Intelligent Design Monkey Business-again.

There is an interesting article in this month's Chronicle of Higher Education about intelligent design. Apparently some of ID's leading luminaries held a conference at Cornell University, my alma mater, and conned convinced Springer, a major science publishing house, to publish the conference papers as a volume called Biological Information, New Perspectives.

Apparently Springer posted a web page advertising this forth coming book on its web site but it was quickly pulled when science bloggers such as Nick Matzke over at Panda's Thumb discovered this page and posted about it here.

Springer immediately pulled the web page advertising the ID volume deciding that maybe it needs more complete peer review. Apparently, even as noted by this sympathetic review of the conference, participants were told to tone down their religious perspectives so that the conference would be more scientific.

In an update on Panda's Thumb more details have surfaced. First the conference was not well attended. There were 27 or so attendees and that apparently included the presenters.  Second the conference really had nothing to do with Cornell officially but was merely held in the auditorium at Cornell's fine hotel school. This auditorium is rented to the public and that is what happened here.  The conference apparently was not publicized and indeed was held in that in between time before summer semester. To be fair to the conference organizers, that time of year is a wonderful year to be in Ithaca as I spent four delightful summers working there as an undergrad.

That said, one wonders if the University is too happy about having its reputation besmirched by implied association with this conference.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/01/book-intelligent-design-proponents-upsets-scientists

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2012/02/springer-gets-s.html

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2012/02/update-on-sprin.html

Science From Multiple World Views?

Recently I stumbled upon a small publisher of home school materials called Gravitas Publications. This publisher's main product is called Real Science 4 Kids by Dr. Rebecca Keller. I have no expertise in home school curricula, and from what I have seen some aspects of her approach seem sensible.

What bothers me is her claim that science can be taught from the point of view of multiple world views in a strictly neutral sort of way.

She writes:

"Yes! Real science doesn’t choose sides. So when teaching science, it’s important that the lessons let kids explore all sides. Otherwise, choosing one side can get in the way of understanding the real science. Darwinism, creationism, intelligent design theory, and all the other “isms” are simply paradigms (or “lenses”) through which science is viewed. The “-isms” are philosophies based on perceptions for how science is interpreted. Students need to learn how “-isms” play a role in science."

Ok, science doesn't choose sides in that is ideologically neutral- there is no conservative science, or Christian science, or Buddhist science. There ideally is just science. And she is right- our world view does affect how we interpret science. But is science really neutral in terms of the world view it admits?

Personally I think not. For example I don't see much support in science for the notion that the Universe or the Earth is say 10,000 years old or that the goal of a liquid is to seek its lowest level, or that magic is real. At the very least science since it is empirical forces scientific explanations and tests of scientific ideas to be mechanistic and transparent.

At any rate, check out Dr. Keller's video discussing the issue of multiple world views and see what you think:

A New Word.

Picked up a new word today courtesy of an article in Scientific American on Freeman Dyson. The word is "bunkrapt." The neologism coined by Peter Medawar in the 1980's means, to according to the article, to be "infatuated with bunk." So I guess it is from bunk + rapture. I can't wait to use this on my favorite intelligent design hipster or anti-vaccine fanatic.

The article's author John Horgan notes referring to what he sees as some of the wacky beliefs of Freeman Dyson that:

"The gleeful rebel Dyson, it seems to me, embodies our bunkrapt era, when the delineation between knowledge and pseudo-knowledge is becoming increasingly blurred; genuine authorities are mistaken for hucksters and vice versa; and we all believe whatever damn thing we want to believe."

Half Full or Half Empty?

There is a new Gallup poll surveying American's belief in evolution. The bad news is that 40% of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years. The good news is that the percentage of people who believe this has fallen to its lowest level since the first such survey in 1982. Also the pace of decline seems more rapid since the year 2000.

Check out the survey at http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-intelligent-design.aspx

Religious Discrimination or Mere Whining?

An astronomer is suing the University of Kentucky alleging that he was refused a position because of his religious beliefs. Martin Gaskell was supposedly the top candidate for a new observatory position but didn't get it. Dr. Gaskell is an evangelical who has written and lectured on science and his faith. Apparently this got people nervous that his religious beliefs might influence his science.

