…and this is a 
All chance, no purpose
Category: Creationism • Evolution
Posted on: December 31, 2007 7:31 AM, by PZ Myers
That friend to the Discovery Institute and creationist advisor to the Vatican, Cardinal Schönborn, has a new book out, titled Chance or Purpose?. I haven't read it, but Michael Behe has, and Zeno finds a particularly delicious Behe blurb:
Science cannot speak of ultimate purpose, and scientists who do so are outside of their authority. In Chance or Purpose? Cardinal Schöborn shows that the data of biology, when properly examined by reason and philosophy, strongly point to a purposeful world.
Why should science be incapable of addressing the questions of an ultimate purpose? I hear this all the time: science can't give us meaning, science can't explain love, science can't do this or that. It's usually said by some clueless git who has his own ideological axe to grind, and wants everyone to line up in support of his or her own dictated decrees about the truth, which are usually obtained by revelation (i.e., whim) or dogma, and which are challenged by a process that actually tries to examine reality in search of a truth. And those ideologies, such as Catholicism, have no legitimate claim for better understanding than any other traditional nonsense.
I say otherwise. We have no other, better tool. If we're going to discover an ultimate purpose, it will be through the process of studying our universe — through science. The only thing these putative other ways of knowing affect our reach is by impeding us.
As Zeno notes, Behe's quote is beautifully self-contradicting. He starts by declaring that science can't tell us anything about our purpose, and then he goes on to immediately declare that the data of biology lead to an understanding of purpose. Behe is an incredibly muddled thinker — he's got the background that values science, but at the same time he's bogged down in these peculiar presuppositions that make a mess of his brain.
The data of biology do not point to purpose, but to a history of accidents shaped by short-term utility to replicators. Schönborn is unqualified to assess it — he's a blithering theologian — and both Schönborn and Behe are blinded to the overwhelming dominance of chance in our biology by their ideological predispositions.
Comments
Purpose implies intelligence with method and means to design and cause specific actions that in turn cause specific desired results. My point is that one has to accept that there was and/or is an "intelligent designer" with SUPER powers to direct universes to some specific and intended end game. Conversely, take away purpose and you take away god's "raison d'etre".
It frightens them so that science does not see any need for, or evidence of, design. Why wouldn't god leave a trademark at least? If we are so important to this god why wouldn't it in a real way reveal itself? The Wizard of Oz?
Posted by: ConcernedJoe | December 31, 2007 8:07 AM
"If we're going to discover an ultimate purpose, it will be through the process of studying our universe -- through science."
Absolutely.
"The data of biology do not point to purpose, but to a history of accidents shaped by short-term utility to replicators."
Too fast.
Posted by: negentropyeater | December 31, 2007 8:07 AM
Science cannot speak of ultimate purpose, and scientists who do so are outside of their authority. In Chance or Purpose? Cardinal Schöborn shows that the data of biology, when properly examined by reason and philosophy, strongly point to a purposeful world.
Whoa, nothing like rigging the game! People with "Cardinal" titles are somehow authorized to examine the data of biology with reason and philosophy but scientists aren't even allowed to speak on the matter.
Posted by: truth machine | December 31, 2007 8:15 AM
I thought the Catholics accepted evolution? Or has darth pope overturned that? If he has then I think Catholics are back to being even more nutty than the evangelicals.
Posted by: Gobaskof | December 31, 2007 8:20 AM
Can the workings of the universe accurately be described as "chance," though? I'm not supporting design or purpose-- I'm just wondering if chance is the correct word here. To me, that seems to negate the many interesting laws and tendencies of natural behavior. It seems to me that given a set of natural laws, all universal actions of any kind would be rigidly fixed, even without a "god" etc..
Posted by: DaveX | December 31, 2007 8:20 AM
He starts by declaring that science can't tell us anything about our purpose
No, no, he declares that scientists can't.
and then he goes on to immediately declare that the data of biology lead to an understanding of purpose
Sure, when interpreted by an authorized theologian. Who could have guessed what conclusion such a person would reach?
Posted by: truth machine | December 31, 2007 8:21 AM
Religious apologists like this have two gods. On one hand, they have their deistic "prime mover", "ultimate purpose" god, who fills the gaps that supposedly can't be filled by science. On the other hand, they have their Santa-Claus god, who impregnates virgins, raises people from the dead, and (of course) leaves eternal life in their stocking.
They "prove" the existence of the first god (whilst attacking atheists for their naive "caricature" of religion), and yet worship the second god without any sense of contradiction.
How on earth do you make the leap from "science can't explain everything" to "Jebus... Jebus... Jebus..."?
Posted by: hyperdeath | December 31, 2007 8:27 AM
I am a catholic (haven't been ex-com'd yet, but I plan on filing a request). This pope though, is the best that catholicism has had in decades. I mean, from our perspective. He's such an idiot and an asshole. Usually the asshole priests are also cunning smart weasels, but this guy has got everything! He's such a backward dumbass, catholics don't comment much on him from what I've seen. (Since the pointy-hatted numbnuts is supposed to be infallible, whatever they have to say has to be positive.)
