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

Terry:

We've reached a definitional impasse, so I'll make just two points, then
retire (barring a sudden meeting of the minds) from the discussion.

1. On ID and secondary causes. I realize that ID proponents express a
range of views, and that your criticism may apply to some of them. My view
is that ID at its best does not hold the view which you impute to it.

ID does not insist that if a natural phenomenon is completely explicable in
terms of secondary causes, God bears no responsibility for it. Nor does ID
believe that if a complete secondary-cause account of evolution were
available, Dawkins would automatically be right and God would not exist.
Michael Denton's view, for example, is what I am calling an ID view (though
you may prefer to call it an "id" view without the capitals). He apparently
believes that secondary causes can (in principle) exhaustively explain
*everything* in nature, from the Big Bang on, but that does not stop him
from believing in a God of sorts -- a designing Mind behind the universe who
is entirely responsible (and thus is the "primary cause" in a meaningful
sense) for what happens in it.

Both Michael Behe and William Dembski have said that an exhaustively
naturalistic account of origins is not *necessarily* anti-design or
atheistic. It depends on the sort of naturalistic account offered. The
Darwinian account says that integrated complex structures can be formed
without any intelligent input, that unguided processes are sufficient.
Denton, Behe and Dembski say that no, they are not sufficient. (And to save
time going over tiresome old ground, always remember that I, Denton, Behe
and Dembski mean *really* unguided processes, not just unguided from the
point of view of "methodological naturalism". I know that I will not
persuade you that such unguided processes are at the very heart of Darwinian
theory, but for Denton, Behe and Dembski, they are, and all their reasoning
proceeds from that, so if you really want to understand where ID people are
coming from, you must try to put yourself in the frame of mind of someone
who believes that.)

Put another way, it is not that Darwinian evolution relies entirely on
*secondary* causes that makes it objectionable to ID. It is that Darwinian
evolution relies entirely on *unintelligent* causes. If the objection of ID
were to the employment of "secondary causes only", no ID proponent could
accept Denton -- but many do. ID proponents, or at least some ID
proponents, can grant the possibility that irreducibly complex systems could
be created by an evolutionary process which relied entirely on secondary
causation (no miracles, no quantum tinkering, etc.), *if the process were
cleverly worked out in advance and front-loaded* (cf. my example of an
intelligently designed factory in which unintelligent robots produce
irreducibly complex watches). But that of course was not how Darwin (or
Mayr or Dobzhansky or Gaylord Simpson or Sagan or Bertrand Russell or Gould)
envisioned evolution.

2. Regarding lightning bolts, if your point is that there are two equally
valid explanations of the lightning bolt, a secondary-cause explanation in
terms of electrostatics, and a primary-cause explanation in terms of God's
will, and that these explanations are meant to be "two sides of the same
coin", then I understand you and have no problem with combining the two
explanations. Donald MacKay said that scientific explanations were
"exhaustive", in the sense of complete, not needing any "God of the gaps" to
fill them in, but not "exclusive" of non-scientific explanations; so it
could be that the lightning bolt struck where and when it did *both* because
God wanted to kill a sinner *and* because of the laws of electrostatics.
This makes the lightning bolt a tool or instrument of God's will. It is the
"instrumental cause", God's will being the "final cause". I have never had
any problem with this dual way of looking at a single action.

However, I am not at all confident that this way of putting together divine
and natural causation (which reminds me a bit of Gould's NOMA, though I
doubt Dr. MacKay had Gould's motives) is what you mean. For, if that is
what you mean, there is no reason you should keep on giving me difficulty by
insisting that God is still acting in a local or special manner, given that
you know (or at least should know) what I am driving at by using the words.
Yes, of course God is achieving a "local" effect with the lightning bolt, in
the sense that it strikes in a particular "location" which God has chosen,
and yes, of course that local effect may serve some "special" purpose of God
(killing a particular wicked man), but the "localness" and the "special
effect" are practically achieved not through the direct action of God, but
through the collocation of secondary causes. Rather than say that God is
"acting locally", I would say that nature is "acting locally" at the behest
of God.

I think you have not given enough attention to the third word I offered in
my groping for a term -- the word "extra". If God as the primary cause and
electrostatics as the secondary cause are "two sides of the same coin" or
"two simultaneous aspects of God's working", then God-as-primary-cause is
not doing anything *extra*, i.e., does not *add anything to* the efficient
causes producing the lightning bolt. Rather, God-as-primary-cause is
enabling, empowering, sustaining nature-as-secondary-cause, which has all
that it needs within it (assuming God's continuing support of nature's
powers) to produce the lightning bolt and to make it strike exactly where
and when it does.

