Orthodoxy and the 'Intelligent Design Movement' [Archive]

Ken H

22-10-2003, 11:31 PM

Hello Richard,

Well the basic issue is this: is there evidence that life on earth is designed (rather than the product of randomness or semi-randomness). IDM of course contends that yes there is. The problem philosophically is they cannot demonstrate warrant for their epistemological stance and specifically they cannot account for changes in background information changing ontological conclusions. In fields outside of science, like theology, this becomes a bigger problem. Most IDM people (not all) are Christian and are motivated to defend God's identity as Creator. However, they carry over this epistemological/ontological gap problem into their theology. Many of them will say that their critique of Darwin hinges on the fact that Darwinism (as they call it) is unfairly privileged by an assumption of philosophical naturalism on the part of science practitioners. They see this problem plagueing the arts as well. In theology, they argue that ultimately Darwinically inspired philosophical naturalism has clouded our access to important truths, like for instance the historical verification of the Biblical narratives, especially in verifying miracles. My issue is that the life of Christ, being an intervention by the unkowable into our time/space is by definition a knowledge gift from God. People who saw Jesus work miracles did not always respond as we would think appropriately, but that's because we know the full story. We have had the Spirit guided wisdom of the Church to hold out the Gospel to us. If as the IDM people say ontological certainty in such issues can be derived by human observation of the facts, then where is the role of faith, the role of the Holy Spirit. What need for the Church, the Sacraments, etc.? It is no surprise that many ID leaders are Reformed Protestants. If the suspect nature of their epistemology becomes clear in their application of theology, then we have to revisit their thinking about science. Here I think I see them conflating epistemology with ontology as well, and that's what makes so many of the science types furious at them. To the science people it all seems very wilful. Lastly, as I understand things, Orthodoxy has no real argument with evolution, since a) the Fathers read Scripture allegorically often including Genesis and b) since _any_ system in creation is "beneath" the transcendent God. No matter what method He chooses, He is still Author. And, thanks to the unbridgeable epist/onto gap, whatever looks random can still be intended by Him.

Richard Leigh

23-10-2003, 12:14 AM

Dear Ken,

It doesn't surprise me that this sort of thing would be coming out of my (our?) Reformed bretheren, they have a penchant for leaning on reason and intellect along with divine revelation.

Not that I have a hankering after a humanly wise way of stating a case for God, but I am constantly reminded to find Him in the Spriptures (I'm Lutheran, you see).

The whole consideration of creation is, after all, only the first article of the Creed, i.e., beliefe in God as Creator.

But you are right, it would seem to me regarding the epistimelogical issue. /i{How} can they know that and God? So, this can only come by revelation: God's word through His church.

Regarding creation randomly conceived, though, I think it has been established mathematically that not enough time can be found in all of observable creation for a random construction (or self erection?) of the universe available to us.

And the design is quite nice, really.

Thanks for the feedback,

Richard

Cyril Guerette

23-10-2003, 12:32 AM

Dear Ken,

It would seem to be that the beleif that the Universe intrinsically shows forth desgin can be discovered in Rom. 1:20: "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse (NIV)."

I don't know much about this IDM you speak of but I don't think it is relying too much on intellect to say that our minds, upon contemplating his Creation, can contemplate, albeit so minutely, its Creator.

Sincerely,
Cyril

Ken H

23-10-2003, 05:58 PM

Dear Cyril,

Yes, indeed and Rom 1:20 is a favorite of Christian IDM'ers. However, it is my thought that subsequent discussions of Faith as gifted knowledge from God, which we find in this same Epistle and in Hebrews, and sprinkled throughout Paul, militates against the idea that God is demonstrable without His own consent and gift. Jesus indicated this was certainly so in the field of history in Lk 13:3,4. Also in Mt 28: 16, 17. Now, in favor of the IDM people, they argue that they do not insist on the Christian God as the Designer, only that we can reasonably conclude that Design is behind life on Earth. That much I think does agree with Rom 1:20. The problem starts after that when IDM people say that their discovery of a philosophically prejudiced naturalism, stemming largely from the triumph of Darwin, has blinded us in all fields of knowledge. For example, most of the IDM people I've talked to are Protestant Christians and to a man/woman those that are say that the Resurrection is a historical fact, where historical fact is taken to mean that by applying the usual techniques/epistemology of regular historical investigation a person can come to an ontological certainty that the Resurrection occurred. This seems to me to fly in the face of Scripture, seems to vitiate the Christian understanding of God's gift of faith, and contradicts the way we normally do history in more mundane subjects. The question seems to be, "whence an assurance of ontological certainty, unless one is predicating omniscience." I have not had a good answer from an IDM person to this yet.
So, as far as IDM advocates can counter unjustified philosophical assertions tied to science (like when Richard Dawkins assures us that evolution proves atheism) so much to the good. But when IDM methods are brought into Scripture, history, and theology, then the implications begin to disturb me.