Posted by: andyo | December 31, 2007 8:31 AM
hi truth machine, for clarification re: "No, no, he declares that scientists can't." isn't this what he said "Science cannot speak of ultimate purpose" ? and wouln't that be in line with PZ's statement of inconsistency. Just asking.
Posted by: ConcernedJoe | December 31, 2007 8:34 AM
Christians seem conflicted about the role of chance in the universe. On the one hand these say they abhor it. Yet on the other, some of their apologists argue, after Pascal (the Michael Behe of his era), that we have to depend on chance that their god exists and that it rewards humans in the afterlife who worship it.
On a more practical level, christians in the U.S. have given the growth of casino gambling and state lotteries a pass, even though these send the signal to the stupid and downtrodden that financial success depends on chance instead of self-discipline, work, saving and investment.
Posted by: Mark Plus | December 31, 2007 8:37 AM
Gobaskof -
Yes, the official position of the Vatican is that evolution is fine, but...
1) As evolution is a scientific theory, the Vatican isn't going to stop anyone denying it either. Cue Cardinal S cosying up to Disco etc. There are others, but he is the most prominent by far.
2) Try to find out any concensus from the laity in the pew, and you'll get fluffy opinions about 'purpose' and 'design' and such like. Now it's fine to talk of these as long as we're clear that they are scientific opinions (science *can* detect design in principle) and there is absolutely no evidence that they're true.
The way I see it, there's no bulletproof logical contradiction between evolution and Catholicism, but if you were an omnipotent deity, would you choose to sculpt your ultimate creation via the one process that guarantees that almost every creature along the way is ruthlessly competed against (to death) at every stage of its brutal existence? (And I've barely got started on similar criticisms).
snafu.
Posted by: snafu | December 31, 2007 8:43 AM
While it's true that science doesn't offer definitive answers to abstract questions, theologians often miss the fact that neither does religion.
However, the answers that science does offer are solid, backed-up, factual, real--which can be genuinely comforting when you look outside of science and see wide support for unsubstantiated assumptions, pulled one after another, directly from some theologian's, or politician's, or other public figure's ass.
Posted by: Molly, NYC | December 31, 2007 8:51 AM
A quibble: this is actually an improvement on Behe's view of science he displayed at the trial in Dover (but it probably won't last). In Dover and elsewhere, Behe has argued for a blurring of the line between science and philosophy/theology, actually making science another form of philosophy.
In this instance, he at least seems to be making a distinction between them. Here, "reason and philosophy" ("reason," as Catholics have a tendency to do, used to mean "theology") are merely using "the data" of biology to reach philosophical/theological conclusions. Just as philosophy can use the scientific data about the size and nature of the universe to ask questions about the place humans have in that universe, so too can the data of biology be used by philosophy and theology to supposedly address such questions. The likelihood that Schönborn has, in fact, used the actual data of biology; has made a good theological argument from it or even whether there is such an animal as a "good theological argument", I leave to the reader.
The contradiction Behe has here is not so much internal to the blurb, it is to his previous position that science should be enlarged to include non-empiric arguments.
Posted by: John Pieret | December 31, 2007 9:12 AM
Posted by: heddle | December 31, 2007 9:23 AM
hi truth machine, for clarification re: "No, no, he declares that scientists can't." isn't this what he said "Science cannot speak of ultimate purpose" ? and wouln't that be in line with PZ's statement of inconsistency. Just asking.
Sorry, I'm under the weather and haven't had enough sleep. Pretend I never wrote that.
Posted by: truth machine | December 31, 2007 9:24 AM
I live in a country where about 80% of the population is Catholic (nominally, at least), and yet many think the pope is a crotchety old man. I he were to declare that creationism is the Truth, I don't think anyone here but a nutty minority would follow suit.
Posted by: Andrés | December 31, 2007 9:25 AM
I'm so glad *I* don't hold views contrary to PZ and then stick my head over the parapet to shout them out. :)
A useful post ... I've been a little uncertain how to field this argument when presented with it by the spiritual / religious / magic crystal crowd.
Posted by: Mono Ape | December 31, 2007 9:27 AM
Pope Shakin' Stevens the first did say that evolution was more than just a theory. Pope Rotweiler the XVIth has now made statements casting doubt upon same.
And in other Dark Ages news, her has just launched a recruitment drive for exorcists:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=5WB043VEJ0SZ1QFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/12/29/wexor129.xml
Posted by: Peter McGrath | December 31, 2007 9:28 AM
Processes that are described by such laws are path dependent, contingent on history, whether they are fully deterministic or not. Deterministic chaos is a prime example. And as for chaos that doesn't mean that the processes are sensitive only to initial conditions, but to other factors as well.
As a fully deterministic example, take gravitation. Drop marbles on a knife edge, and you will find that you will have to use statistical distributions to describe the paths taken, for example which side the marble drops on. [If it is a concern that it isn't a pure gravitational force problem, equivalently fling a mass on a trajectory through the small Lagrangian gravity balance volume between two large masses and observe the different paths.]
