THE CAMBRTAN EXPLOSION, INTELLIGENT DESIGN,
AND THE GROWING THREAT !PO BIOLOGY EDUCATION
--Paper Delivered at the American scientific Affiliation Convention--
--Colorado Christian University, Lakewood, 27 July 2003--
The reason why ASA members should take intelligent design seriously is because of its effect on high school biology. The objective of the well-financed Discovery Institute in Seattle is plain: to redirect the whole of American science, substituting its new paradigm in place of evolution in the public schools. What this means is that ASA members have work to do.
In fact, the views entertained by the young members of the ASA could well affect the quality of American science throughout this century. What they might do I shall suggest at the close of this talk.
You will observe that my position opposes that of the Discovery Institute. This difference of opinion does not rise to the level of a quarrel with the house of our friends. Nor does it denigrate the Christian faith of design theorists. But the integrity of high school biology is at stake. The outcome is uncertain. We should do what we can. It is not too much to say that America's place in the 21st century rests on the outcome of the controversy.
I am aware that uttering the word design and the word couplet intelligent design resonates among numerous evangelicals who nurture misgivings about evolution.
As for intelligent design, ASA members likely mirror evangelicals as a whole; they separate into three groups:
First is the large group of non-biologists who endorse intelligent design, and from whom the Discovery Institute recruits its growing strength: numerous evangelical leaders, grassroots churchgoers, writers, and non-evangelical supporters in Universities, all non-biologists.
The second group are the biology teachers who know
their evolutionary theory. They've already taken a look at intelligent design,
and said, "no thanks."
Third are
the evangelical fence-sitters, who are waiting to see which way the wind
blows.
Possibly all three groups are represented in this room.
I therefore state a two-fold premise that is central to the religion of
Abraham.
Two powerful streams of thought arose in the ancient world. In the centuries that followed they interacted and cooperated, but always opposed each other. For over two thousand years those two themes influenced biology, and today they both cast light on the evolution controversy.
My first stream began when the ancient Hebrews declared that God created the world from nothing. That's in II Maccabees chapter 7 verse 29. Creation became central to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Creation made possible the epic event of the year 1859, from which gushed forth the biological revolution. Even the title of Darwin's great book would have been impossible absent the monotheistic doctrine of creation.
1
The intelligent design movement stands outside this broad theological and historical flow of history.
My second stream arose from Plato and Aristotle, who governed biology until 1859. The world was eternal, species were fixed from all eternity, and the idea of evolution was inconceivable. Aristotle said that non-material agencies operate in nature and Plato said that eternal ideas generate earthly varieties. So does intelligent design in its explanation of the Cambrian explosion.
Aristotle was the greatest biologist of all time, but his concepts of fixity and purpose precluded experimental biology for over two thousand years. In 1859 Darwin became an unexpected friend of theism when he freed biology from the shackles of Platonism and Aristotelianism.
Today, that pre-Darwinian Platonic-Aristotelian view appears again.In sixth century Alexandria, the Christian philosopher Philoponus declared that because God created the world, time was linear, nature was material, and Aristotelian distinctions between the Earth and the stars were abolished. In modern language this means that chemistry on Earth is the same as chemistry on the stars, and that explaining the origin of the Cambrian fossils by natural means has roots in ancient Christian theism.
In medieval Baghdad and Cairo, Muslim and Jewish theologians also chipped away at Aristotelian thought. Creation meant that God could have created another kind of world.
In 17th century England the chemist Robert Boyle, of Boyle's Law fame, vigorously opposed Aristotle. A pious Christian, he believed that divine purpose invested nature, but that Aristotelian purpose was not efficacious in science. For Boyle, creation meant that scientific explanation lay in the material connections in nature, without any Aristotelian non-material agencies. For Boyle, creation meant that nature held many secrets waiting to be pried loose by science.
What happened was that learned monotheists attributed to nature the assumptions of linear time, material nature, and the disavowal of purpose as a causal agency, that are now unconsciously assumed by science. far from opposing the Bible, evolutionary theory issues logically from a long historical and theological tradition that began when the ancient Hebrews declared that God created the world from nothing.
Not so, declares the Discovery Institute, not for the Cambrian explosion. But in rejecting evolution it departs from the monotheism that made evolutionary theory possible.
As I suppose we all know, the Cambrian explosion refers to the abundance of phyla, including even a chordate, that appeared in only five to ten million years, in the blink of a geologic eye, some 550 million years ago. Charles Walcott, who discovered the fossils in 1909 in the Burgess Shale of British Columbia, thought they all belonged to present-day phyla. Today, it is thought that many did not leave descendants. The bizarre fossils offer a fascinating picture of early life history--and raise fascinating questions as well.
