Here is the second half of Day 1--hope it goes through:
*************
Everett Mendelsohn, History of Science, Harvard University
Mendelsohn spent some time commenting on the founding of the Polyani Center
without any input from the science or philosophy departments. He thought
that was bad.
Then he turned to his topic. He said that the French revolution had caused
a break between the church and state. This allowed for a loosening of the
grip the church had on science. He cited the 'apocryphal' story of Laplace
saying to Napoleon that he had no need of the hypothesis of God in order to
explain the formation of the solar system. [Later Ron Numbers said that
there was good evidence that the story was real--grm]. During the 19th
century, God was banished from one area of science after another. Wohler's
manufacture of urea should that a vital force was not necessary for organic
compounds and destroyed the philosophical distinction between organic and
inorganic chemistry. This was shown in a number of ways. Huxley predicted
protein synthesis and then eventually life. Helmholtz and company argued
that biology was an extension of physics. In 1844, Chambers' Vestiges of
Natural History of Creation published anonymously argued that natural
explanations would work for everything. Lyell put into the public frame a
secular view of nature.
In 1859 Darwin's Origin never mentioned humans, but everyone got the
message. Organized Christianity rejected evolution [beginning the battle
that we still have--grm]. Literature of the day used the phrase 'Defeat of
Teleology' over and over.
Post 1860 belief became weaker and people openly doubted purpose and design
more broadly.
***********
Ernan McMullin, Notre Dame
He started out by defining naturalist. Boyle described himself as a
naturalist, but that is not what we mean by the term today. Today we mean
ontological naturalism (ON)--the universe is all there is or ever will be.
If one is ON then methodological naturalism (MN) is true, but if one is MN,
it doesn't imply ON. McMullen pointed out that ON is often associated with
atheism, it could be associated with pantheism as well and probably should
be. Then he defined several types of Methodological naturalism.
MN1 Science suggests a way of dealing with human history is dominated by war
between the City of God and City of Man
MN2 Gould--can't derive moral values from science . Gould places science in
charge of ontology. [In my opinion, if there is God, must have role in
ontology.--grm] Gould's view raises the question of how wide a scope does
science have? Galileo's statement that science tells how the heavens go and
not how to go to heaven would seem to extend to all science. Believers,
McMullen says, have trouble with Gould's definition.
MN3 Augustine took a naturalist position on origin of species. Augustine's
dualism made it impossible to have soul come from matter. McMullen seemed to
state that Augustine was actually an evolutionist --something that was
questioned in the Q&A session.
McMullin then turned to irreducible complexity. He could not understand why
an omnipotent God couldn't make a path across the gaps that the ID group was
saying weren't there. That is a good question--why can't God create a
pathway. Our inability to discover one doesn't hurt us, but God's inability
to make one, seems to limit his omnipotence. He compared this with Boyle's
natural theology in which structure was fitted to function and that used to
indicate a designer. Boyle relied on gaps in his knowledge and omitted
[probably because he couldn't think of one--grm] a 3rd
alternative--naturalistic means.
**********
Ron Numbers, University of Wisconsin,
He started with the statement, "Nothing characterizes science more than its
rejection of God." He then cited Judge Overton that Science must depend on
Nature and called the ID group a tiny minority.
He then went on a history of how devout Christians have embraced MN.
Christianity encouraged the study of nature--they had no interest in
creating a naturalistic world. In the 14th century, Nicole Aram said that
there was no reason to take refuge in heavens [for explanations--grm] it is
the refuge of the weak. In the 16th/17th century Galileo insisted nature
never transgressed its laws. Bacon welcomed God's natural law and saw
natural law as evidence of God's control. Descartes argued for the nebular
hypothesis and pushed God out. Le Maitrie called humans machines. For Le
Maitrie, natural law acted to secularize; for others it illustrated natural
law. He cited Ted Davis' new book in which Boyle viewed mechanism as
locating purpose behind nature. For both Boyle and Newton, the search for
naturalism was a religious quest.