Thus, I could accept an explanation like this:

"The primary cause of the lightning bolt is God's will to kill the wicked
man, and the secondary cause of the lightning bolt is the laws of
electrostatics. The laws of electrostatics were designed by God and their
continued operation is empowered by God. The primary and secondary causes
operate simultaneously and with reference to exactly the same event."

But what I have been hearing you and David saying all along is something
more like this:

"The primary cause of the lightning bolt is God's will to kill the wicked
man, and the secondary cause of the lightning bolt is the laws of
electrostatics. The laws of electrostatics were designed by God and their
continued operation is empowered by God. The primary and secondary causes
operate simultaneously and with reference to exactly the same event. **But
in addition, God acts directly in a third, extra, special, mysterious way,
which is not merely as the sustainer of the laws of nature (which laws are
the secondary causes of the lightning bolt) and not merely as the guiding
will behind the action (i.e., as the primary cause of the lightning bolt),
but by doing something locally (above and beyond what the sum total of the
laws of nature could ever do) in order to produce *this specific lightning
bolt*, and if he did not do this mysterious extra thing, there would be no
lightning bolt. Further, this mysterious extra action cannot be
incorporated into any scientific equation, and the result it produces in
nature is indistinguishable from what the science of electrostatics would
predict if its practitioners had never heard of this type of divine
action.**"

It is this mysterious "third mode of divine action" -- neither clearly
primary nor clearly secondary; and with local effect, yet having nothing to
do with the chains of efficient causes which generate all local effects --
that I cannot understand. It seems theologically and scientifically
redundant. The event is already exhaustively explained from a physical
point of view, and God's responsibility for the outcome is already
sufficiently acknowledged by referring to him as the primary cause.

What is the point of inflating God's action in this way -- ascribing an
intellectually meaningless extra mode of action to him -- except to generate
an impression that the writer, preacher, teacher, parent or theologian is a
person of exceptionally zealous piety?

Cameron.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terry M.Gray" <grayt@lamar.colostate.edu>
To: "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2009 1:12 AM
Subject: Re: [asa] TE/EC Response - ideology according to Terry

