The former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca once said: “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”  This simple advice has wide-ranging application—whether we’re settling personal disagreements, planning our schedules, or trying to build bridges with non-Christians.

One area of bridge-building has to do with the creation-evolution “debate.”  In my book “That’s Just Your Interpretation” (Baker, 2001), I deal with a variety of philosophical and apologetical questions such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, Eastern monism and reincarnation, foreknowledge and free will, predestination, and the like. One question I address has to do with the Genesis-science issue.  I note that the fundamental question is not how old the earth is (although I do believe it is billions of years old); nor is the issue how long God took to create the universe (if we insist that God’s creating in six 24-hour days as more miraculous than a process of billions of years, this still wouldn’t be as miraculous as God’s creating in six nanoseconds…or just one!).  I also mention in the book that the fundamental issue to discuss with scientifically-minded non-Christians—the main thing—is not “creation vs. evolution”; rather, it is the question of “God vs. no God.”  There are, after all, evangelical theistic evolutionists such as theologian Henri Blocher and the late Christian statesman John Stott, and the theologian J.I. Packer seems quite open to theistic evolution (consider his endorsement of theistic evolutionist Denis Alexander’s book Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?).

Now I have my questions about evolution, but then again, a number of naturalists do too!  For example, the biochemist Franklin Harold writes: “We should reject, as a matter of principle, the substitution of intelligent design for the dialogue of chance and necessity….but we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system, only a variety of wishful speculations.”^[1] Hmmm…interesting.  At any rate, if evolution turns out to be true, then the Christian should embrace it as one dedicated to following the truth wherever it leads. This might mean reworking his interpretation of Genesis on the subject—much like Christians have had to rework their interpretation of biblical passages referring to the sun rising and setting, the earth not moving, or the earth resting on foundations.[2]

As I speak to secular audiences on university campuses and elsewhere, I don’t raise the creation vs. evolution issue.  Rather, for the sake of argument, I grant evolution and begin the discussion there. I don’t want people turned off to the gospel because I’ve lost sight of the main thing—the centrality of Jesus; unfortunately, a lot of well-meaning Christians do just that and end up running down this or that rabbit trail and never getting back to the main thing. Evolution is a secondary concern; we Christians should remember this when engaging with unbelievers rather than getting side-tracked.  Keep the main thing the main thing.

I typically highlight the following two points when speaking with naturalists.

1. If humans evolved from a single-celled organism over hundreds of millions of years, this is a remarkable argument from design!  Indeed, a lot of naturalists themselves utilize design language when referring to biological organisms—“machines,” “computer-like,” “appears designed” (a point I’ll address in a future blog posting). As believers, we shouldn’t be surprised to see God’s sustaining and providential hand operating through natural processes—though unfortunately even some believing scientists are reluctant to acknowledge this.  Alvin Plantinga’s recent book on God and science, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (Oxford), points out that the conflict is between naturalism and science, not God and science, even if this involves guided (not unguided) evolution. 

Now, the atheist Richard Dawkins has claimed that Darwin made it possible to be a fulfilled atheist.  Well, that’s not quite right. For one thing, Darwin himself didn’t see God and evolution in conflict with each other.  Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species (1859), “To my mind, it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes . . . .” And again: “There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one . . . from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”^[3] But there’s more for the atheist to consider.

2. Several significant steps or hurdles must be overcome before evolution can get going:  Many naturalists claim that “evolution can explain it all.” For example, Daniel Dennett asserts that Darwinistic evolution is a “universal acid” that eats through everything it comes into contact with.  The problem, however, is that a number of massive hurdles must be overcome before self-replicating life can even get a running start.  Here are the key hurdles:

• The origin of the universe from nothing: evolution’s no good without a universe in which it can unfold, and the universe began a finite time ago; it hasn’t always been around.
• The delicately-balanced, knife-edge universe requires many very specific conditions for life;
• The emergence of first life (and eventually consciousness): how life could emerge from non-life (or consciousness from non-conscious matter) continues to stump scientists; moreover, if humans could somehow produce life from non-life, this would simply show that this takes a lot of intelligent planning! Just because we have a life-permitting universe, this is no guarantee that it will be a life-producing universe.
• The continuation of life in harsh early conditions: even if life could come have into existence on its own from non-living matter, there would have been immense obstacles to initial life’s continuation, development, and flourishing.

When we’re looking at the odds in terms of probabilities, this is what we have:

Many naturalists will simply deny design at every stage (and for all of them).  It seems that no matter how much the odds are ramped up, design would never be acknowledged—an indication that the issue isn’t scientific after all.  This is a theological and philosophical issue.  At any rate, from the literal outset (the beginning of the universe) the falsity and folly of an “evolution did it all” explanation is apparent.

So the main thing is to keep the main thing: God vs. no God—not creation vs. evolution.  And if evolution turns out to be true, why couldn’t this be one of the means by which God brings about his purposes on earth? Indeed, God has revealed himself and his nature through two “books”—God’s Word and God’s world—and Christians should view them as ultimately in concord with one another.

Similar Posts:

• Expelled: Evolution vs. Intelligent Design – A Review
• Inferring Design from Anti-Design Scientists
• The Creation-Evolution Debate in a Nutshell
• The Language of God: Some Reflections on Francis Collins’s Perspectives on God and Science
• Six Views on the Creation/Evolution Debate

• Nature is all there is.
• All reality is comprised of or rooted in matter.
• There is no supernatural—no Creator, no miracles, no souls,
  no angels, no life after death.
• Science becomes the only (or best) means of knowledge. 

Richard Dawkins is a four-point naturalist.  Such a position, however, defies our most basic intuitions and assumptions about human experience. Naturalism’s logically leads to:

• the impossibility of knowledge;
• the unreliability of reason;
• the denial of free will and personal responsibility;
• the undermining of human rights and dignity

I’ve already touched on the first two points (on the impossibility of knowledge and reliable reason) in a previous post, but let me review before addressing the matter of free will/personal responsibility.

Knowledge is warranted true belief.  It’s not enough to have true belief, since you can believe something that’s true but in a totally fluky way.  And Dawkins is right—that we just dance to the music of our DNA—then he himself is dancing to his own DNA.  Dawkins has accidental true belief, but that’s not knowledge. If our beliefs are determined and we believe that determinism is true, then this is just a lucky coincidence—again, not knowledge.  Those who reject determinism are still determined to believe what they do.  Yet Dawkins claims to know his view is true and that he is more rational than the theist.

Naturalistic evolution is interested in survival, not truth. As naturalistic philosopher of mind Patricia Churchland puts it: 

“Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F’s: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing. The principal chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive….Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.”^[1]

The late atheist philosopher Richard Rorty echoed Churchland’s analysis of the implications of Darwinian theory: “The idea that one species of organism is, unlike all the others, oriented not just toward its own uncreated prosperity but toward Truth, is as un-Darwinian as the idea that every human being has a built-in moral compass—a conscience that swings free of both social history and individual luck.” ^[2]

If naturalistic evolution is interested in survival rather than truth, I may believe a lot of things that help me to survive—human dignity and worth, human rights. But these beliefs may be completely false.  On the other hand, if we are truth-seeking beings (a reflection of what the Bible calls “the image of God”), this makes a lot better sense if a rational, intelligent being created us to think or reason—to have genuine knowledge. Being made in the image of a rational God means we have good reason to trust our minds as generally reliable rather than malfunctioning or systematically misleading us.