Evolution as the process of life is of course also path dependent, more clearly so as statistics are required to describe populations, hereditary, the mechanisms of variation, selection, et cetera, even if AFAIU some such as selection can be more or less deterministic on their effect on the distributions. TR Gregory has an article on Evolution as fact, theory, and path that describes this.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | December 31, 2007 9:29 AM
@ heddle:
You make the same gap argument that John Pieret and Dave S made over at Laelap the other day (and which I have now answered). I see two problems with that.
First and foremost, there is already a very small and diminishing gap in most sciences. Evolution is known to be path dependent and the data confirms this. So by your own claim, the data point to a purposeless world. (A purposeless designer is ruled out both by religion and by parsimony during testing.)
Second, all gap arguments are falsifiable. A religious claim on evolution would be that humans, or possibly human equivalent intelligences, were a forced outcome. This will probably be testable in the future. One of the leaders of the exoplanet hunt has claimed that lifebearing planets will be detectable in a few decades. Whether we will detect technological civilizations on a small percentage of these by some means (say SETI, or detection of pollution perhaps) isn't really critical as we have the one required example to model a likelihood.
The way to bet of course is that the likelihood for human equivalent intelligences is small, which would nicely answer Fermi's question. ("Where are they?") Whether the ETI search is more or less independent of evolution, it is in any case an already quantifiable piece of data pointing to the falsehood of the religious claim.
I have to ask the same question as I did at Laelap and still haven't got an answer to; isn't gap arguments considered to be too risky by theologians to entertain nowadays?
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | December 31, 2007 9:55 AM
I thought it was because of misinterpreting Parmenides attributes of "truth" that Zeno came to his famous paradoxes. I also thought that "ultimate" is not the kind of word an atheist would go for. I respect scientific method because it investigates an era of knowledge in the best possible way. But I'd rather have both science and religion leave it up to me to reach for any "ultimate truth". And for me it is more "real" to say that I perceive an object than to say the object itself is "real". Call me a clueless git, but in order to accept the materialist view that only matter and energy are "real" and that they are independent of perception, I have to accept at least bent space. But is bent space "real" too? Actually there are more theoretical entities I have to accept in order to face all the problems that science itself has met on the path of the materialistic "real", and these entities are not "real" according to materialism. So is it so unscientific or theocratic to take as "real" perception instead?
Posted by: stelios | December 31, 2007 10:05 AM
Truth machine - thanks for clarification I though I missed something you gleened. Have a good one
general comment: love it that we are the higher purpose implementators (always implicit if not emplicit in Xian god view) .. love the arrogance and the pride (aren't they sins?)
My thinking: if the world were covered in cold ocean water wouldn't you rather be a whale or something else -- you know like some other organism far superior for living in cold ocean water than you?
Atheist are humble I'd say -- it is the godiots that are raging self-loving, self superior feeling in their warped philosophy.
Posted by: ConcernedJoe | December 31, 2007 10:58 AM
Behe Rule #1:
Speaking outside one's authority is forbidden.
Okay. The Cardinal, being an authority on nothing, is hereby ordered to shut the fuck up.
Actually, I think I've got what it takes to be an authority on God:
God is good. He will save you. Don't worry about a silly thing called death. There's a heaven. Count on it. [Insert Bible verse here.] So, please, feel less ungood. Let us pray. Mumble mumble mumble. On a side note, before you go, please give me money. Thank you, thank you. [Lots of smiling. Cue organ.] Go in peace.
Wooooooo! Authority! Wooooooo! Where's my point hat? Send me a book deal. I'm ready. Wooooooo!
Posted by: CalGeorge | December 31, 2007 11:03 AM
They still do. Schonborn is the outlier here, a member of the Catholic uberright.
The last 4 Popes came out with some version of theistic evolution. After Galileo, they aren't inclined to persecute any more scientists for heliocentrism or round earthism. It was bad PR.
Schonborn and the Catholic ultraright are one reason the Pope's statements are often so vague and wishy washy. The hierarchy of the RCC is by no means unified and there is a perennial power struggle between the ultraright and the right. Given the sheer inertia of the religion due to the gerontacracy this could go on for a few more centuries.
Posted by: raven | December 31, 2007 11:03 AM
I would add that, as science progresses, even questions like "what is love?" are open to examination.
If there's anyone out there who thinks that "takes all the 'Mystery' out of it," I say that I'll take wonder over mystery any day. And reccommend that you read "Unweaving the Rainbow" by Richard Dawkins.
Posted by: John Marley | December 31, 2007 11:04 AM
"I say otherwise. We have no other, better tool. If we're going to discover an ultimate purpose, it will be through the process of studying our universe -- through science."
Full speed ahead then. Any thought of purpose or meaning that does not consider well-established scientific data in its premises is not at all likely to be true.
Problem is, it's difficult to test purpose or meaning in a laboratory under the supervision of the scientific method. Thus, when purpose is discussed, scientists, philosophers, theologians, and the man on the street are all in the same fix. Notice the subtle turn here: "The data of biology do not point to purpose, but to a history of accidents shaped by short-term utility to replicators."