This statement in particular from an essay Dr. Gaskell wrote seems to have caught people's attention:

"The main controversy has been between people at the two extremes (young earth creationists and humanistic evolutionists). “Creationists” attack the science of “evolutionists”. I believe that this sort of attack is very bad both scientifically and theologically. The “scientific” explanations offered by “creationists” are mostly very poor science and I believe this sort of thing actually hinders some (many?) scientists becoming Christians. It is true that there are significant scientific problems in evolutionary theory (a good thing or else many biologists and geologists would be out of a job) and that these problems are bigger than is usually made out in introductory geology/biology courses, but the real problem with humanistic evolution is in the unwarranted atheistic assumptions and extrapolations. It is the latter that “creationists” should really be attacking (many books do, in fact, attack these unwarranted assumptions and extrapolations)."

However on the surface I am not sure his views are that much different from theistic evolutionists such as Ken Miller. But looking more closely I am bothered by his inclusion in a positive light of groups like "Leadership U" which try to push ... "Intelligent Design".

Also as noted here his attorney refers to Gaskell as an "openly Christian man". Seems like a clever appeal for sympathy in spirit of diversity promoting acceptance of GLBT people. If so this strategy is not going to garner much support from me. I have seen attempts to use this strategy by whiny conservatives whose only motivation is to use the rhetoric of diversity to silence discussion of diversity.

Related Links:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/us/19kentucky.html

http://www.examiner.com/creationism-in-national/astronomer-alleges-anti-religious-discrimination-by-university

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20101210/NEWS01/312110011/Job+candidate+sues+UK++claiming+religion+cost+him+the+post

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/sciencecareers/2010/12/should-a-scient.html

Ah for the good old days!

...when convictions were convictions and martyrs were martyrs. Apparently William Dembski, has had to recant some of his moderate views on creation. In his latest book, End Of Christianity, he had the temerity to admit that he believes that scientists ARE right-the Universe really IS around 14 billion years old and that "the Flood" was NOT world wide. I guess that didn't set well with his overlords (I mean bosses) at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. According to Michael Zimmerman writing in the Huffington Post, Dembski was called on the carpet for his writings. Since the inquisition is long gone, presumably his bosses used less drastic means than hot pokers or racks to get him to recant. Maybe they water boarded him- I don't know.

At any rate Dembski has at least partly recanted claiming that his statement about the flood NOT being universal was based on incomplete reflection:

"Before I write on this topic ( the Flood) again, I have much exegetical,
historical, and theological work to do. In any case, not only Genesis 6–9 but also
Jesus in Matthew 24 and Peter in Second Peter seem clearly to teach that the
Flood was universal. As a biblical inerrantist, I believe that what the Bible teaches
is true and bow to the text, including its teaching about the Flood and its
universality."

quoted in:

http://www.baptisttheology.org/documents/AReplytoTomNettlesReviewofDembskisTheEndofChristianity.pdf

Intelligent design advocates have long claimed that their beliefs about intelligent design are NOT Biblically motivated but I wonder how we are to take an advocate of intelligent design placing the Bible above empirical data.

To be fair, Dembski does not entirely recant but argues:

"My book The End of Christianity is a work of speculative theology. It
assumes that the earth and universe are old and, given that assumption, attempts
to answer how the Fall of humanity could be responsible for natural evil, such as
animal suffering. Since, on the assumption of an old earth, animal suffering
precedes the arrival of humans, the challenge is to explain how the effect (natural
evil) can temporally precede the cause (human sin and the Fall). My solution is to
argue that just as the effects of salvation at the Cross of Christ reach both forward
in time (saving contemporary Christians) and backward (saving the Old
Testament saints), so the effects of the Fall reach forward in time as well as
backward. What makes my argument work is the ability of God to arrange events
at one time to anticipate events at a later time."

OK so Dembski argues that the Fall was an actual event whose affects rippled both into the present and also into the past. So I guess all those veggie eating dinosaurs in the Creation Science museum mysteriously got transformed into evil T. rexes.

Speculative theology indeed!

