ID, Atheism, and Theistic Evolution
| February 24, 2010 | Posted by William Dembski under Atheism, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, theistic evolution |
A famous theism-vs.-atheism debate between William Lane Craig and Frank Zindler took place in 1993 at Willow Creek Church and was published as a video by Zondervan in 1996 (under the title Atheism vs. Christianity). The debate is available on YouTube here (in 15 parts). It is available in full here. In that debate, Zindler, taking the atheist side, made the following remark:
The most devastating thing, though, that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people, the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve, there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin, there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation, there is no need of a savior. And I submit that puts Jesus, historical or otherwise, into the ranks of the unemployed. I think that evolution is absolutely the death knell of Christianity.
I’ve addressed Zindler’s objection to Original Sin and the Fall in my book The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World (check out the book as well as a $5,000 video contest promoting the book at www.godornot.com). What interests me here, though, is the logic that’s suppoed to take one from evolution to the death of Christianity — and presumably also to the death of any other brand of theism. Accordingly, evolution — a Darwinian, materialistic form of it — is supposed to imply no God and thus atheism. Simply put, (DARWINIAN) EVOLUTION implies ATHEISM. This implication seems widely touted by atheists. Will Provine, for instance, will call evolution an “engine for atheism,” suggesting that the path from evolution to atheism is inescapable.
Now this implication, though perhaps underscoring a sociological phenomenon (people exposed to Darwinism frequently become atheistic or agnostic), is logically unsound. Theistic evolutionists like Francis Collins, Denis Alexander, and Kenneth Miller provide a clear counterexample, showing that some bright biologists think it’s possible for the two to be compatible. Moreover, there’s no evident contradiction between a Darwinian evolutionary process that brings about the complexity and diversity of life and a god of some sort (deistic, Stoic, etc.?) setting up the physical conditions by which evolution operates.
The reverse implication, however, does hold: ATHEISM implies EVOLUTION (a gradualist, materialist form of evolution, the prime example of which is Darwinian evolution). Indeed, the atheist has no other options in explaining the diversity and complexity of life. This reverse implication explains why ID is so vehemently opposed by atheists. By challenging evolution, ID challenges atheism. The logic here is a simple application of the rules modus ponens (If A, then B; A; therefore B) and modus tollens (If A, then B; not B; therefore not A). Thus,
Premise 1: If atheism is true, then so is Darwinian evolution.
Premise 2: But if ID is true, then Darwinian evolution is false.
Premise 3: ID is true (the controversial premise).
Conclus 1: Therefore Darwinian evolution is false (modus ponents applied to Premises 2 and 3)
Conclus 2: Therefore atheism is false (modus tollens applied to Premise 1 and Conclus 1)
Evolution is the mainstay of an atheistic worldview — is it a coincidence that the day-job of the world’s most prominent atheist (Richard Dawkins) is evolutionary biology? ID, by challenging this mainstay, fundamentally undermines an atheistic worldview. It’s therefore ironic that theistic evolutionists fall all over themselves to support evolution, even arguing that it is more compatible with Christian theism than ID.
When I got into this business 20 years ago, I thought that any Christian (and indeed theist), given good evidence against evolution (again, a materialistic understanding of it) would be happy to trash it and move to some form of intelligent design (whether special creation or intelligent evolution). But that’s not happened. Theistic evolutionists now make common cause with atheistic evolutionists — specifically against ID. ID has become public enemy number one for both atheistic and theistic evolutionists (the recent spate of books by both sides confirms this point).
The practical effect of this is that not just the mainstream academy but the mainstream Christian academy (Wheaton College, Calvin College, Seattle Pacific University, etc. — most of the schools in the CCCU) have now closed their doors to ID and to hiring faculty that explicitly support it. We’re therefore on our own. This may seem like a bad thing (it sure would be nice to be invited to those wine-and-cheese parties at the Templeton Foundation), but I submit it is a good thing. It keeps us honest. We don’t have to play nice with Darwin because our livelihoods are at stake. Moreover, it will make the ultimate victory of ID all that much sweeter.
34 Responses to ID, Atheism, and Theistic Evolution
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However, to me they are rational (while unprecedented), and as such, they point to a rational God
True, but they cannot be found through a systematic study of nature. A miracle, almost by definition, is a violation of the laws of nature.
who created all reality, not just spiritual reality.
Also true. If you are saying the order of the universe points to a creator I agree wholeheartedly.
The important thing is to separate their rationality from scientific rationality – and I think that is what you mean.
Here is what I think is wrong with our culture. Science should not be considered synonymous with rationality. You can be rational without being “scientific” and, since science is practiced by human beings, “scientific” without being rational.
I sense that the TE’s view of theology is closer to gnosticism than to orthodoxy.
