The third part of a series meant to help a woman facing a difficult class with a secularist who belittles her. She wrote the blog for some help. This informal series of comments is an attempt to jump start her thinking.
The good news for any thoughtful Christian is that he or she has many options in approaching reality. She can take an intellectual risk and (for sound theological and philosophical reasons) explore the possibilities of young-earth creationism or take the mainstream scientific approach of old-earth creationism with its theological and metaphysical difficulties. She need not believe in any particular miracle or divine “intervention” but can be open to following the evidence where it leads. It is an intellectually bracing and honest approach.
Of course, she could also discover that God has chosen not to intervene in the area of biology and accept some form of theistic evolution as most member of my own church do.
I think this is a mistake, not merely because of theological problems it creates, but because it shuts off interesting questions, and leads to some serious philosophical problems. As you read and think about these issues (and I address this to my blog reader), try to see who is most openly following all the evidence (taking into account all of reality: physical and metaphysical) and not locking some questions away.
The question is: “What is true?”, not what fits my preconceived philosophy of science or theology.
This is not a post-modern approach, but a classical handling of the complexities of reality. It is (if anything) philosophically pre-modern (Plato and Aquinas), not post-modern! Some post-moderns have seen the “dead end” of scientism, but they have gone too far in denying that truth exists altogether and in some of their criticisms of science.
The argument is not about data, but how to interpret the data. Theology and science progress from data to better interpretations of that data (from the Incarnation to the doctrine of the Trinity, from data about the heavens to theories of modern cosmology). Both reject errors along the way after argument . . . while the two knowledge traditions are not just the same, both share the commitment to rationality and truth-finding that marks any positive field of human study.
(What do I mean by truth? I accept a roughly correspondence theory of truth.)
The best advice I ever received on this issue as a student was from an agnostic professor who said to always stay calm, listen, follow the arguments where they led, and not to try to solve a physical problem at too high a metaphysical cost.
Sometimes a few moderns sound as if “doing good science” is all that matters . . . but if their philosophy of science is so limited as to have metaphysical bankruptcy written into it. . . then it will also harm science itself in the end. If reality consists of more than matter and energy in mindless motion, then either we need to expand what most people will count as science or allow some sort of “natural philosophy” to operate in the border area.
Before Darwin: The Birth of Science and Intelligent Design
As is usually the case, the discussion began with the ancient Greeks. Plato made the importance of design and “creation” clear in his last and longest dialogue The Laws (Book X). He says:
Athenian: Quite true, Megillus and Cleinias, but I am afraid that we have unconsciously lighted on a strange doctrine.
Cleinias: What doctrine do you mean?
Ath. The wisest of all doctrines, in the opinion of many.
Cle. I wish that you would speak plainer.
Ath. The doctrine that all things do become, have become, and will become, some by nature, some by art, and some by chance.
Cle. Is not that true?
Ath. Well, philosophers are probably right; at any rate we may as well follow in their track, and examine what is the meaning of them and their disciples.
Cle. By all means.
Ath. They say that the greatest and fairest things are the work of nature and of chance, the lesser of art, which, receiving from nature the greater and primeval creations, molds and fashions all those lesser works which are generally termed artificial.
Cle. How is that?
Ath. I will explain my meaning still more clearly. They say that fire and water, and earth and air, all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art, and that as to the bodies which come next in order -earth, and sun, and moon, and stars-they have been created by means of these absolutely inanimate existences. The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them-of hot with cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites which have been formed by necessity. After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only. Art sprang up afterwards and out of these, mortal and of mortal birth, and produced in play certain images and very partial imitations of the truth, having an affinity to one another, such as music and painting create and their companion arts. And there are other arts which have a serious purpose, and these co-operate with nature, such, for example, as medicine, and husbandry, and gymnastic. And they say that politics cooperate with nature, but in a less degree, and have more of art; also that legislation is entirely a work of art, and is based on assumptions which are not true.
Cle. How do you mean?
Ath. In the first place, my dear friend, these people would say that the Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honorable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.-These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth.
Plato is describing the philosophy of his day that attributed the creation and “design” of the universe to chance. Plato suggests that this theory places the origins of the Divine and moral norms in an “art” which is itself the product of chance. There is no design or art behind the cosmos. In short, the rational and the orderly sprang from the irrational and disorderly by the workings of chance and some scientific process. Plato, or at least the Athenian of the dialogue, strongly opposes teaching this view is his mythical city-state of Magnesia. He fears it will harm the minds and morals of the youth of the city. Many contemporary arguments are prefigured in this early discussion.
