Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Young Earth Creationism

  • Evolution, Historical Methods, and Assumptions

    Andrew Lamb has commented on a post I wrote back in July. I have responded to most of the comment there, but he references an article of his own, Immeasurable Age, and it employs an approach that, while I do not think it has merit, is so common in both public discourse and apologetics, that I want to respond.

    In the comment he states:

    Contrary to your assertion Henry, age is dependent upon assumptions, i.e. age is not something that can be measured. See the article Immeasurable age.

    It’s interesting to note here that Mr. Lamb introduced the term “measured” and then uses a mildly eccentric definition of the term. Apparently if any form of inference is involved, one is not measuring. But we use various types of inference in a number of measurements. For example, inference is involved in measuring radio frequencies. One observes the effect and from there infers the frequency.

    Now you should rightly point out that my example of inference is substantially different than the types of inference involved in determining the age of the earth. (Note again that I did not use the term “measure.”) That is why I called his use only mildly eccentric. There is no device, such as a time ruler that I can put up against the time line of earth’s history and read off the actual age. That is the nature of historical study, whether human history or historical science. (At the end of this post I will provide links to a couple of online sources on the age of the earth. I’m not planning on discussing the actual science, but rather the general approach.)

    I would prefer better definition of terms like “assumptions” (which Mr. Lamb uses) or “presuppositions” (which is seen frequently elsewhere). In this case Mr. Lamb is using “assumption” in a manner that borrows some of the baggage of “presupposition” without actually going there. (A presupposition is something one must suppose or assume to be true to make sense of a worldview, i.e. it is unquestionable within that worldview. An assumption can be something that one takes temporarily to be true, but which one intends later to test–or not, as the case may be.)

    Thus I would immediately disagree with the definition Mr. Lamb provides in his article:

    All three methods involve making assumptions. Assumptions are things we believe, but which cannot be proven.

    That definition is closer to the definition of a presupposition. Now note that I’m not much of a fan of the term “presupposition” either, but I’m much happier with it when it is either carefully defined by an author, or used in a standard defined sense. I have found so many senses of the term, however, that I think each author would do well to state how he understands the term whenever it is used.

    A more serious problem, however, is the way that this idea is used in the article. We are told that because the age of the earth cannot be measured, but is rather based on assumptions, pretty much anything goes. Lamb gives a number of ideas of measuring age based on clearly false and ridiculous assumptions, such as checking your current rate of growth and extrapolating, thus implying without saying so that scientific assumptions (if such they are) are also perversely stupid. One could summarize this as “It’s all based on assumptions (probably bad ones), so why not ours?”

    To quote:

    When it comes to the age of the world, we can use historical methods (method 1 above), which involve assuming or trusting particular records to be accurate. This is the way we at CMI calculate the age of the earth. We trust the Bible to be a supremely reliable record of world history, and from the information in the Bible we can calculate that the world is about 6,000 years old.

    So we are to believe that the assumption that the records in the Bible are accurate, and the assumption that rates of radioactive decay have remained essentially unchanged, are to be placed on the same level. Then if one is a Christian, of course one should accept whatever the Bible says over equally speculative scientific options.

    I hope you note the way I worded that. I believe a number of my more conservative friends would be uncomfortable with the idea that the accuracy of Biblical records was simply one assumption among many, so hey, why not accept it.

    But the assumptions involved are not even close to the same level. An age based on radioactive decay may be based on an assumption of a constant rate (though more on that later), but the assumption that the earth is 6,000 years old is based not on a single assumption, but rather on a large number of them.

    1. We assume the Bible’s accuracy
    2. We assume that the Bible intends to present us with history in specific passages
    3. We assume that we read those passages correctly
    4. We assume that genealogies are, or are even intended to be, complete
    5. We even make an assumption of constant rate in reading Genesis 1, that each day is 24 hours long even when it occurs before the appearance of the sun
    6. . . . and many more

    But do we have to make such assumptions, or are these things testable? Other ancient records go well beyond the 6,000 year history based on the Bible. The great pyramid and the Sumerians, amongst others, would have live through the great flood. In later years, records from these other nations can be synchronized with part of the Biblical record. If we can synchronize the record at one point, why would we take the Bible in isolation earlier, unless it proved to be accurate in providing this specific type of historical data?

    I discuss the issue of historicity in the Genesis accounts on my Participatory Bible Study Blog in articles Historicity of Genesis 1-11, Literary Types in Genesis 1-11, and Perspective on Vocabulary and Genre in Genesis 1-11. To summarize, there are good indications that these chapters are not intended as narrative history, and if they are not narrative history, then the assumption (!) that one can glean that type of information from them would be incorrect.

    But my intent here is not to prove the 6,000 year old earth wrong. While I avoid the term “prove,” I think that the evidence against a young earth is so strong that it is perverse to reject it. But what I am concerned with here is what one does with the concept of “truth.” This isn’t capital T “Truth” with which one can pound the table, but valid data on which one can base sound decisions for one’s life.

    I depend on such information from science and technology all the time as I live my life. I’m using a computer that is based on such information. Of course, I am again not speaking of historical information.

    So let’s turn to the resurrection. I’ve discussed recently how far from proof this is, and looked at a couple of attempts to place it on firmer ground. Some of my conservative friends may be concerned that I’ve given away the store by stating that a miracle can’t be the most probable explanation of an event by nature from an historical point of view.

    But one can provide some evidence that sets up the circumstances and the results of the resurrection. This too is based on many assumptions. First, one assumes that there were witnesses, that nobody just made this all up. Second, one assumes that this material was passed on with any sense of accuracy. Both of these assumptions involve a set of other assumptions about the nature of the ancient world and how its people worked.

