Apples, Oranges, Intelligent Design and Evolution

Today's sermon at Woodcrest really bothered me. The title, “In the beginning... god created” should have been sufficient to tell me that this one wasn't going to sit well with me, but I hoped that it would refrain from many of the more dogmatic approaches that typically render any debate between Naturalism and Theism pointless (apples and oranges rarely compare well, when in reality they are both fine fruit and can coexist nicely in a regular diet). Unfortunately, it didn't – choosing instead to reinforce a lot of the stereotypes that have ruined the debate for so many.

I'm going to allow myself the same liberties expressed my Mr. Van Waarde in his sermon, and ignore issues such as literal interpretation of Genesis, Young Earth theory, and similar specifics of dogma. They are interesting, but like Mr. Van Waarde, I'd like to focus on the more general lines drawn between the two camps.

My first disagreement with today's sermon came at the beginning, when it was expressed that differing world views cannot coexist, and a general rejection of the post-modern ideal of tolerance. Differing world views can and do coexist, every day. Not only that, but they have to, or we will live in a backwards-looking Imperial war-zone! Take a trip through London, and you'll find Churches (of many different denominations), Mosques (likewise, of different denominations), Hindu temples, Buddhist centers, and even atheist reading rooms. Sometimes, you'll even find them on the same street (Brick Lane being an obvious example). Are these colliding world-views not coexisting in the real world? With a few notable exceptions (such as the Rushdie-inspired bombing of Collets – condemned by religious leaders of all faiths), they coexist every day. People go about their business, mingle on the streets, and are quite happy to not kill one another over differences of faith. If one looks for places in which tolerance is not the norm, one finds such lovely places as Srebrenica, Rwanda, Jerusalem and lately Baghdad (which in its hay-day was a melting pot of the world). Is this the type of world we should be promoting? Or should we, as Mr. Van Waarde stated was impossible, tolerate our neighbors' views? (In my mind, there is little doubt that Jesus would advocate tolerance!)

The church then played a clip from Ben Stiller's film, Expelled. Stiller is touring a Nazi death-camp, and the tour-guide is carefully describing what happened where, and sticking to facts. It's clear that her job is to give the facts, and let the tourists draw their own moral conclusions. I've been on similar tours, and it is considerably harder-hitting to hear a deadpan “70 people died here each day” than to listen to a rant containing the words “evil” and “monstrous” repeated so frequently that you begin to wonder if there's a hidden agenda behind the tour. The guide carefully dodged Stiller's attempt to give the dissection doctor an out by being insane, focusing on him being well aware of what he did (leading tourists towards “evil” on their own, rather than insanity excuses). Then he hit her with a surprise question, “if you could say anything to the doctor, what would you say?” She was clearly unprepared for the question, and dodged it by saying that it wasn't her place to answer that question. The scene cuts, and the pastor highlights “it wasn't my place” as an example of what is wrong with post-modern thinking. In my view, the tour-guide was absolutely correct in her answer: on a tour of a death camp, it isn't her place to improvise a rant. Much of the point of the tour is to let the tourist draw their own conclusions – and only the most twisted of tourist would have anything nice to say to the doctor! This is an example of straw-man allegory at its worst; it takes a diplomatic answer, and turns its careful reticence into an attack on tolerance – when that wasn't even the question! I challenge anyone to go to the Auschwitz museum, and leave with the opinion that the museum is doing anything but condemning the holocaust. Conversely, had the Nazis been a little more tolerant, the wouldn't have executed Jews – just as tolerant crusaders would not have filled mass graves with Muslims. It's a self-defeating argument: stating that tolerating competing world views is wrong is exactly the same as condoning mistreatment of those with whom you disagree, albeit on a smaller scale (historically, though, it's usually been the start of a slippery slope into genocide).

The sermon then moved to describing Naturalism and Theism. The basic description of Naturalism was actually quite reasonable. Mr. Van Waarde described epistemology, methodological naturalism. Theories are proposed (and to count as a theory, it has to provide supporting evidence, hypotheses that can be disproved, and suggest predictions on what that theorem's effect on the universe would be, were it true), discussed, and either refined or discarded as evidence is found to support or refute it. It's an ongoing process; at no point do we say “alright then, these are the Laws of Physics” and regard them as an immutable doctrine – rather, we keep looking for better answers, with the hope of eventually closing in on some universal truths. This was moderately well explained, although it would have benefited from some examples.
The sermon emphasized the word random, again and again. “How could something as complex and beautiful as the world happen randomly?” The funny thing there is that for an infinite universe, you might as well ask “how could something as complex and beautiful not happen randomly?” ; you would get the same answer. When the size of space-time is effectively infinite, there is a probability of almost 1 that anything will in fact happen somewhere. In the absence of a God lighting up the sky with a verifiable proof of His existence, there is no empirical method that can state with certainty that the chain of events is or isn't random. Apples and oranges.

Theism, according to the sermon, is the statement that while naturalism can describe what happened, theism can describe why. The injection of divine purpose into reality. This, again, I don't have a problem with. In fact, if the sermon had summarized the viewpoint that science describes what we can provably interact with, and theology/philosophy (and many other disciplines) seek to add meaning to it, I could have agreed with the whole sermon. However, the sermon moved on to far weaker ground by claiming that science regards philosophy/theology as a “lesser” discipline, since it isn't bound by provable/disprovable claims grounded in reality. Some scientists doubtless feel this way, just like some philosophers would argue that truth is such an ephemeral concept that the scientific method can't really show you anything useful at all. Extreme views like those are nonsensical, and a brief glance at any reputable University will show you that social sciences, hard sciences, philosophical disciplines, anthropology and various theologies co-exist and are studied next to one another quite happily (indeed, many great advances occur when masters of disparate disciplines work together).

