Science vs. Intelligent Design III
Two Stealth Movements
I don’t know of a better political commentator than Charles Krauthammer. He might be the smartest man in Washington. But his latest formulation of the Intelligent Design controversy raises questions (“Phony Theory, False Conflict: ‘Intelligent Design’ Foolishly Pits Evolution against Faith,” Washington Post, Friday, November 18, 2005, Page A23).
Krauthammer is right: To the extent that Intelligent Design is a smokescreen for a fundamentalist agenda of biblical literalism, it has no business in science class. Built upon faith in universal laws of nature, natural science cannot admit capricious supernatural explanations of what in principle might be scientifically understood but is not understood yet. Among respectable thinkers, Intelligent Design may be more than “today’s tarted-up version of creationism,” but where it rushes to fill gaps in scientific knowledge with the “[not] empirically disprovable” theory that God is the explanation, it discredits itself.
God may be “behind every hydrogen atom in electrolysis,” writes Krauthammer, “but that discussion is the province of religion, not science. The relentless attempt to confuse the two by teaching warmed-over creationism as science can only bring ridicule to religion.”
Fine. But here’s my question: Why isn’t it equally ridiculous to make God the enemy of science? Shouldn’t the unquestioned assumption that atheist materialism is the only permissible religion for scientists and students of science bring exactly the same ridicule to its proponents? Yet for years our science classrooms have been bathed in this other religion, positivist materialism, masquerading as science. When will the ACLU go to court to prevent teachers from promoting that religion in science classes?
Evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins and the late Stephen Jay Gould, whose materialism is as strict and totalitarian a fundamentalism as that of the most committed creationist, can admit no place for religion in their version of the enterprise of human learning. Indeed, philosophically Dawkins has not progressed beyond the beliefs of Antoine Nicolas de Condorcet, the reason-worshipping philosophe who perished in the French Revolution believing that science, triumphing over religion (which he equated with superstition), would bring about heaven on earth.
Despite the cataclysmic villainies of the 20th-century atheist dogmas of National Socialism and Stalinist Communism, Dawkins and other evolutionary biologists write as if religion (which he too equates with superstition) were the greatest source of human ills and as if science founded on human reason alone were their cure.
Leaving aside the question of whether or not the more responsible promoters of I.D. have raised scientifically legitimate questions, is it not true that much of the energy of the I.D. movement has been evoked by the atheist materialism of scientists like Dawkins and stealth proselytizing by science teachers of their stamp? Are they not striving equally to convert the general culture to their brand of fundamentalist faith that matter itself is the cause of its own being and organization?
Can We Get Along?
The age we live in is one of conflict between different fundamental images of the nature of reality. There are fanatics and polemicists on both sides, and both sides have their stealth promoters. But just as between true and honest believers in materialism and true and honest believers in God there may be open debate without rancor or mutual threat, so dishonestly disguised proselytizing, whether from Christians or from materialists, leads to fear and thence to polarization, rancor, irrational polemics, and, eventually perhaps, violence.
Let’s pull back from that brink and try to reason together wisely. Let’s not assume that all uses of the term “intelligent design” imply the intent to pollute science with phony scientific theories, and let’s not assume that to be a good scientist requires one to embrace materialism as the ultimate reality.
Aristotle’s Four Causes
As Aristotle, the founder of Western science, would have pointed out, and as Dorothy Sayers reminds us in a very fine essay on education (“The Lost Tools of Learning”), both those who think of biblical creationism as a scientifically demonstrable theory and those who think science proves matter to be the sole ground of the nature of things are confusing material and efficient causes with first and final causes.
Let me try to explain with an example:
What is the cause of an omelet? Based on Aristotle, we can say that there are four causes: The formal cause is the plan for the omelet in your mind, the concept “omelet” and the knowledge of what omelets are, without which the omelet would not come to exist. The material cause is the eggs: The omelet can’t exist without them either; their nature allows omelets to exist and they are what the omelet is made of. The efficient cause is the mixing and the pouring of the eggs, the introduction of heat from the fire under the pan, the removal of the pan from the heat before the eggs skip being an omelet and become charcoal, and so on—what you are doing to the eggs that turns them into an omelet. The final cause is the omelet itself, the ultimate purpose for which you have brought the efficient cause to bear upon the material cause guided by the formal cause. We could debate whether breakfast or hunger or nutrition is the final cause of the omelet.