This statement may be perfectly true, false, or otherwise, but once one switches from data to what the data points to, s/he has entered into the philosophic realm--a realm not easily subjected to rigorous scientific testing.
Thankfully, the laws of logic and thought are the same for scientist, theologian, and philosopher alike.
Posted by: Schooner | December 31, 2007 11:15 AM
Once again, a remarkably astute analysis. Thanks for taking the theocrats to the cleaners yet again.
Posted by: danleyj@gmail.com | December 31, 2007 11:21 AM
Posted by: CapitalistImperialistPig | December 31, 2007 11:21 AM
The trouble with this statement is that biology is already studied in light of both reason and philosophy, often quite properly. Hence the claim about "method" is redundant.
And no, biology especially does not point to a purposeful world. At least the "fine-tuning" argument in cosmology brings up legitimate issues, if no legitimate answers. There is no "fine-tuning problem" in biology at all.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | December 31, 2007 11:26 AM
Looks like a Catholic bashing session again. Oh well, Peter McGrath just put up an even more regressive example of the ultraright. Exorcisms BTW, are not just a Catholic practice. They are very popular among the fundie Xians as well and done frequently.
My problem with exorcisms is that the Demon theory of mental illness went out of fashion a century ago and treating the mentally ill this way can end up killing people. It was attempted with Seung Cho and we know how well that worked.
"about growing worldwide interest in Satanism and the occult.
I'm unaware that this is the case. There is a lot of neopagan and new age stuff floating around but this isn't Satanism. Occult maybe, but it seems harmless. Because it doesn't actually work as far as I know.
And atheism is neither Satanic or occult. They don't believe in god(s). They don't believe in the devil either. Sounds like the RCC needs to update their concern list from 1007 to 2007.
Posted by: raven | December 31, 2007 11:32 AM
truth machine, you say, "He starts by declaring that science can't tell us anything about our purpose - No, no, he declares that scientists can't, and then he goes on to immediately declare that the data of biology lead to an understanding of purpose."
Behe actually writes, "In Chance or Purpose? Cardinal Schöborn shows that the data of biology, when properly examined by reason and philosophy, strongly point to a purposeful world."
Considering your sobriquet, that's glaringly disingenuous of you. Behe does not claim for theology an understanding of purpose, but rather, a suggestion of the existence of purpose.
That makes him somewhat less of a crazy than you suggest.
Posted by: Richard Harris | December 31, 2007 11:34 AM
I wonder whether Behe truly understands the implications of his own words. Assume for a moment that the conclusions of the cdesign proponentists are true: we were 'created' for/with a purpose. This purpose certainly was not approved or vetted by humans--and is enforced with the threats of guilt and hell. This is slavery, pure and simple.
But for the majority of people, this is better than trying to make their own purpose, or have none at all. It gives their lives and communities structure, ritual, and cohesion. They feel connected to the past. They have 'hope' with no imagination. They have swallowed the Soma of voluntary servitude.
Evidence suggests that life/consciousness/ethics are emergent properties of a complex adaptive system broadly affected by chance. As of yet, there is no evidence of an overarching purpose for it all. But keep in mind that if we discover that one does exist, we will still need to evaluate it, and may even reject it in favor of our own.
Posted by: ennui | December 31, 2007 11:36 AM
First off, it wouldn't be impossible that a question could be addressed properly without science, a question that science itself could not address (as is done in the courts in some cases, and in much scholarship).
But secondly, there is nothing that suggests that science could not address ultimate questions (love probably is not one of these, however, since it seems mostly to be a means to an end, sucessful reproduction). It's the old fallacy that IDists and creationists fall into, the fact that we don't find purpose or "ultimate meaning" via science is supposed to mean that science cannot address either one. No, science doesn't find design, purpose, or ultimate meaning, which at least implies that these do not exist (or at least that these are no more than human interpretations of phenomena).
In fact there is much reason to suppose that if some god who purportedly is the ultimate meaning made this universe, that we would be able to discern this, possibly outside of science, more likely via science. Not, of course, if this "ultimate meaning" were simply an experiment to see what happens when sensitive intelligent beings are frequently tortured and destroyed most cruelly in a universe dominated by chance and accident, but if the "ultimate meaning" were something like "major religions" tell us (peace, harmony, love, and happiness to all) we ought to be able to use science to inform us that the universe conforms to such a meaning. And since the universe does not at all conform to the proclaimed "ultimate meaning," I think we should consider the evidence to be against those claims.
No, sorry, philosophy and science when followed according to our best intellectual standards do not find any "ultimate meaning" in the universe, and it is not because these are incapable of finding meaning, emotion, love, and purpose where these exist ("ultimate" anything is questionable as to meaning, let alone to discovery). Science incorporates the best of our investigative abilities (including philosophy and reason, of course) for matters not already constructed and decided by humans, and as such it should be considered to be our best tool for finding purpose or design beyond human/animal purposes and designs. Since it does not find meaning and purpose in the universe besides those that have non-teleologically evolved, our best conclusion at the moment is that meaning and purpose do not exist outside of evolved animal existence.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | December 31, 2007 11:46 AM
Posted by: LeeG | December 31, 2007 11:53 AM
Behe writes:
So discussion of purpose is a matter of authority? What is the chain of commad of that authority? Priest, bishop, cardinal, pope?Posted by: Ex-drone | December 31, 2007 11:53 AM
Again, it seems our leading theologians want God to require our faith and at the same time He is leaving all sorts of evidence around that the Universe was his creation, and not a natural phenomenon.