Why did all those phyla appear so suddenly? Has there been in fact a reduction in their number? Why haven't new phyla appeared in all the millions of years since?
The chief characteristic of the intelligent design movement is the distinction made between natural causes, which come under the scientific method, and intelligent causes, which are required to explain phenomena, such as the Cambrian fossils, where evolution is said to fail. This unusual causation would set high school biology back with two worrisome changes.
The
first change would be theological. It comes from the unique lexicon which is intended to show that evolution can be opposed without using religious language. Avoiding the natural causation advanced by Robert Boyle, the Internet paper on the Cambrian explosion advances a non-material explanation, as did Aristotle. We readily find the diagnostic terms "intelligent designer" (p 32)) "intelligent agents" (p 32, 42), and "prior intelligent design" (p 43), which are non-material, and which, we are told, "acted to generate the information-rich arrangement of parts that characterize the Cambrian animals."Intelligent design writings elsewhere are replete with similar terms, of which the word couplet intelligent design is the most prominent.
How would those terms be explained to a room full of obstreperous teenagers in a high school biology class? We are not told. The intelligent design movement insists that its terms do not mean God. Then are they sentient entities? Were they created or are they eternal? We are not to know.
In its thirst to satisfy the US Constitution by not mentioning God, the intelligent design movement makes matters worse. By touting so-called intelligent agents, it interposes a surrogate or proxy between God and the Cambrian fossils, thereby compromising the First Commandment and the first statement of the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. The Discovery Institute people have a way to go to explain what they mean.
The second change in high school biology would be philosophical. It comes with the handling of the concept of purpose. The idea of purpose in science means that a future condition causes something to occur in the present; the idea arose in the fertile minds of Plato and Aristotle. In explaining the Cambrian fossils, the intelligent design movement ignores the sagacious Robert Boyle, who did not have much use for Aristotle, and who was skeptical about the role of purpose as a causal agency in biology.
We have particularly strange- sounding phraseology. Here is a defining sentence, quote (p 32): "An intelligent designer, conceiving, ..., of distant goals before they are actualized, can put in place complex structures or informational sequences in anticipation of their future use." Here the "intelligent designer" is like Plato's Demiurge, acting as a divine craftsman in fashioning the sensible world by copying eternal principles.
What can that sentence mean, with the words "distant goals" and "anticipation"? It means that the immaterial idea of a Cambrian phylum existed in a transcendent realm outside of nature, and was the cause of its existence in the natural realm--that's Platonic; that a future, unfulfilled condition is both effect and cause; that the consequent precedes the antecedent--that's Aristotelian.
As for the alleged absence of fossils prior to the Cambrian explosion, when an "intelligent agent" brings an "immaterial plan" into existence, there's no need for "material precursors" because "immaterial plans need not leave a material trace" (p 42-43). An immaterial plan is Platonism.
Stumbling over Plato and Aristotle should be no surprise. When an alternative to evolution is proposed, the only one available is the pre-Darwinian paradigm derived from those giants of antiquity, there being no Biblical answers to the questions answered today by evolution.
It is in the interest of the young ASA members, here before me, to stand up for science education. Which begins, does it not, with defending the integrity of high school biology against the threat posed by intelligent design. It is time for ASA members to consider the impact of intelligent design, were it introduced into high school biology, on the religious development of impressionable teenagers.
Indeed, the young ASA members now have a splendid opportunity
at hand to exercise leadership at the grassroots, at the local level, to dispel
public misconceptions about creation, to foster enlightened public perceptions
of science.
This can be done in three ways.
First, correspond with evangelical leaders when they endorse intelligent design. Many have not thought of its theological implications. Others approve only because it is against evolution. Few, if any, know what goes on in a high school biology classroom. ASA members might also petition the biology community to reflect on its own culpability when it utters careless and unscientific assertions that nature is the only reality.
Neither initiative would likely succeed, and for this reason
alone we can expect the evolution controversy to continue.
Second, make nice with high school biology teachers, school board
members, and church-goers.
--encourage harassed biology teachers not to drop evolution from their lesson
plans.
--inform misled church members that it was indeed monotheism that led to evolutionary theory, and that high school biology texts these days are first class.
Third, call upon design theorists to be explicit about what they mean when they make statements about the foundations of science.
We should not be misled. If we say yes to intelligent design, even for the laudable purpose of opposing academic atheism, we say yes to three unhappy results. Ambiguous theology. Misreading of History. And bad science. Indeed, ambiguous theology arises from a misreading of the historical record, and acting together they make bad science inevitable.
"Teaching the Controversy," a Discovery Institute initiative, would import this ambiguous theology into the high school biology classroom. One, intelligent design conceals God Who would be both Redeemer and personal friend, and instead elevates an impersonal craftsman or engineer that tinkers occasionally with nature. Two, distinguishing between natural and intelligent causation implies that God created two kinds of nature. Three, implying that God was more active in the Cambrian than elsewhere means deism.
