Undeception

Parchment and Pen has a post up that seeks to classify  the different Christian views on origins. C. Michael Patton is usually pretty good at describing different points of view sympathetically, and things were going along pretty uncontroversially as he described different types of special creation, that is, views of creation that envisage miraculous intervention of one sort or another. Then he gets to “Deistic Evolution”, whose advocates, he asserts…

Believe, as Darwinian Evolutionists, that God created the universe over billions of years, using naturalistic evolutionary processes to create humanity without intervention.

Wait…that sounds a lot like “theistic evolution” (or  ”evolutionary creation”), doesn’t it?

I call this ”deistic evolution” due to the “hands-off” approach God takes to the development of man in the evolutionary process. Darwinian evolution, through the process of natural selection, is accepted. While there is across the board agreement that God did not/does not intervene in the process of evolution, DEers are divided as to whether God directly caused the first life to begin or whether he let life come into being naturalistically (abiogenisis).

Among those he describes as “Deistic Evolutionists” who apparently believe that God was “hands off” in creation, he cites Pete Enns, who just happens to be a Reformed Christian who has recently posted part 13 of a series that outlines the relationship between evolution and God’s sovereignty from a Calvinistic perspective. For any Calvinist, the notion that God would be laissez faire about such a thing as the creation of the universe is unthinkable; deism is a four-letter word among the Reformed. Patton, a Calvinist, knows this, which I take to be an obvious backhand. It’s not as though that were the only adjective he could possibly find (I would argue that no adjective is needed for “evolutionist”), and that particularly adjective is laden with a view of God’s nature that is eschewed by most Christians, including most who accept the findings of mainstream science. I must say that this choice was unbecoming of him and his reputation as a straight-shooter.

The fact is, God can be at work in and through creation whether or not He feels the need to tweak this or that during its development. My favorite analogy is of a competent software engineer who is able to develop a program that, once executed, will perform her desired goals without requiring her intermittent input. She is no less responsible or “hands on” about how it performs, since she wrote every piece of code responsible for how it operates; in fact, the more of an expert she is, the less of her interference in its execution is necessary. This analogy is of course limited, and I’ve heard others who modified it to say that God in a sense wrote Himself into the code (which I quite like the sound of, even if I don’t fully understand all of its implications).

The last category in Patton’s list is Intelligent Design (ID). He notes that one can be both an ID advocate and a special creationist of any sort: it simply requires acknowledging that the possible influence of miracles must not be excluded from one’s laboratory research. What’s interesting here is that he subcategorizes “Deistic Evolution” and evolution-friendly Intelligent Design alike under a category called “Theistic Evolution” (TE)! Although most ID advocates (at higher levels, not so much in churches) acknowledge significant evolutionary activity, sometimes including universal common descent, the views of TE and ID have usually been placed in contradistinction to one another.

As I said above, I don’t think accepters of mainstream science need a special label, whether they’re believers or not. But for the purposes of lists like this in which the theological component is a criterion for classification, I usually prefer “theistic evolutionist” – with no ID, thankyouverymuch – (not so keen on “evolutionary creationist”).

I would suggest, however, that as long as we’re classifying these origins positions by theological commitment, perhaps my own position is best characterized not specifically by the origins component, but by the hermeneutical component responsible for it. My hermeneutic is characterized by a firm conviction that the Bible is first and foremost a literary work and a product of the times in which its constituent content was written. Further, I am convinced that an examination of the genre of early Genesis will confirm it as a work of ANE literature and that consequently we need bring no expectations of a theological nature to the table when asking questions about origins. Almost incidentally, since I do not expect Genesis to answer the question of how the heavens and the earth and all that are in them originated (its authors seemed to be more interested in why), I look to mainstream science to answer that question — as most Christians do unquestioningly for questions of weather, embryology, etc. regardless of their view on origins. Perhaps this doesn’t give me a neat, tidy two-word descriptor, unless you like (as I confess I do) a term I coined a few years back: literary-genericist.

