Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Creation and Evolution

  • Francis S. Collins on Religion and Evolution

    Courtesy of the Florida Citizens for Science blog, I found this article on Francis S. Collins, an evangelical Christian who sees no incompatibility between religion and science, including acceptance of evolution. The article can be found at Relgion Today (HeraldToday.com).

    I could add little to what Dr. Collins had to say. I came at the question from the other end, starting from a religious point of view and looking for compatibility with science.

    I do believe that the expectation that people reject evolutionary theory, which is supported by overwhelming evidence as Dr. Collins says, puts a stumbling block in the path of well-educated people who are considering the gospel message. Dr. Collins provides a good response to that problem.

    While I want consensus science, and that means evolutionary theory, taught in the public school classrooms of this state, I believe Christians should regard the “how” of creation as a non-essential, one that can be debated openly in the church without accusations of heresy.

  • Another Shift in the Kansas School Board

    It’s looking good for the teaching of evolution in Kansas public schools, as reported by MSNBC, Evolution’s foes lose ground in Kansas. The balance of power shifted from 6-4 in favor of the ID standards to 6-4 against. The general election could change things slightly, but that looks like the worst case scenario for science standards.

    Don’t miss Josh Rosenau’s comments on Thoughts from Kansas and his post titled Final Tallies: Science Wins in Kansas.

    Science standards will be coming up here in Florida soon, so keep your eyes open. We want to make Florida’s standards for science education first rate. For more information on this, follow the Florida Citizen’s for Science web site.

  • How to Waste $25 Million

    A $25 million creation museum is under construction in rural Kentucky, with the intention of challenging the scientific consensus view of origins. MSNBC tells us about it in a story titled High-tech museum brings creationism to life. They quote Ken Ham, of Answers in Genesis saying,

    “If the Bible is the word of God, and its history really is true, that’s our presupposition or axiom, and we are starting there,

  • Van Till a Freethinker?

    With a hat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars, I’d like to call attention to the text of a speech given by Howard J. Van Till (The Fourth Day) to the Freethought Association of West Michigan. Van Till’s work on evolution in general and intelligent design in particular is amongst my favorite reading, and he provides some excellent insights into working with truth, and our view of what truth is, in the context of a religious institution.

    While I experienced some hostility as a graduate student in a Seventh-day Adventist institution, I never experienced this degree of hostility, but I did reject the idea of signing a doctrinal statement in order to be able to teach. That was one of the things that led me away from even seriously seeking work in an Adventist institution. Now as a member of the United Methodist Church, I often actually seem quite conservative.

    Readers who come from my current side of the aisle–mainstream Christianity outside the Calvinist or Catholic traditions–may find it hard to empathize with Van Till. Calvinism tends to be much more creedal, and thus to be much more explicit.

    But I am no less subject to having an ODoR (operational description of reality) than anyone else, and often being less explicit about it simply makes it harder to examine, rather than meaning that one is actually more open minded. I think Van Till has again provided some excellent insight into the nature of the controversy over creation and evolution, and the relationship of science and religion.

  • Creation and Evolution Summer Camps

    Summer camps to indoctrinate children on creationism? Look at this article: Beliefwatch: Camping.

    I certainly have no objection to churches teaching their beliefs at summer camp, and I congratulate the Unitarian-Universalist church on having a camp on discoveries in science. What I sincerely wish we would see would be a Christian camp that would teach about the variety of views of God’s creation that are held by Christians. This could be a unity building event, letting children know that Christians disagree on how God created, but we all agree that God didcreate, and that he is the creator.

    Such classes could help ease the current atmosphere in which a Christian who is serious about his or her faith is often beaten back to the peripheries by misguided people who believe only creationists, or in some cases even young earth creationists are really Christians.

  • Arguing from Authority

    Jason Rosenhouse (EvolutionBlog) has blogged about the authority (or lack of it) of mathematicians commenting on evolutionary theory in a series of two posts. Start reading with the first one, Are Mathematicians Qualified to Discuss Evolution, Part One, and follow along from there.

