Undeception

To know a primrose is a higher thing than to know all the botany of it—just as to know Christ is an infinitely higher thing than to know all theology, all that is said about his person, or babbled about his work…What in the name of God is our knowledge of the elements of the atmosphere to our knowledge of the elements of Nature? What are its oxygen, its hydrogen, its nitrogen, its carbonic acid, its ozone, and all the possible rest, to the blowing of the wind on our faces? What is the analysis of water to the babble of a running stream? What is any knowledge of things to the heart, beside its child-play with the Eternal! And by an infinite decomposition we should know nothing more of what a thing really is, for, the moment we decompose it, it ceases to be, and all its meaning is vanished…

I would not be supposed to depreciate the labours of science, but I say its discoveries are unspeakably less precious than the merest gifts of Nature, those which, from morning to night, we take unthinking from her hands. One day, I trust, we shall be able to enter into their secrets from within them—by natural contact between our heart and theirs. When we are one with God we may well understand in an hour things that no man of science, prosecuting his investigations from the surface with all the aids that keenest human intellect can supply, would reach in the longest lifetime. Whether such power will ever come to any man in this world, or can come only in some state of existence beyond it, matters nothing to me: the question does not interest me; life is one, and things will be then what they are now; for God is one and the same there and here; and I shall be the same there I am here, however larger the life with which it may please the Father of my being to endow me.

George MacDonald
from Unspoken Sermons, vol. 2, “The Voice of Job”

The Created Evolutionist linked me over to an article in December’s Smithsonian Magazine about the important transitional links found between dinosaurs and modern birds. First I’ll give you a sample of the cool information in the article, and then a tiny rant follows:

But there was one important feature that had not been found in dinosaurs, and few experts would feel entirely comfortable asserting that chickadees and triceratops were kin until they had evidence for this missing anatomical link: feathers.

A poor Chinese farmer, Li Yingfang, made one of the greatest fossil finds of all time, in August 1996 in Sihetun village…

Despite the feathers, the skeleton left no doubt that the new species, named Sinosauropteryx, meaning “Chinese lizard wing,” was a dinosaur. It lived around 125 million years ago, based on the dating of radioactive elements in the sediments that encased the fossil. Its integumentary filaments—long, thin structures protruding from its scaly skin—convinced most paleontologists that the animal was the first feathered dinosaur ever unearthed. A dozen dinosaurs with filaments or feathers have since been discovered at that site.

By analyzing specimens from China, paleontologists have filled in gaps in the fossil record and traced the evolutionary relationships among various dinosaurs. The fossils finally have confirmed, to all but a few skeptics, that birds descended from dinosaurs and are the living representatives of a dinosaur lineage called the Maniraptorans.

via Dinosaurs’ Living Descendants.

First off, let me say that such discoveries are certainly exciting. The common descent of dinosaurs and birds makes every bit as much sense as the common descent of monkeys and humans, and it’s fun seeing more pieces fall into place.

I must say, though, that on occasion (and not just in this article) discussion of evolutionary advantages is spoken of in extremely misleading terms. An example from this article, in a discussion on the origin of feathers: “Originally, single filaments may well have been for display.”

No, the filament was not “for” anything: the question they’re really trying to answer is not what certain traits evolved for, but why those particular traits were selected for. Essentially, it’s more properly a question of what advantages those traits afforded their beneficiaries to produce offspring that outlasted those in the population without the traits.

There is hardly any substantial difference between saying “Evolution made this species” and “This feature was for this function.” Scientists don’t mean to imply the thoughtful agent and teleology that such terminology implies. But that’s exactly the popular understanding of evolution, perhaps even for the author of the article: this organism needed to be able to do X, so evolution “provided” Y solution.

