Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Creation and Evolution

  • Is there such a thing as a theistic evolutionist?

    Panda’s Thumb writer Pim van Meurs gave an irony award to Salvador Cordova whom he quotes as saying:

    Darwinian TE (Theistic Evolution) just doesn’t cut it scientifically.

    That is ironic, considering that young earth creationism makes many assertions that contradict archeology, not to mention geology. Young earth doesn’t even match the written record.

    But this statement does remind me of all the reasons I don’t like the label “theist evolutionist.” I’m a theist and I’m an evolutionist, but the two about as unrelated as any two ideas. As a theist I see nature as God’s handiwork, and thus evolution as God’s elegant way of producing diversity. But that doesn’t change what I see when I see nature.

    There really should be no difference between a theistic evolutionist and any other variety in the field or in the lab. Now I’m not a scientist at all, but I don’t keep inserting “and God did that” between the lines of every science book I read.

    Two commenters on Panda’s Thumb, Raging Bee and Doug S make extremely cogent comments.

    As I’ve argued in my response to The God Delusion, my theist is emphatically not a scientific thesis, nor do I claim scientific evidence for it. So in answer to my title question, I think not. But we’re probably stuck with the term to describe people like me no matter how weak it is.

  • Dinosaur Protein

    If you’ve seen the information on T. Rex protein and are wondering what it does and doesn’t mean will problem find this post on Pharyngula helpful. There are already creationist misinterpretations of this information, such as this one:

    For the moment, let’s not ignore the importance of what has been found (and as will be declared in the soon-to-open Creation Museum): finding T. rex soft tissue is compelling evidence that it was not 65 million years ago that dinosaurs died out, as given on the evolutionary timeline.

    This looks like another example of excellent scientific work.

  • The Complexity of the Creator

    The attack on moderation, or excluding the middle (broadly conceived) and the assumption that this is all there is are the two key points of disagreement, from which most everything else follows.

    The assumption that this physical universe is all that exists is illustrated in the discussion of the multiverse theory (pp. 145-147). Now do not take this too far. I’m actually attracted by the multiverse theory as he expresses it. It’s obviously speculation, but it’s enjoyable speculation at least, and may even point in the right direction in years to come. My knowledge of physics is too small to go any further than that.

    But for me the question still remains–who is the creator? At some point you do have to get to the question of why there is something rather than nothing. The environment in which the universes of the multiverse exist, such as to be subjected to natural selection must exist, and thus you only push the question back another step. Now, instead of asking where the universe comes from, you must ask where the multiverse comes from. The universe is clearly not nearly so universal as we thought (if these speculations are true). It is naturally caused by the multiverse.

    This should be familiar to those who have studied arguments for the existence of God. The question frequently comes back to where God comes from. But that is the point of that particular category of argument. Because nothing else is self-existent, we look for a self-existent source for other things, because it seems pretty clear that something must be self-existent. (Of course it may indeed be “turtles all the way down!”)

    At the same time if we admit that something is self-existent we have already taken a step beyond anything we understand within the physical world. We’re imagining something that’s so far out of the box that it’s, well, out of the universe, or perhaps even out of the multiverse. At this point, I think I’m making one of the best arguments for agnosticism. Whatever is the ultimate cause or “ground of all being” (Tillich), is not something we can measure according to the standards we know.

    Thus I find it totally irrelevant, though interesting, for Dawkins to claim that God must be “very very complex and presumably irreducibly so!” Well, yes. And if theists in general were asserting that God had first evolved into what he is and then created the universe, that would be relevant. But this is a clear example of Dawkins assumption that even God must be natural. He first defines God into the natural universe and then argues against him, but that is simply a complex way of assuming one’s conclusions. As it is, it kind of misses the point.

    What theists are saying is that there simply is no natural force that can produce the creator, period, so the creator is something that is outside of our physical universe, who operates according to very different laws.

    For a contrary view more conservative than mine, see Christianity and Secularism by Elgin Hushbeck, Jr. (My company publishes that book.)

  • Points of Agreement

    [Continuing my series responding to The God Delusion. The starting entry is From the Land of the Deluded.]

    It may surprise many readers to know that I have a number of points of agreement with Dawkins. Since I have blogged about many of these things before, I’m only going to give a basic list with an occasional link to other writing I have done on the subject.

    First, I accept the theory of evolution, and I even appreciate the description Dawkins gives about it. For an understanding of atheistic evolution (and I believe the adjective is not unfair in his case), I recommend The Blind Watchmaker (link to my brief review). But I also recommend it to anyone who simply wants to understand the simple power of variation plus natural selection to produce amazing things. It’s wonderfully well written and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I even understood Gould’s punctuated equilibria much better after I read it! (Gould is one of my favorite science authors of all time, but he tends to be more wordy and is easier to misunderstand than Dawkins.)

    Second, while I know that many Christians have been offended by the title and the tone of the book, I’m afraid I don’t see the point. I titled my opening entry From the Land of the Deluded. Why? Is it because I believe I am, in fact, deluded? No. I just find it amusing. What is puzzling to me is that Christians are concerned that an atheist calls them deluded. If he is, in fact, an atheist, as what else could he regard them? If he is an atheist he doesn’t share many basic assumptions with them. What possible offense can his judgment have on them? I’m a believer in dialog, and I think dialog needs to be courteous. But dialog also needs to be clear. We need to know what each party to the discussion actually believes, otherwise we cannot possibly hope to come to a real understanding.