    The reason I’m calling attention to this particular entry is that many people struggle with the issue of authority, especially in regard to complex areas of study. I’ve found that in church work people often ridicule the authority of people with advanced degrees, while at the same time coveting, and actually giving too much authority to people with such degrees. The many diploma mills that hand out doctoral degrees, especially in the area of Bible study and theology demonstrate the desire to put “doctor” in front of one’s name, or to have a pastor for one’s church who does.

    Rosenhouse makes an excellent and very clear statement:

    But that doesn’t mean that a mathematician (or any non-biologist) is therefore forever excluded from discussing biology. It means simply that their professional training gives them no authority for doing so. Whether you should accord any weight to their pronouncements depends entirely on the specific arguments they make in defense of their views.

    I think that statement is exceptionally clear, though some of the commenters seem to have ignored that point. My field is Biblical studies. I can comment all I want on evolution, and readers of this blog know that I do, but my comments need to be evaluated on the merits of the individual arguments. I hope that I get these comments right. None of them are original, and I can normally point you to the book by an appropriate expert, but I do lack authority in that field.

    Ordinary people have to deal with this type of issue all the time. If experts are in disagreement, how do you make a determination? How do you find your way through the evidence?

    One way, of course, is through authority. You find lists of people who support your particular position, and then you follow the crowd. And if you select people who actually are experts in that field, and find the consensus position of such experts, then you will likely not go too far wrong.

    What’s interesting in the case of evolutionary theory is that we are presented constantly with lists of authorities, and it is the minority who are primarily making the argument from authority. Further, they often confuse the areas of expertise involved, as Rosenhouse notes in his post. Any number can be made to look impressive if you create a context designed entirely for that number. (Note here that I’m a non-expert commenting on mathematics, even in a very simple form.) We see this daily in advertising. A car is advertised at a “savings of $3,000.” Another is advertised at the “low, low price of $14,995.” What is the actual savings, or value, of each vehicle? Those numbers need to be placed in context. In the grocery store you have items for $0.50 off, “buy one, get one free,” “4 for $3.00,” “20% off,” and so forth. Those numbers aren’t selected randomly. The person doing the pricing uses the number that appears most impressive.

    Thus the Discovery Institute can claim 600 scientists skeptical of evolution, but in order to evaluate that number, even assuming that one wants to use an argument from authority, one needs to know a number of things. What fields are these scientists qualified in? What percentage of the experts in that field does the number of signatories constitute? What precisely were they asked to indicate by their signature? Without those elements of context, the numbers themselves will be either meaningless or misleading.

    So as a non-expert, what do I recommend? Well, my own approach, after growing up as a young earth creationist, was to start where I did have expertise, in Genesis 1-11 and archeology. I soon discovered that the young earth position was untenable even without considering geology. It may seem strange to evolutionists who started understanding geology, but I really had no concept of the age of the earth when I first rejected creationism. I simply knew that based on material on which I was qualified to comment, the young earth position must be wrong. All I said at the time was that the earth must be substantially older than 10,000 years.

    Since I had read an abundance of creationist literature, I then started to read material from experts on evolution, emphasizing informational material. Roadside geology guides accompanied me on a number of trips in the west. As I would try to recognize formations, and would then compare what I saw with the guide, I quickly realized that this was not something I would become an expert on. So how did I evaluate it?

    Here are the major points:

    1. The real numbers-what is the expert consensus. For a non-expert to go against the consensus of experts should require a substantial body of evidence, generally gleaned from dissenting experts. For an expert, of course, what is needed is solid evidence and research.
    2. What do they say about things I do know? If they comment on a topic on which I can comment with some authority, and do so incorrectly, then I begin to question the entire work. I recall reading a work on archeology by a mathematician. Within the first few pages I realized he was proposing calculations based on a level of accuracy of measurement that was simply not possible. For example, measuring something that is a hundred meters or so in length, and whose length includes an estimated portion (thickness of the covering of a wall when the covering no longer exists), and then using the resulting figure accurate to 4 decimal places is odd, at best!
    3. How well do they represent the positions and arguments of opponents. I found that creationists in general did not decently restate the arguments of evolutionary scientists. In fact, the entire picture of evolutionary theory I learned while growing up was not an accurate representation of evolutionary theory. I tend to doubt the word of someone who misrepresents–intentionally or through ignorance–something that I can easily check.
    4. Track back everything as close to the source as you can. There are practical limits based on the libraries available, how serious your interest is, and your knowledge of the field, but it is valuable to get as close to the person who found and cataloged the data. When the story changes as you get closer to the source, you know there’s a problem.