> Cameron,
>
> Re #1 - I really think that my view is the consistent working out of
> those theological viewpoints. It appears that you haven't thought through
> their implications very carefully. ;-)
>
> I do think that the idea of secondary cause is very simple. Fully
> implicit in it is the idea of primary cause. Thus both primary and
> secondary causes are present in every event. It seems to me that you
> forget (or are very fuzzy on) the primary cause. Secondary causes, as I
> am using the term (and the way I understand others have used it), are
> those things that aren't the primary cause. This would be things that can
> be explained via the action of creatures. Because such causation is
> merely secondary there is a primary cause present at the same time. This
> is the action of God. Contingency, necessity, and free agency are all
> aspects of secondary causation, i.e. creaturely action. Behind each and
> enabling each is the primary cause--God and his role as Creator and in
> his providence (which includes sustenence, governance, and Fatherly
> provision). Primary causation precludes the sort of autonomy and
> independence in nature that you describe.
>
> Indeed, I am critical of the deistic leaning (as you put it) views of
> Collins, Van Till, Miller, Darwin, and yourself (if you are granting
> their view). In The Fourth Day, Van Till stressed four aspects of what it
> means to creator: originator, sustainer, governor, and provider. In every
> case he distinguished between ultimate origination and creaturely
> origination, between ultimate sustenance and creaturely sustenance,
> between ultimate governance and creaturely governance, between ultimate
> provision and creaturely provision. I think this was properly getting at
> the distinction between primary and secondary causation. In my
> conversations with him the late 80's and 90's he seemed to grow less and
> less comfortable with the notion of divine governance, even as I stressed
> it and found in it connections with Reformed orthodoxy. His movement, I
> think, was related to questions of theodicy. Distancing God from "nature
> red in tooth and claw" and other problems of evil seem important to all
> of these folks, including Darwin. Reformed theology has already dealt
> with that problem and embraced it head on.
>
> Finally, perhaps "wiggle room" is something you can understand. I do not
> believe that our science and that our "laws" are prescriptive--
> they are descriptive and they are approximations. I don't think that the
> creature (us) will ever come to a full knowledge of the creation and
> God's working in it. Thus, as "right" as we think we have it, I think
> there is still a black box of the Creator's knowledge of and operation in
> the world that is unexplainable and incomprehensible. Notice I don't
> posit God's action in some quantum fluctuation or in some chaotic
> indeterminacy. This is to reduce God's involvement to the creaturely and
> to make it explainable and comprehensible. It confuses secondary causes
> with primary causes. In terms of your example, he does "something
> special" in every lightening bolt. As a result every lighten bolt is the
> consequence of his "wiggle room" activity. He willed it and it happened
> because he willed it. Having said that in no way means that science can't
> "explain" in terms of secondary causes a lot that happens. It can. God
> has worked and works in ways that is regular enough for us to do science.
>
> I'm actually quite indifferent to the claims of ID. Of course, in my view
> everything is designed. Whether or not God did something extraordinary
> (miraculous) in the course of evolutionary history is possible, but I
> don't see any reason to expect it. My problem with ID is that they
> suggest that certain things cannot be explained in terms of secondary
> causes. I simply disagree, as a scientist, with their conclusions. This
> is not a matter of principle--it's a matter of evidence and argument.
> We've gone over this before. While there are many unanswered questions,
> there are many many cases where the broad outlines of a solution are
> present and these are sufficient to not throw out the theory but stay on
> track and try to fill in the gaps. You and the ID guys disagree and
> that's fine, but it turns out that most practicing life scientists are
> convinced. My bigger beef is the apparent agreement with Dawkins and
> company that if we explain something in terms of secondary causes that
> God is not involved. Now over and over again, the ID guys, including
> yourself, deny that they actually say that, but when push comes to shove
> it seems that in order to distinguish the theistic view from the
> atheistic view we have to point to something that is unexplainable in
> terms of secondary causes. The way you put it is that "God has to make a
> differences" somewhere.
>
> TG
>
> On Jul 18, 2009, at 9:01 PM, Cameron Wybrow wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Terry:
>>
>> Thank you for this careful response.
>>
>> 1. Regarding the specifically theological remarks you make, I would say
>> that many of them would be acceptable not only to Calvinists but to a
>> wide range of Christians. I grant that the Christian God is omnipotent,
>> omniscient, omnipresent, in all things, behind all things, etc. I grant
>> that ultimately it is God who powers gravity and electrostatic phenomena
>> and so on. I grant the complete dependency of the universe on God. If
>> we were merely speaking about theology in a very general mode, and not
>> about the more precise relationship between God and nature or the
>> workings of secondary causes, I would probably have very little
>> disagreement with what you say.
>>
>> 2. But there is still the question how to conceive "nature" within this
>> framework, and it is here that I find what you and David are saying
>> ambiguous and unsatisfactory. You refer to "secondary causes", but some
