Re: [asa] Because of us - Steve Fuller's anthropic principle -Darwin's original sin

Ted:

You've misunderstood part of my post, probably because of the arrangement of
my argument. I'll take the blame, for throwing in an aside which
interrupted the main flow of my argument. Here is where the
misunderstanding comes in:

***

TD -- "First, I think you have understood my own view, though I can't speak
for George Murphy. As you say, this view does not collapse into the
Gould/Dawkins view -- it is not a form of atheism. You seem to think that
this then leads to a contradiction, but I simply do not agree with you on
this."

Hold on. I do not think that "this" leads to a contradiction, if by "this"
you mean your view and George Murphy's. The contradiction I was pointing
out lies wholly with those who try to combine classical Christian theism
with the Gould/Dawkins/Coyne sort of view of nature -- but the
Gould/Dawkins/Coyne sort of view is not your own.

The only reason I referred to your view and George's, was to avert any
suspicion on your part that I was attacking it. I was saying: "The quantum
view is all right by me, at least on the logical front, because it still
amounts to guidance by God. It doesn't commit the logical error of saying
that God guides evolution without guidance."

The view I was attacking as illogical was the view that neo-Darwinism -- *as
its classic proponents have understood it*, not as you and George Murphy
have suggested reframing it in quantum terms -- is compatible with God's
ensuring that certain definite results will emerge out of the evolutionary
process. The whole point of classic neo-Darwinism is that the evolutionary
process cannot be counted on to produce any particular result. It may stop
at bacteria, if the bacteria are doing just fine; it may stop at snails, or
reptiles; it may even backtrack from reptiles, if reptiles are selected
against, leaving only amphibians and lower forms of life. It can have no
direction, given the nature of the mechanism. It certainly cannot guarantee
the result describe in Genesis 1. And therefore it certainly cannot
guarantee that there will ever be a Fall, an Israel, a Messiah, a
Redemption, etc. So how could God have "used" evolution of that sort to
accomplish his ends?

I don't want to get into all the larger metaphysical issues you raise in
this post at the moment, but I will address the point about Behe. You quote
Behe as saying:

"Miller doesn't think that guidance is necessary in evolution, but if it
were (as I believe), then a route would be open for a subtle God to design
life without overriding natural law. ... As a theist like Miller, that
seems perfectly possible to me. I would add, however, that such a process
would amount to Intelligent Design, not Darwinian evolution. Further, while
we might not be able to detect quantum manipulations, we may nevertheless be
able to conclude confidently that the final structure was designed."

Yes, and I agree entirely with Behe's position here (including his cautious
"may"). Your position, and George Murphy's, as far as I understand it from
what he's said, are not incompatible with design detection framed in this
modest way. Neither Behe nor any ID theorist that I know of has said that
God's *individual actions* are detectable, or that we can point to a
particular mutation, and say: "THAT mutation wasn't a truly chance one; it
was caused directly by God". The design inference -- assuming for the sake
of argument that such a thing is possible -- rests on a larger pattern of
biological change over time that cannot be plausibly explained as a sequence
of truly disconnected chance events."

Your position, put crudely, is that God guides evolution but that the
guidance is not scientifically detectable. And if by guidance you mean the
specific divine actions involved, Behe and I entirely agree with you. But
that does not rule out the possibility that guidance can be inferred from
the results. I don't have to have seen a baseball player swing his bat to
infer that he has done so, if my bay window is smashed and his baseball is
lying under my coffee table. So even given your quantum explanation, which
I admit is possible, and which I don't find theologically offensive, design
detection can't be ruled out as a possibility. Neither the science nor the
theology of your quantum answer forbids it. (It doesn't make design
detectability certain, either; I realize that; but it doesn't rule it out.)

Cameron.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Davis" <TDavis@messiah.edu>
To: <asa@lists.calvin.edu>; "Cameron Wybrow" <wybrowc@sympatico.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 11:00 AM
Subject: Re: [asa] Because of us - Steve Fuller's anthropic
principle -Darwin's original sin