    Third, I deplore the negative stereotyping of atheists in American or any other culture. I do not believe that atheists are by nature immoral any more than anyone else. I would have no problem voting for an atheist for public office.

    Fourth, I do not believe in indoctrination. I do believe in religious education. I advocate this distinction in churches. A child should know about more than his birth faith and should have the right to make an informed choice. This means hearing about other faiths and about the option of no faith, and I would provide this training in Sunday School. Note that I don’t mean teaching from one of the little “Different Religions and How to Convert Them” kind of books, but from materials that positively present the views of the particular group. I blogged about this previously here.

    Fifth, I’m pretty happy both with the Zeitgeist commandments enumerated on page 263 and 264, and with Dawkins’s amendments to the same. It’s perhaps odd that coming from such different positions, we look for such similar things in society, but I think it is a good indication that moderation is a possible option.

    Sixth, I do believe that religious beliefs should be subject to challenge, and I agree pretty much down the line with his comments on the Danish cartoons story (p. 24ff). I blogged about it previously here.

    Sixth, last but not least, I must call attention to the footnote on page 321, quoting Ann Coulter: “I defy any of my co-religionists to tell me they do not laugh at the idea of Dawkins burning in hell.” Well, I have not read Ann’s book, so assuming Dawkins has quoted her correctly, I will say simply that I do not laugh at any such thing, nor do I regard it as a Christian attitude for anyone to laugh at the prospect of anyone else burning in hell. (Hell itself is another worthwhile topic, but I’m not going there right now.)

    When there is conflict on issues such as this, I am in favor of religious freedom. I wish I had come away from The God Delusion with the feeling that Dawkins also favors freedom, but I’m not certain. He seems to have a certain tendency to assume that he is right (not necessarily a bad thing), and to assume that he can also make a better choice for everyone else, which I think is a bad thing.

  • Collins on Faith and Science

    This CNN article on Francis Collins also comes from a friend’s e-mail. I’m happy to call attention to it. Dr. Francis Collins is both an evangelical Christian and accepts the theory of evolution. His testimony is interesting.

    I will be commenting some more on the relationship between science and religion in the next few days as I complete some reading, but for now, I see much here that is worth considering.

  • God Guided Evolution

    Ed Brayton has an interesting post on views of evolution amongst doctors, which is based on this post by Steve Reuland on the Panda’s Thumb. I should have gotten around to it earlier, like when it was first posted, but it’s finally Saturday, I have a few minutes to work on it, and Ed’s post got me started.

    Quoting from the Panda’s Thumb:

    One question gives respondents three choices, each of which requires the respondent to make a statement about his or her belief in God. The choices are as follows: 1. God created humans exactly as they appear now; 2. God initiated and guided an evolutionary process that has led to current human beings; 3. Humans evolved naturally with no supernatural involvement – no divinity played any role.

    Ed further notes that:

    Option #2 – God initiated and guided an evolutionary process that has led to current human beings – is not ID, it’s theistic evolution.

    I have a serious problem with the survey question in that I would have to answer option 3 for myself, and yet I’m a theistic evolutionist–or I think that’s what I am. It depends on what one means by the word “guidance,” I suppose, though it seems to me that “thesitic evolutionist” should refer to one who is both a theist and who accepts the theory of evolution. Since option 2 refers specifically to human evolution, it gets right down to the ultimate question of guidance occurring within the process of evolution of one life form to another. Does evolution work by itself or not?

    There are theistic evolutionists who believe that God guided the process of human evolution, for example, but did so in such a way as to conceal his tracks. Now that’s entirely possible, but it introduces a specific purpose into the process–the productions of humans such as you and me. To many, it seems a no-brainer that a Christian would have to accept this concept of evolution. After all, what meaning do concepts like original sin and redemption mean if God didn’t specifically create human beings, as we are, in some sense of the word. As I understand evolution, it would require some kind of guidance to guarantee that random variation combined with undirected selection would produce any particular creature. There are simply too many accidents involved.

    Say we have a mastodon with a particularly nice mutation for dealing with excessive cold, but he is struck by lightning before passing on that trait. The trait disappears, but not because it’s not a good one; it is lost by accident. Over millions of years the likelihood of such accidents is extremely high, and the particular result cannot be guaranteed unless you have some sort of guidance, whether that comes from front-loading or from intervention along the way.

    But I personally think it’s necessary to give up the idea that human beings, precisely as we now have them, are the goal of evolution. I do believe in a type of teleology in creation, i.e. that God has a purpose, but that purpose can be primarily stated as diversity. Given the possibility of intelligence being produced through evolutionary processes, and the extended amounts of space and time available, I think it was inevitable that intelligence would be produced by evolutionary processes. It’s hardly my field of expertise, but I suspect that we’ll find that life has come into existence numerous times and it’s quite possible that intelligence has occurred many times in the universe also and that we are not unique in that sense.