>> of the statements you make imply that you don't mean by "secondary
>> causes" what I mean by it (and what, in my view, most philosophers and
>> theologians in the history of the West have meant by it). I understand
>> nature to have a dependent existence, as you say; but I also understand
>> it to have a *real* existence. As George Murphy said, that is an
>> implication of the doctrine of creation. The world is real. (And in
>> speaking about this, I always like to commend to people the famous and
>> influential articles of Michael Foster on Christian Creation doctrine
>> and the rise of modern natural science, available in a book which I
>> edited.) And while nature is not "autonomous" in an absolute sense (as
>> if it could exist without God), that does not mean that it does not have
>> its own powers and self-regulating, self-regenerating abilities.
>>
>> Here you seem to disagree with many TEs. Ken Miller, for example, has
>> spoken of God's respect for nature's creative role (analogous to the
>> behaviour of a parent who stands back and allows a mature child to "do
>> it himself"); Van Til (even back when we was a more orthodox believer,
>> I'm told) spoke of a "fully gifted creation", i.e., a creation which was
>> "deputized", as it were, to do things for itself; George Murphy has
>> suggested that "the capacities of creatures" may be quite extensive,
>> perhaps extensive enough to account entirely for macroevolution without
>> miraculous intervention or tweaking; and many other TEs, I believe, have
>> spoken of nature as if it has properties, powers, etc. that belong to
>> it, so that God does not need to "tinker" with it for natural phenomena,
>> including macroevolution, to occur.
>>
>> The ultimate source of nature's powers is of course God, and perhaps we
>> should think of God as always providing the "ground vibration" that hums
>> beneath all natural activity, and thus to think of natural activity as
>> in one sense really a mode of divine activity; yet for all that, the
>> world is a reality distinct from God in important ways. That has been
>> the general sense of the Christian tradition, at least those parts of
>> the tradition I know a bit about -- Augustine, Aquinas, and some parts
>> of Anglican and Catholic and Protestant thinking. I cannot speak for
>> the Reformed tradition. I would be surprised, however, based on my
>> reading of Calvin himself (which is not extensive but more than just a
>> few pages), if Calvin did not grant that the world had an existence in
>> some way distinct from God's, and natural powers of its own (however
>> much those depended on God for their operation). I would be interested
>> in getting some references from you or anyone here to extensive
>> passages from Calvin regarding "the nature of nature", secondary
>> causation, the distinction between the world and God, etc., so that I
>> could read more of his thinking on the matter.
>>
>> What puzzles me is that you and most other TEs seem to take umbrage when
>> anyone suggests that anything other than "secondary causes" might be
>> necessary to explain the evolution of integrated complex systems, and
>> many TEs mock both YEC and ID for any such suggestion, yet, when I *try*
>> to speak the language of secondary causes in order to meet TEs on their
>> own battleground, a certain subset of TEs (yourself and David and
>> probably some others here and elsewhere), suddenly starts becoming very
>> vague about whether "nature" (as opposed to God) really causes anything.
>> How can one answer the question whether secondary causes are sufficient
>> to explain macroevolution if one does not have at first a clear
>> conception of what is meant by secondary causes?
>>
>> I understand what Hobbes means by secondary causes. I understand what
>> Darwin means by secondary causes. I understand (I think) what Descartes
>> means by secondary causes. I understand (I think) what Aquinas means by
>> secondary causes. But I don't really know what you and David mean by
>> secondary causes. You seem to use what I would call the traditional or
>> normal sense of the term when your goal is to attack ID for "God of the
>> gaps" or "miracle-mongering", but then to switch tactics and use the
>> term in an unrecognizable sense when dealing with some of my remarks.
>> Your notion of nature -- how it works, to what degree it is autonomous,
>> whether the causal nexus is normally unbreakable (excepting miracles
>> such as the Red Sea or the Resurrection), etc. -- seems to be very
>> elusive indeed. And I find to hard to agree or disagree with a position
>> that I cannot pin down.
>>
>> I spoke earlier about philosophy. A philosopher would spend much more
>> time clarifying terms such as "nature", "cause", "efficient cause",
>> "secondary vs. primary causation", "necessity", etc., *before*
>> discussing the fine details of God's role in planetary motion or
>> macroevolution. I am trying to induce you and David to offer this
>> preliminary, definitional sort of preamble, to explain to me how you
>> think nature works, *before* you then stitch that together with divine
>> action. But you seem unwilling or unable to offer such a preamble. I
>> do not know whether this is all tied up with your particular Calvinist
>> theology, or whether you just think that the notion of nature and
>> causality you are using is so obvious that I should be able to get it
>> without elaboration.
>>
>> 3. I suspect that I am working within a conception of nature that you
>> would find too "Deistic". And perhaps I am. However, I do not see how
>> traditional Christianity (again, I cannot speak for Calvinism) can avoid
>> at least a "semi-Deistic" account of nature. If God created nature to
>> be a reality, and if he gave it "natural laws" discernible by the human
>> intellect (which you and all other TEs proudly proclaim to be the great
