In the uncomfortable questions thread, David White asks:
Ever entertained the notion that attacks on true science from the muscular political creationism/ID lobby might be vitiated by exposure of their great and inexplicable theological flaw (gasp!) dating all the way back to William Paley?
Not really, no. Because, you know, there are only so many hours in the day.
I don't mean to be rudely dismissive of David's thesis, which is laid out at length on his own blog, and is detailed and well argued. The thing is, though, the political problem of creationism has relatively little to do with theology. Or, to paraphrase something Brother Guy Consolmagno of the Vatican Observatory said when he visited campus this past fall, young earth creationism is a very particular Protestant heresy, and has nothing to do with me.
David's right that the literal creationist position rejects the notion of divine guidance of chance. That idea is more or less how relatively sane religious denominations reconcile themselves with evolution. The Catholic Church in which I was raised, for all its many faults, has long held that there's nothing wrong with the idea of life evolving over millions of years, so long as God guided the process. They've been remarkably good on this front, and I believe they're still the largest Christian denomination in the world. The people who believe that the world was created in six literal days six thousand years ago, and every word of the King James Version is literally true are a tiny subset of Christians.
The hard-core believers in that subset are more or less immune to theological arguments from outside their wacky little sect. So there's little chance of reasoned debate about Scripture getting through-- they'll just write it off as Jesuitical sophistry, and continue to believe their own funhouse mirror cosmology. The people who might be reached by that argument for the most part already have, though one of the many denominations that hold to some variant of the divine guidance theory. That's perfectly compatible with the modern scientific outlook, as demonstrated by the large number of scientists who are themselves religious, and I have no problem with people who want to look at it that way.
The political strength of the "Intelligent Design" crowd comes not from theology, but from a weird mix of savvy marketing and cynical co-option by the political right. They're very, very good at raising money from their followers, and some of their weird ideas line up reasonably well with the goals of wealthy businessmen, who make use of their money and devoted following to help elect politicians who will cut taxes on the wealthy and enact business-friendly policies. The rich people who benefit from this really don't care about theology-- they mostly just nod along with the social agenda of right-wing religious leaders so they can keep getting tax cuts and government handouts.
(And it's not much more than nodding along-- even with unprecedented approval ratings, a solid Republican majority in Congress, and a cowed and pliant Democratic minority, the Bush administration did very little to seriously push the social policies of the Religious Right. They issued a few executive orders here and there, and helped a bunch of wing nuts burrow into the federal bureaucracy, but never did much on the legislative front. And notice that whenever local jurisdictions institute "Intelligent Design" friendly policies, the conservative establishment doesn't expend much political capital to stop them from being quickly reversed.)
If anything's going to break the back of the "Intelligent Design" lobby, it's not going to be a theological argument. "Intelligent Design" and its derivatives will stop getting a serious push when the alliance between business interests and religious conservatives breaks down. If the religious get sick of being played, or the business leaders get scared of the more extreme parts of the religious agenda, the current conservative coalition might fracture, and if it does, a lot of the juice behind "Intelligent Design" will go away.
The next couple of election cycles ought to be interesting in this regard. Between Huckabee in the primaries and the political train wreck that was Sarah Palin, there are a few hints of cracks in the current coalition. Fifty years from now, the Bush administration might very well be seen as the high-water mark for this particular odd alliance. Or their mutual loathing of the Obama administration might stitch them back together.
Time will tell. One way or another, though, I don't think theology has much of a role to play.
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Chad - I think you are correct - It is politics and religion - not theology - that drives ID. I think that some people confuse theology and religion, which are actually not the same thing at all, although there is an obvious relationship.
Of course the REAL problem in all this is that ID advocates are clearly trying to weasel their religious beliefs into US schools, which is also clearly against the law and the U S Constitution.
I am not sure why the IDCreationists hate the USA so much, (yeah - I'm looking at YOU Baby Jesus) but someone needs to make sure they stop hating and trying to overthrow our constitution.
The thing about ID is that it doesn't make sense either theologically or biologically. Once one can accept an ancient Earth the mechanism by which evolution occures really becomes less important theologically speaking. The basic narrative remains the same only the divine toolkit changes. Why can't a deity mold species by natural selection rather than on some divine drafting board? Sure, this raises a lot of questions about the nature of the proposed deity but those questions arrise from deep time, the tiny portion of it occupied by humanity and the brutality of mass extinctions (none of which most IDers seem to have any problem with) and not by the mechanism by which species change. ID simple present a diety who puts work in to "designing" species only to end up killing them off later. Where's the theological sense in that?
another problem is that creationists, in my experience, consider all alternate theologies to be heresy. otherwise theistic evolution would have trumped cdesign proponentistism long, long ago ...
Ericb asks:
Isn't the term 'theological sense' semantically null?
Isn't the term 'theological sense' semantically null?
If you take "theology" to be a formal system with its own internal set of rules by which arguments may be constructed, then "theological sense" is a perfectly valid shorthand way of saying "This is a well-formed theological argument."
And, also, by Goedel's theorem, it's possible to construct well-formed theological statements that cannot be proved from within the theological system.
Thanks Chad, for choosing my question and for your thoughtful response. I'm delighted to share my views with your readers. This is obviously not really an embarrassing question for you, however, all the while that my article has been out, the silence from the creationist/ID lobby has been deafening. They know they can at best only obfuscate but not ever escape this irreducible inconsistency. Perhaps we'll get to see if there are any creationists out there honest enough to admit what they themselves would have to call heresy.
Well said, on each point, Chad.
Nitpick: the claim about Godel's theorem would only follow if the system in question can model the natural numbers. Without that it is possible that there is a complete and consistent theological axiomatic system.
Now, as to the major point that you and David disagree on, I think you are looking at different aspects of the same interrelated phenomenon. To the rank and file the issues are largely political but when one looks at ID's major proponents such as Dembski, Johnson and Wells what they are saying supports David's thesis. The rank and file don't care much about theology but many of the ID leaders do care.
I think the way ID gets traction beyond the theopolitical wackaloons is that a lot of people have a hard time grasping that people are not designed by God. They're ok with giraffes, but people bothers them. Underneath it, I think, is a need for meaning. That, and not religion per se, is the stumbling block for the non-wackaloons.
Fritz Zwicky
[Caltech Astronmy Professor Fritz] "Zwicky has dealt critically with religion during his whole life. (Source: 'Everybody a genius'). In a diary entry of 1971, he writes 'To base the unexplainabilty and the immense wonder of nature onto an other miracle God is unnecessary and not acceptable for any serious thinker.' According to a story, Zwicky should once have discussed with with priest about the beginning of the universe. As the priest said that the universe started with 'And there is light' Zwicky replied that he would buy this if it would be changed to 'and there is electromagnetism.'"
So Peano's Axioms are constructible in theological systems? Cool! Chapter and verse, please...