What Lawrence Krauss wrote about transporters and souls in The Physics of Star Trek is not the only time he’s engaged the subject of how religion and science relate.
His web page has a number of articles that he’s written on religion and science, and–though I don’t agree with him in everything he argues in them–I find it refreshing how respectful he is of religion in these pieces.
One set of pieces in particular jumped out at me, because it was involved in the recent Intelligent Design debate that Cardinal Schoenborn has been participating in.
It seems that Dr. Krauss first wrote a piece for the New York Times that Cardinal Schoenborn then took exception to (without naming it) in his well-known article, following which Dr. Krauss sent a letter to B16 and later published a piece summarizing the situation and defending his letter against secular critics who thought he shouldn’t bother interacting with the Church.
In this post, I’d like to take a look at the text of Dr. Krauss’s letter to B16 and offer a few thoughts. He wrote it in conjunction with two Catholic biologists who were also signatories of the letter.
Here ’tis:
July 12, 2005
His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
00120 Vatican CityYour Holiness:
In his magnificent letter to the Pontifical Academy [of Sciences] in 1996 regarding the subject of Evolution, Pope John Paul II affirmed that scientific rationality and the Church’s spiritual commitment to divine purpose and meaning in the Universe were not incompatible. The Pope accepted that biological Evolution had progressed beyond the hypothetical stage as a guiding principle behind the understanding of the evolution of diverse life forms on Earth, including humans. At the same time, he rightly recognized that the spiritual significance that one draws from the scientific observations and theory lie outside of the scientific theories themselves. In this sense, claiming that evolution definitely implies a lack of divinity, and/or divine purpose in nature is as much an affront to science as it is to the Church.
This is a pretty good summary of what JP2 said in the letter in question. One could quibble that he’s omitting some nuances JP2 stressed, but in substance it’s a good summary. Particularly to be appreciated is the phrase I’ve emphasized.
The Holy Father also recognized: "It is important to set proper limits to the understanding of Scripture, excluding any unseasonable interpretations which would make it mean something which it is not intended to mean. In order to mark out the limits of their own proper fields, theologians and those working on the exegesis of the Scripture need to be well informed regarding the results of the latest scientific research." Since scientific investigations have repeatedly confirmed evolution by natural selection as a guiding principle for understanding the development of the diversity of life on Earth, theologians who are interested in exploring such questions as human dignity and purpose must take this mechanism into account in their considerations. As he put it, quoting from Leo XIII, truth cannot contradict truth.
The substance of this is also fine, although my Spider Sense goes off at one point because too much weight could be put on the assertion that theologians "must take this mechanism into account in their considerations." If Dr. Krauss means that theologians must agree that evolution is true and incorporate this into their theological explorations then I would have a problem with what he says.
If he means, though, that the evidence for evolution proposed by contemporary science must be taken seriously and in that sense "taken into account" then I would not have a problem. You’ve got to listen to all relevant evidence, though what conclusion you come to based on that evidence cannot be mandated at the outset. You may spot flaws in the argumentation others put on that evidence or you may have additional evidence they are not taking into account. Everyone has to come to his own conclusions on empirical matters.
There is no "scientific Magisterium."
These principles were reinforced more recently in explicit statements by the International Theological Commission, headed by you before your election as Pope. As the Commission document explicitly states, "God is…the cause of causes." As a result, "Through the activity of natural causes, God causes to arise those conditions required for the emergence and support of living organisms, and, furthermore, for their reproduction and differentiation." Finally, referring to evolution as a "radically contingent materialistic process driven by natural selection and random genetic variation", the commission nevertheless concluded "even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation."
Here we run into a significant problem. While the quotations Dr. Krauss gives from the International Theological Commission document are accurate, they are used in a way that is at least somewhat misleading.
First, the Commission does not assert that evolution is a "radically contingent materialistic process driven by natural selection and random genetic variation." It says that many neo-Darwinian scientists and some of their critics have concluded that if that is what evolution is then there is no place for divine providential causality. It then disputes this conclusion and concludes that a "truly contingent natural process" can fall under divine providence.
Krauss correctly points out the Commission’s conclusion on this point, but the way that he has introduced the emphasized phrase makes it appear that the Commission has conceded that this is an adequate and apparently exhaustive description of biological evolution, and it has not.
