A. To John Walley
I thank Mr. Walley for his reply.
I am glad that Mr. Walley now agrees with me that there is potential overlap between ID and TE.
However, there are a few points that I need to comment on:
First, Mr. Walley says that it should be “obvious” that “TE is frontloaded with Intelligent Design”. I presume that by this he means that TE “obviously endorses front-loaded design”. Based on what I have read in the *PEC* book, and what I have seen in this discussion, that is not true. I have been told by everyone here that there is no single TE position, and that TEs hold many views on how evolution occurs. And the front-loading option is not prominent in the *PEC* book, at least not in my reading so far. Nor, as far as I can tell, does Ken Miller, or Francis Collins, or Francisco Ayala, champion front-loading, though I’m willing to be corrected.
As far as I can tell, most TEs seem to believe (though it’s hard to say, because of the vagueness of some accounts, and the overall diversity) that without any front-loading, without any prior arrangement, atoms and molecules and cells and organisms can evolve upwards, through chemical and biological means, via chance and processes of chemical and biological “selection”, and that God wanted it that way, because he wanted nature to be “free” to express itself by creating new forms on its own initiative, not supervised by a “tyrannical” overlord.
Again, as far as I can tell, the next largest group of TEs seems to believe that God did intervene in some very subtle way to steer the process, but that this very subtle intervention is indistinguishable from what would be expected from “chance” quantum fluctuations, and therefore, atheistic and Christian evolutionary positions can describe nature in exactly the same way, with the option of explaining via God or not-God left totally up to the personal and private faith of the scientist.
Kenneth Miller, the philosophically and theologically challenged cell biologist who purports to be an expert on Darwinian evolution, sits on the fence between these two positions. During the Dover trial he was loudly shouting about being “100% Catholic and 100% Darwinian”, which would be position number 1 above, but in his book, *Finding Darwin’s God*, he toys here and there with the idea of God’s operation in the evolutionary process, an operation hidden behind “quantum indeterminacy”, which would be position number 2.
The smallest group of TEs, as far as I can determine, is the group that believes in “front-loading”.
So Mr. Walley is in the minority, at least, if those TEs who have committed themselves in print are any indication. However, I think his position is the more philosophically coherent than the first position (which says that both God’s will and chance reign simultaneously), and I wish it were more common among TEs, because it would make ID-TE rapprochement easier.
Second, Mr. Walley wrote:
“...you seem to believe that it is not sufficient for ID to have been embedded only at the beginning but it has to be manifested along the way as well, such as in the fiat creation of Adam for God to get credit for His creation.”
That is not what I believe, and if I seemed to imply that (though I’d like to know where I did), I apologize for any lack of clarity in my writing.
What I believe is this: God can have full credit for all of creation if everything, even man, is created via a process of front-loaded evolution. If there is no miraculous causation at all (beyond the creation of the laws of nature and the “primeval atom”), God’s sovereignty, omnipotence, omniscience, and general providence regarding nature would still be preserved via front-loaded evolution. In that sense, as long as Genesis-literalism is not a requirement of orthodoxy, front-loading would be compatible with orthodoxy.
Third, Mr. Walley wrote:
“From reading your posts you seem to imply that Darwinism excludes this type of front loading and implies atheism. I know this is a popular use of the term but I don't think that is universally accepted on this list. I think many like me see Darwinism as only a mechanism (sans ideology) of RM + NS which is of no threat to the Christian faith.”
I reply that “Darwinism”, like any term, can be given any meaning whatsoever, as long as people agree to use it consistently, but that the most sensible approach is to reserve the term for (a) what Darwin himself taught, and (b) what his most consistent disciples have taught and still teach (allowing for updates in the science where Darwin was ignorant or wrong). So I have taken my notion of “Darwinism” from a close reading of Darwin himself (which does not seem to be a very common exercise among many who invoke Darwin’s name), and a close reading of those modern writers who claim to be fully Darwinian (e.g., Ken Miller, Richard Dawkins).
The position taken by Darwin, Miller and Dawkins is definitely not front-loading. Front-loading is necessitarian; Darwin-Miller-Dawkins (with the partial exception of Miller, some of the time) are oriented to “chance”; chance must build literally everything, because natural selection can only (as its name implies) select from what has already been built. And just as necessity and chance are far from the same thing, so Denton diverges radically from Darwin, Miller, and Dawkins.
