Eddie's Defense of Natural Theology

I agree with you, George, that the prevailing ethos at BioLogos has frequently supported a theology of what you call the “nonchalant” God. I also hope, as you do, that this sort of subtle, implicit preference never becomes an underlying bias of Peaceful Science.

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Since Pantheism and Deism are both errors from an orthodox Christian point of view, and since BioLogos claims in its mission statements to be true to traditional Christian faith, then such a “defense” would not help BioLogos much! The evangelical folks they are trying to convert to Darwin would still fulminate against their theology.

I can’t think of any orthodox Christian (or Jewish or Muslim) tradition in which God is not “separate from nature” in a crucial sense. The natural world is created; it is populated entirely by creatures. God is uncreated; he transcends nature. True, it can be said that God is also immanent in nature; but the immanence is not the immanence of Pantheism. So to complain that ID people separate God from nature, as if that is a theological blunder of some sort, is to suggest that all the Abrahamic religions commit the same theological error. And I doubt that BioLogos would ever officially endorse that position.

Is it possible that you are reading into BioLogos what you would like to see there, i.e., a less transcendent, more pantheistic notion of God? I know that you have said you are an atheist, and that doesn’t offend or bother me at all, but I have observed that to the extent atheists tolerate any religion at all, it is often pantheistic forms that they speak most kindly of. Actually, given a choice between someone like Bertrand Russell and someone like Thomas Jay Oord or Francisco Ayala (if Ayala hasn’t gone beyond pantheism to outright atheism), I would prefer Russell. Give me full-blooded orthodox Christian doctrine, or give me a well-thought-out critique of Christian doctrine; I respect both. It’s lukewarm, fuzzy intellectual compromises, that trade on the ambiguous use of terms such as “natural” and “providential” and “guidance”, that don’t turn my crank.

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OK, I was most likely wrong to say that “the majority of ID advocates are philosophers.” But I think it’s still true that a disproportionately large number are philosophers, especially the most prominent ones. Meyer, Johnson, and Dembski, Berlinski are not scientists, but are some of the biggest voices in the movement. And very few (per your own admission, only 3) are scientists with active research programs outside of ID. Is there any other scientific theory with a similar status?

I’m not sure taking a few courses in science and reading scientific journals give you “familiarity with how science operates.” The test of being a true scientist is publishing papers in mainstream scientific peer-reviewed journals. I mean, if I took a few courses in philosophy and read some philosophy papers (and I did actually do that), I don’t think I could just claim that I’m now a philosopher. I would have to make an original contribution to philosophy to claim that.

What I’m saying is that most scientists who actually do science would find it hard to support ID-type explanations, because it’s very different from normal science as it is practiced today. If you are working in science, you are reminded of this everyday. That is different from if you just took some science courses in the past. And this is borne out by the fact that very few practicing scientists support ID. This is also how you should understand why scientists are skeptical of design-type arguments: it’s not just because of some restrictive Baconian notion of science they were indoctrinated in their graduate science courses. It’s because it’s not the normal way of doing things that actually gives results.

I agree. There can be boundary disputes. I just don’t think ID-type arguments is the right way of doing this, and you already agree with me that some ID arguments are not very good. I’ve already outlined in my other posts what could be better ways to look for design and/or Divine Providence informed by science, and I think @jongarvey agrees with me (and perhaps you as well).

(Emphasis mine)
The fine-tuning folks in physics are not, as far as I know, making a scientific argument that fine-tuning gives evidence for the existence of God. That is not a testable claim, so it is outside the realm of science. I think the defensiveness of people from even supplementing notions of science with notions of teleology is that often these introduced concepts are not clearly empirically testable, and thus violate a fundamental tenet of what counts as science. This is similar to how orthodox Christians are often suspicious of attempts to qualify definitions of biblical inerrancy, for example.

This is not a reaction limited to ID. For example, recently among some philosophers and a few string theorists the idea was floated about that perhaps it is OK for some theories to never be confirmed experimentally, yet regarded as verified - the idea of “non-empirical science.” (I think @Patrick brought this up in a different thread a few days ago also.) There has also been strong reaction against this in the rest of the community. Basically, scientists are wary of changing the fundamental criteria of how to do science, even if it’s only to “supplement” it. Once you start doing it, it’s possible that the statement “science shows X” is no longer as objective and certain as it used to be.

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@Eddie

I believe YECs intentionally promote this erroneous position… I’ve seen it several times… by people who know better.