So much for review.  Another implication of naturalism is that it must deny free will or personal responsibility.  If matter is all the reality there is, how could free will emerge?  Our beliefs are the necessary result of certain physical inputs.  It’s like a prism of colors that is inevitably formed when sunlight is refracted through mist or rain.  Certain physical inputs lead necessarily to certain outputs.

On naturalism, there is no self that makes decisions, and no “decisions” really matter.  The buck doesn’t stop with the agent since “no one” is making those decisions.  “Choices” are not up to me.  They are the product of material forces that impose themselves on each of us—forces over which we have no control.

Atheist philosopher of mind John Searle of Berkeley makes this quite clear.  “Physical events can have only physical explanations, and consciousness is not physical, so consciousness plays no explanatory role whatsoever. If, for example, you think you ate because you were consciously hungry, or got married because you were consciously in love with your prospective spouse, or withdrew your hand from the flame because you consciously felt a pain, or spoke up at a meeting because you consciously disagreed with the main speaker, you are mistaken in every case. In each case the effect was a physical event and therefore must have an entirely physical explanation.”^[3]

If you look at the website, www.naturalism.org, many noted atheists like Daniel Dennett are on its advisory board.  This site claims:  “From a naturalistic perspective . . . [h]uman beings act the way they do because of the various influences that shape them, whether these be biological or social, genetic or environmental. We do not have the capacity to act outside the causal connections that link us in every respect to the rest of the world. This means we do not have what many people think of as free will, being able to cause our behavior without our being fully caused in turn.”^[4]

Naturalist Michael Ruse tells it to us straight:  we merely think morality is objective and binding upon us—but that’s totally false.^[5] We believe the illusion of moral realism and moral obligation; without this strong impulse, Ruse declares, we would disregard or disobey morality. “If you think about it, you will see that the very essence of an ethical claim, like ‘Love little children,’ is that, whatever its truth status may be, we think it binding upon us because we think it has an objective status.”^[6] This is a corporate illusion that has been “fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate.”^[7]

When we are assessing a worldview and whether we should accept it, one of the criteria we should use is whether the worldview can be lived out consistently or if we have to systematically live at odds with it.  Does our worldview disallow us to practice what we preach?

Richard Dawkins confesses: “As an academic scientist, I am a passionate Darwinian, believing that natural selection is, if not the only driving force in evolution, certainly the only known force capable of producing the illusion of purpose which so strikes all who contemplate nature. But at the same time as I support Darwinism as a scientist, I am a passionate anti-Darwinian when it comes to politics and how we should conduct our human affairs.”^[8]  Why, if Darwinism creates the illusion of purpose, has Dawkins been able to see clearly?  Why isn’t he under the illusion of purpose?

Theism doesn’t have to resort to such metaphysical hypocrisy. The theistic context—of a personal agent who freely creates—affords a setting to anticipate or expect creaturely agents who can freely make decisions.  Even if environment and genetics influence choices, they do not determine them. Unlike Dawkins and his naturalistic views, we can be passionate theists both in theory and in practice.

Similar Posts:

• Richard Dawkins: Advocate of Science or Self-Refuting Scientism? – Response to Dawkins, Part III
• Morality and Naturalism’s Counterintuitive Claims: Response to Dawkins, Part V
• Richard Dawkins: A Philosophical and Theological Lightweight? Responding to Dawkins, Part II
• My Recent Interaction with Richard Dawkins
• Expelled: Evolution vs. Intelligent Design – A Review

The Skinny:

Belief that the universe was created miraculously by God around ten thousand years ago (or less).

Explanation:

YECs often insist that their view is the only way to understand and remain faithful to the integrity of the Scriptures. For them, options which integrate evolution or an old earth paradigm compromise the clear teachings of Scripture and even the essence of the Gospel message.

They will often argue (especially since the publication of  The Genesis Flood in 1960) that science is on their side using “catastropheism” or “Flood Geology.” They believe that world-wide biblical catastrophes sufficiently explain the fossil records and other geographic phenomena that might otherwise suggest evolution or an old earth.

They believe in a literal Adam and Eve, Garden of Eden, snake talking, and global flood.

Relationship Between science and Scripture:

Scientific discovery always submits to Scripture in all matters. Science is interpreted in light of Scripture. YECs see the early chapters of Genesis, taken at face value, as an accurate and authoritative (even scientific) guide to the basic details of the origin of the universe. Science is of great value so long as it starts with the Bible.

Notable Adherents:

John Calvin, Martin Luther, Henry Morris, Ken Ham, John MacArthur, Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Four in ten Americans believe in YEC.

2. Gap Theory Creationism

The Skinny:

Belief that the earth was created by God an indefinite number of years ago, while the creation of humanity happed ten thousand years ago or less.

Explanation:

The explanation for the old age of the universe can be found in a theoretical time gap that exists between the lines of Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. God created the earth and the earth became formless and void. Therefore God instituted the new creation which begins in Genesis 1:2b.

Here is how it looks:

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

—-Indefinite Time Gap—-

Genesis 1:2a And the earth was (i.e. became) formless and void.

This theory allows for an indefinite period of time for the earth to exist before the events laid out in the creation narrative. Gap theorists will differ as to what could have happened on the earth to make it become formless and void. Some will argue for the possibility of a creation which died out prior to humans. This could include dinosaurs and many other extinct species. While this was popularized by the Scofield Reference Bible in the early 20th century, it was eventually replaced with Young Earth Creationism with the rise of ”flood geology.”

They normally believe in a literal Adam and Eve, Garden of Eden, snake talking, and global flood.

Relationship between science and Scripture:

Typically sees nature as a complementary guide from God which speaks authoritatively to issues about which the Scriptures are unclear or silent. Whatever source (Scripture or nature) is more clear is the authority in matters of origins. If both seem equally clear, yet seemingly conflicting, Scripture is the final source.

Notable Adherents:

Cyrus I. Scofield, Harry Rimmer, A. W. Pink, Donald Grey Barnhouse, Clarence Larkin

3. Time-Relative Creationism

The Skinny:

Belief that the universe could be both young and old, depending on your perspective.

Explanation:

Since time is not a constant (Einstein’s Theory of Relativity), time at the beginning of creation could have moved much more slowly than it does today. From the way time is measured today, the succession of moments (events with a causal relationship of before/after) in the creation narrative equals that of six twenty-four hour periods, but relative to measurements at the time of creation, the events would have transpired much more slowly, allowing for billions of “years” to elapse.

This view, therefore, does not assume a one-to-one correspondence in measurements of time/space/matter phenomena between the time of creation and today or from God’s perspective to ours. They would argue that any presumption upon the radical events of the first “days” of creation is beyond what science should attempt to speak about with any degree of dogmatism. In short, we can’t gauge, measure, or predict, much less be dogmatic about, the physics present at the creation event.