Material and efficient causes are the proper study of science. But science has no access to the discovery of formal or final causes. They are accessible, if at all, only to thought, not to experimentation; to reasoning but not to material proof.
The material and efficient causes of the phenomena described by the theory of evolution may be studied scientifically. But neither their formal and final causes, nor whether those causes may be material or spiritual, can be determined by science. This is why the question whether evolution is the result of the nature of matter or of intelligent design is a philosophical question, not a scientific one.
At the same time, this is why it is just as offensive to believers in God to use science to promote materialism as it is offensive to positivist-materialists to use science to promote Christian fundamentalism. In both cases, the study of material and efficient causes is being hijacked to teach a particular doctrine of final causes to which science has no access.
Let us agree that the right place for a discussion of the material and efficient causes of evolution is science class and that the right place for a discussion of the final causes of evolution is philosophy or religion class.
Where Can We Study Their Relation?
Where is the right classroom for a discussion of the relation between evolution’s material and efficient causes and its possible final causes? Where is the border crossing between the separate provinces of science and faith to which Krauthammer has respectively consigned discussions of matter and mind? Where can those who respect both science and religion hear a discussion between scientists and religious believers on the relative merits of non-phony ideas about intelligent design and atheist materialism?
Thanks to Descartes, we have inherited a view of reality according to which there is mind and there is body, and never the twain shall meet. Our universities have enshrined this split in the division of the arts and humanities from the sciences. At Stanford they used to call students of the former “fuzzies” and of the latter “techies.” Consideration of the formal and final causes of material facts is forbidden to science lest it contaminate the scientific method; consideration of the material and efficient causes within the Creator’s design is forbidden to religion lest it tyrannize over science.
Materialists deny the Cartesian split by arguing that the mind is just the body doing its thing. Fundamentalists deny the split by arguing that scripture records the only facts that signify. The rest of us are supposed (by modern education) to accept the split itself as dogma.
But greater minds than that of Descartes have found ways of transcending that split, of finding unity where he found division, without denying either matter or spirit. Where can we go to seek such a unity again? Where, oh where, may any conversation take place on the subject of the relation between the truth of matter and the truth of spirit? Apparently not in school.
Both science and religion are built on faith. Science is built on faith in the universality of the laws of nature, in the reality and consistency of cause and effect, in the validity of perception by the human senses and their instruments, in the disprovability of theory based upon experimentation, in the authority of the replication of experiments, etc. Religion is built on faith in the reality of more than meets the eye of the body, a reality that may claim some authority from experience but that is not subject to rational proofs because the rational human mind is in this respect the contained, not the container; because, as Wendell Berry puts it, “we cannot comprehend what comprehends us.”
Cannot we human beings, who are a union of matter and spirit, find a way to agree that since both human enterprises are founded on faiths of these two kinds, there is value in honest conversation between them unmarred by fundamentalist superstitions on either side? Why must I be labeled a threat to science because I want to consider how the facts of science might exhibit intelligent design, or a threat to religion because I want to consider how God’s plan might include evolution? Is there no common room in the university of the modern mind where science and faith may meet to discuss, without fear or rancor, the nature of things in general?
________________________
Further Reading:
Isaac Constantine, “Signs of Intelligence? What the neo-Darwinists don’t understand about theories of Intelligent Design,” Weekly Standard, 7/13/2005.
Mark Davis, "Find a Place for Intelligent Design in Public Schools," Real Clear Politics--Commentary, January 4, 2006.
I don’t know of a better political commentator than Charles Krauthammer. He might be the smartest man in Washington. But his latest formulation of the Intelligent Design controversy raises questions (“Phony Theory, False Conflict: ‘Intelligent Design’ Foolishly Pits Evolution against Faith,” Washington Post, Friday, November 18, 2005, Page A23).
Krauthammer is right: To the extent that Intelligent Design is a smokescreen for a fundamentalist agenda of biblical literalism, it has no business in science class. Built upon faith in universal laws of nature, natural science cannot admit capricious supernatural explanations of what in principle might be scientifically understood but is not understood yet. Among respectable thinkers, Intelligent Design may be more than “today’s tarted-up version of creationism,” but where it rushes to fill gaps in scientific knowledge with the “[not] empirically disprovable” theory that God is the explanation, it discredits itself.