Initial link to Wright’s Bampton Lectures here

Daniel:

Though I agree with you on much, I don’t think we are going to see eye-to-eye on the issues regarding scientific professionalism. You are a science grad student and presumably committed to a career in physics, and you look at things from that viewpoint. I understand this. Religion scholars and philosophers and historians etc. also have their insider’s viewpoint on the way things should be properly done in religion, philosophy, history, etc. I have a degree of sympathy with this. Specialists have insights to teach the world. Nonetheless, after more than 60 years of living, with much of my time spent in and around academics, I am much less convinced than many academic specialists seem to be that they are the only ones qualified to touch on matters related to their subjects.

I was a superb, way above average student in school, in all subjects – math, physics, chemistry, space science, history, geography, Latin, French, English, I skipped grades, was sent to gifted learner’s schools, won scholarships, etc., eventually going to a very good research university on a science scholarship. But while I loved science, I also loved all other academic subjects. I have learned the different thought-patterns of the different professionals over my lifetime (much high-level conversation with scientists, economists, statisticians, engineers, etc. as well as Classicists, political scientists, theologians, historians, etc.), and I find that specialists tend to develop “tunnel vision” – tend to see things in one way, the way that is most drilled into them by their training, and by the reward system (jobs, tenure, grants, promotions) in their profession. I don’t find the majority of specialists in most subjects – science or humanities or social science – very intellectually flexible or very willing to look at things in new ways. Most scientists and scholars are much more comfortable working within existing paradigms, filling out their details, etc. But I’ve always been attracted more to the scientists and scholars who are mavericks, who think outside the box.

Such creative people may notice some relevance of information theory or physics or philosophy to evolutionary theory, or may notice some relevance of ecology to the study of ancient history, etc. And such people are not the sort of people to play the “that’s not science” card or the “that’s not history” card – they are more willing to expand their horizons, and they are quite willing to learn from people from other fields who lack their specialized training. In fact, Darwin and Wallace both attributed their key insight of “natural selection” to the reading of an economist, Malthus; reading “outside their field” helped them “inside their field”.

For example, J. Scott Turner is a fully qualified physiologist, with many publications, an expert among other things on the biology of termites and the ecology of their mounds. He is now writing about evolution, and his approach to evolution requires a fresh look at the question, “What is life, anyway?” So he reads all the standard biological stuff, but he also reads philosophy, theology, or any other material which might be able to help him get a handle on the nature of life. He will read a modern technical journals but he will read Aristotle as well. That’s the kind of scientist I admire, and that is the kind of scientist I would have tried to be, had I finally chosen to stay in science rather than switch to the humanities and theology. The Polanyis, the Heisenbergs, the Hoyles – these are kinds of scientists I admire as broad thinkers, more than the scientist who spends his entire career studying four or five proteins used in the wings of fruit flies.

So I guess I’m finding much of what you say in your new post (as opposed to what you said in earlier posts, which resonated with me) to be a reflection of a sort of professional defensiveness, a sort of guarding of the fort, to prevent any widening of perspective on origins questions, beyond what is currently acceptable to the card-carrying insiders. And I don’t find that intellectually appealing.

I don’t much care whether ID is classed as “science” or not. I think the ID folks make too big a deal about being called “scientific.” But equally I think their opponents are also too obsessed with what counts as “science”. I’m more concerned with what’s true, whether it’s scientific or not. For example, if the question is: “Did life arise by the accidental sloshing together of simple molecules in the primeval ocean, which by chance built up more and more complex molecules etc. until life formed?” I don’t see why all intelligent discussion – whether it comes from biochemists or economists or philosophers – should not be allowed. But certain people act as if “origin of life” is their proprietary interest – belongs to their profession only, and no one else has anything valid to say about it. This “you don’t have the union card, so you can’t come to the meeting” attitude is to me deeply anti-intellectual.

I don’t object when a scientist or medical doctor or anyone makes a point about philosophy or theology I hadn’t thought about before. I don’t say, “You’re not a theologian, and therefore you couldn’t possibly have an insight into theological questions.” I weigh the ideas on their merit, not on who they came from.

I’ve heard people make the idiotic claim that Michael Behe has no right to speak about evolution, because he is not a biologist, but only a biochemist, the premise being that the subject “evolution” somehow “belongs” to biologists exclusively. (But of course those same people never object when Larry Moran, also a biochemist and not a biologist, denounces Behe. Then, all of a sudden, the boundaries are relaxed.) This territorial mentality is to me non-productive.