Mr. Van Waarde then moved onto very weak ground by claiming that a hard, fact-based Universe could not contain morality. Unfortunately, every discipline from philosophy to anthropology to political science would disagree with this statement. A first question to ask is “does the world exhibit morality?” Outside of humans, the natural world is coldly brutal. Creatures kill and eat each other (some have even been seen to kill without eating, apparently purely for the joy of killing). Creatures die in accidents, natural disasters, and of changing climate. This is even acknowledged in Christian theology, with the fallen world. Conversely, pack- and tribal-oriented creatures display a certain “morality”, sometimes putting their group above themselves in terms of survival. This has been widely discussed by evolutionary biologists and anthropologists. Philosophers such as Aristotle and Kant have both demonstrated how self-interest can require a moral code, and the adoption of such a code can be beneficial entirely from self-interest. Christianity, or it's precursor Judaism (with a somewhat different moral code provided by the same God), holds no monopoly on the cold, hard logic of behaviors that enhance the survival rates of one's pack/tribe. In other words, once again the sermon relied upon a straw-man argument. The necessity of morality in organized social structures can be explained with or without God. The creation of a Universe in which morality is a necessity can be seen as the guiding hand of God – or as a natural development. Once again, the absence of empirical evidence of God saying “prairie dog packs shall feature a scout who risks his life with an alarm call for the good of the pack” neither proves or disproves God's role – and science merely states (after observation) that prairie dogs act that way, and offers speculation on the physical advantages of doing so (offering hypotheses that can be examined with long-term study, and predictions that may be applied to other social creatures). More apples and oranges.

Finally, the sermon moved on to Stiller's now-infamous ambushing of Richard Dawkins. Dawkins was asked about intelligent design (he claims he was tricked into giving the interview), and stated that it was possible that a superior intelligence in the past had setup the creation we see – but don't, and can't know for sure. More importantly, as he was being rudely cut off by Mr. Stiller, he pointed to the root issue of causality: that intelligence would have had to come from somewhere. He didn't say there was or wasn't an intelligence at work, simply that we don't (and possibly can't) know that based on empirical evidence. The pastor, of course, seized on his mentioning of a creator intelligence to say that even Mr. Dawkins thinks that it's possible that there's an order behind the apparently random creation. That may be true; indeed, I tend to think that it's well within the capabilities of an omniscient deity to say “bang” and start the Universe with a random seed that would eventually lead to the Universe He wants. It also misses the point: where did God come from? Can his presence be postulated in a scientific theory (focusing only on what we can measure, like all good science), and left open to specific provable/disprovable claims? No – God cannot be measured (and repeated attempts to shout “God, if you exist, strike me down at 9am!” haven't proven overly helpful). That's why “faith” is ephemeral, a philosophical subject (an apple) – and the apparent expansion and cooling of the Universe from a single point in space-time is scientific (an orange); it provides specific claims, and as we study more of the Universe we can match specific claims with observable reality.

The ultimate question here is about the teaching of Intelligent Design, Creationism in general, and Evolution in school curricula. Most scientists I know have no problem with the teaching of Intelligent Design – but in philosophy, not in science. It is not a scientific theory, and presenting it as one is doing a disservice to both the scientific method and to social studies. Evolution can be examined and possibly refuted as evidence arises, and has closely matched a great deal of the evidence we have uncovered (and been modified when evidence does not line up). For intelligent design to be taught in a science class, it would have to contain disprovable hypotheses, and specific predictions (also disprovable with real, measurable empirical data). It does not contain these elements, so it isn't science. That's quite ok, though – philosophy is a very well respected discipline (it's not an accident that the “Ph” in Ph.D is short for Philosophy!), and is the perfect home for theories as to why the empirical world developed the way it did.
Instead of arguing for biology lessons to include non-scientific theories, perhaps it would be a better argument that all schools should teach philosophy and comparative religion? After all, Mr. Van Waarde did say that in this post-modern world kids want to be presented with options so that they can select a world-view. What better way to assist them in this than to present thousands of years of thought, dedicated to just this kind of question – rather than modifying a discipline focused entirely on repeatable experimentation in the empirical world.

In conclusion, this is ultimately a futile debate. The most fervent adherents to each “side” firmly adhere to Mr. Van Waarde's theory that disparate world views can never be reconciled – and as such, they are unlikely to ever achieve such reconciliation. It cannot be empirically proven or dis-proven that the creation of the Universe was purely random, or was guided by the invisible hand of a benign creator. Rather, the educated, moderate, population of a blissfully post-modern world can accept that empirical evidence shows that a given chain of events happened – and happily relate that to their knowledge of philosophy to conclude for themselves whether there is, is not, or even might be, a God – and which of the many faiths they should listen to.
Christianity has always been at its strongest when it recognizes that science is just another way to honor God, by studying what's here now, and the physical steps required to get here – while the Church deals with the spiritual world, and the well-being of its flock. Lets not repeat the Galileo incident, over and over again. There's plenty of room down here for all viewpoints.