In fact, in the very same passage that Dr. Krauss is taking his quotations from, the Commission goes out of its way to take note of Intelligent Design critics of neo-Darwinianism, saying:
A growing body of scientific critics of neo-Darwinism point to evidence of design (e.g., biological structures that exhibit specified complexity) that, in their view, cannot be explained in terms of a purely contingent process and that neo-Darwinians have ignored or misinterpreted. The nub of this currently lively disagreement involves scientific observation and generalization concerning whether the available data support inferences of design or chance, and cannot be settled by theology [Communion and Stewardship 69].
In other words: Whether the ID people are right or not is an empirical question that the Church is not intervening to settle (indeed, it says it can’t be settled by theology, which means that science will have to fight it out). As far as the Church is concerned the ID people could be right or wrong.
This should be kept in mind as we proceed.
The Commission goes on in the next section to state that, because the human soul has to be specially created by God:
Catholic theology affirms that that the emergence of the first members of the human species (whether as individuals or in populations) represents an event that is not susceptible of a purely natural explanation and which can appropriately be attributed to divine intervention [op. cit. 70].
So it would not be theologically acceptable to look upon naturalistic evolution (under secondary causation) as an adequate explanation for the emergence of all life forms including man. The latter required a special intervention of God on at least the spiritual level.
Dr. Krauss continues:
Scientists have been pleased to see a convergence between the views of the Catholic Church and the scientific community on these issues, in particular on the compatibility between the results of scientific investigation and Church theology. One of us recently wrote an essay in the New York Times, for example (see attached), praising precisely the Church’s understanding of the compatibility of scientific investigation and religious belief, even when the process being investigated, like Evolution, appears completely contingent.
This is all fine, and most welcome.
Now we get to the controversial point . . .
This week, Cardinal Christoph Schšnborn, archbishop of Vienna, however, appeared to dangerously redefine the Church’s view on Evolution. In an essay, also published in the New York Times (see attached), he claimed that "Evolution in the Neo-Darwinian sense… is not true".
Okay, but he wasn’t speaking as a representative of the Church but as a private individual, and so his remarks are incapable of redefining anything on behalf of the Church. It is his right as a private individual to hold either that neo-Darwinian evolution is true or that it is false (per the ITC’s statement that theology cannot settle this question, see above), and as long as he makes it clear that he is speaking for himself and not for the Church then he would also seem to have a right to air his opinions on this matter in public.
That being said, I don’t see any evidence in Cardinal Schoenborn’s piece that makes it clear in what capacity he is writing in (in fact, he talks like he’s speaking for the Church), and in an age of global communications, this is something that can be faulted. Most readers of the popular press do not have a sense for when a cardinal is representing the Church and when he is representing his own theological and scientific opinions, and in view of this fact, high churchmen have a responsibility to make clear to the public the capacity in which they are speaking.
I also should point out that there seems to be a terminological problem here. Cardinal Schoenborn included in his definition of neo-Darwinian evolution the idea that it is "unguided" and "unplanned." I suspect that by stressing the compatibility of evolution with divine providence that Dr. Krauss and his colleagues are not incorporating these features into their understanding of neo-Darwinism and thus that part of the disagreement may be based on the term "neo-Darwinism" being used in different senses.
I also have to raise a concern about the way Dr. Krauss has quoted the cardinal, because there is no string in the cardinal’s article that can be elided to form "Evolution in the Neo-Darwinian sense… is not true." What the cardinal said was: "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but
evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense – an unguided, unplanned process
of random variation and natural selection – is not."
Dr. Krauss appears to have taken part of this phrase and combined it with an earlier occurrence of the phrase "is not true." Although this seems to be what the cardinal believes, it violates the rules of what can be put in quotation marks and thus misleads the reader regarding what the cardinal actually said.
As a scholar, Dr. Krauss no doubt understands the importance of quoting people exactly when you use quotation marks, and hopefully this was an accidental violation. Since he didn’t misrepresent the cardinal’s meaning, though, I won’t dwell on the matter further.
Dr. Krauss continues:
Moreover, he argued that if divine design was not "overwhelmingly evident" then the associated claims must be viewed as ideology, and not science.
