Evolution Was the Key in Joseph Campbell’s Loss of Faith

_{William Dembski

June 13, 2009

Education, Religion, Science}

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Joseph Campbell died in 1987 but remains influential. In this revealing video, Campbell clarifies why he left the Roman Catholic faith of his youth — EVOLUTION:

While many try to reconcile their faith with evolution, many find in evolution reason to leave the faith. Just because there’s no strict contradiction between the two doesn’t mean that the two aren’t in tension. Campbell felt the tension and left the faith.

SOURCE: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJmNBxbExuA

Postscript [added 06.14.09, 7:40AM CST]: It’s interesting to see Campbell disparage the biblical cosmology for being several millennia old and thus out of touch with current cosmologies — myths that impact our lives being myths that are compatible with contemporary cosmologies, according to Campbell. But when I studied ancient near eastern cosmologies at Princeton Theological Seminary, I found an interesting thing: they divided into cosmologies in which creation occurs through a spoken word by a supreme deity (the biblical cosmology was not unique in this regard) and cosmologies in which natural forces evolve and do all the creating, producing better and more powerful deities as time flows along (e.g., the Babylonian creation, in which Marduk is born several generations down and finally becomes the chief god). Given that this is an information age and that the Bible teaches that God created the world through a spoken word, would it not follow that the biblical cosmology is actually back in the saddle and ready again to engage culture? It would seem then that the provenance and length of time that a cosmology has been with us need not sap it of its cultural relevance or impact.