Alvin Kimel

24-10-2003, 03:52 PM

You might find of interest Richard Swinburne's essay on the Argument for Design (http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles2/SwinburnDesign.shtml) of interest. Swinburne converted to Orthdoxy a few years ago.

Fr John Wehling

24-10-2003, 09:19 PM

Reason is a great gift of God to man, but in our fallen condition it is not pure, not unscathed by the passions. It is one thing for a scientist to use his reason and detect design in the universe. This is not a bad thing; I don't see how it could be. But it is another thing altogether for a person to see within the universe the Divine seeds of the Logos, the "inner principles," the Glory of God over all the earth. The first requires the use of the reason without, perhaps, a certain naturalistic presupposition. The second requires a pure heart cleansed through ascetic labor and the aquisition of virtue, and illumined by the Holy Spirit. The two, then, are not at odds, but they are not the same thing.

Fr John

Waldemar

24-10-2003, 10:23 PM

IDM is just the latest episode in the fight between the Fundamentalists ("We can prove God!") and the Evolutionists ("No you can't!"). I think the Orthodox can be impartial to this fight for the very same reasons that G.K. Chesterton gave for the Roman Catholic Church:

"It is impartial in a fight between the Fundamentalist and the theory of the Origin of Species, because it goes back to an origin before that Origin; because it is more fundamental than Fundamentalism. It knows where the Bible came from. It also knows where most of the theories of Evolution go to. It knows there were many other Gospels besides the Four Gospels, and that the others were only eliminated by the authority of the Catholic Church. It knows there are many other evolutionary theories besides the Darwinian theory; and that the latter is quite likely to be eliminated by later science. It does not, in the conventional phrase, accept the conclusions of science, for the simple reason that science has not concluded. To conclude is to shut up; and the man of science is not at all likely to shut up."

Waldemar

24-10-2003, 10:27 PM

Let me add this last quotation because I think it is so wonderfully ortho-doxa:

"All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive." - GK Chesterton

Cyril Guerette

02-11-2003, 08:01 PM

I thought I'd add a quote from Gregory of Nazianzus I've come across lately from the second of his famous Theological Orations:

"VI. Now our very eyes and the Law of Nature teach us that God exists and that He is the Efficient and Maintaining Cause of all things: our eyes, because they fall on visible objects, and see them in beautiful stability and progress, immovably moving and revolving if I may so say; natural Law, because through these visible things and their order, it reasons back to their Author. For how could this Universe have come into being or been put together, unless God had called it into existence, and held it together? For every one who sees a beautifully made lute, and considers the skill with which it has been fitted together and arranged, or who hears its melody, would think of none but the lutemaker, or the luteplayer, and would recur to him in mind, though he might not know him by sight. And thus to us also is manifested That which made and moves and preserves all created things, even though He be not comprehended by the mind. And very wanting in sense is he who will not willingly go thus far in following natural proofs; but not even this which we have fancied or formed, or which reason has sketched for us, proves the existence of a God. But if any one has got even to some extent a comprehension of this, how is God's Being to bedemonstrated? Who ever reached this extremity of wisdom? Who was ever deemed worthy of so great a gift? Who has opened the mouth of his mind and drawn in the Spirit, so as by Him that searcheth all things, yea the deep thing of God, to take in God, and no longer to need progress, since he already possesses the Extreme Object of desire, and That to which all the social life and all the intelligence of the best men press forward?"

I found it intriguing how he shows that the mind can contemplate God in Creation, indeed that the Order points to God and anyone who sees it not is "very wanting in sense" ... and yet he says that in no way this "proves the existence of God." It is only reasonable to see God in Creation, but this doesn't constitute an water-tight proof. I think that this is somewhat how Aquinas saw it as well, no single argument "proves" God's existence, but together they form an inductive argument that is pretty "probable" though not certain. The human mind can never grasp God so.

Jonathan Hayward

16-05-2009, 04:09 AM

IDM is just the latest episode in the fight between the Fundamentalists ("We can prove God!") and the Evolutionists ("No you can't!").May I ask you to read Philip Johnson's Darwin on Trial or Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box? It is somewhat misinformed to present intelligent design as beginning and ending with fundamentalists.

I wrote The Evolution of a Perspective on Creation and Origins (http://jonathanscorner.com/origins/), and also Why Young Earthers Aren't Completely Crazy (http://jonathanscorner.com/young/), after I read those two books and became dissatisfied with being a theistic evolutionist.

Please don't say that intelligent design is interchangeable with fundamentalism. It's a "fingernails on the chalkboard" experience for people who have read the movement's seminal works--like Catholics saying that Orthodox are just Catholics who don't realize they need to restore communion with Rome.

Christos Jonathan

Owen Jones

20-05-2009, 03:40 PM

The key to understanding modern evolutionary theory as derived from Darwin (evolutionary theory has been around forever -- it was addressed by Aristotle) is to go to Darwin's own words. In "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life" (the original title) Darwin states the following (in my own summary words): I am drawing an inference based on my observations in the field that the diversity and adaptation of species could have only come about by a natural process because it is too far fetched to believe that God could have managed such complexity. At some time in the past what God did was breath life into material things, but that's it.

