Re: Evolutionary Psychology and Free Will

Gregory,

If I may try to summarize the main points of you post:

(1) You object to the tendency of scientists to seize
on "evolution" as a way to explain everything they observe
including the formation of the universe, life and even
ethics and consciousness. Your opinion is that some
of these involve change and perhaps some others are
immutable.

(2) You see TEs and CEs(what are CEs?) not raising any
objections to this general tendency of scientists.

(3) You sense Ted is using evolution in much this same way.

On (3), Ted answered for himself, but actually, whereas I
could see how you might get that impression of me, I'm a
little puzzled how you got this impression about Ted. Perhaps
you misunderstood whatever point he was trying to make at
the time.

As to (1):
First, that is a general tendency in the way that scientists
work. When an approach seems to be working in one place, we
try to apply it somewhere else.

Second, we tend to be far less cautious in defining terms than
philosophers and some other disciplines: so expressions like
"watching the system evolve" perhaps sound more "sexy" than
"watching the system change"; but certainly for an experiment
that uses a He-flow cryostat (for example), the latter statement
is actually more correct.

So I think a lot of this is misuse of words for various
reasons that have little to do with evolution. We probably
should be more reserved about grasping for sexy sounding words,
but that is another issue.

As to (2), we do have to work on different levels. If we want to talk about
"science", we must discuss what we obtain from a process of methodological
naturalism; because that is all we can do with science. It is also important
to know what we can obtain from that avenue. The fundamental difference
is not in how we do science; good science should be good regardless of who
does it or where it is done. Rather, it is when we start to ask the why
question.
If the universe (or multiverse) is all that was, is and ever will be, we are
expressing a philosophical naturalism that insists on everything being
explained
by science. Such is what you refer to as scientism, and this is clearly
where
we get of the train. Science does explain the prosaic questions, but why
we are here to ponder our existence and whether there is a God and what
purpose life and following Christ could mean, these are not things that
science can or should be expected to answer.

> I am not challenging scientific-evolutionary theories, when applied in
> their ‘proper’ domains. What I am though challenging, is the ideological misuse
> of evolution, for example, when it is extended into a universalistic theory
> or worldview that ‘tends’ to cast doubt on the Biblical view of human
> origins, creation, the image of God, and sometimes the entire biblical narrative.
> Can these things not be considered comparatively, distinctly?

I don't think TEs are saying that the Decalogue (ten commandments)
is necessarily explainable by science and in particular evolution.
Crows steal from other birds because they are big enough and strong
enough to do so. On the other hand, lions will take up orphaned
pups. Are crows evil and lions saints? I'm sure we can explain
these through methodological naturalism using some group selection
model or evolutionary stable states model, but we cannot say which
is actually "right" by way of science. To that, I think we have to
turn to something that is outside. That may be partly why Jesus
says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfied" (Mt 5:7), we will know that satisfaction
(if we are faithful) when we reach heaven's gates and hear "well
done". But in the mean time, we can surely expect the world to
follow the examples of crows, lions and other beasts. (My apologies
in advance if I have offended any crow lovers on the list. They
are very intelligent birds, but we should not follow their example
on this point above, though the world does.)

By Grace we proceed,
Wayne
Received on Fri May 5 00:26:51 2006