Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Creation and Evolution

  • ID = Intense Desperation?

    Or perhaps it had set in a long time ago. I hadn’t really meant to comment on the current uproar about the Discovery Institute’s apparent “discovery” that part of Judge Jones’s ruling in the Dover case came “almost verbatim” from the propose findings of fact from the plaintiff’s attorneys. I’m not an attorney, and I hardly consider myself qualified to discuss that. But I can read, and I can see what’s similar and what’s not, and I can smell desperation.

    As a non-lawyer, some interesting questions come to mind.

    1. Did it take them this long to compare the proposed findings of fact with the final decision?
    2. What were they doing in the meantime, counting the pixels in each letter?
    3. Is there possibly some reason to conclude that other tactics having failed, this is a desperate attempt to catch the unwary by making claims that sound terrible, but that the average person doesn’t actually understand?
    4. Does anybody other than me find the combination of citing percentages in tenths of a percent (90.9%) with a phrase like “virtually verbatim” (see Discovery institute quote here and the original press release source below) to be a troubling case of using math to imply greater exactness than one’s data actually supports? OK, that one may seem more obscure, but it will be understood as 90.9% identical by many readers, and the one thing DI has is good media manipulators.

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  • Hiding the Evidence about Human Evolution

    This one has been going on for some time now, but it is still an active fight of which we should remain aware. Kenyan Pentecostals are trying to prevent the display of Kenya’s famous humanoid fossils in the national museum along with their evolutionary explanation. (See the ABC News story here.)

    The major complaint is that the theory of human evolution presented with the fossils is presented as fact. But the actual fact is that there is no alternative scientific explanation for these fossils. Christians should not be involved in trying to hid the evidence. I think it’s a hopeless task, but the only way to provide an honest reason to present an honest explanation would be to produce such a scientific explanation–coherent, testable,and capable of explaining the available evidence. I’m not holding my breath.

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  • The Danger of Unchanging Truth

    Recently, I’ve written a bit about the difference between science and theology. One of the key differences is that science expects to change, whereas if theology is not assuming it is founded on bedrock, it is usually looking for some bedrock. Religious people often criticize science on the basis that it changes too often. Its history is one of repeatedly overturned theories.

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  • How God Impacts Science

    There’s been a bit of a dust-up around the blogosphere about this over the last few days to a large extent amongst people involved in science professionally in one way or another. Since I’m not responding directly, I will only note that I read of this debate through Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and you can find links at Ed’s current post, Clarifying the Moran Debate.

    Since I’m called a theistic evolutionist, though it is a term to which I have previously objected, I thought I’d make a few comments on how God and scripture impact the way I look at science. I can’t say “the way I do science, because my field is Biblical studies, and not one of the natural sciences.

    My answer to the question could be either “lots, in every way” (to paraphrase Paul in Romans 3:2), or “not at all.”

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  • Making Miracles Possible

    Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars in which Ed Brayton responds to some of the scientific claims, I found this post.

    Now I’m not particularly interested in the specific scientific claim, and whether it makes the virgin birth more “possible” somehow.  What interests me here is the tendency to try to find natural explanations for miracle claims.  DaveScot says:

    I have a problem with these people in that they arbitrarily limit what science can potentially explain. The so called supernatural remains supernatural only as long as there’s no metric by which to measure it. Once a metric is discovered the supernatural becomes the natural.

    Paul quotes someone on the virgin birth of Christ saying that it defies everything
    science has revealed in regard to mammalian reproduction. This is utter dreck.

    My response, however, is disbelief.  First, explaining that some part of the reproductive process might be compatible with the human reproductive process seems to me to accomplish precisely nothing.  Is it DaveScot’s intention to claim that the virgin birth is a purely natural event?  But second how is it that he expects to come up with a metric to measure the supernatural?

    Bluntly, this illustrates even more why much of what is claimed for intelligent design (ID) is simply horrifying theology.  First, the virgin birth in which I express belief each Sunday in the apostle’s creed is not a natural event.  I don’t care how easy or hard it might be made to appear, it’s not natural.  The key point of having it in the creed in the first place is that it is an ultimate example of God stepping into history.  It’s different from those natural occurences, such as gravity or my own birth that occur due to natural law, or what I would better express as the consistent will of God.

    What DaveScot appears to be proposing here is that one eliminate the supernatural through learning to measure and presumably explain it.  But that goes quite contrary to the primary intelligent design claim of either irreducible complexity or specified complexity, which requires something other than a natural process to explain.  Now I must ask which ID theorists want.  Do they want to stop looking for a natural explanation, or would they prefer to explain everything naturally.  If the latter, in what way are they not more anti-God than their opponents.  (Personally I don’t think DaveScot’s claims here would hold general acceptance amongst ID proponents, but I could be wrong.)

    On my second point, however, I affirm God the creator in the same creed with the virgin birth, by which I do not mean a God of either disappears or becomes natural as we find a way to measure him.