    These are just a few suggestions.

    One final note. For those who are interested in specifically avoiding mathematical deception, try one of the following: How to Lie with Statistics or Damned Lies and Statistics. Both will help you untangle the way in which numbers can be used to deceive you.

  • It’s One Thing to Lie

    . . . it’s another to lie stupidly when the evidence of that stupidity is right in front of you.

    ID creationists William Dembski gave an account (loosely speaking) of a question and answer by Ken Miller and Francis Collins. Since then an actual transcript has been made that clearly shows the inaccuracy of the account provided by Dembski’s informant. Having dealt with many “eye or ear-witness accounts” of such events, I would never have used such an account without verification. It has the clear signs of the witness hearing what he or she wants to hear. You can read the relevant transcript and Ken Miller’s comments here. (All links, hat tip to The Panda’s Thumb.)

    DaveScot, over on Uncommon Descent has now commented:

    The question and answer as Bill Dembski was given by someone in the audience recalling it wasn’t an unfair paraphrase. The verbage was different but the points were essentially the same.

    That’s not only lying, that’s lying stupidly, and it continues the pattern despicable behavior demonstrated over at Uncommon Descent.

    What DaveScot and William Dembski are trying to paper over is, in fact, the fundamental issue, and the fundamental problem with intelligent design. Intelligent design theory neither argues, nor does it demonstrate that the universe is designed. In fact, one of my strongest objections to ID is that it demonstrates precisely the opposite. If it were true, it would show not that the universe was designed, but rather that if there was design, it is poor design. ID points to the places where design fails as demonstration that design is, in fact true. This is inescapable if one applies any actual thought to the so-called “explanatory filter”–a Dembski contrivance that neither filters nor explains.

    For a Christian who accepts evolutionary theory, such as myself, the most fundamental problem with ID theory is not what it says about nature and science. Apologies to my scientist friends and colleagues, but the scientific answers are not the most fundamental thing to me. The problem with ID is what it says about God. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but from reading Finding Darwin’s God, Ken Miller has a similar problem. ID finds not God the designer, but God the backroom tinkerer, God the perpetual inventor who can never get it right.

    Futher, even if one allowed that God might have intervened precisely at the formation of life, that would not make current ID theory and the explanatory filter any better than they are. In order to show an intervention at that point one would need to design a complete new theory. ID is bad at what it tries to do now, and it would be bad at detecting intervection at the formation of life. Note that just because ID is lousy does not mean God never intervened. It merely means that ID is lousy science.

    What theistic evolutionists are arguing, for the most part, is simply that God made a universe that was well enough designed to work! We argue that it does work, and that science shows us God’s creation actually working. We celebrate God in even the simple things that happen on a day to day basis. For me, the formation of the bacterial flagellum is something God did. He did it in a wonderfully elegant manner, by creating a universe in which such complexity could appear according to natural laws. Because again, as I see it, natural law is simply the consistent result of God’s will. Consistent!

    Nonetheless my expectation is that scientific investigation will eventually show us how non-living matter can produce life under the appropriate conditions. I think it is just a matter of time. And this points again to the nature of ID theory. It is, in fact, a God of the gaps argument. It posits God’s action where we don’t understand the process. As long as it does that it is horrible theology and it says horrible things about God. It says that God is generally a failure, who creates a system that works partially, but requires constant retuning to make it go. It says further that even that retuning is rather poorly done.