    But if I use the word “assumption” in the manner in which Mr. Lamb uses it, I would say, “Well, those are your assumptions, and that’s how you choose to believe.” There’s no basis for testing and discussion. Any believe is equally plausible because they are all based on assumptions. But are all assumptions equal?

    What I would suggest rather, is that each of those assumptions can be discussed and tested and we can discover what is more or less probable. Then we can build a complete picture based on the best set of parameters we can work out. Note that I begin to deviate seriously here from the definition of “assumption” that I stated earlier. That’s because I believe it is the wrong concept to use.

    “It’s all based on your assumptions” parallels “that’s just your interpretation” in terms of tearing down the possibility of intelligent discourse and discovering truth. “That’s just your interpretation” suggests that a text actually has no meaning of its own, and anyone can read into it whatever they desire with equal validity. “It’s all based on your assumptions” does the same thing to scientific data.

    As used here, some “assumptions” are more equal than others, with apologies to George Orwell. Only in this case I’ve inverted the idea, and it is true and right that some assumptions be more equal.

    In fighting what he perceives as falsehood, Mr. Lamb has taken an unwitting (I hope) shot at any sort of truth or validity.

    To simply consider one thing regarding the age of the earth, one of the most common young earth creationist objections to constant rate in a natural process is the idea that the global flood would have massively changed deposition rates, as indeed it would. But the first point here is that there is no assumption that deposition rates everywhere and at all times are the same, but rather than the physical laws that govern them remain the same.

    Scientists are well aware that a flood deposits different things at different rates depending on the specific conditions. That’s why they can look at the state of the geologic column and be quite certain that there was no global flood. It would have left certain depositions. Old earth creationists are willing to go with the evidence here and understand the flood to be more local, though certainly great enough to stand out.

    Amongst the things that one can use to check deposition are the fossils of creatures that lived at that time. For example, if a layer was deposited instantly in a massive flood, all of the creatures involved would have to have been alive at one time.

    Just as we can divide up the various assumptions that we would have to make about the Bible in order to get the young earth position, we can divide up the assumptions here as well. Then we can test these one against another. One need not make all these assumptions at once, and many of them can be tested and determined to be probable or improbable.

    Let me provide references to a couple of articles:

    Abundant Evidence, Skepticism, Apparent Age (from the American Scientific Affiliation). Provides a more detailed discussion of the relativism involved in this type of argument.

    FAQ: Age of the Earth (Talk.Origins Archive). Goes into more of the nuts and bolts.

    CB102: Mutations Adding Information (Talk.Origins Archive). A good starting point on this issue, raised in Mr. Lamb’s comment to the earlier post.

  • An Answer for Mark: Death as a Divine Tool

    Mark responded to my post Dealing with the Theological Implications of Evolution, and in turn poses a question to me, well summarized in the last sentence of his last paragraph:

    What is the particular problem that is raised that Stegosaurus had a million or so years in the sun but now is no longer?

    Which reminds me that I get in the most trouble for the things I don’t say in a post. That question needs to be put into the context of the point I was trying to address in the post. Some Christians respond to evolution by saying that it doesn’t really make any difference. Genesis tells us that God created; evolution tells us how God created.

    Depending on your audience, that will mean substantially different things. In some ways I regret growing up and essentially completing my formal education as a young earth creationist. There are so many lines of inquiry I would have pursued. I don’t mean things that would have advanced knowledge generally, but that could have advanced my knowledge.

    At the same time, I understand how young earth creationists think, and telling them that evolution doesn’t make any difference is quite futile. You see a substantial part of the young earth creationist background involves an understanding of the fall. I’m not saying that every young earth creationist feels this way, but I personally haven’t encountered one who doesn’t.

    The fall of humanity happened at a specific historical point. There was no sin in the world before that, and there was sin afterward. The physical world suffered as a result of sin, and was, in fact, dramatically altered because physical death was introduced at that point. (Never mind how an ecology would function without death.) In the particular form in which I learned it, the deteriorating ages of the patriarchs in Genesis 5 & 11 indicates the deterioration of the very fabric of the universe, or at least of life, so that people became less and less long-lived as they separated from God.

    In that context, to say that evolution makes no difference theologically is nonsense. Evolution makes all the difference in the world. If God used evolution as his tool to create the world, not only is the chronology different, but the connection between sin and physical death is broken. There might be some deterioration of the world after sin, though no evidence of this is available, but the direct connection cannot exist.

    For people who hold the young earth creationist viewpoint, at least in the form I grew up with, evolution is a devastating blow to all they hold dear. If the fall did not cause deterioration, then how can redemption cause recreation? Remember here that they believe this does involve the physical world, all of creation (Romans 8:22). Everything from God’s personal care of everyone, to redemption, and finally to the life hereafter and the new creation falls under their system if evolution is true. The theological impact is massive.

    I would add a side note on the “gap theory” or “ruin and restoration creationism” which holds that the earth is very old, the same age as that held by mainstream science and by old earth creationists, yet that sin was brought to earth before the creation that occurred in Genesis 1. In their view sin caused death, but did so before Adam was created. Adam then participated in that death at the fall. For them successive extinction events can become successive acts of destruction by God intended to wipe out or punish evil. Evolution is still devastating to their theology and they would reject it vigorously.

    One other odd view is Bill Dembski’s view that death was introduced prospectively, i.e. God knew that evil would occur and dealt with it before the fact. Adam was thus responsible, even though he sinned much later. I blogged about it a bit here, and Dembski’s article can be found here. (Note that he has revised this several times, so quotes from it in any earlier articles may be wrong. I’ve tried to note the date, but I think I forgot a few times. I always used the version that was online as of the date I posted.)

    Old earth creationists and theistic evolutionists are in essentially the same place on this. Death must be seen as a natural part of the way the universe is designed, and death becomes God’s tool. I would say that the issue is even harder for old earth creationists. Let me digress for a moment to explain why.

