Personal Creeds and the Problem of Evil part 6

My last post on this topic discussed the idea of God’s universal sovereignty, or governance of the world in relation to suffering. I summarized that God’s governance of the universe is necessary for the question of evil to be valid, for the question itself is really asking why God doesn't run things differently -specifically with less tolerance for evil and suffering.

The view I personally hold to is an unpopular one: that in some way God causes all events. A God that lets things run on their own is a much more amicable God. But he’s also a distant God, and the price for keeping God’s hands clean of the tragedies that happen in life is too much to pay.

Is God therefore evil? This is a silly question in a way, for God is himself the only absolute standard of all goodness. It’s from God’s being that goodness even exists. In the classic texts of Christian theology, evil is seen as simply a privation of good, not something that can even exist if goodness did not exist first. In another way, it’s not a silly question: for if God causes everything, and some of those things are evil, does it not follow that God is evil?

Classic Christian reasoning says no, for when I say “God in some way causes all events”, the phrase “in some way” is very important. God governs the universe in such a way that he never tells us exactly how he causes events. There is always secondary causes in Christian reasoning: immediately we see the cause and effect of plate tectonics, upsurges of magma, and evil human choices. God simply tells us that he’s intimately involved in superintending all of these events, directing them to his own ultimately good purposes. When we call into question his purposes, he simply tells us to trust him, and let him mind his own cosmic business. The gist of the reason why God is not responsible for evil is that we do not have enough information to accuse or excuse him. God never denies his involvement, but he challenges human autonomous reason for presuming to know the inner reasoning of God.

The bible is replete with examples of people throwing their cares, their anger, their questions, their deepest screams at God. It’s ugly, but so is life. Sometimes I think that we affluent westerners have lost touch with this element of Christian spirituality. Yelling at God seems impolite, perhaps even blasphemous. We do not empathize with the Haitian Christians, who in the aftermath of the earthquake were heard to be chanting “God forgive us/God, we forgive you.” Yet, it seems unmistakable to the sufferer that God is an appropriate wailing wall, a fitting target for our hurt and anger.

I wonder if part of the distaste for this teaching is a desire to present a more “pleasing to the eye” Christianity to an unbelieving culture? We have a nice, safe God that way, don’t we? But in silently condemning what the bible says is acceptable, we also misrepresent the appeal of an intimate walk with God through Christ, in all of its wonderful edgy aspects. Isn’t it the incarnate Son who takes the worst of our world’s abuses on his shoulders that we worship?

I suppose my overall point in this post is to Christians, myself included: beware of your personal creed, beware of building yourself a theological bomb-shelter that keeps God safe, but also keeps him out of your hurt and questions. Beware of denying God what he says about himself because it fits a tidier view of His ways. “The One forming light and darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these.” (Isa 45:7) Beware of worshipping a G-rated deity in an R-rated world.

Personal Creeds and the Problem of Evil part 5

“The 'Removing God’s Sovereignty' Option”

In this post, I’d like to explore a creed that I have long wrestled with that often crops up as a response to the problem of evil. In the face of evil, Christians have a tendency to safeguard our God from evil by removing one of his attributes: his sovereign governance of the world. Often we’re not so bold as to say we remove an attribute of God. But I have read laborious intellectual attempts at explaining away the problem of evil by expertly finding some way of getting God out of this whole “governing an evil universe” thing.

Can this be done and still leave the Christian faith intact? Yes and no. I don’t believe in “domino theology”, where you knock one piece down and the whole thing crumbles with it, so this answer doesn’t undermine the Christian faith entirely. But these “God is not sovereign” explanations definitely impoverish the faith greatly by painting God as some far removed deity who just lets the universe run its course, so that evil occurences happen without his guidance, making them purposeless and meaninglessness chance events. I find these “God is not sovereign” answers are Christianized versions of the cause-and-effect answer.

Let me elaborate on that one idea of “meaninglessness”. Christianity has always put a premium on a loving, personal God who is involved in the world and has a purpose for the whole and the individual. When a sufferer asks why he is suffering, he is implying a faith that there is some sovereign power and purpose undergirding his life. That is, there is a reason such-and-such evil event occurred. This faith in the meaningfulness of life is not possible unless God’s hand is holding life, giving events a divine purpose and a meaning.

I find this both painful and comforting. On the one hand, life has purpose! I am not left alone in the universe, I am not abandoned to laws of causality and chance. God hears my thoughts and sees my actions, and considers them of such worth as to hold me accountable to them. I do not understand why evil things happen, but God is good, he is there, and though he’s not telling me the reason things happen, there is one. There is meaning, a plan, a purpose, and I can rest in that, all because history and matter are in the hands of a good God.

The painful part is that sometimes the suffering is so great, I cannot fathom a reason that could possibly justify this amount of evil. God becomes the cruel silent tyrant who smashes my plans, destroys my life, refuses to explain himself yet demands my praise. When C.S. Lewis lost his wife, he called God the great cosmic sadist. I have certainly felt that way towards God -I think Lewis was being nice in his selection of adjectives actually.

It is shocking to me how many times I have read the book of psalms and failed to observe how often the psalmist responds to suffering by reaming out the Lord: “O God, why do you cast us off forever?” (74:1) “...my soul refuses to be comforted, When I remember God, I moan...Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion?” (77:2-3, 9) Job’s rants in particular strike me: “The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; he (God) covers the faces of its judges -if it is not he, who then is it?” (Job 9:24) Here we see Job suffering, describing God as a cruel man of war who delights in shooting Job with arrows, and in all the rebuttals Job’s friends give him, they never once consider the option that God did not cause Job’s suffering. The book of Job concludes with this shocking statement: “Then all of Job’s brothers and sisters came to him and all who had known him before, and ate bread with him in his house, And they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him.” (Job 42:11) God’s causality of all events is simply assumed, and why shouldn’t it be? The very question of evil and meaning in life assumes God is running everything. It is the necessary truth to make the question of evil possible, for only if there is an eternal governor with an eternal purpose can there be eternal meaning in our lives, our thoughts, and our sufferings.