    If, as I expect, a natural process leading to the origin of life is found, I will see in that also the work of God. What I will not expect is that we will be able to properly identify God in the parts of the process that we don’t yet understand.

    This is the big difference between the theistic evolutionists and ID creationists. We see God as a competent designer who is successful. They see him as a complete failure. They believe in a small God that they can bring inside a scientific theory as an explanation. We believe in a God who just won’t fit there. We’re not saying God isn’t good enough to be a scientific explanation. We’re saying he’s something completely different, too big to be an hypothesis, too great to fit in their piddly formulas.

    If the ID proponents could just “get” that, they would perhaps understand why their petty little pseudo-theory gets on the nerves of Christian theists who accept evolutionary theory.

  • Science and Religion – Can they be Allies?

    PZ Myers has responded to an interview with Ron Numbers in a post titled I’m proud to be non-human. His main point seems to be that those of us who favor evolution need to go all the way and stick totally with the scientific evidence.

    He says:

    There is a strong cultural aspect to this struggle that is independent of the facts, I won’t deny that. But calling the science “irrelevant” is throwing away the sharpest tool in our toolbox. We are going to win people to the side of science and reason by promoting, well, science and reason. Stop running away from it! Stop being ashamed of the fact that the evidence is on our side! We aren’t going to win by engaging in theological debates, or by getting the right legislation, or by winning court battles

  • Basis of Faith and Meaning

    A number of people over the years have suggested that because of some doctrinal position or another that I hold, I no longer have a basis for my faith. Those who express themselves a bit less forcefully see it as a weakening of faith, a distancing from God, and a lessening of belief in God’s power. Two doctrines in particular tend to bring this response: 1) My rejection of Biblical inerrancy, and 2) My acceptance of the theory of evolution. In the second case, it seems also that people feel that an acceptance of the theory of evolution robs life of all meaning. If human beings were produced by a process of descent from the smallest form of life, somehow God no longer has a purpose, or no longer has control.

    I’ve been thinking about these things recently, and asking myself just what is the basis for a meaningful Christian life, a question that seems to me to combine these two issues quite nicely. Since I rarely have difficulty finding meaning in any particular day of my life, these aren’t questions on which I spend lots of time.

    Let me list some of the places from which people say they get meaning and find a basis for their faith:

    1. A certain set of historical events, such as the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus
    2. Certain spiritual experiences or encounters with God or the divine in some way.
    3. Don’t know, it just happened.
    4. A deep internal need for God.
    5. God made me specifically, and intended me for a specific purpose.
    6. Community, being part of a church or spiritual family
    7. I make my own meaning.
    8. I became convinced that the Bible was true for logical and historical reasons.

    That list is not exhaustive, but I think it illustrates this adequately. I would have to say that for myself, there are elements of the first, second, third, sixth, and seventh. The focus of my own meaning in the world, however, combines my personal encounters with God with making my own meaning. My encounters with God, however, mean that when I make my own meaning, I do so in relation to God, which doesn’t mean quite the same thing as it does by itself.

    So what would it take to shake my faith or even to make me abandon it? I really can’t think of anything. The classic question for Christians is what would happen if someone found a clearly identifiable body of Jesus, proving he was not physically resurrected. Since I do believe in the physical resurrection, that would be troubling and would require some rethinking of elements of my faith. At the same time, I believe I would simply adjust to the other possibilites in the resurrection. If I had never experienced the risen Christ, I would not find the historical evidence anything like sufficient to convince me of the resurrection. If the physical evidence got worse, I would still have the experience of the risen Christ.

    Similarly, at one time I believed something very much like a hard version of inerrancy–there could be no errors in the Bible of any type, including in historical and scientific matters. Through study I became convinced that this was not the model of inspiration displayed by the scriptures. At the same time I knew that I heard the voice of God through the scriptures. So despite a substantial shift in the method by which I believe God communicates (and it’s quite possible I’ll again change my mind with further study!), I don’t doubt that God does communicate.

