Harmonizing Evolution and Guidance at BioLogos

The part he is saying that parallels science is this:

That is undeniable true about how scientific community works, at least on a social level.

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There are three clauses in the above sentence. I agree with the first two, but not the third. Not sure where you get that from.

I think the parallels are closer than you think. In quantum mechanics, we affirm the results of experiments which are pretty clear and the equations that are deduced from those experiments. But what quantum mechanics really “means” is a complete mystery, as Feynman famously said. But it doesn’t matter. Certain paradigmatic experimental demonstrations (such as the Stern Gerlach experiment) still effectively function as “dogma” in the field of quantum mechanics in a functional, Kuhnian sense.

Note that by “dogma” I don’t mean “something we force ourselves to believe in because we have no good justification for it” but instead “something that is foundational to the field and defines how we form subsequent theoretical predictions and interpret experimental results.” Some “dogma” in science may be well justified by empirical data, some are simply too foundational to be justified by empirical evidence (e.g. the assumption that there is uniformity in nature), and some are just bad assumptions but people haven’t realized them yet.

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Yes, I’m referring here mostly to the social level, where rhetoric matter. Because the OP here isn’t just about the substance of the answer to the question of “Does God guide X?” but also how it is presented.

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Yes, I prefer things stated up front. I like a world where everybody means what they say, and says what they mean, rather than a world in which people wrap their true feelings and beliefs in all kinds of external guises for self-protective reasons. One of my frustrations with so many in the origins debates – whether atheist or creationist or EC – is that much of what they say and do seems framed in language that disguises motives and commitments. Maybe a prof at a conservative seminary leans liberal, but fears losing his job, so he talks and argues in odd ways that are hard to penetrate. Maybe an ex-fundamentalist is an atheist, but still a part of him wants to hold on to faith, but he disguises that part – even from himself – by zealous tirades against Christianity or religion in general, which deep down he knows rely on caricatures. Maybe a BioLogos leader thinks about God largely deistically, but can’t openly say so in the evangelical atmosphere in his church or college, so he speaks obliquely and ambiguously when ideas such as guidance or sovereignty are brought up.

I grew up in a different world, in liberal, mainstream, wishy-washy Protestantism, where you could say anything without getting banned from your church, and I was educated in secular universities, not religious colleges, where every view from radical Nietzschianism to radical Marxism was tolerated. I’m not used to caginess, guardedness, self-protective masks and dodges, etc. But unfortunately, in origins debates, these things are common. I just got tired of seeing the BioLogos leaders constantly acting as if they were walking on egg shells. I wanted a rigorous intellectual debate on metaphysical and epistemological issues related to religion/science questions, and no one at BioLogos (except Ted Davis) seemed interested in that. They all seemed to be trying to protect something. But my mind is Socratic, the very opposite of a protective mind. I believe in intellectual risk-taking, and that’s not common in origins debates. Tactical speech, tactical silence, etc. are all too common.

One of the most interesting guys in the debates is @vjtorley, who apparently doesn’t care who he offends, but just goes after the truth as well as he can. He even puts his own Christian faith on the table for examination. I don’t always agree with him on details, but I like his fearless attitude. The philosopher knows no fear. But I always felt that BioLogos was permeated by fear, fear of fundamentalism, and perhaps in some cases, of lapsing back into fundamentalism (which is where many EC leaders came from). It’s very hard to have a relaxed talk with someone who is driven by fear, and whose intellectual responses are colored by that fear. I could talk with Ted Davis because he was fearless. The others, from Giberson and Falk all the way through to Kramer and Stump, I found difficult, because they were not fearless.

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Do you think that some day you will be able to say exactly how God acts (or whatever verb you prefer) in the world?

But God acting in everything, or in evolution, isn’t foundational to Christianity, is it?

And I still don’t think the analogy works.

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8 posts were split to a new topic: Do Any Atheists Indulge in Charactures?

Perhaps we may be able to shed light on some of the ways in which he can act specially. Not a complete explanation, but some explanation, narrowing down the possibilities. Your statement was that we can never say anything about how God acts in nature, never ever, not even roughly or vaguely.

God ordaining everything to his goals is foundational to most branches of traditional theology.

Assertions without argument can be dismissed without argument.

What gives you the idea that this is possible?

Everything? So would you say that anyone who doesn’t think so is not a true Christian?

Agreed. Let me try this: in science, the point is to establish that you understand the field; but in religion, the apparent point is to establish that you share beliefs and establish trust based, apparently, on community. I’d say those are not comparable.

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I am probably oversimplifying but I thought @dga471 was making a reasonable point about getting clarity on what is meant by ‘guidance’ in the context of a certain omnipotent god. I think this is reasonably similar to getting clarity on what is meant by ‘heritable’ or by ‘evidence in support of’ in the context of a particular scientific subdiscipline. No one is going to identify guidance by the gods, at least because no one can show the opposite but also because the gods are imaginary. This is not relevant IMO to what Daniel is saying, and so I really think his comparison is fine.

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Well, in their defense. they probably had reason to walk on eggshells.

Perhaps you wanted the intellectual conversation that they were never prepared to give you. If that’s the case, perhaps it’s best to accept as they are, and find elsewhere what you needed.