Personal Creeds and the Problem of Evil part 4

I’d like to catch up on the train of thought I left off on February 26 with the topic of suffering. To save my readers some time, “part 3“ was about the so-called “cause and effect” response to the problem of evil. This answer replies to suffering by pointing out the means by which suffering and evil came about. Of course, it really is shocking to ponder what small decisions, actions and words can cause such extensive damage. Think of motor vehicle accidents, or firearm mishaps: here we see how empty it is to point out what the causal relationships of traumatic events are. These answers simply do not address the problem of pain at all. Nicolas Wolterstorff, a Christian philosopher who lost his son in a mountain climbing accident, found the numerous books on “the grieving process” to be obscene: he wrote that the problem isn’t the grieving process, but the grief itself. Somewhere along the line we have to face the evils, the traumas, the pain itself, rather than satisfy ourselves with answers that are simply sophisticated sounding avoidance patterns. These ideas, these thought patterns, these "personal creeds" I think belong in the category of answers to the problem of evil that seek to answer the question by avoiding it.

I was disappointed with what I wrote in part 3 in that I don’t feel I had space to flesh out the central argument I wanted to. I know, that sounds dry and stuffy, and going into detail over an argument (an argument in the sense of logic, not bickering) is kind of like aggressively pointing out the load-bearing beams of a beautiful building: drawing too much attention to the structure of an argument can draw attention away from the entire point of the argument. So I apologize to my readers for waxing perhaps too philosophical in this post.

Nevertheless, I do want to flesh out the logic of the argument I presented, if for no other reason than to share an argument that has caused me personally to rule out “Naturalism” as a legitimate way to think of the world around me.

The force of this argument is to take one of the heartbeats of atheistic evolutionary thinking and consistently apply its own way of reasoning to itself. For if the universe consists in nothing but matter, and we are the product of blind chance molecules bumping into one another, then it follows that this longing for an alternate universe with no pain in it was also produced by these chance molecule encounters.

Consider your own creeds about human nature. Non-theistic evolutionary thinking feeds on a particular line of reasoning: survival and adaptation. The Darwinian imagination explains much of our nature as humans by thinking about how attribute x is useful for survival: “We walk upright because it helped us see predators in the bush”, “We developed big brains because that helped us survive and adapt”, etc. But when applying this reasoning to the problem of pain, I found those explanations which make atheism appealing end up undoing its appeal. For to be consistent, it also must conclude that the experience of human reasoning about suffering is there because it serves some adaptive purpose: either that, or it is an unfortunate by-product of some other useful evolutionary development, kind of like that unfortunate bit of "evolutionary residue" we all carry around: our appendix. In the latter case, wishing suffering wasn’t there is an unfortunate and useless quirk of human nature.

Either way, the naturalist must conclude this: nature produced in us a profound longing for a reality that does not exist. Useful or not, nature created a powerful urge for which there is no satisfaction in nature.

Perhaps someone may not find this reasoning all that much of a blow to their atheism or skepticism. For my mind at least, it provides an argument that continually serves to remind me of where a world with no God must logically lead: those things in life that stir me the most, that churn up the strongest emotions and most rigorous mental and artistic exercises is nothing more than mere nature bustling about its own irrationality.

Book Review: Japan in World History

Time for a more lighthearted post.

Ever since I was young, I have had a fascination with Japan. It started as an interest in ninja turtles, then to ninjas, then to Samurai, which led to a research project on medieval Japan in elementary school. From there my enchantment with Japan manifested itself in a love of anime in highschool, then an interest in Japanese religion in my post-undergrad years, and this latest book has given me a much broader outlook on the country.

The theme of this historical series is “doing history from the vantage point of the moon”, so it’s a little dry in not going into details, and at times hard to follow because it pursues Japanese history according to time, rather than topics or themes. So when you read about medieval Japan, you skim everything about medieval Japan: economics, farm life, political developments, art, religion, etc. It’s abit overwhelming in the breadth of information each section throws at you. Particularly disappointing to me was the complete absence of discussions about ninjas.

So how can I sum up early Japanese history? Well, it’s remarkably similar to European history. Some people came, they farmed, they grew, governing structures arose, peasants were oppressed, rulers were assassinated, and out came a country. What distinguishes Japan from Europe? While the Japanese kept the same idiotic patterns of expansion and repression that Europe did, the Japanese did it with style. Assassinations had shuriken. ‘Nuff said.

Despite being behind the rest of the world in developing literacy, Japan produced the world’s first novel. They also took the idea of comics from the Americans, and turned them into Anime. They took the idea of the sword, and made it awesome in a way that hasn’t been surpassed. Monster movies came in, but they come out 400 feet taller and breathing nuclear fire. So one of my observations is that everyday stuff goes into Japan, but it comes out cool. I think I know a couple of people who could probably use a vacation to Japan.

What of recent Japanese history? How can that be summarized? In a nutshell, after an American Commodore named Matthew Perry opened up Japan to the rest of the world at gunpoint, an isolated people developed their identity and national pride around militarism, got big and strong, turned Fascist, got stabby and beat up their neighbours, then lost a giant war and got re-founded as a nation. After that, they resumed what came natural to them: being cool, and pissing off their neighbors by doing everything better than them. One of my favorite stories was the U.S. Congressman smashing a Toshiba radio in front of the Capitol out of bitterness for Japanese products out-selling American.

One thing the Japanese have imported but haven’t done much with, is karaoke. Some things I guess even the Japanese can’t fix.