    I never had the problem that some people claim with evolution, which is the loss of meaning. I went from believing that God literally formed the first human being from dirt and then literally breathed into this statue so that it became a living creature (Genesis 2:7), to believing that God formed a human being through the process of descent with modification, and when that being was the human being he intended, he saw that it was good. Notice that I don’t see God as ever getting further from the formation of man. The method changed; the result was the same.

    In a conversation with my wife I was searching for an analogy for this difference in the method by which a person was formed. I proposed the difference between a mother laboring and giving birth to a child versus a C-Section. She suggested more the difference in the connection between a parent by birth or by adoption. I still feel a little closer to the first analogy; there really is no difference in how connected the mother is to the child in either birth. I will admit that if adoption (or step-parenting) is done properly, I agree with my wife’s point. The tie should be created and should exist just as tightly as a blood tie. But I’m not sure people understand it that way. The key is that God’s parent-child relationship with human beings is not changed by the method by which he produces those children. It has always interested me that many are happier being descended from dirt than with the idea of being descended from a small life form that lived in dirt–or water.

    I think that if the meaning of your life is shaken by any change in the method of your creation, that meaning may be pretty loosely attached in the first place. You may need to look at your experience of God and your connection to God. I’m often accused of putting more weight on science than on the Bible and faith, but in a most fundamental way I think it is creationists who put a greater weight on science than I do. The methodology of science is, for me, a way of learning about the physical world, with results that are tentative and subject to change at any moment. They have to be, because we learn new things. My meaning doesn’t come to me from my understanding of the function of the physical world, and it isn’t shaken when new things are discovered about the physical world. I’m really placing much less weight on science in my spiritual life than the creationist who feels that he must find a scientific basis for everything in Genesis in order to uphold the faith.

    1Now faith is the substantial nature of things we hope for, the clear conviction of things we don’t see. 2By this means the elders were approved.

    3By faith we understand that the universe was made by the word of God, so that things which are seen didn’t come out of things already visible. — Hebrews 11:1-3 (TFBV)

    It’s my faith–my belief in, my confidence in, and my trust in God that gives substance to my spiritual hopes and gives me clear conviction. This is a different category of “knowing” than knowing that the earth orbits the sun, or accpetance of common descent. Even using the word “knowing” is deceptive, because it is entirely subjective. I can’t prove it to you, I can’t make you hear me. I have good friends who think I’m irrational because of it, and I understand their point of view. But I have the firm conviction.

    This is a conviction that worked from Abel, Enoch, Abraham, and Moses, who had no scriptures at all. They couldn’t believe that scriptures were without error, because they had no such option. They only had their belief that they had encountered and communicated with the living God. That gave them enough to work with, and gave them meaning in their lives. They didn’t have the doctrine of the incarnation or the resurrection. But they were faithful nonetheless.

    39And these all, having received approval of faith, did not receive the promise, 40since God concerning us foresaw something better, so that without us they would not come to completion. — Hebrews 11:39-40 (TFBV)

    Their belief was without seeing, without scripture, and yet they received approval and remained firm. I’m not against facts as part of your faith. But the foundation had better be deeper than the details.

  • The Dog DID my Homework

    We’ve all heard the traditional excuse for missing homework: The dog ate it. Well, intelligent design creationists (IDCs) now have a better one. The dog did their homework. Well, it’s analogous to that in any case.

    Thanks to Pim van Meurs of The Panda’s Thumb in his entry Eugenie Scott: The Big Tent and the Camel’s Nose for calling my attention to this quote from William Dembski:

    As for your example, I’m not going to take the bait. You’re asking me to play a game: “Provide as much detail in terms of possible causal mechanisms for your ID position as I do for my Darwinian position.” ID is not a mechanistic theory, and it’s not ID’s task to match your pathetic level of detail in telling mechanistic stories. If ID is correct and an intelligence is responsible and indispensable for certain structures, then it makes no sense to try to ape your method of connecting the dots. True, there may be dots to be connected. But there may also be fundamental discontinuities, and with IC systems that is what ID is discovering.
    Source (ISCID Forum)

    Now you can go to the original discussion (linked above) and to Pim van Meurs’s comments to get more discussion of the details, but I must confess this one really struck me funny. It’s something that many have been saying about IDC and creation science for some time. The IDCs really aren’t bothering to do their own homework. There is no model, no predictions, nothing testable, and yet we’re supposed to admire the great discovery. IDC is most like the older creation science on this major point: They have nothing positive to contribute. This is the student who says, “The dog did my homework, thus there really wasn’t anything to see [the dog can’t write], so I can’t show it to you, but trust me, it was done. But Mary’s homework is really lousy, disorderly, doesn’t have enough detail, and there are actual questions that she failed to answer!”

