Re: [asa] TE/EC Response - ideology according to Terry

> In particular, I would be interested in hearing whether you have finally
> understood why your usage of the word "guidance" is confusing, and is likely
> to be confusing to anyone who does not share your Calvinist theology, and if
> you have any suggestions for a better term for divine action in relation to
> the evolutionary process.

One major reason why it's confusing is that both atheists and
antievolutionists keep insisting that natural processes rule out God's
role. As a result of such ingrained god of the gaps assumptions,
people waste enormous amounts of energy on promoting or denying
scientific explanations and fail to realize that the real problem is
the fundamental theological position that they both share.

If there were valid evidence against Christianity, I would not endorse
Dawkins-type claims about evolution implying atheism. It's still
rotten philosophy and logic, even if atheism were true. On the other
hand, ID routinely proclaims that Dawkins is right in claiming that
evolution entails atheism and appears to generally believe it based on
the determined effort to attack evolution regardless of the quality of
the argument.

The problem with attacking "Darwinism" is that Darwinism is regularly
used to at least include the science, if not exclusively refer to the
science. Unless you clearly specify that your objections are to the
metaphysical claim that evolution entails atheism, people will
generally assume that you are attacking the science as part, if not
most, of your target. Even if you do define your term, probably a lot
of people will still assume that. Darwinism simply isn't a very
useful word because it's used to mean too many different things.

> But you and David Campbell and others appear to me to be hiding your heads
> in the sand about the fact that if variation plus natural selection can
> accomplish all that Darwin said they can, then God-as-designer is
> *theoretically redundant*.

Well, one problem is that the scientific evidence indicates that
variation plus natural and other types of selection can accomplish
even more than Darwin said they can. ID keeps saying that this means
that Dawkins is right.

More fundamentally, the problem is with the question of what sort of
theory is in view with "theoretical redundancy". God as designer is
generally redundant to the formulation of scientific theories, though
it is quite relevant to the question of why scientific theories exist
and work in the first place (why things behave in an orderly manner,
why we can figure things out, etc.) E.g., E=mc^2 does not need to
include an additional +/-God's action term. It describes how things
behave under ordinary (non-miraculous) conditions, not to mention the
fact that +/-God's action cannot be characterized mathematically and
so does not give any useful physics predictions. However, if I am
talking about how to regard things theologically, then noting the
importance of +/- God's action is quite relevant. Also, there is no
point in trying to watch as many mass-energy conversion events as
possible to try to detect the +/- God's action term, because God does
not go around tweaking every billionth (or whatever) mass-energy
conversion event. All evidence indicates that God does most of the
ordinary running of the universe via ordinary, "natural" means. Even
conversion is normally mediated by hearing or reading the Gospel,
despite the prominent role of the Spirit in the process. To know
where to look for miracles, we need some theological basis for knowing
that God is likely to be doing something special in a particular place
and time. There's nothing special about making a new kingdom or
phylum or class or order or family or genus or species. They're just
categories that, in hindsight, prove to be distinctive groups of
organisms. The only reason to particularly expect miracles there is
rejection of evolution. Of course, this doesn't prove that there must
not be any miracles in the course of evolution. It's simply the
combination of two principles:
1. Evidence for or against the adequacy of natural laws to describe a
physical process is evidence about how God did it, not about whether
God was involved.
2. God does a lot by natural laws, so not expecting miracles all over
the place (while recognizing that they can occur) is reasonable.

In reality, ID advocates often accept 2. While I don't know for
certain, not having seem much comment on such things, I expect that ID
advocates are generally skeptical about claims such as seeing Mary in
a window, UFOs violating the laws of physics, etc. Furthermore, every
moment everyone assumes that physical things around us will generally
keep behaving by natural laws. (As Martin Garder has pointed out,
this is not in fact an assumption that can be justified by science
alone. All scientific data are compatible with the claim that the
laws of nature will abruptly change tomorrow.)

> Darwin's view was that if one has a fully acceptable scientific explanation for evolution, i.e., an explanation which shows that variation plus natural selection can successfully mimic *all* the characteristics that could be produced by intelligent design, it would be foolish to maintain that somehow intelligent design was still a factor.<

I don't think Darwin went this far, though Dawkins certainly does.
For the later part of his life, Darwin did think that intelligent
design was unnecessary in such cases.

> It is gratuitous and scientifically counter-productive to continue to believe in the operation of a cause (intelligent design) that has been shown to be (a) theoretically unnecessary and (b) against the data (see Darwin's discussion of biogeography, for example).  So anyone who accepts Darwin's argument will junk intelligent design, as Darwin did. Anyone who accepts his argument will believe and assert that no design was actually involved in the production of species.<

The definition of intelligent design here is problematic.
Antievolutionary ID arguments are characteristically against the data.
 No intervention is necessary in the physical course of evolution, but
this says nothing about an ultimate belief of God being to some degree
behind it all, whether a rather deistic version (as Darwin himself
tended towards) or a more theistic version (as in TE). Theoretical
necessity-see above.

> no more metaphysical than saying that angels are not involved in pushing the planets in their
> orbits<

That is a metaphysical assertion. Claiming that it is not
scientifically necessary to invoke them is no more metaphysical than
any ordinary scientific statement, however. (Doing science entails
metaphysical assumptions).

> If you have the intellectual courage to say that there is no invisible, intangible
> person running beside your car, and that there are no angels pushing the
> planets, then you should have the intellectual courage to say that no
> intelligent agent was operating in the evolutionary process.

Is this a quote from ID or Dawkins? Trick question-they're both
saying the same thing-that God isn't real unless He is evident from
science. They just disagree on which answer they're trying to prove.