Christian Fundamentalism

In my last book review, I referred to Christian Fundamentalism twice, and I thought I would post some reflections on the Christian Fundamentalist movement that have been inspired by Thomas Oden’s book “Agenda for Theology”.

Briefly put, Christian Fundamentalism holds 5 doctrines at its core, as found in their conferences and creeds:

1. The inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible.
2. The virgin birth and deity of Jesus.
3. The substitutionary Atonement.
4. The literal, physical resurrection of Jesus.
5. The literal, physical return of Christ.

Now, I myself have no problems with any of the above doctrines. I believe they’re all true, and vital for Christian spirituality. But at the same time, I find it is an odd list, isn’t it? The bible contains a lot of content, why single these articles out? Compare for example, the above Fundamentalist “doctrinal standard” with the Epistula Apostolorum, (150 A.D.) one of the earliest Christian creeds:

“In the Father, the Ruler of the Universe,
And in Jesus Christ, our Redeemer,
In the Holy Spirit, the Counselor,
in the Holy Church and Forgiveness of Sins.”

Quite a different ring to it, doesn’t it? Imagine if you were involved in a committee which churned these creeds out. All writing finds its inspiration from somewhere: grocery lists are for food needs, laws are written for the needs of lawyers and judges, blogs are written for the needs of people who desperately want an audience for their thoughts. What was it that inspired the above creeds? What need moved them?

I found Thomas Oden's book very helpful when he writes of fundamentalism: “The principle of selection of these 5 fundamentals makes good sense only if seen in the context of nineteenth-century historicism, in which a determined effort was made to establish faith on the basis of objective historical evidence.”

Again, I have no problem with historical evidence: the Christian faith would be a scam if points 2-3 aren’t historically true. But problems arise when the health of a Christian’s faith is measured primarily (and sometimes only!) by the acceptance of a handful of historical facts. To summarize Oden’s criticism of Fundamentalism, it has taken such a keen interest in the fact of Jesus' resurrection, that it has lost sight of what it means to live in fellowship with the risen Lord. It has lost sight of what the early church confessed as the heartbeat of the faith: “in Jesus Christ, our redeemer.” The framers of the Apostolorum simply express what is natural to Christian experience: a living encounter with the Triune God, Father Son and Holy Spirit, through the assembly of believers and the forgiveness of sin.

This life in Christ of course depends upon certain historical facts, but to be consumed with these facts apart from living the Christian life is a Christian heresy. For all of Fundamentalism’s labours in promoting sound doctrine, many fundamentalist believers seem to have lost sight of the fact that most of the time when the apostles write about “sound doctrine”, they are referring to articles of Christian living: provide for your family; work hard; treat each other with love, grace, and respect; do not live in any way that maligns or brings disrepute on the name of God. I really wish that last one had made its way onto the list of “Fundamentals”.

I agree with every point of Fundamentalist doctrine. But, I deeply desire to disassociate myself with this label, simply because while Fundamentalism emphasizes sound doctrine, it seems to display in its attitude and mannerisms a complete loss of understanding of what Christian doctrine is really all about.

In the context of my book review of Sarfati, I don’t mind so much his preoccupation with a literal understanding of Genesis -by all means, defend that view, I think he made some strong points. However, the lack of seriousness he attends to alternative interpretations seems to me to betray that collusion with historicism that is characteristic of Fundamentalism.

Book Review: “Refuting Compromise” by Jonathan Sarfati

A simple reading of the first 11 chapters of the bible shows God forming all of creation in seven ordinary days, and recounts a tale of a global flood that wiped out the earth. “Refuting Compromise” is a scientific and biblical defense of this tradition, mostly written to Christians who embrace some sort of “compromise” with contemporary science: claiming the universe is billions of years old, that Noah’s flood was small and local rather than global, etc.

I have been asked “Why are you even bothering to read that?” Well, I have no illusions about my status as a scientific ignoramus. I have no formal scientific education beyond high school, and so hold no scientific doctrines as inviolable. I have no reason not to give the young-earth creationists a hearing. So I bit the bullet and waded through this 400-page tome of fundamentalism.

I have one caveat in defense of my intellectual integrity: I did insist that the young-earth creationist I would listen to have some legitimate scientific qualifications. Sarfati has a PhD in physical chemistry from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Like Johnson, Behe, and Miller, he has done enough cognitive legwork to be worth listening to.

Genetic Information

One thing I really like about Sarfati is his criticism of “micro/macro evolution”. A lot of Creationists and proponents of Intelligent Design claim that only “micro evolution” is true. So for example, they would have no problem with Darwin’s observations of the Galapagos finch beaks: a finch’s beak changes abit from island to island, being adapted to its environment. Sure, a bird’s beak, that’s “micro” evolution. But for a Hippo to turn into a whale, that’s too much, that’s “macro” evolution.

I agree with Miller and Sarfati, that this isn’t a helpful distinction, because it’s impossible to put parameters on what qualifies an evolutionary event as “micro” or “macro”. A Chihuahua and a great Dane, if we never saw these animals before, appear to have pretty “macro” differences between them.

Sarfati claims that what is objectionable to evolution is not the size of a change, but the notion that natural selection can increase an organism's genetic information. To move from an amoeba to a fish is not plausible because such a shift means there is an increase in genetic information. To increase in genetic information is for a cell to create information out of thin air, which has no scientific evidence to back it up he claims. However, Sarfati does believe that mutations may cause decreases in genetic information that benefit an animal in its environment. So if global temperatures drop to ice-age conditions, and a dog loses the genes (via genetic mutation) that tell his fur to cut off growth at 1 inch and therefore grows longer fur, he has inherited a beneficial mutation as a result of a loss of genetic information.

