Karl Giberson, a physicist on the faculty at Eastern Nazarene College, and Francis Collins, the head of the NIH, have a new book out, The Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Questions. Given that they are both committed Christians, as well as totally convinced that modern science is essentially right and good, the book is intended to defend Christianity against the critics who argue that science and religion are incompatible. Expectedly, it has got all of the junior New Atheists jumping with joyous ire, and all over the blogs are stern condemnations: "this is not a good book"; "the authors's [sic] frequently murky prose"; "I was struck by just how unserious they are on this issue." You get the idea.
I am not about to defend Giberson and Collins -- although I do think that the latter, a man whose life is devoted to the welfare not just of his fellow Americans but of human beings everywhere, has in the past, because of his faith, been subject to criticisms that strike me as vitriolic to the point of obscenity. (And if you think I am referring to the treatment in Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, you would not be far wrong.)
In fact, my suspicion is that some of the Giberson-Collins arguments simply don't work. I have expressed before my worry that the randomness of the Darwinian process of evolution poses an insuperable difficulty for the Christian claim that humans necessarily had to appear as part of God's plan. Giberson and Collins endorse the suggestion by Simon Conway Morris that the existence of ecological niches that more than one organism occupies -- marsupials and placental both occupied the saber-tooth tiger niche -- shows that niches exist independently of organisms themselves. Hence, since we humans occupy the cultural niche, even if we had not some organism would have done so at some point and that is enough to get the Christian story up and running. But I am not sure that niches do exist independently of organisms -- there is a good argument for saying that organisms have a creative hand in the business of niche making -- and even if they do (exist independently) then I do not see a guarantee that the cultural niche would get occupied. If the dinosaurs had not been wiped out, might they not have stood forever as a barrier to mammals getting to culture?
Where I do want to defend Giberson and Collins is over the problem of evil. Let me say that I am not sure that the problem of evil -- how could a loving, all powerful God allow evil -- can be solved. I am with the chap in the Brothers Karamazov who said that even if everything is good in the end, the cost is not worth it. My salvation, Mother Teresa's salvation, is not worth the agony of Anne Frank and her sister in Bergen-Belsen. It just isn't. But I am not sure that biology, Darwinian evolutionary biology, exacerbates it.
Darwin thought it did.
"With respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.-- I am bewildered.-- I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I shd wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice."
(This from a letter written a few months after the Origin of Species was published in 1859, addressed to his great American supporter, and sincere Christian, Asa Gray.)
I suspect that, if anything, Darwinism speaks positively to the problem of evil. In the case of moral evil, evil brought on by humans such as Auschwitz, the classic response is couched in terms of free will. Better that we have free will and do evil than otherwise. At the least, Darwinism suggests that humans have a dimension of freedom not possessed by lower organisms like ants. They truly are genetically determined, doing what they do because their genes dictate things. Which is just great for ants -- they can build nests and so forth without any education. But if things go wrong -- rain wipes out the pheromone trails they use to find their food and return to the nest -- then thousands are killed. Mother ant (the queen) can afford this because she has lots of offspring. We humans have but a few but invest a lot of care in them. We cannot afford to lose our kids every time it rains. So we have built-in abilities to deal with crises and problems. This is part of our biology. We are as lawbound as the ants, but we have an evolutionarily conferred dimension of freedom above raw genetic determinism. In short, biology helps to flesh out the Christian's demands about freedom.
In the case of physical evil, the dreadful earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan, the traditional Christian answer, for all that Voltaire parodied it, is that of Leibniz -- working by law results in good things and bad things, but overall the good outweighs the bad. God is constrained in what He does and in total He does the very best possible. Now of course there are questions about whether God had to create through law, although if He had not done so, it would be a very different world (and not arguably better) than the one we have now. For a start, He would have had to eliminate the thousands of pieces of evidence of evolution, or He would be a deceiver along the lines that Philip Gosse rather foolishly welcomed in the nineteenth century (on the grounds that God was testing our faith).
But supposing that God did (and had to) create through law, then Richard Dawkins of all people offers a piece of candy to the Christian. Dawkins argues that the only physical way to get organic adaptation -- the design-like nature of living beings -- is through natural selection, that very painful mechanism that worried Darwin! Other mechanisms are either false (such as Lamarckism, the inheritance of acquired characteristics) or inadequate (such as saltationism, change by sudden jumps). In other words, although Darwinism does not speak to all cases of physical evil -- the earthquakes -- it does speak to the physical evil that it itself is supposed to bring on. It is Darwinism with suffering, or nothing.
