Thinking Christian

Robert Pennock recently wrote a guest blog in US News and World Report, calling for a sane and presumably peaceful end to polarization over the origins of life. His leadership toward that end is (ahem) rather remarkable. Pennock is a philosopher at my alma mater, Michigan State University; and his opinion, of which he has frequently written, spoken, and even testified in court, is that Intelligent Design is strictly non-scientific creationism (on which please see here). To my knowledge Pennock does not declare himself an atheist, but his approach to science and nature specifically seeks to exclude any supernatural involvement in the world, and he is a favored guest speaker and writer among atheist and freethought groups.

So here we have Pennock calling for an end to polarizing debate on evolution and Intelligent Design. As he writes at the close of his piece,

Let us forthrightly reject those false and polarizing views and hope that the better angels of our nature will eventually prevail and bring this war to an end.

I’m certainly in favor of putting this polarization behind. Who wouldn’t be? So let’s see where Pennock’s leadership in that direction takes us. He begins with this beautifully conciliatory headline: “Creation of Christian Soldiers a Chilling Sidelight of Darwin Bashing.” Such an irenic opening clearly signals his desire to move beyond bashing those who disagree with his own position. Throughout the piece he displays that same refreshing “let’s all get along together now” tone. His peace-making overtures include:

Yet another Discovery Institute urban cow-dude tries to resuscitate the dead ID horse under the guise of “academic freedom.” Casey Luskin’s claims (one can hardly call them arguments) have been rebutted many times before, so there is no point in doing so again here.

…Ralph Seelke, whom I had observed testify with such brazen misinformation in favor of one of the Discovery Institute’s recent disguised ID bills in Michigan.

I don’t believe that creationist activists themselves would makes [sic] such [threatening phone] calls; no doubt such threats come from individuals who are mentally unstable. But creationist leaders regularly say things that encourages [sic] such individuals.

As I wrote in a recent op-ed about Expelled and the ID culture wars, it is hard to know how to respond in a civil manner to such ignorant extremism. Let me go further here: Such views (and I do here mean views, not people) do not deserve a civil response.

Just a few months ago I received a call from a member of [University of Colorado philosopher Bradley] Monton’s department at Colorado asking for my assistance in repairing damage to the department’s relationship with science colleagues caused by a talk he gave on the subject. I sympathize with the department, but can no longer give Monton the benefit of the doubt in the way I did when he posted his draft while still a graduate student. So far as I know, he hasn’t stooped to publishing out-of-context quotes from private E-mail without permission (no reputable publisher would allow that, in any case), but I was told recently that, like Luskin, he has been making personal attacks on me in talks and a series of Discovery Institute podcasts. I have turned the other cheek to this calumny as well. Again, who is the character assassin?

Note carefully how he has refrained from being uncivil towards anyone. I’ll repeat it in case you missed it: “Such views (and I do here mean views, not people) do not deserve a civil response” (emphasis added). Thank you for that courteous example, Dr. Pennock!

Bradley Monton has a response to this, which we’ll come to in a moment. First, however, we need to note how all of this serves as strong and convincing refutation of an accusation that has been brought against Pennock:

Commenting upon myself and Richard Katskee, [Discovery Institute's Casey] Luskin writes that we and other “Darwinists” aim to “stifle debate” and that we use a “poison pen” and “name-calling” as “intimidation tactics” to silence anyone who dares speak up in favor of ID.

It’s gratifying to know that Pennock would never think of using a “poison pen,” or speak in an intimidating manner. Clarifying further, he tells us,

I don’t hesitate to point out misstatements, deceptions, and fallacious arguments, but I keep the focus on the claims themselves and avoid attacks on individuals.

It’s so good to see he has left individuals out of this. And he really does want to be less polarizing. He said so himself! So inspiring is it, that it bears repeating:

Let us forthrightly reject those false and polarizing views and hope that the better angels of our nature will eventually prevail and bring this war to an end.

One must appreciate his leadership here, presenting (as it were) the first unifying, pacifying round of a sort of START talks negotiation with his ideological opponents.