This is a far more appealing view than Johnson’s micro-macro distinction, but I’m not sure if it really works. What exactly qualifies as an increase in genetic information? Say a mutation in a single-celled organism causes a doubling of all information? (this happens sometimes in the lab) There’s no new information perse, simply a duplication of existing information. Sarfati claims this is not the kind of increase he excludes. But what if a cell’s DNA re-arranges its information so that it bears new traits? Sarfati doesn’t go into much detail with this “no increase” model, and so I’m not sure if it’s all that sound. He may go into more detail in some of his other books, so I’m putting a question mark at the end of this theory. Sounds like it could be promising, but sounds suspect enough that it may just end up in the dust-bin of Creationist theories.

The Earth’s Magnetic Field Decay

Another promising argument of Sarfati’s was about the earth’s magnetic field decay. This one caught my interest, because it was the one Creationist argument that Miller said stumped him for awhile. The argument goes that we observe the earth’s magnetic field decaying: at current decay rates, if the earth really was millions of years old, its magnetic field would have decayed to such an extent as to be virtually non-existent. Sarfati’s view is that God charged the earth with a magnetic field at creation some 6000 years ago, and it has been decaying ever since. Current decay rates are a strong witness to the earth’s young age.

Miller replied to this view by explaining that the earth’s magnetic field is caused by the rotation of the earth and the inner convection circulations of the earth’s core: in essence, "a self-sustaining dynamo." According to Miller, this is the consensual view of contemporary geologists.

Sarfati fires back at this explanation, saying that if the “dynamo model” is correct, it requires its adherents to maintain that the earth is a 100% effective perpetual motion device that has flawlessly maintained the magnetic field over millions of years. Again, I know too little to confirm or disconfirm the arguments, but it sounds to me like Sarfati is on to something here. Like most of the science I have learned through these books, I’m leaving this one as a question mark to explore in more detail later.

A Deep Irony

So just how did Noah fit all of the current species we see today on the ark? Sarfati’s model claims that what Noah had on the ark were “created kinds”, and the multiplicity of animals we see today are a result of natural selection operating on these original species which lost genetic information to create the many species we see today. What this amounts to is that Sarfati accepts some version of the theory of “common descent”. More than that, his views on the young earth mean that this evolution of species occurred much much faster than contemporary Darwinists believe!

Out of these four books, this is perhaps the most confusing thing I have read. All of these authors embrace some form of evolution, some form of “common descent.” Sarfati so far, with his “no increase of information” is the only one to put some roughly coherent scientific parameters on evolution, while Miller is consistent with saying no laws exist which prevent one species from evolving into another.

Sarfati’s Geological Models

Like reading Johnson, the information on paleontology and geology caught my interest. Apparently before Darwin’s theory came in vogue, some form of catastrophism was popular among geologists. In other words, the geological science of Darwin’s day proposed no threat to a literal take on Genesis: it even supported it. Of course, it is no commendation of Sarfati to observe that a lot of the geological evidence he advances comes from sources over a hundred years old!

The Politics of Science

At a few interesting points, Sarfati gives illustrations of a community of earth scientists that dismiss any kind of catastrophism out of hand, even though some of these views have eventually been vindicated. (The specific example Sarfati gives is the Spokane Flood) These examples intrigue me, because it gives me a picture of the scientific community embroiled in the very ecclesiastical politics that religion is so roundly criticized for having. Scientific communities have creeds, and standards of orthodoxy that actually obstruct innovation and discovery within science. Behe also decried this lack of freedom within scientific circles to think outside of the Darwinian box.

At one point in Miller’s book, he criticizes opponents of Darwinism for failing to publish their theories in peer-reviewed journals. I think this view is a little naive, for it assumes peer-reviewed journals are willing to publish Creationist and Intelligent design researchers.

My point in all this is that one of the fruits of my research has been to discover to what extent science is politically motivated. Academia is not just about a noble quest for truth. It is also a business and a bureaucracy. There are a number of well-qualified young earth geologists with prestigious degrees in geology and earth science. But what would happen, given the prejudice against these scientist, if a leading journal of science was heard to publish a paper espousing young-earth geology? There are economic and political consequences for upholding a high view of freedom of speech.

Creationists and proponents of Intelligent Design want to be admitted to the academic debate. Johnson himself was regularly invited to speak in Michael Ruse’s science classes at Florida State University. Ruse is no Creationist sympathizer, but is running against the grain in defending the academic rights of these radical dissenters. If they’re false, what better way to bury these views than by roundly shredding them in academic debate? Excluding them from scholarly discussion simply aggravates the problem, and perpetuates bad science. For every academic that isn’t willing to give them a hearing or a response, there is a multitude of churchgoers unqualified to critique them who are. Who will defend the population from bad science if the scientists aren’t willing to?

What then? Hold the scientific consensus hostage to my personal incredulity until they demonstrate to my satisfaction that they have been careful in their observations, and speak the truth? I think my position must be something like that, and no, I do not find it satisfactory. Some sort of basic academic trust needs be exercised between "rival" disciplines. But this cuts both ways: if I am to accept what scientists say because scientists say so, by what rule are they exempt from believing what religious studies say about God, because a religious academic said it? There is a mutual contempt and suspicion between these disciplines that I haven’t worked out a satisfactory answer to.

Faith and Science

Sarfati’s scientific views will likely have little persuasive power upon non-Christians. This is a book for Christians to Christians, and the gist of his argument is that God has explicitly told us he made the earth in seven days some six thousand years ago. If scientific evidence claims otherwise, science simply got its information wrong, and needs to go back to the drawing board. Again, a non-Christian would have a very tough time accepting this as a persuasive argument.

Does Creationism deserve to be called science? Consider that scientific theories are brewed up out of ignorance: we cannot explain a certain observation of nature, and so someone comes up with a hypothesis and if the glove fits well enough (it never fits perfectly by the way), that hypothesis is elevated to some respect and adherence. Unlike Johnson, Creationists have a theory: a very general one, but a theory. Loosely speaking, a young earth, and loosely speaking, some global catastrophe as the explanation for geological observations.