I’d cut some of them even less slack than that. Some are akin to Old Testament false prophets who are willing to say anything for pieces of silver.
Others, however, and I’m lumping Beckwith in this category albeit I’m not sure he is a true TE, have what I think are legitimate concerns about the misuse of ID, which is not the same as being anti-ID.
If God is real, He’s not an abstraction. There is a kind of spirituality that presents God as pretty much an abstraction, and as such, it is a false spirituality.
I agree with you and hopefully you don’t think I’m doing that. My point is that one should never put science ahead of God, or make a belief in God contingent on the latest scientific fashion.
Don’t forget ID is science and good science. This means it can be falsified. If it should ever be, God still exists. H remains the I Am.
tribune7,
You pretty much clarified a lot in your last post. I don’t think there’s really anything important where we disagree. Thanks
I think Dr Dembski’s post is a very helpful discussion because as I read it as an affirmation that Christians can accept evolution but NOT Darwinism. EC/TEs usually use different definitions of terms and I will discuss more on that subject a bit later. However, I think with regard to the term Darwinism we agree upon a meaning.
Darwinism is totally and undeniably incompatible with Christianity. Where by Darwinism I mean to include both his theory of RM+NS and his metaphysics or world view. When I say that ECs agree probably exceptions can be found but I think most would agree.
I prefer to use the term Evolutionary Creationist rather than Theistic Evolutionist for at least two reasons:
1. EC makes it crystal clear that we stand in the same position as YEC and OEC in that we all believe “In the beginning God”
2. The noun is creationist rather than evolutionist which indicates a better emphasis, ie we are creationists who also accept evolution not evolutionists who accept theism.
Yes I am probably tilting at windmills using a different definition, but this is one case where IMO it seems important.
One large problem between ECs and ID has to do with the meaning of words. When you, at least on this blog, say Darwinian evolution you mean not only the scientific theory but also the metaphysics, world view, religion held by people like Dawkins and Coyne. As an EC when I refer to Darwinian’ evolution I simply mean RM+NS as Darwin described them. Note that I added a ” ‘ ” after Darwinian to delineate the term as I understand it. I will attempt to use that term henceforth so the reader knows which meaning I am using. The none quoted form designates the usual meaning on this blog as I understand it and I read UcD regularly, at least the posts.
Let me illustrate a second problem I see between ECs and ID. Asking if Darwinian evolution is true or false seems to me to be the wrong question. Using both senses of the word Darwinian evolution is false in a technical sense. No EC that I can think of holds to Darwin’s original theory unchanged. Numerous extensions and modifications exist and I refer to them as the modern evolutionary synthesis. Except for a few quibbles I would say that Lamarckian evolution is false but much more damming it seems irrelevant. Since on this blog Darwinian always seems to include Darwin’s metaphysics then obviously you think Darwinian evolution is false.
As someone trained as an electrical engineer/applied mathematician and as someone who spent their entire career in programming, the questions I think important are different than true or false. One good question being “Is a theory useful or is it a good first approximation to reality”.
I don’t ask if theories by Ptolemy, Newton, Einstein are right or wrong, true or false, but whether or not can I use their theories to give me good approximations to reality. Newton of course was an immense improvement over Ptolemy but even old Newt is not applicable under all conditions. All of these theories are clearly wrong although general relativity is the best theory we have but it and quantum mechanics disagree so somebody is wrong in both a technical and the fundamental sense and I suspect problems with both. For many uses Newton’s theories are good enough, at least to get us to the moon and back. Likewise common descent and RM+NS is inadequate.
With regard to Dr Dembski’s soligism something seems wrong wrt IDers who are agnostics and possibly atheists.
Wrt “ID is true” that is questionable IMO.
But let me be very clear as to what I mean which is, has ID demonstrated with a high degree of certainty that natural laws, constants and initial conditions are insufficient to produce life as we know it. To which my answer is no, not yet. By very sure to read that not yet. I certainly think that ID has raised interesting and important questions that result in doubts in my mind. Will ID ever be successful? I don’t know and that is the job and passion of people like Behe and Merer. Front loading and Mike Gene’s ideas also would need to be factored into this discussion somehow. I see front loading as fitting into the natural laws etc, all created by God, God is in all we see, nothing is beyond his control and concurrence.
Now I would like to deal with Dembski’s paragraph which I quote below but not in the depth it needs to do it justice and also do justice to the position of some ECs as well.
“When I got into this business 20 years ago, I thought that any Christian (and indeed theist), given good evidence against evolution (again, a materialistic understanding of it) would be happy to trash it and move to some form of intelligent design (whether special creation or intelligent evolution). But that’s not happened. Theistic evolutionists now make common cause with atheistic evolutionists — specifically against ID. ID has become public enemy number one for both atheistic and theistic evolutionists (the recent spate of books by both sides confirms this point).”