What does it matter if Bill Dembski is not a “scientist” but a “mathematician”? I have a friend at one of the top ten universities in the world who is not a scientist, but a mathematician. He is called upon by scientists from all fields – biology, engineering, even economics – to help them with their work. Is he unqualified to say anything at all about science because he is not a “scientist”? That makes no sense. If someone wants to argue that Bill Dembski’s arguments are flawed, that is perfectly fine with me; but to argue that he doesn’t need to be listened to because he’s “not a scientist, only a mathematician” is to me symptomatic of a tribal defensiveness.

This “who counts as a scientist” or “who counts as a biologist” etc. attitude is really a species of argumentum ad hominem – arguing against the person rather than the person’s argument. I would rather see your specific criticisms of particular ID writer’s particular claims, than your general objection to the fact that certain ID writers don’t match your definition of “scientist.” If their science is inadequate, you should be able to show that without applying labels to them.

And of course, the place to do that is not here, since this thread is about “natural theology” not “ID arguments for design”. If you want a discussion about the flaws in ID arguments, I would suggest you post a column here on something like: “Five Flaws I Have Found in ID Arguments” – and then those who wish to discuss those arguments and your rebuttal could answer them. I would have nothing against such a discussion. But it’s not what I’ve been talking about here, and I’d rather stick to the main theme.

By the way, for what it’s worth, I agree with you entirely about the problem with theories that can never be confirmed experimentally. String theory and multiverse are two theories which are either impossible or very hard to confirm experimentally, yet some mathematicians and physicists insist they should be accepted on the strength of the equations alone, or because of their “elegance and simplicity” or the like. I agree that science requires empirical confirmation. But in fact, if we limited our thoughts on the origin of life to strictly what has been confirmed by empirical data, we would have to say that all current theories of accidental abiogenesis are in a very weak state. Yet if you ask most biologists, I suspect that you would find that they believe that life did in fact come about accidentally, even if we have no idea how. That’s because a metaphysical commitment (to non-design) is overriding commitment to good empirical science, which so far – says James Tour, who knows more than most about this subject – give very little grounds for an accidental origin of life. That is another reason why it’s good to have philosophers in on even “scientific” discussions; philosophers are good at spotting such tacit metaphysical commitments, whereas biologists have zero training in that area (as I know from my years spent with biology, biochemistry etc. students).

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Daniel,
I wish you well in a career in physics. Here is my advice to you from a retired 60 year old technologist - Enjoy the technical work at the cutting edge for as long as you can but make sure that you are following the money.

5 posts were split to a new topic: Poll: Did God Kickstart Life?

Dear Eddie,
Thank you for continuing to engage me in this conversation, even if our differing backgrounds result in some disagreement.

Expertise and the “Right” to Speak about Evolution

Perhaps I was making my point too strongly with regards to the qualifications of ID people. You are absolutely right that progress in science often comes from cross-pollination from different subject areas. Even in physics this is happening every day - atomic physicists using their systems to simulate condensed matter models, mathematicians being inspired by the ideas of string theorists, physicists working together with biologists, to name a few examples. By itself, there is no reason for mathematician and philosopher Dembski, or biochemist Behe, to be forbidden from speaking about evolution. There are many evolutionary biologists whose formal training was mainly in math or physics (Martin Nowak is a prominent example here at Harvard).

My main point was mainly a question of why, even after over two decades, have few biologists taken up the claims of Dembski, such that his work, instead of that of biologists in the field, is still relied on as the main intellectual defense of the movement? Even if Darwin was inspired by Malthus, he formulated his theory using arguments and language that biologists would understand, instead of economists. If Dembski had a great point, then we would expect that eventually biologists would pick up on it, formulating his arguments to create a fruitful research program (as Lakatos would phrase it). We haven’t really seen that. But perhaps Dembski’s time just hasn’t come, and all biologists are missing something. We will see. As you said, this is not the place to discuss specifics of ID arguments. But I am not really making a direct argument against ID. Instead, this is a meta-level observation about ID.

What are the Rules of Interdisciplinary Thinking?