So which is it?
Did God wish to prove his existence to us and thus make faith inapplicable, and for some reason is only capable of doing so in tiny, indirect ways (instead of, say, flaming letters hanging around in some nearby nebula)?
Or was God simply unable to create the Universe without leaving all sorts of evidence of His Divine Intervention, thus implying that God is either weak or stupid?
If creationists aspire to either (a) evidence of divine intervention in the cosmos, or (b) an attempt to rule out any non-divine form of cosmic or life creation, then it must be 1 or 2.
EITHER God is lying about desiring our faith and leaving evidence of His magic around,
OR God is stupid or incapable of creating the Universe or us without leaving evidence of His intervention.
So which is it?
Is God undermining faith, or is He stupid or weak?
Posted by: El Cid | December 31, 2007 11:56 AM
No, science doesn't find design, purpose, or ultimate meaning,...
They leave that to the con artists.
If anything convinces me that the world is purposeless, it's the existence of the Catholic Church and the make-believe world of bullshit they have constructed.
Talk about purposelessness! All that hemming and hawing rests on a foundation of - utter bullshit.
It's positively despair-inducing. There's your world of chance. Anything goes! God. The Devil. Exorcism. Pronouncements about Purgatory. Go for it. No evidence required. It makes my head spin [ooop, maybe I need an exorcism!] just thinking about it.
Posted by: CalGeorge | December 31, 2007 12:07 PM
Theistic evolution and creationism do an interesting little dance together as God both hides behind Nature and then pokes His head out long enough to show everyone He is not Nature after all, and then back again. People get confused because it is confusing.
It's the same dance Faith plays with Reason. It's unreasonable to be an atheist, but belief in God is based on Faith, which it is unreasonable not to have, because everyone needs to throw out reason for perfectly rational reasons -- but only in rigidly designated areas defined by God, and discerned by the select few who pass the ESP test.
As hyperdeath astutely points out in #7,
So do religious believers. Nature is a miracle: violations of nature are miracles. If you want to have it both ways then your gods are dancing with each other.
What if we all finally recognized God, and found its "purpose" disappointing -- it turns out to have nothing to do with us? Would God still count as "God?" Or would we look to see what the hell the purpose of the universe being made by an uncaring God was?
Posted by: Sastra, OM | December 31, 2007 12:09 PM
Science cannot find an ultimate purpose simply because purposes do not exist in nature. "Purposes" only exist within human frameworks of meaning. There is a large difference between the statements, "The heart pumps blood" and "The purpose of the heart is to pump blood."
The second sentence only makes sense by imposing a function onto the biological material and functions only make sense within human frameworks of meaning. They help us explain things, but they don't really exist in nature.
"Purpose" has no existence in nature (unless you are Aristotle) it is something created by humans.
Posted by: fardels bear | December 31, 2007 12:15 PM
re #37
Very well put, Sastra!
Posted by: Lee Graham | December 31, 2007 12:17 PM
Stop the presses! Michael Behe Retracts!
"Science cannot speak of ultimate purpose, and scientists who do so are outside of their authority. Therefore, as a scientist, I am henceforth going to shut up about finding scientific indications that there is an ultimate purpose to the universe. My deepest apologies to all concerned. I've no idea what the hell I've been thinking all these years. Mums the word from now on, you bet, and I'm off to church."
Posted by: Sastra, OM | December 31, 2007 12:17 PM
Re: Torbjörn Larsson, OM #19
I did not follow the discussion at Laelap, so you'll have to provide a link, if you want. But is seems that you are arguing the Behe is wrong--and he may well be. That is not the point. I said he did not contradict himself, and he didn't. It seems to me that (as far as you can tell from this blurb) all Behe is saying, extrapolating a bit, is that (1) he affirms methodological naturalism and that (2) MN might lead to a design conclusion and (3) if that happens, that's all science will have to say on the matter. PZ, if I read correctly, is affirming philosophical naturalism--which is fine--but it doesn't render Behe's position self-contradictory. Other than that--well if I understand you I tend to agree. If by gap-risk you mean theologians should not point to scientific gaps as some sort of proof of God, then of course I would agree.
El Cid #35,
"Blind faith" is not a Christian virtue. Romans 1:20 does not say: because of creation, all men are without excuse, but woe to the weak-minded who take me up on the offer look at creation for evidence." Or, to give another of many examples, Gideon demands multiple displays of physical proof before he will obey God, and yet Gideon ends up in the faith "hall of fame" (Hebrews 11.) You are making the mistake of assuming that Christianity calls for blind faith, and therefore should steadfastly avoid tainting itself by seeking evidence in creation. But on the contrary Romans 1:20 is properly seen as a call for Christians to fear-not evidence that is acquired through their senses--that is, through science. Apart from being unbiblical, it would simply make no sense if creation was merely a trap to see if we will keep our faith in spite of what we see. No, our faith is strengthened because of what we see--even if every little gap is plugged.