Comments

Hi vjtorley, Thank you for the website, and I will definitely take a look at it. But I will say that my questions were less out of curiosity per se and more geared towards trying to understand the Intelligent Design position on free will. Is there a widely accepted view in the community, or are the views pertaining to free will as diverse as the views on the identity of the designer?RDK_{June 16, 2009
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RDK Regarding your queries on free will, I think you might be interested in having a look at the following Web site: http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/cogito/ The site represents a bold philosophical attempt to reconcile the valid insights underlying both determinism and indeterminism. The authors of the model show that it accords well with the findings of quantum theory, and guarantees humans libertarian freedom, but at the same time avoids the pitfall of making chance the cause of our actions. An excerpt:
Our Cogito model of human freedom combines microscopic quantum randomness and unpredictability with macroscopic determinism and predictability, in a temporal sequence. Why have philosophers been unable for millenia to see that the common sense view of human freedom is correct? Partly because their logic or language preoccupation makes them say that either determinism or indeterminism is true, and the other must be false. Our physical world includes both, although the determinism we have is only an adequate description for large objects. So any intelligible explanation for free will must include both indeterminism and adequate determinism.
The Cogito model is as good as anything I've seen on the Web. Enjoy!vjtorley_{June 16, 2009
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Apologies for the interruption of this discussion, if someone had a question to the community here (regarding the content in general), where would be the best place to ask it? Is it ok to ask it here? I'm trying to gain a comprehension of some specific and subtle points that I cannot find a response for, and would appreciate some assistance.Blu_{June 16, 2009
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Hi Nakashima,
Mr RDK, Since we have already seen GAs with gigabit gennomes, a GP system evolving a billion lines of code is not so far in the future. Code bloat is very common in GP, and many systems routinely trim out unreachable code for the sake of efficiency in solving a problem. A billion lines of code (function calls) is within the realm of posibility. As with the genome of eukaryotes, much of the result might not be used!
I was not aware of this. I'm obviously not a computer programmer, so my knowledge of that area is limited. But as a biology student I do know that any non-living analogy to a biological system is mildly illustrative at best and obfuscatory at worst, based on the mere fact that said analogy is not a living, reproducing organism. But as you've just shown, perhaps my experience in code analogies is lacking.RDK_{June 16, 2009
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Correction: the last sentence should read: "This was confirmed by observing a 1987 film of the program running (though some insisted that the program must be different or appealed to quasi-latching and other such nonsense)."David Kellogg_{June 16, 2009
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Gil, the basics of Weasel are explained in The Blind Watchmaker, where clearly letters can mutate after they are "correct." Such mutations tend not to be preserved for future generations, but that's the difference between mutation and selection. The letters mutate freely; the closest phrase among the multiple offspring is preserved. This was confirmed by observing a 1987 film of the program running (though some insisted that the program must be different) and by appeals to quasi-latching and other such nonsense.David Kellogg_{June 16, 2009
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Mr RDK, Since we have already seen GAs with gigabit gennomes, aGP system evolving a billion lines of code is not so far in the future. Code bloat is very common in GP, and many systems routinely trim out unreachable code for the sake of efficiency in solving a problem. A billion lines of code (function calls) is within the realm of posibility. As with the genome of eukaryotes, much of the result might not be used!Nakashima_{June 16, 2009
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Nope. You still don’t get Weasel. A very convincing rebuttal. Let's see the source code.GilDodgen_{June 16, 2009
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Hi Gil,
You’ve just encapsulated the phenomenon of miserably wrong predictions concerning the creative power of Darwinian mechanisms in a nutshell. (Encapsulation in a nutshell is a doubly effective.) Thank you. Read Behe’s Edge.
I don't think I would be wrong to ask for a few examples of the miserably wrong predictions that Darwinian mechanisms make, would I? Or maybe I am. Can't tell. In any case, Behe's Edge of Evolution is ABUNDANT (is that better?) which a plethora of erroneous analogies and comparative mathematical equations, much like the one you just gave. There are reasons biologists don't compare organisms and organic systems to computers, machines, and lines of code Mr. Dodgen - simply because organisms and organic systems are not a line of code any more than a bowl of cereal is a line of code. Using mathematical equations to describe something that is in no way analogous to the structure or build of said equation is obfuscatory and misleading, and purposefully so. But I doubt you would admit it. If we absolutely had to run with the silly ID camp's analogy game, I'll give you a much more fruitful analogy - although in the end, it is (alas) still an analogy, and analogies only carry so much illustrative power: A billion-pair genome is more like a giant hard drive to which every organism that has ever run the program has write privileges. It’s full of thousands copies of small files, multiple revisions of common programs, some programs in beta, some everyday workhorses, and some plenty of archival junk, broken code that hasn’t run in eons. Although new copies and revisions are constantly created all the time, nobody ever stops to clean out all the junk or defrag the thing. Furthermore, the operating system is kind of weird, in that all the little code fragments are allowed to constantly run in parallel. Consequently, since there are multiple copies of most genes, if one does break, via mutation or whatever, it doesn’t doom entire organism, the other copies just sail on. Don’t forget, most genes are small. The average protein is expressed by a gene with maybe 60 amino acids. It’s only the odd piece of code that ever gets close to “big” (meyelin synthesis, for example, is a couple of thousand base pairs). While it’s inconceivable to imagine a billion-line syntax-dependent program to mutate itself into working, it is manifestly not inconceivable to image a 128 byte chunk of assembly language doing so.RDK_{June 16, 2009