He then did something that surprised me[I say this for one list I will post
this on--the ASA list]. He said the Epidemics of smallpox which were viewed
as God's judgement and that Cotton Mather urged inoculation. The Boston
physician (couldn't hear his name) said it was impious to do that. After it
was seen that more survived among the inoculated than among the
non-inoculated, people wanted the inoculation. The second example was that
of the lightning rod. Lightning was viewed as God's judgment and putting up
one thwarted God's judgment. However, Franklin pushed such a thing and it
softened the public's acceptance of naturalism.
Why did the above surprise me? Because Andrew White, whom my historian
friends say is so inaccurate also relates this same set of circumstances.
Yet every time I cite White, I get whapped. It seems to me that if Numbers
relates the same thing as White, White can't be as bad we are told.
Numbers continues. Between 1750 and 1850 discipline after discipline ejected
the supernatural as an explanatory phenomenon. Buffon said that those
studying physical forces shouldn't use God.
Numbers then said that Laplace, when explaining his nebular hypothesis to
Napoleon and when asked where was God, was over heard by Herschel saying his
famous statement, "Sir, I have no use of that hypothesis."
Naturalization of the earth followed on the naturalization of the skies by
Copernicus and Kepler. By the 1820's most geologists were naturalists. When
Lyell set out to free Geology it already was. Then Darwin made attribution
of animal structure to a deity specious and Huxley said it was specious to
mask our ignorance in God. Even in the 19th century the most common reason
for accepting evolution among the biologists was it offered a natural
explanation. And at the end of the naturalization of the earth, science
turned religion into an object of study.
************
Paul Nelson Discovery Institute
This was the beginning of the concurrent sessions. The structure of this was
bad. One really couldn't see more than 2 papers and there were no fixed
start and end times like at other conferences I have gone to. And
occasionally there were switches in the order. Luckily I got to see the
papers I wanted to see.
Paul's paper was well attended by some notables in the creation/evolution
controversy as well as at least one notable in science. These were Ray
Bohlin, John Baumgardner, Michael Behe, William Craig Lane and Simon Conway
Morris.
Paul started out with a definition of evolution--
If, within a species or population, the individuals
(a) vary in some trait q -- the condition of variation;
(b) leave different numbers of offspring in consistent
relation to the presence of trait q -- the condition
of selection;
(c) transmit trait q faithfully between parents and
offspring -- the condition of heredity;
then the frequency of trait q will differ predictably between
the population of all parents and the population of all
offspring.
This formulation is based on the work of John Endler
and Richard Lewontin.
He cited Gabriel Dover, "At the age of 40 I was momentarily reduced to
feeling like a 10-year-old novice by Francis Crick. Crick challenged me with
the statement that we can't understand evolution unless we understand how
creatures are put together."
He cited Halocynthia roretzi which is classed as a chordate because of a
notochord in its larva. There are 2500 cells, a brain, an eyespot, epidermis
etc, and most tissues develop after 9-12 cell divisions. All these stages
are preparatory. If it stops dividing now, it dies. Paul likened development
to the marching band problem. You have a bunch of people on the sideline
and want to spell out Berkeley [wonder why he chose that?? :-)--grm]. You
must have the instructions in the individual players minds BEFORE they start
going out to the field. You can handle the dumb ones by telling them to
follow the guy in front of them.
He said that the division and creation of different cell tissues was exactly
like this--the cells must know what they are supposed to do before they do
it. And if they don't, they won't get a chance to reproduce at all. And
natural selection can only act on those which end up capable of
reproduction.
