Re: Questions about Walter Thorson's latest article in PSCF

On 3/12/04 12:34 PM, "Chuck Austerberry" <cfauster@creighton.edu> wrote:

> Though it won't be available on-line for 18 months, the March 2004 issue of
> Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith has another piece by Walter
> Thorson. It follows a two-part work published two years ago, available at
> http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2002/PSCF3-02dyn.html
>
> Even if you don't get the print version of PSCF, Walter Thorson's earlier work
> has enough of his thesis for anyone to engage in the dialogue, I think.

Chuck,

Having moved recently, I am still unable to locate a few things in my
office, including the March, 2004, issue of PSCF. I did read earlier drafts
of Walt Thorson's essay, so let me see if I can recall enough to make a
contribution here.
 
> Walter Thorson clearly regards ID as a kind of natural theology rather than
> natural science, but he does so without demeaning ID at all. Walter Thorson
> defends a kind of naturalism, and he does not expect mundane scientific
> inquiry to detect interventionist action by an intelligent agent, so Walter
> Thorson is not entirely congruent even with Stephen Meyer. But I think Walter
> Thorson is trying to bridge the gulf between ID and theistic evolution.
> Walter Thorson's approach appears similar to Howard Van Till's Robust
> Formational Economy Principle. It's likely not identical, if only because
> Walter Thorson seems to find more common ground with Stephen Meyer's views
> than I recall Howard Van Till finding.

I must admit that I find less common ground that does Walter. :)
 
> I find such attempts at mediation appealing, and yet I am puzzled. For
> example, Walter Thorson criticizes Kenneth Miller's rebuttal of ID, because
> Walter Thorson sees Kenneth Miller and some other theistic evolutionist
> critics of ID as being too confident about the ability of reductionistic
> physical science to explain biology. Walter Thorson seems to want biology to
> be more accepting of teleological explanations, what he calls "the logic of
> function," as still within the realm of naturalism. He draws much from
> Michael Polanyi's point that while a functional machine consists of atoms that
> obey physical laws, the functional organization of that material cannot be
> explained by physics. The question I have is this: do Walter Thorson's points
> really accommodate anything significant coming from ID theory? Does the
> recognition of multiple irreducible levels (physical, chemical, biological,
> etc.) really suggest anything like ID?

I don't think so. It looks to me that Walt wants to agree with ID advocates
when they say things like, "You can't account for the natural assembly of
certain functional biotic structures just by knowing what atoms and
molecules can do." But beyond that, however, Walt and ID advocates seem to
me to part company on a major point.

ID says something like, "Therefore an Intelligent Designer (the designation
"Skillful Assembler of Biotic Structures" would, I believe, be far more
accurate) must act in some non-natural way to actualize those complex and
functional biotic structures."

If I recall correctly, Walter would be more inclined to say, "Therefore we
must recognize that the system of natural causes includes, as an essential
factor, the 'logic of function' possessed by functional biotic structures.

I would be more inclined to suggest that what Walt labels "the logic of
function" is already included in what I call the universe's "robust
formational economy," especially its configurational and functional
potentialities. What atoms and molecules are able to do is surely not
exhausted by what they can do as individuals, but must include what they can
do (or how they can function) as members of larger systems. I would go on to
suggest that this category of "configurational and functional
potentialities" is an especially rich aspect of the universe's nature, and
that the remarkable character of this aspect is greatly underestimated by ID
advocates and greatly underappreciated by preachers of materialism like
Dawkins & Dennett.
 
> Similarly, Walter Thorson notes that "The claim that mutations occur entirely
> at random has not been proved." Of course it has not. Certain mutations are
> much more likely than others, for purely mechanistic reasons. Moreover, no
> fluctuation tests or other experiment could ever prove that an intelligent
> agent never directed at least some critically important mutations over the
> course of evolution. In fact, I would hope that most biologists wouldn't even
> make such an unsupportable claim. I admit, however, that unless a teacher is
> very careful and clear, students might interpret legitimate statements about
> the unpredictability of individual mutations as some sort of metaphysical
> statement that "no one is in charge." I would hope that words like
> "unsupervised," "undirected," etc. are disappearing from biology textbooks.
> Unpredictable is good enough;

Agreed. I would add that "unpredictable" opens the door to authentic
contingency in what happens in the natural world, which makes the world an
interesting place.

> and again, some *probabilities* of mutations are predictable.
 
> So, while I would welcome any real mediation between ID and theistic
> evolution, and while I regard them as potentially very close theologically and
> metaphysically (but also potentially very different theologically and
> metaphysically - it all depends on assumptions that people too often hold
> close to their vests), I don't quite understand what Walter Thorson means by
> his "modified naturalism" that includes a "logic of function paradigm." I
> certainly don't see anything appropriate for high school science classes,
> other than a healthy reminder that the naturalism appropriate to science in no
> way requires a materialistic, non-theistic metaphysics.

Correct. Our problem is that the most visible and strident participants in
the public arena (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Phillip Johnson, Henry
Morris, Ken Ham....) have agreed to tell the world that it's a simple
either/or choice.

Howard Van Till
Received on Wed Mar 17 11:28:30 2004