Your personal background, especially your interest in learning about all fields and looking about things in new ways, actually resonates with me deeply. When I was a teenager, I also had the dream of being a sort of polymath - being well-versed in more than just one academic area. This is why in this thread, I strenuously objected to being characterized as a narrow-minded specialist who is making blind metaphysical commitments without knowing, similar to Hawking proclaiming that “philosophy is dead.” Like you, I admire people like Heisenberg and Polanyi, whose thought stretched across disciplines. And this is not just lip service. I regularly lead discussions in a weekly philosophy of science discussion group at Harvard, I attended a multi-day conference about Thomistic philosophy, and I read many books in biblical studies, theology and philosophy beyond what most physics grad students typically care about. I attempt to understand seriously the ideas of Kuhn, Aquinas, Popper, Lakatos, Cartwright, van Fraassen, and others. This is all what I do with my free time.

So even if I have a conflict of interest in pursuing a career as a specialist, I think that objectively speaking, I am more open-minded to philosophy and theology than most scientists. A better question is, why am I still so reluctant to adopt notions of teleology in science, while you, as someone who is similarly committed to interdisciplinary thinking, seem to be more open to it? I think the answer may be that we simply have different ideas of how to relate all these different disciplines.

My “big picture,” so to speak, is a harmonious one - where philosophers and scientists talk to each other, obtain mutual insights and then apply these insights to their own disciplines. In order for this to happen, I think one has to be sympathetic to the mindset of people in each field. If your ideas encounter resistance, perhaps that is not because of the narrow mindedness of the specialists, but because the ideas are not phrased using language and arguments that are accepted in the typical mindset of the field - the mindset that has worked for many decades. Being sympathetic to different mindsets means sometimes accepting that each field has a certain domain where they are to be trusted, even if the boundaries of these domains are not always clear.

To conclude, even though you are right that scientists often have implicit metaphysical commitments that are untested and often unrealized, I think we would all do better to listen to them and find out how and why they got to that mindset. Is it pure naivete or indoctrination? Or a natural outcome of what seems to work in the field? Only then, I think, can one ever get scientists to understand the insights that a philosopher might be able to bring. Doing so requires a sympathetic mindset as I describe above. I also think If you can’t convince someone like me, who is already Christian and willing to listen to philosophers and theologians, I doubt that you will more easily convince my other fellow scientists who are even more specialized.

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Dear Daniel:

Your co-operative restatement brings us closer together again. Whereas I only agreed with about 1/4 of your last post, I agree with maybe 3/4 of this one. I think we are almost to the point where our difference is one of emphasis rather than straight opposition.

I also thank you for your calm and friendly tone, which is very welcome. On many other science/religion sites, the tone quite often gets edgy. I am trying to do my part to make sure that I don’t bring edginess to Peaceful Science. Your own calm and responsive mode of expression helps me and gives me a desire to respond in kind.

I hope I did not say anything to imply that I thought you personally were narrow-minded or uninterested in philosophical and theological questions. Anything I said was directed not to any individual here, but to a widespread general reaction of scientists (and in fact all academics) to ideas which don’t fit comfortably into current paradigms in their fields.

Example: When I was studying Hebrew Bible, there was at the time a widespread hostility to the new “literary” method of Hebrew Bible which had its champions in people like Robert Alter and scholars publishing in JSOT out of Sheffield. The “old guard” in Biblical studies back then (up to about 25-30 years ago) did not merely belittle the new approach, but aggressively attacked it, calling it “unscientific” (Biblical scholars often consider their philological work “scientific”), “unscholarly,” etc. That was because they had identified a particular scholarly mode of Biblical study (the historical-critical) with Biblical studies itself; to be against the historical-critical method, or even to suggest that it needed complementing by a “more subjective” literary method, was by definition (as the field defined itself then), unscholarly, unscientific, etc. In effect, the old guard tried to strangle the new method in its crib, and jobs were lost, and careers annihilated (I knew several of the victims personally). But later, lo and behold, the new “literary” or “holistic reading” method became accepted as one valid scholarly approach, and it’s now common for conferences on Biblical studies to hold panels employing such readings, for some journals to feature such readings, etc. So what was once considered “unscientific” or “unscholarly” or “pious, religiously motivated” Biblical scholarship is now respected as a genuine contribution to the understanding of Biblical texts. But the salaries and prestige now enjoyed by the champions of the “literary” approach to the Bible came at a cost: the dead bodies of the scholars who championed the idea too soon and were academically martyred (If I may be permitted that metaphor) for their foresight and their criticism of the received paradigm at a time when it was prickly and defensive about itself.