Posted by: heddle | December 31, 2007 12:31 PM
"Nature is a miracle: violations of nature are miracles."
I recognize the weight of the problem, but it appears you are equivocating with the word miracle, Sastra.
Posted by: Schooner | December 31, 2007 12:43 PM
No, our faith is strengthened because of what we see--even if every little gap is plugged.
An excellent example of the bullshit religious people excel at.
No evidence. Evidence. Yup, everything strengthens my faith. It's all good.
Sounds like you are on autopilot.
Faith is just another word for avoiding the cognitive dissonance that would explode your idiotic belief system.
Wouldn't want to go down that road. Safer to live in the fantasy world you've constructed for yourself.
Posted by: CalGeorge | December 31, 2007 12:48 PM
One of the excuses for claiming that science "cannot speak of ultimate purpose" is that it deals largely in proximate causes. So the idea is that science doesn't tell you why the world exists, but how it all works.
The only proper analogy for this, however, is how forensics investigations and courtroom procedures operate. How do we find out what happened, and the purposes behind the alleged crime? Only by the methods of science, and the closely related criminal investigations, both of which determine intent and purpose by investigating proximate causes to discover the "ultimate" causes and purposes behind the crime. That is all humans are able to legitimately do to determine purpose, with all appeals to "ultimate causes" and "ultimate meanings" which are "beyond the evidence and science" only causing injustice and not catching the culprits.
If Behe and Shoenborn actually had some way of getting to the "ultimate meaning" other than by following chains of cause and effect, that would be most welcome knowledge (as a philosophy prof noted, wouldn't it really be great if we could gain absolute truth simply by reading a book?). However, since their own "ultimate meanings" and "ultimate causes" happen to explain nothing about the form and function of life, or of any incident on earth, I am not about to believe that some grand "revelation" is responsible for these supposed "ultimates". Indeed, since we can tolerably well explain the evolution of religion, and the development of religious views in humans, I'm afraid that even their attitudes about science and "God" are already best explained by science itself (along with related scholarship, such as histories of ideas and of philosophy).
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | December 31, 2007 12:53 PM
This is slightly off topic but it's at the intersection of religion and science and I'd like to know if anyone has heard of it.
My grand-daughter is being raised Roman Catholic and sent to a separate (Catholic school board) school by the Other GRandparentS. This weekend she informed me that scientists had tested the bread and wine used in mass and found that they contained the DNA of a 33-year-old man. I told her that you can't tell a person's age from their DNA and that. in any case, the bread and wine are not supposed to literally turn into flesh and blood but only to take on a spiritual essence. Nevertheless, she said, that's what her teachers told her. I said, "Which scientists?" and of course she didn't know.
She is 11 so still at that age when she believes more or less automatically in what Authority tells her. And here they are co-opting her respect for science to reinforce their mythology.
Has anyone else heard of this canard?
Posted by: Monado | December 31, 2007 1:01 PM
El Cid,
I like your point which reminded me to this cartoon, http://russellsteapot.com/comics/2007/omni-impotence.html
ennui and Sastra,
I agree completely. Is a slave's purpose in sync with the slave holder? No. Do animals living in a zoo (if they could) identify with the purpose of the zookeepers? No.
Why would we think that our purpose would be in line with God's should he exist?
Worship God for eternity? No thanks. That's not the purpose I choose for myself.
Posted by: Rick T. | December 31, 2007 1:05 PM
Monado, this is a variation on the innumerable stories one hears in devout Catholic households about scientific "confirmation" of various dubious miracles. I'll bet this particular one was inspired by the book by Garza-Valdes titled The DNA of God?, in which the Shroud of Turin is said to contain DNA from a man's blood. Could it be Jesus? (The author humbly says he does not know, but of course that's what he suspects.) When pseudo-scholarship like this gets picked up, it easily morphs into other versions. Shroud of Turin? Why not communion bread? I've seen photographs that "prove" the communion wafer has on occasion miraculously turned into actual human flesh. Oh, yummy! (Tastes like Canadian bacon?)
If you can get your granddaughter to ask lots of questions about the basis of such stories, she'll either (1) be able to bring you the information necessary to track down the source material, (2) discourage her gullible teachers from offering so many miracle stories in her presence, or (3) get excommunicated.
Posted by: Zeno | December 31, 2007 1:20 PM
The good cardinal may be less of a DI friend than the DI suspects. He does not take Genesis literally and writes things like: "It is nonsense to maintain that the world is only six thousand years old. An attempt to prove such a notion scientifically means provoking ... the mockery of unbelievers."
Posted by: June | December 31, 2007 1:27 PM
Torbjörn:
I didn't know you had returned to the thread over there. I've responded in Laelap's quieter confines (heddle, it is here). But the short answer is: not when the gap is really between empiricism and other philosophies.