Back to Bradley Monton now. He blogged a response, beginning with an interesting question:

Robert Pennock has published an article in the online edition of US News & World Report where he says some critical things about me, culminating in the implication that I’m a “character assassin”. (Is calling someone a character assassin itself behaving like a character assassin? Just wondering.)

Before we go too much further here we should identify Monton more clearly. He shares at least two important things in common with Pennock: both are philosophers, and neither believes in God. The crucial difference between them is that Monton thinks Intelligent Design is worth studying for its scientific and philosophical merits. He does not seem to have signed on to a complete endorsement of ID, but he’s certainly in favor of pursuing the question.

And there’s another crucial difference between Pennock and Monton, evident in their two articles linked here. Pennock is the craftsman of conciliation, while Monton (an atheist!) is one of those culture-war-mongering creators of Christian soldiers.

But no, never mind. I cannot sustain the sarcasm any further. I hope you caught what I was really saying about Pennock above. And I hope you’ll carefully read Monton’s response. In genuine courtesy (and I’m not being sarcastic now)—in fact with remarkable courtesy, considering with what force and in what a public venue Pennock attacked him—Monton simply documents several errors in Pennock’s piece.

I don’t agree with all of Monton’s beliefs, obviously, but I am with him 100% on his pursuit of what is true, and his quest for courtesy. His courtesy admittedly exceeds my own: he did not resort to sarcasm, whereas I couldn’t restrain myself from it this time.

The tone Pennock takes, on the other hand, is no surprise to anyone who has followed this debate. (Consider Pharyngula and Panda’s Thumb, for example.) Pennock’s article contains numerous errors, as Monton shows, it’s rife with unconcealed anger, and it is unabashedly anti-Christian. Pennock wants the culture war to end. He wants the polarization to be resolved. His simple proposal for accomplishing that seems to be that everyone who disagrees with him—and especially the “Christian solders”—should just go away. I guess if that happened, that would solve Pennock’s problem, wouldn’t it?

Related: Opponents, Not Enemies

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Jerry Coyne, atheistic evolutionist, is blogging now.

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Dechristianizing a Church Encyclopedia

Happy Darwin Day?

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The question at New Scientist was, how did we ever come up with the idea of gods? The answer begins,

It turns out that human beings have a natural inclination for religious belief, especially during hard times. Our brains effortlessly conjure up an imaginary world of spirits, gods and monsters, and the more insecure we feel, the harder it is to resist the pull of this supernatural world. It seems that our minds are finely tuned to believe in gods. Religious ideas are common to all cultures: like language and music, they seem to be part of what it is to be human. Until recently, science has largely shied away from asking why. “It’s not that religion is not important,” says Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University, “it’s that the taboo nature of the topic has meant there has been little progress.” The origin of religious belief is something of a mystery, but in recent years scientists have started to make suggestions….

Two thoughts on this:

1) “Science has largely shied away from asking why…. but in recent years scientists have started to make suggestions.”

The obvious underlying assumption is that until science tells us, we don’t know; for there is no other way to know but through science.

2) “It turns out that human beings have a natural inclination for religious belief, especially during hard times…. It seems that our minds are finely tuned to believe in gods.”

This is marvelously consistent with our having been created in God’s image, for relating with God. What’s lacking in that answer? Sure, we can also “conjure up an imaginary world of spirits, gods, and monsters,” but this is easily understood also from a Biblical perspective: our relationship with God has been broken, and in our alienation we worship the creature rather than the Creator (Romans 1:20-23).

The New Scientist article proposes two cognitive features of humans as sources of our religiosity: the way wementally treat living things as opposed to non-living things, and an “overdeveloped sense of cause and effect.” There’s no need to doubt these are true of humans, from childhood on. There’s also no need to doubt that they contribute to beliefs in that imaginary world. But is there a need to assume that the explanation for religion is entirely natural and evolutionary? No, for God has spoken to us, we have his revelation of where our belief in him first originated, where it has gone wrong, and what he has done through Christ to bring us back to him.  