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Mr Herb, i think you have the cause and effect relationship backwards on Weasel. If it weren't for being bashed so regularly, it would have fallen into its deserved obscurity.Nakashima_{June 16, 2009
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Gil,
The letters are preserved once a match is made at a particular location in the preloaded text string, and are not permitted to be changed from that point forward.
Thanks for the clarification. I agree with you, by the way, about the absurdity of the "weasel" program. I have no idea what Dawkin's goal was when he wrote it, quite frankly, but it's surprising to see Darwinists still pushing it as an example of "evolution". Why don't they just move on already?herb_{June 16, 2009
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Mr Dodgen, That understanding of how Weasel worked has been thoroughly discredited here on UD, in ana rgument spanning at lest three threads earlier this year, and many virtual trees killed to print the argumetns for perhaps maybe quasi-latching as a fallback position that I meant all the time. Not that this is particularly compelling. As John Koza, Computer Science professor at Standford, has shown in Genetic Programming, vols 1-4, it is quite easy to create programms by evolutionary processes that do many more complicated things than Weasel or Hello, World.Nakashima_{June 16, 2009
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The letters are preserved once a match is made at a particular location in the preloaded text string, and are not permitted to be changed from that point forward.
Nope. You still don't get Weasel.David Kellogg_{June 16, 2009
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History is abound (sic) with perfectly intelligent people making very well thought out logical arguments and predictions on paper… only to be proven miserably wrong by evidence. You've just encapsulated the phenomenon of miserably wrong predictions concerning the creative power of Darwinian mechanisms in a nutshell. (Encapsulation in a nutshell is a doubly effective.) Thank you. Read Behe's Edge. Just a minor question on the part I’ve bolded above—does the “weasel” program actually preserve correct letters, or can they still mutate? The letters are preserved once a match is made at a particular location in the preloaded text string, and are not permitted to be changed from that point forward. Of course, you can see what a joke this is. Why not just print out the preloaded text string when the program launches and save all the effort of recreating, in a highly inefficient manner, what is already there? This kind of thing makes me want to jump off a cliff in desperation over the lack of basic logic consistently displayed among devout Darwinists.GilDodgen_{June 16, 2009
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Hi Gil,
And then have the program randomly generate text characters, look up the preloaded text string, and when you get a match in a particular location, preserve that text character in that location in the preloaded text string and preclude it from any other random influence.
Just a minor question on the part I've bolded above---does the "weasel" program actually preserve correct letters, or can they still mutate?herb_{June 16, 2009
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Hi Gil, History is abound with perfectly intelligent people making very well thought out logical arguments and predictions on paper... only to be proven miserably wrong by evidence. The main problem isn't even the specific "Hello World" analogy. You're attempting to compare a math equation to a biological entity. Even worse, you're assuming a priori that some sort of design is present. When you're talking about trivial logic puzzles or math equations, then sure - a priori reasoning is fine. But it's of little use to science. A scientific theory cannot evade empirical evidence, and it must wield predictive power. I don't see ID as passing either one of those criteria.RDK_{June 16, 2009
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One could evolve the “Hello World” code by a program analogous to Weasel... Sure one could. Just load the program in advance with the following text string: #include <stdio.h> int main(void) { printf(”Hello World!\n”); return(0); } And then have the program randomly generate text characters, look up the preloaded text string, and when you get a match in a particular location, preserve that text character in that location in the preloaded text string and preclude it from any other random influence. The only problem with the Weasel program is that it is just an inefficient way of reproducing what was included at the outset by the programmer. This is not obvious?GilDodgen_{June 16, 2009
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Hey Herb,
RDK, Please disregard the questions about Pol Pot, which in retrospect, are inappropriate. My apologies.
No offense taken! :) Hi Barb,
I respectfully disagree. Think about this: Do you appreciate having the freedom to choose what you will do and say, what you will eat and wear, what kind of work you will do, and where and how you will live? Or would you want someone to dictate your every word and action every moment of your life? No normal person wants his life taken out of his control so completely.
Of course not. But if we look closer at the words you used to compile that paragraph, you are assuming two things - the existence of a free will, and the existence of a "you". Can you explain in sufficient detail either of these phenomena? Perhaps then we'll get somewhere. What do you mean by "you", or "I"? Is it your personality? Your identity? Your essence?
God gave us the ability to think, weigh matters, make decisions, and know right from wrong. (Hebrews 5:14) Thus, free will was to be based on intelligent choice. We were not made like mindless robots having no will of their own. Nor were we created to act out of instinct as were the animals.
But we do act out of instinct! We aren't influenced as much by it as, say, dogs, but we do have some. Motherly intuition? Strong feelings of familial ties? Brotherly love? Classic case of nature vs. nurture. And I do agree that humans, just like any other half-sentient animal, has the ability to weigh decisions rationally. The point I'm trying to make is that the idea that our will is somehow "free" from experience, patterns, and presuppositional bias is superstitious at best. I'll ask one more time, since no on has been able to give me a straight answer - what does it mean for your will to be "free"? P.S: and your point about Yahweh giving us morality is moot. People who grow up in different cultures have different moral codes than you. Or what about people with no conscience at all? How do you explain them?