I can get the exact quote if you like, but it's available on line and it is worth taking a look at his words. So I think the ID group is trying to address this conundrum and turn it on its head. They are basically drawing the opposite inference that Darwin drew, based on scientific observation.

Theophrastus

20-05-2009, 04:37 PM

....because it is too far fetched to believe that God could have managed such complexity. At some time in the past what God did was breath life into material things, but that's it....

It's not that Darwin thought God was incapable of producing complexity. Rather, Darwin concluded that naturalistic evolution could explain biological divergence quite nicely without invoking supernaturalistic activity.

One good example is the distribution of finches on Galapagos. A creationist might say that God separately created each finch species on each separate Galapagos island. However, Darwin concluded that it seemed much more reasonable that the Galapagos finches (consisting of several different, though related, species) evolved from a South American finch species that migrated to the Galapagos sometime in the past, and diverged into several different species.

Of course, if one wants to argue that God guided the evolution of the finches, that's good theology, but not-so-good science (since God -- as defined by many -- is not empirically falsifiable by means of the methods of modern Western science).

The "Intelligent Design Movement" wants to argue that some biological systems are too complex to have evolved without intelligent activity behind them. But such an argument is susceptible to be undermined by the progress of science itself, as scientists continually discovers ways in which very complex systems may have naturalistically evolved. (The other problem with IDM is that the source of "intelligent activity" might be an alien species: Behe notes this possibility in his Black Box.)

Jonathan Hayward

21-05-2009, 02:34 AM

Darwin was not an atheist or materialist, but a Deist. He was, more specifically, a Deist shaped by the tragedy of outliving a child of his--much rougher of an experience than when people start to cry out, "Where is God when it hurts?"

His theory of evolution was not, originally, a triumph of an account that needs no God, but a triumph of a God who need not do what Christians confess that offends the Deist: interact with his Creation. Darwin's theory was the triumph of a Deism that could reconcile life as we know it with the Deistic concern to believe in a Watchmaker who wound up the great Watch, the universe, and set it in motion, and did not touch it since. To him as a Deist, the idea of a God who kept on intervening with his Creation is almost as offensive as a literal watchmaker so incompetent that he has to keep fiddling with a watch when the watch should be running by the virtue of its own clockwork alone.

And, I might add, to a parent who survived his child, there may be something in asserting that God's job is not to intervene or interact. If you assert, with Orthodox, a God who continues to interact with miracles (the supreme example of which is God become incarnate as Godman in his own Creation), then that is to assert a God who does miracles, a God who heals and saves, a God who watches over his children and loves little ones, and this selfsame God allowed Darwin's child to die after hearing Darwin's anguished prayers, and left Darwin to live after suffering through all this. Maybe, to Darwin, it is much easier to call God good if he is the Great Watchmaker who created the Watch but who needs to keep his hands off now.

Darwin's theory was a triumph of religion in science, of Deist faith, and perhaps a way of rescuing God's character after God apparently failed to help a tragedy.

Christos Jonathan

P.S. I'm a little concerned about Theophrastus's summary of Behe as saying that some things are just too complex. It kind of flattens out the idea of irreducible complexity: a Swiss Army Knife, were it a life form in an evolutionary world, could conceivably evolve from a simple knife, evolved to have the blade fold into its handle, evolved to have a screwdriver, evolved to have a second and smaller blade, and so on until you have a packed, thick Swiss Army Knife. But on Behe's definition, this is not to be appealed to as irreducible complexity even though it is very complex. A mousetrap, on the other hand, is simpler, but irreducible in its complexity because if you are building up to a working mousetrap, the intermediate steps are a complexity without advantage (read: a complexity that natural selection does not favor, and may work to eliminate): take away any one of the wooden base, the hammer, the spring, the trigger, and one other part he mentions, and the mousetrap is (unlike a Swiss Army knife that has accumulated some advantages over a simple knife but not yet a thick Swisschamp) utterly useless. I find it a disappointing summary to say Behe says simply that some things are too complex to have evolved. He does not place any upper limit on complexity by evolutionary processes, merely assert that there are some kinds of complexity not demonstrably accounted for in the picture.

Owen Jones

21-05-2009, 02:47 AM

Thanks, Jonathan, for an excellent summary. I am always amazed that people adhere to a theory without ever actually looking at the basic text of that theory. How many people have actually read Darwin's words? He clearly reveals his Deism as the source, motive behind his theory. God breathed life into material things. That's it for Darwin. He could not possibly have created the complexity and diversity that Darwin finds in the natural world. Therefore, there are certain theological assumptions (presumptions) behind Darwin's theory. That Deism is functionally no different than atheism never seemed to have occurred to Darwin, and so now Darwinism is mostly used as an argument against there being any need for any God at all, by people who really are incapable of thinking intelligently about first principles.