    Creationism was at one time clearly based in the Bible. That Biblical basis was the only thing it had going for it. If one assumed that Genesis was a literal account of the origin and early history of the world, young earth creationism fit. One fought for the integrity of the scriptures. I think this particular view of Genesis 1-11 is incorrect, and takes the materials as the wrong type of literature, but nonetheless that was a fixed position. Certain things had to be correct in order for that position to be accepted as true. Such a position is currently advocated by Dr. Kurt Wise in his book Faith, Form, and Time. While this view does not, in my opinion, present a fully testable scientific model, it does give some predictions, and it has form.

    Creation science, on the other hand, is without form and void (Genesis 1:2). Advocates try to claim that one can teach creation science without reference to the age of the earth and that the flood is a separate issue. But a worldwide flood is hardly a separate issue. If there was one, there will be significant differences in the geological record than would be the case if there was no such disaster. Consider the results left by various meteor strikes. Compared to a global flood covering the highest mountains, those meteor strikes would be very minor issues. The geological record would be different if the earth is very young than if it is very old. Creation science, without dealing with those issues, could not be a coherent model of anything. The only clearly identifiable notion that linked advocates of creation science together (in their statements specifically about creation science, not what they told church congregations) was their statements that evolution was wrong, summed up in various ad hoc criticisms.

    Now here come the IDCs, or rather they’ve been yelling for some time, enough time to have some substance to present. They keep criticizing Darwinists for lacking 100% detailed histories of each evolutionary transition. Critics like Berlinski keep making silly demands of the fossil record (The Deniable Darwin), expecting fully formed explanations of everything at once, with fossils representing every step.

    And then what does Dembski claim? Well, because ID isn’t mechanistic, we don’t have to explain it. Evolutionists have explained some things, even many things, and are going on explaining more things, but Dembski, who has explained absolutely nothing tries to criticize others for having done only some work. The dog did the homework, the dog ate the homework, there really wasn’t any homework to do in any case, but your homework isn’t good enough.

    Look at this part of the quote again: “True, there may be dots to be connected. But there may also be fundamental discontinuities, and with IC systems that is what ID is discovering.” So if there are dots to be connected, don’t IDCs need to go about connecting them? If there are discontinuities to be found, can they be discovered without doing the hard work of connecting the dots that can be connected? How can any of this be discovered without actually identifying the intelligent designer, and determining his/her/its goals, methods, and capabilities?

    In a post on the Compuserve Religion Forum, I wrote the following:

    I imagine the first expedition to a planet in another system, made up, of course, of IDCs, since they are such revolutionaries in science. They come upon something that just must be designed. They run it through the explanatory filter. No, it’s not a natural regularity. No, it’s too complext to be the result of chance. Conclusion: It must be designed.

    So having made this wonderous discovery, they pack up, jump back in their spacecraft, and begin the long journey home.

    I’m sure many will regard this as unfair, but please tell me in what way the behavior of IDCs differs from this. Can’t the “Newton of information theory” or the discoverer of irreducible complexity manage to discover some little thing about the designer? Did the dog not leave just a corner of the homework page uneaten?

    There is nothing that would commend ID to anyone except for a presumption that it must be so. Just admit it, IDC advocates, you just believe God has to get his fingers in the pie all along the way, you somehow can’t comprehend a God who could actually get it right in one pass, so you have to find a theoretical basis for that view.

    It’s bad theology, it’s bad science, it drives dishonest politics. The real discussion is between people who have done their homework.