This view may or may not allow for an evolutionary view of creation. When they do, evolution would have happened very quickly from God’s perspective (almost instantaneously), but from the perspective of human science analysis, it happened very slowly.

They normally allow for a literal Adam and Eve, Garden of Eden, snake talking, and global flood.

Relationship between science and Scripture:

Typically sees nature as a complementary guide from God which speaks authoritatively to issues about which the Scriptures are unclear or silent. Whatever source (Scripture or nature) is more clear is the authority in matters of origins. If both seem equally clear, yet conflicting, Scripture is the final source.

Notable Adherents:

Seeing as how this view does not dogmatize anything but candid uncertainty, it may be broad enough to house all those who simply say, “Who knows?”

4. Old Earth Creationism (OEC)
(also Progressive Creationists, Day-Age Creationists, and, sometimes, Framework Hypothesis)

The Skinny:

Belief that the universe was created by God somewhere around 15 billion years ago, while the creation of humanity occurred just thousands of years ago.

Explanation:

The old age of the universe can be reconciled with Scripture by understanding the days of Genesis 1 not as literal 24-hour periods, but as periods of time of indefinite length. The word “day,” according to OECs, would be understood the same as in Gen. 2:4 “. . . in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.”

While this view understands the universe is billions of years old, proponents believe that man was created a short time ago. Therefore, they do not believe in evolution.

Most believe in a literal Adam and Eve, Garden of Eden, snake talking, and global flood.

Relationship between science and Scripture:

Typically sees nature as a complementary guide from God which speaks authoritatively to issues about which the Scriptures are unclear or silent. Whatever source (Scripture or nature) is more clear is the authority in matters of origins. If both seem equally clear, yet conflicting, Scripture is the final source.

Some Notable Adherents:

Hugh Ross, Francis Schaeffer, Norman Geisler, and possibly St. Augustine

5. Deistic Evolution* (DE; often just “Theistic Evolution”):

The Skinny:

Belief, as Darwinian Evolutionists, that God created the universe over billions of years, using naturalistic evolutionary processes to create humanity without intervention.

Explanation:

I call this ”deistic evolution” due to the “hands-off” approach God takes to the development of man in the evolutionary process. Darwinian evolution, through the process of natural selection, is accepted. While there is across-the-board agreement that God did not/does not intervene in the process of evolution, DEers are divided as to whether God directly caused the first life to begin or whether he let life come into being naturalistically (abiogenisis).

Concerning Adam and Eve, the views are diverse and, often, complex. Some believe that the first few chapters of Genesis are a creation myth that served as a polemic against other gods and should not be taken literally. Adam and Eve, in this case, would simply be literary, symbolic figures representing the fall of humanity and the ensuing curse. Others believe that toward the end of the evolutionary process, God, through an act of special creation, created and elected Adam and Eve as the representative heads of the human race. Others believe that God did not use special creation, but appointed already existing humans as representatives for humanity, calling them Adam and Eve.

They normally do not believe in a snake talking and usually believe that the flood was local.

Relationship Between Science and Scripture:

DEers employ a type of science known as “methodological naturalism,” believing that the assumption of God should never be invoked at any point to explain naturalistic phenomena. Therefore, no matter how much science may lack understanding as to the “gaps” in our knowledge about the process of evolution, supernatural intervention should never be seen as an option; otherwise, the data is tainted with a “god-of-the-gaps” approach. This is to be distinguished from “philosophical naturalism,” which assumes the complete absence of God in its very philosophy, not just method of inquiry. This view places a higher authority on matter’s origins in their interpretation of nature through science than through Scripture seeing as how, according to them, Scripture does not speak clearly on these issues.

Notable Adherents:

The majority of Christian scientists, B.B. Warfield, C.S. Lewis, Pete Enns, Catholic Church (open to the theory, yet not dogmatized officially)

*Please note, I have never heard this referred to as “deistic evolution” so the designation may be original here. As well, don’t confuse this with theological deism which believes that God does not (indeed, can not) intervene in the affairs of humans at all.

6. Intelligent Design (ID)

The Skinny:

Belief that science itself, without reference to the Bible or any other religious book, points to the reality of an intelligent designer.

Explanation:

It is difficult to classify ID as a a distinct option among these listed. In fact, IDers can fit into any one of these groups except deistic evolutionists. For example, many IDers are theistic evolutionists, but they don’t believe that God took a “hands-off” approach in the process of evolution (otherwise, they would be deistic evolutionists).

It could look like this:

They argue that Darwinian evolution is insufficient to account for the “irreducible complexity” found in so much of creation. Science itself, according to IDers, needs an intelligent explanation to account for phenomena of the universe. God must have had his intervening hand in the process. Therefore, methodological naturalism is denied.

However, IDers are not arguing for a specific model of creation. They simply argue that there is sufficient reason to believe that science points to the hand of a designer.

Relationship between science and Scripture:

In theory, IDers are not about invoking any religious tradition into their agenda. Therefore, they distance their method of inquiry from any religious text.

Notable Adherents:

Michael Behe, William Dembski, Phillip Johnson, Stephen C. Meyer

A word of caution:

I believe that one can be a legitimate Christian and hold to any one of these views. While I lean in the direction of some sort of Time-Relative creation, I only do this because my main contention is that it is very unwise to be dogmatic. Though I used to be favorable to it, I now reject methodological naturalism, believing it leads to preset conclusions that end up being awkward, unnecessary, and very unscientific. Therefore, though I rejected it at one time, I have come to accept ID as a responsible approach to these matters.

In the end, I believe that the best anyone can do is lean in one direction or another. Being overly dogmatic about these issues expresses, in my opinion, more ignorance than knowledge. Each position has many apparent difficulties and many virtues.

While I believe this is an issue we should continue to discuss with excitement and hope, this is not an issue, in my opinion, that should fracture Christian fellowship.

Similar Posts:

• Six Views on the Creation/Evolution Debate
• Stephen Hawking Worships the “Unknown God”
• Creation and Evolution: Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing
• The Gospel of the Young Earth
• Expelled: Evolution vs. Intelligent Design – A Review

Here is the first one I posted two days ago:

It is funny, but when I first created this and showed it to some people at the Credo House they had the same initial thoughts as I did: “Creationists are going to get mad!” Why? because I put a caption at the bottom which said “Are the really THAT different.” 

My point was to demonstrate how evolutionists and special creationists both believe some very bizarre stuff. It was not to legitimize snakes talking or random mutation from a single-celled organism into a multi-celled organism with a voice box.

Neither was this to say that this is a Christian/Atheism issue. Far from it. Atheism has nothing to do with evolution as evolution does not speak to ultimate beginnings. In fact, if evolution happened, it simply gives a different (and substantial) line of evidence for a Creator. In other words, the irrationality of atheism has nothing to do with the bizarre claims of evolution. 

Unfortunately, people quickly interpreted this through a different grid. I am saddened how this type of stuff gets picked up by atheists as if it has to do with them. Let me be plain and clear: though I do not accept evolution, the debate about evolution is not a Christian vs. atheism debate. In fact, one could say that to be a rational evolutionist, the evolution debate must be seen as an in-house (theism) debate.