ID certainly has its limitations, in that it only engages the debate on one level and you have summarized that argument well -- irreducible complexity. But it is only one of many flaws in Darwinism.

And so logically I suppose you could see a similarity between ID and Richard Dawkins. Dawkins doesn't really refute the ID premise. When backed into a corner, he admits that probably some kind of aliens from outer space created life on earth. He just knows for sure that there is no God. The ID people go to pains to say that there argument is not a proof of God per se.

The underlying problem is spiritual alienation. People cannot account for suffering under God. And so the theory of natural selection provides them with a so-called scientific theory of why people suffer. They suffer because the evolutionary advantages acquired by our ancestors, such as territoriality, etc., are still operative in the modern world, even though we no longer need them, and this is the cause of needless competition and conflict. But evolution continues and will eventually right that problem. It's the Star Trek theory of history.

Jonathan Hayward

21-05-2009, 02:56 AM

But such an argument is susceptible to be undermined by the progress of science itself, as scientists continually discovers ways in which very complex systems may have naturalistically evolved. (The other problem with IDM is that the source of "intelligent activity" might be an alien species: Behe notes this possibility in his Black Box.)

May I make a point about Darwin's Black Box? Without speaking for Behe's other works, in Darwin's Black Box Behe's explicit goal is to produce a falsifiable scientific theory that can be tested and corroborated/rejected/modified through experimental process as a scientific theory. Whether or not he succeeds, that is his goal, and if he has produced an account that could be proven false by future scientific developments, that is a success in his intended purpose--not a failing.

I have found it strange that "religion and science" scholarship often seeks to demonstrate the compatibility of timeless religious truths with the current state of flux in scientific speculation. It's just a wee bit backwards. And I'm most interested in other questions than whether Behe succeeds. But if Behe has attempted what he has and produced a theory that could be falsified by future scientific developments, that is a success on his part.

Added clarification: Philosopher of science Karl Popper argued that what distinguishes science from pseudo-science is falsifiability. Pseudo-science can find proof for itself anywhere and can interpret any experimental result as further proof of its truth. Genuine science makes claims that admit falsification, hence what distinguishes a scientific theory from pseudo-science is that it makes itself "vulnerable" to future research by being falsifiable. This isn't the only thing out there, but it is one of the more serious and influential criteria, and Behe is trying to meet this criterion and provide a falsifiable form of intelligent design. I don't know if you're familiar with this; you write, "since God -- as defined by many -- is not empirically falsifiable by means of the methods of modern Western science" to place God as defined by many out of science's ballbark, but then find it a liability that Behe's proposition is subject to falsification.

Christos Jonathan

Jonathan Hayward

21-05-2009, 05:00 AM

Darwin was not an atheist or materialist, but a Deist. He was, more specifically, a Deist shaped by the tragedy of outliving a child of his--much rougher of an experience than when people start to cry out, "Where is God when it hurts?"

His theory of evolution was not, originally, a triumph of an account that needs no God, but a triumph of a God who need not do what Christians confess that offends the Deist: interact with his Creation. Darwin's theory was the triumph of a Deism that could reconcile life as we know it with the Deistic concern to believe in a Watchmaker who wound up the great Watch, the universe, and set it in motion, and did not touch it since. To him as a Deist, the idea of a God who kept on intervening with his Creation is almost as offensive as a literal watchmaker so incompetent that he has to keep fiddling with a watch when the watch should be running by the virtue of its own clockwork alone.

And, I might add, to a parent who survived his child, there may be something in asserting that God's job is not to intervene or interact. If you assert, with Orthodox, a God who continues to interact with miracles (the supreme example of which is God become incarnate as Godman in his own Creation), then that is to assert a God who does miracles, a God who heals and saves, a God who watches over his children and loves little ones, and this selfsame God allowed Darwin's child to die after hearing Darwin's anguished prayers, and left Darwin to live after suffering through all this. Maybe, to Darwin, it is much easier to call God good if he is the Great Watchmaker who created the Watch but who needs to keep his hands off now.

Darwin's theory was a triumph of religion in science, of Deist faith, and perhaps a way of rescuing God's character after God apparently failed to help a tragedy.

One further note about what was implicit that I didn't draw out:

I know devout Orthodox who are theistic evolutionists, and I know of at least one Orthodox bishop who refused to decide for his faithful what they could believe about evolution (or not). However:

If you read the saint's lives (there are daily changing links, both new calendar and roughly old calendar, on my liturgical clock (http://jonathanscorner.com/clock/clock.cgi)), it is manifest that the Orthodox God is a God who continues to interact with his Creation, miracles included, and the Philokalia are volumes that manifest interaction with God in the day-to-day spiritual life of the faithful.

I believe this casts a very large shadow on one of Darwin's sensibilities, namely the desire for a Watchmaker who sets the watch in motion and never touches it again because it is offensive to imagine a Watchmaker who never stops working on the watch.

It is conceivable that some or maybe even all species have come into being without any species created in an explicit miracle.