"The basic features that underlie the development of body plans are
not simply genomes but are developmental fields, fields of patterning
that are first found in the egg and produce cells whose fates and
positions are progressively specified during morphogenesis so as
to produce a given polarity, region, organ or other structure as
development unfolds....Thus, an ancestor can be viewed, not just
as so much genetic information or as a combination of some
particular somatic features, but as including a developmental
process involving them both. Using a developmental ancestor
stresses the fact that, after all, the Metazoa owe their very existence
to their ability to produce differentiated cells that form a level
in a somatic hierarchy." James W. Valentine and H. Hamilton, "Body plans,
phyla and
arthropods," in R.A. Fortey and R.H. Thomas, eds., _Arthropod
Relationships_ (London: Chapman & Hall, 1997), pp. 1-9; p. 3.
To build a novel structure you need uncommitted cells and new instructions.
He cited Kevin Peterson, (Eric Davidson, Kevin Peterson, and R.A. Cameron,
"Origin of Bilaterian Body Plans: Evolution of Developmental Regulatory
Mechanisms," _Science_
270 (1995):1319-1325.) and Cameron et al. (R. Cameron, Kevin Peterson, and
Eric Davidson, "Developmental Gene Regulation and the Evolution of Large
Animal Body Plans," _American Zoologist_ 38 (1998): 609-620. )
Apparently when the Peterson article was presented at the 1996 Evolutionary
Morphology Seminar and the Univeristy of Chicago,, Sepkoski said,"Nice
idea -- but tell me why it isn't hopelessly teleological." The
control system must precede appearance of metazoa body
plans so the question then becomes upon what does the natural selection
(N.S.)act? N.S. sees function in adults if everything must occur before
adult then what does N. S. do?
He cited Jeffrey Schwartz ("Homeobox Genes, Fossils, and the Origin of
Species," _Anatomical Record (New Anat.) 257 (1999):15-31.) who
wants to evolve genetic switches but Paul says that would be hard
because there are 2500 genes downstream of Rx, one of the
genes in an animal he was discussing. (Walter Gehring,_Master Control Genes
in Development and Evolution_, Yale Univ. Press, 1998, p. 204.)
Paul then cited a knockout experiment as evidence that you can't perturb the
control switch. If you knock out the switch the animal dies. [in the q&a I
raised the point that a knockout was less damaging than a point mutation and
that I thought it inappropriate to use knockouts to model point mutations. I
haven't listened to my tape to see what he said. I know he had a good answer
and unfortunately I can't recall what it was. I do recall him saying that
you just can't mess with the early stages of development.--grm]
During the q&a, Conway Morris started speaking. I wrote in my notes:
"Conway Morris hit him" waiting for the objection. There was none so I
wrote 'didn't hit him'. It was a fascinating paper and I told Paul later
that he had indeed challenged me in a way that few creationists do.
**********
Robert DeHaan
I wanted to hear Bob DeHaan's talk because I have criticized Bob on the ASA
list for years because of his antievolutionary views. In 1998 he had
written, "Evidence from paleontology, moreover, indicates that the pervasive
pattern of change in the major animal groups is from the top down, not from
the bottom up. the top-down hypothesis thus receives strong support from the
fossil record. The top-down pattern of individual development parallels the
patterns of phyletic development. this suggests that internal developmental
processes, not Darwinian mechanisms, constitute the critical causal
processes accounting for the top-down direction of change in phyletic
lineages." PSCF 50(1998):4:269
While there was much I still disagree with, he seems to be more evolutionary
than he used to be. In fact, Bob was kind enough to credit me for moving
him in that direction. He still had some of the vestiges of his top-down
thesis. He says that if you take the weighted average of the time of
FIRST appearance of animal phyla [he used 11]measured from the base of
the Cambrian, that it is 25 million years after the base of the
Cambrian. If you do the same for all classes,[he used 62] the
weighted average is 80 myr after the base of the Cambrian and
with 307 orders it is 190 myr after the base of the cambrian. He is trying
to show that this top down development is evidence of divine input. We have
had many e-mail conversations concerning the statistical error in this
view--that the first animal is all taxonomic categories and that the second
example of a particular phyla is going to be in the same phyla--not moving
the phyla appearance time--but will likely be in a different class moving
the class first appearance time away from the base of the cambrian. Never
have gotten that one across to him.