Similarly, Galileo identified a particular concept traditional to the science of his day (that action can be communicated only by contact) with science itself. For him, the notion of “action at a distance” produced by some “occult” force belonged to “pseudosciences” like astrology – sound familiar? – and the concept had to be excluded from proper scientific explanation. His dogmatism in absolutely excluding “action at a distance” from science caused him to be wrong about the cause of the tides.

My point of course is that “the experts” can have blind spots, and that is why, though I certainly don’t belittle the principle of expertise (as many fundamentalists unfortunately do), I don’t bow and scrape before it, either. There are collective prejudices – of professions, of generations, of eras, of cultures. Such prejudices can slow down the march to knowledge.

[It’s interesting to note that among those most opposed to the new “literary” or “holistic” reading approaches were Protestant and Catholic divinity school professors! These were from the same traditions that, a few decades earlier, had fought tooth and nail against historical-critical methods, as belonging to the Devil, and undermining faith in the Bible; yet once the Protestant and Catholic seminaries gave up that fight, and accepted historical-critical methods, they became among the most ultra-orthodox defenders of those methods as the “scientific” methods for Biblical studies, and became among the leaders in trying crush the “literary” method, which reminded them too much of the previous “religious” approach to the Biblical text – the approach they had fought to escape from! (Converts from anything so often do swing to the far end of the pendulum, I’ve found!) Ironically, it was some of the more secular, less religious Biblical scholars – often secular Jews, but certainly including others – who were more open to holistic, literary readings than the clergy/divinity professors! Perhaps precisely because they had never been terribly pious, and never had had a reaction against that piety in themselves, they did not see any danger in a literary method which might seem to give support to traditional pious approaches to the text. They were not concerned to make Biblical studies a “rigorous science” that had to exclude anything that might sound “religious” (which according to the historical-critical folks belonged in the synagogue or the Sunday service, not in academic Biblical studies). They were happy if their new literary method helped us to better understand the Bible. In other words, they put interpretive substance ahead of abstract methodological loyalties. There is an application to origins debates in there somewhere. :slight_smile: ]

You are quite correct. I don’t expect to convince most of them. I’m interested in talking only to the minority who are intellectually open. Life is too short – especially at my age – spend time engaging those who have deep and long-standing commitments which are 99% certain never to change.

I once met and talked with J. Scott Turner, and was impressed by the man. He was not an ID proponent, but he was very interested in the possibility of a teleological description of nature within academic biology proper. So such ideas do not necessarily represent a corrupting virus spreading from populist ID quarters into academic science. They sometimes arise within academic science itself, in the minds of the mainstream researchers who are not convinced by the dominant paradigm, and are so built that they aren’t easily intimidated by bluster and threats to stay in line and pay obeisance to the paradigm. The same could be said of James Tour, reputedly short-listed for the Nobel Prize in chemistry a few years ago, who is not an ID proponent, but who does not accept the “party line” of origin of life research that its conjectures and conclusions are entirely sound. It is not a question of “teleology versus good science” or “skepticism about chemical origin-of-life theories versus good science”; it is sometimes a genuine disagreement among qualified, talented scientists over the certainty of the prevailing “truths”.

I’m much less concerned with winning a place for ID (narrowly conceived, e.g., particular arguments of Dembski) within science than I am with winning a place for healthy skepticism concerning received paradigms. And that concerns me not only in natural science, but in academic fields much nearer to home for me, where often the dogmatism and “groupthink”, and the propensity to become heresy-exterminators, can be as great as in biology, climatology, etc. Indeed, my involvement in the origins debate has deeply sharpened my perception of methodological dogmatism in the humanities and social sciences, as my own bitter experience of such dogmatism in the humanities and social sciences has made me specially alert to parallel forms of dogmatism in the natural sciences.

To repeat what I said in an earlier post: I do not question the success of the recent centuries of largely non-teleological natural science. I do not reject the results of that approach. I do not think scientists were wrong to adopt that approach. I merely remain more open than most scientists seem to be regarding the possibility of integrating (not confusing or muddling or artificially forcing together) teleological and non-teleological approaches. As to whether that integration should be called “science” or “philosophy of nature based on the latest results of science,” I think that question is intellectually relatively unimportant, and is agonized over mainly by professionals trying to protect certain habits and practices of theirs, and by certain political/social agents seeking to use the cultural prestige of the word “science” as a weapon with which to beat down or suppress ideas about “the nature of nature” that they don’t happen to like.

