Thinking Christian

Book Review

Francisco Ayala wants us to understand and appreciate what he considers to be Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion. As the author of the book by that name, he certainly has a claim to knowledge on the issues: having trained as a seminarian in Spain, he is now an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Irvine.* He chaired the committee that produced the booklet, Science, Evolution, and Creationism for the National Academy of Sciences/Institutes of Health.

Why a biologist would consider Darwin a gift to science is not hard to imagine. Not assuming his readers understand evolutionary theory, though, Ayala devotes several chapters to an overview and argument for evolution and against Intelligent Design theory. As an introduction to the topic from a mainstream science perspective, this book would be hard to beat. Ayala knows his topic, and he writes well.

Things That Seem Wrong About the World
But that’s familiar ground for most readers of this blog. My interest was in how he saw Darwin as a gift to religion. He introduces his primary reasons early in the book, beginning with this on page 5:

When I was studying theology in Salamanca Darwin was a much-welcomed friend. The theory of evolution provided the solution to the remaining component of the problem of evil. As floods and drought were a necessary consequence of the fabric of the physical world, predators and parasites, dysfunctions and diseases were a consequence of the evolution of life. They were not a result of deficient or malevolent design: the features of organisms were not designed by the creator.

Related to that is evolution’s explanation for imperfections in nature (pages 22-23):

If functional design manifests an Intelligent Designer, why should not deficiencies indicate that the Designer is less than omniscient, or less than omnipotent? … We know that some deficiencies are not just imperfections, but are outright dysfunctional, jeopardizing the very function the organ or part is supposed to serve…. Even if the dysfunctions, cruelties, and sadism of the living world were rare, which they are not, they would still need to be attributed to the Designer if the Designer had designed the living world.

For Ayala then, as a believing Catholic Christian, evolution explains many things that seem wrong about the world: imperfections in nature, and the problem of evil.

“Not a Threat”
Evolution is, moreover, a friend of religion because (page 6):

Christians need not see evolution as a threat to their beliefs…. There need not be conflict between religion and science. Apparent contradictions only emerge when either the science or the religious beliefs, or very often both are misinterpreted.

Evolutionary theory resolves a kind of “conceptual schizophrenia” (page 42) by which we might otherwise want to attribute some of nature to natural processes, and some of it to supernatural. A full explanation of the natural world can be accomplished in just natural terms, while religion provides a genuine way of knowing about matters of meaning, love, purpose, and so forth (page 172):

The scope of science is the world of nature, the reality that is observed, directly or indirectly, by our senses. Science advances explanations concerning the natural world, explanations that are subject to the possibility of corroboration or rejection by observation or experiment. Outside that world, science has no authority, no statements to make, no business whatsoever taking one position or another. Science has nothing decisive to say about values, whether economic, aesthetic, or moral; nothing to say about the meaning of life or its purpose; nothing to say about religious beliefs (except in the case of beliefs that transcend the proper scope of religion and make assertions about the natural world that contradict scientific knowledge; such statements cannot be true).

That closing parenthesis is of course aimed directly at various versions of Creationism–any belief, that is, that contradicts evolutionary theory.

This summarizes Ayala’s position on religion and evolution: evolution solves a significant problem for religion, the problem of evil; and science and religion can be friends if they will mind their manners and remain each in their proper spheres.

This blog post will go much too long if I try to respond to all of this in one shot. I expect this will require several entries before it’s done. Having covered some ground here by just introducing the issues, I’ll limit myself to a very limited response now to part of what Ayala had to say regarding the friendship of science and religion.

It is most refreshing to see such a highly regarded scientist recognizing boundaries and limits around what science can do. He has a genuine respect for religious understandings of life; and I have absolutely no questions about the reality of his own religious convictions. There is much to appreciate there. His convictions are of a specific sort, of course; and well they should be, for what good is a vague, unformed set of beliefs?

No Threat–To What?
But he assumes a great deal of authority for his beliefs. Early on he had said that “Christians need not see evolution as a threat to their beliefs.” But what if some Christians believe in God’s literal involvement in the origin and development of life? Ayala says God is not the designer (that’s why God is absolved from responsibility for imperfections and evil). That runs counter to the beliefs many of us hold. Later on Ayala explains that our beliefs are just wrong; that we need to let loose of God’s creative involvement in the world.