Bob told me that he was a bit afraid that I might come to his talk. :-) As
I said, he is moving in the correct direction. [and Bob, if I got anything
wrong in this writeup please correct me--grm]
Theologically, he has God inputting information into the biosphere during
the Precambrian and ending with the Cambrian explosion. After that evolution
took over. In my mind this is a major shift in what Bob had believed.
I went to dinner with him that night and he told me that it was all the
anthropology stuff I had posted that made him reconsider the role of
evolution.
His thesis was one that groups arose, developed and then became senescent.
This is a throwback to some of the earlier paleontology in last century. He
also said that the giantism of the Pleistocene animals was an evidence of
senescence taking over. I pointed out that man ate them as they occupied the
world.
I went to dinner with him that night and had a delightful time discussion
things. I really enjoyed our dinner of catfish.
***********
Stephen Weinberg University of Texas.
He began with saying that the conference title suggests that scientists have
committed to naturalism a priori. He denied this. He denies a dividing
line between natural /supernatural. Naturalism, he said is the belief you
can understand nature via science. Supernaturalism is belief in God,
demons, angels and other things that in order not to offend them would
classify them as fairies. This term made a lot of the Christians mad as I
heard throughout the talk. While not particularly liking it myself, I
respected the man's guts for coming to a conference and saying something
that he knew the audience wouldn't want to hear. However, in a conversation
with my son who is about to go to seminary, I found something very
interesting about the term fairies. Apparently G.K. Chesterton, an Anglican
at the time of writing, uses the term similarly in _Orthodoxy_ (at least
that is what I recall him saying--blame me not him for any error). The fact
that almost no one at the conference knew about Chesterton, who was an
orthodox Christian may well have been a joke played by Weinberg upon the
audience as evidence that we Christians are not as well read as him. And few
of the naturalists caught this possibility either--at least none of them
that I spoke with. Alternatively, it might have been nothing more than an
insult.
Weinberg stated that the anthropic principle is in enormous retreat now and
that the beginning of life, and consciousness will be explained, although he
did allow for the possibility that consciousness may simply be too hard for
us.
He pointed out that some things used for the anthropic principle simply
won't be explained by science--like why the earth is 93 million miles from
the sun--it is an accident of history like the accident that allowed Truman
to survive an assassination attempt and Lincoln to die.
He did say that the cosmological constant is a better example of fine tuning
because it is 120 orders of magnitude than it should be. And it is necessary
for it to be this small for us to be here. If it were much larger there
would be no galaxies, stars etc. He claimed that this could be avoided by
having our region of the universe have the proper values and other regions
have inhospitable values of the constants. I thought this was really
drawing into play unobserved evidence. The guy who followed Weinberg,
H.Schaefer, did such a poor job that I doubt he would even have thought of
the possibility.
He then closed his speech by saying that just like he doesn't spend time on
crackpot mail, he doesn't see any reason to spend time on fairies. He said
that he didn't think the meeting was instigated by open mindedness to study
naturalism and thought it represented an alarming trend. The program seems
to be to promote naturalistic and theistic evolution and to deny
macro-evolution. [One could ask of course that if he felt this way why did
he take the honorarium--grm]. He said that it was an attempt to turn
naturalism into dogmas. He correctly pointed out that there were no talk of
prayers on the weather report and that students want good weather and
farmers want the opposite. He said that if religious people are naturalist
about the weather, why not about evolution?
In my opinion, he did little to help convert people or even give them too
much data to influence them to change from their non-evolutionary positions.
When you insult someone (intentionally or not) they quit listening. In order
to change YECs they must listen to you.