God may be “behind every hydrogen atom in electrolysis,” writes Krauthammer, “but that discussion is the province of religion, not science. The relentless attempt to confuse the two by teaching warmed-over creationism as science can only bring ridicule to religion.”
Fine. But here’s my question: Why isn’t it equally ridiculous to make God the enemy of science? Shouldn’t the unquestioned assumption that atheist materialism is the only permissible religion for scientists and students of science bring exactly the same ridicule to its proponents? Yet for years our science classrooms have been bathed in this other religion, positivist materialism, masquerading as science. When will the ACLU go to court to prevent teachers from promoting that religion in science classes?
Evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins and the late Stephen Jay Gould, whose materialism is as strict and totalitarian a fundamentalism as that of the most committed creationist, can admit no place for religion in their version of the enterprise of human learning. Indeed, philosophically Dawkins has not progressed beyond the beliefs of Antoine Nicolas de Condorcet, the reason-worshipping philosophe who perished in the French Revolution believing that science, triumphing over religion (which he equated with superstition), would bring about heaven on earth.
Despite the cataclysmic villainies of the 20th-century atheist dogmas of National Socialism and Stalinist Communism, Dawkins and other evolutionary biologists write as if religion (which he too equates with superstition) were the greatest source of human ills and as if science founded on human reason alone were their cure.
Leaving aside the question of whether or not the more responsible promoters of I.D. have raised scientifically legitimate questions, is it not true that much of the energy of the I.D. movement has been evoked by the atheist materialism of scientists like Dawkins and stealth proselytizing by science teachers of their stamp? Are they not striving equally to convert the general culture to their brand of fundamentalist faith that matter itself is the cause of its own being and organization?
Can We Get Along?
The age we live in is one of conflict between different fundamental images of the nature of reality. There are fanatics and polemicists on both sides, and both sides have their stealth promoters. But just as between true and honest believers in materialism and true and honest believers in God there may be open debate without rancor or mutual threat, so dishonestly disguised proselytizing, whether from Christians or from materialists, leads to fear and thence to polarization, rancor, irrational polemics, and, eventually perhaps, violence.
Let’s pull back from that brink and try to reason together wisely. Let’s not assume that all uses of the term “intelligent design” imply the intent to pollute science with phony scientific theories, and let’s not assume that to be a good scientist requires one to embrace materialism as the ultimate reality.
Aristotle’s Four Causes
As Aristotle, the founder of Western science, would have pointed out, and as Dorothy Sayers reminds us in a very fine essay on education (“The Lost Tools of Learning”), both those who think of biblical creationism as a scientifically demonstrable theory and those who think science proves matter to be the sole ground of the nature of things are confusing material and efficient causes with first and final causes.
Let me try to explain with an example:
What is the cause of an omelet? Based on Aristotle, we can say that there are four causes: The formal cause is the plan for the omelet in your mind, the concept “omelet” and the knowledge of what omelets are, without which the omelet would not come to exist. The material cause is the eggs: The omelet can’t exist without them either; their nature allows omelets to exist and they are what the omelet is made of. The efficient cause is the mixing and the pouring of the eggs, the introduction of heat from the fire under the pan, the removal of the pan from the heat before the eggs skip being an omelet and become charcoal, and so on—what you are doing to the eggs that turns them into an omelet. The final cause is the omelet itself, the ultimate purpose for which you have brought the efficient cause to bear upon the material cause guided by the formal cause. We could debate whether breakfast or hunger or nutrition is the final cause of the omelet.
Material and efficient causes are the proper study of science. But science has no access to the discovery of formal or final causes. They are accessible, if at all, only to thought, not to experimentation; to reasoning but not to material proof.
The material and efficient causes of the phenomena described by the theory of evolution may be studied scientifically. But neither their formal and final causes, nor whether those causes may be material or spiritual, can be determined by science. This is why the question whether evolution is the result of the nature of matter or of intelligent design is a philosophical question, not a scientific one.