Posted by: John Pieret | December 31, 2007 1:31 PM
To be fair to the Discovery Institute, June (@48), it does not stipulate that the world is only some thousands of years old. The DI steers clear of that for fear of offending its less fundamentalist allies. That makes it agnostic on young-earth creationism, which is one of the reasons that ICR and AiG often criticize the DI as lukewarm about a creator God.
Posted by: Zeno | December 31, 2007 1:33 PM
Schooner #42 wrote:
I think the equivocation is built into the concept. The fact that using the word in either sense makes sense may indicate where some of the fat might be settling.
No, our faith is strengthened because of what we see--even if every little gap is plugged.
When used in this religious sense, "faith" is a commitment to spin.
Faith is another one of those religious words with alternate meanings which get equivocated with. Hope, trust, confidence, and assumptions can all be abandoned without abandoning a prior agreement not to do so. This commitment can't be to God if the commitment is to believing in God in the first place. It's a promise you make to you, out of reverence.
Posted by: Sastra, OM | December 31, 2007 1:38 PM
Ah, John just beat me to it, and succinctly said the same thing I was going to.
I think that partly some theologians are shying away from the gaps argument because they've had it beaten down enough times to know better. But a bigger reason might be that the two sides are getting much more polarized. Either religion has nothing to say about science, and therefore all of evolution is ok, or the Bible is right about absolutely everything and science is all wrong. There's not much call for the in-between stance right now.
Posted by: Carlie | December 31, 2007 1:45 PM
As the poster pointed out, one cannot tell the age from a DNA sample.
This is common among the cultists. They constantly tell each other lots of ever changing urban legends for some sociological reason. A Xian baby was found, drained of blood. About the same time some wells were poisoned. The Mary appeared in a tortilla. Or was it in shadows from a street light?
The creos have their own subset. One old guy told me that we couldn't be descended from chimps because:
1. Only humans have color vision.
2. Only humans have a 4 chambered heart.
3. Only humans have no muscles in their feet.
The reality, easily checked, all apes and old world monkeys have color vision, all mammals and birds have a 4 chambered heart, and anyone can wiggle their toes or they should go see a neurologist ASAP.
I've heard much more unbelievable and more destructive ones from time to time. The latest, Obama was raised a Muslim and some immigrants stole a baby from a shopping cart in WalMart and got caught when the exits were sealed and customers searched going out.
Posted by: raven | December 31, 2007 1:56 PM
Hmm. The difference between ID and science, with respect to finding "purpose" is a) they are babbling about purpose in the sense of what we are supposed to *do*, not what we *are*, and the other can be explained thus:
Science: Years ago scientists dug up a tomb with parts of a chariot in it. They spent years trying to reconstruct it, but where stumped at one little half moon like part, with a hook on one end and a loop on the other, in the remains. Some time later someone noticed a carving, or something, and noticed that the axle had a kind of indent on it, which ran around its circumference. Ah, ha! You put the half moon bit against the axle, then tie a bit of pelt between the loop and the hook, and that holds the wheel on.
ID: Q: "Does this look designed too you?" A: "Well, gosh, I don't know, its complex, so probably." Q: "What's its purpose do you think?" A: "Don't be silly. The purpose of everything is to end up with us, so we will kiss gods ass!"
See, the later is much simpler and hardly takes any time at all, unlike those silly scientists, who spend years trying to figure out the mundane purpose of some sad little bit of bronze, while completely failing to answer all those entirely man made "purposes", which only exist in our heads, and that the religious find so important... Who cares after all how someone made a wheel stay one a now defunct chariot, or how some ancient people brewed beer, or how *anything* works? Its not like knowing stuff will win you brownie points with they imaginary friend. lol
Posted by: Kagehi | December 31, 2007 2:17 PM
You could probably end this discussion real quick-like by pointing out that there are a variety of rather nasty ways a '33 year old man' could contribute his DNA to communion wine or bread.
Posted by: El Cid | December 31, 2007 2:36 PM
You've seen nothing of the events portrayed in the Bible and you accept them without challenge. Further there is absolutely NO historical evidence, beyond the forged Josephus mention, of Jesus or any of the events that surrounded him, besides the four (sometimes conflicting) Gospels and a bit of other fluff from the Bible.
That's the very practice of blind faith. Everything you believe comes from self-referential stories.
What's worse, is there is plenty of outside evidence to indicate it's complete bullshit. Let's just look at Christmas, today. Forget all the rest of the errors, problems and rip-offs of other mythologies. The whole Christmas story is a total rip-off of Mithras and the Winter Solstice celebration and Jesus is just a Jewish (Essene) version of Mithras with a bit of Krishna, Osiris & Dionysus thrown in for good measure. If you'd have ever studied these dying-God mythologies, with an open mind and willingness to accept the hard evidence, you'd see that.
So, yes, you have BLIND FAITH, even if you think you don't. Your only references come from your faith. Which, since they're internal, do not present any outside, second-source confirmation. Hence, blind.
