Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Theistic Evolution

  • 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.

  • Learning the Answer or How to Find It

    Joe Carter provides some thoughtful suggestions on sex education. He suggests that it is more important to teach children how to make moral decisions than it is to indoctrinate them into the particular solution you want them to accept.

    If forced to choose I would be firmly on the abstinence only side. But I believe the debate is rooted in a misguided focus on a false dilemma. Both approaches are primarily concerned with indoctrination toward a particular viewpoint and inoculation against the effects of certain behavior. Neither is concerned with providing an “education”, in the truest sense of the term. The abstinence advocates, for example, want teens to “just say no” while the comprehensive crowd want students to “just wear a condom.” Both are more concerned about “effectiveness” than with teaching teens how to think for themselves about human sexuality.

    I couldn’t agree more. I do, however, have one bone to pick. Why do certain conservatives have to find in practically everything a reason to attack the theory of evolution? Under heading Teleology Carter asks:

    . . . Is sex a gift from a benevolent Creator or merely evolution’s way of tricking us into passing on our genetic material? . . .

    Perhaps we might instead ask whether my responsibility to deal responsibly with what I have is dependent on the precise process by which I got it. Is my responsibility to be sexually responsible diminished if I am the product of evolution? I don’t think so, and I wonder about the “responsibility circuits” of those who think it is.

    To add a slightly different angle to this, I wonder why it is that Christians so often talk negatively about sex. By this I don’t mean that suggesting abstinence or fidelity is a negative way of talking. In fact, I believe that we have in Christianity fine ways to talk about joy and sexual fulfilment in a positive relationship. I think we would accomplish more by extolling the joys of committed relationships rather than railing against the evils of promiscuity. And note, again, that I do regard promiscuity as harmful.

    Let me ramble around one more corner. In an article titled Uganda’s Early Gains Against HIV Eroding, the Washington Post reports that early efforts against AIDS in Uganda were very successful, but that success has begun to erode. What were the characteristics of the early anti-HIV programs? At a concert shortly before he died, singer Philly Lutaaya performed a farewell concert and . . .

    [b]etween songs, he warned the stunned crowd that having several sex partners was a sure way to die in the age of AIDS, echoing pleas also made by political and religious leaders of the time.

    This fidelity, in the case of Uganda included asking polygamous families to remain with their circle of wives. The spread of AIDS was reduced by sticking to fidelity. Surely this is a message that Christians could get ahold of.

  • 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.

  • Evolution Sunday Meditation

    Why do I consider an “evolution Sunday” a good idea?

    Well, the fact is that I have some mixed emotions. I like the idea of a Sunday dedicated to religion and science, and the specific meeting point right now is evolution. No other scientific theory is eliciting the type of attack from the number of religious people that evolution does. Amongst Christians, it is often presented as a fundamental issue of belief in God or not, that Christianity is valid, or not.

    The date doesn’t work for me nearly so well. There are three reasons for this. The first is simply a matter of convenience. In many years the date will fall within Lent, and in most others very shortly before that. For many churches that means that there are many scheduled activities and there are fixed items on the liturgical calendar that pastors and church leaders are rightly reluctant to alter. The second is that the specific date, Charles Darwin’s birthday, does tend to put the focus on the issue of Darwin himself, raising such questions as whether Darwin should be regarded as a “saint” or some sort of symbol. The third reason is that many churches have members who take different positions on evolution. The church of which I am a member is such a church. The name “Evolution Sunday” is a substantial barrier for such a church.

    On the first issue I see a simple solution. If a church does not want to dedicate that particular Sunday to this topic, they can simply designate a different Sunday to carry out the same type of discussion. The rather considerable season after Easter would probably be a good time for such a Sunday.

    On the second and third, I would suggest that one simply rename the day to something like “Science and Religion Sunday.” This covers the topic, but doesn’t lead to the same connotations as “Darwin Day” or “Evolution Sunday.” I personally have no problem with publicly expressing my support for the theory of evolution as a theistic evolutionist, but I recognize that there are other theologically valid positions within Christianity, and for a church that is not unified on the topic, a more open title might be appropriate.

    In the same way, I would suggest that a church conduct their commemoration, celebration, study, or other such activity in a way that allows open debate and discussion. While I do not think that either intelligent design or any form of creationism belong in the public school classroom, both because of the issue of religion supported by state money and because I believe that public school curriculum should come from consensus positions of the various fields of study, the church is an excellent place for such a discussion. Churches can and should be places of lively intellectual exchange, and such intellectual activity will be a spiritual blessing to the church as well as to the community.

    One irony, in my view, of the stenuous efforts to introduce intelligent design or other varieties of creationism into the public school classrooms is that the educational opportunities available in churches are so massively underutilized. And here is what I regard as an even better idea for introducing activities about science into church life–year round educational activities. Educate parents, educate the young people, educate the parents to use their homes as a place of active spiritual and intellectual development. There is no reason for the church to constantly lose ground to secular forces in the area of education. Much of what passes for Sunday School and for youth educational programs is really a rather poor excuse.

    Science is part of the world in which we live, and one way or another, we need to deal with it and integrate it with our spiritual life. That must be a function of the church.

  • Theodicy: Taking a Stab at Natural Evil

    Theodicy is a big subject, but for many people it relates closely to acceptance by Christians of the theory of evolution. I recall conversing with one friend who commented that while he could understand my acceptance of evolution, he just had a terribly hard time accepting a loving God who could, at the same time, use a process that involved so much killing and destruction in the creation of life.

    Now personally, I have a much harder time dealing with the holocaust, the Russian revolution, or the death of Saudi Middle School girls because of the actions of religious police. Those actions represent clear evil to me, moral choices made in favor of evil resulting in pain and death. The fact that God allows such things requires a bit of explaining.