At the same time, this is why it is just as offensive to believers in God to use science to promote materialism as it is offensive to positivist-materialists to use science to promote Christian fundamentalism. In both cases, the study of material and efficient causes is being hijacked to teach a particular doctrine of final causes to which science has no access.
Let us agree that the right place for a discussion of the material and efficient causes of evolution is science class and that the right place for a discussion of the final causes of evolution is philosophy or religion class.
Where Can We Study Their Relation?
Where is the right classroom for a discussion of the relation between evolution’s material and efficient causes and its possible final causes? Where is the border crossing between the separate provinces of science and faith to which Krauthammer has respectively consigned discussions of matter and mind? Where can those who respect both science and religion hear a discussion between scientists and religious believers on the relative merits of non-phony ideas about intelligent design and atheist materialism?
Thanks to Descartes, we have inherited a view of reality according to which there is mind and there is body, and never the twain shall meet. Our universities have enshrined this split in the division of the arts and humanities from the sciences. At Stanford they used to call students of the former “fuzzies” and of the latter “techies.” Consideration of the formal and final causes of material facts is forbidden to science lest it contaminate the scientific method; consideration of the material and efficient causes within the Creator’s design is forbidden to religion lest it tyrannize over science.
Materialists deny the Cartesian split by arguing that the mind is just the body doing its thing. Fundamentalists deny the split by arguing that scripture records the only facts that signify. The rest of us are supposed (by modern education) to accept the split itself as dogma.
But greater minds than that of Descartes have found ways of transcending that split, of finding unity where he found division, without denying either matter or spirit. Where can we go to seek such a unity again? Where, oh where, may any conversation take place on the subject of the relation between the truth of matter and the truth of spirit? Apparently not in school.
Both science and religion are built on faith. Science is built on faith in the universality of the laws of nature, in the reality and consistency of cause and effect, in the validity of perception by the human senses and their instruments, in the disprovability of theory based upon experimentation, in the authority of the replication of experiments, etc. Religion is built on faith in the reality of more than meets the eye of the body, a reality that may claim some authority from experience but that is not subject to rational proofs because the rational human mind is in this respect the contained, not the container; because, as Wendell Berry puts it, “we cannot comprehend what comprehends us.”
Cannot we human beings, who are a union of matter and spirit, find a way to agree that since both human enterprises are founded on faiths of these two kinds, there is value in honest conversation between them unmarred by fundamentalist superstitions on either side? Why must I be labeled a threat to science because I want to consider how the facts of science might exhibit intelligent design, or a threat to religion because I want to consider how God’s plan might include evolution? Is there no common room in the university of the modern mind where science and faith may meet to discuss, without fear or rancor, the nature of things in general?
________________________
Further Reading:
Isaac Constantine, “Signs of Intelligence? What the neo-Darwinists don’t understand about theories of Intelligent Design,” Weekly Standard, 7/13/2005.
Mark Davis, "Find a Place for Intelligent Design in Public Schools," Real Clear Politics--Commentary, January 4, 2006.
posted by G.Rap | 1:48 AM
20 Comments:
Among respectable thinkers, Intelligent Design may be more than “today’s tarted-up version of creationism,” but where it rushes to fill gaps in scientific knowledge with the “empirically disprovable” theory that God is the explanation, it discredits itself.
If it was just a typo, then never mind. But the problem with the "theory" that God is the explanation is not that it is empirically disprovable. The problem is that it is not empirically disprovable. (In my experience, many creationists fail to understand this point.)
But here’s my question: Why isn’t it equally ridiculous to make God the enemy of science?
Who says it's not equally ridiculous? If it were true that "our science classrooms have been bathed in ... positivist materialism, masquerading as science," I'd be as alarmed as the next guy. But to my knowledge it isn't true, and I'm not sure what examples you have in mind.
"Science does not produce evidence against God." -- Richard Dawkins (Time Magazine, August 15, 2005).