This type of sloppy terminology, the shorthand jargon so commonly found in popular science articles, is usually approved or even used by experts. Its popularity is understandable: it’s much easier to say “This feature evolved to fill this need” than to say, “This feature proved advantageous enough at addressing this particular need that it was selected for and spread throughout the population.” But unfortunately, analogizing the complex process in terms of agency/teleology, while convenient, is not an altogether harmless metaphor. It has led to widespread misunderstandings of the basics of the theory among the non-scientist populace, misunderstandings not limited to religious evolution skeptics who sieze upon it to claim that the theory of evolution is scientists’ very own creator god. Any reasonable person hearing scientists speak of features developing (or, especially, “designed”) for particular purposes is likely to draw an inference to some sort of Lamarckian scenario or worse. Misconceptions like these lead to questions about why certain features obtain in a specimen, when in reality their presence may well owe more to not being selected against than any advantage they yield (e.g. certain vestigial features, non-coding DNA, etc.). This language, gone unchecked, results in misunderstandings of the theory that set the stage for honest skepticism and opportunistic grandstanding alike.

Like I said, not a huge rant, but something I wish more science writers and advocates would consider. Am I wrong?

My good friend Cliff Martin describes the experience of people like myself who have followed the truth even when it took us outside the borders of the evangelical reservation and found that its gate-keepers enforce stringent import restrictions on items we acquire outside its borders  – of course, he does so using the perhaps more apt biblical analogy of the shibboleth.

Speaking from experience, Cliff writes:

As I take a few steps back from the accepted traditional theology of the evangelical church to which I belong, that very church keeps nudging me to step further away. I am asked to keep my concerns to myself. When I try to warn my friends that the edifice of Christianity is supported by pillars of styrofoam, I am told things would go better for me if I would just keep it to myself. I am told that the personal rejection I endure on so many fronts is my own fault. I come on “too strong”, they tell me.

Let me interrupt here. Knowing as I do how tactfully and respectfully Cliff engages in conversation with those he disagrees with (read the comments on his blog posts!), I find it hard to imagine the label “too strong” being applied to him in any bad way, at very least in any way that wouldn’t also apply to the very evangelical polemicists he is talking to. More likely the label these people are reaching for is “too credible and unnervingly likable”, but regardless, he is passionate because he believes that these conversations are important. As he continues:

The fact is, I haven’t found any polite way to tell people that the survival of evangelical faith will require the shedding of many cherished shibboleths.

I agree completely. God knows that I don’t opine on subject after subject out of some perverse love for sacred cow tipping (I do consider that to be perverse), or to show off as a free-thinker. But some of evangelicalism’s sine qua non‘s, which almost all go back to hopeless dependence on the false, extra-biblical doctrine of inerrancy, are in desperate need of being expelled.

People are leaving the faith because they receive only condemnation when they voice their honest doubts about the “official” pronunciation of the secret code word. Outsiders are recognizing the too-real threat of quixotic Christian culture warriors heroically stabbing at scarecrows, leaving the crows to ravage their fields, while all the time real world needs that we all recognize are not being met.

I’m truly sorry, my conservative friends, but Cliff, I, and the like-minded cannot and will not just shut up and go away. Christianity is our home, you are our family, and we’re not just going to watch the termites gnaw away until there’s nothing left except for useless but perfectly “orthodox” ruins.

We intend to tread lightly, be judicious in our challenges, and speak lovingly to you whom we embrace as family but who view us as dangerous outsiders. We will try to be patient, because we can’t blame you for protecting what you are convinced is precious.

But the deck is stacked against us. What can be done?

Meanwhile, we black sheep are just going to keep bleating “sibboleth”.

This is a guest post from frequent commenter Arcamaede, who follows the climate change news very closely. I asked him to lend his “fair and balanced” perspective to this question. Often, it’s assumed that “as evolutionary science, so climate science” — either scorning both or upholding both unequivocally. Might there be cause for a more nuanced approach?

~ Steve

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If you haven’t heard about “Climategate” then you do not follow the issue of climate change!

In brief, Climategate is the controversy that erupted after the release of thousands of emails from the CRU (Climate Research Unit) of the University of East Anglia which detailed serious scientific misconduct among climate scientists there (and in other similar institutions throughout the world). That misconduct was in the form of suppressing dissenting views as well as data that conflicted with the views of an inner cadre of high level climatologists.