However, even an Orthodox theistic evolutionist is obliged to believe that God continues to be involved with his Creation, in miracle and in other ways, on a much larger scale than what Darwin dodged when he created his theory of evolution.

If we may call God a Watchmaker, we must confess that the Watchmaker never stops his work on the watch!

Christos Jonathan

Theophrastus

21-05-2009, 06:33 AM

P.S. I'm a little concerned about Theophrastus's summary of Behe as saying that some things are just too complex.I would say that Behe argues that some systems are too complex to have evolved via naturalistic evolution.
A mousetrap, on the other hand, is simpler, but irreducible in its complexity because if you are building up to a working mousetrap, the intermediate steps are a complexity without advantage (read: a complexity that natural selection does not favor, and may work to eliminate): take away any one of the wooden base, the hammer, the spring, the trigger, and one other part he mentions, and the mousetrap is (unlike a Swiss Army knife that has accumulated some advantages over a simple knife but not yet a thick Swisschamp) utterly useless. The mousetrap is an interesting object. Take away the wooden base, and you still do have a mechanism that can trap mice, albeit less efficiently. Likewise, take away other parts of the mousetrap, you can have an even less efficient mousetrap. And perhaps the simplest mousetrap is a square or L-shaped piece of metal that falls down upon an unsuspecting mouse that passes by. In other words, even a mousetrap (http://www.fidelibus.com/mousetrap/) is not necessarily irreducibly complex.

Theophrastus

21-05-2009, 06:47 AM

This isn't the only thing out there, but it is one of the more serious and influential criteria, and Behe is trying to meet this criterion and provide a falsifiable form of intelligent design. I don't know if you're familiar with this; you write, "since God -- as defined by many -- is not empirically falsifiable by means of the methods of modern Western science" to place God as defined by many out of science's ballbark, but then find it a liability that Behe's proposition is subject to falsification.

If Behe could demonstrate that some biological system were definitely so different from any other system as to demand a non-naturalistic-evolutionary explanation, then that would be evidence for irreducible complexity; but Behe has not demonstrated any such system. I guess the whole issue of intelligent designer is really a non-issue: the key issue is the demonstration of irreducible complexity.

Once IC is demonstrated, then we could hypothesize on how such an IC system came about: an agent outside the matter/energy realm; an extra-terrestrial being; or even the invocation of time travel (about which, if I remember correctly, Behe very briefly speculated). The first actor would be immune to empirical measurement and falsifiability via the methods of modern Western science (MWS), whereas the second and third actors would be susceptible to the empiricism of MWS.

Owen Jones

21-05-2009, 03:35 PM

Of all of the scientific theories that are non-falsifiable, certainly Darwinism is at the top of the list. There is no experiment envisioned, so far as I know, that could possibly falsify it, which I assume is the reason for speculation regarding time travel.

Personally, I find it incomprehensible that intelligent people could even begin to take Darwinism seriously, after just a modicum of effort exploring its premises and conclusions. So something else is obviously at work here. It is a classic cosmogonic myth. While I think the ID argument has merit, it is only one of many questions raised that the typical Darwinist dismisses. So what you have is a kind of quasi-religious fundamentalism surrounding the whole Darwinist camp.

In Origin of the Species..., Darwin makes his case primarily on aesthetic grounds. He says his theory is more "ennobling" of man, than the theory that God created every unique creature. This is very revealing and I have never read anyone who made an attempt to address this argument. It is really his concluding summary argument, after he has gone through all of the objections to his theory. So in what sense does he mean that it is "ennobling?" And why is this his summary, or decisive argument in favor of Natural Selection? Presumably because the alternative is not so ennobling? Is it because a creator God who has created each unique creature as it is is somehow deeply flawed? Just look around at how flawed humanity is. If this is the summation of creation, then the nobility of the Creator must be called into question. But if life is an ongoing evolutionary process, there is hope that mankind will eventually evolve out of this morass, and in his present in-between state he is somehow ennobled by his future possibilities. Which is in and of itself an odd sort of argument when you think about it, because why should I care? What good does it do for me, if mankind needs several more milennia to evolve into a state of advanced knowledge and psychological awareness that he can begin to live in a state of pure harmony with his fellow creatures? I will be long dead and gone. So it is not really an argument, but a symbol for an experience of alienation and a solution to the problem of alienation from one's fellow creatures that provides its believers with a vision of future harmony. A heavenly vision that will inevitably be achieved some day, hopefully, in the not too distant future. And even as an immediate goal, it provides mankind with a feeling of unity and solidarity with all other creatures, since we all descend from a common ancestor in the not too distant past, as Darwin states.

So it is the aesthetic arguments that win out over the objections, such as problems with the geological record, and other obvious empirical problems with the theory that Darwin recognizes up front. And this explains why it is so appealing to people who would never bother to crack the book. It is really a mystical vision of the unity and harmony of all living things that provides people with a powerful mechanism to overcome their spiritual alienation. It is pure mysticism, not a scientific theory per se. It is also ennobling because, as Darwin suggests, our new-found scientific knowledge becomes the main factor driving evolution, specifically, our psychological development. So that we now can drive, direct, influence our own evolutionary development. We are all gods. We have become God.