Just because science classes don't include a discussion of anything past material observation of the world doesn't mean they are atheist. Science classes, as I've observed, explain what's going on and how to observe, measure and record that. It gives students the tools to understanding DNA and Motion and Chemical Reactions. I don't see why that has to be muddled with an intense discussion of what drives it all: something totally unobservable and unarguable because no one actually knows. That is the field of philosophy classes, not science. By that very nature, science classes aren't atheistic. Discuss the fundamental causes, the ones we can never truly know, somewhere else. Let science deal with what it is: an explanation as far as we can assuredly understand. The other day in my Physics class we were talking about some scientist who reportedly said, "I'm afraid I'm going to die knowing everything, and understanding nothing." We talk about how no one really knows exactly what energy is. We address that science has limits, but nowhere do we say that God is the cause, and nowhere do we say that God is not the cause. It's not atheistic, its not Christian, its not Islamic, Buddist, or whatever. Its just what we can see. We know there are limits, but geez, leave it alone. Science class just says "this is what we think is going on". Leave all the baggage of a God or no god to another subject.
Dr. Rapp-
You have raised some very provoking questions about the relationship of scientific and religious inquiry. There is room in the metaphorical “university of the modern mind” for the type of enterprise you propose: in intellectual communities united by similar faiths, whether at The Bishop’s School, Bob Jones University, or the Vatican. Of course, as you partially acknowledge, there are a variety of insurmountable epistemological problems that preclude the “discussion” of science with faith in the modern, secular university. In short, religion is in the end a faith that “is not subject to rational proofs,” (which you must acknowledge as being significantly different from the “faiths” of rational and scientific inquiry) and therefore any discussion that takes religious tenets as starting assumptions is scholastically suspect. One can reject Judeo-Christianity (not to mention Platonism) on plenty of grounds other than scientific materialism. As a result, these religions can no longer command the stature they once did (at least among the learned) as universal laws. I think what you are and have been really mourning, Dr. Rapp, is not the divide between science and religion, but the difficulty of religious belief in the “postmodern” age.
You also error in characterizing intellectual and academic scientists as opposed to religion, that the “only permissible religion for scientists and students of science” is atheist materialism. Indeed, Gould was not a “strict and totalitarian” material positivist intent on eradicating faith, but rather espoused the position that science could not speak to the divine. Nor do science teachers as a whole (certainly some do) promote science by denigrating religion. Surveys consistently show that academic scientists, for instance, are the most religious of the professoriate. Some surveys have even revealed that the majority of these scientists espouse religion belief--unlike the humanities and social science professoriate where atheism and agnosticism are ubiquitous. I further suspect that the frequency of religious belief is even higher among practicing scientists and high-school teachers. Opponents of ID (and science teachers generally) are not trying to convert students into atheists, as you sometimes characterize them, rather they are trying to prevent religious tenets from being cloaked in the authority of science while giving students an intellectual rigorous way of seeing the world.
-A believer when I danced among the daffodils, now an agnostic
Just had a debate with my girlfriend over this topic, so I've been thinking about it.
I have two questions for further discussion:
1) When we speak of the "validity" of a theory, what are the qualities of this characteristic? When we say, "both are theories and are just as valid," we get people giving us confused looks, saying "but we have seen evolution happen, we have watched bacteria evolve and we know it happens, we have not seen God create." And in all truth, I cannot equal argument for argument and it seems to me that under this rational way of thinking the scale tips toward evolutionism, and I find myself sounding, in the context, like a religious dogmatic.
2) You continuously throw out this quote "the eye cannot see itself," implying we cannot know the origin of our thoughts, or souls, and our world, yet this quote, taken for its surface meaning, is no longer true--what I am getting to is, consider the green woman in Perelandra and her surprise and fright at the mirror shown to her by the unman. What if we are somehow someday shown, by divine or devilish infiltration or through some science-fiction miracle, the way our minds work? What if we already have seen it, but have been scared by it or have mistook it as the green woman mistook the mirror image for "a face," and what if, as the mirror can be a good thing, this knowledge proves to be a good thing? Would it not be as if we have escaped from our caves and are at last able to truly know ourselves--i.e. "Gnothi Se Auton?"
I am stunned to find no comments, so will offer mine. Gideon, some sage in a former life suggested science was about "how" and religeon and philosophy was about the "how come." I suspect you and he are one and the same! Where I agree with you the absolute most is wishing people could simply discuss all this with humility. Proponents of absolutes, alas, may ask their listeners to open their minds, but only as a preliminary to conversion. They themselves are ill practiced at opening their minds. The defence lawyer pleading with jurors to admit to doubr will himself never admit doubt. Therein lies the delemma. The conversation you seek would at best be a polite stand off between passions ready to duke it out after they've left the studio and are out in the parking lot. Atheists can argue with atheists and believes can argue with believers, but put athetists and believers in the same room and, well, let's just hope the metal detectors found everything on the way in... In my personal life, I find myself in great admiration for the firm and certain of heart, mind, and purpose, even as I watch them kick others and, in the proess, trip themselves up.