Well there goes McCain...

I see that John McCain has picked Alaska's governor Palin as his running mate. Intriguing choice since McCain likes to position himself as a maverick. But science wise the choice is a bit flaky, Palin seems to have bought into the beguiling argument that schools should teach both creationism and evolution. She is quoted here in the Anchorage Daily News:

"Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both."

Later on in the same interview she did back track a bit and qualified her remarks saying:

"I don't think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn't have to be part of the curriculum."

Of course the state Republican platform according to the same article says that:

"We support giving Creation Science equal representation with other theories of the origin of life. If evolution is taught, it should be presented as only a theory."

And that merely echos the common misunderstanding people have about the meaning of the word theory in science.

Clearly though regardless of what she thinks about creationism and its cheap suit version intelligent design, she doesn't understand much about science. Too bad because I honestly felt this was an election where I could "kick the tires" to choose between two great tickets. But John McCain certainly hasn't helped himself here among moderates and certainly hasn't boosted my opinion of his science policy. If he wanted to go the conservative evangelical route he should picked Huckabee.

To give Palin her due she doesn't seem to have the sort of skepticsm about climate change that one might expect. But then again considering how rapidly Arctic climate regimes are being altered by global warming, she probably wouldn't be able to survive politically unless she supported programs to help her state cope with warming.

Update on Expelled! Was Behe expelled?

I am no fan of Michael Behe but according to this post at Darwinian Conservatism he was expelled from Expelled. Seems he is just too independent for some of the other ID'ers.

Thanks Larry for pointing this gem out.

Trouble Ahead for Science?

I have been following the controversy about Ben Stein's "documentary" Expelled and no I have not seen it yet. But Ken Miller sums up scientist's fears about the effect of this "documentary" and the intelligent design movement in general.

Miller in an op ed piece in the Boston Globe writes:

"It deceives its audiences, slanders the scientific community, and contributes mightily to a climate of hostility to science itself. Stein is doing nothing less than helping turn a generation of American youth away from science. If we actually come to believe that science leads to murder, then we deserve to lose world leadership in science. In that sense, the word "expelled" may have a different and more tragic connotation for our country than Stein intended."

So why should I even waste money on seeing Expelled? Now I don't want to hearing any intelligent design whining about not having an open mind. I have looked at the trailers and read the reviews and oh by the way spent several excruciating days biting my tongue at the Kansas Board of Education hearings several years back where I heard the best the ID proponents can give and I have waded through much of the ID literature. And you know what? There is nothing there!

Nothing.

Ben Stein EXPOSED!

As many of you may know, Ben Stein has a new documentary Expelled on how Intelligent Design advocates and the great research they do is being suppressed by the scientific elite.
http://theforcethat.blogspot.com/2008/03/scare-tactic-alert.html

Now Scientific American has gotten into the act with a series of articles on Ben Stein's documentary and the sorts of distortions Mr. Stein engages in. Check out this review from Scientific American and associated links.

Of particular interest is this first hand report by Michael Shermer on how Stein plays fast and loose in the production of his movie. According to Shermer, Stein's movie includes a scene of Pepperdine University students being addressed by Stein and presumably hungering for Stein's version of the truth. But Shermer reports:

"Actually they didn't. The biology professors at Pepperdine assure me that their mostly Christian students fully accept the theory of evolution. So who were these people embracing Stein's screed against science? Extras. According to Lee Kats, associate provost for research and chair of natural science at Pepperdine, "the production company paid for the use of the facility just as all other companies do that film on our campus" but that "the company was nervous that they would not have enough people in the audience so they brought in extras. Members of the audience had to sign in and a staff member reports that no more than two to three Pepperdine students were in attendance. Mr. Stein's lecture on that topic was not an event sponsored by the university." And this is one of the least dishonest parts of the film."

Now to be fair, I suppose Michael Moore has used similar sorts of ummm short cuts...but since a big point of Stein's film is the dishonesty of the scientific establishment I would expect Stein to rise above slick production tricks. Instead it looks like we get more intelligent design smoke and mirrors and it sounds like the viewer is asked again to ignore the little man behind the curtain (maybe Michae Behe?), something I am sure the fundamentalist religious audience for whom this film is intelligently designed is more than willing to do.

