A Thinking Reed

"Faith seeks understanding"

Written by

Lee M.

in

Lutheran theologian Ted Peters states the obvious (or, at least I always thought it was pretty obvious):

I hang out with those so-called theistic evolutionists. We tend to think scientists are pretty smart. In fact, many of my colleagues are research scientists, even evolutionary biologists. We are convinced that the neo-Darwinian model of random genetic variation combined with natural selection provides the most adequate explanation for the development of life forms.

But my friends and colleagues are also religious, mostly Christian but with some other faiths mixed in. We think religious people can be pretty smart too. What is so important and what gets missed too often when the media covers the evolution wars is this: To be a Christian does not require that one be anti-Darwinian.

It’s very possible that one could embrace the science of the Darwinian tradition and also embrace a Christian understanding of God at work in the natural world. I believe that God has used the evolution of life over deep time to serve a divine purpose for creation. This requires distinguishing between the strictly scientific Darwinian model and the atheism and related ideologies that have frequently been associated with evolution. The science is solid.

What annoys me the most about the “intelligent design” controversy is that complex theological, scientific, and philosophical issues get reduced to culture war “boundary markers” that are supposed to separate the sheep from the goats (who’s who depends on which side you’re on). The idea that this of all things would be what distinguishes “true” Christians from wishy-washy theological liberals* just strikes me as absurd.
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*Anglican philosopher Peter Van Inwagen once wrote of having a conversation with a fundamentalist-turned-logical-positivist (!) wherein Van Inwagen asked if he considered St. Augustine to be a “wishy-washy theological liberal” since he clearly read the opening chapters of Genesis non-literally and believed in a development of life forms. The logical positivist said yes!

Comments

8 responses to “"Faith seeks understanding"”

  1. Gaius

    Lee,

    Your comments make me wonder.

    In re the mind/body problem I would have guessed you are a substance dualist, or possibly even a more-or-less Berkelian idealist.

    Doesn’t this already seem to make miraculous, divine intervention in the course of events, at least so far as to create those soul-substances, necessary?

    Perhaps at conception, but maybe not. I wouldn’t want to exlcude creation “at the beginning” followed by a series of re-incarnations, myself. But, either way …?

    More, I would have guessed that, whether you incline more toward dualism or idealism, you accept a real agent causality in which the mind (the soul, the Ego, or whatever) causes physical things (or relevant ideal phenomena, with or without divine cooperation as in Malebranche) to go in ways they would not have gone in accordance with physical causes (however you might conceive them), alone.

    But surely this is not less weird (if weirdness is a problem) than supposing real divine intervention in the course of natural or human history? Outright miracles, in other words?

    And if that is not absurd, what is wrong with the “less weird” ID suggestion that various physical constants were, as it were, selected by God precisely with a view to bringing about certain entirely “natural” results in the history of all the universe?

    And do you mean to disallow all miracles, or only those that would be involved if the creation story was more or less literally true?

    Just wondering.

    Reply
  2. Lee

    Well, first of all, I’d want to distinguish the claim that the physical constants of the universe were intended by God in order to bring about the existence of life (the so-called anthropic argument) from what I take (at least some) ID proponents to be arguing – namely, that the immanent process of evolution cannot be explained naturalistically. The former is, as far as I can tell, entirely consistent with Darwinism as an account of the mechanism of evolution.

    I’m not, in principle, opposed to the idea of miraculous intervention (for instance, I think the Resurrection qualifies as such an event, even as it eludes our complete understanding), but I also don’t think that invoking miracles – understood as some kind of extraordinary divine intervention – is necessary to account for the development of life (or, at least, I don’t think ID proponents have shown that it is), nor a particularly good practice as science.

    At the end of the day, though, I’m not sure that science is anything more than “saving the appearances.” I haven’t given it much thought, but I do sometimes toy with the idea that science doesn’t have purchase on the “deep” structure of reality (that’s the Platonist-Berkeleyan in me coming out). Ontologically I follow Augustine in thinking that the fundamental distinction is between created and uncreated being.