Comments were delayed because lost temporarily in cyber space.
Some responses to come soon.
Jack,
The problem is that you are assuming that watching bacteria evolve and watching God create are two different phenomenons. They could, for all I know, be one and the same. My personal view leans towards evolutionism simply because, through my observations and analysis (which I also assume to be valid ;) ) I am convinced that, even if God were responsible for all of the creation, for modern animals and the modern face of the world, God does so in a consistent fashion that correlates with the behavior predicted by evolution. Perhaps God controls the movement of all particles in the universe; But if he does so consistent with Newton's laws of motion, then I am similarly content with analyzing that motion according to those laws and leaving the discussion of 'why' to the philosophy-types.
I have recently been spending my time randomly hopping around to different news outlets and I was brought to an article a few days ago on this very topic.
The article is at:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1136361067333&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
I was a bit concerned by what I read and emailed the author (And recieved an unsatisfactory response :( ). I will post the three-email tree here, in order.
Mr. Rosenblum,
I am specifically responding to the following paragraph
"Nor can Darwinists explain how complex systems, such as human sight, none of whose component parts would alone provide any advantage, could have come into being by a long series of micro-mutations. The best Darwinists can offer in response are what Harvard professors Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin call "just-so" stories about how each of the postulated (but never observed) changes in each part of the system conferred some advantage."
This paragraph shows a misunderstanding of the tenets of natural selection. In natural selection, the environment does not allow the stronger, or better adapted, or animals with advantageous traits to survive: It simply causes those who are weaker or less adapted or lacking those advantageous traits to die. The mechanisms involved with eyesight, before the eye was fully developed, would be a benign mutation, neither helping or hurting (apart from a slightly higher expenditure in energy) the animal's chances of survival. In order for these traits to develop into a complicated organ such as en eye, the animals with the precursors must, through OTHER traits, be able to survive: either they are indeed stronger animals, lucky, or there is minimal predation in their environment. By chance, over millions and millions of reproductive encounters, the mutations continue until they become a solid advantage, at which case, if the rest of the animal's physiology is normal, it will constitute enough of an advantage to allow that animal to dominate and 'win' the competition for food and resources. Now, if each component of eyesight did provide an inherent advantage, then the disappearance of the 'have-nots' would happen earlier in the cycle, but it is not a prerequisite for evolutionary progress.
I would like to add a disclaimer to this email that I am a 17-year old high school senior :P
-Alex
----------------------------------
A very bright high school senior, I'd wager. But that's just another "just so" story.
All the best,
Jonathan
----------------------------
My point is that the 'just so' stories are in response to a question that, even when left unanswered, does not weaken their point.
The question is:
"How can complex systems, such as human sight, none of whose component parts would alone provide any advantage, come into being by a long series of micro-mutations?"
My answer is:
By chance. The individual mutations do not need their own advantages in order to exist within the population. The difference is that they do not become prevalent until there is an advantage. They do not have to answer the question, because it is. Think of the easily observable examples. Lets take bacteria. Bacteria can become immune to antibiotics that have not been invented yet. What does that mean? Well it means that a small percentage of the bacteria population caries around genetic information that, until the drug is invented and used, does not help them. Why are those bacteria around, you would ask. Again, my answer is that the genetic immunity does not HURT them, and thus they continue to survive as a small percentage of the environment. When the antibiotics are introduced, and taken incorrectly, creating an environment where only those with the seemingly benign mutation of immunity survive, then the entire bacteria population in that one person becomes immune.
Think of the absurdity of your question, as it relates to bacteria:
"Why would bacteria become immune to yet-to-be-developed drugs, when the immunity (when it occurs), has no immediate benefit to the organism?"
The point of this email is to explain that, if you want to make a point about leaving a panel of experts speechless, then ask an unloaded, accurate question.
-Alex
-------------------------------
Thoughts?