However, I need to clarify what the comic was intended to communicate. To do this, I offer this parallel comic:

The point, once again, is not the evidence for either. It is how we are programmed to accept bizarre ideals in one area and reject them outright in another. Christian creationists need to be careful that they don’t make fun at evolution just as they don’t make fun of the idea of a snake talking. Is either really too hard for God? As well, if a snake did literally talk, big deal. Maybe evolution happened and a snake talked. Who knows. In this sense, they are not THAT different. Both are “other worldly”, non-intuitive, and outside of our everyday experience.

It takes quite a bit of pride to speak with too much assurance about any of these things. Most importantly, the world is filled with bizarre things. Just because it does not fit without our “normality” does not make it untenable.Similar Posts:

• Six Views on the Creation/Evolution Debate
• The Gospel of the Young Earth
• The Creation-Evolution Debate in a Nutshell
• Kirk Cameron Defends God Against Atheists
• Expelled: Evolution vs. Intelligent Design – A Review

• Snake Talk and Evolution Comic: Some Clarifications
• Expelled: Evolution vs. Intelligent Design – A Review
• The Creation-Evolution Debate in a Nutshell
• Six Views on the Creation/Evolution Debate
• Evidence for the Death of My Sister vs. Evidence for the Resurrection of Christ

In my last post, I mentioned my brief interaction with Richard Dawkins when he came to Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale last month.

A week later, I responded to Dawkins at Nova in an open forum. (Here is one of the video clips from the Q&A time that followed—on “If God Made the Universe, Who Made God?” Look for more postings in the future.) I mentioned that I would post (in serial form) my modified notes from my open forum at Parchment and Pen. So here is Part II of my “Dawkins Series.”

*****

When scholars step outside of their discipline, their authority doesn’t automatically carry over to other fields of study. In the case of Dawkins at Nova Southeastern, one wouldn’t know this from the rousing applause he received following his cheapshot slams on “religion.” (I gave one such audio sample in my last blog posting.) Yes, Dawkins has done some creative work when it comes to evolutionary theory, and I’m not really concerned about this. Evolution is a secondary consideration in the big scheme of things; it doesn’t at all disprove God’s existence. The bottom-line issue is not evolution but naturalism—God vs. no God. The assumption that “evolution did it all; so we don’t need God” is false. Evolution, first of all, needs a universe (think “Big Bang”)—not only this, but a life-permitting universe; and not only that, but a life-producing universe; beyond all of these, a life-sustaining universe. All of these stages would be necessary before evolution has a chance of advancing from a bacterium to homo sapiens. A being like God is capable of bringing this off without a problem, however. And what’s so far-fetched about design in the universe and even organisms? Dawkins himself acknowledges the strong appearance—indeed, the “illusion”—of design. Biology, he claims, is the study of complicated things that appear to be designed but are not! If God exists and could use the evolutionary process to bring about his purposes, then we don’t have to talk about mere appearance of design, but actual design. But let that pass.

When Dawkins steps outside of his field—into theology or philosophy—he’s a lightweight, and even fellow atheists acknowledge this. The atheist philosopher of science Michael Ruse at FIU has said, “Richard Dawkins makes me embarrassed to be an atheist.” [1] Terry Eagleton, an English literature and cultural theory professor (not a theist, so far as I know), severely criticizes “Ditchkins”—his composite name for Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. He considers them to be both out of their depth and misrepresenters of the Christian faith: “they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be.” [2] Sociologist Rodney Stark (at that time writing as an agnostic-moving-toward-Christianity) [3] put it this way: “To expect to learn anything about important theological problems from Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett is like expecting to learn about medieval history from someone who had only read Robin Hood.” [4] 

In a book I coedited with fellow-philosopher William Lane Craig, he wrote an essay entitled “Dawkins’s Delusion,” which replies to Dawkins’s book The God Delusion. Craig does his darndest to piece together Dawkins’s argument against God’s existence—which, Craig concludes, is “embarrassingly weak.” At the end of his essay, Craig writes:

Several years ago my atheist colleague Quentin Smith unceremoniously crowned Stephen Hawking’s argument against God in A Brief History of Time as “the worst atheistic argument in the history of Western thought.” [5] With the advent of The God Delusion the time has come, I think, to relieve Hawking of this weighty crown and to recognize Richard Dawkins’ accession to the throne. [6]

At Dawkins’s talk, he claimed that a divine designer who is as complex as the universe he designed doesn’t explain anything; rather, a naturalistic scenario, which moves from simplicity to complexity, does explain things. But this is naïve and misguided for a number of reasons.

First, according to the prevailing big bang cosmological model, the universe’s beginning looks like the “traditional metaphysical picture of creation out of nothing,” as naturalistic astronomers John Barrow and Joseph Silk affirm. [7]Something coming from nothing—now that’s a really simple beginning! But of course, it makes no metaphysical sense that being came from non-being; something coming from something is metaphysically obvious.

Second, this argument doesn’t really have any traction among the critics in the philosophy of religion. One big reason for this is that such a criterion is rather arbitrary. Why not argue that the designer should be more complex than what was designed? To make a claim is one thing; to justify it is another. Why think that Dawkins’s mere assertion should be taken as authoritative?
  

[2] Terry Eagleton, “Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching,” London Review of Books (October 19, 2006). Available at URL: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/print/eagl01_.html (accessed November 25 2007). Eagleton gives a fuller critique in Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). 

[3] After reading an interview with Stark in 2006 (where he identified himself as agnostic), I emailed him, inquiring as to where he was in his pilgrimage.  He replied to me(30 August 2010), Stark stated this: “I slowly wrote my way to faith.” 

[4] Rodney Stark, What Americans Really Believe (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008), 120.  

[5] Quentin Smith, “The Wave Function of a Godless Universe,” in Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1993), 322. 

[6] William Lane Craig, “Dawkins’s Delusion,” in Contending with Christianity’s Critics: Answering New Atheist and Other Objectors (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2009), 5 

[7] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 38Similar Posts:

• God is Great, God is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible
• My Recent Interaction with Richard Dawkins
• The Language of God: Some Reflections on Francis Collins’s Perspectives on God and Science
• The Moral Indignation of Richard Dawkins
• Expelled: Evolution vs. Intelligent Design – A Review

One of my all-time favorite movies is “Elf.” Our family probably watches it three or four times every Christmas season. The child-like naivety of “Buddy” the elf is more than enough to make anyone smile. He believes in Christmas. He most certainly believes in Santa. It takes us back to the time when we, who’s parents introduced us to the Jolly man, anticipated his coming every Christmas and defended his existence on the playground. There is one scene in Elf that I really love (okay, there are a hundred that I really love!). It was when Buddy was being told by Santa that many people did not believe he existed. An astonished Buddy does not know how to respond (as if it is the first time he ever considered that people might not believe in Santa). First, he wonders who they think brings all the gifts. After Santa says that there is a rumor that it is the parents, Buddy says, “That’s crazy. What about Santa’s cookies? I suppose parents eat those too?” Don’t be too hard on Buddy. He is just trying to find a sufficient explanation for the presents and cookies.

