YouTube Q&A
Here is some Q&A from my YouTube e-mail account that I though was constructive.
Q1. Jer 33:25 — I have established the fixed laws governing heaven and earth. While this remains true (and thus, the workings of a hurricane can be attributed to God’s design all the while being natural), it’s fallacious to suggest that therefore *all* things in nature which appear designed can in fact be reduced to natural laws. This doesn’t follow and is just a philosophical assumption on your part. Agreed?
A1. If God is sovereign and his creation is governed by the laws of ordinary providence, then any self-organizing systems that are a consequence of these same laws are by definition, part of God’s design. In other words, God knew what he was doing when he fine-tuned the universe to permit the emergence of order and complexity (by setting up the perfect blend of physical necessity and contingency). My own personal brand of ID is more related to the “fine tuning” argument than to Dembski’s anti-evolution rant.
Q2. Likewise, appealing to examples where we *thought* something was the result of intervention, which in fact turn out not to be, is fallacious if used as evidence against divine intervention in general (i.e. 1. X had a natural explanation, whereas before it was thought to be lacking one. 2. Y appears to lack a natural explanation.3. Therefore Y in fact actually does have a natural explanation). It’s a non-sequitur, right?
A2. In principle, I don’t distinguish between ordinary providence (natural law) and special providence (divine fiat). God is sovereign over all of creation whether we can figure exactly out how or not. The fact that something can’t be sufficiently explained from our finite understanding of the cosmos does not automatically make it a miracle (as you would agree). I would affirm that it is a candidate miracle, but I’m not willing to wager that the emergence of life was done by fiat — as those in the ID seem to do. Since when does God need to perform miracles in secret to compensate for his inability to fine-tune a cosmos that has the requisite properties for the emergence of complex biology? Miracles are for our benefit — they are done for our sake, not to keep the universe running smoothly. Miracles are for human history (because of our harness of hearts), not for natural history.
Q3. Regarding “Specified Complexity”, Dembski himself (as I recall) doesn’t say that it automatically equates to “design”. Instead, he simply points out that it is a pattern that needs explaining, and proceeds to explain by evolution is not up to the task (not that it hypothetically couldn’t have been). Whether Dembski is right or wrong in the latter conclusion, we should be careful not to misrepresent him or the ID movement.
A3. Whether you like or dislike evolution, it can explain MOST of what we find in the life sciences and after 150 years of trying there is no evidence that directly falsifies it. Therefore, until a better paradigm emerges, scientists are completely justified in using the current theory. ID, on the other hand, is trivial — it doesn’t lead to new discoveries because it can’t make testable predictions. Therefore, scientists are completely justified in REJECTING it.
Q4. You seem to think that the Judeo-Christian is unwarranted in taking evolutions (alleged) insufficiency as evidence for “creation”. However, naturalism’s ostensible inability to explain life fits perfectly under the theistic hypothesis (where God intervened to create life, such that we shouldn’t be able to find a natural explanation), but remains surprising outside of the theistic hypothesis. Thus, at least as a quasi-bayesian inference, it counts as evidence for theism. It’s important to note, I think, that the theists hypothesis and observation here is not ad hoc and so doesn’t count as a “God of the gaps” (even if that charge was any worse than saying, for example “evolution of the gaps”).
A4. Any shortcomings of evolution theory are not good evidences of creation — period. I have to assume that in any universe created and sustained by God for the purpose of life and creatures that bear His image, all the potential required to accomplish this is designed into the cosmos from the very instant of creation. Therefore, no “intervention” on the part of God is necessary to get specified complexity, even biological complexity, to emerge. As a result, I also have to assume that any inability of a man-made theory, such as evolution, to explain a certain phenomena does not mean that God had to “cheat the system” — but rather than man is ignorant.
Folks like Dembski seem to take great joy in the prospect that God is incapable of creating a universe with the all the properties necessary for life to emerge without additonal tinkering — and so they spend all of their time looking for God in the voids — the gaps in our knowlege of creation. This explains why all they do is magnify the shortcoming of modern science. I personally think that is a pathetic view of God. I’d rather assume, when confronted with mysteries like the the Big Bang and Abiogenesis, it is we who are ignorant.
April 1st, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Gordon,
1. He is absolutely right, it is a fallacy (of generalization) to say that because some things which appear designed but are natural, must imply that all things are really natural and only apparently designed. Your first sentence bears out that it is an assumption: “If God is sovereign and his creation is governed by the laws of ordinary providence” — in other words, you are assuming that God only governs nature through ordinary providence, and not through special providence (i.e. miracle).
2. He is also right for the same reason, this is a fallacy of generalization. You might be right, but your statement goes further than just hesitancy. As you say, we can’t necessarily rule out miracle, but in Howard van Till style, you seem to still be saying that God performing miracles in the formation of the universe would somehow take away from God’s absolute power or creativity. You may be right that “miracles are for human history…not for natural history,” but how do you prove it? It’s a philosophical assumption.