Ayala’s version of evolution, which (like Kenneth Miller’s) leaves God entirely out of the process of life’s development, is a friend to Ayala’s version of Christianity. Better this than Dennett’s or Dawkins’s versions, which are clearly at enmity with Christianity. But one could wish that he had not stated so baldly that evolution is no threat to Christian beliefs, for it certainly is at odds with any view that says God has been intimately, providentially, guiding the course of life and nature from the beginning.

There is a tension there. For Ayala, that tension must always be resolved in favor of science; religiously-based knowledge about nature is no knowledge at all. That’s certainly a mainstream belief, yet it’s open to challenge. I am out of time and space to explore that now, though; I’ll have to return to it later.

Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion, by Francisco Ayala. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 2007. 256 pages. Amazon price $24.95.

*I’m writing this on an airplane, without the book in hand. I photocopied several pages of interest to bring on the plane with me, but I forgot to include Ayala’s biographical information. Thus my rendering of it comes from memory and must be somewhat vague until I have time to look it up and correct it.

Posted by Tom Gilson under Origins and Science | 10 Comments »

Book Review

The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Revised and Expanded Edition), by Philip Jenkins

Philip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Penn State; the book is published by Oxford University Press. With that set of credentials it’s hard simply to sweep aside the rather astonishing central theses of his book:

“The era of Western Christianity has passed within our lifetimes, and the day of Southern Christianity is dawning. The fact of change is itself undeniable: it has happened, and will continue to happen.”

There is a worldwide sociological shift going on virtually unnoticed even by Christian historians and observers. It is perhaps most strikingly highlighted by:

The theological coloring of the most successful new churches reminds us once more of the massive gap in most Western listings of the major trends of the last century, which rightly devoted much space to political movements such as fascism and communism but ignored such vital religious currents as Pentecostalism. Yet today, fascists or Nazis are not easy to find, and communists are becoming an endangered species, while Pentecostals are flourishing around the globe. Since there were only a handful of Pentecostals in 1900, and several hundred million today, is it not reasonable to identify this as perhaps the most successful social movement of the past century? According to current projections, the number of Pentecostal believers should cross the one billion mark before 2050.

But the book is not entirely about Pentecostals, and it is not entirely about the movement of Christianity south from Europe and North America. Jenkins explains how Christianity is in many ways returning to its homeland. Founded in the ancient near east, its earliest reach was greater toward the south and east than northwest into Europe. Jenkins’s definition of Christianity is broad, encompassing notional believers (i.e., “Christians” ranging from genuine believers to those whose claim to Christian connections is merely traditional or cultural) in the Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Coptic, and Ethiopian traditions, and even Indian churches tracing their roots to the apostle Thomas, and heretical branches like the Nestorians.

It’s a broad perspective, yet this is still a surprise:

On balance, I would argue that at the time of the Magna Carta or the Crusades if we imagine a typical Christian, we should still be thinking not of a French artisan but of a Syrian peasant or Mesopotamian town-dweller, an Asian not a European.

Which leads to the provocative suggestion,

A powerful social movement has demeanded that the West and specifically the churches apologize for the medieval crusading movement. In this view the Crusades represented aggression, pure and simple, against the Muslim world…. An equally good case could be made that the medieval MIddle East was no more inevitably Muslim than other regions conquered by Islam and subsequently liberated, such as Spain and Hungary…. Westerners have simply forgotten the once-great Christian communities of the Eastern world.

To which I plead guilty, in spite of having studied church history in school and having read Latourette’s 2-volume history of Christianity. In fact, all through this book I was confronted with completely new information, to a most humbling extent. I work in a mission agency–mostly on the U.S. side of the work, but I still get worldwide reports. Yet I still have had nothing at all like a true conception of what God is doing all over the world.