Yet you will, sans evidence, profess them as truth and go off on your "fine tuning" arguments every time you get a chance. No matter how many times you get you bloodied when the fallacies are swatted across your nose like a rolled-up newspaper to a bad dog.
Posted by: Moses | December 31, 2007 2:38 PM
I'm sorry, P-Zed, but there ARE questions of ultimate purpose that science can't answer! Those would be, of course, anything currently outside of the bounds of science, and everything that is still outside later on, after science starts showing evidence of what is currently outside!
The gaps are infinite, baby! And they can all be filled with God(TM)!
Also infinite, of course, is the uselessness of such a stance.
Posted by: jfatz | December 31, 2007 2:46 PM
Actually, it would make perfect "sense" for creation to be a trap for keeping your faith, although that isn't what I discussed. It would just not be a "sense" that you liked.
Again:
Is God aiming to leave evidence in His Universe such that its creation can only be explained through His Magical Intervention?
If so, then God's existence and power then becomes part of the scientific Universe, and dependent not upon human faith but upon the evidence He left behind for the thinking beings He created.
Or you might be trying to suggest that some degree of evidence of God's Magical Role in creating the cosmos or life is acceptable, but not too much evidence.
So it was not a priority for God to create the Universe in such a manner that no evidence of Magical Intervention remains, nor was it a priority for Him to create it in such a way that too much evidence remained.
Thus we come to the theological variant of the Goldilocks Universe -- God must leave some evidence behind that the Universe wasn't arrived at naturally so that Christians may find some evidence to bolster their Faith, but he must not leave too much evidence such that Faith is not needed at all.
Posted by: El Cid | December 31, 2007 2:49 PM
The problem is that most people don't understand that one will not find the truth by assuming the truth beforehand.
Posted by: negentropyeater | December 31, 2007 2:50 PM
Moses, #57
I have studied (not exhaustively) the parallels between Jesus and god-myths--and the parallels are not striking--unless your source of materials are web pages devoted to exaggerating the alleged parallels. There was a great recent discussion of this on evolutionblog:
http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2007/12/haught_on_science_and_faith.php
between Rick T., who was making claims of parallelism, and non-Christian (I am pretty sure; 99% confidence) J. J. Ramsey who argued that the supposed parallelism is greatly exaggerated. I think if you follow that discussion it is quite clear who came out on top in that debate.
What is truly amazing is how often this gets trotted out as if Christians don't know it. Every Christian I know knows that the Christmas celebration was co-opted from pagans. I suspect that part of the reason this is common knowledge among Christians is that at their church, just like every church I've attended, there is typically a Christmas-time sermon devoted, at least in part, to this very fact--if only to encourage the congregation not to get caught up in the secular aspects of the celebrartion. Yet people like you, Moses, act as if you are revealing something that Christians don't know--and will be shocked, absolutely shocked to discover.
That is partially true but like all such things (see Mithras comment above) the convenient extreme position is accepted uncritically. The truth is the references in Josephus to the resurrection are considered by virtually all scholars, including Christian scholars, to be a misguided redaction. There is much less unanimity, however, on the question of the authenticity of the simple reference in Josephus to a rabbi named Jesus.
If that happens so frequently, as you alleged, then it should be easy for you to provide a couple links where, indisputably, a reasonable person (as opposed to a mindless backslapper)would say that I couldn't hold my own and got bloodied.
Posted by: heddle | December 31, 2007 3:31 PM
Remember that Mr. Deity is back for a second season. Check out Season 2 episode 2 where they discuss "purpose".
http://crackle.com/play/?ml=fi%3D%26fpl%3D213894%26o%3D12#id=2071472&ml=fpl%3D68726%26fx%3D%26o%3D12
Posted by: bernarda | December 31, 2007 3:43 PM
Heddle...
Just to clarify...
You believe Jesus was GOD and the son of GOD
His mother was a human VIRGIN
He died and SAVED us - what ever that means
He came back to LIFE AFTER ABSOLUTE DEATH
A priest can transfore bread and wine into Jesus's BODY and BLOOD
There records of such happenings recorded by CONTEMPORY IMPARTIAL SCHOLARS
I just want to know your frame of reference...
PS winning a debate or a jury trail is not winning the truth
Posted by: ConcernedJoe | December 31, 2007 3:45 PM
A couple of points:
1) Science, by definition, can not ultimately speak to the question of purpose or meaning. Teleological language should be excluded as a formal matter since it implies a non-falsifiable source of purpose/meaning/order etc. which science can not adjudicate.
2) Despite this, teleological language is routinely employed by practicing scientists to characterize their work or interests, especially in casual conversation. This raises particular problems in biology.
3) Biology, when carefully examined, does not provide the support for teleological inferences that (for example) devotees of natural theology would prefer.
4) In my judgement, however, there are fields of study which do provide support for (but not a demonstration of the inevitability of) a limited sort of teleology which only attempts to address the source of order in the universe, but declines to draw inferences about meaning or purpose. Your mileage with respect to this proposed boundary condition may vary, but this seems to me the point wherein the creationist goes astray.....
Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | December 31, 2007 3:58 PM
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | December 31, 2007 4:02 PM