I would be remiss in not pointing out and appreciating Patton’s fair-minded ecumenicism on the origins issue:

I believe that one can be a legitimate Christian and hold to any one of these views….While I believe that this is an issue that we should continue to discuss with excitement and hope, this is not an issue, in my opinion, that should fracture Christian fellowship.

As Scott Bailey points out, America’s Evangelical Christian subculture assumes that everything generated by the world at large needs a more definitive Christian version.  Yesterday BioLogos released a video that discusses the pitfalls of trying to have a “Christian” version of science.

Another key point made in the video is how Intelligent Design advocates like Stephen Meyer misunderstand the nature of DNA “information” Scientists David Ussery and Sean Carroll make the point that speaking of genetic material as a “blueprint”, “language”, or “code” must be recognized as metaphorical (unfortunately perpetuated by the title to Francis Collins’ book). The structure of genes aren’t bits of intrinsically interesting data; rather, says Carroll, “it’s not the genes you have; it’s how you use them.” And different organisms will often end up using them in different ways:

And so these genes, which are involved in building bodies, you can sort of think of them like a carpenter’s toolkit. That while everyone may have a hammer and a nailgun and a whole set of wrenches… how you use them over time determines what structure you build, whether you build a hope chest or a whole house.

So despite what your religious authority or the “expert” approved by your religious authority tells you, the scientists most directly involved in studying DNA are not at all troubled by the claims of Intelligent Design, except insofar as they continue to be accepted as (almost literally) the gospel truth among the faithful, the committed evolution-deniers.

Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution by Denis O. Lamoureux

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have long maintained that we cannot hope for a broad acceptance of evolution among evangelicals until the heavy theological questions are acknowledged and a plausible approach to the theological quandaries evolution creates are sketched out — followed by rather than in reaction to an explanation of the science behind it. This is what Denis Lamoureux aspires to do in Evolutionary Creation.

This book bears the name of Lamoureux’s recommended term for exclusively non-interventionist “theistic evolution”. In discussing scientific strengths of evolutionary theory, I especially appreciated how Lamoureux supplements a respectable treatment of genetic evidence for common descent by lending his unique perspective as a dentist to present the considerable paleontological evidence from analysis of teeth and jawbones. His critique of special creationism and intelligent design was clinical and admirably civil, but fervent nonetheless.

Lamoureux spends considerable space presenting a view of the Bible’s authority that doesn’t take its scientific or even all of its historical claims as accurate. In his memorable terminology, he rejects scientific and historical concordism, the beliefs that an authoritative Bible demands full agreement between the authors’ understanding and scientific/historical reality on those matters. This is a good and necessary start, and I found his candor about theological problems and uncertainties commendable. Yet ultimately I found rather weak his basic assumption that a “message of faith”, a divinely guaranteed spiritual message, lay embedded within every passage; I found that he offered no compelling rationale for discarding scientific or historical concordism while retaining what appears to be merely nuanced theological concordism.

One more significant component of the book is its detailed account of Lamoureux’s “evolution” of thought on these matters, beginning with creationism, followed by evolution acceptance and atheism, then back to creationism, and finally to acceptance of evolution. One should not underestimate the potential of testimony for creating empathy and so attracting outsiders.

Due to this book’s impressive attempt at being a comprehensive volume giving at least an overview of all areas touched by “evolutionary creation”, it is not for the casual reader. For someone who wants to delve deep into the theological and scientific issues swirling around the debate, it seems a great introduction, almost textbook-like (indeed, I can see it being used in Christian college environments). Evolutionary Creation will serve as a useful introduction for those wanting a thorough discussion of all these matters.

(Please note: this book review first appeared at Goodreads. I’m just getting into that site and noticed that I could post my review as a blog post; hence this.)

A discussion between Michael Behe and a Christian evolutionist critical of ID, Keith Fox, took place on this week’s Unbelievable? It covered a lot of tired territory, but had a few points of interest.