>I am not at all sure, Cameron, why you keep pushing the "chance" thing,
>particularly when you say this:
>
> <The combination popular on this list, i.e., to accept the "science" of
> Dawkins and Gould (separated from their "atheist metaphysics"), and then
> Christianize it with theistic metaphysics, does not in my view work. It
> produces metaphysical hash, because the "science" of Dawkins and Gould is
> inseparable from their metaphysics. In fact, evolutionary theory of their
> type is 90% metaphysics (bad metaphysics in my opinion) and 10% science.
>
> Put crudely, any form of theistic evolution that accepts 100% of
> Dawkins/Gould must say:
>
> "God guides evolution by making use of a process the fundamental nature of
> which is logically incompatible with guidance".
>
> This notion violates basic logic, and I reject it. (There is a possible
> rescue, which I'll consider later, though only to confirm my rejection.)
>
> Now I know that George and Ted have suggested that perhaps God guides
> things under the cover of quantum indeterminacy, but this does not solve
> the contradiction mentioned. Suppose that God does this. Then, from the
> point of view of the human observer, evolution looks like a chancy, random
> affair, but from a God's-eye view, it is controlled to produce exactly
> what God wants. This would preserve "methodological naturalism" --
> there's no way of telling an intervention from a quantum freak event --
> but it would still concede that ultimately the events aren't "random" --
> metaphysically, I mean. So while I grant George and Ted that if God
> intervenes in the evolutionary process, he could do so unobserved
> (perhaps) under quantum indeterminacy, the metaphysical question can't be
> avoided: is the course of evolution guided, or not? Ultimately, George
> and Ted are saying: yes, it is, though science can't prove it.
>
> A Gould/Dawkins answer, topped up with Christian theology, would be
> different from Ted and George's answer.>
>
> ***
>
> I have two main comments, Cameron, by way of reply.
>
> First, I think you have understood my own view, though I can't speak for
> George Murphy. As you say, this view does not collapse into the
> Gould/Dawkins view -- it is not a form of atheism. You seem to think that
> this then leads to a contradiction, but I simply do not agree with you on
> this. We really have no idea how God interacts with matter -- or with us,
> apart from the "ordinary" human interactions associated with the
> "extraordinary" events of the life of the incarnate God. As Boyle put it
> long before we knew about QM, in a dialogue on "Things Transcending
> Reason," where an interlocutor says, "I can as little explain by any thing
> in Nature, how God, who is an immaterial Substance, can move Matter, as
> how he can create it..." We are really no closer to answering this
> mystery today, than we were in his day. The quantum thing above is
> nothing more than one poor human model to try to make some sense out of
> the unfathomable mystery of divine action. Perhaps you can do be!
>
> tter, Cameron, but I doubt it.
>
> The point of this model is really about us, about our knowledge, not about
> God and how God achieves God's plans. The point, as several scientists
> and theologians have realized, is to say that our own determinist models
> of divine action (which you seem to prefer, Cameron, unless I misread your
> intonation), inspired by determinist models of nature, cannot actually be
> imposed on God b/c they can't be imposed on nature. Down deep, things
> happen that we cannot predict, that we can never fully know. If David
> Bohm is right, then all of this is wrong, obviously; but if you take that
> route, Cameron, or some other deterministic route, then it seems to be
> that we're right back in the Enlightenment pickle of making God into the
> Divine Calculator instead of the maker of heaven and earth whose ways are
> not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts. To my way of
> thinking, a model based on the usual view of QM (namely, that we won't
> discover hidden variables), is much to be prefe!
>
> rred.
>
> Also, I should point out that Mike Behe has no problem with such a view.
> In his contribution to "Debating Design," he quotes Ken Miller's summary
> of this view (in "Finding Darwin's God," p. 241), and then says "Miller
> doesn't think that guidance is necessary in evolution, but if it were (as
> I believe), then a route would be open for a subtle God to design life
> without overriding natural law. ... As a theist like Miller, that seems
> perfectly possible to me. I would add, however, that such a process would
> amount to Intelligent Design, not Darwinian evolution. Further, while we
> might not be able to detect quantum manipulations, we may nevertheless be
> able to conclude confidently that the final structure was designed."
>
> (Dembski also has favorable things to say about a quantum picture of
> divine action is his new book, but I won't quote that since it isn't out
> yet.)
>
> My sense, Cameron, is that Behe captures the point you state in the
> excerpt I quoted from you post, above. Am I reading you correctly?
>
> I find it odd, personally, that Behe says that something undetectable
> counts as ID, but perhaps I really am missing something very important
> about ID that you can help me see. I think this is i.d., not I.D., but
> (again) maybe I am mistaken. You seem, Cameron, not to like the subtlety
> of the quantum view, and maybe you share my puzzlement with what Behe says
> here?
>
> Second, Cameron, if (as Behe says and I think you are also saying) the QM
> view is not Darwinian evolution, then so what? It might well look
> "Darwinian" (unguided), but this is only to say that we just don't know
> the ultimate causes here and we are confessing scientific ignorance of
> them. What's the big deal here? Is the problem simply that the QM view
> doesn't give the theist a big club to apply to the head of Dawkins or
> Gould? It certainly leaves more than plenty of room for faith to
> interpret events as divinely caused and planned--at least it seems to do
> me. What's the problem here? I'm not bothered if my faith is not
> scientific; Dawkins' faith isn't scientific, either; and my faith can
> answer a lot of questions that his is forced to ignore or even deny the
> legitimacy of. I'll take that any day.
>
> In terms of science, however, these things are as Owen Gingerich says,
> "Questions without Answers." I quote from my review of Owen's book,
> "God's Universe," as follows:
>
> <Gingerich has plenty of courage, but he treads much more cautiously.
> Although evolution is incomplete and many questions remain unanswered, he
> admits, "those are not grounds for dismissing it." Outlining a middle way,
> he goes on to question whether the mathematically random mutations upon
> which evolution depends are also random in a larger, metaphysical sense.
> His suggestion here reminds me of yet another Harvard scientist: the
> botanist Asa Gray, the first American Darwinian and also an important
> early proponent of what is often called "theistic evolution." Gray
> acknowledged the presence and power of natural selection, but he also
> believed that "variation has been led along certain beneficial lines" by
> the Creator to produce the grand scheme of living things.
>
> The development of quantum physics in the twentieth century has led some
> to propose that God might govern the universe partly at the atomic or
> molecular level. Such activity would be real but scientifically invisible,
> since it would be masked by the inherent uncertainties of quantum
> phenomena; faith would perceive what science lacks the ability to confirm
> or to deny. The late William Pollard, a physicist at Oak Ridge who was
> also an Episcopalian priest, is often associated with this view.
> Contemporary champions include at least two more ordained physicists, John
> Polkinghorne and Robert John Russell, and Gingerich makes a similar claim.
> If God does not act at this level "to design the universe in a purposeful
> way," he says, then "random chance was extremely lucky, because the
> outcome is there to see.">
>
> I fail to see the problem here, Cameron, unless you just reject the view
> that God can do things without God being "seen" doing them. The outcome
> can be seen, but not the actions themselves. That seems compatible with
> both TE and ID, wouldn't you say?
>
> So, Cameron, what's really your beef here?
>
> Ted
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Received on Tue Apr 28 13:39:02 2009