I don’t care to further justify my approach (I’ve already doubtless used too many words), but if anyone wants to know the sort of stuff that in my 50+ years of reading about science has come into my thinking and shaped it, the list of "Books We Like" on The Hump of the Camel, will give some idea of the range of reading that I think is necessary for a full and deep consideration of these large questions about nature, science, methodology, etc. (It will be noted that virtually none of these books is compulsory reading in any undergrad or graduate science program in most American universities, and for me that is part of the problem we all face in trying to have these discussions. There isn’t a common core of readings which both scientists and humanities scholars/philosophers/theologians are familiar with.)

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Just a small topical point: caught a programme yesterday about the guys who discovered the dangers of CFCs in the 60s.

The opposition of the chemical companies was predictable (and their claim that there was no good science against CFCs salutory when commercial interests make similar claims today), but I understand that for about a decade the lead researcher couldn’t get any conference invitations, was denied PhD students and various other penalties for his heresy imposed by his own guild, until the climate changed (ads it were) and suddenly everyone had always agreed with him.

Science is, eventually, self-correcting, when the hole in the ozone layer gets big enough. But then every human activity is self-correcting on those terms: mediaeval Catholic abuse breeds the Reformation, big new political ideas eventually get voted out when proven wrong.

Sometimes it seems scientists are quicker to forget former errors - the guy who invented CFCs also invented leaded petrol for DuPont and pushed its safety so strongly that it took half a century for any other research to refute him. Not only a big fail, but a big amnesia job.

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Science is self correcting. On major question on many of our minds right now is if the ID movement is self correcting or not.

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My point is that this is a misunderstanding of what the TE/EC position is.

It would be helpful if you could discuss Denton’s work. You seem to have read his books so it would save me the time of reading two entire books. What are the mechanisms, what predictions does his model make, and how do those predictions differ from the theory of evolution being used by the scientific community?

That all seems to be a distinction without a difference. Whether natural selection is a law or not is hardly cogent to the discussion, and the term “law” isn’t really used anymore anyway. Natural selection is a natural process, and the Discovery Institute describes the comparison as natural processes OR intelligent design. Even saying that there can be a combination of both still separates them. It is quite obvious that the detection of design boils down to “not nature, therefore design” as described by the Discovery Institute.

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No one is trying to convert people to Darwin. The constant use of Darwin’s name by ID supporters only makes it look like they are trying to fight an ideological war instead of having a scientific debate. The constant use of scientism, Darwinism, and the like is just more culture war nonsense.

Also, I never said that TE/EC was Pantheism. All I said is that it was more towards Pantheism on the spectrum between Pantheism and Deism. Obviously, TE/EC christians are not pantheists.

I tolerate all religions, within reason. That’s not the problem here. What I am reading into BioLogos is that God acts through nature, so evolution is like every other process in nature like rain, the orbits of planets, and the fusion reaction in the Sun. If you think God is producing sunshine and rain, then why not evolution?

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This is a bit of a double edged sword. Some people are drawn to controversial science simply because it is controversial, and they fail to see that it is bad science. Certain aspects of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and epigenetics seems to be the most recent examples of bad science gaining traction among the public simply because it seems controversial.

At least initially, the entire point of ID at the Discovery Institute was to get creationism into public school science classes. It is even detailed in the Wedge Document, which was an internal document within the Discovery Institute:

“We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.”

“To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.”
The Wedge Document

The biggest complaint I would have is that Behe needs to do some original research and publish in peer reviewed journals. If there is any heat being directed at Behe is that he is avoiding the scientific community and not doing science. This is why I tend to have more respect for people like Douglas Axe or more recently Winston Ewert because they are at least doing something, even if it turns out to be poor quality.

It is rather telling that you only point to the lack of evidence for “accidental” abiogenesis and fail to criticize your own position. Where is the empirical data for the intelligently designed origin of life?

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But it is a widely-held misunderstanding, and a long-held one. So the question arises why TE/EC writers have for 15-20 years now continue to express themselves in words that generate this misunderstanding in a wide range of readers (not just ID and YEC proponents), when it would be easy enough to restate their views in a form which meets the objections.

One of the problems with pseudonymity (which I concede is sometimes necessary – in my case, my job may depend on it – is that the case with you?) is that one doesn’t know who one is talking to and how much background they have. I’ve been studying these issues in depth now for over 10 years, and I’ve only seen your name very recently, on BioLogos, so I can’t tell how much detailed research you have done in the texts of ID, TE/EC, and other writers, or whether you have any academic training at all in theology or the relevant areas of philosophy. I also don’t know how closely you have followed the blog debates on the ASA list, the BioLogos site, Telic Thoughts, Uncommon Descent, etc., over the past ten years, but I know those debates intimately, and in many cases have been involved in them myself. I have read many of the major TE/EC books and articles, and virtually all of the ID responses to TE/EC writers. So I have a very good idea of exactly what the TE/EC folks write, how they word things, etc.