Scare tactic alert

The Intelligent Design Community is eagerly awaiting the release of that boffo documentary exposing the academic cabal surrounding Darwinism (gee maybe I should write for the Discovery Institute), "Expelled", starring that well known scientist Ben Stein.

Since I am clearly in a boffo mood today, I call your attention to the latest buzz. According to the New York Times, Michael Moore he of Sicko fame was dis-invited from a screening of Expelled.


Allegedly, according to the film's promoters, the film has some rough edges and not considered ready for "professional scrutiny". Of course it is ready for screening at various mega church groups who have lost any ability to think critically so rough edges won't bother them so long as the film is appropriately anti evolution and paints evolutionary scientists as totally dogmatic and picking on the poor Intelligent Design Advocates.

What I found interesting is that Stein in commenting about the film says:

“there’s just a lot of people who don’t believe that big science and Darwinism should have a stranglehold on academic life, and they have been waiting for a voice.”

Notice how now there are two enemies. One is Darwinism, but the other is "big science." I suppose that is something like big Church (oops). But the term "big science" perhaps harkens to a more innocent time when scientists labored alone in their labs-that's the type of science the Intelligent Design people do except they don't have labs.

Big science....hmmm yes a lot of science is done on a massive scale and there are certainly a number of reasons for that. Some of that has to do with the complexity of the problems that face us today. But big science- and lets throw in big technology to boot- has been around since the 1930's and is not going away. Anyone read about the Manhattan Project?

Big science-sounds scary but Mr. Stein can pine for the good old days but remember that he and others who use this phrase in a disparaging way are simply trying to avoid applying critical thinking to understanding the world around them. They don't want to because critical thinking would show the weakness in the Intelligent Design idea and that would mean no one would go see his film.

A Row about Testing Evolution...

...is ongoing now on my Science blog at the Lawrence Journal World. Most of the discussion has been at a fairly high level considering how such discussions usually go. Take a look here:

http://www2.ljworld.com/weblogs/dangerous-ideas/2008/feb/18/can-evolution-be-tested/

Down the Rabbit Hole of Intelligent Design

The intelligent design folks have latched on to the success of documentaries such as Inconvenient Truth and Sicko with their own effort to show how close minded scientists are to new ideas. In the sort of inversion that has become old hat in the ID movement, Ben Stein (YES....that Ben Stein) has a documentary called GetExpelled. The movie's trailer starts out with Stein writing "Do not question Darwinism" over and over again in a biology lecture room's black board. Hmmm I must have given him detention.

The movie's blog and web site imply that Stein is some sort of rebel against the close minded scientific establishment and visitors are encouraged to join the GetExpelled community. Of course, the rest of the trailer attempts to darkly imply that there is some sort of dark conspiracy against intelligent design. Mr. Stein considers it his duty to warn us about this conspiracy.

Slick- just the sort of thing to appeal to some young people who with no sense of history might not get Mr. Stein's inversion of history. For rather than being young turks with new ideas fighting against the evil scientific establishment, the Intelligent Designers are backing an archaic way of viewing the universe which is still entrenched in the popular mind. It is the evolutionists and natural scientists who have the new ideas. Maybe to the ahistorical young evolution seems to be the establishment position, but it is not.

Get Expelled looks like another inversion of reality, an inversion worthy of Lewis Carroll where critical thinking gets demonized and irrationality becomes the way science should work.

Oh and according to Scientific American Ben Stein has won the The Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth. Liberty and Truth? Now there is a real inversion for you.

Fossils and Faith

I have been laid up with a virus-you know those unsung tools of the intelligent designer-but today my blogging energy got a boost or a kick from an article called "Resurrected Life" about an artist who uses fossils as the basis for religious art. At first read the article might seem to be a sincere attempt to reconcile religion and science through art. A noble idea and one I endorse.