I must confess that I’m having some trouble parsing this sentence, though it does not seem to correspond to what the cardinal said, which was: "Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science." This assertion seems fairly straightforward: The cardinal believes that the evidence for design in biology is so overwhelming that it cannot be denied or explained away without the result ceasing to be science and becoming an ideological construct.
One could agree or disagree with the cardinal on this point, but I have trouble squaring this with the representation of the remark in Dr. Krauss’s letter, so there may have been a typo or a drafting problem.
He attacked not only Neo-Darwinism, but also the multiverse hypothesis of modern cosmology, both of which he claimed were "invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science".
I think that the cardinal has a fair point here. It is arguable that many neo-Darwinists shape their theories in order to avoid evidence for purpose and design in nature, and it is very arguable that this is a key motivator behind the multiverse hypothesis.
Physicists have proposed mathematical models that would allow for the existence of a multiverse, but as yet nobody has actual evidence for other universes, and if you listen to discussions of why one might want to believe in a multiverse, the subject of avoiding design inevitably comes up.
For example, in Dr. Krauss’s book The Physics of Star Trek, he notes that a very large number of features of our universe seem to be calibrated to allow the existence of life. In other words, it looks like our universe was set up to allow life to exist. Dr. Krauss then goes on to raise the consideration that this may be an illusion caused by the fact that there are many universes in existence and that they have different features and that we just happen to be living in one of the universes that is so configured that intelligent life can exist. So of course this universe has the features for life. That doesn’t mean that it was designed to have life. . . . if there are bunches of other universes that are inhospitable to life and don’t have any.
And that’s true. If there are a large number of universes (let’s say that there are an infinite number, just to make it easy) and if their relevant physical properties vary randomly then surely some of them will randomly have the right combination of features to allow the existence of life, and so any species arising in such a universe would see around itself a universe that looked designed to have life even though it was actually random chance that produced these results.
But none of this gives us evidence for other universes or for the idea that their features vary randomly.
In fact, one could argue that postulating the existence of such universes to avoid the appearance of design in this way would be to appeal to evidence that you don’t have. One could argue that, until we have evidence that other universes with random physical properties exist, one should stick with the appearance of design that this universe displays and infer the existence of a Designer.
Or one could argue that the apparent design of this universe is equally consistent either with the random multiverse hypothesis or with the design hypothesis and that science is not (at least presently) capable of distinguishing between the two.
(One could also say that there is a multiverse and that it is designed. Personally, that’s the one I’m hoping for, but only because I like parallel universe stories.)
In any event, we don’t have evidence for the existence of other universes. Mathematical models are not evidence. One can just as well construct mathematical models of the cosmos that incorporate a Designer. Until a model produces a prediction that is subject to falsifiability, Karl Popper won’t want to call it science.
As long as that is the case, the multiverse hypothesis cannot claim greater scientific legitimacy than the design hypothesis, and the point is fair that the multiverse hypothesis frequently seems to involve a motive of avoiding the idea of design.
Equally worrisome, in his effort to claim a line between the theory of evolution and religious faith, Cardinal Schšnborn dismissed the marvelous 1996 message of Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy [of Sciences], calling it "rather vague and unimportant".
Yeah, that was a mistake.
It was, in places, not as precise as one might want, but to dismiss it in this way is not cricket, particularly for a cardinal.
Neither is what Schoenborn went on to do, which was to appeal to various papal audiences of John Paul II in an apparent attempt to neutralize the 1996 letter. He appeared to describe these audiences, in contrast to the 1996 letter, as containing "the real teaching of our beloved John Paul."
From an exegetical point of view, this is quite problematic. Neither papal audiences nor messages to the pontifical academy of sciences have a high level of magisterial authority. They’re both pretty low on the totem pole (compared, for example, to encyclicals). Indeed, if I had to decide which has more authority than the other, I’d go with the message over the audience since it represents a more extraordinary form of communication and thus carries greater weight and presumably had greater thoughtfulness go into it. (Audiences, by contrast, occur every week.)
However that may be, the proper approach is to seek whenever possible to harmonize what a given pope said in a message with what he said in his audiences, and it is a mistake to be dismissive of the former in favor of the latter.
I would note, though, that Cardinal Schoenborn is a native speaker of German rather than English, and so describing the letter as vague and unimportant may have had a different resonance and force in his linguistic community than it does in English.