    I’m not much impressed with the common argument that God didn’t create evil; God created Satan, who then rebelled. In other words, I don’t feel the separation between God taking action directly, God creating someone who has the option to take an action, or God creating a process that has that same effect. If God created Satan knowing he would do evil (a requirement if one accepts foreknowledge, which in the traditional sense I do not), then God is equally responsible. If God creates a world in which the holocaust can occur, he can’t evade responsibility. In scripture, I don’t see any great effort to avoid God’s responsibility for whatever happened. That seems to be mostly a later effort.

    Let me illustrate. Supposing I have responsibility for a group of children, and I let them loose in a room full of valuable but fragile items. I don’t set any parameters, but simply tell them to play and then I run off. I don’t come back, observe, and most importantly intervene when their play gets lively and the valuable items are broken.

    If the owner of the valuables comes to me and charges me with responsible, will he except the excuse that the children did it? I suspect not. I put the children there. I didn’t instruct them properly. I didn’t monitor them, and I didn’t intervene to stop them. I think most people would regard me as responsible for the breakage.

    In the same way I regard God as responsible for the universe. I think I have warrant to believe that God regards God as responsible for the universe.

    But the fact is that in my experience most people do not agree with me with regard to God. They do find “the devil did it” to exonerate God in some sense. In that context, I think the old earth creationists have a bit of a problem. As a theistic evolutionist I believe that God so ordered the universe that there would be processes that would bring about life and allow it to diversify. I must accept that God is thereby responsible for such things as scarcity of resources; no diversification would occur if there was no selective survival.

    The old earth creationist, it seems to me, must see God as creating an incomplete process. Variation and natural selections works some, but appears to be defective. Thus God allows the process to work and then steps in and creates greater variations from time to time. So God is not merely using a tool that is part of the fabric of the universe; he is also getting involved on a day to day (or more likely age to age or period to period basis. I think if they were consistent the same people who accept a devil based theodicy should regard this as God with dirty hands.

    I must restate, however, that I think theistic evolutions and old earth creationists are in the same boat on this one, and that evolution does not make a theological difference on this one point. But that is only true between old earth creationists and theistic evolutionists. Young earth creationists or ruin and restoration creationists would see it somewhat differently.

  • 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.

  • Origin Models: An Abundance of Christian Views

    “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is an interesting philosophy in politics and war. Usually the amity between “enemies of enemies” lasts about as long as hostilities between those particular enemies. Wesley Elsberry has posted an excellent article on problems with the “two model” approach to the creation-evolution debate.

    To summarize, though you should go read his excellent post, anti-evolutionist strategy depends on the notion that if the theory of evolution falls, then creationism will be the only alternative. One response to this has always been to ask just which alternative theory would win, considering Hindu, Native American, and many, many other creation myths available. But if one simply considers the various Christian views that gather under the umbrella of intelligent design (ID), then the question would be which ID wins if evolution loses.

    The problem is that none of these approaches is actually a coherent theory, and to the extent that they approach having the elements of a theory, various of their bodily appendages are sticking out of the edges of the big tent. ID is at best an observation, or better a supposition, not a theory. That is, it explains nothing, but rather points out things that it alleges cannot be explained without proposing an alternative, that is if we take seriously the suggestion that the intelligent designer is not God.

    Partially under this big tent of ID, we find young earth creationists, old earth creationists, ruin and restoration creationists, and the occasional theistic-mostly-evolutionist. The problem is that each of these views would tend to produce very different results in the fossil record and in the behavior of living organisms.

    A few years back I reviewed the book What is Creation Science?, and noted that they tried to distinguish debates about the age of the earth, a global flood, and the idea of special creation, apparently to be understood in a vacuum. They wanted to argue them separately.

    But consider the common statement by creationists that new species appear abruptly in the fossil record, precisely as you would expect them to appear had they been specially created by God. Is the age of the earth and the question of a global flood irrelevant to this point? Hardly! This statement would generally match an old earth creation model, because in that model the age of the earth is accepted at about 4.5 billion years, and these species are supposed to have appeared over long periods of time. I’m not certain why God would want to create in that fashion, but that’s not my subject today.

    Because of the long periods of time available, creatures would have been fossilized, and if God created in the phased pattern suggested, then one would expect new species to appear and disappear abruptly. I’m ignoring the great difficulties with fossil preservation and discovery here. There will always be a first specimen of a particular species, and a last specimen of a particular species. The “abrupt” separation is a matter of classification, a binary choice that doesn’t mirror the actual history in detail, nor it is intended to. We would always assume there are many, many creatures who lived and died but weren’t fossilized or whose fossils have yet to be discovered.

    But the young earth creationist shouldn’t use this argument, because by his view all of life should have appeared abruptly in the fossil record, and then continue forward without disappearance, except for a few extinct species. How many species should become extinct in a matter of a mere 6 to 10 thousand years?

    I don’t know if there are young earth creationists who don’t believe in a global flood. Normally the two go together because they are derived from the same approach to interpreting Genesis 1-11. But if the young earth creationist believes in a global flood he shouldn’t believe in any substantial number of fossils at all. A mere period of less than 2,000 years from creation to the flood should produce very, very few fossils. They should all be the result of the global flood.

    So if our hypothetical young earther believes in a global flood, he shouldn’t be looking for any sign in the fossil record of the origin of species; that all happened in one week, so you wouldn’t have any of the intermediate states fossilized. One should then look for a different principle of sorting for fossils, as indeed various creationists have done. It is not my purpose to examine those views here except to point out that they are each different.

    Then there is the difference between old earth and young earth creationists over the entrance of sin into the world. Was human sin the cause of all physical death? I’m not going to go into detail, but again this would have an impact on the evidence that we would be likely to see.