    I have always had little sympathy for the tendency to try to explain miracles.  Either one believes God can intervene or one doesn’t.  If one does believe God can intervene, no natural explanation is necessary.  There could, of course, be alleged miracles which are merely fortuitous natural events.  But that is not the claim of believers.  The claim of believers is that God did, in fact, intervene in the case of the miracle.  For the virgin birth, the bigger claim than the physical event is that Jesus the human being was/became God incarnate and lived on earth as a human being.  No amount of explanation of the human birth processes can explain that.

    My personal belief is that while God created a universe that will successfully run without intervention, God does interven to communicate.  But I need no physical explanations of the possibility of such intervention.  If I had such, that would simply become another natural part of the universe.

    Again, I believe I’m confronted with the mysteriously shrinking god of ID.  It just doesn’t make it theologically.

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  • More on Evolution Conflict

    Ed Brayton has again weighed in on the framing of the conflict over science education. I agree with the way in which Ed has laid out the issues, and strongly recommend reading his piece.

    As an advocate of sound science education, I would like to repeat some things I’ve said before, but that are often forgotten in discussion.

    I am not opposed to free speech for intelligent design advocates. In fact, I see them exercising free speech all the time. What I would suggest they do about the peer reviewed publication is to simply establish one or more publications with peer review and publish scientific research in those publications. If it is done well, scientists will begin to read and respond to the new evidence they present. Of course I think the reason they are not generally published in peer-reviewed journals is because they are not doing research that is worthy of such publication.

    Further, I have no problem with ID being discussed at the college or university level to whatever extent the people who are teaching there want to discuss it. I went to college at a place where young earth creationism was a regular topic. Nobody is actually being repressed here, no matter how loud the whining becomes.

    But more important than my perception of repression or its absence–after all, I could be totally wrong–is the simple fact that there are other avenues open. In this age of the internet and various easy print publication opportunities, it’s quite easy to get something into print. But the real complaint is not getting published or not, it’s where one is published, or how much respect one gets from scienfic colleagues.

    That respect from scientific colleagues, however, has to be earned. And earning it is hard work. New ideas do work their way into the scientific community only slowly, and most new ideas get thrown out in the process of discussion. That is appropriate. One can argue that there should be more room or less room for new ideas, but ultimately, science must test ideas thoroughly before they are accepted.

    And that leads me to the place where I do not think that ID has a place–the high school science classroom. Why? Very simply I believe that the high school curriculum is packed enough with consensus science, and that it should be limited to that. Let new ideas be discussed elsewhere and when a scientific consensus arises, that will be time enough to add that material to the high school science curriculum.

    Framing the debate a s religion vs science, however, makes this difficult, no matter which side frames the discussion in that fashion.

    (Note: Read Ed’s piece before you comment here. I’m only making a small subpoint.)

  • Different Standards of Evidence

    In a post some time ago titled The Dog DID my Homework I commented on the odd inequity of intelligent design advocates asking for detailed evolutionary histories of each structure, while expecting no more than raw assertions of themselves.

    Carl Zimmer on The Loom has written a National Geographic article on the evolution of complex structures (I haven’t read it yet, but will get there soon). Casey Luskin responded (?) to the article, and Zimmer has in turn responded to him.

    Zimmer comments:

    It’s remarkable that he calls for an absurdly detailed reconstruction of history as evidence for evolution, while expecting nothing of the sort from advocates of intelligent design. Apparently the rules are different at the Discovery Institute. There you need only make vague references to a designer, claim some supposed shortfalls of evolution, and you’re done.

    I think this issue of the level of original research required of each side is the most telling point in the ID debate. ID advocates need to get down to doing and publishing original scientific research. Unfortunately, I don’t see any promising lines of such research, and apparently neither do the qualified scientists who should see them if there are some available.

  • Pseudo-Polymath Series on Genesis

    I’ve been intending to mention this since last week’s Christian Blog Carnival came out, but I’ve been distracted. Mark Olson at Pseudo-Polymath has started a series on Genesis from a philosophical perspective. The first entry is Reflections on Gensis: Chapter 1, and he has now posted the second entry, Reflections on Genesis: Chapters 2-3 (part 1).

    Right now I only want to make one comment and mention a couple of my own related posts. At the end of the first entry, Mark says:

    However, Kass suggests that scientific views evolution may deny the intelligibility and primacy of species (the separation noted in Genesis) and the importance and uniqueness of man. And in that sense it might be in opposition, but I’m not expert enough on evolution to know how notions “kind” and “species” which arise from Genesis are denied by evolutionary theory.

    I’d simply like to link to two of my previous posts that may relate; Design, Direction, and Evolution and An Evolutionary View of Kinds.

  • Wisdom, Discernment, and Creation

    My Breaking Christian News E-Mail tipped me off to this article on http://www.worldnetdaily.com”>WorldNetDaily titled End creation-evolution debate in your home. This sort of thing amazes me and makes me very, very concerned. The article advertises a new printing of the book Bishop James Ussher, The Annals of the World.