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Yesterday I tried to set aside a question about the relation between creationism and intelligent design, but bobxxx commented,

I have a few things to say about creationism and intelligent design. I think people who pretend these are different ideas are being dishonest. Invoking creationism is the same as invoking supernatural magic. Invoking intelligent design is the same as invoking supernatural magic.

… and it really does call for a thoughtful response. I have already answered him on the use of the word “magic,” so I will focus on the general question of creationism and ID.

D1. Self-Described Creationists‘ Definitions of Creationism
Let’s consider the definitions as they are put forward by different groups. First, those who use the term “creationist” describe themselves. There are two broad categories: old-earth creationists and young-earth creationists. Both agree on the following:

1. God is eternal, immaterial, all-powerful, omniscient
2. God created the universe ex nihilo, out of nothing. Matter, space, and time are not eternal but were created by his own word.
3. Life was originated on earth by God’s direct action, and God was directly involved in the formation of each new kind of organism. “Kind” is defined more loosely than species by most creationists, allowing for the possibility that closely related species (like dogs and wolves, for one very obvious example) resulted from a single creative intervention.
4. Humans were not only specially created in the sense of (3), but were also imbued with God’s image, meaning that God gave us, in a special creative act, the ability to reason, to communicate, to relate to others and to God as persons, to make choices with moral significance, to create, and so on.
5. Most crucial of all: the first three chapters of Genesis, understood literally, are a reliable guide to the science and the proper understanding of the history of life, the universe and (pardon the allusion) everything. It is from this conviction that (1) through (4) flow.

Young-earth creationists hold that all of this happened recently, in the past 10,000 years or so, and that scientific evidences for an older universe are based on various misinterpretations that I will not go into here, except to note that they consider the form of the fossil record to be the result of a universal Noahic flood. Old-earth creationists disagree: they accept the plain (in my opinion) evidence showing that the universe is about 14-15 billion years old, the earth is 3.5 billion years old, and so on. Old-earthers differ among themselves in their views on the Flood and its influence on geology and paleontology. They generally agree with (5) the validity of the first three chapters of Genesis, but they hold that its original intent was that some of the language be taken in some figurative sense, allowing for the passage of more than six 24-hour days in the process.

D2. Intelligent Design Proponents’ Definition of ID
Proponents of Intelligent Design define ID quite simply in these terms: there are features of life and natural history that are best explained by inference to an intelligent source in their origination. This is an uniformitarian argument: we see wherever the origin of complex information and certain other types of complexity can be identified, it always comes from an intelligence. We see complex information and those certain types of complexity in nature, and we can rationally infer intelligence also as the source of that. (I do not intend to go into the details of what constitutes such information and complexity; that’s not my purpose here and others are more qualified to discuss it.)

D3. ID/Creationism Opponents’ Definition of Creationism
Jerry Coyne helpfully provided one definition of creationism, from the perspective of an opponent to the view. I’ll quote it again in full:

But regardless of their views, all creationists share four traits. First, they devoutly believe in God. No surprise there, except to those who think that ID has a secular basis. Second, they claim that God miraculously intervened in the development of life, either creating every species from scratch or intruding from time to time in an otherwise Darwinian process. Third, they agree that one of these interventions was the creation of humans, who could not have evolved from apelike ancestors. This, of course, reflects the Judeo-Christian view that humans were created in God’s image. Fourth, they all adhere to a particular argument called “irreducible complexity.” This is the idea that some species, or some features of some species, are too complex to have evolved in a Darwinian manner, and must therefore have been designed by God.

That’s not a bad description of creationism as accepted by those who call themselves creationists, except that (4) irreducible complexity is optional; “scientific creationism” preceded any discussion of irreducible complexity by several decades.

D4. ID/Creationism Opponents‘ Definition of Intelligent Design
I think the most common definition of ID I’ve seen spoken among its opponents “is creationism in a cheap tuxedo.” The general sense is that it’s the same as creationism defined in D1, except ID people try to hide the religious aspect.