It is vitally important, however, that in these difficult and contentious times the Catholic Church
not build a new divide, long ago eradicated, between the scientific method and religious belief.
This is the language of diplomacy. While it is welcome to have scientists stating that the divide between scientific method and religious belief was "long ago eradicated," and while this is substantially true, there are particular areas–most notably on the question of origins and on medical ethics–where some are advocating a version of scientific method that will clash with religious belief because it would either (a) refuse a priori to acknowledge evidence for a Designer even if overwhelming evidence of design were amassed or (b) insist on conducting the scientific enterprise in ways that are immoral (e.g., experimenting on humans in immoral ways, up to an including creating and destroying human beings for purposes of medical experiments).
As long as that is the case, there will continue to be a tension between religious belief and at least those articulations of the scientific method that make these two mistakes.
We are writing to you today to request that you clarify once again the Church’s position on Evolution and Science, that you reaffirm the remarkable statements of Pope John Paul II and the International Theological Commission, so that it will be clear that Cardinal Schšnborn’s remarks do not reflect the views of the Holy See.
B16 may or may not make substantive clarifications on these points (if he does, he won’t cite Cardinal Schoenborn by name and give him a public spanking), but it is important to point out here that–while he was speaking in a private capacity–Cardinal Schoenborn’s views do not seem to fall outside of permitted Catholic opinion and (if he takes reasonable steps so that people will not think he is speaking for the Church) he is free to argue them in the marketplace of ideas.
As are his critics.
Dr. Krauss and his colleagues conclude:
We thank you for your consideration to this request, and wish you continued strength and wisdom as you continue to lead the Catholic Church in these difficult times.
Sincerely,
on behalf of:
Lawrence M. Krauss (Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics, Professor of Astronomy, and Director, Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics, Case Western Reserve University)
Prof. Francisco Ayala (University Professor and Donal Bren Professor of Biological Sciences, Ecology, and Evolutionary Biology, Professor of Philosophy, and Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of Calfornia, Irvine)
Prof. Kenneth Miller (Prof of Biology, Brown University)
If I may add my own postscript to this, I’d like to give my compliments to Dr. Krauss and his associates for being willing to engage this issue in a thoughtful and positive way, and in particular they deserve compliments for even knowing about the ITC document (which didn’t make world headlines the way the 1996 message on evolution did, and so which most folks aren’t even aware of).
I hope other scientists will follow their example of positive engagement on such questions.
I take it back. The Physics of Star Trek post was gravy, a lark. THIS is why God created JimmyAkin.org.
Very thoughtful, methodical, judicious comments, Jimmy. Krauss, Schönborn, and even JP2 are all (in that order, in keeping with the subject’s proximity to the topic of the post) fairly evaluated, warmly appreciated for their positive contributions, and where necessary critiqued in charity and fairness.
Jimmy,
Re the many “ifs” and universes, etc. you might want to listen to Fr. Robert Spitzer of Gonzaga U. w. Fr. Pacwa. They were together on EWTN live w. a title Proofs of the existence of God on 07/06/2005. It’s a very interesting listen and is in the EWTN radio archives.
Her’es the link for the Pacwa EWTN proofs audio:
http://www.ewtn.com/vondemand/audio/resolve.asp?rafile=el_07062005.rm
Also, in the German orgiginal, Schönborn contrasts “die tatsächliche Lehre unseres verehrten Johannes Paul II. [the real and true teaching of our revered Jonh Paull II]” with his “eher unbestimmte und weniger bedeutende Botschaft von 1996 [more diffident/indefinite and less meaningful message in 1996]”.
I think the NYT translation was too facile, suggesting Schönborn outright disdained JP2’s 1996 message. The German suggests to me rather that the cardinal intended to redress what he sees as an inordinate media popularity for that 1996 message. (Note his almost complaint that the 1996 message is “always and everywehre cited,” though JP2’s other teachings are given less play.) Schönborn does not mean vagueness as imprecision — esp. in conjunction with JP2’s other robust pro-design teaching — but diffidence in regards to appearing to endorse, or even being construed as endorsing, outright radical neo-Darwinianism.