As I said, in respects I am inclined to go for nothing. But that is not the same as saying that the Christian should drop his or her faith because science makes it untenable. So, for all of the excited criticisms of the New Atheists, I am going to give Karl Giberson and Francis Collins a bit more lease on life.
Rabbi Adam Jacobs: Atheism's Odd Relationship with Morality
[[ " Why does God allow suffering? If Jehovah God is all-powerful, loving, wise, and just, why is the world so full of hatred and injustice? Have you ever wondered about these things yourself?
Is it wrong to ask why God allows suffering? Some worry that asking such a question means that they do not have enough faith or that they are showing disrespect for God. When reading the Bible, however, you will find that faithful, God-fearing people had similar questions.
For example, the prophet Habakkuk asked Jehovah: “Why is it that you make me see what is hurtful, and you keep looking upon mere trouble? And why are despoiling and violence in front of me, and why does quarreling occur, and why is strife carried?”—Habakkuk 1:3. " ]]
http://www.watchtower.org/e/bh/article_11.htm
[[ " As Creator, Jehovah God has the ability to foresee all potential causes of harm, and he has the power to intercede. In view of these facts and the qualities attributed to God in the Bible, many rightly ask, “Why does God allow natural disasters to occur?”* As millions of sincere inquirers have found, God himself has provided a most reasonable answer in his written Word. (2 Timothy 3:16) Please consider the following. " ]]
http://www.watchtower.org/e/200709/article_01.htm
you seem like someone who enjoys thinking :)
So what's all this aboot the "Problem of Evil?" I keep hearing aboot it...is it a 'problem' because people have to make room for it, somehow, within their worldviews?
I've noticed, as well, how believers in a universal omniscient omnipotent G_d would have 'trouble' with Evil and so, because they need to believe in that type of G_d, would have to invent, to try to come up with ways of how that type of G_d could still exist...
For me, I'm thinking that evil is just ignorance and that natural disasters aren't evil...
I'm glad that there aren't any worldviews that don't require people not to think, even though we can get hypnotized by them, thinking that "Hey, that's the Real World" :)
Yet, Mr. Ruse seems to be begging the point...even if indirectly...in his seeming accusation, that "the problem of evil" is a problem which originated with God instead with the free will of the sentient beings, whether they be of the order of the terrestrial or celestial?
I wonder if it makes sense to him that this problem of evil, IS the problem of sentient beings with their own free will; being endowed with their our own abilities to carry out their intentions, and by an act of free will, choose for themselves , and that this is what makes evil a contingency; the possibility that it is ever-present as a potential in sentient beings with free will?
Creating a world inhabited by marionettes, would have been far easier and enormously less problematic for God.
None of these would love Him.
I wouldn't be worth it.
Ruse, you aren't even trying to defend most of the book, or defuse the problem of evil, and you don't even really make a case for the necessity of the suffering involved in evolution, the limited topic treated here. If there's a point with intellectual substance, I'm afraid I'm blind to it. The only thing I get out of this article is the observation that you're more sympathetic on a personal, emotive level towards Giberson and Collins than towards Coyne, Rosenhouse, and Harris (though still not really a believer). And that you still think science and religion may be compatible, although you don't defend that viewpoint here. Is it really necessary to write an article purely to remind people that you aren't on the same side as the new atheists?
Evolution = good and evil, suffering and pain by "natural selection", you know, the "mind" of nature. This kind of suffering and pain etc. is perfectly fine, and there is no critic.
A Creator = good and evil, suffering and pain for a reason. You know, the "mind" of a thinking Being, not "mindless nature". This kind of suffering and pain etc. is not perfectly fine to the critic. There is a legion of critics.
What does "natural selection" have to say about this in the "Bible" of evolution?
Does it explain its reason for permitting all this pain and suffering, this good and evil? Or, do men make up things for evolution to "mean"?
Is there really a problem in understanding this subject? Or, is it just another strawdog to avoid something?
It's always the simplest that the human mind can't understand, for they tend to complicate everything with "fancy" explanations.
Just because an answer is simple, doesn't make it right. Telling your kid that the stork is bringing his new little sister, doesn't make it true. "God did it" is not an answer unless you can prove it, or at least support it with facts and data. You can't.