Plato presents the two basic options in his dialogues. The universe might be created under the control of a Craftsman, the Demiurge of the Timaeus. In this case, Mind comes before cosmos. Of course, it need not be the case that Mind is paramount, as in the Christian conception. Plato’s Craftsman must work with recalcitrant matter. This god can only do his best in creation. It still is the case, however, that the cosmos has a fundamental basis in the rational workings of a divine Mind. On the other hand, there is the position we have just examined in the Laws. To paraphrase Whitehead, most debates about the “design” or creation of the cosmos are a footnote to this discussion in Plato.
Both Plato and Aristotle saw knowledge of Mind as fundamental to gaining knowledge about the physical cosmos. On the other hand, the philosophies of the Epicureans and Lucretius demanded no god for their cosmological accounts. The Hellenistic and Roman periods were a time of lively discussion in this area. It is safe to say, however, that forms of neo-Platonism and Stoicism (both theistic) came to dominate the later periods of intellectual thought. The apparent order of the universe, and perhaps the need for order in the Roman state, made the more theistic “design” position the dominant one.
The spread of Christian theism in the Roman Empire encouraged this process. The apologists for the new faith were able to rely in their works on the wide spread acceptance of the need for a Creator. The second century apologist Theophilus of Antioch, for example, was able to use such beliefs in his writing. In the twilight of the Western Roman Empire, Augustine was able to appropriate the same sort of inclination toward the reality of design in his City of God and his discussion of creation in the latter portions of his Confessions.
In the Medieval West, design and the involvement of supernatural Intelligence were widely accepted, and they helped justify the idea that we live in a creation that can be studied and in which truths can be grasped beyond the surface appearances of things. Contrary to the stereotype of the period as a time of intellectual stagnation and dogmatism, philosophy of science continued to develop during the Middle Ages. Such men as Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham made important advances of the Greco-Roman understandings of the natural world and philosophy.
These general inclinations strongly in favor of design did not change with the advent of the modern age. Seeing the work of an Intelligent designer was a common place for the early scientists. Isaac Newton, who ushered in new methods in understanding the natural world, was a life long student of the Bible and had no difficulty seeing strong evidence for design in the Universe. Even the most severe critics of the Christian religion in the enlightenment period, which helped birth the modern world, did not reject the existence of a Creator or providence behind the cosmos. Thomas Paine, the arch-critic of traditional Christianity, speaking in the Age of Reason about the death of the established Church said, “Human inventions and priestcraft would be detected; and man would return to the pure, unmixed and unadulterated belief of one God, and no more.” Reason demonstrated the providential order of things to such men. The self-proclaimed “infidels” of the Enlightenment were not for the most part atheists in our modern sense, and the order of nature was a powerful reason for their theism.
Two assaults changed this picture, seemingly forever. First, David Hume launched a philosophic assault on the “argument from design.” He said:
You then, who are my accusers have acknowledged, that the chief or sole argument for a divine existence (which I never questioned) is derived from the order of nature; where there appear such marks of intelligence and design, that you think it extravagant to assign for its cause, either chance, or the blind and unguided force of matter. You allow that this is an argument drawn from effects to causes. From the order of the work, you infer that there must have been project and forethought in the workman. If you cannot make out this point, you allow that your conclusion fails; and you pretend not to establish the conclusion in a greater latitude that the phenomena of nature will justify. These are your concessions. I desire you to mark the consequences.
When we infer any particular cause from an effect, we must proportion the one to the other, and can never be allowed to ascribe to the cause any qualities, but what are exactly sufficient to produce the effect. A body of ten ounces raised in any scale may serve as a proof, that the counterbalancing weight exceeds ten ounces; but can never afford a reason that it exceeds a hundred, If the cause, assigned for any effect, be not sufficient to produce it, we must either reject that cause, or add to it such qualities as will give it a just proportion to the effect.”
Hume went on to argue that one could never derive a knowledge of a personal, intelligent God from the impersonal cosmos. Any argument from design or to design was not robust enough to do the work theists had traditionally assigned to it: the establishment of the existence of the full-blown God of Christian theism. This assault was a severe blow to the notion that God had a detectable and active role to play in Creation. The complexity so evident in the natural world, however, still led most thinkers to favor a “creationist” position. At worst, Hume was arguing against bad design arguments, not against detecting design in nature at all.