As far as the less meaningful nature of the message goes, Schönborn is trying to put the cart back behind the horse, since I believe he sees JP2’s teaching, as well as the Church’s, being read through the 1996 message, rather than vice versa. The message was “less meaningful” not only beucase it must be analyzed in the larger context of JP2’s many other teachings, but also because the new Catechism itself endorses robust teleology, which is basically anathema to neo-Darwinism.
I agree the cardinal jumped the shark a little by poo-pooing the 1996 message, but I do also think his negativity is less harsh than the NYT suggests.
There is a good interview at Zenit with Fr. Edward Oakes, SJ, about all this too.
1 of 2) http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=74786
2 of 2) http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=74825
I should mention (which seems so bizarre to me) that the Austrian cardinal’s commentary was written first in English and then translated into German. Pardon my calling the German the original. I do maintain, though, that the Germanic resonances of the words (coming from a German-speaking author) still hold, at least when read in conjunction with the whole passage in question.
…that the evidence for evolution proposed by contemporary science must be taken seriously…
If only there actually was some evidence for the neo-darwinian theory, rather than vast mountains of evidence against it, that might be a concern. But the more informed one becomes about the details the less one needs to worry about taking the neo-darwinian theory seriously.
“Many ways to induce mutations are known but none lead to new organisms. Mutation accumulation does not lead to new species or even to new organs or new tissues.” — Lynn Margulis, Acquiring Genomes, 2002
I don’t see how one can construct a true mathematical model of the cosmos that incorporates a Designer, without the sort of occurance parodied here.
I’d be interested in hearing a description of how one might look. Otherwise, a very thoughtful piece!
Actually, it looks to me like a parody of what happens when you try to leave out a Designer, except that scientism would substitute “a great number of surprisingly lucky random events over billions of years” for the word “miracle” in an attempt to explain what they can’t understand.
Neat cartoon, though.
In a nutshell, my question is, how would you quantify and mathematically describe a supernatural Designer? This isn’t saying that a supernatural Designer didn’t design the universe, just that a mathematical description of a supernatural Designer would seem to be by definition impossible, and I’m curious how one would go about it.
John:
1/0
Unless you’re an atheist, then its:
1/0i
🙂
John,
Only the atheists try to ‘capture’ God inside
the cosmos, because they are scare to death of
an Omnipotent, Eternal God.
Kudos, Jimmy! 🙂
Since a “true mathematical model of the cosmos” – assuming “the cosmos” to mean everything material that exists – is known to be impossible in principle, given that positivism has been a dead letter for half a century, I don’t really see the point to John Plato’s question.
Thanks for the great commentary, Jimmy. It’s great to see some informed and even-handed Catholic-blogsphere commentary on the topic.
Ah, and Zippy… Where would an evolution threat be without you.
[…tipping fedora to DC…]
Always a pleasure. And veritas, baby!
Theoretical Question: Going by the idea of parallel universes/realities, and the multiverse then – at least in the ideas in the sf/f novels I’ve read – how does one deal with the supposed existence of doppelgangers of onesself? How does the individuality of the soul work in such an instance?
John Plato-
A mathematical description of the Creator is impossible because the Creator is the first principle that makes mathematics even possible.
I’m not a mathemetician, and so I don’t know how to explain it, but it is like asking for proof of the data we receive through our five senses. How do we KNOW that this data actually corresponds to an external “reality”?
The answer is that this sense data forms the basis of all other judgements that we can make. We can’t dismiss our senses without losing the capacity to reason.
So, we find that in order to make any progress, we must start by accepting a mystery (our senses). If we do this, then we find that all things are possible. If we fail to accept the mystery, we can’t accept anything at all.
The one thing we can’t ever accomplish would be the expression (in an any way that is accessible to our senses) of just what makes our sense data valid.
It’s like trying to construct a building from the top down.
Tim J, Zippy, David B.: I don’t disagree! That’s my point. When Jimmy wrote:
“In any event, we don’t have evidence for the existence of other universes. Mathematical models are not evidence. One can just as well construct mathematical models of the cosmos that incorporate a Designer.”
…I couldn’t see how one could construct a mathematical model of the cosmos that actually did incorporate a Designer, for reasons along the same lines you suggest. I wondered if perhaps there were some oblique way I was missing, something like Cantor’s proof by diagonalization, or Godel’s first incompleteness theorem, ways that use mathematics to indirectly present greater truths.