Jonathan Hayward

22-05-2009, 01:43 AM

Once IC is demonstrated,

But science doesn't deal in proof, just as mathematics doesn't deal in experiment.

None of science's theories and laws have been demonstrated: that's not what one asks of science, just as experimental corroboration is not what one asks of mathematics.

The scientific way of evaluating IC would be to compare it with competing explanations on, among other things, its ability or inability to account for the data. And so the question is whether Behe has succeeded in making claims of irreducible complexity that win out against opposed claims that the complexity in question is reducible complexity. I know of people who emphatically deny that he has, but none of them make it Behe's duty to demonstrate irreducible complexity: they only ask his thesis to win out as an explanation against other competing claims.

Christos Jonathan

Jonathan Hayward

22-05-2009, 03:33 PM

One clarification I might add:

Behe is attempting something deliberately limited. I am not here concerned with whether he succeeds or fails, but what he is attempting, and by implication what is and is not required for him to succeed.

Computer programmers are generally concerned about "scope creep" where a project keeps being asked to do more and more, more than is wise to attempt because trying to do the ultimate solution to everything rarely works well if at all. There is a maxim among programmers, "the [software programming project's] design is complete, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away."

Something of the same is true of scholarly writing, where in the humanities scholars choose a deliberately narrow / focused / restricted topic and attempt a restricted goal only.

Something of the same spirit affects Behe's work. He's not trying to prove or irrefutably demonstrate irreducible complexity. He's not trying to produce a future-proof explanation that can never be overturned. He's not trying to produce an argument that shows that the Christian God is the intelligence that must be behind irreducible complexity. He shouldn't be trying any of these things if he is attempting science.

Behe is attempting a limited and focused goal. Whether he succeeds within his accepted boundaries is a different question, but it is not a failure on his part that his explanation is:

Unproven,
Falsifiable,
Not future-proof, and
Does not uniquely determine that the Christian God alone could be the intelligence behind irreducible complexity.

The first three at minimum are true of all good science and a lot of bad science, and so are signs of at least some success in Behe's attempt to achieve a limited and restricted goal.

Christos Jonathan

Jonathan Hayward

22-05-2009, 05:19 PM

Of all of the scientific theories that are non-falsifiable, certainly Darwinism is at the top of the list.

I might comment on that point...

I don't have a print reference, but I've heard that when Karl Popper suggested that falsifiability be the distinguishing criterion for judging science vs. pseudo-science, his choice of the paradigm example of an unfalsifiable theory inappropriately presented as science was Marxism... and not Darwinian evolution only because he didn't want to be dismissed for Creationism.

Christos Jonathan

Jonathan Hayward

23-05-2009, 01:47 AM

Right now I am hoping, and would welcome your prayers, to write a piece that would talk about religion, science, and related issues and bring together some stuff scattered through things I've written.

The pieces I want to revisit are:

The Commentary (http://jonathanscorner.com/commentary/), a short story, at least nominally, about a young man who has been searching for a commentary explaining cultural issues needed to understand the Bible, and meets quite a rude shock when he finds it. One part is about Genesis 1 and evolution.

Two Decisive Moments (http://jonathanscorner.com/decisive/), about what's left out when we argue whether the universe is young at 6000 years old or old at 13,000,000.

Technonomicon (http://jonathanscorner.com/technonomicon/), which is about ascesis and being obsessed with technology, and treats some behind-the-scenes issues that are also there in origins debates.

The Horn of Joy (http://jonathanscorner.com/joy/) - I'm debating including what this says about science overall.

I would welcome people's comments; I think it might help me if anyone comments on these. They are roughly in descending order of explicit treatment of origins questions.

With regards,
Christos Jonathan

Owen Jones

23-05-2009, 02:47 PM

Underlying Darwinism is the idea of an inexorable historical progress. This is the heresy that you should key in on. Progress is a Christian idea. I'm not sure it ever existed anywhere else. But it is the progress of the soul. Darwinism and every other modern ideology immanentizes the Christian doctrine of progress into an historical process. So it would be interesting to examine this doctrine Biblically. One of your quotes suggest this, as the world is seen as winding down to its end, but there is no end for the believer.

Jonathan Hayward

23-05-2009, 08:54 PM

Likewise, take away other parts of the mousetrap, you can have an even less efficient mousetrap. And perhaps the simplest mousetrap is a square or L-shaped piece of metal that falls down upon an unsuspecting mouse that passes by. In other words, even a mousetrap (http://www.fidelibus.com/mousetrap/) is not necessarily irreducibly complex.

One of Behe's detractors offered the rebuttal of an imagined scenario where someone accepted all five parts Behe described in a mousetrap, handing one of them back, and still having a fully functional mousetrap. The part handed back in the imagined scenario was the wooden base, and the mousetrap was claimed to work because the pins etc. had been pushed into a wooden floor which replaced the wooden base.