As for whether RM + NS can be separated out as mechanisms from Darwin’s overall view of nature, well of course they can be, but the exercise is somewhat perverse, because the whole scheme of variation plus natural selection was born out of the same womb as Darwin’s overall view of nature. It is not as if Darwin accidentally discovered, by independent scientific investigation, that RM + NS could explain the origin of species, and then, being of naturalistic inclination (whether deistic or atheistic), slapped “naturalism” on top as an arbitrary philosophical preference. The reason that he came up with variation plus natural selection in the first place is precisely because he was looking for a naturalistic explanation; he was trying to exclude Paleyan design. The motive generated the mechanism. [This is an oversimplification, to be sure, because it did appear that Paleyan design could not explain certain features of nature; Darwin did have some empirical reasons fo!
r looking for a non-design alternative. Nonetheless, his statements about miracles and natural laws make clear that by the time he wrote the Origin, he had decided that a “scientific” explanation must exclude design. He had become what Ken Miller or Eugenie Scott would call a “methodological naturalist”. The Origin represents a transitional point. Biology rapidly transitioned from the old position (biased in favour of design), through an intermediate position (in which design and chance are posited as on equal footing, the decision to be made by the evidence) which can be found in parts of the Origin, where Darwin compares design and chance explanations, to the new position (excluding design in principle), which is outlined in principle in parts of the Origin, and becomes standard afterwards.]
But even if we allow that RM + NS can be yanked out of Darwin’s context, and incorporated as neutral scientific notions into theology, the problems that I have pointed out remain. It’s simply a matter of chance whether or not certain variations appear. That means it’s a matter of chance whether or not any given creature appears, including man. That means that evolution could not have been God’s “tool” for creation, or at least, not God’s exclusive tool, because otherwise God could not guarantee any result. And both the Bible and Christian tradition make it clear that whatever God wants, he gets. He may allow his creation a little bit of leeway regarding the timing (as in the case of Jonah), but he never allows his creation to thwart him. So the Darwinian mechanism is ludicrous as a “means of creation”. It’s too chancy. It might be acceptable as a minor means of creation, to explain slight “local variations” on God’s overall plan. But God wo!
uldn’t have made the backbone of the plan depend upon a non-rule-bound process which was capricious; at least, not the God of orthodox belief. (The God of process theology is another matter; he revels in uncertainty; even his own being is uncertain.)
Front-loading, however, is not chancy. By nature it’s compatible with an omnipotent God who plans things out to the last detail, or almost the last detail (if we go with Denton and leave a tiny but relatively insignificant role for chance).
Both “front-loading” and the incorporation of RM + NS as neutral mechanisms into Christian theology were miles from Darwin’s mind. Any Christian theologian who adopts either position is doing it without the blessing of Darwin, and against the intentions of Darwin (and of Dawkins, Sagan, Gould, Gaylord Simpson, etc.) But if you want to call such a baptizing of Darwin “both Christian and Darwinian”, so be it.
Fourth, Mr. Walley wrote:
“My apologies for the strong language but it is frustrating to continually have to belabor the obvious among people who ought to know better but seem to refuse to surrender pet biases for apparently political reasons.”
I was not objecting to strong language. I like strong language. I was objecting to the theological arrogance of the thought-content that the strong language conveyed. In essence, Mr. Walley’s previous remarks had said that those who understood creation in the traditional manner, as a series of wondrous special works, had a childish, unworthy view of God, and that TEs, who make creation out to have occurred only through natural processes, had an adult, worthy view of God. I was challenging the know-it-all attitude behind such a statement. And it is certainly no less “political” to insist that God creates only through naturalistic processes than it is to insist that he creates through a series of miracles. Both are interpretations of the text, motivated by various emotional needs and theological agendas.
Doesn’t it strike anyone here as odd that prior to modern times, almost no one, including the greatest theologians, philosophers and scientists, found it childish to suppose that God created through a series of miraculous acts? What should we conclude from that? That even the brightest pre-modern thinkers had childish minds and childish views of God, whereas modern, liberal, mainstream-church-going, middle-class suburbanites with no real scientific or academic training, who pick up a book on evolution every ten years or so, like Ken Miller’s, and agree with it, have finally learned to think about God like adults? That’s pretty arrogant. I would venture to argue that Thomas Aquinas thought about God on a level to which none of us can aspire, and that his thought was not childish, and that he accepted the notion of a series of miraculous actions in creation.