Many times when I am talking to atheists about the Christian faith they bring up their graduation ceremony from believing in Santa. As they graduated from a belief in Santa, so they say, they have also graduated from a belief in God. While this has an emotional appeal and seeming parallel, it does not really work. In fact, it works in favor of theism more than atheism.

The reason why people believe in Santa is not simply because their parents tell them he is real, but because parents tell them that Santa is the explanation for a phenomenon that happens every Christmas morning. Santa is the one who brought the toys and ate the cookies. When the kids wake up Christmas morning and see all the new toys (at my house the ones from Santa were unwrapped) and ask, “Who got me this?”, they are asking a very reasonable question. They are seeking to find the cause behind the presence of their new toys. It’s the whole cause and effect thing. If the new toys were not there, there would be no reason to ask such a question. Therefore, the presence of Santa is invoked by a need to find causation for their Christmas morning joy associated with the toys.

Therefore, Santa is, by definition, the cause behind the effect of the toys and cookie crumbs. When people quit believing in Santa, they don’t quit believing in a cause, they just change the association behind the cause. It is not as if one day kids come of age and realize that the toys magically appear every Christmas morning with no explanation. It is not as if they believe that given enough time, chance will produce a situation where every year on December 24th you can place a plate of cookies by the fireplace and expect that they will be gone the next morning without explanation. You see, Santa just changes names. No one quits believing in the agent (whatever the name may be) responsible for the presents and the cookies. They just no longer believe that the agent’s name is “Santa.” Therefore, in a very real sense, no one quits believing in Santa (the cause of the toys and eaten cookies).

When it comes to God, the situation is the same. Existence itself demands a causal explanation. We are an effect, looking for the cause. God, by definition, is that cause. Just as we cannot say that there is no cause for the toys under the tree Christmas morning, you cannot say that there is no cause for all of existence. That is why R.C. Spoul has said that the best argument for the existence of God is this: “If something exists, God exists…Something does exist, so God does exist.”

“If toys are under the tree, someone must have put them there…Toys are under the tree, so someone put them there.”

Considering this, while we could not say that the parallel between God and Santa works for atheists (for it is simply a slight of hand illustration), it does work for theists because it illustrates that effects always need an explanation. Just changing the name of the explanation does not in any way do away with the need for a cause. Santa (the cause behind the toys) is still needed. God (the cause behind existence) is still needed. No one graduates from either, even if they change their names.

Buddy’s conclusion may have been misplaced, but his logic was sound: “That’s crazy. Who do you think is responsible for eating the cookies?” Who do you think is responsible for existence? Whatever your answer, that is your God.Similar Posts:

• The Anatomy of Belief (7): Real Life Conviction
• The Offense of Christmas
• Ten Arguments for the Existence of God
• 10 Arguments for God's Existence
• Why is There Something Rather than Nothing? The Only Six Options

Last week, Richard Dawkins spoke here in Ft. Lauderdale at Nova Southeastern University on “The Fact of Evolution.” The following week, I spoke on “The Fact of God”—also delivered at Nova Southeastern. It was a direct response to Dawkins’s naturalistic worldview as well as a number of the comments he made at his lecture. My talk was followed by a very spirited discussion with a number of atheists in attendance. Well, “spirited” is euphemistic. One atheist who attended wrote to me, apologizing for the rude behavior of his fellow-atheists as they engaged with me!

Next week I’ll begin posting my response to Dawkins at Parchment and Pen. I’ll do so in a short series rather than giving my entire talk in one large chunk. But what I want to do here is discuss the question I posed to Richard Dawkins during the Q&A and then comment on his response to it. After all, since I couldn’t offer a rebuttal when I was on campus, I do so here!

One observation before I comment: During the Q&A time, when someone identified himself as a believer in God (or could be suspected of it), Dawkins at times sidestepped questions, ending with a quick jab at “religious” people being terrorists and or ignoramuses. For example, he called any advocate of old-earth creation “the not-completely stupid creationist.” His anti-religious quip to me was another such instance. So give a listen to the brief audio clip here—and then you can read my comments….

There I was—the first one in line during the Q&A. I asked Dawkins how he could claim that the naturalist id rationally superior to the theist since, according to his book River Out of Eden, all of us are dancing to the music of our DNA. Our beliefs are the product of non-rational, deterministic physical forces beyond our control—whether we’re theists or naturalists. In fact, if the naturalist is right, it’s only by accident—not because he’s more intellectually virtuous than the theist. That is, the naturalist has accidental true belief (which is not knowledge) rather than warranted true belief (which is knowledge).

Dawkins gave the odd reply that it’s kind of like Republicans and Democrats—with each group thinking they’re right and the other group wrong. But on what grounds could either side think they are more rational than the other? Dawkins then added that he supposed that whatever view “works” the correct one to hold. But here’s the problem: what “works” is logically distinct from “true” or “matching up with reality”—since we may hold to a lot of false beliefs that help us survive and reproduce, even if they are false. Indeed, naturalistic evolution is interested in survival and reproduction—the “four F’s” (fighting, feeding, fleeing, and reproducing). Truth, the naturalist philosopher Patricia Churchland argues, is secondary to these pursuits According to another such naturalist, the late Richard Rorty, truth is “utterly unDarwinian.”

To top off his answer to me (without addressing how to ground rationality), Dawkins dismissively quipped that science flies rockets to the moon while religion flies planes into buildings. Many in the audience applauded his rhetorical flourish. (How could a guy with a charming British accent be mistaken, right?!) His “bumper sticker argumentation” [1] reminded me of what St. Augustine said about the dismissive “Christian” answer to the sincere (Manichean) question: “What did God do before he made heaven and earth?” Augustine disliked the mocking answer that North African Catholics would give back to this heretical sect: “He was preparing hell…for those prying into such deep subjects.” (This actually reminds me of the unthinking dismissiveness of Dawkins here!) Yet Augustine refused to evade “by a joke the force of the objection.” He wrote:

It is one thing to see the objection; it is another to make a joke of it. I do not answer in this way. I would rather respond, “I do not know,” concerning what I do not know rather than say something for which a man inquiring about such profound matters is laughed at while the one giving a false answer is praised. [2]

Such responses from Dawkins are no doubt one of the reasons that atheist philosopher of science Michael Ruse declares: “The God Delusion makes me embarrassed to be an atheist.” [3]

The problem with Dawkins’s response is threefold. First, as one of my friends commented on Dawkins’ quip, it was science that built the airplanes capable of flying into a building, and it was Nazis during World War II who developed rockets to fly into space! No, it’s not “science vs. religion” here. Rather, people with differing motives and agendas can use science properly—or misuse it for evil ends. In fact, modern science is rooted in the biblical worldview, building on the foundation of Bible-believing thinkers such as Copernicus, Newton, Faraday, Boyle, and many others, as, say, Stanley Jaki has argued in his book The Savior of Science.