But I can’t see how one would do it. To do so in a meaningful way would involve describing the nature not just of the universe, but of the Designer, and if that nature can be so algorithmically described, then by definition the Designer would not be supernatural. And if mathematical models that meaningfully incorporate a Designer can’t be constructed, then it erodes the force of Jimmy’s assertion a bit. One can’t claim that scientists are being arbitrary when they ignore a supernatural Designer in their mathematical models if a supernatural Designer can not be mathematically modeled in the first place.
This isn’t to say that Intelligent Design isn’t scientific; I believe it is, or at least it can be. But it can also overreach, and I think this particular statement was one of those times, at least in my opinion.
I enjoyed the subtle attention to detail of the rest of Jimmy’s post, which is why I remarked on the one thing that seemed out of place to me.
Could “incorporate a Designer” mean incorporate the existence or action of a designer into the models without actualy DESCRIBING the designer in any way?
I’m not taking a position on i.d. right now just making that point.
JP: Understood.
Could “incorporate a Designer” mean incorporate the existence or action of a designer into the models without actualy DESCRIBING the designer in any way?
Sort of like Newton’s gravity: G*m1*m2/r^2, and we recognize it because it makes the apple fall, but what the heck is it really? Scientific descriptions are always to some extent descriptions of the effects of unexplained upstream causes, it seems to me. Incorporating a designer would have to mean some sort of formalism such that when we see that formalism we infer an upstream designer, just as when we see the apple fall in a way that matches the equation we infer an upstream gravity.
John Plato,
I know you don’t disagree, I was just adding my two cents.
I haven’t had the chance to read everyone commenting in this thread, but some folks are making the task of incorporating a designer into a mathematical model of the universe too hard if they are insisting on making it a supernatural designer or one who is beyond mathematics.
As advocates of Intelligent Design often point out, the fact that the life or the universe contains elements of design does not require the designer to be supernatural.
“Terrestrial life/the universe we see around us shows elements of design” does not automatically mean that the designer in question is supernatural.
The multiverse “alternative” to Divine Intelligent Causation as an explanation for the extraordinary bio-compatibility of our universe has two problems.
One, even if the multiverse exists and our universe is one of those with life due to a happy combination of randomly produced constants, the underlying physical laws governing the multiverse and how it “produces” particular-universe “offspring” still would require a high level of specificity. After all, there are an infinite number of hypothetically possible mathematical structures for such a multiverse and, insofar as one can guage probabilities in infinite sets, I think it likely that the mathematical structures allowing for complex, integrated and information-rich physical structures to the extent necessary for rational and sentient life are much less common than those which would produce nothing of the sort.
Two, positing a multiverse does nothing to explain why anything (contingent) exists at all. Nor does it explain why what does exist exhibits Order. On the contrary, it ASSUMES the existence of particulars and a supervening Order. This leaves the Cosmological Argument untouched. It also, to the surprise of many perhaps, leaves the Thomist Design Argument untouched, since it argues from observed orderedness or integrated patterning and functioning in natural systems, NOT from irreducible complexity.
Emendation: Replace the last “it” above with “this argument”, otherwise the sentence is ambiguous and confusing. Sorry.
“Terrestrial life/the universe we see around us shows elements of design” does not automatically mean that the designer in question is supernatural.”
Or at least that, even if the Designer is supernatural, his work need not be. God could work through the natural laws he created in a seamless way, guiding without “breaking the rules”, so to speak.
Like the old billiard ball analogy… Say there is billiard ball on a table and God moves it in a certain direction. He has not broken any natural laws (that we know of) and the ball, following its nature, behaves in the same way as if you or I had moved it.
Unless one considers that every act of free will (God’s or ours) leaves a supernatural “fingerprint” on the universe, which could also be true.
The thing is, the “laws” of nature are the manifestation of God’s will. Things could just as well behave completely differently, only God does not (usually) desire that they do so. Things act according to nature, but that nature comes from God and is continually maintained by God, and can be changed if God wants to change it. I don’t think we should separate too much the idea of the supernatural and the natural, or say that living things or the universe having evolved slowly over time by natural processes or having been designed and crafted directly by God are contradictory ideas.