-Alex
I think we've got some very interesting and enlivening responses to this issue. I have one thing I would like to say in response to the responses: I have reason to believe that most of the science teachers referred to here are professors at Bishops, and I know very well that most if not all of Bishops' teachers are very smart people who would not preach materialism and let loose with criticisms of religion in class even if that was their belief. There are scientists, however--particularly some of those who are spokesmen in this debate--who do not have that sense of humility mentioned above.
Humility really is the question here, isn't it? I think that the truest flaw of character is the inability to think you might be wrong, even if you're right.
Thanks to Maurile for pointing out the absence of the crucial "not." I've put it in now.
Dawkins may say that science does not produce evidence against God all he wants, and that is true. But Dawkins himself produces arguments aplenty against God and religion in his books, which have been highly influential. Those arguments are, in my opinion, inane.
Aztarg has been fortunate in his science classes, and if what he says is so, I applaud the intellectual integrity of his teachers.
Anonymous says what I am mourning is the difficulty of religious belief in a "post-modern" age. Indeed I do mourn the difficulty of certain beliefs (in God, in virtue, in the good religious traditions). But it is a serious error to imagine that the beliefs of our time are not every bit as religious as those of the past. Belief in materiality, belief in feelings, belief in progress, belief in nature--all these are as rigorously held, whether the believers are aware of their beliefs or not, as belief in traditional theology or Holy Scripture ever was. As Mary Holmes used to say, "All men worhsip. The only question is what they are worshipping."
As for what opponents of ID and other scientists and teachers of science believe, I'm sure it is all over the map. However, as evidence of the legitimacy of the concerns I've raised, I need only point to the remarks of biologist and Nobel Prize winner David Baltimore (President of Cal. Tech) at the dedication of our own new science building. In a question/answer session with the students, his condescending dismissal of religious beliefs in favor of the seriousness of science was inescapable, and his public lecture confirmed his attitude. He was presented to us as one of the great minds of modern science, and no doubt he is, scientifically speaking. As an authority on the subject of the possible conversation between science and faith, however, he has, in my opinion, discredited himself.
I agree, of course, that many scientists, and the best among them, do not hold such shallow ideas of religion nor such easy faith in the material foundations of reality. But many do, and their various expressions of worship in that belief are rarely challenged.
Jack's comment (1) fails to distinguish between matters of knowledge based on observation and matters of faith. My argument that science too is based on faith is not that particular scientific theories do not validate themselves to our senses through observation and experiment, but that the GROUNDS of science, its axioms, are no more testable in the material world or by the senses than other faiths. I'd ask him to reread my earlier comments on this subject.
Jack's comment (2) misunderstands Plato's point. "The eye cannot see itself" remains true. It can see a mirror image of itself, but not itself. And, as Plato argues, images of realities are not the same as the realities themselves. Likewise, no matter how thoroughly we come to understand the brain, we cannot possibly comprehend the relation between the operations of that physical organ and the self who is doing the thinking about them. We may think we can see it theoretically, or in an animal, or even in another human being, but when it is our own thinking that we look at, the subject and the object remain distinctly different phenomena. The human mind exists in relation, even in relation to itself, and that two-ness can never be reduced to one-ness. (In this sense, only God is one.)
That said, much understanding of the human brain/mind connection may lead to good. Much may also lead to evil. Everything will depend not on the facts but on the virtue of those who have mastered them. The power of this kind of knowledge in the hands of people trained to achieve technical knowledge and mastery without reference to virtue ought to worry us more than it does (the subject of C.S. Lewis's novel "That Hideous Strength").
I am in perfect agreement with Wiklund that humility is called for. Am I not right to mourn over the general loss of belief in that virtue among others?
Jack reinforces the point and I concur.
Alex's comment got lost in cyberspace too, as did one of Jack's, I'm afraid.
The comments come to me first to be moderated (beacuse I've had to delete one that was nasty). I'll try to keep up with the flow.
Alex and Gideon--
Regarding the thing about scientists watching evolution among bacteria. I do not believe that seeing evolution happen can possibly prove that God doesn't exist, which is I think how Alex interpreted the comment, which wasn't even mine in the first place. Remember that no amount of scientific research will ever be able to prove or disprove God. I would even say that scientific research shouldn't have any effect on how religious people think of God except to make them further in awe of Him. Here lies the true weakness of those scientists who speak out against religion--no matter what a scientist shows a true believer, the believer will always be able to say "very interesting. I still believe in God."