So what does this have to do with evolutionary science?

Some Christians in the ID (and YEC) movements have seized upon this in an attempt to substantiate their own claims that evolutionary science is suspect due to similar behavior.

Of course this objection is not new. Before I made the transition from YEC to Evolutionary Creation, I recall one minister (who had a PhD in Biology) appealing to this in his lessons on Creation. He told the story of a professor of evolution confessing that evidence for human evolution would fit in a peach basket. (The professor purportedly retracted his statement when he discovered the questioner was a Creationist!) More recently, the movie Expelled strove to document suppression of dissent and opposing data.

Both climate science and evolutionary science are legitimate sciences. Both practice the scientific method.

The mature, refined, conclusive evidence of how evolution works comes from genetics as well as other fields. Conclusive evidence of how the climate works is still evolving (no pun intended) and has not had nearly as much time as evolutionary science to amass data and interpretations with the same level of confidence.

In short, we’re not going to see common descent overturned by a future discovery any more than we’d see gravity overturned or find that the world was flat after all. But we will indeed see changes in understanding the workings of the climate.

What would possess an intelligent, well-trained scientist to misbehave as has been done with Climategate? Hubris is a large factor. One could also argue greed and political agendas being others. That the whole issue of climate change has grown into the political (and monetary) arenas would be hard to deny.

But would other scientists behave like that?

I was trained in the area of Physics from the age of 18 until age 23. One of the factors that led me to leave after my first year of my PhD was the horrible level to which ego drove the whole endeavor of science. It just wasn’t the idealistic endeavor I’d been led to believe it was. (I later learned by age 29 that it was the same in Christian ministry.) There is no question in my mind that scientists (and Creationists) are vulnerable to pride.

I recall as a Physics student that our department was broken into three factions: two warring and one trying to stay out of the way of the the two. The whole (20 year!) war was over one faction catching a mistake in another’s presentation! Additionally, when one faction had a member come into “power” that faction falsified student evaluations in order to give their enemies low marks.

But that’s what the whole peer-review process is intended to minimize. Unfortunately in the case of climate science, the people steering the whole process are a rather small number within the discipline of climatology. It’s a relatively new field (less than 50 years) with lots of exciting questions to answer. Marking territory in this sets your name up in lights for potentially decades or centuries.

What about evolutionary science? It’s also subject to ego battles. A lot of the major discoveries have been made. But it’s an established field.

Quick! Name me one living popular evolutionary scientist who has made a monumental discovery in recent years?

Bet you couldn’t name one! That’s because there aren’t any (though a friend noted that James D. Watson is still alive). Sure, discoveries are being made but “Darwin” is a name everybody knows — maybe even “Huxley”, perhaps “Wallace” if you really know your history. The guys who remain are people like “Dawkins”, a man who has no real discoveries to his credit. He’s just a biology writer — he’s not considered a significant player. (Which largely explains his inflated ego and the way he conveys his atheism.)

The peer review process works adequately in evolutionary science due to its age and the huge number of practitioners. These are things that climate science will have when it’s been around as long as evolutionary science.

Then there is greed. Climate science is a cash cow. For the high level people involved at the CRU it means millions of dollars in research grants each year. Evolutionary science on the other hand (while receiving funding) is not the place to go if you want big money. Unless you write a really popular book containing nothing original!

(Another interesting tidbit learned from Climategate is that the relationship between CRU members and oil companies.  For those of you who would want to read a bit more about the issue of academic freedom and corporations you might take a peek at this discussion.)

Then there is agenda.  This really steps outside of the scientific arena and puts us into the political one. Here’s an analysis that makes it clear that the political leanings of some climate scientists biases their work.

Can the same thing be said of evolutionary science? Well, yes, but in a totally different direction. A primary case in my mind is the objection of some to the appointment of Francis Collins to his position at the NIH. This, however, does not reflect on any particular bias to the evidence for evolution (or show any particular attempt to hide counter-evidence) but just shows how a person’s worldview can make them into a bigot.