    Thus even leaving out other religions, just Christianity can produce quite a number of alternative views. Which one is supposed to replace the theory of evolution as a model? Again, ID is deceptive by trying to pretend that these views have enough in common to belong under a single tent. It is also deceptive in suggesting that it actually proposes an alternative model. It really proposes that we have either the theory of evolution or, well, not!

    Even the fig leaf garment of one of the rather weak creation models is here removed, yet we are all supposed to believe that we are hearing a debate between two substantial theories. Actually all we are hearing is the proposal that we dump around a century and a half of scientific progress and refinement in favor of saying “I don’t know.”

    I’m rather interested in this specific point because Florida is working on a so-call academic freedom bill, which proponents claim has nothing to do with religion, or even with ID (see the Florida Citizens for Science blog. But what they can’t produce is the alternative scientific information they propose should be in the classroom, but which is not allowed there now. The only beneficiaries of their law would be ID or some one or other of the more specific creationisms that are available. We thus know from the start that their effort is deceptive.

    As one final note I believe this is also an indication that ID bears a closer resemblance to theology, where multiple alternative explanations for one thing can coexist and be bundled loosely, than to science, in which competing theories are constantly tested in the hopes of discarding those that don’t make it and keeping those that do. Theology studies something that is very hard to get into the lab by its very nature. ID seems to bear some resemblance to that.

  • Joe Carter’s 10 Ways Darwinists Help ID

    I found these 10 ways rather amusing (part 1, part 2, part 3. Perhaps we should all take advice from the opposition and say just the things they’d like us to say. Here’s my response, briefer than my usual!

    1. Well, if ID advocates would just define an actual theory and quit trying to disguise the religious intent, perhaps people’s perception of your work would match yours. I’m not required to be deceived, however, and thus I represent it as I see it rather than as you would like me to see it.
    2. It is stealth creationism. It’s religiously driven. ID advocates must be delusional if they think their activities would be driven by scientific concerns. It’s that large body of creationists out there that keep ID going. Just look at the efforts to market “Expelled!” to churchgoers–an open admission of the religious nature of the controversy if I ever saw one.
    3. “Science in the gaps” is almost cute, but unfortunately completely lacks validity. You see, the “God of the gaps” is constantly receding, while science keeps advancing. The fact that we find ever more complex stuff and then come to understand it is a positive thing about the power of scientific investigation. You’ll have a parallel when you find science retreating and God filling in the space. It’s not going to happen. In reality God is never retreating. He’s unthreatened by natural explanations and science will continue to grow. There’s always going to be something more, at least “always” from a limited human perspective.
    4. Produce some science and scientists will publish it. Until then, quit complaining! Oh, and by the way, it’s not science because–wait for it–it’s not science–not because it isn’t published in peer-reviewed science journals.
    5. Sexual selection is a topic of controversy in evolution. Why not provide some scientific discussion if you think that helps ID. The reason ID advocates won’t do that is that if you adjust the factors a bit you’ll still have evolution.
    6. Learn how words are defined and used in different contexts. In other words, instead of trying to plug your idea of design into a scientific discussion, use the author’s definition.
    7. I’m not an atheist. But I neither want to regulate who gets to be vocal, nor do I want to. If you’re not sufficiently perceptive to hear the many religious voices in favor of the theory of evolution, such as Francis Collins, John Haught, Richard Colling, Kenneth Miller, and many others, perhaps you have a discernment problem.
    8. Where you divide the questions is an interesting point. Richard Colling, in his book Random Designer, deals quite directly with origin of life issues, but the fact is that they are logically somewhat different. Common descent, an old earth, and the mechanism of variation+natural selection are not dependent on explaining the origin of life. The reason creationists want to combine them is that common descent has been largely explained in broad terms, while the origin of life has not. Combining them makes a better target. Scientists, on the other hand, have to investigate the topics, and the different states of the science suggest they need to be looked at separately.
    9. Pot, kettle, black. Oh, and many creationists are liars, especially young earth creationists. That’s not an argument against creationism, but it sure does complicate things. It’s annoying having to hunt for the honest creationist so you can argue with him.
    10. You started by accusing us of attacking a strawman, then you end with a strawman yourself.

    My suggestion to other defenders of evolutionary theory: Don’t take Joe Carter’s advice.

  • Theisms, Creationisms, and Evolutionisms: An Exercise in Definition

    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.

    (more…)

  • Random Mutations and God

    JuliaL, in a comment to my previous post, Don McLeroy and his Big Creationist Tent . I’m going to copy the comment here and reply, because I think it brings up an important point that deserves a post of its own.

    Here’s the part that mystifies me:


    Consider natural selection of random mutations. If they’re random mutations, they can’t be God-directed, and if they’re naturally selected, you can’t hav, quote, “God-selecteds.”

    Is the claim being made that there is no such thing as a mathematically random process, such as the choosing of the winning number in a lottery? Or, is McLeroy saying that a process can indeed be mathematically random, but in some magical fashion then God is incapable of being any part of it? So God is completely excluded from lotteries? And if we want to cut God out of any issue, we need only introduce randomness (like “Russian roulette” with a gun before pulling the trigger), and God is forced to stand by helpless? I’ve seen people pick a Bible verse to read by closing their eyes, letting the Bible fall open, and then putting their finger to the page to pick a random verse to mediatate on. Does this process mean that God is now excluded from the event and must stand around looking incompetent?

    As for natural selection, is the claim here that anything selected for/against by nature thereby excludes God from any role? Nature pretty much destroys certain kinds of plants I attempt to put in my yard; the heat, humidity, and alternate drought and flood kills them off. Does installing such plants mean that I have managed to ban God from my yard?

    This seems a strange view of God, not as the ground of all being or as the wholeness of which everything else is a part, but as a separate, discrete individual who can be pushed aside through math and nature processes that we all normally acknowledge exist.