>> inheritance that Christianity bequeathed to modern science), then in
>> some sense it is right to speak of the autonomy of nature. In some
>> sense it is right to say that secondary causes are a sufficient
>> explanation for what happens, i.e., can offer (in principle, anyway)
>> what Donald MacKay in a mid-50s essay called an "exhaustive" explanation
>> for what happens. I believe it is historically clear that the *motive*
>> of Darwin and of his evolutionary predecessors and contemporaries was to
>> show that secondary causes were entirely sufficient or exhaustive in
>> this sense. That is, I believe that Darwin and his supporters held a
>> more or less "Deistic" view of nature, and I further agree with George
>> Hunter that Darwin did not invent this notion of nature out of whole
>> cloth, but inherited it from a number of philosophers, theologians and
>> clergymen of the previous 150-200 years, who preached and taught that
>> God (outside of a few miracles, largely confined to Biblical times)
>> worked entirely through "secondary causes". I further believe that all
>> of the caustic (or at least condescending) remarks about "God of the
>> gaps" which have issued from the pens of Eugenie Scott, Ken Miller,
>> Francis Collins, etc., go straight back to this
>> God-only-operates-through-secondary-causes tradition in philosophy and
>> Christian theology. (Though Miller blows hot and cold on this notion,
>> accepting it or rejecting it as serves his polemical purposes, or as his
>> mind wanders through the field of theology for which he has little
>> natural aptitude.)
>>
>> Another way of putting it is this: the main lines of argument that
>> *most* TEs (and for that matter most atheist Darwinists) have used
>> against ID and YEC people are based, consciously or unconsciously, upon
>> a Deistic or quasi-Deistic idea of nature as a closed realm of secondary
>> causation (excepting the Biblical miracles and, for non- cessationists, a
>> few other miracles). But the criticism of my analysis that you and
>> David Campbell are offering seems to involve a denial of this Deistic or
>> quasi-Deistic idea of nature. So what I am asking for is for you to be
>> clear. If you disagree with Scott and Miller and Collins when they
>> speak of secondary causation and naturalistic causation and God of the
>> gaps and miracle-mongering and so on, if you think they are making *the
>> wrong kind of argument* against ID (I'm more concerned about the ID than
>> the YEC side of things), then I wish you would, in addition to
>> criticizing *my* conception of nature, criticize *theirs* as well. On
>> the other hand, if you and David essentially agree with Darwin and
>> Dawkins and Scott and Miller and Collins and Ayala in conceiving of
>> nature as a closed realm of secondary causation, then you should have no
>> objection whatever to my comments when I speak of guidance or non-
>> guidance in terms of "what would have happened naturally if God had not
>> intervened" and so on.
>>
>> 4. I wish to comment on only one specific passage in your note, which
>> illustrates the general difficulty I am having. You wrote:
>>
>>> His involvement makes a difference at all levels: sustaining the being
>>> of the creature, sustaining laws and properties, and locally
>>> contributing to the outcome.
>>
>> "Sustaining the being of the creature" -- I check;
>>
>> "Sustaining laws and properties" -- I check;
>>
>> "and locally contributing to the outcome" -- HOW?
>>
>> The third point is the nub of the whole matter, and pertains to the
>> causes of evolutionary change. My point is that if God "sustains the
>> being" of a cloud, and of all the electric charges in it, and of the
>> electric charge of the ground, and if God "sustains the laws and
>> properties" of charge, etc., the lightning bolt will jump to the ground
>> *of its own accord*. God does not have to do anything "local" to make
>> this happen. (By which I do not mean that he is not present during the
>> event, or that he does not will this particular lightning strike, but
>> only that, though present, he does not have to do anything *special* or
>> *extra* beyond what he does in the case of *every other lightning
>> bolt*.)
>>
>> Do you agree or disagree?
>>
>> If you disagree, why?
>>
>> And if you agree, then would you agree that God does not contribute
>> "locally" to the evolutionary process, i.e., he does not do anything
>> different -- does not perform any special or extra creative action -- in
>> the evolution of man than he did in the evolution of spiders? That is,
>> he did not have to do special action X in order to get spiders, but
>> special action Y in order to get man. All he had to do was *to steadily
>> will the continuance of the laws of inheritance, natural selection,
>> etc.* which were quite capable of taking care of all the local details
>> themselves. Would you agree with this? Or do you see God as "sticking
>> in" some extra little creative action, peculiar to each case? Perhaps
>> hidden under quantum indeterminacy? An extra action without which the
>> spiders couldn't have appeared, and man couldn't have appeared?
>>
>> Another way of putting this is: do you really believe that events in
>> the world (outside of events which obviously have revelatory purpose,
>> e.g., the Resurrection, walking on the sea, manna in the wilderness,
>> etc.) generally are brought about exclusively through laws of nature
>> which God ordained at Creation and steadily maintains? Or are you
>> holding out for some "wiggle room" for God, so that even in what we
>> would call ordinary or natural activities, things do not occur strictly
>> in terms of natural laws? Obviously we cannot argue about Darwinian
>> mechanisms until you are absolutely clear about this.
>>
>> 5. Regarding Denton: Yes, quite obviously he accepts the anthropic
>> principle! That is not at all incompatible with front-loading. In