Analysis
So how do we sort out all of these definitions? Let us first note that ID (D3) makes no reference to the Bible as a research source. Therefore D1(5), the most crucial methodological component of D1 creationism, is completely out of the picture. If Genesis is of utmost importance to D1 creationists, and of no particular relevance to D2 Intelligent Design, can ID be the same as creationism? Frankly, this is possible only if the D2 Intelligent Design definition is an IDer’s lie. That’s where the D4 accusation of hiding comes from, and the belief that ID is dishonest is widely held. This is in spite of the fact that none of the arguments for ID depend on the Bible, or even make reference to it.

D1 creationism and D2 Intelligent Design share two crucial point of agreement: that it’s okay to consider the possibility that the world is not a closed system of natural cause and effect. This above all else is what raises ire among people like Jerry Coyne, who, as we have seen, will lump a committed evolutionist like Kenneth MIller in with a creationist like Ken Ham, because Miller believes in a God who has intervened in history—not the development of life, to be sure, but at least the original creation of the universe and the life of Christ.

D1 creationism and D2 Intelligent Design also share the opinion that neo-Darwinism and its variants are inadequate to explain the origin and development of life on earth.

Rhetorical Ploys
ID opponents consider Intelligent Design to be playing a rhetorical game: disguising and hiding their real agenda, which is religious (reports like this make put that in doubt, of course, and there are indeed many non-religious ID proponents). I think there is another rhetorical game going on. Opponents of Intelligent Design have a reason for equating it with creationism. Creationism (D1, young-earth variety) has a terrible scientific reputation, and it has a clear religious agenda that has been ruled out of school by U.S. courts. Though ID (D2) is quite clearly distinct from creationism (D1), it serves opponents’ rhetorical purpose to associate it with a long-standing poor science record and with religious motivations.

What About Dover?
Judge Jones ruled in Dover that ID really is creationism, and it really is religious. On this I think he was simply wrong. D2 is not equal to D1. Of course the local body, the Dover School Board, was not so clear on this, and they did have a religious motivation for introducing the topic of ID into the schools. On this they erred, but ID leaders know the difference more clearly than that.

One reason Jones ruled as he did is because of clear evidence that the library book in question, Of Pandas and People, used the term “creationism” rather than “Intelligent Design” in its early drafts. “Aha!” shouted the opponents, “Here’s proof that the two are the same, and they’re just hiding it!” No, that’s only proof if the term was used in the D1 sense in the original drafts, which according to my information was not the case.

There was a time when there was only one term in general usage for the view that evolution is an inadequate theory; and there was a time when that term “creationism,” was not as clearly defined as it can be now. There is nothing unusual about vocabulary evolving in that way, and every writer knows there’s nothing unusual about realizing your first draft is wrong and needs correcting. The time came when it was clear that creationism was the wrong word. ID opponents say this was because proponents saw the political disadvantage in it. Frankly, that too smacks as a rhetorical move on their part. Do they have evidence from the writers that this was their motive?. What about the possibility that the writers realized they were using the wrong word, because what they were talking about wasn’t D1 creationism at all, but D2 Intelligent Design?

What About Intelligent Design Proponents Who Are Religious?
Finally, what about people like me and many others who support ID and are at the same time openly believers in God? I believe that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and that he was directly involved in the development of the various kinds of organisms. I hold to an old-earth version of D1 creationism, and I support ID. There are many others who would say the same. Does that make ID equivalent to creationism? Well, I believe that squirrels eat birdseed, while at the same time being convinced that birds eat birdseed. Does that mean I think squirrels are birds? Of course not.

I can support a program that seeks natural evidences for design, and at the same time hold the Bible teaches design, and at the same time recognize that those two attitudes are not identical to each other. That’s not so hard to see, is it?

Recent Related Posts:
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Yesterday in a very quick post I pointed to an inconsistency in Jerry Coyne’s New Republic article, “Seeing and Believing,” which is a critical review of two new books by the theistic evolutionists Kenneth Miller and Karl Giberson. Today I must mention several things I really appreciate about what he wrote, and offer some suggestions about what it it may mean.