    The thing that has mystified me for a long time is that so many people seem to view a natural process as something which separates something from design by God. From my theological point of view, the universe exists because God wills it so, therefore everything is designed. Supposing I create a machine that automatically produces some other device. Would that secondary device not be considered my design? God goes one better, and designs and elegant and simple algorithm that produces huge variety. It’s still God.

    Intelligent design creationists (IDC) are not satisfied to have God ordain laws and processes. They want God to intervene along the way, and see indications of that design. The Holy Grail of this idea is that one process or system that simply cannot have been produced by the simple combination of variation + natural selection. They keep claiming to have found it, but as knowledge of the evolutionary process advances, ways are discovered. IDC requires a severe deficit in imagination.

    The requirement for detectable intervention ties intelligent design to creationism. If that were not the case, they could embrace people like me who believe in God and believe that the universe itself exists by the will of God. That means everything we see is designed at some level or another. I’m not a metaphysical naturalist. But IDCs do not embrace people like me. Why? Because the simple statement that the universe is designed is not their real goal.

    Their goal is to prove elements of the Biblical story of creation, specifically that there are “kinds” that cannot produce one another, boundary lines that can only be crossed by special divine intervention. That’s the point of trying to find detectable footprints. It’s not design/non-design so much as it is the detectability of design, and even more specifically the detectability of limits that require divine intervention at particular points.

    On this young and old earth creationists can agree, because their understanding of the Genesis story, while not the same, agrees in hearing it as narrative history. They just disagree in the level of symbol involved. They both need divine intervention in a way that should be detectable. (There’s some discussion of this right now because IDCs want to deny part of their roots. This has been discussed recently by Nick Matzke, Ed Brayton, and from the IDC side by Rob Crowther.

    Now to the word “random.” That is largely a scare word, since evolution is not, in fact, a random process. Natural selection is quite directed. There are a number of definitions of the word random, but in this case non-mathematicians are generally thinking something like “lacking a definite plan, purpose, or pattern” (Merriam-Webster). Though this is not the mathematical definition, it will work for our purposes.

    In A Wonderful Life Gould suggested a thought experiment rolling back the movie of the history of life on earth from the time of the Cambrian explosion onward, and suggested that it might unroll in different ways because random events might occur differently. But there is a view of determinism that would say that everything that occurs is totally caused by previous events, thus if we had sufficient knowledge we could tie every event right back to be big band, down to movements of subatomic particles. With this level of determinism, someone with my view of evolution could claim that God did design not just human beings as such, but me in particular, by the way he “set off the big bang.” Everything would be determined by the arrangement of particles (and whatever) at the moment “cause” came to have any meaning. Thus intelligent design without that identifiable time of intervention.

    (For those who want to think more about this, let me link to two series by Peter Kirk at Speaker of Truth. I’m not specifically endorsing everything Peter says, and I gather that he isn’t either, but that’s not because I disagree with any substantial portion. I simply don’t understand the physics well enough for my agreement to make any difference. The important thing is that he is here working with concepts from physics, and relating them to theology and origins, and deals some with the issue of causation. The posts are Kingdom Dynamics Introduction, Beyond Causality, The Boundaries, and The Crunch, followed by The Beginning part 1 and part 2.)

    IDCs would like that, however, because it wouldn’t give them their “kinds” with boundaries between them. In the view of some of them, front-loading would come with the creation of the first life, which should have DNA capable of producing everything that happened later.

    But there is no necessity that absolute determinism is true. It’s just a possibility. There could be events that are not caused in our sense of the word at all. For example, we have no way to speak sensibly of the “cause” of the big bang. I have had people I regard as reliable tell me that quantum physics shows that the universe is truly deterministic, and others I regard as equally reliable tell me it proves that there is true randomness. I don’t understand their arguments so I cannot comment on who is right. But it’s interesting that it appears to be a debatable issue!

    Some other theists who are scientists, especially physicists, see the subatomic realm as a place where God could intervene, for example, to cause mutations at the appropriate moment, without us being able to detect that intervention at all. Again, this wouldn’t make IDCs happy, because they want to find God, and also, for the most part, to prove that he created the world in a way that can be related to Genesis. Don’t ever be deceived by the rhetoric–Genesis will show up sooner or later.

    I don’t really understand the how of it at all. I would be satisfied if God simply created the process, and the process produces everything else. I think variation + natural selection is a very powerful process. At the moment I don’t see any example of demonstrated intervention. I would simply say that as a theist I hold that even if the process is random in its input (variation) it is random because that is the way God ordains it to be. That is not a scientific conclusion, however. Science must simply observe whether it is random or not and report.

    Finally, I do believe that the IDCs come up with a bizarre idea of God, a God who is more active at some points than others, and one who designed a process to diversify life, but it didn’t work right, so he has to tinker. Somehow they think this is a positive think and work very hard to prove that it happened, at the same time proving, in my view, that God is incompetent. That’s not a conclusion I’d prefer to come to!

  • Don McLeroy and his Big Creationist Tent

    I’ve written a great deal recently (here, here, and here) about the use of the term “worldview” to attempt to create a level playing field, particularly for young earth creationism. I don’t have a problem with the term “worldview” in a strictly limited sense. If we exclude particular possibilities a priori, and refuse to reexamine those assumptions, we can be locked into a worldview.

    One of my major problems with common use of the term “worldview” is that it tends to be used in a binary fashion. I don’t mean that there are only two worldviews, seen as mutually exclusive, but rather that each worldview is seen as totally exclusive of all others.

    Don McLeroy, newly named head of the Texas Board of Education (Hat Tip: NCSE, the Texas Freedom Network, and The Panda’s Thumb) gave a speech in 2005 that illulstrates some of my points very well, even better than I stated them. In a somewhat incoherent and disjointed speech, he managed to lay the boundaries of intelligent design creationism (IDC), to justify the inclusion of “creationism” in that label, to employ the scriptures extensively in support of his position, and to claim that it was all scientific.