For one, I didn’t realize that Behe not only maintains the validity of the bacterial flagellum as an argument for design but even goes so far as to say that the evidence for design in that feature is harder for Darwinists to account for now than ever! Naturally, there was no time for exposition of this. Does anyone else know what he’s talking about?

Another thing that caught my ear was Behe’s interpretation of Lenski’s famous E. coli experiment, lauded by many as an example of evolution observed in action. Behe argued that this was essentially a perfect example of what sounded like the creationist “no beneficial mutations” meme, since apparently the “best mutation he found” in that experiment was the elimination and not the addition of genetic material. Fox’s response was that we should hardly expect to see as wide a variety of selective pressures as are at work in the wild within Lenski’s controlled laboratory environment of a single isolated species (which Behe dismissed as a “rationalization”).

But the most interesting thing to me in the show was when Behe responded to Fox’s critique of Intelligent Design as based on what is not known, as an argument from ignorance and a science-stopper. He asked Fox what he thought of the various fine-tuning arguments for the universe that many Christian scientists who accept mainstream evolution champion as, at very least, “pointers” to a Creator. Fox responded that although he wouldn’t place all confidence in it, “I find that a very convincing view.” To which Behe responded:

By “fine tuning” you can say the universe was much, much more finely tuned than you have agreed that it is; that it was fine-tuned not only in its laws, not only in the amount of matter it has, not only in the charge on the electron and physical things, but it was finely tuned so that certain events would happen in it so that, from the beginning, the universe was set up to unfold as we see it.

Fox then tried to distinguish fine-tuning evidence from the design inference by arguing that “physical fine-tuning is based entirely on what we know: we know those numbers, we know about them, we know how little they can vary.” He said this in contrast to the design inference, which he argues is based on what we do not know. But as Behe rightly countered, there is indeed an analogical correspondence between the “what we know” of the cosmological probabilities that some infer as evidence for fine-tuning and the “what we know” about the complexity of the flagellum that some infer as evidence for intelligent design. These are both interpretations of known facts, but as ID critics all point out, they are explanations of known facts that are only possible when embracing what is not known as a positive factor, i.e. as an argument from silence.

This is precisely why I cannot understand BioLogos’s fascination with those so-called “pointers”, even when their inconclusiveness is admitted. If we believe God is testified to in the universe, we must accept that this is done in each instantiation of each fact of the universe explained or unexplained, not in some nook or cranny that we haven’t been able to scope out fully yet. He is everywhere, or He is nowhere. He’s not some cosmic Nessie whose existence we are always suddenly more hopeful of whenever we find an unexplored underwater cavern. We don’t determine we are looking at a forest by finding some elusive type of tree: it is precisely the collocation of all the trees that actually are there that defines the forest. Our credibility as Christian evolutionists is sullied a bit when some of us harp on fine-tuning as a reason for theism — not least by having to admit that Behe is, even to a limited degree, right. Ouch.

Can one be consistent in accepting both the common form of inerrancy as described in the Chicago Statement and universal common descent?

This question is something I struggle with when I observe people try to sell other believers on evolutionary theory without openly acknowledging the ways in which their own rejection of the idea of a single pair of progenitors has resulted in an often subtle yet usually profound modification of how they understand the Bible to work. I, too, have been tempted on numerous occasions to begin the presentation of my case by positing a (purely hypothetical) scenario in which accepting that early Genesis was unhistorical does not result in a revised or nuanced bibliology; if not outright dishonest, I feel that this approach is nonetheless misleading, perhaps even disingenuous, and a setup for problems later.

Rather than giving in to this temptation, I have opted to problematize their assumptions about what the Bible should be or should say. After all, this is the main problem, and one that underlies more misconceptions and naïveté than just their beliefs about origins.