If you argue that the designer is not supernatural, then you’re arguing that you do indeed have evidence of other universes — at least two: Our universe, and the universe of the original non-supernatural designer. So not only are you are arguing for a multiverse theory, you are also arguing that one universe can spawn another. If you accept the premise that physical processes in a parent universe can create and specify those of a daughter universe, then you have just accepted nearly the entire basis for evolutionary cosmology, as well. By positing the idea of a non-supernatural designer, you essentially admit defeat before you’ve even begun.
I don’t like framing cosmological ID as a search for a non-supernatural designer, partly for the above reasons, partly because I feel (as Fr M Kirby pointed out so aptly in his third paragraph) that it is a form of question-begging, and partly because I feel there’s a palpable disingenuousness about it. At least there is for me.
I also wanted to address J.R. Stoodley’s initial question, but I don’t think I can add much to Zippy’s excellent response. A mathematical model is about formally expressing observations, and seeing where those expressions lead. There are some in the ID movement who have the goal of altering the scientific method, to create a new “deist science” that allows observation and miracles to exist side-by-side in the same theory. I am not one of those people. I believe that this poisons science, that it is cowardly, unnecessary, and most of all, that it robs our strongest arguments of their true grandeur and conviction. A good experiment does not assume what it is trying to prove; it convinces by force of result. I do not believe we succeed when we attempt to “prove” miracles. I believe we succeed when we disprove the unmiraculous, leaving the acceptance of miracles as the only remaining choice. In doing so, we remind the world of the limits of science, of what it does well and what it cannot do at all.
There are some in the ID movement who have the goal of altering the scientific method, to create a new “deist science” that allows observation and miracles to exist side-by-side in the same theory.
I know the blog post isn’t about miracles and their relation to science, but I do have a recent post about that very topic, as it happens.
I don’t like framing cosmological ID as a search for a non-supernatural designer, partly for the above reasons, partly because I feel (as Fr M Kirby pointed out so aptly in his third paragraph) that it is a form of question-begging, and partly because I feel there’s a palpable disingenuousness about it. At least there is for me.
It seems to me that it can only be disingenuous (let alone palpably so) if we have made the pre-scientific metaphysical presumption that intelligent agency never actually causes anything physical to happen in the world. That presumption certainly flies in the face of common experience; whether and to what degree of palpability it is disingenuous to make it isn’t the sort of question I typically set out to answer.
A more interesting question is whether science can be a meaningful, non self-contradictory description of some true aspects of the world while rejecting agency as a cause a priori (on whatever grounds: methodological, epistemological, ontological, etc). Lots of people – I daresay perhaps even most people – have assumed that it can be. But as far as I can tell the assumption that the common observational experience that I cause physical effects through my agency nevertheless can or must be left out of legitimate science, and that leaving it out results in something intellectually coherent, remains at best a very counterintuitive assumption.
Zippy,
There be a lot of big words in your last post and its way past my bed time (I’m on the east coast), but I want to say something.
It seems you want to say science can and does investigate one-time occurances so it is a fallacy that it can only describe repeatable occurrences, and that refusing to recognise God as the cause of an effect is as illogical as refusing to acknowledge a human person as the cause of something.
The scientific method basically means you observe stuff, and maybe manipulate some things and observe the results, then you come up with some idea as to what caused what you observed or an underlying formula or something. Then you keep making observations and if possible conduct experiments and be able to repeat the results to show you didn’t skrew up the first time. Through some stats in too to make sure you have statictically significant differences and all that jazz, and to make yourself look smart of course and if you are a biologist or an ecologist or something then to prove your discipline is respectible to phisicists and the like. If you amass enough data and it is all consistent with your hypothesis and convince your peers it is the best idea anyone has come up with to explain the phenominon, and you might get them to call your hypothesis a theory or if it is simple and solid enough a principle or a law. There will probably be some outlying points found by you or someone else that don’t fit the hypothesis, but you’ll fudge over that or dismiss it one way or another. Eventually someone else may come along with a new hypothesis that explains both the data you explained and some of the outliers, and if he or she is good enough they may convince everyone, or rather fail to convince much of anyone but then the next generation of scientists will take up the idea, and their theory may oust yours.
