Creatures die; humans are creatures. There is inherent in our condition a separation from our spiritual home with God. | |
| Redemption | Involves return to the originally created state via God’s creative power. (The first two views will overlap here. | Involves a return to the original state, only better, with a spiritual body. | Redemption allows the spiritual side of humanity to connect with the creator in eternal life, which is a gift given by God. What is meant by “eternal life” varies in how it will be interpreted and what that state of being will be. |
I believe that almost any actual theologian will vary from any single column. My hope is that you will think of a continuum starting with the first view and ending with the third for each element and realize that some mixing and matching will occur. These are just summaries of some of the possibilities. I’m trying to keep this short and thus have not provided all the Biblical support for each position.
If I generate enough interest in my own mind or on the blog, I may write some more on the Biblical and theological implications of each of these points.
The debate about labels is one of the most interesting aspects of the creation-evolution controversy to me, and at the same time one of the most frustrating. Since my primary training is in Biblical languages, and by my own efforts in linguistics, the way words are used simply fascinates me.
There is plenty of influence of the PR efforts, particularly those made on the intelligent design side, but also by those of folks in mainstream science. I’m not writing to complain about this. I think it is a natural thing for those who think they are advocating a true or valid position to try to label themselves and the issues in the most favorable fashion. Often this will seem to them as the most accurate labeling as well. After all, they are presenting a “true” position!
My attention was brought back to this topic a couple of days ago when I read this entry on the Panda’s Thumb which shows that [tag]Bill Dembski[/tag] rejects common descent. I then looked around for some evidence, because I thought I remembered that [tag]Michael Behe[/tag] accepts common descent. And sure enough I found it on Telic Thoughts in an article complaining about the use of terminology:
In reality, it is more accurate to label Behe a theistic evolutionist, as this label would accurately communicate that a) Behe is an evolutionist and b) believes God was involved in the process of evolution. And in fact, this is how most people interpret theistic evolution, as some sort of God-guided process. How most people interpret a label is the most important point.
A few days ago I added Steve Martin’s blog An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution to my blogroll and subscribed to it’s RSS feed. I have mentioned frequently that there are a number of evangelical Christians who accept evolution, and I’m glad to see more of them involved in the debate.
Today Steve posted a letter from Dr. Richard Colling, which was sent to the Olivet Nazarene University’s newspaper who, not surprisingly, did not publish it. The letter is good reading for those who believe Christian advocates of evolution are not also committed Christians.
Steve’s concluding comment is particularly on point:
This is the kind of testimony that exposes the evolution=atheism lie and the “evolution=compromise slander. It is the credibility of Colling and other deeply committed Christians who uphold the integrity of scripture and the integrity of science, which will ultimately stop Evangelicalisms self-damaging war on evolution. This personal credibility is a much more important factor than any argument from the scientific evidence. It was for me. So Richard, from all of us that have traveled this journey, thanks.
I will continue to watch the feeds and other sources for information on Dr. [tag]Richard Colling[/tag].
A couple of questions have arisen about my position on these issues, and though I’ve stated all these things before, they have generally been in longer presentations. So I’m going to try to state my position.
I see three easily demarcated positions on design:
The second option might be divided between those who think God’s interference can be detected, and those who don’t, but I don’t think that is of great consequence for my purposes here.
When I say that I believe the universe is designed, I mean in the sense of #1. God ordained the universe to exist, including the natural processes of variation by whatever means and natural selection, and that is an adequate explanation. I do not mean that variation and natural selection explain everything, but other elements to the explanation will also be natural. My statement that the universe is designed is in no sense a scientific statement. I’m not a biologist. I am not professionally involved in any of the natural sciences. I’m a Bible teacher. That statement is theological and faith based.
I do not exclude the possibility of option #2, but I have no expectation that God’s action will ever be detected, and I see no difference between completely indetectible (even in principle) interference and no interference at all. Certainly one can never actually know in an objective sense.
I think there is a strong desire to find this interference, either through front-loading or through ongoing interference because there is a desire in Christian theology to believe that the existence not just of life, but of intelligence, and specifically human intelligence was foreordained. I do not believe that must be the case. Should intelligence appear on another plant in an arthropod form, I would regard that creature to equally bear the image of God.
I believe the universe is bigger, less predictable, and more risky than we in the theological world have ever believed. On this topic I would commend to your attention the book God after Darwin by John Haught.
I have suggested many times before that before one believes what IDC (intelligent design creationism) advocates say about their goals, one should look at the way they handle the matter where they are in control. I’m sure that I will be accused of unfairly lumping ID and creationism together, but if they don’t want that to happen they should make efforts not to look so similar.