*******
Henry F. Schaeffer, Univ. Georgia, Athens
He is a quantum chemist and with over 800 papers published you might think
would have the intellectual capability to handle Weinberg. Unfortunately,
he didn't. And this was the considerable opinion of every Christian I spoke
with. Basically he gave a Campus Crusade for Christ talk (at least as they
were in my college days). He quoted scientist after scientists saying that
one could be a Christian and a scientist. He even quoted Weinberg several
times and acted like a puppy dog in his slavish flattery of Weinberg.
Weinberg looked bored. Here are the guys he quoted--not comprehensive but as
much as I could get:
Bacon, Kepler, Thompson, G. G. Stokes, Kelvin, Charles Townes, Polkinghorne,
Sandage, Griffiths, Chris Isham, Wayne Phillips, Francis Collins, Davies,
Hawking, Hoyle.
The only interesting thing was that Schaeffer said at the very beginning
that he was intimidated [I think he meant to follow Weinberg], but just as
the word intimidated came out, there was a loud explosion and the overhead
projector went dead. Schaeffer asked Weinberg if he thought that was an
act of God. Weinberg did laugh--about the only time he did.
The only real piece of data Schaeffer presented that might point to a
creator was the need for the water molecule to have precisely 1.84 Debye
units for the dipole moment. He didn't explain it--just said it. Here he
had some real evidence and left it lying on the rug like an unexplained
stain.
I sat across the isle from Weinberg and during Schaeffer's talk he put on
his sunglasses (in the auditorium). I think he went to sleep.
Q&A
In the Q&A session, Weinberg said he was not surprised that scientists are
religious. It is 'horrifying to believe that we die and won't see our loved
ones" He further said that it is hard to resist the consolation of afterlife
that religion gives. He admitted that he didn't know about the dipole
moment. He said that if we believe that the universe is intelligible because
God arranged it this way, it doesn't answer anything. He called God a cruel
malicious being punishing humanity for Adam and Eve seeking knowledge.
In response to one of Schaeffer's statements that Christianity had brought
moral improvement with Wilberforce ending slavery as an example, Weinberg
said correctly that Wilberforce would not have gotten anywhere without the
help of non-religious peoples. And he then cited Frederick Douglas as an
example that Christianity did more to advance slavery. Douglas' master
became crueler after becoming a Christian.
Michael Shermer, (looking MAAARVELOUS--however Billy Crystal used to say it
on Saturday Night Live) grandstanded to the cameras [smile included] and
said to Schaeffer, that his was one big argument from Authority. "I came
2000 miles to hear the best that ID has to offer. Is this the best arguments
on can have for ID?" And since Schaeffer had mentioned Jesus, he asked,
What does Jesus have to do with this? This is a science conference." I
couldn't write fast enough to get Schaeffer's response. Hopefully it is on
the tape.
Weinberg said that the moral influence of religion has been bad.
Toole said that Schaeffer had said 'the range of beliefs of scientists was
the same as the general public.' Toole said that the number of religious
scientists is very small and that by merely citing the range of beliefs,
Schaeffer overestimates the number of religious conservatives.
Someone then asked Schaeffer to tell him how ID informed quantum chemistry.
Schaeffer retreated and said that someone has mistaken ly concluded that he
was ID. He predicted that someone would talk about the Miller -Urey
experiment at the conference. I didn't hear them named at all. One
prediction down
Someone commented about Einstein using the term God. Weinberg said he
didn't understand why Einstein even used the word. Einstein's god was like
that of Spinoza.
I will say that Schaeffer's talk was roundly castigated by the Christians
for being such a lousy response to Weinberg. Most Christians I spoke with
were embarrassed. One guy, who knew my friend Frank and knew Frank was in
the anti-creation movement, waited for him at the elevator the next morning
in order to profusely apologize for Schaeffer and to ask Frank not to
consider that the best Christian apologetics has to offer. Schaeffer was
bad, bad, bad.
Thus ended the first day.
I didn't say this on Day 2 but the next morning, I had a wonderful breakfast
with Howard Van Till. It was very nice to meet him and put flesh and bones
on those posts of his.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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