First I should say that I totally disagree with most of what Kenneth R Miller says about ID. Many ECs maybe most, accept intelligent design in terms of fine tuning of parameters, constants and initial conditions. Again many ECs accept that God may have in some fashion occasionally gone beyond the normal laws and processes that we observe in bring about life. I happen to think such action is probable but I don’t really know and that is ok. Whether such action is even in principle detectable is another issue that I neither know the answer to nor to I much care one way or another other than as intellectually interesting.
Maybe one effect ID has had is that the multiverse is being suggested as a way to engage sufficient probabilistic resources. My answer to the multiverse is show me the hard evidence.
I think that accusing ECs of making common cause with atheistic evolutionists is an over-statement and part of the problem that causes the friction between ID and ECs. As I see it EC’s can only be combatants in a joint struggle with atheists in some limited areas but never to the extent of accepting Darwinism. Yes I accept the ID point that many or even most EC folks don’t make that point clear enough and we should.
To really deal with this issue means addressing the elephant in the room which is ID and Science. I think it is perfectly valid to apply the methods of science and mathematics to the support one’s world view or metaphysics. However I think that science should not include references to the deity as the casual factor and that most teleology is out of bounds. While we don’t have a name for the set to which ID and science belong, one might think of it as being called Natural Philosophy where science adheres to MN and the portion of Natural Philosophy that ID belongs to does not adhere to MN. To my mind both are valid. Maybe the name I suggest is not a good one but I can’t think of any other.
To paraphrase Ted Davis the president of ASA, he says that he accepts much of the core of ID but does not accept that ID is science. I take the same position to a large extent. Whereupon we are told that we totally misunderstand science, ID and are asked leading questions with unsavory implications such as “Do you, by any chance, work with or for… Any stalking horse for Darwinism that specializes in confusing Christians?”. Does David Berlinski fully accept ID as science? Yet he is accepted by ID, if not as allied, at least a fellow combatant. Why not at least some ECs? I think ID has made a lot of progress, maybe not in the so called US culture wars but in other matters. As a Canadian I try very hard to stay out of the culture wars south of the 49th parallel although that is hard since it was only in later high school years that I had any Canadian geography or history. Instead I learned things like “Four score and seven years ago” and I have a much firmer grasp on the US than on the Canadian system of government, although frankly both seem dysfunctional right now. We sent our children to Christian schools for grades 2 thro 8, so in that way I have already partially given up on the public school system which seems to be a large concern to much of the ID movement.
Behe’s work on Irreducible Complexity (IC) and limits of RM + NS actions, I do accept as science or at least raising questions that science needs to answer. On issues like whether or not the famous flagellum are examples of IC and in fact if any real examples exist, I leave those answers to future understanding by biologists or biochemists etc and not to science fiction writers like Dawkins is in some of his books IMO. Some ECs don’t accept Behe’s work as being scientific at least not even in principle but here they and I part company. I ask evolutionary scientists not unrelated questions like:
-how do we know that time is deep enough ie are there enough generations to produce life as we know it? Likely a google-plex of years (ie 10 to the 100 raised to the 10 to the 100 power) would be an quite adequate upper bound but we only have about 4.7 billion years, all in all not a very long time in terms of generations of the higher species or in terms of sufficient time to produce the first cell.
-how do we know the backside of the infamous Mount Improbable is a continuous slope without discontinuities? Might there not be some cliffs without any bypasses?
-how do we deal with the combinatorial explosion problem to create the first cel? Here I am doubtful of a wholly natural solution but would not be dogmatic either way.
-where is the 500 page book that details all the steps, each mutation, it’s expression and it’s environmental benefit to the life form… from even one major evolutionary state to another? An example of the kind of complex evolutionary state changes I am talking about is the transition between the a land animal to a sea dwelling mammal like a whale. If one reads Coyne’s book he whines that such level of detail is impossible for a historical science, to which my reply would be “Tough, that is what I can find in a university library for other sciences.”
So far the silence has been deafening.
By MN I mean methodological naturalism which as a name I don’t like but whose implications I accept not because of indoctrination at ASA as has been suggested earlier this week on this blog, but because it is something I saw the need for from early childhood in Africa.
Now I better stop as this epistle is already too long. I hope I don’t get only flames but some thoughtful answers and questions. In such a short comment obviously I can’t nuance things as I would like. Please ask questions rather than assume my meaning and intent and then flaming. For example I well realize that ID insists the designer is not the Judeau-Christian God but so far I have trouble persuading myself that that proposition is true, at least most days of the week. To me it seems like not a slippery slope but like a vertical wall of impenetrable material, coated with Teflon… you get the idea. Probably a similar problem to that some ID folks have with old earth, plus common descent, plus some RM+NS… not being equivalent to Darwinism.
Forgot to sign my comment.
Dave W