Darwinism changed the picture substantially. Before Darwin, theists could point to natural objects like the eye, and then challenge their philosophically inclined critics to provide a better explanation than theism. Darwin provided a purely naturalistic account for apparent design in the natural world. In the Origin of Species, he challenges his critics, “It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the ‘plan of creation’ or ‘unity of design,’ &c., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact.” Darwin would have none of that kind of “sloppy thinking”. Instead, he proposed a mechanism, natural selection, that would do the work of providing for the patterns in nature others had only passively described.
The results of the debate over “design” in nature for theism were very great. In the words of the contemporary defender of neo-Darwinism, Richard Dawkins, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” One can see the impact of Darwin on the argument from design in the writings of the philosopher William James. Writing in Varieties of Religious Experience as the twentieth century dawned he said, “As for the argument from design, see how Darwinian ideas have revolutionized it. Conceived as we now conceive them, as so many fortunate escapes from almost limitless processes of destruction, the benevolent adaptations which we find in Nature suggest a deity very different from the one who figured in the earlier versions of the argument.” God is, at best, unemployed in the new cosmology. Many scientists and philosophers, in light of the putative failure of the design argument, dispensed with him altogether.
Darwin, Wallace, Doyle and the Death of the Modern
All was not well, however, in the Darwinist camp. A split occurred between the purely materialistic Darwinists and those who hoped for “something more.” William James himself was a leader of this second group. Darwin had lost the ability, by the end of his life to enjoy music or poetry. He had become, in his own words, a “calculating machine.” Like Dickens’ Gradgrind in Hard Times who could only love “facts,” the naturalists seemed at war with even the secular romantic spirit of their age.
For many Victorian intellectuals, Christianity had to go. Its rigid sexual morality and stern view of the after life cramped the romantic notions of the nineteenth century academic. Religious life seemed feminine, in an age that prized the masculine. It seemed emotional and low brow. The first trait repelled the intellectual s. The second annoyed the artists. The deep internal contradictions of secularism were not long hidden.
In fact, secularism and hatred of traditional Christianity were all that united Darwin and the his co-founder Alfred Wallace. Wallace was a mystic. He dabbled in the occult and in drugs. If Darwin has been elevated to secular sainthood, Wallace is strangely forgotten. If degenerate Darwinism is best found in the ranting village atheist on the internet or in the public square, Wallace’s heirs are located at the 1-900 psychic hot lines.
Many people were horrified by the societal ills brought on by the secularism they had embrace. One of these men was the prototypical Englishman, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The creator of the arch-rationalist Sherlock Holmes was horrified at the decline in public morals. Darwinism had destroyed the Creator God of the Jews and Christians, but left no way to maintain the England that Doyle loved. Doyle gradually became convinced that the occult was the salvation of England. Wallace and many distinguished scientists gave him the intellectual cover that he needed. Soon the creator of Holmes was dedicating most of his time and considerable fortune to mediums, table tipping, and the fortunes of the growing Spiritualist religion.
Doyle was typical of the man of letters in that period and since. (I use him as an example, not because he was the most important persons in his camp . . . but because his story is typical and interesting.)
Darwinism freed them from traditional religion. Most of their scientific friends embraced the secularist dogma of men like Darwin. The literary types would not go that far, however. They wanted to provide room for a “scientific religion.” They hoped spiritualist activity could be studied. Soon, in the generation that followed Doyle, fraud and frequent disappointment sent most the humanities professors in the direction of the irrational. The “new age” movement and post-modernity are symptoms of this difficulty. Where Doyle wanted “evidence” and the supernatural, the new humanities gurus abandoned reason altogether.
Much of the dual nature of modern, secular American and Western culture can be explained in this secular split. America, for example, is a nation whose front page will be devoted to the purest Darwinian scientism, but have a horoscope on the inside for the reader’s “entertainment.” What is to be feared is the picture painted by C.S. Lewis in his science fiction novel That Hideous Strength. In that amazing work, he imagines the potential coming together of the naturalist secularists with the occult secularists. Their common hatred of Christianity and their commitment to Darwinism might make such a thing possible.
(HT: Panda’s Thumb correctly pointed out that I referred to Wallace as a “Lord” when it appears he was not ennobled.)