    Reply
  3. Gaius

    I think you are right about the compatibility of the basic ID line wrt physical constants and a straight Darwinian view of natural history.

    But you have to wonder how empirical the basis for rejecting any form of divine intervention in the process actually is.

    How many Darwinists are really open to the suggestion that some conditions of the fossil evidence, say, whether actual or merely hypothetical, would or do better uphold the idea of divine intervention than the idea that the whole of natural history can realistically be accounted for by purely natural processes and events?

    If not, then what is the force of appeals to the fossil evidence, if NO state of the fossil record, actual or possible, would be allowed by the Darwinists to better comport with some version of creationism than with any plausible version of a purely natural origin of species?

    Reply
  4. Chris T.

    I like this conversation. First discussion about evolution recently that hasn’t made my blood pressure rise. 🙂

    I wrote two comments on a LiveJournal discussion about this today. I think I’d just like to link them:

    http://www.livejournal.com/community/christianleft/200977.html?thread=1764113#t1764113

    The long and short is, I wish the pro-Darwin crowd (which I more or less count myself in) would take the ID crowd a little more seriously. They have legitimate concerns, and given we have Dawkins shouting about the idiocy of religion in our corner, we can’t fault them for not always voicing their concerns in the kindest or most sophisticated way.

    Reply
  5. Lee

    Gaius – Not sure what the answer to your question is; it’s a good one, though. Reminds me of Hume’s argument against miracles. If memory serves, he basically said that any naturalistic explanation for a given phenomenon was a priori more probable than a miraculous one and therefore always to be preferred (i.e. it’s never rational to believe a miracle has occurred). How this was supposed to be consistent with Hume’s other views (on the nature of causality, etc.) was always a bit of a mystery to me.

    Chris – Thanks for the link – and I’m glad we’re not having an adverse effect on your blood pressure. 🙂

    Reply
  6. Joshie

    One of the difficulties is the set of assumptions that lie behind modern science. Science is about what can be observed, measured, and in many sciences, duplicated.

    What annoys many scientists (and me too frankly) is the claim that ID is a scientific theory. It is not science, it is a philosphical or theological proposition. Evolution is a descrition of how life developed and came to be what it is, not an assertion as to how it began or what its origin is.

    I belive that God direction creation and continues to direct it. That’s not really the issue in the debate over putting it in science textbooks, though. The isssue is whether it is science or not. It is untestable, it is unverifible, it is unobservable. If it should be studied, it’s home is in Social Studies or Philosophy classes not in science.

    The bigger thing is, as Lee put it, that its about boundaries and stock polemics. WE the good guys beleive this, THEY the bad guys belive that. Anti-religious Atheists need fundies to fight, the fundies need atheists to fight. If there aren’t any on either side, then they have to look for somebody to pin their straw man to. Like the debate over gays in the churches, the pledge, the war, and just about everything else in socio-polical discourse, its all about us vs. them. Try to posit a third (or fourth) way and they give you a blank look and then try to figure out where to pin the straw man.

    Reply
  7. Gaius

    Personally, I find it amusing that science has so much political clout and cultural cachet considering that if, as Lee and I suspect, some version of Berkeleyian idealism is true, the objects hypothesized by science to explain natural phenomena do not exist, and the phenomena themselves are no more than mere appearances.

    And yet, this is a thought the vast majority of the educated of the contemporary West, for whom the authority of science is far more unquestionable and unshakeable than any the Popes have ever had for even the most iron-clad of Catholics, would find so absurd as to be positively comic.

    Reply
  8. Anonymous

    I don’t necessarily reject the idea of miraculous intervention on principle, either. But not only doesn’t it make good science–it isn’t science at all. ID may be perfectly valid as a *meta*-scientific theory, but it’s no good as a scientific theory for observed, regular phenomena *within* the boundaries of science. The supernatural, by definition, is outside the scope of natural science.

    –Kevin Carson, via public computer.

    Reply

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