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Well, yes, given that most of them hardly knew anything about theology, yet made frequent theological statements, when people showed up who actually had read Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Wesley, etc., they might well have felt that they have to tiptoe very carefully to avoid exposure in front of their evangelical target audience. :slight_smile:

Very true, except for the “you”. It wasn’t just me. It was a whole bunch of people. Jon Garvey had the same problem with them. So did Dave Wallace, a guy named pds, and many others. We all thought that BioLogos, with that pretentious Greek-based name, suggesting something academic or at least intellectual, was a serious theoretical effort to harmonize science with Christian theology, rather than simply an advocacy organization trying to make Christians from evangelical backgrounds comfortable with evolution. Hence the constant disconnection in the conversations.

I think that Falk etc. perceived the objectors to their theological statements as creationists acting out of malice aforethought; I think they never perceived that the objections came out of a genuine concern for theological clarity and academic accuracy. I expect that this was partly due to the fact that Falk, Applegate, etc. had no idea at all of how theology was studied in a serious academic (as opposed to evangelical-churchy) context, no idea of the level of historical and philosophical rigor that is required. They simply had never encountered people like myself or Jon Garvey before, and did not know how to constructively react. So they fell back on the reflexes that they had acquired from dealing with Ken Ham, Henry Morris, etc., which is like using badminton moves when the object coming over the net is a tennis ball.

But hey, how did we get into this? Was it George’s question about BioLogos? I think I already answered it: BioLogos never endorsed God-guided evolution. The phrase gave them the cooties. So we can drop the topic of BioLogos. Please!

I don’t think that’s what he was saying, but perhaps he will tell us. It wasn’t about clarity but about shared belief. There is in fact no clarity, and I think he has agreed that there isn’t.

For what I’m trying to say there is not much of a distinction between “sharing beliefs” and “understanding the field”. In both cases one seeks to identify whether another person is a member of one’s community (whether it’s a community of scientists in a sub-field or a community of theologians in a certain tradition). A scientist doesn’t subject every fellow scientist they meet to a comprehensive test on whether they truly understand the field, as that is unrealistic. Instead, we look for shared technical jargon, concepts, and interests, to know that we’re talking “on the same wavelength”.

It seems that you’re just hung up on wanting to make sure that science is “objective” and about “knowledge and understanding” and while theology is “subjective” and about arbitrary “shared beliefs” without justification. That is completely irrelevant from my point. Regardless of the foundation or justification of the disciplines, there are undoubtedly communities of scientists and communities of theologians. They are both communities with certain rules and norms of discourse.

I’d argue they’re in the minority and heterodox, even if they’re Christian. It also depends on the specifics of what they say.

What gives you the idea that it’s not? What’s the use of making statements about what a field of study can or cannot ever accomplish in the future? Seems to be a lot of speculation in both cases.

6 posts were split to a new topic: Toleration of YECs

Anyway, before the thread gets derailed I want to comment on this issue.

My perception of BioLogos and TE/EC has always been that the only defining feature of their category is to accept God as the creator without allowing for the possibility of ID. I do not think that is possible. That contradictory position is the source of all the consternation expressed about BioLogos on this thread. They cannot square the circle. Either God actually intended certain outcomes and therefore we can determine the likilihood thereof versus a random or unguided model, or He didn’t.

More recently, some TEs have admitted the possibility of ID being legitimate within the confines of a clear definition of TE. That is progress of a kind.

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So then, it seems that you put @dga471 and I in a different bucket, even though we are critical of ID?

Honestly? I don’t know. I am still unsure as to why @dga471 thinks specified complexity is different than the fine tuning argument. But it does seem like he has technical issues and is not philosophically opposed to a design argument as such. But then again he might be and he’s just hiding it rather well.

I don’t recall having any in depth discussion with you about it. My honest impression of you is that you felt betrayed by YEC/ID and have emotional barriers in place against any arguments they might make. I have not seen you deal with any of the issues relevant to this thread. You claim you are not a methodological naturalist, but you also claim the GAE is consistent with MN when it’s clearly not. So I honestly don’t know what you think. Is a design argument possible to make and you just disagree on technical points?

The fact is that everyone knows ID is anathema in professional circles, and becoming an ID advocate carries professional risk. It is not simply, as you often claim with YEC, an issue of allowing someone to get a PhD or become a professor. It’s primarily an issue of access to grant money, and as everyone knows, getting grant funding is a key metric for tenure track professors trying to get tenure. Because of that I suspect that anybody such as yourself and Daniel who does not appear to have any substantive objections to ID is harboring ulterior motives. And as a reminder, you make the same objection about YEC as is clear above.

I claim I am not a metaphysical naturalist, and I don’t know what a “methodological naturalist” is. I do think there is a great deal of confusion about how MN works in practice.

Yes, it is possible to make a design argument. I disagree on the technical points in several specific ID arguments, and I disagree with how scientific errors are (not) managed in the IDM.

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Try publishing something in a scientific journal relating to GAE or better yet, put it in a grant proposal. You will quickly find out exactly what MN is and that it is in fact an enforced belief within the scientific community.

Getting grant funding on the GAE? That’s already happened, and it is likely to happen again soon. :slight_smile:

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