However, did God purpose for free will to be without limits? Imagine a busy city without any traffic laws, where everybody could drive in any direction at any speed. Would you want to drive under those conditions? No, that would be traffic anarchy and would surely result in many accidents.
This has nothing to do with free will. That's government.
So too with God’s gift of free will. Unlimited freedom would mean anarchy in society. There have to be laws to guide human activities. God’s Word says: “Behave like free men, and never use your freedom as an excuse for wickedness.” (1 Peter 2:16, JB) God wants free will to be regulated for the common good. He purposed for us to have, not total freedom, but relative freedom, subject to the rule of law.
So Yahweh wanted us to be free, but not too free?
At the same time, God’s laws allow for great freedom of choice within their boundaries. This results in variety and makes the human family fascinating. Think of the different types of food, clothing, music, art, and homes throughout the world. We surely prefer to have our choice in such matters rather than have some other person decide for us.
Again, all of this can exist nicely within the realm of rational decision-making. I would like to know why people continue to live under the illusion that for some reason our will is "free". Yes. People have wants. And we may have several conflicting wants, desires, or "wills" (what have you) at the same time. Obviously, we can pick and choose which will we want to satisfy. But then again, acting on that decision is a desire in and of itself. We chose to satisfy that desire because that was our will. What is so "free" about this process?
And patterns of behavior can be broken: just ask someone who’s been through a 12-step program like AA. It is similar to being subject to God’s physical laws. For instance, if we ignore the law of gravity and jump off a high place, we will be injured or killed. If we ignore the internal laws of our body and stop eating food, drinking water, or breathing air, we will die.
I'm not sure what the second part (concerning physical laws) has to do with it. But I agree with you in saying that patterns can be broken. But the decisions we make currently - in the present - are influenced by decisions and experiences we've made and had in the past. If our habits and patterns could not be broken, then you would be right in saying that we are robots.RDK_{June 16, 2009
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on the topic of something causing the loss of faith, for me witnessing alzeimers got it started. (losing faith is a long process, especially if you were born into a faith that you later leave, so I could list about 100 other influential factors, none of them dealing with evolution) Evolution was always accepted in my christian family and I remember other christians telling me that evolution means there is no God, (they were usually bible literealists)but that did nothing to persuade me.Fross_{June 16, 2009
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"Does anything more need to be said?" Sure. Like how the analogy fails in multiple ways. One could evolve the "Hello World" code by a program analogous to Weasel, but ID proponents have misunderstood that program for as long as it's been around. Here's another variant of the ID win/win: 1) If "Hello world" can't evolve / life can't be evolved / therefore ID. 2) If "Hello world" can evolve / computers aren't like life / therefore ID. Again, ID wins, every time.David Kellogg_{June 16, 2009
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That link Gil posted seemed pretty convincing to me. In it, he considers the probability of arriving at the "Hello World" program by random mutation and natural selection, and concludes that it is astronomically small. However, the chance of complex life evolving is far, far less likely. Does anything more need to be said?herb_{June 16, 2009
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Gaz, ------"Grateful for a quick reply, we’ve been waiting with bated breath for some time now." Drop the disdainful rhetoric or I will put you in moderation.Clive Hayden_{June 16, 2009
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GilDodgen (55), "That being said, would you kindly share with us these revelation-bearing simple mathematics about probabilities and combinatorics? If it convinced you, I’m sure it would do a number on the rest of us. https://uncommondescent.com.....selection/" Gil, are you sure you gave the right link? That just seems to lead to a rather dull and wordy thread. Can't you just put your sub-teenager math and probabilities up for us to see here? Grateful for a quick reply, we've been waiting with bated breath for some time now.Gaz_{June 16, 2009
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RDK @ #30 - As individual organisms we react to the environment. As the environment changes, so does the individual’s concept of the “right thing”. The environment is dictating your input - perception is the key and it can be manipulated. It is a combination of pressures, some internal and some external, that collectively dictate our pathway through life. I respectfully disagree. Think about this: Do you appreciate having the freedom to choose what you will do and say, what you will eat and wear, what kind of work you will do, and where and how you will live? Or would you want someone to dictate your every word and action every moment of your life? No normal person wants his life taken out of his control so completely. God gave us the ability to think, weigh matters, make decisions, and know right from wrong. (Hebrews 5:14) Thus, free will was to be based on intelligent choice. We were not made like mindless robots having no will of their own. Nor were we created to act out of instinct as were the animals. Instead, our marvelous brain was designed to work in harmony with our freedom of choice. However, did God purpose for free will to be without limits? Imagine a busy city without any traffic laws, where everybody could drive in any direction at any speed. Would you want to drive under those conditions? No, that would be traffic anarchy and would surely result in many accidents. So too with God's gift of free will. Unlimited freedom would mean anarchy in society. There have to be laws to guide human activities. God's Word says: "Behave like free men, and never use your freedom as an excuse for wickedness." (1 Peter 2:16, JB) God wants free will to be