Evangelical patrons see nothing theologically amiss. This contentious subject that divides us adults should not be visited on teenagers, and should be kept out of high school biology.Intelligent design represents a particular sectarian view of creation that not all Jews, Christians, and Muslims can be expected to endorse. It would propel biology back to its long-since discredited pre-Darwinian Platonic-Aristotelian view of biology.
Intelligent design exhibits the imprudence of supposing that eliminating or even diluting the teaching of biological evolution in high school biology would strengthen theism.
Let us therefore bind ourselves to the high cause of
defending high school biology. When we say yes to biological evolution, we say
yes to the religion of Abraham.
------ Metaphysics, I,982bl-10, 988alO-15; V,1013a24-35.
------ Physics, II,8,199a9-19,
199bIO-14, 27-33.
Aulie, Richard P., March 2001, "A Look at Intelligent Design," Perspectives
on Science and Christian &i1h, p 4-5.
FOUR INTERNET PAPERS: "asa3.org", "Apologetics", "A Representative Set of Papers":
June 2001, "Intelligent Design, High School Biology, and the Lessons of History," Haverford College, Templeton Foundation.
------ 1998, "Intelligent Design Revisited--A Reader's Guide to Of Pandas and People, in three parts: I, What Intelligent Design Means; 11, The Design Argument; III, Creation Science and the Origin of Modern Science.
------ June 1998, "Guide for the Perplexed: An Unforeseen Overture to Science in Twelfth Century Cairo, Perspectives Qn Sciencg and Christian Elilh, vol. 50, no. 2, p 122-134.
------ March 1994, "Al-Ghazali Against Aristotle: An Unintended Overture to Science in Eleventh-Century Baghdad," Perspectives M Science and Christian EAilh, vol. 45, no. 1, p 26-46.
------ December 1983, "Evolution and Creation: Historical Aspects of the Controversy," Proceedings of The America Philosophical Society, vol. 127, no. 6, p 418-462.------ 1982, ""The Post-Darwinian Controvers-ies'(by James R. Moore),--An Extended Book Review Essay" Journal of The American 5cientifjc Affililtion (March, June, Sept, Dec),
------ "The Origin of the Idea of the Mammal-like Reptile," American Biology Teacher, November, December 1974; January 1975.
"The Doctrine of Special Creation," American Biglog Teacher, April, May 1972. ------ Feb 1970, "An American Contribution to Darwin's Origin Rf Species," American Biology Teacher."Intelligent Design and the Burdens of History: William Paley, Asa Gray, and Charles Darwin." on the positive views of Asa Gray; and the paradox: esteem of intelligent design for Paley, and the continuity between Paley and Darwin)
Boyle, Robert, 1667, The Origine of Formes and Qualities, According to the Corpuscular Philosophy, Illustrated by Considerations, and Experiments, Oxford, H. Hall.
------ 1688, A Disguisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things: Wherein it is inquir'd, Whether, And (if at all) With what Cautions, a Naturalist should admit them?", London: John Taylor.
Janet, Paul, 1878, Final Causes (translated from the French by William Affleck), Edinburgh: T. Clark.
Meyer, Stephen C., Paul A. Nelson, and Paul Chien, 2001, "The Cambrian Explosion: Biology's Big Bang," INTERNET.
Meyer, Stephen C., and Michael
Newton Keas, "The Meanings of Evolution," INTERNET.
Plato, Republic, VII,
512a-516b.
------ Timaeus,
29d-30a.
Shanahan, Timothy, 1994,
"Teleological reasoning in Boyle's Disquisition
about ELOAL Causes,"
p 177-192 in Hunter, Michael, editor, Robert Boyle reconsidered, Cambridge
University Press.
Sorabji, Richard, editor, 1987, Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Wildberg, Christian, translator, 1987, Philoponus: Against Aristotle, on the Eternity of the World fOe aeternitate mundi contra Aristotelem), London: Duckworth.
NOTE Two: I
have hitherto adverted through the years, in my references above, beginning in
1972, to the disabling presence of PLATONISM and ARISTOTELIANISM in both special
creation and intelligent design.
NOTE Two: Jonathan Wells, in discussing embryology, has made a sentence that illustrates my point. It is a quite remarkable capsule of both PLATONISM and ARISTOTELIANISM:
On p 66, "Unseating Naturalism: Recent Insights from Developmental Biology," in Dembski, William A., editor, 1998, Mere Creation, Science, Faith, and Intelligent Design, Naperville: InterVarsity Press.
Richard P. Aulie is a biology teacher and
a historian of biology in the Chicago area.
Email: Shipcoveaulfe@yahoo.com