"No intelligent agent was operating" is not a scientific conclusion.
"No intelligent agent acted in violation of natural laws" is a
somewhat scientific conclusion; the problem with that is the
impossibility of proving that absolutely no exceptions whatsoever
exist anywhere. "There is no known evidence of intelligent agents
working in violation of natural laws in the course of evolution" is a
scientific statement.

> I hear you saying that "in science" it is absolutely and utterly
> true that no intelligent agent was operating in the evolutionary process,
> but "in metaphysics" it is absolutely false, because God was operating
> intelligently behind all things.  I refuse to accept this bifurcation of
> reality.

I refuse to accept your bifurcation of God's action into "doesn't
really count because He did it by natural laws" and "real operation
because it was miraculous". I am not saying that "in science" it is
absolutely and utterly true that no intelligent agent is operating;
that is what ID of both the detecting supernatural action and the
Dawkinsian dectecting absence of supernatural action varieties claim.
In science, there is no evidence pointing towards intelligent
intervention via miraculous processes in the course of evolution.
This is in part because science is generally incompetent at dealing
with supernatural processes, but also examining the evidence of
paleontology and biology suggests that evolution works quite well as a
model without the need of invoking something else. This cannot tell
us that no intelligent agent was operating in the process because
intelligent agents could work in any number of ways. It does tell us
that invoking an intelligent agent is not necessary for the purposes
of a scientific model.

If you pray for safe travel, does God answer it positively if you get
there OK or only if He miraculously intervenes to prevent an accident?

> There are not two universes, one scientific, one metaphysical. There is only one.<

Yes, but science addresses only a certain part of it.

>  Either the evolutionary process was intelligently guided, or it wasn't.  The question whether scientific methods can *detect* the intelligent guidance is a separate one.<

Yes, but that's not what you said above. That's what TE insists,
whereas ID generally insists that the two are the same.

> The central question is whether you believe, regarding *what actually happened*, that intelligence was *required* to achieve the outcome that we see.<

I believe that intelligence is required to achieve the outcome that we
see in every single event. Others of a more Arminian view might hold
that some things happen on their own, while still seeing intelligence
as an ultimate necessity. However, it is often not necessary to
invoke it in the course of developing physical models of the event.

>  If you believe that it was *required*, then you believe that Darwin was wrong.<

Darwin's theology was wrong. His science was generally on the right
track (genetics, excessive gradualism, etc. having been corrected
since then.).

>  If you do not believe that God's intelligence was *required*, then your belief that God was "somehow" or "mysteriously" involved (even though Darwin's account is complete and correct) is a private, gratuitous assertion which has no public standing, and is of no interest to anyone except fellow Christians of the same theological orientation.<

No. You're back to insisting that the intelligent action must be
scientifically detectable. Such a belief would have no less standing
than any other belief. In particular, it is a valid counter to the
claims of Dawkins et al. that science disproves God. Furthermore,
such a belief can have important impacts on many other aspects of
public life (e.g., ethics). The one thing that such a belief does not
do, as well as belief that God is required but not by acting in
scientifically detectable ways, is that it does not support the
ID-promoted god of the gaps approach.

> And here I think the final difference between us is theological.  As I've said before, I have no use for, and never will accept, any religion which makes itself "immune from reality", which is never vulnerable to falsification by any means.  A bulletproof religion of private faith which can be harmonized with any state of affairs in the natural or moral world is one that I am constitutionally unable to adhere to.  I cannot and will not live in a world in which faith and reason are entirely sundered.  It appears that your form of Calvinism is bulletproof in this sense, since God can be said to be meaningfully involved whether the data of nature point to chance, necessity or design.<

You're assuming that the only possible way for God to be involved is
by scientifically detectable miracles in the evolutionary process.
Credible falsification of the Bible would constitute falsification of
my faith, but the quality of attacks on it are generally about par
with attacks on the age of the earth. The Bible asserts that God is
meaningfully involved whether an event reflects mathematically random
and/or humanly unpredictable causes, the actions of natural laws, or
miracles. Therefore, it is necessary to look elsewhere for tests.

> I would be interested in hearing if this Calvinism would be similarly
> bulletproof if the bones of Jesus were discovered, and what you would say if
> the consensus of the world's greatest archaeologists were that those bones
> had indisputably been found.  What would you do with the findings of science
> in that case?  Accept that Christianity had been falsified?

If conclusive evidence of Jesus not rising from the dead were found,
then Christianity should be rejected (not that one mightn't find some
useful moral precepts, etc., but that's not Christianity). Paul said
the same.

> the archaeologists were going beyond science and into "metaphysics" when
> they say that this proved that Jesus did not rise from the dead?

The intent of the hypothetical scenario is envisioning that there was
actually good proof of that. However, I would note with regard to
understanding the difference between scientific and metaphysical
claims that there are plenty of cases in which archaeologists have
gone beyond the evidence and made "scientific" claims relating to the
correctness of the Bible that actually reflect their metaphysical
assumptions. For example, making a big deal about finding a 1st
century grave in Palestine with the bones of a Jesus son of Joseph.
That's about as common as finding a similarly marked modern grave in
Latin America. Or claiming that the remnants of an altar at Mt.
Gerazim are the remains of Joshua's altar, without good chronological
control. Given the account in Joshua, any later Israelite
building/rebuilding at the site would probably copy elements from it.

> And would you say therefore that "as a scientist" you completely and unreservedly
> accepted that Jesus never rose from the dead, but "as a Christian" you
> believed that he certainly did, and that the two beliefs were not in any way
> contradictory?

No. But if I were a non-Christian theist of some sort, I could say
that I believed that God was involved in some fashion that did not
involve raising Jesus. Likewise, as a non-antievolutionary theist, I
can completely consistently affirm that God is actively involved in
the course of evolution and that there is no need to invoke miraculous
intervention. ("No need to invoke" does not equal "absolute disproof
of").

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