I think the most offensive problem with this theory is that the source of the theory comes from a religious text, and most people have that darn intellectual wall that simply regards religion and science as mutually exclusive disciplines. Without giving it much thought, a lot of people simply disregard this theory as unscientific because it has religious qualities to it. Nevertheless, it functions just like any other scientific theory.

There is one other objectionable aspect to “Creationism as science” that makes it differ from other theories: it is unfalsifiable. That is, no amount of evidence to the contrary ever can or will demonstrate Creationism to be false. Sarfati is very clear on this point.

Despite this dissimilarity, I am not at this point willing to discount Creationism as “unscientific”, for Creationists and IDers criticize Darwinism on these same grounds. Consider how many nature videos you’ve seen that comment on the beautiful natural world by describing something as the product of millions of years of natural selection: am I expected to believe that every one of those comments is the fruit of the laboratory and critical field-work? More often than not, it’s the Darwinian imagination at work rather than actual scientific observation and experiment. Darwinism is the assumed theory, the orthodox position that has gained acceptance, therefore it is assumed to be able to explain whatever we observe, regardless if any experiments have been done on the many details we explain away through a general Darwinian view. So if that is the “science” you embrace, on what basis can you criticize Creationism as being “unscientific”? Creationism as a theory behaves in a similar way as other scientific theories. Creation scientists don’t have all the details figured out, they can't explain all observations, but their operational assumption is that their theory eventually will be vindicated by the laboratory. Darwinian adherents operate in exactly the same way when they encounter anomalies. And why shouldn't they? Has anyone yet discovered that great "scientific glove" in the sky that perfectly fits all observations?

Exegetical Criticisms

Sarfati spends alot of time interacting with the bible, but it was particularly disappointing for him to spend so little time addressing what’s called “the literary interpretation” of Genesis 1-11. This view of the first few chapters of Genesis considers it not as literal history perse, but mythico-historical literature, if I may invent a term to try and describe it. When Moses sat down to write Genesis, he was not motivated by a desire to give Darwin a rebuttal. Rather, the intention of the text is to take some shots at contemporary religious views, (land, sea and air are not ruled by a pantheon of bickering deities, but are all creations of one good God) and to give God’s people a concept of who God is, (his power and rulership of creation) and how they are to view the creation. (A gift from the one who made it) This view of Genesis 1-11 leaves questions about historical accuracy a blank: that is simply not the point of the text, nor should Moses be faulted for not reading like a dissertation on natural history.

Sarfati simply dismisses this view as “weird”, which seems to me to betray a fundamentalist view of the bible. The literary interpretation doesn’t register for Sarfati as a credible view worth refuting, nor does he seem to understand that the main proponents of this view have a very high view of scripture. In his defense, Sarfati does present ample exegetical reasons why he thinks Gen 1-11 is literal history, and does a good job of making his case. However, he does not directly address my views on Genesis, so it was a bit of a disappointing read. Nevertheless, Sarfati is impressive in the breadth of issues he tackles.

Book Review: “Finding Darwin’s God” by Kenneth Miller

After reading Johnson and Behe, I thought I had done enough reading to step out of my “evolution is irrelevant” camp, and begin taking some shots at Darwinism. Nothing spectacular, just saying that it’s not unreasonable to reject Darwinism, and Johnson and Behe provide no small amount of ammo for some modest attacks on everyday evolutionists, Christian and not.

Well, it didn’t take long for someone to challenge me to read the other guy’s side of the story, and Miller is an excellent read. Here you have a Biology Professor at Brown University, and a Catholic by faith. He is a well-qualified, full blown Theistic Evolutionist, a view I considered to be too much of a Chimera to be plausible.

Much to my surprise, I found many of my presuppositions challenged by this book, and I’m very glad I read it.

The Scientific Case for Evolution

By and large, I found Miller’s case thorough, well-reasoned, and persuasive. It caused me no little amount of stress to come to terms with just how forceful the case for evolution really is. That being said, like my experience of reading Johnson and Behe, I found myself lost in the details of the science, unqualified to evaluate what I’m reading.

The biggest question raised in my mind was about the fossil record. Johnson made an excellent case for the fossil record being a problem for evolution. Miller repeatedly claims that the fossil record is evolution’s greatest supporter. Neither Johnson or Miller are paleontologists, and so both are speaking outside of their area of expertise: who am I to trust? They are both well-read in the field.

Here I simply need to do more homework. As I have explored online resources on this topic, I’m a little vexed at how eager evolutionists are to point to “artist’s renditions” of the fossil record. I’m not willing to settle for a bunch of doodles of apes turning into people, or dogs turning into whales. I would like to see the bones, be told where they were found, and what the strata they were found in says about their dates. I’m looking for science, not a propaganda picture book.

The other thing is, I’m wondering if Johnson and Miller are speaking to different criteria of proof? Johnson wants transitionary fossils. Miller is looking at a bigger theme of “common descent”: are there general common traits between fossils? The paleontological evidence as far as these two men present it, seems to be this: there’s enough evidence for believers in evolution to find support, and little enough evidence for skeptics to be justified in unbelief. If that’s true, Miller is overstating his case, and Johnson's objection that the data isn't sufficient to justify the conclusion is sound.

As Miller clearly writes, paleontological evidence is based on morphology: The shape of animal A is similar to animal B, so it’s reasonable to conclude that over millions of years, animal A turned into animal B. If that’s the gist of the science, I don’t see the big deal in either affirming or denying the theory. It’s just not a weighty area of knowledge.