Now, the fact is, there are indeed many Christians who accept mainstream evolutionary theory but are otherwise quite conservative theologically, including in their bibliology, although anecdotally I surmise that the number is far fewer of those who accept evolution and maintain an “inerrant” Scripture as taught by most of our evangelical pastors and teachers. Even when they say they accept inerrancy, they have – futilely, in my opinion – taken up the tack of nuancing “inerrant” to mean something quite different from those who take the term at face value; “inerrancy” implies more than a mysterious theological concordism, but scientific and especially historical concordism as well. But for those in the group, however small, that have (for the moment, anyway) caught their foot on their way down the slope, I understand why they can feel free to try to persuade others that they can go on believing essentially the same things that they’ve been taught they should, at least about the nature of the Bible, mutatis mutandis for the Adam/Eve part of course.

But what about the rest of us? My question is this: how legitimate is it to advertise compatibility between science and “that old time religion” while we know good and well that it’s only compatible after precisely the kind of modification to their bibliology that’s held them to their skepticism of science in the first place? Should we instead put more effort into maturing their bibliology on all fronts, and not just Genesis? I vote for emphasizing the latter and minimizing the “cake-and-eat-it-too” sort of accommodationism that misrepresents what most of my fellow theistic evolutionists have begun to conclude. Until they’re ready for a change in their understanding of what our faith rests upon and for an acknowledgment of the limitations of Scripture, I doubt they’ll go particularly far into acceptance of science no matter how cleverly we present it.

Do you agree?

All right, here’s a rant for you.

There’s a news story circulating about the well-known fact that homeschooling texts are ignoring or even (the audacity!) criticizing mainstream science in favor of creationism. The usual suspects have emerged to show their disgust of the benighted institution of homeschooling. There’s a poll up at MSNBC asking the question, “Is it OK for home-school textbooks to dismiss the theory of evolution?” Wait, what does “OK” mean here? Are they asking, “Do you think it’s good that home-school textbooks do this?” or “Is it healthy for society that they do this?” The ambiguity in the question itself implies that what they really want to know is, “Should the authorities allow parents to teach their kids this stuff?” The mantra among most secularists that I’ve heard on this issue is that homeschooling should be, preferably, illegal or, at very least, strictly regulated for content by the state. Thus, the following rant.

You’ll not find a stauncher advocate of teaching mainstream science in homeschool curricula than me, nor anyone who is more disturbed that homeschooling is usually used as a shelter from science education. But parents indubitably have more of a right to teach their children creationism than the state has to teach its belief systems. And don’t try to tell me that public education is not teaching belief systems: no one has the absolute truth, so whether it’s parent-approved, community-approved, or state-approved, there are beliefs and value judgments about what the truth is, some of them surely quite accurate, that are being taught. Claiming a monopoly on truth enforceable against other people’s children is nothing short of intellectual fascism, the rule of the thought police instituted by those who think better than the ignorant masses. But until the state assumes the role of deciding whether or not people can produce their own offspring and raise them from birth and as long as no ideologies are being taught that directly advocate violence or other tangible abuse, education must also be left in the hands of the parents. At least homeschoolers aren’t using taxpayer dollars to teach their agendas.

Homeschool critics often compare teaching creationism to teaching 2+2=5; I happen to think they’re not so far off. But this doesn’t mean the state has a right to stick its Cyrano de Bergerac into things. Most of the homeschooled, like me, will eventually learn better (and more’s the pity for them if their faith is tied to creationism), but even if they don’t, life will somehow go on. It really will.

Maybe one day everyone will accept mainstream science and reject creationism. No doubt by that time some subgroup or other will reject some other commonly accepted truth for some reason; it’s only human to do so (so evolution tells us). But I refuse to accept that our ruling intelligentsia should manage society like some intellectual Gestapo by the bully force of the government. Maybe we should just do our best for those over whom we have influence. Maybe we should trust that the truly better ideas will win the day. And maybe, in the meantime, we should learn to exercise a little patience with those who don’t understand as much as we think we do now.

Nah…that sounds a little too Christian.

Enjoy these latest videos from the very creative Gordon J. Glover, the first in a series of videos having a little fun critiquing Intelligent Design.

And while I’m linking around, check out Tom Jefferson’s Mike Beidler’s witty and semi-satirical Evolutionary Creationist’s Declaration of Independence.