My first appreciation is this: far too often when Intelligent Design opponents speak of it in terms of creationism, they leave their terms vague. “Creationism” is spat out as an epithet, almost never defined. That’s just never helpful, in view of all the multiple competing denotations and connotations of the word. Coyne, bless him, tells us what he means by it:

But regardless of their views, all creationists share four traits. First, they devoutly believe in God. No surprise there, except to those who think that ID has a secular basis. Second, they claim that God miraculously intervened in the development of life, either creating every species from scratch or intruding from time to time in an otherwise Darwinian process. Third, they agree that one of these interventions was the creation of humans, who could not have evolved from apelike ancestors. This, of course, reflects the Judeo-Christian view that humans were created in God’s image. Fourth, they all adhere to a particular argument called “irreducible complexity.” This is the idea that some species, or some features of some species, are too complex to have evolved in a Darwinian manner, and must therefore have been designed by God.

There are some points to criticize in that definition, especially with respect to the relationship of creationism and Intelligent Design. I have made corrections of that sort often enough in the past, so this time I’ll leave them for others to handle if they wish. Here is what’s more interesting to me. Let’s take this as a working definition for now, for the sake of seeing what it leads to. More specifically, given Coyne’s definition of creationism, what does he consider is wrong with it? The answer, as it turns out, is not what one would expect.

My second note of appreciation is for the careful way Coyne spells out his answer to that important question. He places the entire relationship of religion and science under scrutiny, presenting some very helpful, accurate analysis along the way. For example, some liberal theologians water down religion to make it compatible with evolution, which leaves it, he says, “a hairsbreadth from pantheism,” or “leaves God out completely.” In this he is exactly right. To achieve that compatibility in truth, “a proper solution must harmonize science with theism;” and he correctly recognizes that this theism ought to be of the sort that is “actually understood and practiced by human beings,” not by ivory tower theorists.

This sets the stage for his appreciation and then his criticism of Giberson’s and Miller’s books. Neither of these authors is friendly towards Intelligent Design, much less toward any of the earlier manifestations of “scientific creationism.” Miller is one of ID’s more vocal critics, possibly the most effective of them all. His particular effectiveness comes from his not presenting much of a theological axe to grind: he is a practicing Catholic, a vocal believer in God. Giberson, too, though not as prominent in the debate as Miller is, criticizes ID from the standpoint of a believer in God.

Coyne says several positive things about their critiques of design. Then, in preparation for his criticism, he takes aim himself against not only ID but also the general category of religious truths. Religious truth, he says, is fundamentally flawed:

What, then, is the nature of “religious truth” that supposedly complements “scientific truth”? The first thing we should ask is whether, and in what sense, religious assertions are “truths.” Truth implies the possibility of falsity, so we should have a way of knowing whether religious truths are wrong. But unlike scientific truths, religious ones differ from person to person and sect to sect. And we all know of clear contradictions between the “truths” of different faiths. Christianity unambiguously claims the divinity of Jesus, and many assert that the road to salvation absolutely depends on accepting this claim, whereas the Koran states flatly that anyone accepting the divinity of Jesus will spend eternity in hell. These claims cannot both be “true,” at least in a way that does not require intellectual contortions.

Coyne’s problem with religious truth is similar to that stated by Tom Clark: we don’t have an adequate test for its truth or falsity. Coyne should realize, I hope, that just because religions disagree, that is no proof that all of them are wrong, or that a wholesale rejection of a spiritual view of life is justified. He seems not to be aware that religions are subject to rational and evidential tests, which, though they may not in all cases be conclusive, are nevertheless strongly indicative of which beliefs are worthy of being held.

Be that as it may, in making his complaint about religious truth, Coyne draws a firm line in the sand. Though on the surface they may seem to be allies among those who battle against Intelligent Design or creation science, Coyne considers Miller and Giberson to be virtually creationists themselves.