Apparently the best attested fossil records are for the horse, the whale, and the elephant. So say we have fossils of small horses, and gradually we have a succession of fossils of horses getting larger, with moderate changes in bone structure. I can accept that, it’s no different than a chihuahua turning into a great Dane, and despite these dog’s great morphological difference, we know they share a common gene pool. Does this warrant the assumption that all life went from a puddle of goo to the enormous diversity we see today? I find that a bit hard to swallow, and it stretches the evidence if all we have are some bones for three species. But at the same time, given we see this occurrence with three species, is this positive evidence against all life evolving from a puddle? Just as forcefully, no. Johnson provides nothing to say that it couldn’t have happened that way, simply that there is insufficient evidence to baptize Darwinism as the only way it could have happened. Why should anyone get all hot and bothered if someone makes a commitment one way or the other?

Theism and Evolution

Theistic Evolution is one of those two-headed monster views that I think the Creationist camp views as compromising the faith, and which Skeptics regard as a compromise of science. Certainly some versions of Theistic Evolution fit that description. I myself would consider Miller’s version a compromised Christianity, but that’s judging Miller by the criteria of my conservative Evangelicalism. Miller is a Catholic, and ever since Vatican II, it’s been very unclear as to what is really means to be “Catholic” anyways. I don’t mean that as a thoughtless protestant shot at Catholics -I have heard far more disillusionment and confusion about Vatican II from Catholics than from Protestants, but that’s a subject for another post. I simply wanted to draw attention to the fact that “theistic evolution” is acceptable in certain quarters of Christendom, and regarded with suspicion in others. My personal take is suspicion, and I simply desire to put my cards on the table.

For example, Miller defends the idea that science and religion are different ways of knowing. Science occupies one sphere, religion another, and it’s not that these contradict each other: it’s just that they deal with different subject matter to such an extent that they rarely interact with one another. Roughly speaking, Miller claims science explores knowing physical reality, whereas religion deals with the sphere of ethics.

This all sounds good on paper. This view is heartily endorsed by many scientists and scientific organizations. This view attempts to give religion dignity to speak to its field of expertise without claiming a priestly role over science. This also gives freedom to scientists, keeping religion out of the laboratory, and allowing scientists the academic liberty to pursue their studies without the restraints of religious dogma, or ecclesiastical politics. Everyone wins, right?

But ironically, I think the logical outflow of this view is to put religion in a domineering position over science. According to Miller, religion’s magisterium is Ethics. Ethics comprises an awful lot. I wonder if Miller would endorse the view that the “ethics” magisterium also must include the ethics of knowing? In other words, religion claims the sphere of telling people how to know. This hardly seems objectionable, any good Christian would affirm such axioms as: “Don’t overstate your case”; “form your beliefs according to the evidence”; “Give each side a proper hearing.” Religion is a welcome companion to science in this sense.

This is all fine and dandy for science if religious ethics restricts their ethics of knowledge to “how to know.” But I’m not aware of any religion that restricts itself in this way. All of the major western religions also lay claim to what people are to know, including historical facts. All religions I’m familiar with, eastern and western, lay an ethical burden upon believers to adhere to certain beliefs. For a Christian, they ought to believe in Jesus. A Muslim ought to believe in the Koran. As regards the bible, if a simple literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11 is historically true, it is obligatory upon Christians to believe in a young universe, created in 7 days, roughly 6000 years ago.

A find this “magisterium” distinction unhelpful and confusing. Education is largely a matter of acquiring new information and experience, and synthesizing this new knowledge with existing knowledge. Putting a partitioning wall between ethics and science seems to me to be a simple act of compartmentalizing one’s mind to the point where you’re unable to coherently integrate your thoughts. If religion claims the sphere of ethics, then religion also claims the right to dictate to science not just how to believe, but what to believe.

Newton’s Last Stand

I have a lot of respect for Miller: throughout this book, I was struck by the personality of a man who has an intense love for science. Once I finished the book, I was simply buzzing with appreciation for the scientific enterprise. Miller’s attitude is infectious. Miller is a biologist, but his scientific interests go beyond simple cells.

Most interesting to me scientifically in the midst of the debate this book addresses, was Miller’s forays into Quantum theory. (I feel smarter just writing that.) In a nutshell, he presents what we know about the behaviour of atoms, and demonstrates that life on the atomic level is unpredictable. We cannot predict with any accuracy how atoms will behave: the more we study and test, the more we confirm that atomic movements are “inherently and absolutely unpredictable”.

Thus, Miller raises a significant challenge to “scientism”, or views of the world espoused by the likes of a Dawkins or a Dennet, that try to cow science into supporting the notion that life is all a determined ball of cause and effect, with set, discoverable laws that tell how everything has and will happen. Miller says this is basically Newton’s view of science which Quantum theory has sufficiently demonstrated to be false. At the heart of the structure of the universe is chaos and randomness, not predictability.

So we look hard at the microscope, and we find no God: but neither do we find law or order. Miller speculates that God has so wired the universe as to make himself undiscoverable through a microscope: we will never find an atom with God’s signature on it to settle our debates. But, the Deity has so wired the universe as to leave room for Himself to imperceptibly guide the creation. It wouldn’t be hard for an omnipotent, omniscient being to be shifting the random atomic forces about in such a way that, millions of years down the road, out come a pair of hominids to which God reveals himself and bestows upon them a soul. (Or so Miller speculates) God’s current active involvement and creation of the universe is not the least challenged by science: what is challenged is a Newtonian view of science, which is still being propped up by those who wish to enlist science in their diatribes against God.