4. I agree that insufficient evidence for evolution can’t necessarily be taken as evidence for creation. But neither can it be taken as evidence for evolution either. Where the rubber meets the road is where we DO have sufficient evidence for or against certain hypotheses.
I believe it’s a better argument to simply say, there is much evidence to support the hypothesis of evolution, which gives scientists strong reasons to believe the remaining gaps may eventually be filled with naturalistic explanations. Until then, naturalistic paradigms are the only ones which provide scientifically testable theories, which will remain until creationism or some other alternative theory can demonstrate testable and verifiable explanations. I think this response, though more tentative than your “God won’t cheat the system” answer, is actually stronger because it’s more closely tied to objective evidence than to philosophical supposition.
April 1st, 2009 at 11:14 pm
jtandy,
Regarding point 1, “…you are assuming that God only governs nature through ordinary providence, and not through special providence (i.e. miracle),” I am inclined to ask, what exactly in the realm of nature in the present day do we (including special creationists) not chalk up to ordinary providence? The weather? Photosynthesis? Gestation? Even unknowns like gravity are typically assumed to be ordinary providence. I don’t think Gordon’s assumption is one not shared by most special creationists. Is it an assumption? Yes, but an assumption mostly common to both camps in the debate, and therefore not invalid for Gordon’s argument.
Re: answer 2, of course it’s a philosophical assumption on both sides, but Gordon’s is the only one that is compatible with the aims and methods of science. Science is the search for natural (”ordinary”) causes, with an open admission that anything else is outside of science.
This is devastating for creation science, but I admit that this doesn’t say as much against ID, since “design” can actually be quite natural (e.g., humans, aliens) and not supernatural at all. The problem I have with ID is that people with a front loaded conclusion approach nature — which, again, is by all Christians assumed to be generally functioning on “auto-pilot” in the present day and throughout history except by recorded, exceptional miracles — and treat our efforts to understand nature as though we have reason to expect that God saw it necessary to tweak this or that or the other. It’s a philosophical motivation that admits no defeat until it finds presupposed exceptions to nature as understood today. More unfathomable is the fact that some like Behe accept common descent, which is surely giving away the farm — it is nothing short of irrational for him to go looking for little Easter eggs of design hidden amongst the evidence of naturalism.
Science is based upon induction, no doubt about it, and induction sounds a lot like the “fallacy of generalization”. But the principle of parsimony is a quintessential aspect of science: given that natural causes explain the aspects of nature we know much of anything about, we have no good reason to proceed in researching other aspects of nature by assuming anything but natural causes for the remaining uncertainties. It’s like a detective looking for a murder suspect by asking witnesses where he’s not rather than where he is.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Stephen,
I agree with you that ordinary providence is and should be the “default explanation” for observable cause and effect. Also agree that something can take the form of a formal “fallacy”, but not necessarily be fallacious. That’s why I said several times, that Gordon “may be right” about the assumption; yet, to take a hard conclusion that all things must be a certain way based on induction from examples would be taking it too far.
My objection expressed above was not that naturalistic explanations shouldn’t be hypothesized in general, but against 1) the suggestion that God’s “tinkering” (so-called) with creation somehow weighs against His creative abilities in the first instance, and 2) that we can rule out the possibility of miracle by deduction from God’s presumed “ability” to front-load into creation all that was necessary for ordinary providence to succeed. I agree that He’s able, but I don’t think we have enough evidence yet to say that creation was accomplished purely through front-loading and natural cause-and-effect.
You make a good point about what in the realm of nature do we expect miracles today. I could give many modern day examples that would echo those of the Bible; for instance, Jesus calming the sea by His command, or healing a leper by His touch. These will surely be said to fail as examples, because they are dealing with God’s redemptive history with mankind, not purely nature.
Perhaps, but maybe it’s partly a false distinction. Why shouldn’t God’s ordinary providence be expected to cause the sea to calm, without need for a miracle? Did God’s “tinkering” and “intervention” with the storm take away from His power and ability as Creator? Wouldn’t God’s power have been sufficient to save the disciples on the boat by making the sea calm naturally, without Jesus walking out on the water to save them? Surely, yet the Bible indicates that a miracle occurred through His direct intervention, acting on what would ordinarily be a natural chain of cause and effect. It also uses the same sort of language to describe purely natural things (like how God feeds the birds of the air). I am willing to take many of these as allegories for ordinary providence, but I see no reason or means by which we can rule out special providence in nature as matter of principle. Nor any means to distinguish those natural occurrences that involve humans from those where no humans were present.
April 3rd, 2009 at 9:13 am
Jtandy - I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said here. I admit that my personal bias is that God rules nature without special providence (except in the affairs of men) — however, there is no reason that is HAS to be this way. Regardless, one would never be wrong (in a scientific context) to operate according to the naturalistic premise, wheras — assuming special providence can prematurely end a material investigation.