And Behe's rebuttal was that you haven't reduced the complexity; you have replaced one part with a larger surrogate. And he acknowledged that some or all of the parts of the mousetrap could be replaced with surrogates and still there could be a fully functional mousetrap. He didn't argue for irreplaceable complexity, but irreducible complexity.

In the link you provide, step 1, the simplest step, for a mousetrap, is a house plus at least one human being.

This is the kind of rebuttal that, from an argument's perspective, constitutes an implicit acknowledgment. The rebuttal and first simple step to a mousetrap as purely reducible complexity is a house plus at least one fully functional and living human body.

A living human body is not, in any sense, simpler than a functional five-part mousetrap of the sort Behe describes. This is like imagining that bacteria reached their complexity by evolving from elephants.

Christos Jonathan

Christina M.

14-03-2011, 03:42 AM

Has anybody here read "Signature in the Cell" about DNA evidence for intelligent design?
http://www.amazon.com/Signature-Cell-Evidence-Intelligent-Design/dp/0061472794/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300066360&sr=8-1

I'd just like to hear a few opinions from Orthodox Christians who have read the book, and also to hear how they think it compares to other popular I.D. books, like Behe's, etc.

I recently started reading it and I'm finding it extremely fascinating.

P.S. I'm not looking for discussions on I.D., since I know there are other threads about that (and I've already read them). I'm just curious about opinions of this particular book's conclusions, since they are novel.

Bryan J. Maloney

14-05-2011, 12:58 AM

It may be more acceptable to someone who knows nothing of genomics. I found it rather troubling, in that, if its claims are taken as true (in light of actual knowledge of human genomics), then the "designer" of this book's specific flavor of "intelligent design" is an idiot, a sadist, or both.

Christina M.

14-05-2011, 01:44 AM

Woohoo! Two months and I finally get a response! YES! :)

Bryan, thanks for responding! Can you please elaborate on your response, because I don't think I'm understanding you. Can you please explain why you think the author makes the "designer" out to be an "idiot, a sadist, or both"? Thanks!

I'm about 10% through this book, but I had to start reading something else so I had to put it aside temporarily. I'm still finding it very interesting, and I hope to continue it later.

Jonathan Hayward

14-05-2011, 02:01 PM

I have not read the book in question so I will not comment on it. But there is one concern I would like to raise.

God created life as we know it. Exactly how is the subject of this debate; he could have created it young earth, or old-earth via miracles, or set a mechanism of natural selection in place that would unfold into life as we know it.

But whatever of these or maybe other options we consider, God is the creator of life regardless of how much or little mediation he used to create life.

This may be a critique of an IDM book more than a critique of (theistic) evolution, but I am concerned about what is said about cells. They are not the work of an incompetent designer. They may be the work of an intelligent designer whose "ways are not as [our] ways", but that's it.

Christina M.

14-05-2011, 03:10 PM

Jonathan, I agree with your assessment, but we have to remember that the purpose of reading an IDM book (at least for an Orthodox Christian) is not to prove to ourselves that God created the world; Hopefully we already "know" this through faith. The purpose of reading an IDM book would be to be able to refute popular (atheistic) evolutionary theory which claims that everything happened "at random" without the interaction of God.

Of course it's possible that maybe God allowed everything to happen "at random", and maybe that is the way He chose to create the world (although I personally don't agree with such theories), but that's what makes a book like this even more interesting: If everything happened "at random", how can anyone explain the digital code embedded inside every living cell? The answer is: "They can't." Modern science has absolutely no answer to this question, so they just push it to the background, as if it's not important. They do experiments to show how the first cells could have been formed, yet they are absolutely clueless as to how the DNA got there. If you uncoiled a single strand of DNA in one human cell, it would be 6 feet long, and it contains between 50 and 250 million base pairs. Don't you find it interesting that (atheistic) evolutionary theorists have absolutely no way to incorporate this into their theories, yet most people accept those theories as "laws" without questioning them?

If we are unable to find sufficient scientific evidence which shows that modern evolutionary theory is incorrect, then that's fine; we will still have faith that God is the Creator. But if there is substantial scientific evidence of the "marks" of the Creator (such as the genetic code inside cells), then it would be nice to know these things so that we can see that modern (atheistic) evolutionary theory is incorrect.

Bryan J. Maloney

15-05-2011, 06:13 PM

Bryan, thanks for responding! Can you please elaborate on your response, because I don't think I'm understanding you. Can you please explain why you think the author makes the "designer" out to be an "idiot, a sadist, or both"? Thanks!

In essence, it posits a form of "intelligent design" that would have "intelligently" designed alu repeats, was the Designer incompetent or malevolent in not avoiding the eventuality of this degeneration? Likewise, consider our own bodies' amazingly stupid and horrible design flaws. Our jaws are too short for our teeth. Our spines are miserably "designed" for bipedalism. All of these are ultimately determined by genomics. Are we to insist that Adam's jaw was significantly longer, giving him more of a bestial muzzle than a human face? Was Adam a quadruped or had a radically different spine? Eventually, "fallen world" becomes so all-expansive a way to handwave away any flaws in "design" that it is a worthless explanation. The explanation that explains everything explains nothing.