Summary

I’m still chewing on Miller’s arguments. He presents a very forceful case for evolution, and a fine-sounding harmonization between his faith and his science. Unfortunately, he spends hardly any time interpreting the bible, where issues of interpretation is the main source of the contention between science and faith. I’m not terribly bent out of shape if someone is persuaded that Genesis 1-11 is not meant to be interpreted literally. There exist good literary reasons for interpreting it that way. However, if someone decides Genesis 1-11 is meant to interpreted literally, but is false because scientific orthodoxy says so, then you’ve put science as having magisterial power over religion. This results in a position that does not allow a faith tradition to speak on its own authority, but only within the bounds of science. Again, not a happy match. What little he does say about the bible, I find unacceptable, and the “magisterium” distinction he makes just doesn’t work. I'm left with more questions, but a better idea of where to find answers, where I need more knowledge, and which proposed solutions are not the way to go.

Book Review: “Darwin’s Black Box” by Michael Behe

Michael Behe is a Biochemist at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, and a Catholic by faith. His book is subtitled “The biochemical challenge to evolution.” I have heard a number of positive reviews of Behe’s book over the years, and it certainly is significant that here you have a Biologist by trade raising a challenge to the assumptions of his own discipline.

Strengths

I have an odd commendation for Behe -a wealth of detailed scientific information, excellent sources, all so impressive that I could hardly understand a word of it. Perhaps this is more an enchantment with my own ignorance now that I think about it -if I genuinely know so little about biochemistry, who am I to judge that he knows what he’s talking about? My assumption is, you can’t hold a post at a university and be an ignoramus in your own discipline at the same time: as far as I can tell, Behe does a good job of backing up his arguments with solid science. At numerous points, Behe does encourage his reader to familiarize himself with a basic textbook on biochemistry -oboy, I’ll get right on it, and while I do, I’m going to get a root canal! All the more material for my posts on human suffering...

The gist of Behe’s argument is easy enough to follow: understand the notion of “irreducible complexity”, and apply that to various biological systems explained in minute detail with inaccessible scientific jargon. Simply put, a) evolution requires gradual, successive steps of change. However, b) nature is replete with “irreducibly complex” systems. That is, you cannot reduce these systems to single parts, for if you removed one part, the whole system becomes useless. An eye requires many parts working simultaneously in order to function. If you take only one of these parts away, the whole thing ceases to have any utilitarian value. Now, how could evolution, which depends on the functional value of mutations, possibly explain this? For these many parts, until joined to the whole, have no useful function at all. This is Darwin’s black box Behe claims: Darwin knew nothing of the nature of cells, and now that science has uncovered the “irreducible complexity” of biological life, his whole theory has become enormously implausible.

I like Behe’s argument. It’s pretty intuitive, and though I couldn’t follow all of the details of the examples he provided, I generally got the idea as he demonstrated how bacterial flagellum, blood clotting, etc, all require the functioning of numerous parts all at the same time, and how taking one of these parts away destroys the functionality of the entire system.

Behe challenges evolution, and supplies a bit of an alternative: “Intelligent Design”. Since Darwin’s theory cannot adequately explain the discoveries of Biochemistry, what can? An intelligent designer: Behe is arguing for the admittance of “Someone intelligent made this” into the arsenal of scientific theories that help us explain the world around us. He doesn’t say this is necessarily God: he says the theory of “Intelligent Design” could go almost anywhere: it could be God, it could be aliens, it could be ourselves going back in time and making life happen. The point is, mere natural laws cannot explain life, but an intelligent designer can. Moreover, the “Intelligent Designer” has left us no more knowledge of himself other than the fact that he’s intelligent, so scientists need not get their knickers in a knot that religion is trying to horn in on the goings-on of the laboratory.

Weaknesses

Behe is a bit of a one-trick pony. He puts all of his eggs in the “irreducible complexity” basket. For someone who desires to learn more to speak intelligibly to the creation/evolution debate, it seems unreasonable for me to settle the issue in my mind with the close of Behe’s book. I don’t believe in putting all of my eggs in one basket; why is Behe comfortable with this violation of common-sense laws of belief forming?

Simply put, it’s because Behe accepts the notion of “common descent”. That is, those intently looking for solid scientific ground to stand on to reject the insulting notion that we are descended from primates will find no sympathy in Behe, for he accepts that human beings descended from primates.

Of course, if “common descent” is in fact true, this is hardly a weakness in Behe’s position: it’s simply uncomfortable for those hoping to find in Behe a rigorous challenge to the “goo-to-you” version of evolution. So if Behe is right, we have confirmation that biology is trapped in Darwinian orthodoxy despite scientific progress. Yet, we also have confirmation in Behe that the main body of Darwin’s theory is correct.

My overall evaluation of Behe is that he isn’t what a lot of Christians expect. If you’re bound and determined to reject the theory of evolution, Behe is good evidence to support a suspicion that the scientific enterprise is caught up in an unwarranted enchantment with Darwin. Other than that, Behe is largely an endorser of Darwinism, for good or ill.

Book Review: “Darwin on Trial” by Phillip Johnson

For years I had seen Johnson’s numerous books on evolution floating about church libraries, and the private libraries of many Christians. The appearance of many of these books have been published in such a way that I think they were marketed to appeal to fundamentalist-type Christians, and so I rolled my eyes every time I saw them. “More Fundy literature plaguing Evangelicalism, great.”

Little did I know that Philip Johnson isn’t some backwoods ignoramus with an axe to grind, he’s a tenured professor of law at Berkeley university. Generally, the first thing I do with books is look into the qualifications of the writer to speak to the topic he’s presenting. Lawyers know a lot about sound and unsound arguments, so though Johnson’s profession isn’t in the sciences, I know I’m dealing with someone who doesn't merely know how to reason well: he has made a career out of teaching people how to do so. I was quite impressed also to learn that even Johnson’s opponents respect him, and give him a hearing. A good place to start my studies.

Some Strengths of Johnson

Philip Johnson’s main line of attack is to point out that Evolution is inadequate to explain the scientific data -this is exactly what I wanted to hear: not that evolution is inadequate, but that if it is inadequate, it needs science to demonstrate it to be so: arguing against evolution in the public square from a religious basis tends to get drowned out in fruitless hollering at or over each other’s presuppositions.