Having things be repeatable is a big help in observing them, but there are other ways of doing science. You can just make observations on one thing and do the stats and come to your conclusions based on that one forest or whatever. Of course, you have multiple samples to compare and do the stats on, otherwise you just have a case study, which contrary to popular belief amoung some science students are not worthless, but have very limited use (your just describing how one thing is). A case study of the Titanic will help you understand what the wreck is like, which will help historians write their stories about how it sank, but it will tell you nothing about sunken ships in general unless you visit other wrecks as well.
Miricals generally have the problem of occuring when the scientist isn’t watching and then being unrepeatable. All the scientist has to work with is the before and after picture, so generally all they can responsibly say is that the occurence was atypical, and they do not know the reason it happened. If the patient says he was cured while praying to St. Drythelm it may be reasonable to suggest that this had something to do with the cure, but it is impossible to confirm this scientifically.
About God being the cause of something, I think that as scientists we shouldn’t prejudice ourselves one way or another on the matter. As some have pointed out, for centuries whatever a scientist (like say, Newton)could give a naturalistic explanation of something he did, but if he did not understand it, then it was the “work of God.” Later, someone would come up with a non-supernatural explanation for the thing and the earlier scientist would look silly for having thought something was miraculous that was quite natural. Eventually scientists decided they would call nothing supernatural and the things they still did not understand, like the origin of life, they insisted must have a natural explanation that they did not know.
I don’t think this is logical. So far scientists have only been able to produce a lot of hot air and groundless speculations about how life began, no idea more testable than another. Maybe we will never find out how life began; there is just not enough evidence left in the present to deduce it, or even to put forth what can honestly be called a scientific theory. The fact that previous scientists thought there was no natural explanation for the burning of the sun or whatever does not change the fact that the idea that a direct intervention by God caused the first cell(s?) is no less or more plausible, scientifically, than the latest speculation by some biochemist with too much time on his hands. There is nothing backing any hypothesis up, except the fact that cells exist and all have much in common, and fossils can trace their existence back to a certain time a few billion years ago and those early cells were small and prokaryotic, and scientists have been able to create a few molecules needed for life in conditions similar to that of the early Earth.
Those facts don’t help much. Some day someone may find a way of testing one of the many theories about how life began and actually back it up enough to get it accepted by the scientific establishment. Until that time, God (or some other “intelligent designer”) remains as viable a theory (in the loose, popular sense of the word) as any.
Ultimately of course this has nothing to do with whether God created the world and everything in it, shaping it to his liking. See my last post for that.
Sorry about the length of that, I didn’t realize how long it had gotten. Mea culpa.
It seems you want to say science can and does investigate one-time occurances so it is a fallacy that it can only describe repeatable occurrences, and that refusing to recognise God as the cause of an effect is as illogical as refusing to acknowledge a human person as the cause of something.
Yes to the first bit, no to the second. Jimmy Akin made the point that ID types (which I am not one of, by the way, but I see incorrect things being said about them all the time) don’t specify what sort of causal agent (natural or supernatural) they infer, just that they infer a causal agent. John Plato responded – or at least I understood him to respond – by saying that this is disingenuous, because (and it isn’t clear to me which of the two inferences he was making) there is no such scientifically explorable thing as an agent or that once you’ve admitted to agency as a cause of physical effects you have inferred God anyway, so to be honest we should just say “God did it”.
Addressing the first point, there is clearly such a thing as agency as a cause of physical effects, just as (e.g.) gravity is a cause of physical effects. We all experience it every day, and it isn’t clear that a scientific account of reality can be coherent if agency is willfully excluded from that account (even though most people seem to assume that such an account can be coherent).
Addressing the second, I agree that admitting agency as a cause leads to a conclusion of the existence of God as First Cause, but so does admitting any sort of efficient cause whatsoever. There isn’t anything special about agency in this regard. Once you stipulate cause and effect, you are necessarily assuming a First Cause. People may think they can do science without God, but in reality they cannot do science without God.
Finally, never apologize to me for being verbose or obscure. It is embarrassing to those of us who are almost always both 🙂
I wrote:
Yes to the first bit, no to the second.
That is to say, yes, I was saying the first thing, I was not saying the second thing. That I was not saying the second thing doesn’t mean that I disagree with the second thing.