Christina M.

15-05-2011, 07:01 PM

Thanks again for the response, Bryan. But I do not agree with your examples.

I've never had any problems with my jaws or teeth, nor has my spine proven insufficient for bipedalism. In fact, I would consider it extremely uncomfortable and harmful to try to walk "on all fours" for an extended period of time. If anyone has problems with their spine while walking upright, I would highly recommend that they find a good chiropractor. ;)

I really don't see your point, unless you are trying to prove that creation is the result of completely random "collisions" without any interaction from God. Let's not forget that Sts. Ireneaus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Palamas all said that even the human body, along with the soul, was created "in the image of God".

Bryan J. Maloney

15-05-2011, 07:13 PM

Let's see, therefore, Christina is the measure of all humanity. I'll remember that.

Christina M.

15-05-2011, 07:15 PM

Let's see, therefore, Christina is the measure of all humanity. I'll remember that.
You better! ;)

Daniel R.

15-05-2011, 07:20 PM

Let's see, therefore, Christina is the measure of all humanity. I'll remember that.
I don't know I short of find it hard to walk on all fours as well but then again maybe that is just Christina and me ;)

In regard to the fallen world as far as I know I thought the Fathers do speak of Adam having a body more like that of the angles before the fall. In regard to animals natural adaption in a fallen world can explain such things.

In Christ.
Daniel,

Bryan J. Maloney

20-05-2011, 07:18 PM

Of all of the scientific theories that are non-falsifiable, certainly Darwinism is at the top of the list.

If so, then it shares it in a tie with "intelligent design". If you are going to argue against Darwinian evolution on the basis of falsifiability, then you must equally argue against "intelligent design" on the same basis. Anything else would be dishonest and immoral.

Bryan J. Maloney

20-05-2011, 07:19 PM

I don't know I short of find it hard to walk on all fours as well but then again maybe that is just Christina and me ;)

In regard to the fallen world as far as I know I thought the Fathers do speak of Adam having a body more like that of the angles before the fall.

Don't the Fathers also teach that angels don't have bodies at all?

Anna Stickles

21-05-2011, 12:39 PM

Don't the Fathers also teach that angels don't have bodies at all?

We talk about "bodiless powers" but when the discussion gets more technical, angles can be said to have an immaterial body. In other words they exist as specific energies that are coherent in their mode of existence, (as opposed to the Platonic idea of pure mind) and also are spatially limited in some sense, rather then being "everywhere present and filling all things." At least this is my general impression.

Jonathan Hayward

21-05-2011, 02:23 PM

Regarding the comment that our spines are not designed for walking upright and our jaws are too short:

I remember hearing about one person's argument that our bodies were wrong because, for instance, we do not operate at 100% efficiency using the materials we take in (hence we have bathrooms).

What strikes me is that the human body is being evaluated against some set of criteria which makes us think we know better than our Creator. The argument about spine and jaw is an argument about what would be optimal given a certain outlook that, if it does not assume evolution, is none the less shaped by evolutionary kinds of assumptions about what would be optimal. To my knowledge, only people well-versed in what on evolutionary grounds would be considered optional raise these objections to intelligent design.

I'm not quite sure I'd call it begging the question, but the claim "The human body is not optimal" should be replaced by "The human body is not optimal when viewed against this set of criteria."

Christos

Fr Raphael Vereshack

21-05-2011, 02:24 PM

Souls and angels, too, are bodiless and are not in any one place, but they are not everywhere. They do not encompass everything, but themselves need the all-encompassing God, and are in Him Who embraces and contains all things, with their limits suitably set by Him.
St Gregory Palamas Homily 19

The Fathers often put it that the angels have immaterial bodies.

In Christ-
Fr Raphael

Evan

21-05-2011, 03:35 PM

Jonathan Hayward

21-05-2011, 03:46 PM

One P.S. I might like to add:

The church's calendar year, with its moving Pascha and associated dates, is in the terms of computer science what may be called an algorithm, meaning that there's a deterministic rule that computers can calculate, and indeed one may find Paschalion calculators on the web that determine Pascha and associated dates for any of many given years, and presumably not by looking things up in a table, but by "on-the-fly" calculations.

As far as algorithms go, I don't know the algorithm but I am positive it is Rube Goldberg by algorithm standards. Computer science is the study of algorithms, said Knuth, and simplicity is a virtue among algorithms; Rube Goldberg complexity is a red flag. By the standards of software engineering and computer science, the algorithm for Pascha is pretty bad.

Now let me ask: is this a problem, or reason to doubt, that Intelligence set the ecclesiastical calendar, or merely the result of applying a human standard to the ecclesiastical calendar that has stepped beyond its best bounds?

Christos Jonathan