    As a theistic evolutionist, I found his discussion interesting, and it affirms the most negative comments I have made about the intelligent design movement. There have been intelligent design advocates who have tried to include me in their camp, saying that theistic evolution is really a form of intelligent design. I disagree; so does McLeroy, thought it seems for different reasons.

    I want to focus just on McLeroy’s definition of the “big tent” of IDC, and just what it is he says they are in opposition to. Look at the following quotes from the speech:

    . . . And one other thing about these lessons, big tent, and this is, uh, in the big tent of evolution we all have disagreements, but we’re united in one thing, and we’re united in what we oppose. And you’ll see this later. This is the power of the deductive argument, but nature is all there is. We’re united against the fact that that’s a true statement.

    . . . and . . .

    . . . Actually, in intelligent design we are focused on a on a bigger target, and in the words of Phillip Johnson “the target is metaphysical naturalism, materialism or just plain old naturalism. The idea that nature is all there is.” Modern science today is totally based on naturalism, and all of intelligent design’s arguments against evolution and chemical origin of life it is the naturalistic base that is the target. . . .

    . . . and . . .

    Now I would like to talk a little bit about the big tent. Why is intelligent design the big tent? It’s because we’re all lined up against the fact that naturalism, that nature is all there is. Whether you’re a progressive creationist, recent creationist, young earth, old earth, it’s all in the tent of intelligent design. And intelligent design here at Grace Bible Church actually is a smaller, uh, tent than you would have in the intelligent design movement as a whole. Because we are all Biblical literalists, we all believe the Bible to be inerrant, and it’s good to remember, though, that the entire intelligent design movement as a whole is a bigger tent. So because it’s a bigger tent, just don’t waste our time arguing with each other about some of the, all of the side issues. And that’s one thing that I really enjoyed about our group is that we’ve put that all in the big tent, we’re all working together.

    So what we have here is a big tend of IDC that includes just about everyone out there. Young earth creationists, old earth creationists, more general ID proponents, and one guesses even those who hold the gap theory. Thus on one side of the debate we are supposed to see people who believe the earth is 6,000 years old and those who believe it is 4.5 billion years old. We are to combine people who believe there was a global flood and those who believe it was just a very large localized event. Within that range we have giant differences between the evidence required for each option.

    This is not the picture of a scientific movement. It is the picture of a political movement, involving a temporary religious alliance. I would warn the old earth creationists to beware. Should this “big tent” ever succeed in its goals, the young earth creationists who now accept IDC (and many of them do not) will be after you guys in a minute.

    But what is the goal of this diverse group? The defeat of naturalism, what else? Now notice that if naturalism is defeated, there will be some form of supernaturalism to take its place. In a philosophical sense, I’m fine with that. I’m a supernaturalist myself, on which more later. But let’s continue:

    So what is naturalism? It’s the idea that nature is all there is. . . .

    So now McLeroy makes it explicit. In his big tent belongs everyone who is opposed to naturalism, and he defines naturalism as the belief that nature is all there is. Now forgive me for being dense, but as a theist, I would think that I qualify as someone who does not believe that nature is all there is. In fact, every so often one of my atheist friends reminds me of that “weakness” in my thinking.

    So perhaps the main thing that keeps me out of McLeroy’s big tent is the fact that I have a hard time seeing how young earth creationists and old earth creationists belong in the same tent. From the scientific point of view, they don’t. At a minimum, one must recognize that different arguments are required against each one.

    But I would be wrong to think that’s the problem. Now let’s look at what is not included in the “big tent.”

    I’d like to make a quick comment about the option of theistic evolution, and it’s a very poor option. There’s not anybody in our group that’s advocating this. Because Darwinism doesn’t allow God to do anything. Consider natural selection of random mutations. If they’re random mutations, they can’t be God-directed, and if they’re naturally selected, you can’t hav, quote, “God-selecteds.” And so no one in our group represents theistic evolution, and the big tent of intelligent design does not include theistic evolutionists. Because intelligent design is opposed to evolution. Theistic evolutionists embrace it. So, you know, there are some in the Christian camp that just say, “Well, I am a theistic evolutionist.” And there are some bright minds that are that way, but they aren’t part really of the intelligent design group. It just doesn’t fit.

    I hope you read that paragraph carefully. The problem is not whether God exists or not, or whether there is something other than nature–no matter how much someone tries to tell you other wise. The issue is about detecting and measuring God’s presence scientifically. If I say that the world exists because God brought the universe into existence, and that life appeared in accordance with God’s natural laws and then further diversified in accordance with those laws, I am not welcome in this big tent.

    The reason cannot be that I’m a naturalist. I just said God (something other than nature) is the cause of all of this. The reason is that I don’t believe that God’s fingerprints can be found where he tinkered with the processes. Unfortunately for my welcome into McLeroy’s big tent, I believe that the process God created to produce life and diversify it actually works, and doesn’t require periodic adjustments.

    This issue is not naturalism or not. The issue is whether the scientific method is to be called upon to measure the supernatural. I don’t think that will ever work. In fact, I would be unsurprised if in the scientific sense we ever found the point at which we say “God did it” because I believe that “God did it” in such a comprehensive and consistent way that we’re never going to find the seams or the fingerprints.

    One can wonder why I’m a theist, in that case, a point which I’ve discussed elsewhere, but in terms of science, “God did it” is never an answer, and should never be used as a stop sign for scientific effort.

    That’s why I totally agree with McLeroy that I belong outside his big tent, but I do so by disagreeing with the common element. It is not that they are supernaturalists. It is that they believe God must have left fingerprints on nature. They can’t agree on just what he left and where, but they’re willing to get together to push the rest of us out of the way.