Bearing in mind Jenkins’s broad definition of Christianity, here is the picture as it was in 2005 and is projected to be in 2025 (based on figures on page 2):

The figures total 2.1 billion Christians in 2005, and some 2.6 billion about 17 years from now. North America and Europe already comprise only 38% of Christians; in a few years that will drop to 34%. Europe is now the most populous Christian continent, but it is also infamously the most nominal Christian region of the world. A count of those who consider themselves Christian by more than cultural heritage would drop their percentage by at least 80% to 90%. Churches in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, on the other hand, are thriving.

Southern Christianity tends to be considerably more conservative theologically than northern. This, at least, has hit the major media, as African Anglican Church leaders have made their opposition to liberal social practices strongly felt. They are far more likely to be Pentecostal. They expect God to work in signs, wonders, and visions–and they see it happening. Latin America is becoming more Pentecostal than Catholic. They are sending missionaries north and west. The largest church in London today is led by a Nigerian pastor. They are struggling for elbow room with Muslims, and often, as in Darfur and previously in Rwanda, suffering incredible persecution. They are the face of Christianity, far more so than one like me.

This can only be heartening for those of us who have dreamed of and devoted our lives to sharing the message of Jesus Christ with everyone around the world. Heartening–and humbling. God is at work. Those of us standing far out on the fringes of Christendom–like myself, here in the virtual Bible Belt area of Virginia, U.S.A.–hardly have a clue.

The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Revised and Expanded Edition), by Philip Jenkins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 261 pages plus 45 pages of endnotes, plus index. Amazon Price US$14.95

Posted by Tom Gilson under 21st Century Faith | 4 Comments »

Denyse O’Leary was the co-author (with Dr. Mario Beauregard) of a book I reviewed in the April issue of Touchstone magazine: The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul. Beauregard has published research (see links from here) challenging some neuroscientists’ view that spiritual experiences can be explained through physical brain science alone, and this book covers his work while also challenging those other scientists’ conclusions, and even their often-questionable research methods.

A few days ago on her Mindful Hack blog, Denyse raised a good question in response to my review, which, by agreement with Touchstone, I will not be posting on the web for at least three months. I’ll quote this much from near the end of it for context, though:

For my money, philosophical approaches are sufficient to put materialism* away for keeps. But that doesn’t make it any less satisfying to learn the heavily hyped “empirical evidence” for materialist neuroscience is distorted, weak, and contradicted by other research.

Denyse wrote,

On the whole, he seems to have liked the book, though he wonders why we cannot demolish materialism through philosophy alone…. Philosophy alone cannot decide the issue. We must look at evidence from science as well.

Well, of course she is right about this. I will not quote her reasons (they are in the ellipsis) since you ought to read them from the source.

She is right in that philosophy has not, in fact, dec ided the issue. “For my money” (as I said), I think it should have done so by now, because materialist views of mind seem to be utterly self-defeating. They place all causation in the literally mindless machinery of electrochemical activity. There’s no room left for any other causation.

Therefore things like reasons and thoughts, which cannot be identified with that machinery, don’t cause anything. If you disagree with that, your disagreement was not caused by any reasons you might have, but by that mindless machinery firing away inside you. That pretty much eliminates your ability to say you have reasoned your way to your conclusion. Your reasons don’t have any power to cause anything, including the conclusions you erroneously think you came to because of your reasons.

Those who try to disagree usually do so by saying that reasons and thoughts actually can be identified with the machinery; that the brain’s physical activity doesn’t have to be distinct from what feels to us like logical reasoning and free decision making. Others say that reasons and thoughts more or less “ride along” on top of the machinery. The first answer, however, makes an illusion out of our freedom to think and to decide, while the other retains the problem of thoughts and reasoning not causing anything at all.

I’m reminded of a comic strip from years ago in which a tiger (I think) jumped up on an elephant and growled out, “I’ve got you, I’ve got you!” The elephant, quite unperturbed, just continued on its way. Whereupon the tiger on top said, “Okay, now that I’ve got you, where am I taking you?” If thoughts “ride along” on top of the brain’s machinery, they’re as powerless to direct its ways as the tiger is to tell the elephant where to go. Less so, in fact: they don’t even have claws.