>> fact, "front-loading" is the *means* by which, according to him, the
>> evolutionary goal of man is reached. You seem to have missed the part
>> where he speaks of his view that the massive "unused" portions of DNA
>> house the "evolutionary program" which unfolds over time. If that is
>> not "front-loading", I don't know what is. Further, it is not just the
>> DNA which is "front-loaded", because the DNA and the protein folds and
>> all else necessary for evolution are generated from the mathematical
>> structure of physical/chemical reality. So the "front-loading" was
>> ultimately done at the time of the Big Bang.
>>
>> On another point, it is true that he does not insist that *exactly* homo
>> sapiens had to be the end of the evolutionary process, but he *does* say
>> that something *very much like* homo sapiens had to be the end. There
>> are many very strong reasons for this, among them that even the most
>> highly intelligent octopuses or ants would not be able to utilize fire,
>> and the ability to utilize fire is essential for the development of
>> technology, without which an intelligent species cannot acquire the
>> scientific understanding of the workings of nature or of its own
>> origins. Denton discusses the importance of fire, and the necessary
>> connection of its employment to a certain primate body shape, at some
>> length.
>>
>> And whether you like the term "necessity" or not, he insists that the
>> *general direction* of evolution was tightly constrained. Pick another
>> word if you like, but he is clearly talking about something
>> quasi-deterministic, the opposite of chance (and he opposes "chance"
>> explicitly and repeatedly). He understands the evolutionary process to
>> be much less indeterminate than the process envisioned by Gould, or even
>> by Darwin. The alleged chance, spontaneity, contingency and freedom of
>> the evolutionary process are understood by him as largely illusory.
>> Contingent events there are, but the overall plan is too well enforced
>> to be thwarted or even seriously diverted from its course by them.
>> Denton's naturalistic creation story is unified by law in a much tighter
>> way than Darwin or even the most fanatical of "molecules to man"
>> advocates (Sagan, etc.) ever envisioned. In fact, Denton's "law" runs
>> from the top to the bottom of nature, penetrating every aspect of the
>> world and imposing upon it a quasi- Platonic mathematical form. His
>> scheme ruthlessly and unapologetically subordinates stochasticism to a
>> deeper necessity. Denton understands the application of "law" to
>> biology in a far deeper way than Darwin ever did.
>>
>> As for your final sentence, it is not Denton's responsibility, within
>> the task he sets himself, to comment on the Biblical record or harmonize
>> his views with those of special revelation. I don't say that they
>> *can't* be so harmonized; nor do I say with any assurance that they
>> *can* be; I have an open mind on the question. I provisionally
>> conjecture that they could be harmonized with a sufficiently flexible
>> reading of the Bible. And a flexible reading of the Bible, if I may
>> speak with a degree of understatement, does not seem to be a problem for
>> many TEs. But I am holding off on any discussion of harmonization until
>> I see Denton's third book, which is supposedly due to come out this
>> year. I am eager to find out whether he comes full circle, to revisit
>> the possibility of Christian belief in the light of his teleological and
>> anthropogenic understanding of nature.
>>
>> Nonetheless, I cannot resist the comment that Denton's almost complete
>> determinism should seem much more theologically appealing to a Calvinist
>> (as I understand Calvinism) than Darwin's "laissez- faire", chancy
>> conception of evolution. Calvin called Lucretius a "dog", and I can
>> imagine him doing the same (and am almost certain that he *would* do the
>> same) for Darwin; but I think he would be rather impressed by the
>> thoroughgoing sense of divinely-planned inevitability that runs
>> throughout Denton's account, and would see Denton as a ripe prospect for
>> evangelization.
>>
>> Cameron.
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Terry M. Gray"
>> <grayt@lamar.colostate.edu
>> >
>> To: "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>
>> Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 6:32 PM
>> Subject: Re: [asa] TE/EC Response - ideology according to Terry
>>
>>
>>> Cameron,
>>>
>>> With David's response (and then your counter response) and the renewed
>>> discussion of front-loading, the discussion has come back around
>>> again. I have been mulling over a response now for over a week. I am
>>> confident that you won't be satisfied because my notion is deeply
>>> rooted in my theology. I do think, contra Gregory, that it reflects a
>>> very deep integration of faith and science. I am also confident that
>>> if you grasp my view here and accept it that you will agree with
>>> assessment about biological evolution.
>>>
>>> Also, I find your distinctions unhelpful. Concurrence is the needed
>>> word that is distinct from cooperation and guidance but you don't like
>>> that word. Also, as you define things, indeed, I mean guidance and
>>> cooperation. There is no creaturely ability that is able to function
>>> without God's involvement. His involvement makes a difference at all
>>> levels: sustaining the being of the creature, sustaining laws and
>>> properties, and locally contributing to the outcome. God's role,
>>> because of his faithfulness, is such that the outcome is describable
>>> by the approximations that we call scientific law.
>>>
>>> It is good to see that David and I are giving you the same answers for
>>> the most part. We have arrived at our perspective "independently",
>>> i.e. our views are not derivative from each other in any way. However,
>>> we do faithfully, I think, represent the Calvinistic and Reformed