    Nonetheless, the sheer bloodiness of the evolutionary process is certainly troubling to many. Since I grew up believing in young earth creationism I can understand this. To go from the idea that God painlessly and bloodlessly created all the creatures essentially as they are, and that all pain and death are the result of evil, to a view that pain and death are simply a part of existence in the universe is quite a step. There are those who will say blithely that evolution really doesn’t make any theological difference. It’s just a matter of the technique God used to create. But that is to ignore serious implications.

    In this case, however, the implications also apply to old earth and/or intelligent design creationists just as much as they do to theistic evolutionists. The blood and guts exist, and they exist before any human being has made a choice to sin. Thus they seem to be a feature of the universe rather than the result of some wrong action. This is called “natural evil.” Wikipedia gives a fair definition, but when dealing with creation one needs to note in addition that the traditional Christian view that has accomplanied young earth creationism is that there was no natural evil in the world prior to the fall of man (Genesis 3), and that all natural evil resulted from that moral failure. Thus while you can distinguish natural evil from moral evil on an ongoing basis, even natural evil ultimately was caused by the actions of a moral agent.

    Dr. William Dembski has written an excellent article on this subject, Christian Theodicy in Light of
    Genesis and Modern Science    . Those who read this blog regularly will be aware that I generally don’t hold a positive view of Dembski’s work, so listen to me here. This article is the best single discussion of natural evil that I’ve read. It’s clear, well argued, and creative. I think those who write on theodicy will be responding to it and referencing it for some time to come. Having said that, I disagree with the major conclusion and would debate a number of individual elements. Dembski believes in an old earth, though he also supports intelligent design, which makes his overall view very close to that of most old earth creationists. I’m going to quote it here simply to demonstrate the widespread acknowledgement that this is a problem. In some later posts I plan to respond to individual elements of Dembski’s view.

    With regard to Hugh Ross, he says:

    Nonetheless, the actual arguments I’ve seen from old-earth creationists that attempt to preserve both theological and scientific orthodoxy have struck me as inadequate if by theological orthodoxy one means a traditional understanding of the Fall that traces all natural and personal evil in the world to human sin. Take Hugh Ross. Ross does not believe the Garden of Eden was free of death, decay, pain, and suffering. For him, there was never a perfect paradise. To justify this claim scripturally, Ross will cite Genesis 3:16, in which God informs Eve after she has sinned that he will greatly multiply her pain in childbirth. Since zero multiplied by anything remains zero, Ross infers that God did not here initiate Eve’s pain but rather increased her existing pain in childbirth. More generally, Ross will suggest that God uses randomness, waste, and inefficiencies (his terms) to bring about the “very good” world into which he placed Adam.

    I will simply note that I sympathize with the problem here. For people who are used to thinking of a God who uses no “randomness, waste, and inefficiencies” this seems a pretty serious problem. Dembski cites Ross as accepting that, and indeed he accepts that he himself has a need to discuss this particular problem.

    I was thinking about all of this when I ran across a post by Carl Zimmer on The Loom, Cancer: An Evolutionary Disease (follow links from there to an abundance of additional information). My son died of cancer, and suddenly the whole issue becomes personal. In my view of evolution, cancer is just as much a product of natural selection as is anything else. So “natural evil” touched me rather directly in this case. At the same time, I’m extremely interested in seeing evolutionary research aid our understanding of cancer and help find cures.

    Now let me try to get to the point of this note. After thinking a bit about how I’ve answered this question before, I simply don’t believe in natural evil. What we call natural evil is simply the environment in which we live, and which rewards our good choices and “punishes” our bad choices. Further, the sort of environment proposed by young earth creationists–which I believe for the first 20 odd years of my life, is non-sensical. Dembski quotes Ross as referring to the “increase” in labor indicated in Genesis 3 as part of the curse as a reason to believe that there was hardship and death prior to the fall and it was merely increased.

    I would suggest that there’s a better reason: It simply couldn’t be any other way. And Genesis confirms this, I believe, when it says that God placed the man in the garden ” to till it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15 NRSV). Do you suppose that if Adam did not till the garden, the plants would grow equally well? If he chose one seed over another, would there be more of what he did plant than of what he didn’t? Even the much maligned author of the second creation story (Genesis 2:4b and following) doesn’t imagine a perfect world in the way that Christian theology imagined. There would still be choices and there would still be consequences, ultimately confirmed simply by the fact that the human couple were able to make the choice to sin, and noticed consequences even before God came a talked to them.

    There would simply be no meaning to moral evil, or no possibility of it in a world in which there were no consequences to one’s choices, and if there are consequences, then it must be possible for them to be negative as well as positive.

    I’ll be posting more details. This is just my opening shot on the topic. Watch for the category Theodicy in the coming weeks.

  • A Short Note on Theistic Evolution and Frontloading

    I know, none of you readers believe I am capable of being brief, but I’m going to try! This post was triggered by my reading of Richard B. Hoppe’s post Dissent Out of Bounds on Uncommon Dissent (Oops, make that “Descent”), which is largely about Uncommon Descent’s comment censorship (because of which I do not comment there and I ceased tracking back to them), but the comments in question bring up some excellent points.

    One key is a definition of design. There’s some good discussion of that in the comments. But the issue I want to address is the matter of design and theistic evolution. It seems that when certain intelligent design (ID) proponents wish to make their movement seem larger, they include theistic evolutionists, on the grounds that if we believe the universe is designed, we do, in fact, believe in intelligent design. One assumes, of course, that we don’t believe in unintelligent design! When we’re to be excluded because we don’t believe in the right type and time of design, then we’re asked to produce a place, time, and proof of design, which in general we don’t think possible.

    (more…)