    To me engaging naturalism does bring religion into the equation, though I think by bringing in scientific method some of the points – I hadn’t thought about that, so I really gotten a lot out of this discussion. That you can do it without bringing religion into it, so I think you can go both ways. . . .

    And this is simply ridiculous. Of course the intention is religious. The intent is to make sure that we get God into the equation. All this stuff about unidentified intelligent designers is a smokescreen, though the smoke is so transparent that everyone other than those generating the smoke are seeing through it. It is only the IDC folks who think that they have covered something up when they refer to an undetermined intelligent designer. The rest of us know who they’re talking about.

    McLeroy invokes the matrix in accusing evolutionary scientists of being hopelessly deceived by their worldview. But there is nothing about a methodological naturalism that prevents one from seeing any sort of evidence. I would suggest that the filter is much in evidence inside the big tent. It’s a filter that removes the abundant evidence of common descent. It also prevents people from seeing new evidence found regularly that advances our knowledge of evolutionary processes.

    I am perfectly willing to be proven wrong, for someone to find God’s fingerprints showing his tinkering. I don’t think it’s going to happen, but I’m open to such evidence. Thus far, none has been forthcoming.

  • Young Earth Creationists: What They Say and What They Do

    A couple of days ago I wrote an entry about young earth creationists and presuppositions. Two commenters have now taken me to task over my claim that young earth creationists try to dodge their main presupposition, that Genesis is narrative history conveying accurate science.

    Commenter Jonathan Bartlett said:

    I think you are slightly confused on some of the issues. Scientific creationists DO NOT say that they came to believe in YEC because of the evidence. What they do say is that they believe that YEC can be _supported_ on the evidence alone, and believe that it can be investigated and analyzed scientifically without respect to the Bible. There is a difference between the _inspiration_ for an idea and the _support_ for an idea. Science should, in theory, criticize only the _support_, and not the _inspiration_, and it is on this basis that scientific creationism attempts to make its case . . .

    I am always delighted when someone accuses me of being confused, and I am most frequently accused of confusion by creationists who generally believe that I don’t understand their position, even though I was myself a young earth creationist most of the way through college and only slowly rejected it over a period of years. And just to prevent the normal reply that obviously I was led astray by my secularist professors, I am a graduate of a Seventh-day Adventist college where the dominant view was YEC.

    What’s interesting about the paragraph I quoted from the comment, however, is that it accuses me of confusion while at the same time demonstrating the very thing I describe! My contention is that the young earth creationist position is founded on the presupposition that Genesis 1-11 is narrative history that is accurate in its science. I didn’t specify “inspiration” as opposed to support, because I don’t think that matters all that much. In what sense would it be possible for something to be “investigated and analyzed scientifically without respect to the Bible” and yet impossible for one to “get to” (my unscientific terminology) that same thing through science?

    When a young earth creationist sets out to demonstrate his theory apart from the Bible, he is, in fact, claiming that it is scientific. In the link I provided in one of my own comments, a young earth creationist claims to be prepared to debate the issue without referring to religion. He’s avoiding the presupposition, pretending it’s unnecessary, whether he confesses to getting inspiration from the Bible or not.

    My basic claim here is that such an activity denies one of the presuppositions of young earth creationism, and that this presupposition is essential, and is actually held by the young earth creationists. Young earth creationism will completely fail without that presupposition. It cannot be scientifically supported. It fails tests from archeology through physics, geology, biology, astronomy, and so forth. Its predictions fail. The Bible is not merely an inspiration, it is a fundamental element running through the YEC position, and not merely the Bible, but a specific category of literalistic view of the Bible.

    There are two reasons YECs want to avoid this fact. First, there is the first amendment in the United States. They would like their dogma taught in the public schools. Since their dogma is religious (though I believe theologically unsound), they have failed to get the courts to accept it. But when they go to court and claim that their position is scientific when it is, in fact, attached at practically all points to the Biblical text of Genesis 1-11 read as narrative history, they pretend, and I repeat pretend not to employ the (very bad) presupposition that is fundamental to their entire system.

    The second is that science has gained a high level of public respect. It has earned it. So to be respectable, the YECs have to place themselves on a level with science. They accomplish this in two ways. 1) They claim that their own view is the really scientific one, and 2) They degrade the scientific claims of their opponents by claiming they are merely the result of scientist’s presuppositions or their faith in _____ (fill in claim of moment here).

    Young earth creationists really shouldn’t talk about presuppositions. It doesn’t work well for them.

    Another commenter, macht, also is severely bothered by my “get to” phrase. Before I quote what he said, let me say that I think it is nonsense to claim that one can be inspired by the Bible to create a scientific model, then to claim that one can fully analyze and test that model scientifically without reference to the Bible, yet one can’t “get to” the model through science.

    If one can fully analyze and test a model, one can assemble that model based on hypothesis and testing. Science works that way.

    Here’s the quote:

    Morris and Parker think that evolution and creation are two different worldviews that ultimately cannot be confirmed or falsified by science. But they also say that these two worldviews each have a “scientific model” which can be confirmed or falsified. As far as I can recall, they don’t claim that we can “come to” either one without presuppositions. What they say is that each scientific model attempts to explain empirical data within their own frameworks and that when we evaluate each, the creation science model is confirmed and the evolution science model. . . .

    This is an example of the pervasive prevarication of young earth creationism. Evolutionists have faith; they have faith. Evolutionists have a worldview; they have a worldview. Evolutionists have presuppositions; they have presuppositions. It’s all just one happy presupposition party in which your guess is as good as mine, so who are all those nasty scientists, and a few Biblical studies types like me, to criticize? (It’s another topic, but it’s interesting to note that we have this sort of post-modern “we all have our reality” view, except that we’re supposed to come out believing YEC is TRUTH.)