This kind of reminds me of a story of my Dad's, in which a man and wife, as a terrible war is about to break out due to chaos spread through the land by some great demon or something, dig themselves a hole and wait for the wars to be over, testing the above ground by poking a stick up and observing whether it has caught fire when they bring it back down. One day they bring it down and it is cold, so they return to the surface to find a wasteland of black, burned earth. No life survives from where they stand to the edges of their vision, it is only black and cold. The demon is infuriated to see that two humans survived and comes up to them and says, "What are you doing here? You can see there is nothing left in this world for you. Everything is dead. Can you still live in this world?"
The couple replies "yes we can, it is our world and we will live here as best we can."
A shoot of grass comes up on the ground in front of them.
The demon reprimands them again, "All your friends and family are dead, there is no one else on this planet. You are entirely alone."
"We have one another and we will go on living here."
A bird sings off in the distance. The demon starts to shrink. And so it goes on, with the people continuously denying the demon, the demon shrinking smaller and smaller, and the world becoming renewed by the devotion of the couple, until the demon disappears and the world is entirely green again and they can hear people laughing.
Anyways, I hope you got the relevance of that story--it isn't entirely the same issue, but it's similar.
Jack
I see it now Jack. Sorry for the misunderstanding; Pretend that my post, instead of starting with Jack, started with "Anonymous person that Jack referred to!"
-Alex
Just read this in an essay assigned for a class of mine. (the class isn't a science class, it's actually a writing class similar to your Humanities, in which we read a wide variety of works focusing on a theme and then write about it)
"Our textbooks like to illustrate evolution with examples of optimal design--nearly perfeect mimicry of a dead leaf by a butterfly or of a poisonous species by a palatable relative. But ideal design is a lousy argument for evolution, for it mimics the postulated action of an omnipotent creator. Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proff of evolution--paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a natural process, constrained by history, follows perforce. No one understood this better than Darwin."
The writer goes on to talk about a specific--and indeed very interesting--case of evolution in the Panda, but doesn't mention God again. I just thought this blatant tossing aside of God was funny/sad and wanted to share it with you all, especially those who say scientists don't try to disprove God.
Jack
Jack, thanks for posting that. Two comments:
1. The author of that passage isn't arguing that no sensible Gods exist -- just that no sensible Gods could have specially designed the panda's jury-rigged thumb just so. (There may well be sensible Gods who watched the thumb evolve, and perhaps even cheered it on. Or there may be dopey Gods who specially designed it. But sensibly designed it is not.)
2. The passage you quoted is not from a biology textbook. It is from an essay by Stephen Jay Gould that first appeared as a magazine article and was later reprinted in a popular book (The Panda's Thumb).
For both reasons, the passage is not evidence of any anti-theistic bias in the science classroom.
Well, regarding your first point--the idea that "no rational mind would create this" is flawed in my opinion because it assumes that to believe in God is to believe in a world that is entirely designed and based on rationality. We all know that a constant theme in literature and philosophy is that "God works in mysterious ways"--sometimes appearing rational, sometimes irrational and emotional, and probably existing in actuality somewhere in between. The way this writer classifies God is very much diminished from the way a Christian would classify God--it is set and comprehendable.
Regarding the second point--I acknowledge where the essay comes from, but I don't believe it makes a difference. The idea is that he is criticizing metaphysical things via material things and scientific reasoning.
Jack
PS--Gideon when are you going to post something new?
Great last comment, Jack. Thank you for saying it.
Two new things on the way, but I've been grading midyear exams. Thanks for asking.
>>"'no rational mind would create this' is flawed in my opinion because it assumes that to believe in God is to believe in a world that is entirely designed and based on rationality"
Perhaps God is both rational and in possession of a sense of humor.
The rationality of God's creation or of evolution is not something that we can judge. A finch with a 6-inch long beak is quite irrational in a world of 7-inch flowers, but change that context and it makes perfect sense. Perhaps the panda's thumb made sense in the past, makes sense now and we just dont know it, or will make sense in the future.
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