Although Giberson and Miller see themselves as opponents of creationism, in devising a compatibility between science and religion they finally converge with their opponents. In fact, they exhibit at least three of the four distinguishing traits of creationists: belief in God, the intervention of God in nature, and a special role for God in the evolution of humans. They may even show the fourth trait, a belief in irreducible complexity, by proposing that a soul could not have evolved, but was inserted by God….

Besides his “aesthetic design” argument, Giberson offers another reason for his faith–we might call it the argument from convenience….

This touching confession reveals the sad irrationality of the whole enterprise–the demoralizing conflict between a personal need to believe and a desperation to show that this primal need is perfectly compatible with science.

It would appear, then, that one cannot be coherently religious and scientific at the same time. That alleged synthesis requires that with one part of your brain you accept only those things that are tested and supported by agreed-upon evidence, logic, and reason, while with the other part of your brain you accept things that are unsupportable or even falsified.

And now we are ready to answer the question, what is the problem with creationism, as Coyne sees it? And what is the problem with Intelligent Design? Astonishingly, it’s not that he disagrees with ID’s scientific findings! Otherwise how could he lump staunch evolutionists like Miller and Giberson together with ID proponents or other “creationists?” On this evidence, is it too much to suppose that Coyne would reject ID even if Behe’s and Dembski’s arguments for it were widely accepted?

The question isn’t about the science at all, is it?

No, it’s not the science, it’s the worldview behind the debate. And here is my final note of at least partial appreciation for what Coyne has done here: he has succeeded in making it clear that for him (and likely for others) the ID question is a matter of worldview. I call it “partial appreciation,” because I’m not entirely sure Coyne realizes what he has done. He has drawn his line in the sand, and where he places his friends and his opponents has nothing to do with their science; it’s about their religion.

It is for him a religious battle, and his position is a religious one—not that he is religious himself, but that his position is defined by his own view of religion. This is what he has accused ID of doing, and yet he has done it himself.

I’m glad he has made that so plainly apparent, whether he sees it himself or not.

Recent Related Posts:
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From EurekAlert, a terribly dangerous finding:

A study of college freshmen in the United States and in China found that Chinese students know more science facts than their American counterparts — but both groups are nearly identical when it comes to their ability to do scientific reasoning.

Neither group is especially skilled at reasoning, however, and the study suggests that educators must go beyond teaching science facts if they hope to boost students’ reasoning ability.

[Link: Study: Learning science facts doesn't boost science reasoning]

What’s the danger? Evolution, says Michael Ruse, is a fact, Fact, FACT! And it is the facts that must be taught in high school! Meanwhile Texas is under condemnation for approving science standards that include being able to “analyze and evaluate” scientific theories.

The article later notes,

How to boost scientific reasoning? Bao points to inquiry-based learning, where students work in groups, question teachers and design their own investigations. This teaching technique is growing in popularity worldwide.

The danger, in other words, is that this finding might actually apply to evolutionary studies. Maybe just teaching fact, Fact, FACT! isn’t necessarily the best thing for science students. And to question teachers? My daughter sat through six weeks of evolution studies last year and was never allowed to ask a question. (We have discussed this with the principal, and confirmed that this was the case.)

But an unquestioning, unchallenged, party-line approach to teaching evolution is supposed to save America’s science future from going down the tubes. That’s the line from the NCSE. Does NCSE really stand for National Center for Science Education?

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I’m wondering what this means for evolutionary theory:

However, surprisingly, the patterns of molecular evolution in many of the genes they found did not contain signals of natural selection. Instead, their evidence suggests that a separate process known as BGC (biased gene conversion) has speeded up the rate of evolution in certain genes. This process increases the rate at which certain mutations spread through a population, regardless of whether they are beneficial or harmful.

[Link: Natural Selection Not The Only Process That Drives Evolution?]

It’s not random, and it’s not guided by selection—so what’s driving or directing it?

I don’t know, and I certainly don’t present it either as a problem for evolutionary theory or an advance for ID, because there’s not enough information here to go on. It’s not even clear how solid this finding is. It’s certainly intriguing, though.

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