    So what are the presuppositions of young earth creationism? There is a God. He inspired a book. That book must be taken literally, and its first 11 chapters are a historical narrative of prehistory. Even though the writers, however divinely inspired, had no scientific skill at all, one must take their words as science. Maybe I missed some, but that’s the gist.

    What are the presuppositions of biological evolution? Hmm. Let’s see. You learn about nature by observing nature. I should add, of course, that the scientific method has been repeatedly shown to work as the specific means of studying nature, as is testified by this computer on which I’m writing and all the various accomplishments of technology that lie between this computer and the one on which you will read this post. It may be a worldview, but it works!

    The worldviews are not equal. One works and the other doesn’t. The theory of evolution is validated, and young earth creationism is not.

  • Young Earth Creationism and Presuppositions

    Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars I found this article on WorldNetDaily. Ed suggested that it didn’t require fisking, but from the Christian point of view there are a couple of things I’d like to comment on.

    Lofton says,

    I love Ken Ham – president of the Answers In Genesis ministry – because he’s a Christian with a brain and he has the guts to defend the faith. I also love him because he drives the God-haters nuts – or I should say he drives them even nuttier.

    Where to start? There are so many silly things about that paragraph. First, there’s the notion that Christians with brains are rare, and thus one had to search and search until finally Ken Ham was located. Oh joy! Oh Rapture! A Christian with a brain! Well actually there are plenty of Christians with brains, and there are plenty of Christians who are willing to defend the faith, and none of them are Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis. I’m not so much commenting on Ken Ham’s IQ as I’m suggesting that he is not defending “the faith” but rather an eccentric view of Biblical interpretation that is producing misguided science. Unless “the faith” is to be equated with massive rejection of evidence over a wide variety of fields, then Ken Ham is not defending the faith. Young Earth Creationism doesn’t merely collide with geology and evolutionary biology. It collides even with archeology. There is written history that dates to before the flood date according to young earth creationists.

    Christians should make no mistake. Ken Ham isn’t just after secularists. He’s opposed to Christians who disagree with him about when and how God created.

    Thus Christians with brains such as Hugh Ross are excluded by Ken Ham’s viewpoint. Now I’m not arguing that Ken Ham doesn’t have the right to disagree with Hugh Ross, or with theistic evolutionists. He absolutely does. But people who look at or read about that museum in Kentucky should not imagine that it is dedicated to the general proposition that God created, or that it is a general defense of Christianity against some supposed secularist forces. It’s not. It is designed to advocate a young earth position, a position that is truly not tenable.

    But Lofton continues saying that Ken Ham drives God-haters nuts. I’ve got to tell you that in general the response I get from non-Christians with whom I discuss any young earth creationists is one of extreme humor. I suggest that a response is necessarily precisely because the public discussion of the museum is so deceptive. Many Christians who actually have no problem with evolution may believe this museum is simply about generally seeing God as the creator, of seeing God’s handiwork in nature. It’s a good idea for them to hear that it isn’t.

    I cannot speak for “God-haters,” as I’m not certain that I’ve met any. I certainly have met quite a number of people who would strongly oppose practically everything taught in the museum. I haven’t been there, but from what I’ve seen, I would be one of them.

    What’s going on in the quoted paragraph, however, is not an attempt to accurately portray the situation, but rather to rally Christians against these imagined God-haters. There is nothing like invoking the word “atheist” to get the faithful ready to rally around. But the faithful need to consider two things. First, as Christians we’re not called to act as mobs trying to persecute those who don’t like us. The way Christians speak about atheists is, well, just not Christ-like. Second, when you’re trying to choose a rallying point to defend the faith, it’s a good idea to choose a solid one, something that is part of the essentials of the faith, and is likely to stand the test of time. Young earth creationism doesn’t meet that test.

    But the great fun starts when Ham is quoted saying, “. . . all scientists have presuppositions that they start with to determine how they interpret evidence.” In support of this he notes that scientists search for answers in nature. I’m shocked! Scandalized even! Well, not so much. It seems just natural that scientists setting out to study nature would, well, study nature.

    The word “presupposition” is a buzzword these days, and it gets abused more than it gets properly used. On the one hand, “you’re just basing everything you say on your suppositions” or “that’s all you can possibly see in your worldview” (nearly synonymous phrases) are used to end the discussion. Supposed simply being informed that I have presuppositions is supposed to end the discussion. On the other hand, the idea of presuppositions is dismissed entirely.

    In fact, we all do have presuppositions. But we can actually identify them, and then we discuss whether they are appropriate or not. For example, if one is studying nature, one should, most likely seek one’s answers right there–in nature.

    But young earth creationists are the master of the great presupposition, and many of them are the master of the denied presupposition. They presuppose that Genesis 1-11 (amongst other texts) contain narrative history and scientific statements. They assume that they should be interpreted primarily in a literal fashion. When some of them claim that they get to young earth creationism on purely scientific grounds, they are merely denying this presupposition. It is impossible to come to young earth creationism on purely scientific grounds. Anyone who claims that is simply denying their most fundamental presupposition.

    If one eliminates this one presupposition, the entire young earth structure collapses. There’s simply no reason for it. It’s designed to explain things that just are not so.

    Thus I find it particularly ironic (as in break the irony meter) to have a young earth creationist talk about presuppositions. We could also word this in worldviews. They would generally suppose that their worldview is simply the view that God is creator and sovereign. But that is not precisely the worldview. They must add all of those presuppositions about Genesis to their worldview. God is not just sovereign and creator. He is not just a God who reveals himself, or even a God who reveals himself to prophetic writers who produce sacred texts. He is specifically a God who reveals scientific data or historical narratives. There is no need to presuppose all of that. One can test each of those things.

    Absent those unjustified presuppositions, the worldview of young earth creationists lacks any justification whatsoever.