>>> perspective embodied in the Westminster Confession of Faith and
>>> Catechism which speak quite plainly of these matters.
>>>
>>> George is correct in asserting that the sovereignty of God is the
>>> major undergirding idea here. I'm not sure his discussion of mediate
>>> vs. immediate action is particularly relevant. I even think that he
>>> overstates the case in characterization of Hodge and I'm not sure we
>>> claim Zwingli especially when it comes to ideas concerning the
>>> sacraments. Hodge's comments reflect the idea that special grace
>>> (conversion, sanctification, etc.) always involves the direct action
>>> of the Holy Spirit. This does not mean that there are not means:
>>> scripture, preaching, sacrament, etc. but that if regeneration occurs,
>>> it's because the Holy Spirit has acted in an immediate way.
>>>
>>> Okay. All of this is prefatory to my real answer.
>>>
>>> The fundamental starting point is with the doctrine of God (theology
>>> proper). Several attributes of God are particularly relevant for this
>>> discussion. God is omnipresent. God is immense. God is omnipotent. God
>>> is simple. God is self-existent (aseity). I don't know how many of
>>> these need explaining, but the basic idea is that God is everywhere
>>> and his full being is everywhere and he is not limited by space. It's
>>> not as if part of God is here and part of God is there. Even "after"
>>> God created the world he is everywhere. That means the full being and
>>> power of God is present "in, with, and under" every creaturely entity,
>>> every quark, electron, molecule, cell, organism, mountain, planet,
>>> galaxy, etc.
>>>
>>> Now we must be quick to say that this does not mean that everything is
>>> God. The Creature is not God. We are not pantheists. Not even
>>> panentheists. The Creature exists separately from God. But not
>>> independently from God. Only God is self-existent. But the creature is
>>> dependent. Radically dependent. If God would stop his work in
>>> maintaining the creature, the creature would cease to exist. (Talk
>>> about "making a difference.") Nontheless, everywhere the creature and
>>> all the parts of the creature is (most creatures are not simple but
>>> are made of parts), God is there in all of his fullness.
>>>
>>> Of course, this is all incomprehensible. That's why the theologians
>>> call these the incommunicable attributes of God. We don't share them.
>>> We can barely grasp their meaning. Even talking about them should make
>>> us nervous. But since God appears to us and tells us that he is these
>>> things, then we proceed. And we base our thinking about the creation
>>> on this revelation.
>>>
>>> One thing that it does mean is that all our language about artisan and
>>> artifact, artist and creative work, guiding a boat like the a pilot
>>> guides the boat, concurring the way a politician concurs, etc. falls
>>> woefully short. The carpenter and saw analogy brought up before
>>> captures some of what is meant by concurrence or cooperation, but with
>>> God, the saw owes its on-going existence to the carpenter, is fully
>>> filled up by the being of the carpenter, every quark, atom, molecule
>>> that makes up the saw is filled with and empowered by the carpenter.
>>> There is NOTHING in our experience as "creators" and "governors" that
>>> is like this. The artifact and creative work exist apart from the
>>> artisan and artist. The artisan and artist are dependent on the
>>> objective properties of the tools of their craft.
>>>
>>> I trust you can see where I am going with this. You spoke about
>>> "angels pushing planets". While I'm not so sure that that's the most
>>> felicitous expression, I'm not as dismissive of the notion as you
>>> suggested "others" in our group are. God in his omnipotent,
>>> omnipresence enables his creation at all levels (sub-atomic, atomic,
>>> molecular, macrosopic, systems). The creature would not work apart
>>> from this enabling power, the creature would not have its properties
>>> or its interactions with with other creatures apart from this enabling
>>> power, and in the process he guides and governs what the creature does
>>> so that the outcome of the creature's action is exactly what God
>>> wants. His guidance and governance is such, in his sovereign will,
>>> that each creature acts according to the properties God gives it:
>>> necessary, contingent, or free.
>>>
>>> So molecular motions and chemical reactions are empowered by God (who
>>> is "in, with, and under" the atoms and molecules involved). That fact
>>> that we can predict their outcome as a result of scientific discovery
>>> does not mean that they are unguided, ungoverned, unenabled,
>>> independent, or autonomous. It also does not mean that God isn't doing
>>> anything that makes a difference.
>>>
>>> The extension to evolutionary processes is obvious.
>>>
>>> So Dawkins (and Cameron for that matter) may say that God isn't doing
>>> anything, but if what I say above here is true, then they couldn't be
>>> more wrong. The task of the scientists is "think God's thoughts after
>>> him", i.e. to find out in terms of secondary causes how God created
>>> and governs the world. The scientist makes no claims about how God
>>> interacts with the world. Asa Gray's criticized Hodge's "What Is
>>> Darwinism?" (and Darwin himself) for not knowing better. As I've
>>> stated before I'm not even sure how you would tell the difference
>>> between an "irregular" God-governed action that leads to some
>>> evolutionary innovation and one that is part of the "regular" God-
>>> governed action.
>>>
>>> And again, because God's guidance, cooperation, and concurrence is
>>> present in all that happens, the fact that something is describable by
>>> secondary causes in no way means that God is not involved. What this
>>> means is that the science of the theist and the science of the atheist
