Re: [asa] Re: Cosmological vs. Biological Design

>
> Good comments, Dave, but I do think that the analogies with gravity and
> with history both miss the point. Gravity as a law of nature doesn't show
> purposelessness either and, precisely as you said, people don't claim any
> atheism as a result. As an example, it doesn't relate since there is no
> concept in gravity of anything that could have been otherwise.
>

Gravity shows no sign of supernatural intervention. If you try to fully
calculate gravitaiontal interactions for more than two objects over an
extended period of time, it's usually intractable. It certainly can't
predict the origin of our solar system, or even predict that a habitable
planet would exist, though it does tell us that a planet can have a stable
orbit at a habitable distance from a star. Thus, gravity leaves us with
many possibilities and no guarantee that things would turn out similarly if
one could rewind and start over. Therefore gravity supports atheism and
purposelessness, unless one thinks there's a problem with extrapolating from
ordinary providence to absence of God and from physical randomness to
metaphysical randomness.

Gravity has no purpose or goal of its own. Things are not better on the
floor than up on a shelf. Gravity gives me no moral justification to drop
stuff off of tall buidings, nor any moral guidance at all, except in the
sense that it allows me to calculate likely physical consequences of certain
actions, which I could evaluate morally on some other ground. Evolution is
the same way-merely a property of creation, without purposes of its own.
Genesis 1 makes it clear that natural laws and objects are not conscious
forces like the deities and monsters of polytheism.

> ID ( at least the version that I think is the most credible ) doesn't
> deny any of the laws of nature or processes involved in evolution. It looks
> at the part of evolution that proclaims that the tape can never be rerun.
> The part that says there are myriad possibilities in which life could evolve
> and the only reason it goes in the direction it does is environmental
> pressure. And even if that exact same pressure were to be exerted all over
> again, the outcome would be very different. The issue is whether science can
> truly say whether there is guidance of any kind over the direction of
> evolution. Has nothing to do with gaps of laws of nature but purpose in
> direction. TE seems to say that science cannot rule out supernatural
> guidance--it's just hidden so well we can never see it. ID seems to say that
> if such guidance is that well hidden, it doesn't really exist--or at least
> it doesn't matter whether it exists or not, the effect is negligible. This
> isn't saying God doesn't exist but that his providence is not evident.
>

The degree to which rerunning would be vastly different is debated. Gould
probably overstated the extent of unpredictability-see Conway Morris's work,
for example. (Ironically, this exaggerated claim of randomness lies behind
the erroneous claims that the Cambrian radiation was so big as to be a
challenge for evolution to explain.) More importantly for present purposes,
on what grounds does ID base the premise that God's plan ought to be obvious
to science, rather than seen via special revelation, as is the case in the
Bible?

Consideration of everyday events highlights the importance of recognizing
God's providence in things that happen according to natural laws. If I
believe that God is at work in my life only if I see some scientifically
detectable deviation from expectations of physical laws, I conclude that He
doesn't do anything for or with me. If I believe that all things work
together for good according to His purpose, then I am not concerned wheter
they happen according to natural laws or not. Science cannot rule out
supernatural guidance-it's just that it is detected by faith rather than by
sight. Even seeing miraculous events in the Bible often did the viewers no
good; lacking faith, such events failed to sway them.

>The analogy of history is better than that of gravity because we do claim
God's purposes are fulfilled throughout history and God's working through
his people. The main reason the analogy fails here is that human history, as
opposed to natural history, is very much influenced by people and a core
belief of Christian faith is that the Holy Spirit works through human
beings. So in history there is mechanism whereby God influences the
direction of history--by working through humans, whether they believe in him
or not. Someday this view may be challenged if biochemical explanations are
claimed to be discovered for all human actions. But for now, that's in the
future.<

This working through humans, however, is not something amenable to
scientific analysis. Certainly there are people now who claim that
biochemistry explains all human actions. It does explain all human actions,
but not in a very useful way for understanding humans. My typing could be
described by the exact set of biochemical reactions currently taking place
in my brain, neurons, muscles, etc., but that doesn' t help one understand
what I am typing. Also, I doubt that any historian would say, based on the
data of history, that things might not be very different if you could go
back and start over. Theological or philosophical presuppositions might
lead us to posit that things had to happen as they did, either in evolution
or in history, but the physical data give us no reason to suppose that
things could not have turned out very different. Of course, in both cases
we essentially have a sample size of 1, so claims on likelihood are
speculation. Even if we were to discover life or history on another planet,
that would not address the question of whether life on Earth was predestined
to turn out exactly as it did; God could have a different sort of plan for
the other world in question.

> In the development of life, the question is why human beings came into
> being at all. Is it a chance occurrence without any guidance, supernatural
> or natural? Or is it influenced in some way? This is where the dialog needs
> to be. Evolution seems to say that the long-term outcome cannot be
> predicted. Given the state of affairs of the universe say one billion years
> ago, there would be no possible prediction that Homo Sapiens Sapiens would
> ever exist. Reset the clock and it wouldn't appear next time.
>

There's nothing about the biological/paleontological evidence 1 billion
years ago that would allow a biologist to predict the emergence of Homo
sapiens sapiens, though this doesn't prove that it would not appear next
time. The innumerable contingencies on the course of evolution make it seem
improbable that something just like us would evolve if God did not
specifically guide evolution in that way; however, the probability that
evolution would eventually lead to organisms with sufficent intellegence to
be suitable for spirituality might be high. (Note the difficulties of
conveying a hypothetical rerunning while bearing in mind God's sovereignty.)

 Indeed, we all believe that God is intimately involved in all that happens.
> Both TE and ID seems to say that God willed that human beings come into
> existence. It's just a question of chance with hidden guidance or with some
> slightly perceptible guidance. Personally, I don't see any theological
> reason why one would be favored over another.
>

Again, it's important to distinguish between scientifically perceptible
versus perceptible by other means. TE perceives guidance on theological
grounds, not from gaps in scientific explanations.

The only theological reason I can think of is that scientifically
perceptible guidance runs into the problem of "it might be aliens, Zeus,
etc." Miracles seem to function primarily to point to YHWH, not just to a
designer, and the Bible, not science, must be our primary guide to God. I
don't think this is strong enough to rule out slightly perceptible
guidance. The observation that insistance on slightly perceptible guidance
often correlates with dubious examples and criteria for perceiving
guidance might also be taken as a theological sign that it's on the wrong
track. However, this doesn't show whether the right track involves
different criteria for perceiving guidance or scientifically hidden
guidance.

"There might be some scientifically perceptible examples of guidance" is
rather different from "This is an example of scientifically perceptible
guidance and anyone who claims that a non-supernatural explanation exists is
promoting atheism." The latter is closer to the popular perception of ID.
Can this be changed?

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama
"I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
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