A different, tangential question is, “Do humans influence climate?” The answer is, “Yes.” But like anything in science the corollary question is, “How and how much?” The answer is, “We know many ways that humans influence climate but the full impact and how to mitigate that impact is still debated among climatologists.” Or, as a popular but controversial climatologist put it recently:

The so-called “greenhouse effect” is real. The question is how much will this effect be, and this is not a simple question. There are also questions being raised as to the very sign of some of the larger feedbacks to add to the confusion. Our purpose here was to merely point out that the addition of absorbing gases into the atmosphere must result in warming, contrary to some research currently circulating that says to the contrary.

On the evolutionary science side, there are absolutely no empirical data that would allow us to even question it as a valid explanation. The only objection is one based on a (shaky) literal theology. (Intelligent Design does not invalidate evolution, folks!)

I was encouraged to write this little post because I see a lot of misinformation on all sides of these issues. Some Christians attack the solid science of evolution. In the climate controversy, we have Christians on many sides of the aisle mixing their theological perspectives in their understanding of the science. The extremes I have in mind are:

1. God won’t allow us to destroy the environment.

Actually, the Bible makes no such promise. We’re quite free to make the whole world a wasteland.

2. The Bible is environmentally sensitive.

The cultures that wrote the Bible were not environmentally sensitive by our terms. They deforested.  They executed wholesale slaughter of animals. The concept of a time when man was somehow “one with nature” just never happened.

3.  The environment doesn’t matter.

John MacArthur once said, “I’ve told environmentalists that if they think humanity is wrecking the planet, wait until they see what Jesus does to it.”  This is a view based on a strain of fundamentalist literalism which is foreign to the original audience of the text of Scripture.

The Bible says zero about environmental issues. Any attempt to make it say anything is anachronistic. The question of climate issues will be settled through careful science and reflective thinking of humanity.

We need to let our understanding of the the history of science influence our understanding of the text of Scripture. By no means should we let the empirical contexts implied in Scripture distort our present understanding of scientific data. So where does that leave the place of Scripture in science?

Scripture remains a gateway for believers to be inspired to participate in scientific endeavor. Those of us who are believers can use science to better understand the works of God, and so deepen our understanding of Him.

I’ve been watching the back-and-forth between Jerry Coyne and Karl Giberson. Apparently there has been a video produced for USA Today that features them in a conversation answering the question, “Are science and religion compatible?” that has not been put online yet. I think we know their answers, though.

Karl Giberson of the BioLogos Foundation, of course, finds faith and science completely compatible. Incompatabilist atheist Jerry Coyne actually insists that he does also, at least provisionally: “…if and only if ‘compatibility’ meant only this: ‘can someone be religious and also be a scientist/accept science? ‘” He goes on to clarify by reiterating that people are capable of inconsistency and holding beliefs that are in tension with one another, which is what he thinks science and faith are. Ever the incompatibilist, Coyne attacks the common Christian claim that there are “two ways of knowing”, one that is empirical and discernable only by observation, and one that does not depend upon physical observability. Says Coyne, “This—the disparity in ‘ways of knowing’—is the true incompatibility between science and faith.” He accuses Giberson and other compatibilists of failing to address attacks on the validity of the kind of religious epistemology that is “immune to rational scrutiny”. Because rational scrutiny is indeed applied to theology by believing theologians and philosophers all the time, he appears to be defining “rational” as laboratory-driven, or perhaps motivated by empirical evidence alone. He makes a point to dismiss the validity of holding beliefs merely acquired by culture and tradition, which of course any believer would do as well, but he implies that any beliefs initially acquired by any means other than deductive reasoning or empirical observation is necessarily invalid.

Although I’m sure he doesn’t believe this in all areas of his life, Coyne argues as though the only information a reasonable person should permit himself to accept is that which is demonstrable beyond a reasonable doubt in the laboratory or, somewhat incongruously, demonstrable beyond all uncertainty through logic and reason. The incompatibility between Giberson’s view and Coyne’s view is not between a faith perspective and a scientific perspective but between a qualified trust that what we experience may be real even if not empirically demonstrable and an implicit and unquestionable trust in the validity of only those experiences which are empirically demonstrable.

