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

Hi Cameron,

The ol’ noggin’ is tired, so I hope I’ll make some sense. Let me focus on what seems to the core point of our disagreement. You write:

“He has three basic choices, and only three basic choices, if he wants to "guarantee" the existence of Man: (1) Miracle -- A poofing into existence of everything on the spot; (2) Necessity -- A front-loaded process through which Man must eventually evolve; (3) Chance -- A process entirely dependent upon unguided events over which God has abdicated all direct control, but in which the lack of direct control is compensated for by a massively wasteful creation of matter and energy, to overcome low probabilities with unthinkably large numbers. (Note: Combinations of the basic choices are possible, but they don't clarify anything for my purposes, so I'm omitting them.)”

First, I am always uncomfortable assigning limitations to God’s choices. It would seem more likely to me that the limitation is found in the human brain and our ability to envision God’s choices. I would say that from our perspective, it appears God has only three basic choices. Okay, so we have to deal with what we can handle. But let's remember our limited understanding and perspective.

So let’s get to your point.

It’s not a question of God guaranteeing the existence of “Man.” That’s an abstraction. As a Christian, I believe that God created you, me, Ted, George, and everyone else on this planet. Concrete, not abstract, reality.

So how did we come into existence? We were born. And how did that happen? On one particular day/night, our parents chose to have sexual intercourse and it happened during a time when our mothers’ ovulated one of thousands of possible eggs that, in turn, was fertilized by one of our father’s millions of sperm. We were brought into existence because one particular sperm fertilized one particular egg and it cannot be otherwise. If any other sperm or any other egg was used, we would not exist as who we are. Our existence is dependent on that one sperm and that one egg, each of which underwent its own particular pattern of chromosome recombination during the process of making that one sperm and one egg.

So take the three choices for the origin of Man and put them into our reality – the origin of each one of us.

From the scientific and common sense perspective, #3 was in play. In this case, it is not the science of Darwin, Dawkins, or Gould, but the science of Mendel and genetics. And from a common sense perspective, we all know there is a 50/50 chance a pregnant woman will have either a boy or girl. And whether we are male or female is an intrinsic part of our created identity.

So let’s look at your objections to #3.

“First of all, there's a general plausibility problem: why would God *want* to use a chance process, if he has a clear end in mind? When we humans want X to occur, we don't set in motion a chance process in hopes that we will get the desired outcome. We manipulate the situation to get exactly what we want. Why would God bother with an inefficient process, which could at least in theory fail, when he could do things either by direct creation, with 100% efficiency and certainty, or via front-loading, with 100% certainty and considerably less waste?”

1. If you have two brothers and one sister, is it a theological problem that so much sperm and eggs were wasted to bring just four of you into existence? In theory, the attempt to bring any one of us into existence with this inefficient and wasteful process of fertilization could have failed.

2. I have two answers to your question.

a. If the “inefficient process” brought us into existence, it had to be that way. This is because this inefficient process would define us and become a necessary component of our identity. Direct creation of such beings would be divine deception.

b. Both the Book of Nature and the Bible teach me that God values freedom most of all. It is the freedom to accept or reject God that makes us who we are. Perhaps it is chance that makes creation hospitable to such freedom.

You also add: “Second, God-as-actor cannot, strictly speaking, *guarantee* the existence of Man no matter how much matter he creates. There is always a very slight probability, for any finite amount of matter, no matter how large, that Man might not emerge. So God would be very foolish to employ pure chance methods. He would be better to use front-loading or direct creation.”

God can not only guarantee the existence of Man, but he guarantees the existence of each and every one of us. As I explained in my OP, “If God could have created any one of an infinite number of creations, why did He create this one? Because of us. That is, this is the creation, the only creation, in which we exist. We cannot exist in any other creation. Other humans or humanoids might exist in other creations, but they would not be us…..Because even if chance and natural selection brought us into existence, well, then that’s what would be needed to bring us into existence. God is still in control because this very reality where chance and natural selection brought us into existence would not exist and be sustained if God had not wanted to commune with us. God choose to create this reality whereby chance and natural selection brought us into existence because that is our reality and our history. From God’s perspective, beyond our space-time reality, our emergence was inevitable and foreknown because the very reason this reality was chosen into existence is precisely because God knew it would spawn us, regardless of the mechanism. Creation runs through us and exists because of us.”

-Mike

  Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 12:36 AM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Because of us - Steve Fuller's anthropic principle - Darwin's original sin

  Mike Gene:

  I enjoy all your posts to this group. I particularly enjoyed the wonderful one you sent a couple of months ago about the hidden emotional reasons which govern how someone reacts to an argument that is new and strange. I thought it was very shrewd psychology.

  I'm going to partly disagree with your latest line of argument.

  You asked:

  "Does anyone here really believe that if Dawkins/Gould are correct, we should abandon our Christian faith?"

  I answer:

  I do.

  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. It would work like this:

  God wants to create a universe with certain definite things in it, including Man. He has special plans for human beings, who are to be made in his image. But for his plans to occur, he must first guarantee that Man emerges. Now how can he do that?

  Of course, "God-in-eternity" sees "ahead" and knows that Man will appear, but that is no explanation. The Christian God is no mere Boethian God, resting inactive in eternity, but a Creator, and is in intimate relationship to time as well as to eternity. So "God-in-time", so to speak (all language about God is inadequate, so don't take the picture-thinking too literally, but it is adequate for my point), has to *do* something as well as observe from his lofty, timeless perch. So we have to consider him as, so to speak, an actor in the origin of the time/space world.