But even if the belief in miracles in creation were childish, it would not damage my argument, or the position of ID. I carry no brief for miracles in creation, and have argued against Randy Isaac, showing that they are not necessary for ID. However, ID is compatible with miracles in creation, because natural objects would show the same results, in terms of design, that front-loaded naturalistic evolution would show. It is impossible for design theory to tell whether a given design was implemented miraculously or naturalistically. So ID has no scientific motivation for saying anything one way or the other about the possibility of miracles in creation. And ID cannot rule miracles out on the basis of some supposed knowledge of what God would or would not do. ID does not theologize. Individual ID supporters may indeed theologize, but ID itself does not, and cannot.
TE, on the other hand, is committed to theologizing. Theologizing is its raison d’etre. I have nothing against that. But in their theologizing, TE proponents should recognize how easy it is for theological judgements to become mere reflections of contemporary currents of thought. In the modern world, the currents of thought are all in favour of “freedom”, “creativity”, “spontaneity”, “individuality”, “novelty”, “progress”, “evolution”, and so on. In the pre-modern world, the currents of thought were in favour of “order”, “balance”, “harmony”, “obedience”, “law”, “predictable cyclical recurrence”, “stability”, etc. Modern thought is more favourable to evolution, not merely because of the real or putative evidence that scientists have uncovered, but because evolutionary thought fits in with what the Germans call the “Zeitgeist” – the spirit of the times. From the Enlightenment onward, the times have been fa!
vourable to evolutionary thinking. We are all children of the Enlightenment. We therefore tend to share the self-flattering opinion of the Enlightenment thinkers that we are more “adult” in our scientific, philosophical and theological thinking than pre-modern people. But I would argue that we are simply more arrogant and complacent about our alleged superiority. I fear that TE judgements about what God would or would not do, and about adult versus childish views of God, are heavily shaped by Enlightenment prejudices. Many of the statements I hear from TEs sound, in spirit, much more like Voltaire, Lessing, Hume, or Kant than like Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, or Luther. I would suggest that TEs do a little digging into the history of ideas, philosophical and theological. They might be surprised at the amount of unconscious influence of modern secularizing thought that is operating in their thinking.
B. To Bernie Dehler
Mr. Dehler wrote:
“He appeals to Michael Denton for arguments against evolution. Just like my Theology teacher did. Then I found out, after finishing the class, Denton's book (Evolution in Crisis) was really old and now Denton accepts evolution! Why appeal to the old Denton when the new Denton no longer believes it ???”
Mr. Dehler has apparently not read either of Michael Denton’s books. Denton never denied “evolution” as a real process, not even in the first book. The title of that book, *Evolution: A Theory in Crisis*, is perhaps somewhat misleading in this regard, but note that the title was not: *Evolution: A Dubious Process*. Denton never denied that evolution took place. His focus was on the crisis of the theoretical explanation of evolution, i.e., neo-Darwinism. Denton pointed out that the biological data is not consistent with Darwinian gradualism; both biochemically and morphologically, he argued, we see discontinuity rather than continuity. In fact, the results of nature look more like the results predicted by “creationism” than those predicted by Darwinian gradualism. However, Denton did not argue from this data that “creationism” was the correct account of origins. He in fact offered no explicit alternative account to Darwinism at all. But he certainly i!
mplied throughout that evolution had occurred, albeit through an unknown set of mechanisms.
It is also important to note that Denton’s second book, *Nature’s Destiny*, while endorsing a naturalistic explanation of evolution, decisively rejects any central role for Darwinian explanation, in favour of front-loaded design. Denton understands Darwinian evolution in the same manner that I do, i.e., as a mechanism heavily dependent upon chance. Thus, if William Lane Craig (whose views were, I believe, the take-off point for the discussion of Denton) admires Denton’s second book, there is no inconsistency whatsoever in his rejection of Darwin. Anyone who agrees with Denton’s second book must reject a great deal of Darwin.
Mr. Dehler should read my earlier exchanges with Don Nield over the alleged changes in Denton’s views. But most important of all, he should thoroughly read Denton’s books before commenting on them.
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Received on Wed Nov 12 10:14:36 2008
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