The article left just a few questions in my mind as explained in the following excerpt from my Lawrence Journal World Blog:

"...there are just some things about it that really bother me as a scientist and as a religious person. For instance, Mr. Detrich thinks that non believers have nothing to live for. Personally I don't believe it is in my ken to say whether or not someone else has anything to live for based on their beliefs. Granted I don't know what is going on in the depths of atheist Richard Dawkins' psyche, but he certainly seems to think his life has a point.

Second of all I am bothered by this statement about nonbelievers:

"They might just accidentally come to the conclusion that life would be better if they believed in a super being, in a creator, rather than life would be better if your actions didn’t matter."

This is a kinder gentler version of Pascal's wager which basically says you should believe because the reward is eternal bliss and the penalty eternal damnation. I have never been impressed by this wager in it's original form and I am even less impressed with Mr. Detrich's kinder gentler version. Also, does Mr. Detrich's kinder gentler version extend to devotees of, say, Krishna or for that matter any sort of belief in a supreme being?

Next, I wonder why is the notion of God "creating" incompatible with scientific explanations of how life came to be and evolved? Mr. Detrich seems to at least accept the geological time scale. Well, if that scale is valid then why could not God's actions to bring change be seen from our end as being-well - evolution?

Finally what am I to make of the concluding statement in the article where he says it is "better to be on the side of good than on the side of bad." Well what about that? Is some one automatically good because they believe in a higher power and some one automatically bad because they don't? Or is some one automatically bad because they believe that evolution happens? Does Mr. Detrich still think we are "evilutionists" as he writes in his "musings"?"

Check out his musings for yourself at:

http://www.spearofjesus.com/musings.html

Remember Darwin's Day is February 12.

Sexism and Creationists...what a combo

I like to tell my Biology and Genetics students that we are for the most part out of the sexist bad old days when women were thought to be incapable of doing science...but Michael Behe-he of the irreducible bacterial flagellum has demonstrated that sexism is alive and well. Seems he is playing the gender card in the case of grad student virologist, SA Smith when she had the gall to correct the Dr. Behe about the evolution of the HIV virus.

Well I had to check what Behe said for myself, because I had met Behe and watched his testimony at the Kansas Creation Science hearings and he seemed like a nice sort of guy though majorly confused about what his own paper on the evolution of proteins was really saying.

Behe says of SA Smith:

"Although she calls herself a “pre-grad student,” the tone of the post is decidedly junior high, the tone of someone who is trying hard to compete with all the other Mean Girls on that unpleasant website. I’ll pass over all that and try to stick to the substance."

Hmmmm I had to look up Mean Girls and I assume Behe is really referring to this site connected to the movie, Mean Girls. Sounds to me as if Behe has taken to imitating a real life Mean Girl Ann Coulter. I guess Behe is a bit grumpy given the failure of his irreducible complexity ideas to explain anything about biology. Or maybe its simply that 19th century scientific beliefs go hand in hand with misogyny.

To be fair to Dr. Behe, maybe he is really meaning to play the "I'm the professor she's the grad student" card. As if THAT is going to win any friends and influence people. Also to be fair misogyny along with racism is found in other scientists including some who are decidedly NOT creationist, James Watson being a recent and ancient case in point.

Ann Coulter image from wbrower.net/OBB/images/Ann_Coulter.gif

A very funny nail

Supposedly J.B.S. Haldane said something to the effect that God has an "inordinate fondness for beetles." Now don't quote me on this because I wonder if this isn't one of those sayings that has gotten twisted around and taken out of context. But it is a great phrase whatever the origin. (See this link for further discussion of this quote's origin.)

Finding this wonderful fig eater, Cotinis nitida got me thinking about this quote and a few more cosmic issues. I don't know. Must be incipient heat stroke.



During the intelligent design controversy, ID proponents liked to say that all we can say about the designer is that design exists and that we cannot infer anything about the designer. So I half jokingly said that maybe we can infer that the God- excuse me, designer- was really fond of beetles. The response I got was quite clever, as ID responses often are. Namely: would a carpenter be fond of nails because he needs lots of them to build a house?



If I had been a bit quicker I might have commented on what this says about the ID view point. It really is all about purpose, human purpose, just as the old style creationism is. All the creatures around us are merely nails in some sort of grand scheme. The beetle is just a nail in a house. Whose house is it? God's house or our house. And why make such intricate nails? Why make anything at all?