  He has three basic choices, and only three basic choices, if he wants to "guarantee" the existence of Man: (1) Miracle -- A poofing into existence of everything on the spot; (2) Necessity -- A front-loaded process through which Man must eventually evolve; (3) Chance -- A process entirely dependent upon unguided events over which God has abdicated all direct control, but in which the lack of direct control is compensated for by a massively wasteful creation of matter and energy, to overcome low probabilities with unthinkably large numbers. (Note: Combinations of the basic choices are possible, but they don't clarify anything for my purposes, so I'm omitting them.)

  Note that if God chooses #1, he can guarantee not only Man's existence, but location, time of origin, etc. If God chooses #2, he can perhaps in theory not only guarantee existence but also control location, time of origin, etc., but the only clear model of front-loading I know of is Denton's, and Denton's requires, in addition to front-loading, a chance element to determine the exact location in the universe where life and Man will spring up. In other words, #2 as envisioned by Denton involves an element of #3. Finally, if God chooses #3, he *cannot* guarantee the timing or location of Man (it's logically impossible ex hypothesi), and, strictly speaking, he cannot "guarantee" even the existence of man, but can at best make it "practically certain", if he is willing to waste prodigious amounts of matter and energy.

  To combine Gould/Dawkins with Christianity, we would be employing solution #3. In that model, God would be thinking: "I want to create Man so that all the events recorded in the Bible will one day take place, but I am determined to do it by making use of chance mechanisms which by their very nature cannot promise the result of Man, or even the result of primitive bacteria. So, I will make so much #$%^! matter that somewhere, somehow, my wonderful creation, Man in my image, is bound to spring up."

  I find #3 preposterous. First of all, if God wants to guarantee a particular location and timing for man, #3 is ruled out of court right away. So for those who think Christianity requires such precision -- and there are at least prima facie Biblical grounds for thinking that it does -- #3 is out. But even if we loosen the requirements a bit, and say that it's OK with God as long as Man turns up someplace or sometime, there are still problems. First of all, there's a general plausibility problem: why would God *want* to use a chance process, if he has a clear end in mind? When we humans want X to occur, we don't set in motion a chance process in hopes that we will get the desired outcome. We manipulate the situation to get exactly what we want. Why would God bother with an inefficient process, which could at least in theory fail, when he could do things either by direct creation, with 100% efficiency and certainty, or via front-loading, with 100% certainty and considerably less waste? Second, God-as-actor cannot, strictly speaking, *guarantee* the existence of Man no matter how much matter he creates. There is always a very slight probability, for any finite amount of matter, no matter how large, that Man might not emerge. So God would be very foolish to employ pure chance methods. He would be better to use front-loading or direct creation.

  If we look at the Biblical portrait, the whole tenor of the stories, with the emphasis on prophecy of even tiny details of human history, etc., suggests that God gets exactly what he wants, where and when he wants it. And if that's the case in human history, it it likely that it is the case in cosmic history as well. It's hard to imagine the Bibilcal God saying: "Wherever Man pops up, if he pops up -- if I haven't blown it by failing to create enough excess matter -- I'll start my salvation history at that time and place in the universe." It's much more in tune with the language and thought of the Bible (and of most historical Christian theology) to imagine the God saying: "I will create Man in the Milky Way Galaxy, in an outer spiral arm, on the third planet of the star-sun Sol, 12 billion years after the Big Bang."

  So I think that ultimately Gould/Dawkins is incompatible with a Providential God who has a definite plan and wants to achieve it. It's only barely possible even logically, it's implausible that God would choose such a means on general grounds, and it isn't in tune with Biblical language about God.

  And besides, the whole *point* of Dawkins/Gould/Coyne etc. is to get rid of God; they didn't demand the expulsion of mind or intelligence or design from nature in order for someone to stick God on top of the whole system at the end. They demanded it to keep God out of the process, even if only as an immanent, non-miracle-working intelligence. The model was metaphysically driven from the start. Only explanations compatible with chance and necessity are allowed in their version of science. Design was willfully excluded from the outset, on a priori, not empirical grounds. Dawkins himself admits that living things look designed, but then declares that biology's job is to show that they aren't! In other words: Aristotle's approach to biology is more in tune with actual appearance of nature, and more plausible prima facie, but we should use Cartesian-Hobbesian-Kantian mechanism anyway. Talk about the determination of science by metaphysical bias!

  Fortunately, I don't have to worry about this, as the Darwinian mechanism, as outlined by Gould/Dawkins, is preposterous, and has yet to explain, in detail, even one complex system, organ, organelle, or organism. Evolutionary theory has had 150 years to improve on Darwin on the level of detail, yet Dawkins's explanation for the camera eye is as pathetic as Darwin's was: all generalizations, no details. When even *one* of these systems is fully explained in Gould/Dawkins terms, then I will worry about whether the chancy view of nature implied in Gould/Dawkins can somehow shoehorn the Christian God into some tiny corner of the picture, or whether it requires atheism. For now, at least regarding the big picture, I see design "all the way down", even if that design is frequently contaminated (or augmented) by some genetic contingencies on points of detail, and even if the design requires (as in Denton) a chance trigger, based on a certain degree of cosmic wastefulness, for its actualization. I think that a preponderance of design, albeit combined with proportions of necessity and chance, is simply a better explanation for the *empirical* evidence than necessity and chance without design. And as I've already argued tediously, "design" does not imply "miracles" or "violation of MN". I think, Mike that you agree with me at least on that last sentence.

  Cameron.

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Received on Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:01:40 -0400