Second, how can Dawkins condemn “religious” people who fly planes into buildings since they are just dancing to their DNA—just like the naturalist is? They’re just doing what nature has programed them to do. We can further ask: Why isn’t Dawkins denouncing atrocities done in the name of atheism—like those of Stalin, Pol Pot, or Mao Tse-tung? Dawkins gives the impression that it’s only people of “religion” who carry out horrendous evils. Of course, if Dawkins is right, these mass murderers could not justly be condemned since they too were wired by nature to act as they did.

Third, Dawkins himself has elsewhere admitted that he doesn’t know what to do with determinism, and he recognizes something hypocritical in his own emotional reaction to murder or rape. In fact, the more consistent perspective would not be anger but rather argue that such criminals need to have their “faulty motherboard” replaced.

Note the excerpt from the following interview from October 2006:

Here is how the interview on determinism went:

Dawkins:….What I do know is that what it feels like to me, and I think to all of us, we don’t feel determined. We feel like blaming people for what they do or giving people the credit for what they do. We feel like admiring people for what they do. None of us ever actually as a matter of fact says, “Oh well he couldn’t help doing it, he was determined by his molecules.” Maybe we should… I sometimes… Um… You probably remember many of you would have seen Fawlty Towers. The episode where Basil where his car won’t start and he gives it fair warning, counts up to three, and then gets out of the car and picks up a tree branch and thrashes it within an edge of his life. Maybe that’s what we all ought to… Maybe the way we laugh at Basil Fawlty, we ought to laugh in the same way at people who blame humans. I mean when we punish people for doing the most horrible murders, maybe the attitude we should take is “Oh they were just determined by their molecules.” It’s stupid to punish them. What we should do is say “This unit has a faulty motherboard which needs to be replaced.” I can’t bring myself to do that. I actually do respond in an emotional way and I blame people, I give people credit, or I might be more charitable and say this individual who has committed murders or child abuse of whatever it is was really abused in his own childhood. ….

Manzari: But do you personally see that as an inconsistency in your views?

Dawkins: I sort of do. Yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with otherwise life would be intolerable. But it has nothing to do with my views on religion it is an entirely separate issue. [4]

Hmmm. You wouldn’t have known determinism was a profound problem for Dawkins, given his evasive response to my question! Of course, Dawkins doesn’t want us to accept the obvious conclusion that his hostility to belief in God just isn’t a “separate issue.” Rather, if he’s right, then his beliefs—on religion or biology—are just as determined by non-rational, material forces as anyone else’s, including the theist’s. They’re both in the same non-rational camp.

This is the kind of self-defeating perspective proferred by the late Nobel laureate, Francis Crick. Human identity—your joys and sorrows, your sense of identity (“you”) and your belief in free will—is nothing more than “the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.” [5] If true, then Crick, like Dawkins, was only accidentally correct—not because of any superior rationality. After all, this belief itself is only the result of “the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules”!

Eighteenth-century philosopher Thomas Reid critiqued David Hume, author of The Treatise of Human Nature and one who held a similar view to that of Dawkins. Hume denied the self, arguing that individual humans are just a bundle of physical properties rather than morally responsible selves or agents: “it is certainly a most amazing discovery,” wrote Reid, “that thought and ideas may be without any thinking being.” Presumably then The Treatise of Human Nature had no author after all! It is only a set of ideas which came together, and “arranged themselves by certain associations and attractions.” [6] Likewise, this would mean that there is no self or agent whom we call “Richard Dawkins” and who is responsible for writing The God Delusion. Indeed, a large collection of molecules is gathering up the royalties!

I’ll have more to say about Dawkins’s determinism and naturalism in general in future blog posts. But for now, I hope this preliminary engagement with Dawkins’s ideas will generate some good discussion.

______________________

[1] See Edward Feser’s brilliant depiction of Richard Dawkins’s dismissiveness rather than genuine intellectual engagement in his “To a Louse” at http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/02/to-louse.html.

[2] Confessions, 11.12.14.

[3] From the cover of Alister McGrath’s book The Dawkins Delusion? Published by InterVarsity Press.

[4] “Who Wrote Dawkins’ New Book?” in Evolution News (October 2006). Accessed February 23, 2011: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/10/who_wrote_richard_dawkinss_new002783.html.

[5] Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis (New York: Scribner’s, 1994), p. 3.

[6] Thomas Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind: On the Principles of Common Sense, ed. Derek R. Brookes, 4th edn., (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1997), 2.6.13-14, p. 35Similar Posts:

• Richard Dawkins: Advocate of Science or Self-Refuting Scientism? – Response to Dawkins, Part III
• Richard Dawkins: A Philosophical and Theological Lightweight? Responding to Dawkins, Part II
• God is Great, God is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible
• Reason, Personal Responsibility, and Naturalism’s Counterintuitive Claims: Response to Dawkins, Part IV
• The Moral Indignation of Richard Dawkins

This is a quote that I heard recently. I think that it is a rather tongue-in-cheek way of expressing our (post)modern culture’s current attitude with respect to the authority of science. During the modern period, science was king. The scientific revolution produced hopes of a Utopian society where virtually all problems would be solved due to human innovation, evolution, and advancement. But during the postmodern period, science has been humbled due to a realization that the process was not as clean as we thought. Human contamination, insufficient data, faulty presuppositions, and religiously and politically motivated studies have tainted our hopes that science is truly king.

Euclid said, “The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.” Such is true, but how do we know that we have properly interpreted the “mathematical thoughts of God”? I believe in the authority of nature and many of our (scientific) conclusions about such. Every Christian should. I have written about this in times past. Romans 1 says that creation itself leaves people without an epistemic excuse about God’s reality. This, among many other things, provides a firm biblical foundation for cosmology, biology, physics, and rationality in the Christian life. In this sense, the study of nature is mandated for the Christian.

However, we need to be timid about our conclusions that come from science, knowing the ways that it, like the Bible, can be manipulated. More important for what I am talking about now, we need to realize how dynamic the conclusions of science can be.

I was a fitness trainer through the nineties as well as working in the fields of sports medicine. I was very good at what I did and understood the issues (at least I thought). I focused on weight loss physiology. I wanted to provide people with the best—the most scientifically accurate—routine for weight loss. When it came to losing weight though, I would tell people to engage in a steady-state cardio routine. This is one in which you would keep your heart rate up consistently and moderately for above thirty-minutes. Then about fifteen minutes of resistance training. Without getting into all the details of why, suffice it to say that this was the most accepted scientific method for such goals. When it came to nutrition, I was not faddish at all. I repudiated the fads. I wanted to stick to that which was scientifically verifiable and accepted: the food pyramid. However both have changed since the nineties. Now, in order to lose weight, your cardio must include more of a circuit training where your heart rate gets up into its anaerobic state every so often. This is something that I used to teach against with (scientific) resolve. On top of this, the food pyramid has been turned upside down and subjectivized! Now, I am not saying what I did before did not work…it did. But it was not really right. There is a stability to say that exercise and proper nutrition are essential to weight loss. But I am no longer quite so committed to a particular type of exercise and nutrition. It is not so stable. Some of my theories have been literally turned upside down! That is just one example of the sort of things that can dissolution a person toward so-called scientific conclusions.