The belief that the universe has a purpose is so ingrained in our minds that it often hinders our ability to think about the Universe. For instance we commonly believe in the balance of nature and that every species has its place- the niche. My students will tell me that plants carry out photosynthesis to produce oxygen. Never mind that oxygen is a waste product of photosynthesis. Many of them just don't get it.

And its not just students who's sight is blinded by purpose. Otherwise sophisticated people sometimes will say that being gay is a way of population control- sort of a group selectionist idea a la V.C. Wynne-Edwards. During the 70's and 80's scientists seriously proposed that the Earth is a great self regulating system. This is the "Gaia hypothesis" of James Lovelock and that of course blends into some slippery versions of the anthropic principle which are stated as saying that the Universe is the way that it is because we are here. And that blends Frank Tipler's notions about the fate of the universe. He claims that eventually life will fill and control the universe and through its quantum mechanical interactions with the universe reach some sort of Omega Point that he identifies with God.



Now this is an appealing notion for me because it seems to be a sort of self assembly of the sort we encounter all through out biology extended to a cosmic scale. Life bootstrapping itself up into greater and greater complexity without intervention of some sort of external intelligence. To quote Tipler:



"I also argue that the ultimate future state of the universe, the Omega Point, should be identified with God. ...If we regard God as something Ultimate, then He is telling us that He is the Ultimate Future. "



So God in the future is influencing the past, presumably through some sort of quantum mechanical entanglement. Very self referential sounding indeed. And at the same time a lot like manifest destiny-only it is life that has as its manifest destiny to become God with the power to resurrect the dead.



Of course if you are Christian, God does have that sort of ultimate power. But it seems that Tipler, like the Intelligent Design advocates, and perhaps even the group selectionists and Gaia advocates, are trying to hammer the universe into a shape that is a reflection of what we are are.


Now the impulse to do that is understandable. After all, in terms of our own evolution, the ability to bend and chip matter for our own uses and by extension modify our environment to suit our very human purposes has served us in good stead. I would not want us to retreat into some sort of technological passivity. Nor do I disavow all notions of purpose. But I believe we constantly have to 'guard or minds' against the very powerful and subtle illusion that our notions of purpose have any scientific meaning in terms of the universe. A beetle otherwise becomes merely a funny looking nail and plants produce oxygen so we can breathe.

Behe tries again...

Michael Behe has published a new book called the Edge of Evolution. The first chapter along with a review by Richard Dawkins can be found in today's New York Times books section. From the first chapter, Behe is up to the same tired old tricks intelligent design folks have foisted on the unsuspecting public since before the last century and Dawkins' response is worth noting:

"Single-handedly, Behe is taking on Ronald Fisher, Sewall Wright, J. B. S. Haldane, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Richard Lewontin, John Maynard Smith and hundreds of their talented co-workers and intellectual descendants. Notwithstanding the inconvenient existence of dogs, cabbages and pouter pigeons, the entire corpus of mathematical genetics, from 1930 to today, is flat wrong. Michael Behe, the disowned biochemist of Lehigh University, is the only one who has done his sums right. You think?"

Dawkins is right, and I know what the intelligent design people are going to do with his comment. They are going to argue that Dawkins is merely appealing to authority. They are going to try to take advantage of the public's love of the underdog fighting against the scientific establishment. But not all underdogs are right. Some of them are merely cranks and that is what Behe, Johnson, Dembski and the other persistent advocates of Intelligent Design have become- cranks who for one reason or another just don't get the paradigm of modern evolutionary biology.

Granted there are those who legitimately think that the paradigms of evolutionary biology needs a fix, or at least a fine tuning. That may well be true, but it doesn't seem likely that such a shift will be to the liking to the intelligent designists.

Creationist Humor?