>>> may look very similar as long as they only talk about secondary
>>> causes. This also means that we can be indifferent as Christians to
>>> the science. Let the chips fall where they may. It doesn't matter. God
>>> is still the ultimate originator, sustainer, and governor.
>>>
>>> I also want to make it clear that I'm not making any claims on the
>>> details of God's interactions in these processes. Because of the
>>> incomprehensibility of God's omnipresence and immensity, I am fully
>>> willing to accept that all this may not be accessible to the human
>>> mind. That we say "God governs all his creatures and all their
>>> actions" is sufficient.
>>>
>>> On a side note: I have been looking again at Denton's book. I'm
>>> finding that "front-loaded" is not exactly the term I would use to
>>> describe his ideas. It seems more in tune with notions of the
>>> anthropic principle. He sees himself as being in line with Paul Davies
>>> and Stuart Kauffman. Thus, the world is created with laws, constants,
>>> components, etc. that produce carbon, liquid water, things necessary
>>> for life, that principles of self-organization result in the emergence
>>> of life and it's steady evolution. I think it would be a mistake to
>>> put his view in the category of "necessity". None of this is really
>>> that incompatible with the Darwinian story as long as the
>>> contingencies of Darwinism are understood to be constrained by the
>>> geometry, physics, chemistry, etc., i.e. not everything is possible,
>>> but only those things that fall within the parameters of the way
>>> things are (or the way things were created). Thus, Denton doesn't seem
>>> to insist that it be "us" that resulted but something like "us"
>>> (mammalian, bipedal, large-brained, etc.). Front-loading in Denton's
>>> sense doesn't really get us anywhere in my opinion. Certainly,
>>> guidance would be needed in Denton's program to get to the specifics
>>> of the divine plan as recorded in scripture or the unique creation
>>> that we have today.
>>>
>>> TG
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jul 9, 2009, at 5:09 PM, Cameron Wybrow wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Terry:
>>>>
>>>> I never said that #4 was not possible. But as I said to others who
>>>> proposed it, it's really a subset of #3, since it accepts guidance,
>>>> even if the guidance is indetectable.
>>>>
>>>> I find your final paragraph incomprehensible. Not the English prose,
>>>> which is fine, but the notion expressed in it. It seems very close
>>>> to what David Campbell is saying.
>>>>
>>>> If God's "guidance" in chemical reactions means only that God
>>>> "powers" the basic laws of charge, etc., and then the particles,
>>>> under the guidance of these laws, merely act "naturally", and attract
>>>> or repel each other, etc., then I have no problem with your view, but
>>>> I think that "guidance" is a misleading term for it, too far from the
>>>> everyday use of the word and hence liable to confuse people.
>>>>
>>>> If God's "guidance" means what would normally be meant by "guidance"
>>>> in everyday life, i.e., God literally guides or steers *a particular
>>>> electron* to join up with *a particular atom* to form *a particular
>>>> compound*, i.e., God is in effect *constructing that particular
>>>> compound at that particular point in time and space*, then I think
>>>> such "guidance" is entirely redundant, since the natural laws God has
>>>> established can accomplish every detail of the action without any
>>>> "guidance". As I said to George, "co- operation" of that sort seems
>>>> as ludicrous as to say that even though I am pushing the gas pedal on
>>>> my car and it is going 60 mph, someone must *also* run alongside my
>>>> car at 60 mph and push the car along, or the car will stop moving.
>>>> Either the internal combustion engine is enough to exhaustively
>>>> explain the motion of the car, or it isn't. Either the laws of
>>>> charge and so on are enough to exhaustively explain the capture of
>>>> hydrogen electron by a chlorine atom, or they aren't. If the laws
>>>> are sufficient, then God doesn't "guide" anything; he merely powers
>>>> the laws. If the laws are insufficient, then God would indeed be
>>>> needed to "guide" each particular chemical reaction, everywhere in
>>>> the universe. But others here have ridiculed that conception as
>>>> "angels pushing the planets". And when ID suggests anything like
>>>> that, it is scornfully called "God of the Gaps".
>>>>
>>>> Terry, the terminology of "guidance" that you and David Campbell are
>>>> using is *just not clear*. I am trying to get you to see that is it
>>>> not clear. And I am trying to get you to see that this lack of
>>>> clarity harms TE generally, and limits its "drawing power" in the
>>>> wider world. Whatever may be the faults and defects of ID theory, its
>>>> writers are more in tune with common language than TE writers are,
>>>> and, as Aristotle and Wittgenstein in different ways make clear, it
>>>> is necessary to respect the virtues of common language -- when it is
>>>> used coherently, that is -- in order to think out even the difficult
>>>> and abstract problems in philosophy. The same applies to theology.
>>>> Metaphors and analogies are necessary in theological discourse, but
>>>> when they must be used, the "anchor word" of the metaphor or analogy
>>>> ("guidance", ''chance", "force", "will", etc.) must be employed in
>>>> the way that it is employed in everyday speech; otherwise the
>>>> metaphors and analogies will confuse more than they help. The way
>>>> that you and David Campbell are using "guidance" confuses more than
>>>> it helps. I suggest that you find another word for the concept you
>>>> are trying to express.
>>>>
>>>> Cameron.
>>
>>
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> ________________
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Received on Sun Jul 19 06:02:04 2009