Though all this to me seems certainly to be correct, I know others disagree. I suspect that for many of them, it’s because they don’t like where this reasoning heads. If they jump on this elephant, it’s going to carry them (like it or not) toward belief in some kind of spiritual reality.

Therefore, with genuine appreciation I grant Denyse’s point: any support this position receives from science is more than welcome.

*”Materialism” here means a view of reality in which nothing exists except for matter, energy, and their interactions according to deterministic natural law or pure chance. On this view there is no spiritual reality.

Posted by Tom Gilson under Origins and Science | 11 Comments »

Book Review

A friend of mine has an overly strong commitment to things she learned when she was growing up. “Doctors say you need to drink eight glasses of water a day” is one. I ran across a repot in which a leading researcher in this field told of his attempts to track down the source of that belief. He found no medical evidence for it. Apparently it just showed up one day in some magazine, and grew. He said there was no truth to it whatever. My friend’s response: “I don’t believe it.” She wouldn’t look at the source material; she already had her facts.

There is research out this week casting doubt on the belief that stretching before sports activities reduces injuries. I’m not going to bother telling my friend. She won’t read the report, and she wouldn’t believe me if I said. She knows we should all drink eight glasses of water a day, and that stretching before exercise reduces injuries. She knows it because that’s what she has always heard.

I expect similar reactions from evolutionists to Mike Gene’s The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues. Everyone in the pro-evolution, anti-Intelligent Design crowd knows that:

• ID is thinly disguised creationism
• ID is just negative science (nothing but picking points against evolution)
• ID has no positive research program
• ID makes no predictions
• ID relies on a “God of the gaps” approach to knowledge
• ID presents no testable hypotheses
• ID is dogmatically driven by people with a theological/philosophical agenda

Everybody knows these things. Mike Gene shows that none of them are true. The evolutionists, I fear, are not going to read it; they’re just going to say, “I don’t believe it.” Like my friend, they will stick with what’s always been “true” for them in the past.

The author uses a pseudonym, obviously, and as far as I know no one has cracked his real identity (or if they have, they’re not telling). He says in the intro to the book that he remains anonymous so that his ideas can be evaluated for themselves, without regard for who has presented them. It seems likely he’s also carrying out some career protection, too. If he’s working in a university biology department (and yes, he does know his science), it could obviously risky for him to “come out” as an ID supporter. (See his Design Matrix website for more.)

The way that he supports ID is refreshingly unique, however. He doesn’t argue for a conclusion of Intelligent Design at all. He argues more modestly, for a suspicion of Intelligent Design. He would have a beef with dogmatists on either side of the issue. Quite helpfully he distinguishes between the strong evidence required for conviction by a court of law, and evidence required by an investigating detective. A detective arrives on the scene with nothing but questions. His first objective is to move toward reasonable suspicions. A little hint there, a vague clue there: these things can move him toward a theory of a crime; and from there he can begin to look for more definite signs. Eventually, much further down the road, proof may come. Mike Gene believes we should recognize ID is in the developing suspicion stage: there is no hard scientific proof of design, but there are hints and clues that raise a most reasonable suspicion, and which can lead to a search for more definite signs.

These hints and clues he summarizes into his “Design Matrix,” four relatively independent factors to test for in nature:

• Analogy with known instances of design
• Discontinuity with observed or means by which evolution works
• Rationality apparent in the design of the natural feature
• Foresight apparent in the design of the natural feature

These are defined such that they can all lead to testable research hypotheses. We’re not talking about black/white, unambiguous research results, however (”Evolution never could have done this!” or “Evolution absolutely could have done this, it’s easy!”). Natural phenomena can be scored on a continuum, Mike Gene says; we’re still in the detective stage, not the judge and jury stage. We’re looking for suspicions of ID, so we should be open to gradations on the scales of the Design Matrix. Only one of them, by the way (Discontinuity), bears any relationship to the tired stereotype that ID is nothing but a negative science that resorts to god-of-the-gaps thinking.