While names have changed, and a slogan like “teach the controversy” has become popular only more recently, I can recall the same theme from my own childhood to the present. Evolutionists need to allow the teaching of creationism along side evolution. It’s only fair. At the same time, evolution was never given a fair presentation on the church side. I never heard in Sabbath School (I was raised Seventh-day Adventist) that there were such people as theistic evolutionists, nor did I learn anything about how they would view God as creator. It was always a war between light (creationism) and darkness (evolutionism), the first God’s own truth, and the second the devil’s deception designed to lead one to hell.
Today I found this column from the forthcoming Newsweek, that tells about Richard Colling, who has written a book Random Designer. Now I haven’t read his book, though I will certainly set out to get a copy now. By the description it sounds very much like he and I would be on the same page philosophically and theologically. He’s a professor of biology at Olivet Nazarene University, where his book is now effectively banned. He doesn’t get to teach a basic biology course he has taught for years, and his book can’t be assigned reading.
This action shows some of the destructive potential of ignorance, but it also removes any fig-leaf of respectability from the “teach the controversy” argument. The advocates of creationism generally do not want the controversy taught. They want to win. If they were to win a court case allowing their materials into the public school classrooms, their next move would be to prevent critical examination of those ideas, and then to prevent the teaching of evolutionary theory itself. I simply don’t believe the public propaganda. I never have, but the evidence that it is pure propaganda just keeps building up.
And here I would note that while I oppose inclusion of intelligent design or any other variety of creationism in high school science classes until such time as it becomes mainstream science (don’t hold your breath), I’m perfectly happy to have any theory discussed in higher education. It should be critically discussed, which, in the case of IDC, would mean that it should be thoroughly shredded.
But at Olivet, apparently, they don’t even want students to have to read about the views of a theistic evolutionist. I believe that the Olivet example is what theistic evolutionists such as myself can expect from the ID movement. They want to shut us out. They certainly don’t want to “teach the controversy” about ID, a controversy that is very much alive amongst Christians.
You see, “teaching the controversy” is good when you want to wedge your way into the public schools, or force your way into universities. It’s not so good when someone wants to fairly examine the controversy inside a Christian school. They want a “heads we win, tails you lose” situation.
Hat tips go to Metacatholic and Higgaion, both of whom have excellent comments on this story themselves.
One of the interesting things I note about creationists of various stripes is that they display a tremendous flexibility in interpreting physical data, they generally take hold of one approach to Biblical interpretation and nothing can move them. One of the clearest explicit statements of this position comes in the first three chapters of Kurt Wise’s book Faith, Form, and Time, and especially the second chapter “The Biblical Standard.” The entire section is titled “God’s Word on the Matter.” Wise is to be congratulated for stating his foundation honestly.
One of the critical issues for Wise is the meaning of “kind,” to which he dedicates a chapter (“After Their Kind”). This is an area where old earth creationists and young earth creationists share a common problem. I’m not planning to delve into the whole area of baraminology, which I think will ultimately be fruitless, but simply to use it as a starting example of theological inflexibility combined with a view of the data that is so flexible it could almost be described as “formless and void.” I blogged about this some time ago, and simply noted that if one took “after their kind” phenomenologically, something that many very conservative Biblical interpreters will advocate for certain obviously non-scientific Biblical statements, one has no problem.
“After their kind” simply states what we observe to be the truth on a day to day basis. Interpreting this phrase to mean that there is somewhere a barrier that genetic variation cannot cross is a variety of theological inflexibility. Inflexibly holding to a particular view of “after their kind” creationists are then forced to be hopelessly flexible with the physical data in order to create boundaries that do not appear to exist.
I was reminded again about this when reading the Summary of Reasons To Believe’s Testable Creation Model and a response to it, and even a negative response from the young earth side. It’s especially interesting to see the young earth and old earth people tear one anther apart over Biblical interpretation. Old earth creationists are more flexible in their Biblical interpretation and more willing to hear scientific evidence, but they are still demonstrate the quality I’m discussing.
It is not just the literary genre of Genesis that is taken as obvious, though that is the starting point. A certain set of Christian doctrines is also beyond discussion, and the assumption is made that if Genesis is not taken as narrative history, those doctrines will also fail.
Let me just take an example from the Answers in Genesis document 10 Dangers of Theistic Evolution. (I have taken the document form ChristianAnswers.net, but its origin is on AiG.) It would be fun to take this document apart point by point, simply because it so blatantly misrepresents evolution in general and theistic evolution in particular. Today, however, I want to note only one point, from their point #6:
Theistic evolution does not acknowledge Adam as the first man, nor that he was created directly from “the dust of the ground” by God (Genesis 2:17). Most theistic evolutionists regard the creation account as being merely a mythical tale, albeit with some spiritual significance. However, the sinner Adam and the Savior Jesus are linked together in the Bible – Romans 5:16-18. Thus any view which mythologizes Adam undermines the biblical basis of Jesus’ work of redemption.