    In fact, I think that such a God makes much more sense. In other words, I believe that evolution can contribute to broadening and deepening our understanding with God. The idea that God created this giant universe with the intent to deal solely and exclusively with one group of intelligent creatures off to the side in a rather ordinary galaxy has never made sense to me. Understand evolution as being God’s means of producing diversity makes sense of that point to me. I think it’s likely that there’s some creature out there somewhere who has a body type I might not even recognize and who is also trying to figure out just where he fits into the grand scheme of things. I find that fascinating and exciting!

    So to me, as a theist, the guidance of evolution is solely in the sense that God chooses to produce a universe with natural laws that will eventually create a great diversity of creatures, and I suspect that we haven’t even a minimal clue as to just how extensive the variety this method can produce actually is. We may want to feel special, but I think we might as well get started now realizing that we’re just one of many very interesting things that could be produced by the evolutionary processes God created.

    Christians may object that the Bible speaks of us as special. I would ask simply just what would you expect of a book involved in the specific interactions of God and human beings? Of course I see a much greater human involvement in scripture than do most Christians, but I think we’re reacting to certain statements much like the grandchild whose grandfather tells him that he’s “grandpa’s special boy” and assumes from that statement that granpa loves him more than all the other grandchildren. Meanwhile, grandpa is off telling the others that they are also “grandpa’s special girl or boy” and so forth. If we’re serious about God being infinite, then we also have to realize that “special” doesn’t exhaust his attention. He doesn’t have to have priority lists.

    My own view is that any naturally occurring intelligence would call forth God’s spiritual contact and communication as those creatures struggle with who they are and why they exist. As they come to realize just where they stand in the general scheme of things it’s time also for them to realize that they have to make a lot of their own way in the universe, because while they may be special to God, they don’t have an exclusive on being special.

    I’m not trying to exclude those who believe in a more direct guidance from the ranks of theistic evolutionists; that would be pointless, and they’d be more likely to win and exclude me. I just want to point out that there is more than one way to be a theist and also accept evolution. God is the ground of all being, as Paul Tillich said, and he is thus the ground of all evolution. But that doesn’t mean he has to tinker with it.

  • Newsweek Article on Human Evolution

    There’s an excellent piece on human evolution in Newsweek, written for those of us who are not scientists. I think there are a couple of unclear points, but for the most part it’s a good update on the state of science. I did notice that things that have been around for some years seem to be considered brand new and exciting–exciting they certainly are, but the simple “begat” idea of human evolution has been weakening for a long time.

    In any case, this is an article worth reading. I’ve seen the various pieces on more scientific blogs, but as an overview for the non-scientist, this one is good.

  • Two New Gaps in the Fossil Record

    I love it when these kinds of news stories hit the popular media. A new species of dinosaur was discovered by Michael Ryan in Alberta while he was a graduate student, and the find has now been published in the Journal of Paleontology, according to MSNBC. The dinosaur species is named Albertaceratops nesmoi, and it provides an intermediate between earlier, long-horned dinosaurs and more recent, shorter horned forms. (Note: I am not a subscriber to the journal, nor a paleontologist, and do not have access to the original article.)

    To quote:

    That makes the newly found creature an intermediate between older forms with large horns and later small-horned relatives, said State of Utah paleontologist Jim Kirkland, who with Douglas Wolfe identified Zuniceratops in New Mexico in 1998. He predicted then that something like Ryan’s find would turn up.

    Of course, our creationist buddies will certainly both fail to see this as an intermediate, and point out that there are huge unfilled gaps to either side, thus inspiring my title after the fact. 🙂

  • Rosenhouse Dissects Johnson

    Jason Rosenhouse has an excellent discussion or even better dissection of some recent writing by Philip Johnson. I’ve had this partial entry on Johnson sitting amongst my drafts for ages, but since Johnson is now bringing forth many of the same arguments, and Rosenhouse has quite thoroughly demolished them, I will simply refer you to his post.

    For some reason lawyers think they have a special handle on argument, but on scientific and religious topics it appears to be largely vacuous. Perhaps they should allow some facts to interfere somehow.

  • Automotive and Human Evolution

    One of the most dangerous types of arguments is the argument from an analogy. In fact, I think that argument is rarely used to good effect. Illustration from analogy, yes, but no additional weight of argument supplied otherwise.

    Ed Brayton discusses another example as Bill Dembski, always the master of spin, claims that vestigial organs can indicate a designer. His analogy? The development of the automobile, and particularly the running board.

    Running board, appendix; running board, appendix. No, I don’t get it. (FWIW, I’m aware of arguments about precisely how “useless” an appendix is. Substitute your favorite vestigial organ as desired.)

    Ed’s comment is on point:

    What an odd argument – “I found something that humans designed that had an unnecessary aspect to it; therefore, God would have created things just like that too.” As if God learned how to design from his own creation? Just bizarre reasoning. Of course, the good thing about invoking God as an explanation for things is that He could have created absolutely anything in any way at his whim.

    Certainly God can do anything he wants. It happens he wanted to allow evolution to produce the variety of life we now have. Get over it, Bill. God doesn’t need your spin.