Here is a list of some other things that have changed over the years with regard to scientific ideas:

• Maternal impression (the mother’s thoughts can influence the child’s)
• Human cell (simplistic to complex)
• The status of Pluto (no longer a planet)
• Piltdown man (scientific hoax about a “missing link” in evolution)
• The food pyramid (turned upside down)
• Health benefits of alcohol (bad for you one day, good for you the next)
• Leeches (depending on the century you are in, very good for medicinal purposes—which? Who knows?)
• Darwinian evolution (changes much faster than we do!)
• Light (what is it? particles? waves? emitter theory, etc),
• Speed of light (is it steady or relative?)
• The osculating universe (the universe is eternally osculating)
• Steady state theory (the universe has never changed)
• Big bang theory (a big bang started it all–superseded both the osculating universe and steady state theories)
• Nature of time (relativity theories are the current standard)
• Global Warming (do I need to explain?)
• Global Cooling (oh yeah, we have those theories too)
• Creation science (can I even make this a single category?)
• Spontaneous generation (the way it all began…then again, maybe not)
• Y2K (oh yeah! This did come from the scientific community)
• Punctuated equilibrium (a drastic change in how species evolve)
• Phlogiston theory(superseded by Lavoisier’s work on oxidation)
• The blank slate theory of social behavior (disproven by cross-cultural universals)
• Aristotelian physics (superseded by Newtonian physics which was [somewhat] superseded by Einstein)
• Just about everything in Freudian psychology (most have been discredited, yet this influenced so much for so long)
• Telegony (a discredited belief that people could inherit traits of previous sexual partners of their mother)
• Continental drift (replaced by plate tectonics)
• Catastropheism (belief that a catastrophe has drastically changed the way things are)
• Uniformatarianism (the current replacement for Catastropheism—that is, until catastropheism takes back over and then everything is up in the air in so many areas)
• The so-called Open Polar Sea (you know, that sea without any ice that was supposed to be around the north poll?)
• The expanding earth theory (wait, isn’t this how the continents divided? Depends on which century you are in)
• Quantum mechanics (the new kid on the block)

Once again, most of these represent theories that were once accepted as true or those that are the current champions in their particular area. The point is to recognize the dynamic nature of the history of science. You can add your own to the list. Please do.

We live in a postmodern world where people are disillusioned with all authoritative means of knowledge, science and the Bible included. For the most part, it is due to the fact that things change. Interpretations change. Theories change. Presuppositions change. The data changes. Our experience changes.

This does not mean that the truth itself is dynamic, but it might help you to understand why people are so confused about truth these days. It might also help you to understand why science does not reign the way it once did. While I love science, appreciate its discoveries and am intrigued by its conclusions, I am very careful about committing myself to whatever the prevailing notion is today. I think you should be tentative as well. While I don’t think the history of science is the history of bad idea, it is the history of dynamic change and discovery that is not as stable as we once thought.Similar Posts:

• Six Views on the Creation/Evolution Debate
• The Creation-Evolution Debate in a Nutshell
• Expelled: Evolution vs. Intelligent Design – A Review
• The Galileo Incident: A Clash of Faith and Science?
• Inferring Design from Anti-Design Scientists

Let me hasten to add that one doesn’t have to oppose the process of evolution in order to defend design.  Indeed, if evolution from a bacterium to homo sapiens took place, then it would be an excellent argument for design!  Noted cosmologists Frank Tipler and John Barrow calculated that the chances of moving from a bacterium to homo sapiens in 10 billion years or less is 10^-24,000,000.  What kind of numbers are we talking about?  A decimal point with 24 million zeros to the left of 1.! [1]  We’re not even addressing the origin of the universe (something coming from absolutely nothing—whose chances of happening are exactly zero). Nor are we speaking of the fine-tuning of the universe (non-theist Roger Penrose calculates this as being one chance in 10^10(123)).[2] Nor are we speaking of getting the precise DNA sequence of the necessary 250 proteins to sustain life (whose chances have been calculated as 1 in 10^41,000).[3] We are stacking such outrageously remote possibilities on top of more outrageously remote possibilities on top of still more. The naturalist must stake everything on an anti-design random process to produce what we see today in all its beauty and complexity. Never before have I seen such faith!  If the design idea is a live option, however, all the shock evaporates.  After all, getting from nothing to homo sapiens in 13.5 billion years isn’t a problem if design has taken place. 

Let’s set that all aside now. Let me just focus on how naturalistic scientists actually help support that idea that design and science in nowise conflict.  Here is a sampling of quotations.

PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Atheist Steven Weinberg (physicist): “sometimes nature seems more beautiful than strictly necessary.”[4] 

Pantheist Eugene Wigner (physicist): The “uncanny usefulness of mathematical concepts” in the natural sciences is “something bordering on the mysterious” and “there is no rational explanation for it.”[5]

ORIGIN OF LIFE

Alfonso Ricardo and Jack W. Szostak (in a recent Scientific American): “Every living cell, even the simplest bacterium teems with molecular contraptions that would be the envy of any nanotechnologist….It’s virtually impossible to imagine how a cell’s machines could have formed spontaneously as life first arose.”[6]

Atheist Francis Crick (Nobel Prize winner, biologist): “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which had to have been satisfied to get it going.”[7]

Jacques Monod (biologist): “…we have no idea what the structure of a primitive cell might have been…. the simplest cells available to us for study have nothing ‘primitive’ about them.”[8]

BIOLOGY IN GENERAL

John Wheeler (physicist): “When I first started studying, I saw the world as composed of particles. Looking more deeply I discovered waves. Now after a lifetime of study, it appears that all existence is the expression of information (my emphasis)” [9]

Bruce Alberts (strong design critic and former National Academy of Sciences president): “We have always underestimated cells. … The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines. …Why do we call the large protein assemblies that underlie cell function protein machines? Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world, these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts.”[10]

Francis Crick: “biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.”[11]

Richard Dawkins: Each mitochontria in a cell “can be thought of as a chemical factory which, in the course of delivering its primary product of usable energy, processes more than 700 different chemical substances, in long, interweaving assembly-lines strung out along the surface of its intricately folded internal membranes….Each nucleus [in all plant and animal cells]…contains a digitally coded data base, larger in information content, than all 30 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica put together. And this figure is for each cell, not all the cells of the body put together [which amount to 10 trillion]). ”[12] Dawkins defines biology as “the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” He says later on that “the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning.” [13] Elsewhere he says, “The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like.”[14]

THE BIG BANG

Michael S. Turner (in September 2009 in Scientific American): there “once” was “no previous era” and that “[m]atter, energy, space and time began abruptly with a bang.”[15]

John Barrow/Joseph Silk (astrophysicists): “Our new picture is more akin to the traditional metaphysical picture of creation out of nothing, for it predicts a definite beginning to events in time, indeed a definite beginning to time itself.” They ask: “what preceded the event called the ‘big bang’? . . . . the answer to our question is simple:  nothing.”[16]