Even in theistic evolution, there will be a “first man” somewhere, and there is no difficulty whatsoever with calling that first man “Adam.” Of course “created directly from ‘the dust of the ground’” is precisely where the disagreement is, but while they include that special item in their objection, they don’t explain how “directly” as opposed to “indirectly” harms the doctrines of the incarnation and redemption, which is what they are trying to defend. I have no numbers on how many theistic evolutionists regard Genesis as a “mythical tale,” but as someone who is a bit cautious with literary terms, I certainly don’t call Genesis 1 “myth” even though it has some elements of myth. Rather, it is theology, and specifically liturgy. As such, it not only has some “spiritual significance,” it is designed to present spiritual truths and to pass them on from generation to generation through worship.
Creationists seem to think that if humanity took a considerable period of time to appear on the scene, then it is impossible for there to be a fall. But the fall, as described in Genesis, can very easily be understood as a fall from grace in a primitive state. Without the efforts of artists to make it look sort of like a modern nudist camp (with only two people and with trees and hair positioned strategically), all that Genesis implies is a primitive state in which the first humans managed the garden. There is an element here of the rural vs the urban that suggests that the story comes out of the period of early urbanization. One notes that after making himself into the ultimate bad guy, Cain heads off and builds a city (Genesis 4:17). None of this requires that the fall of humanity not be a historical event, though personally I think that this passage should be read with even more flexibility.
Note that in the same document even progressive creationism (see their point #1) is regarded as dangerous. Thus the extremely strong evidence of an old earth must be disregarded totally in order to maintain a set of beliefs, including a literal garden of Eden, a historical moment of the fall, a “direct” creation of the man, and so forth. All of this is required in order to maintain the belief that Genesis 1 is narrative history.
And yet with a little bit of flexibility, one could maintain the garden of Eden, as there must be a first human being, and there is nothing to require that God didn’t communicate with that human and direct him to some location. There is also nothing to say that God did that, outside of the Bible read as narrative history, but that’s beside the point. One could then have a historical rebellion by that first couple, followed by, of course, the story of redemption. Evolution does not interfere with the picture at all, unless of course one is incredibly rigid in reading literary materials.
Essentially if the creationists would exhibit any of the flexibility they show in reinterpreting scientific information when they turn to their Bibles, they would find it easy to construct a doctrinal picture that would be in accord with orthodox Christianity. Unfortunately, for them, facts produced by researchers in the field and the lab are to be treated with less respect than their literal, detailed, interpretations of Biblical texts.
It’s not the Bible that’s the problem here so much as people who refuse to let the Bible speak in its own way in its own time. In ancient times it spoke to a pre-scientific culture. It could speak today in a scientific culture, but for it to do so, one must be ready to restate its principles in the context of new knowledge and new discoveries. Otherwise it simply becomes a barrier to knowledge.
Ed Brayton calls attention to the “exchange of views” between P. Z. Myers and Wesley Elsberry. As any reader of this blog will know, I’m siding with Wesley Elsberry.
But this whole debate continues to annoy me. Why is it that people have to care what someone believes about something that is not going to impact their science. Even Myers agrees, for example, that Kenneth Miller (with Levine) have written some excellent science texts. So who cares precisely what they believe when the issue is science?
Yes, when dealing with political issues, that is going to come up. Even my name, as poorly known as it is, gets brought up in church. “Henry’s a Bible teacher and he accepts evolution.” Depending on the position of the person saying it, imagine a tone either of passing a dirty secret or of triumph, as in “It’s OK then.”
The fact that I accept evolution is not in any sense a scientific reason for someone to accept the theory. But such is life in this fine world of ours. Some people accept or reject things because people that they respect accept them. In fact, much of the following of creationism exists, not because people have actually studied the issue, but because they are following the opinions of people who have the “right” theological views.
That’s not good. They should change it. But it’s a fact of life.
In the meantime, for those challenged by nuances and gradations in ideas, try this. ID advocates think God tinkers along the way in an identifiable way. Theistic evolutions expect to find the same physical things as atheistic evolutionists, but they also believe in God. There won’t be any difference in a science text written by a theistic and an atheistic evolutionist–unless they get off the subject. Kenneth Miller’s scientific writings are exhibit A.
Now in politics and theology, all bets are off. 🙂