I also found it very informative to learn that the primary opponents to Darwin’s theory in Darwin’s day did not come from clergy, but from Paleontologists. The Paleontologists considered Darwin’s theory sufficiently refuted by the fossil record, which demonstrated long periods of stasis, and not the change Darwinism predicts. Johnson argues that the Paleontological record today is largely the same as what it was in Darwin’s day: we have more fossils, and more confirmation of stasis. I’ll leave that claim as it is, and come back to this issue when I review Finding Darwin’s God by Kenneth Miller.

Johnson advances many arguments from biology and Paleontology to demonstrate evolution’s inadequacies. Much to the chagrin of scientists, he proposes no alternative theory. This was in fact, the main argument advanced by proponents of Darwinism in Darwin’s day: “Despite a lack of support from the fossil record, what is your alternative explanation for natural history, dear paleontologist? That God created it? How is your explanation anymore scientific than Darwin’s?”

Is it fair to shoot holes in someone else’s theory and yet have no proposed alternative? I think it is: if I do not understand how the pyramids were built, but am surrounded by a mob of crater-faced teenagers insisting aliens built it, I am under no obligation to accept their theory. I can see no clear law of reason that dictates that my rejection of their theory bears an obligation to provide one of my own. Their theory is stupid, end of story.

The one caveat is, I probably would be under obligation if I were an Egyptologist. As pertains to the evolution debate, Johnson probably would sing a different tune if he were a scientist. But he’s not, he’s a lawyer. What then? Johnson’s arguments are valid for non-scientists, but invalid for scientists?

First off, his arguments are valid for logic. The details of evolutionary science are largely irrelevant to those outside of a scientific career, so it seems implausible to suggest that anyone is bound to believe any scientific theory, just because an academic consensus says so. I have a feeling though, that professional biologists would have a tough time embracing the force of Johnson’s arguments. Evolutionary science may well be irrelevant to the average Joe, but perhaps Johnson’s argumentative strategy is equally irrelevant to those who deal with biological theory five days of the week. Then again, if Johnson’s arguments are valid, perhaps it just means biologists need to be more critical about their day-to-day working assumptions.

Some Weaknesses

Johnson argues in his conclusion that Evolution is inseperable from naturalistic philosophy. This is an important creed for Johnson, and I spent a good while thinking about it, and not a little energy attempting to form this argument into a simple, easily demonstrable syllogism. After all, if you can demonstrate that evolution’s very structure is philosophical and not scientific, you’ve basically won the game, right? Unfortunately, I have been unable to demonstrate this to be true, and I have to stick to my original position: evolution can be wedded to either a theistic or atheistic perspective. Christianity does not disavow natural causes for events. It simply disavows that natural causes are the only realities in the universe. So if evolution is a system of natural causes, why should that be “inseperably linked with naturalism”? Johnson doesn’t say, although he may do so in his other book Reason in the Balance, currently collecting dust on my shelf waiting to be read.

The biggest glaring fault in Johnson’s argument is the necessity of holding some kind of conspiracy theory. I loathe conspiracy theories with a passion. Yet, if Johnson is right, that evolution is unadulterated scientific nonsense, I must therefore conclude that the majority of the world’s biologists, paleontologists, astronomers, etc., have all gotten together to conspire and endorse a theory that they know to be false. Or perhaps more softly: a host of academic departments have ceased to think critically about their operating assumptions. (This appears to be Johnson's view) This is a pretty tall order: you’d think that a theory as bad as Johnson makes evolution out to be would have some internal criticism. My observation is the opposite: a large number of well educated people from all sorts of religious and irreligious stripes have found in Darwinism a powerful explanation of natural phenomenon.

While I was impressed with the breadth of Johnson’s scientific knowledge, and the cogency and force of his case against evolution, I found the implications of the conclusion a bit hard to swallow. So I’m keeping his arguments in mind, but before I endorse Johnson’s take on things, I’d like to hear the other guy’s side of the story...

A Prelude to some Book Reviews

This past winter, I made it my goal to read a number of books from a number of perspectives on the creation/evolution debate.

You see, for many years I have been uninterested in the debate, for its relevance seemed minimal. My longstanding distaste for the topic began with an internal criticism of my own faith community: I encountered “the Fundy spirit” which pitted evolution and atheism against the bible and Christianity. However, it seemed plain to me that evolution did not provide any support for atheism, for evolution is merely about how existing matter behaves, not whether God created that matter or not. Evolution does not answer the question of the existence of God at all: it is almost entirely irrelevant to the question. It was always my delight to smugly listen to atheists who went on and on about how evolution answered all of their questions and justified their unbelief, then to simply ask where all that evolving matter came from? I didn’t need any education in the details of the science, because it was irrelevant to evaluating the philosophical question.

Even if evolution is true, (I reasoned to myself) its truthfulness would leave all of the central doctrines of Christianity intact: evolutionists still have to deal with the God question, and I always felt it was a strength of my apologetic not to have to hand out “reject evolution!” buttons as a pre-requisite for entrance to the kingdom of God. To do otherwise was just plain silly.

Then my education took a new turn: since I have begun pursuing graduate theological studies, an itching ignorance has been afflicting my mind. As I specialize in one field of knowledge, I am growing increasingly embarrassed at how little I know about things outside of my specialty. I am becoming specialized -good! I am becoming unbalanced -bad!

An apologetics course I took required me to familiarize myself with some “Intelligent Design” literature, and I have used that as a diving board to plunge into other related books. I would like to blog a few book reviews out, at least to help myself sort through the information I’m reading. I also hope my blog followers will also find my reviews of interest, but I have to apologize: though I’m working on my brevity, these will be longer than my regular posts.