The thing is, that's ok. I don't have a problem with people believing something different from what I believe. I don't even think the belief itself makes you stupid. But to be as narrow-minded and condescending as you are about it, is the height of ignorance. Because by claiming to KNOW the truth, you close any possibility to learn the truth if you are wrong.
It's always the other way around: That supernatural drivel turned out to be false, we now have a perfectly good scientific explanation.
The score:
Science: 1 megatrillion
Supernatural: 0
There isn't a SINGLE instance of some supernatural claim of ANY type that turned out to be true. All we have is people who continue to believe in the supernatural after reason completely demolishes it.
I guess we can reflect purpose to this stuff as a first attempt to understand things in an age where information was not readily available or when we had not understood the world as we do today.
But for there to be people still thinking that all life started from butter (hindu creation story), or some rambling story about a talking snake (christian creation story)...and then try to convince other people that these are the best explanations we have (in the year 2011), then well forgive me for calling this what it is:
Supernatural Drivel.
But they should be viewed as art, and not as fact.
Science makes it pretty damn clear that religion is pure nonsense, I would assume that if religion does not cause the extinction of mankind that human beings will have to snap out of this religious stupor sometime within the next 1000 years.
Science is demonstrable, proven, and it works. It gives us answers. You CANNOT just make up any nonsense and call it science because someone WILL come along and prove it wrong if it is wrong. Science is self-correcting and progressive. Science knows it is not perfect and doesn't pretend to be. Our societies are built on it. Our modern life exists thanks to it.
Religion offers nothing tangible or demonstrable. Science gives us a way to understand the world around us, a way to interconnect, and provides bridges to a better future.
It's that simple.
logic is not a strong suit here nor is understanding of science. Evolution is not "random."
"Hence, since we humans occupy the cultural niche, even if we had not some organism would have done so at some point and that is enough to get the Christian story up and running... In short, biology helps to flesh out the Christian's demands about freedom"
Shoot down evolution but claim ownership of biology?
"...but overall the good outweighs the bad."
Apparently the problem of religion reduces to quantification.
"Darwinism ... it does speak to the physical evil that it itself is supposed to bring on. It is Darwinism with suffering, or nothing.
This article concludes that evolution/(Darwinism) is evil. I wonder how many Christians will denounce this convoluted logic or remain silent in implicit agreement?
Where science demolishes superstitious belief, religion attempts to co-opt science, logic and rationality goes out the window.
His point is that there is no way to guarantee the emergence of any particular species, no way to look at that first single-celled organism and go ah yes, now we are on the way to homo sapiens sapiens. Any random event throughout the millenia could have prevented the emergence of man.
You do not do a favor to the pro-science side as the rational side by so completely missing the point of the article that you are responding to. Neither Ruse nor Giberson and Collins are attacking evolution or calling it evil.
Gibberson and Collins are arguing that accepting evolution does not require one to abandon Christianity. Ruse, who appears to be an atheist, is defending part of their argument.
The challenge to Gibberson and Collins that Ruse is not defending is the idea that evolution had to produce something like human beings, which Gibberson and Collins accept as necessary for Christianity. What Ruse calls the randomness of evolution is really just the fact that evolution is not pointed towards a particular end. What you seem to be objecting to in the characterization of evolution as random is that there are factors that make some changes preferential over others. But that is precisely what Gibberson and Collins are relying on in their defense of Christianity, and its compatibility with evolution.
With regard to evil, the article notes that evolution allows for a great deal of evil. This is simply true. As it happens it is not a problem for evolution, it is a problem for the compatibility of evolution and Christianity. In fact Ruse is supporting the idea that the evil allowed by evolution is not excessive given the need for the world to be lawlike. So he is not claiming anything you seem to oppose.
At first i thought this article written by a philosopher had to be a ruse, but if you take a "random" sampling of out of context words and phrases:
"Darwinism, evil, defend Christianity against the critics who argue that science and religion are incompatible. junior New Atheists, cultural niche... is enough to get the Christian story up and running, biology helps to flesh out the Christian's demands, excited criticisms of the New Atheists..."
something becomes painfully obvious, "I am not about to defend Giberson and Collins... I am going to give Karl Giberson and Francis Collins a bit more lease on life."
This article was not written for the non-theist as was my post, you my friend were taken.
It is alarming how easily the xian mind is hooked by just a few buzzwords.
How is an earthquake "evil?"
It's a natural event. Nothing more.
But in reality, an earthquake is just a natural event and in neither evil or "good".