    Now I certainly do not mind seeing an old book reprinted, but even the title of the article makes ridiculous claims for this book. It will certainly not settle anything about creation-evolution debates. One should be warned by someone giving a month and day for the creation of the world based on texts that are at best written in years and with considerable doubts about those.

    But the article also calls this book “. . . a favorite of homeschoolers and those who take ancient history seriously.” That is simply incredible. Practically the entire field of ancient near eastern archeology has been created since that book was written. It is, itself, a historical artifact, and not a good source for the facts of the history of the world or of their interpretation. If homeschoolers are being taught history in this fashion, we have a great deal to be worried about.

    This is not wisdom and disernment. This is gullibility. I was homeschooled myself. Understand that I’m not criticizing homeschooling as such, though I do believe that many people try to homeschool who have neither the skills nor the discipline for it. But I am criticizing the use of materials that are not appropriate to the task for which they are used.

  • An Intelligent Designer in the Gaps

    I think there is a great deal of misunderstanding of the problems with a “God of the gaps” position. This is not a logical fallacy, but rather is more like an observation on the one hand and an implication on the other. I’m not going to try here for a deep philosophical discussion, but rather a simple overview of what I see as the practical application of God of the gaps positively and negatively.

    Essentially, “God of the gaps” results when people first credit some observed phenomenon to the action of God, then discover that this phenomenon has a natural explanation, and finally remove that activity from God’s sphere. In reverse it effectively says that God’s action is to be observed in the things that we do not understand.

    It is quite possible for someone to hold that God is equally active in both the things we understand and the things that we do not. But that is not the God of the gaps position. When one argues that God is demonstrated by particular things that we do not understand, and that complete understanding would remove that evidence, that person is essentially using a God of the gaps type of argument for the existence of God.

    Let’s take an example. In arguing for intelligent design, Michael Behe proposes that there are irreducibly complex systems, that there is no evolutionary explantion (using all natural causes) to explain the existence of such systems. He further claims that there can be no evolutionary explanation because incredibly improbable events would have to occur to produce all the parts of the irreducibly complex system simultaneously and in the proper relationship. The proposed solution is an “intelligent designer” who puts these things together.

    Now Behe does not claim that the intelligent designer must be God, but nobody actually proposes any plausibly designer other than God. Any lesser intelligent designer would itself require explanation. So for the moment, let’s assume that the intelligent designer is God, and that Behe’s argument is an argument for the existence of God. There is this system which could not be produced by natural causes, yet it exists, so it must be designed, and through other logic we arrive at God as the designer.

    Now suppose I am convinced of the existence of God by this particular argument. Then some fine microbiologist discovers a plausible evolutionary path for producing the system that I was convinced was irreducibly complex. What do I do? Well, if I’m honest I determine that this piece of evidence for the existence of God is no longer valid. If it was the key to my belief, I might have to give up my faith. Otherwise I might still believe, but have one less piece of evidence for that belief. God essentially would have retreated, at least in part, from this section of my universe.

    This is not precisely a logical fallacy, although it could lead to one or two. It is quite possible that something of which I am not aware has tinkered with the development of life on earth. Though I personally don’t believe it to be so, God could be intervening regularly in the development of life. One is not required to reject the notion that “God did it” outright.

    But of what value is that claim? We have two major problems. First, it’s been done many times. As natural explanations have been discovered, people have seen less and less need to assume God’s activity. Second, God makes a rather lousy hypothesis. Now before my Christian friends accuse me of blasphemy, let me note that my car makes a lousy hypothesis as well, but it’s quite an excellent car. God doesn’t make a good hypothesis because he is not an hypothesis. He is too undefined for that, and more importantly his power is not sufficiently limited in our definition. An hypothesis that explains everything explains nothing. It’s the equivalent of “stuff happens.”

    Christian students of the Bible and theology who reject the God of the gaps type of argument do not do so because it is logically impossible. We do so because it conflicts with our understanding of how God functions in the universe, and because as such it has been an untenable position in the past.

    Intelligent design resembles a “God of the gaps” argument in that it finds gaps in human knowledge and plugs God into the gap in our knowledge. I cannot be certain that they are wrong in each and every case, though I see no particular reason to believe they are right. But simply asserting that an undefined intelligent designer did it sure sounds to me like the intelligent designer in the gaps.

    It’s going to be simple to watch and see. If evolutionary scientists continue to discover new processes and fill in the gaps, then ID will continue to look like a “gaps” type argument and will have all its failings, particular a receding God, and explanations that explain nothing. ID advocates now accuse evolutionary scientists of lacking detailed explanations of the development of various systems, while in turn they simply claim that “the designer did it.” I can’t exclude that as a possibility, but I also can’t see any positive evidence in its favor. It’s pretty clear to me now, and time will serve to make it even clearer.