I’ve made a particular study of the charge of “bad theology” which the TE/EC folks (almost none of them with even a single course in theology or religion under their belt, most of them scientists-only) level against ID folks, in comparison with their own scattered and non-systematic theological statements (about the Bible, God, providence, sovereignty, foreknowledge, etc.). As a result of that study (which is guided by my own knowledge of theology and the history of Christian thought, produced in part by my doctorate in the area), I have come to the conclusion that most of the TE/EC leaders (some exceptions would be Ted Davis and Robert Russell) know very little about Christian theology, and what little they know is secondhand or thirdhand, largely derived from reading other TE/EC authors.

My perception of the TE/EC leaders’s lack of competence in theology was reached independently, but is seconded by Jon Garvey, who has read massively in the Church Fathers and Reformers and knows the primary sources well, so I feel in good company. So when you jump in to defend what you perceive to be the theology of the EC/TE leaders, I’m at a disadvantage; I don’t know where you are “coming from”, in terms of either your own personal theological knowledge of Christian tradition, or your knowledge of the theological discussions that have taken place among ID, TE/EC, creationist and other writers over the past 10 years. I can’t tell whether you a relatively fresh voice in the debate, jumping in with your first impressions, or whether you have more background that has not yet shown itself. Perhaps you could clarify how long you have been involved in these debates, and what you have read of TE/EC literature, Christian theological literature, etc.

I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to summarize books for people. We all have to prioritize our time usage, and I have time to discuss the ideas of various writers with people who have read them, but not to do reading and summarizing for others. If people want to learn about Denton, they can do so easily and quickly. He has produced two short, easy-to-read books (in the range of 100 pages each) on fine-tuning recently, The Wonder of Water and Fire-Maker. He writes in the tradition of Lawrence Henderson. But your statement seems to imply that you regard Denton as not a member of the scientific community. In fact he is a well-trained researcher, with both a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from a good British university, and an M.D. His research was in the genetics of retinal cancer, among other things, so he proved himself capable of good, solid scientific research. If you want to read his technical stuff in that area, I am sure you can find it in the technical journals, since you as a scientist will have access to them. However, in recent years, he has been working on fine-tuning, and writing books of a broader, synthetic nature, more aimed at science education. This is understandable, as the man is well into his 1970s.

Anyhow, he makes no claim to be a primary researcher in the field of evolutionary mechanism, but he has read voluminously in that field, and has been doing so for over 30 years. His books on fine-tuning treat evolution as a fact, but they don’t delve in detail into evolutionary mechanisms, because that is not their point. However, it is very clear from his last book on evolution, published about a year ago, that he has been reading very extensively in evo-devo and other evolutionary literature. He discusses in some depth the work of Gunter Wagner at Yale, Wagner being one of the world’s leading evolutionary theorists in the evo-devo area.

But that’s not what the passage you quoted from Discovery says. It speak of “unguided processes”, not “natural processes”. Who is to say that a natural process might not also be guided or in some way planned or designed?

It’s apparently quite obvious to you, but this reaction seems to ignore the rather detailed and nuanced discussion I provided, as if you either did not understand what I wrote, or are dismissing it out of hand. I tried to put some care into what I wrote, to give you some of the shadings involved, by you seem to prefer to read all ID literature in a non-nuanced way.

@Eddie

In a God-Guided system, these two processes are mostly overlapped!

Title of book by Karl Giberson: “Saving Darwin.”

Title of book by Ken Miller: “Finding Darwin’s God.”

Yes, I agree. You did not say that TE/EC was pantheism. I was not accusing you of saying that. I was merely pointing out that pantheism, or even leaning in a pantheistic direction, is incompatible with the traditional Biblical and Christian faith which BioLogos claims to uphold in its mission statements. And this is related to my point, that BioLogos and many TE/EC writers have been charged with various deviations from standard Christian orthodoxy, even as they dish out attacks on ID people about their “bad theology”. Among the unorthodox Christian beliefs endorsed by or flirted with by TE/EC leaders are Open Theism, a flawed Bible, a non-historical Fall. The question is why TE/EC writers, so much more often than ID writers, give even the appearance of deviating from standard Protestant and Catholic doctrine.