My thought is that instead of insisting upon “two ways of knowing” as compatibilists are indeed fond of doing, perhaps we should emphasize distrust in the adequacy, reliability, and universal relevancy of observation and empirical verifiability. If post-modernism has taught us anything, it’s that “knowing” is merely happening to be convinced of that which is true, and it doesn’t altogether matter how we are convinced. To be sure, some ways of becoming convinced are more useful for science than for daily life – and Giberson et al. would agree - but being convinced that your wife loves you and that harming children is wrong are beliefs that, if not “immune” to reason, at least show “rational inquiry” to be not unfailingly relevant or adequate to inform our experience. As long as scientists like Giberson promote science in scientific endeavors, Coyne should be happy with the underlying purpose of BioLogos, which is at bottom to bring more Christians on board with the rationalist “way of knowing” when approaching science. But perhaps there are things beyond brute facts that influence incompatibilists’ behavior.

Christians coming to terms with evolution, including many ID advocates who acknowledge common descent, will often arrive at a midpoint of sorts between denial of evolution and all-out theistic evolution (or evolutionary creation) that acknowledges that we are by-products of evolution and seeks to hold the line on the most theologically problematic aspect of evolutionary theory: the historicity of Adam and Eve. For many, this is a comfortable resting place and they remain content acknowledging the deafening scientific consensus of common descent on one hand and believing in a literal first human pair on the other.

This is often done by positing a bottleneck of the population down to two individuals, often misunderstanding the unfortunately ambiguous terms Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam. The more sophisticated (but odd) way of doing this is to allow there to have been more than two at the time of Adam and Eve, but to posit that the Fall event occurred to them uniquely, and that the effects have passed down to later humanity through descent from them.

From Denis Venema and Darrel Falk at BioLogos comes a handy explanation of the relevant genomic evidence.

Attempting to square the Genesis account and common ancestry by positing a literal Adam and Eve who were the progenitors of the entire human race is, biologically speaking, looking for the most extreme population bottleneck a sexually reproducing species can experience: a reduction to one breeding pair.

Is there evidence that such a bottleneck has ever occurred?

The short answer is no, and that there is much evidence against it.

This leaves those seeking to maintain both common descent and theological concordism advocating one of the following positions (as best I can tell):

1. defining the pair as a literary representation of the entire human population at the time of an historical Fall (as C.S. Lewis did)
2. defining the Fall as something not passed down genetically, but as a metaphor for something that happened within a group of our race’s representatives (possibly even a literal pair)

Any other options I’m missing?

I prefer to just embrace the idea that the Jewish religious leaders who compiled Genesis from earlier stories used those stories to teach various theological concepts, including an etiology for sin, death, toil, the excruciating pain of childbirth, and the pitfalls of trying to live life doing “what seems right in [one's] own eyes” without due dependence on the system prescribed by those leaders. There’s more there of course, but I want to emphasize that our fundamental task in interpreting Scripture has to be to put ourselves in the minds of its human authors as best as we can given the tools of literary and historical research rather than read into Scripture all kinds of theological beliefs we already hold.

With evolution and with Scripture, we aren’t pushing God out of the picture to say that He in some sense authored both via natural processes. A committed affirmation of God’s creation by general Providence doesn’t selectively comb nature for divine signatures or other Easter eggs that will prove His authorship of it; we accept the whole creative process, warts (death, pain, etc.) and all as finding its source and being in God, with all the mysteries and difficulties this creates, resisting the urge to say, “God doesn’t do things that way, so science must be wrong here.” In the same way, we shouldn’t posit theological gems of special revelation throughout every passage of Scripture, somewhere between the lines, redeeming otherwise problematic passages. Rather, we simply do our best to uncover what it says, warts and all, and acknowledge that whatever it says, it was meant to be that way. Most of us already accept that David wasn’t speaking with the ideal level of faith, understanding, and resignation to the Golden Rule in the cursing Psalms; I’m merely saying that we should carry out that sort of evaluation consistently.

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?