regulated for the common good. He purposed for us to have, not total freedom, but relative freedom, subject to the rule of law. At the same time, God's laws allow for great freedom of choice within their boundaries. This results in variety and makes the human family fascinating. Think of the different types of food, clothing, music, art, and homes throughout the world. We surely prefer to have our choice in such matters rather than have some other person decide for us. That’s why free will is bunk. Our personality - our will, or essence - is not free. If anything, it’s steady and solid. Humans are creatures of habit; it’s patterns in behavior that make us who we are, not some sort of quasi-religious entity called a “soul” hanging off in some other dimension. And patterns of behavior can be broken: just ask someone who’s been through a 12-step program like AA. It is similar to being subject to God's physical laws. For instance, if we ignore the law of gravity and jump off a high place, we will be injured or killed. If we ignore the internal laws of our body and stop eating food, drinking water, or breathing air, we will die.Barb_{June 16, 2009
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Gil Dodgen wrote:
The cross of Christ — the hideously barbaric and unjust murder of the best man who ever lived — is a basic and revelatory test of the human heart. Some people care, and some people don’t. I care.
Gil, You might want to ask yourself a couple of questions: 1. When Jesus prayed "Take this cup from me, if it be thy will," who was it who insisted that no, he had to be murdered in hideous and barbaric fashion, like it or not? 2. Who was it who refused to show mercy and forgive the sins of mankind until his own son suffered a hideous and bloody death first?mereologist_{June 15, 2009
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RDK, Please disregard the questions about Pol Pot, which in retrospect, are inappropriate. My apologies.herb_{June 15, 2009
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RDK,
And yes, that’s a real article. Housekeeping Monthly, May 13, 1955.
That's an interesting and frankly rather shocking article. But what does it haev to do with Judeo-Christianity? And can you imagine a 'good wife's guide" written by a prominent materilaistic athiest such as Pol Pot? Do you really think that women fared better under his rule?herb_{June 15, 2009
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"I’d really like to know your position before I go about “attacking” it. All I’m really asking for is a coherent definition of “free will”, because I have the suspicion that in reality we essentially have similar views (minus the Yahweh thing), and semantics are getting in the way." Perhaps so, but what I really don't understand is why I should need to provide a coherent definition of free will, any more than I should be able to provide an exact description of, say, the color yellow to a blind person. Free will is free will. Yellow is yellow. Can you defend the position that "free will" is a thing that requires analysis? It's as bloody obvious to me that I have it as that the color yellow looks like yellow. It's that thing I use when I decide something is worth analysing, that thing I use to judge and make distinctions with, that thing that commands the various faculties of my intellect to assist me in figuring things out. In short, it's the thing doin' the analysin', not the thing to be analysed. This is all classical metaphysical stuff. Again, you seem to have gotten yourself into some sort of scientistic thicket. You have willfully boxed yourself with reason into such a position that you don't even believe in the thing that commands your reason. You have somehow gotten yourself into a situation of self-refutation. This is a sure sign that you need to retrace your steps. Science is supposed to explain the basic things of experience, not explain them away. There are some things it can handle, and some it can't. But for science to claim that that which it is not competent to explain, simply doesn't exist, is an indication that it's gotten a little too big for its britches. Now, why do you want to be such close friends with such a "pompous blowhard" as "science" beyond the competence of real science? True science is groovy, true philosophy is groovy, true theology is groovy. Don't you want to make some other friends, you know, for some intellectual variety? Can you prove scientifically that science is the complete route to all true knowledge? I mean, heck, Godel proved that no finite mathematical system is the route to all true mathematical knowledge. Why not branch out a little? RDK, with all fancy scientistic wrappings put aside, are you a man, or are you a robot? Or just a man who has willfully convinced himself that he is a robot?Matteo_{June 15, 2009
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I’m talking about modern Judeo-Christian culture, and what has ultimately been produced over the centuries as a result of this worldview.
But isn't the Bible for all time? If it isn't, why all the modern applications? And if it is, then why is the Bible so damning towards women? Even your example of Mary Magdeline is a bad one. Her thanks to Jesus was coming back to wash his feet with her hair! What could be more degrading? And I'm not shielding Islam from criticism (if you are indeed referring to Islam in the above post). The treatment of women in Islamic countries is barbaric and awful. But to say that Judeo-Christian principles have been the paragon of ethical female treatment is deluded at best. It is a certain interpretation of scripture that has allowed for proper treatment of women as equals. In the very same way, someone could interpret scripture to be damning toward women, as I just did above. Perhaps it would be best if we all returned to the good-old 1950's lifestyle, where housewives were expected to do nothing but cook, clean, and keep the kids full and quiet: http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/7913/retrogoodwifesguide1955.jpg And yes, that's a real article. Housekeeping Monthly, May 13, 1955.RDK_{June 15, 2009
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I'm talking about modern Judeo-Christian culture, and what has ultimately been produced over the centuries as a result of this worldview. Are you unfamiliar with the woman at the well, or the woman caught in adultery in the Gospels? Why, in our modern, male-dominated, oppressive Judeo-Christian culture, are there more women in college than men? I suppose you would prefer certain other modern cultures, where girls and young women are still murdered with impunity by male family members for the sin of being raped, or for dating non-believers.GilDodgen_{June 15, 2009
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