I remember when David Opderbeck, one of the more theologically educated people affiliated with TE/EC (he has or is about to complete a doctorate in theology), left the ASA discussion list (dominated by TEs), protesting that there was way too much unorthodoxy in the theology being pushed by some ASA scientists. And he himself was sympathetic to TE/EC at that time, so it was not “evolution” that bothered him.

Terry Gray, a critic of Behe (which should please you), and a solid supporter of evolution and a leading ASA-TE, a year or so ago chided Deb Haarsma and BioLogos for departing from Christian orthodoxy as his Reformed tradition understood it.

And Jon Garvey, also onside with evolution, has been documenting, analyzing and criticizing the unorthdoxies of TE/EC writers for years.

The point is that many, even those who are not opposed to evolution, believe that TE/EC writers frequently stray into theological unorthodoxy, and that this is not necessary in order to harmonize Christian doctrine with evolution. From your comments here so far, I get the sense that you have not yet perceived this aspect of TE/EC writing.

And what I am trying to tell you, unsuccessfully it seems, is that there are ID proponents who would say the same thing, i.e., that God might choose to create things via an evolutionary process. There is nothing at all in the definition of ID that rules out “evolution” in the sense of “descent with modification”. The critique of ID (qua ID) is over certain alleged mechanisms. Those who know the ID literature well can point you to numerous statements on the Discovery website allowing for the possibility of common descent, and I have seen many statements, in books by Dembski, Richards, etc. that ID per se is not opposed to evolution. And of course Denton and Behe have affirmed evolution, and last I heard, Richard Sternberg was not opposed to it either. And Ann Gauger has been an ID proponent for years, and up until recently was an ID proponent who accepted common descent. And if we speak of unpublished conversations, I am in e-mail contact with scores of ID proponents, and I know that many of them have no theological problem with common descent, as long as the evolutionary process is understood as in some way guided or designed or planned (which even the BioLogos people grant, though they typically fudge on the meaning of “guided”). So your perception that ID, in and of itself, is automatically opposed to “evolution” or is incompatible with God’s use of natural processes, is an inaccurate perception, based on selective reading of snippets from ID sources, rather than a wide reading of a large number of ID authors.

In fact, the “right wing” of TE/EC and the “left wing” of ID are close together, but that fact has been obscured by the sharp opposition between the opposite ends of these two positions, e.g., by the difference between a YEC-ID position that rejects evolution totally, and a wildly liberal Christian position which strips God of any control over nature, such as that held by Oord or Van Till. I’ve been trying to bring together certain elements of ID with certain elements of TE/EC, but stereotypes of ID, promoted by people who rely largely on hearsay and out-of-context snippets, keep getting in the way. Also the TE/EC leaders at BioLogos, many of whom are converts from YEC, have often gone out of their way to misrepresent ID to the world. Other than Ted Davis, who has always been academically honest about what ID people have written, the first person on BioLogos ever to even attempt to represent ID fairly was Joshua Swamidass. He acknowledged that not all ID proponents were anti-evolution, and he treated Ann Gauger respectfully as a fellow-scientist. My hat is off to him for such actions. But the typical TE/EC reaction to ID has been visceral rejection, accompanied by inaccurate characterizations of ID on both the scientific and theological side.

I did not actually state my position on the intelligently designed origin of life. And why the scare quotes on “accidental”? That is exactly what most origin-of-life researchers since Oparin and Haldane have understood the origin of life to be. Do you know any of them who have suggested that the origin of life was planned or designed?

The point is that extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. The origin of life by accident from sloshing chemicals is an extraordinary claim. It needs extraordinary evidence. The origin-of-life community of scientists have failed to provide this extraordinary evidence. Therefore, there is no warrant for belief in the claim. I am not required to “prove” that life originated by intelligent design. Rather, I am intellectually entitled to withhold assent from the claim that life was or could have been produced by accident. That is the proper scientific attitude to take – the withholding of assent – for undocumented or weakly documented speculations. Yet I would bet that 80% of your biological colleagues privately, and strongly, believe that life did in fact originate by a set of accidents. The reason for that private and strong belief is a set of metaphysical, philosophical, theological – call it what you will – commitments. The commitment is not a scientific one.

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@eddie are you cutting and pasting from prior posts? I’m tired of hearing the same repeated nebulousness of what TE is perceived to be. Just let it go and deal with specifics.