Mike Gene wrote this book with a sense of humor. (Thank God for an evolution/ID-related book with a sense of humor!) The book wraps around a theme of the Rabbit and the Duck. It’s a metaphor about our preconceptions, and the way they can color our perceptions. I won’t try to replay it for you; I’ll just quote the book’s final paragraph, and leave it to you to read the book and chase down the metaphor for yourself:

So as we begin our journey, these lessons, coupled with all the lessons in these chapters, must be kept in mind. We are not engaging in a Duck Hunt; we are going to chase the Rabbit. So, do you see that rabbit hole over your shoulder? Yeah, that one. Wanna have some fun? Well, grab your Design Matrix, and follow that Rabbit.

(There’s much more Rabbit fun on the Telic Thoughts blog, where Mike Gene writes frequently.)

Some of you reading this “know” that ID is nothing but negative science, it’s just god-of-the-gaps, and it’s a mere religious ploy. You won’t read the book; you won’t accept that ID-related thinking can lead to genuine research questions; you’ll just say, “I don’t believe it.” I strongly urge you to get your hands on a copy of this uniquely creative approach to Intelligent Design, and find out where the Rabbit leads you.

The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues by Mike Gene. No City: Arbor Vitae Press, 2007. 291 pages plus index. Amazon Price US$16.47.

Posted by Tom Gilson under Origins and Science | 14 Comments »

Book Review

Science, Evolution, and Creationism, richly illustrated and printed on glossy stock, is a marvelous scientific defense of evolutionary theory from the National Academy of Sciences. If that were all it tried to accomplish, it would be quite a fine little book (just 54 pages plus bibliography, index, and author bios). What it attempts to do instead, though, is to show the compatibility of religion and evolution, and the utter worthlessness of Intelligent Design and other “creationisms.” Like so much else that has been written on this topic, it oversimplifies in some places, misrepresents in others, and is thoroughly wrong in others. It’s hard to know where to begin addressing it all.

I’ll dive in with this from page 37, the opening words of a chapter titled “Creationist Perspectives.” Several of the book’s major distortions crop up in these two-plus paragraphs:

Advocates of the ideas collectively known as “creationism” and, recently, “intelligent design creationism” hold a wide variety of views. Most broadly, a “creationist” is someone who rejects scientific explanation of the known universe in favor of special creation by a supernatural entity. Creationism in its various forms is not the same thing as belief in God because, as was discussed earlier, many believers as well as many mainstream religious groups accept the findings of science, including evolution. Nor is creationism necessarily tied to Christians who interpret the Bible literally. Some non-Christian religious believers also want to replace scientific explanations with their own religion’s supernatural accounts of physical phenomena.

In the United States, various views of creationism typically have been promoted by small groups of politically active religious fundamentalists who believe that only a supernatural entity could account for the physical changes in the universe and for the biological diversity of life on Earth. But even these creationists hold very different views. Some, know as “young Earth” creationists, believe the biblical account that the universe and the Earth were created just a few thousand years ago. Proponents of this form of creationism also believe that all living things, including humans, were created in a very short period of time in essentially the forms in which they exist today. Other creationists, known as “old Earth” creationists, accept that the Earth may be very old but reject other scientific findings regarding the evolution of living things.

No scientific evidence supports these viewpoints. On the contrary, as discussed earlier, several independent lines of evidence indicate that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and that the universe is about 14 billion years old…

Defining Terms
In any social or political discourse, being successful at defining vocabulary is the equivalent of taking the high hill in military battle. If you can pin an emotionally laden label on your opponent, you can cut thinking short. That’s why abortion supporters won’t use “pro-life” for their opponents, but label them “anti-choice.” A “creationist,” the NAS says, is “someone who rejects scientific explanation of the known universe in favor of special creation by a supernatural entity.” They don’t mention that “creationist” has a history of anti-intellectualism and poor science, but they do toss in some great buzzwords: “politically active religious fundamentalists.” Yes, indeed.

To label Intelligent Design as a form of creationism is a rhetorical ploy with some emotional force. Tactics like this have been successful already in leading many to believe that ID “rejects scientific explanation of the known universe,” and science in general. (I’m willing to bet some readers here have bought into that error.) Ironically, the book in previous chapters acknowledged that there is no scientific explanation of the known universe, i.e., the Big Bang; nor is there a scientific explanation for the first life on earth. There’s nothing there to reject.

