Re: [asa] YEC and ID arguments

>
> common descent doesn't in itself have to imply scientism-
> materialism, and
> clearly false positions such as YECism should be rejected.
>
> But Greg and I, working in social sciences, see that people in our
> disciplines...in *your...* disciplines...in the culture at large,
> conflating common descent with scientisim-materialism is a huge, huge
> problem; I at least would daresay it's a bigger threat to faith than
> YECism.
>

To a large extent, YECism and ID are the same problem-conflating common
descent with atheism. Their excessive desire for scientific support for
their claims also suggests some scientism has rubbed off on them.

Both Johnson and Dawkins proclaim that evolution equals atheism. It's
blatantly illogical, but since when does that stop many people from
accepting a loudly made claim? Look at advertising.

Darwinism is not a very appropriate term for Dawkins et al.'s view,
as it is
not the view of Darwin.

Not only are most scientists poorly equipped to assess scientific
arguments
outside their disciplines, most are very ignorant about anything
outside of
science. What's needed is better communication of the fact that science
doesn't tell us much theologically. This is not to endorse the
non-overlapping magesteria of Gould; theology tells us some important
things
about science and its practice, but science doesn't tell us much about
theology.

  And this leads, for me at least, to the problem of teleology and
design
> arguments. For the love of God, I don't understand what I sense is
> a deep
> hostility to any sort of teleology or design argument in biology
> among some
> (not all) in the TE camp. I do understand caution, since there are
> some
> plainly flawed teleology / design arguments, and many of those are
> employed
> by YECs. But when I read someone like Francis Collins with the one
> hand
> employ teleology / design arguments in cosmology and with the other
> blithely
> dismiss the very same sorts of arguments in biology, I say "huh?"
> It seems
> to me that the brick wall against any design / teleology arguments in
> biology lends aid and comfort to those who say Darwinism does imply
> scientism-materialsm.
>

Part of the hostility comes from frustration at the abundance of bad
arguments. After encountering countless bad arguments and no good ones,
it's easy to quit checking new arguments. The negative impact of
flagrantly
bad arguments on Christianity and its image among sciences is a related
frustration. Another source of hostility is the response to
hostility by
many in the YEC and ID camps to TE. When arguments for design are
commonly
accompanied by assertions that I'm seriously deficient in my faith, it's
challenging to approach them neutrally.

Although the above reasons are common triggers for hostility in
humans, they
do not provide a strong logical justification for doubt about all claims
(there is some logical justification in the observation that all sampled
arguments are bad).
A more fundamental aspect comes from the question of what design or
teleology ought to look like. The ID models such as specified
complexity
and irreducible complexity to me have the ring of post hoc efforts to
identify biochemical complexity as designed rather than a priori
efforts at
developing a model of design rooted in actual comparison of designed and
non-designed objects. Identifying human agency in an archaeological
setting, for example, depends not on finding complexity but on finding
things that related to known human activity and cannot be accounted
for by
natural causes. Often simplicity is more distinctive than
complexity-straight lines are relatively uncommon in nature.

Can biology detect design or purpose? Only certain subsets of them, and
even then the actual inference of purpose is often outside the
biology. In
and of itself, evolution and any other natural law has no purpose or
goal-it's just a description of the regular patterns in the physical
world.
This actually argues against most purportedly evolutionary philosophical
views, because they claim to derive values from evolution. Dawkins
is right
to say that there's nothing inherent in evolution to prevent one from
producing beautiful art, but there's also nothing inherent in
evolution to
prevent one from being an axe murderer. The latter might have negative
effects on one's evolutionary success, either due to negative social
pressure (e.g., incarceration or execution) or because it doesn't make a
good impression on the opposite sex, but evolution doesn't tell us
that we
ought to strive for our own evolutionary success; it merely predicts
that we
typically will do so. Many people invoke evolution in support of
conservation of species, but again it merely tells us about probable
biological consequences of the loss of various species. Marxism, social
Darwinism, eugenics, etc. are more explicit in their erroneous effort to
equate evolution with progress. Biology cannot tell us the difference
between "progress" (in any ethical sense, as opposed to the case of mere
biological change) and "going bad". Horses have progressed further than
humans in the process of losing digits, but I wouldn't feel more
advanced if
I cut off a few of my toes and fingers.

However, all this does not tell us whether God might be working through
evolution towards a goal. If I assume that is the case, then I can
make philosophical claims in hindsight such as that God evidently was
working towards the goal of producing humans. Biology only tells us
that
evolution eventually produced humans; either theology or egocentrism
enables
one to see significance in that fact.
To me, the fine-tuning arguments and the arguments from gaps within an
aspect of science (almost invariably evolution) have a different
character.
The former argue that the laws of science are themselves ultimately
examples
of design; the latter seeks for exceptions to the laws of science.
Theologically, I don't see any good reason to expect gaps within
science,
though I couldn't entirely rule them out; they do not seem necessary.
However, ultimately everything has its origin in creation by God. Thus,
whether or not there is statistical basis for recognizing it, the
laws of
nature are the way they are because God made them that way.

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