Robert Jastrow (agnostic NASA astronomer): “Theologians generally are delighted with the proof that the Universe had a beginning, but astronomers are curiously upset. Their reactions provide an interesting demonstration of the response of the scientific mind—supposedly a very objective mind—when evidence uncovered by science itself leads to a conflict with the articles of faith in our profession. It turns out that the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict with the evidence. We become irritated, we pretend the conflict does not exist, or we paper it over with meaningless phrases.”[17]

THE UNIVERSE’S FINE-TUNING

Sir Fred Hoyle (astronomer, mathematician): “Such properties seem to run through the fabric of the natural world like a thread of happy coincidences. But there are so many odd coincidences essential to life that some explanation seems required to account for them.”[18] Hoyle also said: “I do not believe that any scientist who examines the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside stars.  If this is so, then my apparently random quirks have become part of a deep-laid scheme.  If not, then we are back again at a monstrous sequence of accidents.”[19] Hoyle suggests that this is the activity of a “superintellect” who has monkeyed with the universe.[20]

Bernard Carr and Martin Rees state: “Nature does exhibit remarkable coincidences and these do warrant some explanation.”[21]

The thinkers I’ve cited above are all (so far as I can tell) naturalists.  Let me throw in several quotations from the Deist physicist Paul Davies, who is also an evolutionist.  (Keep in mind that design has been held not only by theists, but Deists like Davies, by pantheists such as the Stoics or the philosopher John Leslie, polytheists like the Mormons, and Aristotelians like, well, Aristotle, who was as good an Aristotelian as any!)

• Paul Davies on the beginning of the universe:: “‘What caused the big bang?’ . . . One might consider some supernatural force, some agency beyond space and time as being responsible for the big bang, or one might prefer to regard the big bang as an event without a cause.  It seems to me that we don’t have too much choice.  Either . . . something outside of the physical world . . . or . . . an event without a cause.”[22]
• Davies on the fine-tuning of the universe: “The history of life on earth is a gigantic lottery, with far more losers than winners.  It contains so many accidents of fate, so many arbitrary quirks, that the pattern of change is essentially random.  The millions of fortuitous steps that make up our own evolutionary history would surely never happen the second time around, even in broad outline.”[23] Davies writes elsewhere: “Life, it seems, is balanced on a knife edge. Changing some of the values [or cosmic conditions] by even a scintilla would prove lethal. The fact that the universe comes with just the right set of values to permit life looks like a fix.” [24] Again, Davies: “All the evidence so far indicates that many complex structures depend most delicately on the existing form of these laws.  It is tempting to believe, therefore, that a complex universe will emerge only if the laws of physics are very close to what they are….The laws, which enable the universe to come into being spontaneously, seem themselves to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design.  If physics is the product of design, the universe must have a purpose, and the evidence of modern physics suggests strongly to me that the purpose includes us.”[25]
• Davies on living organisms: “Living organisms are mysterious not for their complexity per se, but for their tightly specified complexity.”[26]

So if we’re surrounded by appearance of design (as atheists like Crick and Dawkins acknowledge), must we insist that it is only apparent design rather than genuine design?  Must we suppress this intuition, as Crick insists?  And why can’t design be front-loaded from the very beginning so that the universe’s fine-tuning and the tightly specified complexity in organisms would reflect this design—even if all of this can be accounted for gradualistically?  Crick, Dawkins, and others tell us that nature doesn’t exhibit design, but yet they can readily detect where nature appears to exhibit design.  When scientists use terms like “miracle,” “engineered,” “uncannily computer-like,” “chemical factory,” or “elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines,” the allegedly huge difference between design and the appearance of design is lost on me. 

Ironically, philosopher of science Timothy Lenoir of Stanford University observes a general trend—namely, that design language in, say, biology is inescapable: “Teleological thinking has been steadfastly resisted by modern biology. And yet, in nearly every area of research biologists are hard pressed to find language that does not impute purposiveness to living forms.”[27] If this is so, then it seems to be pure philosophical prejudice—not scientific observation—that disqualifies design. I could say a lot more on this topic, but hopefully this is enough to ponder for now.

In closing, let me just cite a Nobel Prize winner in physics, Charles Townes (UC-Berkeley), who makes this point:  “Intelligent design, as one sees it from a scientific point of view, seems to be quite real. This is a very special universe: it’s remarkable that it came out just this way. If the laws of physics weren’t just the way they are, we couldn’t be here at all. The sun couldn’t be there, the laws of gravity and nuclear laws and magnetic theory, quantum mechanics, and so on have to be just the way they are for us to be here.”[28]

[2] Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind (New York: Bantam., 1991), 344.

[3] Stephen Meyer, Signature in the Cell (New York: HarperOne, 2009). See his peer-reviewed essay, “Intelligent Design: The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories,” in Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (2004)117/2: 213-239.

[4] Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), 250.

[5] Eugene P. Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences.” Found online at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html. Accessed 18 Aug. 2006. (Note: Toward the end of his life, Wigner became interested in the Hindu idea of the all-pervasive consciousness [Brahman].)

[6] Alfonso Ricardo and Jack W. Szostak, “Life on Earth,” Scientific American (September 2009): 54.

[7] Francis Crick, Life Itself: Its Nature and Origin (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), 88.

[8] Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity (London: Collins, 1972), 134-5.

[9] John Wheeler, cited in Gerald Schroeder, “Can God Be Brought into the Equation?”  Review of Science and Religion: Are They Compatible? eds. Paul Kurtz and Barry Karr, in the Jerusalem Post, 23 May 2003, 13 B.

[10] Bruce Alberts, “The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines: Preparing the Next Generation of Molecular Biologists,” Cell 92 (February 8, 1998): 291.

[11] Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit (New York: BasicBooks, 1988), 138.

[12] Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), 17-18.

[13] Ibid., 1, 21.

[14] Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden (New York: BasicBooks, 1993), 18.

[15] Michael S. Turner, “The Universe,” Scientific American (September 2009), 39.

[16] John D. Barrow and Joseph Silk, The Left Hand of Creation, 2nd ed.  (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 38, 209.

[17] Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: Norton, 1978), 16.

[18] Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe (London: Michael Joseph, 1983), 220.

[19] Fred Hoyle, Religion and the Scientists, quoted in John Barrow and Frank Tipler, The

 Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 22.

[20] F. Hoyle, “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” Engineering and Science (Nov. 1981): 8- 12.

[21] Paul Davies, “The Anthropic Principle,” Nature 278 (1979): 612.

[22] Paul Davies, “The Birth of the Cosmos,” in God, Cosmos, Nature and Creativity, ed. Jill Gready (Edinburgh:  Scottish Academic Press, 1995), 8-9.

[23] Paul Davies, The Fifth Miracle (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 272. 

[24] Paul Davies, “The Universe’s Weird Bio-Friendliness,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (6 April 2007): B14.

[25] Paul Davies, Superforce (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 243.

[26] Paul Davies, The Fifth Miracle (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 112

[27] Timothy Lenoir, The Strategy of Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), ix.

[28] B.A.Powell, “Web Feature,” UCBerkeley News (June 17, 2005): http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/06/17_townes.shtmlSimilar Posts:

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