Emmanuel Goldstein commenting on my last post said:

"We know you despise all religion.Catholics, Jews, whatever.Its what atheists do. But pretending that you are just promoting science when you are using science as a front to promote your own anti religious agenda is a huge deception.
4:43 AM"


Mr. Goldstein is associated with a wonderfully imaginative Creationist site at http://www.thebrites.org/ which features the "The Biological Research Institute for Theoretical Evolution Studies"; "The Paley Watch Company "which claims to use natural selection to assemble watches; and my favorite-"Mutation Paste" which accelerates evolution. There is also Darwin Camp where today's Darwin Youth can "live and learn natural selection. "

Great fun and a great teaching moment about the misunderstandings many people have about evolution. Even the name, by the way, is a clever take on an organisation called "The Brights" which is indeed Atheistic in slant. Visit them at http://www.the-brights.net/.

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Catholics and Evolution...from the Economist

The Economist has a special report on the debate in some quarters about creation vs evolution. Of particular interests to Catholics is the report on the split within the Church about evolution. On the one hand are scientists such as Father George Coyne, who insist that natural phenomena (such as evolution) have natural causes, and others in the Church hierarchy who believe that Coyne and other Catholic scientists have gone too far in accepting the scientific viewpoint. Pope Benedict is portrayed as trying to carefully navigate these two points of view, accepting the empirical viewpoint of science but insisting that is an incomplete description of human origins.

According to the article, evolution skeptics, such as Father Joseph Fessio, in the Catholic Church argue that there are 3 ways to learn about reality-empirical science, direct revelation from God and natural philosophy which attempts to use reason to discern the hand of God in the universe. I was particularly interested in the split between Roman Catholic thinkers and Orthodox Christian thinkers on natural philosophy, the Orthodox insisting that mystical communion with God is not comparable to the results of reason.

Here I find myself much more attuned to the Orthodox position. For me natural philosophy leads to the temptation to reduce God to a scientific formula which seems to me the very antithesis of what faith is ultimately supposed to be about. That sort of reduction also leads to the temptation to try to let theology do the job of science(i.e. turning the Bible into a science book) and we historically know the outcome of that tact-religion only looses credibility.

By the way there is an interesting defense of the compatibility between Orthodox Christianity and evolution by Fr. Andrey Kuraev. The article defends his belief in the consistency of evolution with Orthodox Christianity. He argues for instance:

"The very essence of the process of the unfolding of Creation remains the same regardless of the speed with which it happens. The view of some, that if we extend the process of Creation in time, "God will become unnecessary" is as naive as that of others who think that creation in anything more than six regular days diminishes the glory of the Creator. We must only remember that nothing stood in the way or limited the creative action, and everything happened according to the will of the Creator. We do not know whether this will consisted in creating the world in one moment, or in six days, or six thousand years, or billions. For "who can number . . . the days of eternity?" (Sirach 1:2)."

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The Catholic Church and Evolution revisited

According to an article in the NY Times, Pope Benedict and other prominent Catholics have laid out their position on evolution and God in a book that appears to be a product of the Pope's recent evolution seminar. From what I see the Pope has not endorsed "intelligent design" and continues the Church's long standing acceptance of evolution as a scientific theory and acceptance of what is commonly called theistic evolution.

That said, the Pope seems to have bought into a common misunderstanding about evolution. He is reported to have said:

"Though he did not reject evolution, he noted in the remarks quoted from the book that science could not completely prove evolution because it could not be duplicated in the laboratory."

Granted every instance of evolution cannot be duplicated in the laboratory, but the basic mechanisms of how evolution operates are routinely investigated in laboratory or other controlled situations including field experiments.

Benedict is also quoted in an article in The Catholic News:

"The process itself is rational despite the mistakes and confusion as it goes through a narrow corridor choosing a few positive mutations and using low probability,"

"This ... inevitably leads to a question that goes beyond science ... where did this rationality come from?"

Here again the Pope is buying into some of the probability arguments made about the implausibility of evolution, arguments not supported by science. As noted by many scientists such as Richard Dawkins, Ken Miller, and most recently by Sean Carroll, the probabilities involved only are daunting if you think all the parts, say in an adaptation such as the eye, or all the amino acids in a complex protein, have to come together randomly all at once.

The Pope's thinking here is getting at teleological questions and causality and he clearly understands that these are outside the domain of science, something the intelligent design advocates with their scary sounding references to materialism fail to grasp.

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