Intelligent Design could be considered anti-science on one definition. On page 10 the book says, “In science, explanations must be based on naturally occurring phenomena.” That’s a perfectly sound and true statement, except that it’s used immoderately, with an assumption that explanations must be scientific to be of value. I’ve never read any ID author even hinting that scientific explanations be sought and applied in every conceivable circumstance; but they reject the view that every explanation must be based on naturally occurring phenomena, on grounds that there could be some causes that are not natural. This is the distinction between philosophical naturalism (or materialism) and a broader view that refuses to suppose that nothing exists besides matter, energy, and their law- and chance-based interactions.

So if one equates disagreement with naturalism to being “anti-science,” then much of ID is anti-science. That’s rather a twisted perspective, however. It’s like saying I’m anti-books because I believe I can read, enjoy, and learn from sources outside the bound, printed page.

Mixing Terms
I cut short the third paragraph of this quote because it continues in a very similar vein. Note how, after describing young Earth and old Earth creationism, it says “no scientific evidence supports these viewpoints,” but proceeds to refute just one of them. The rest of the passage is about the same. This is slippery work. Yes, young Earth creationism seems to be rebutted quite effectively by science. Given the definition of science as requiring natural explanations, though, what could it mean for scientific evidence to support the old Earth creationist viewpoint? It would have to support the finding that a non-natural cause was involved in natural history; but science, by definition, can’t do that. What they should have said with respect to old Earth creationism is that scientific evidence cannot speak to it.

I it cannot yet be a legitimate scientific finding that all life came about on Earth by strictly material, natural causes. Science can and does show the relatedness of all life. From there, the inference of common descent is a reasonable one to make (disputable on some grounds, yet certainly reasonable from the scientist’s perspective; more on that in a future blog posting). The further inference they want us to make, that common descent happened entirely from within a closed system of natural cause and effect, is philosophical and theological, not scientific. This is because the methods of science restrict it to knowledge of what happens within its sphere. If there is anything happening outside that sphere, science does not have the tools to comment on it.

Compatible With Politics, Too

“As was discussed earlier, many believers as well as many mainstream religious groups accept the findings of science, including evolution.”

The earlier discussion referred to was intended to show that religion is not incompatible with evolution. I don’t know anybody, though, who believes in religion. I know people who have very specific beliefs about the nature of God, His work in the origin of the universe, His relationship to people, and the like. Some of them agree with evolution in all its materialist glory, some accept theistic evolution, some who remain uncommitted, some are ID proponents, and some are young Earth creationists. I struggle with understanding the value of showing, as this book attempts to do, that evolution is compatible with religion. You might as well say it’s compatible with politics.

The only conceivable purpose of this could be to try to persuade readers to change their religious beliefs. There’s nothing wrong with that in general, but in this instance it’s another example of the immoderacy of science. Certainly my beliefs take scientific evidences into account; that’s why I’m not a young Earth creationist (there are Biblical reasons as well). To suppose that readers will alter their beliefs only on account of science, however, is presuming far too much. Our beliefs take in far more than that: history, philosophy, personal experience, God’s revelation, and more.

Just a Couple of Paragraphs
In just two-odd paragraphs we see several confusions and distortions. I’ll write further on this later, for these are not all that there were.

Let me reiterate, though, what I said so briefly earlier: the explanation of evolution in this book is excellent. I am strongly encouraging my two children to learn as much as they can about evolution, including the arguments in its favor. Even if it’s wrong, it’s essential education. You could say the same about the Bible–though I obviously I wouldn’t agree that it’s wrong. Both evolution and Bible are essential parts of the intellectual landscape in the Western world, and they are both mighty forces to contend with. If this book was intended to bring some reconciliation between people who reject one or the other, it has unfortunately not done the work necessary to succeed.

Related:

• I Had No Idea Intelligent Design Proponents Were So Stupid
• The NAS and the Fact-Value Dichotomy
• Naturalistic Evolution: Underdetermined by the Evidence

Posted by Tom Gilson under Origins and Science | 14 Comments »