Louis
Posts: 6436
Joined: Jan. 2006
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| Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ Feb. 12 2008,21:13) | Kenneth Miller (from above):
| Quote | | Yes, the explosive diversification of life on this planet was an unpredictable process. But so were the rise of Western civilization, the collapse of the Roman Empire, and the winning number in last night's lottery. We do not regard the indeterminate nature of any of these events in human history as antithetical to the existence of a Creator; why should we regard similar events in natural history any differently? There is, I would submit, no reason at all. If we can view the contingent events in the families that produced our individual lives as consistent with a Creator, then certainly we can do the same for the chain of circumstances that produced our species. |
Here I think Kenneth Miller, for whom I have great admiration, has taken a subtly wrong turn. He is correct in stating that events in natural history are no more antithetical to the existence of a creator than the other indeterminate events he cites above. However, as I've stated above, natural history bodes ill for many more specific theological assertions regarding the nature of human beings relative to any such creator: e.g., we are made in God's image, we have souls that set us apart ontologically from other creatures, the nature of the universe generally embodies a moral code that takes note of us, etc. In my opinion, these things can't be true, if the essentials of evolutionary theory are true. And without those assertions a distant creator doesn't get much work done in the realm of the human existential predicament.
I'm repeating myself, without getting much of a rise out of anyone. But there it is. |
Bill,
I know it wasn't me you were seeking to get a rise out of, but the reason you didn't is twofold:
1) You expressed what you wrote beautifully
2) I erm, well, hahaha, you know, agree wholeheartedly with you on that issue.
I particularly agree with:
| Quote | I think thoughtful religious persons who understand and accept the real implications of evolutionary theory and the natural history of life on this planet cannot but experience a severe challenge to their faith. And it is my opinion that pro-science advocates who are making comforting sounds regarding the compatibility of many levels of traditional religious assertion and science, particularly evolutionary science, are mistaken. There is severe conflict there, and that accounts for many elements of the culture wars.
But as before, it is my belief that it is the natural world itself, and our indisputable place in it, that presents this challenge. |
There is a huge swathe of specific theologies that are completely at odds with the reliable, repeatable, independant observation of the natural universe. Does this prevent one from believing in a deity/is this at odds with belief in a deity? Not entirely, no. However it is at odds, and it prevents one having a consistent belief in certain specific deities as described in certain specific theologies.
This is easily exemplified by the classic creationist dilemma. A good friend, and former colleague, of mine is a de facto creationist. She has a strong christian faith, and whilst a scientist herself, (of no mean accomplishment I must add) she would be the first to admit that outside of her field (synthetic chemistry) she hasn't investigated the relevant science at all. We were discussing this once and she said to me "I believe in god, the bible is the word of god, and the information in the bible is true. If one bit of it is wrong, all of it could be wrong and this would be the end of my faith", or words to that effect.
As I mention above, this position is one she maintained in quite deliberate ignorance of the relevant science and philosophy, she didn't want to investigate it or think about it too deeply. We can perhaps speculate about the reasons for that. My reply was that she was on a hiding to nothing. The specific theological position she had decided to occupy brought her into conflict, with her faith potentially forfeit, with not only the best science but the best philosophical and theological (yes, yes I know) thought of the last few centuries. She'd set herself up for a fall. I successfully (and politely and gently, shock horror) convinced her that her belief in a deity was not predicated on a specific "literal" reading of the bible, her faith could be maintained without adhering to a naive "literalist" interpretation. How I did this is by appealling not to her understanding of science but to the aspects of other theological positions that are more compatible with science etc.
Granted these are perhaps but a step in a long road to a rational perspective, BUT I don't think that's a necessary thing. While not religious in the overt sense that would be understood by most Americans (CofE/UKian christianity is a far more woolly and "polite" affair than it's USAian cousin more often than not) this lady's faith was of profound importance to her. Not in a happy clappy church every Sunday sanctimonious sense, but in a deeply personal, private sense. The thing that allowed her to have a more informed faith was the fact that she realised she had set herself up for a fall, like I said, with her loss of faith as the potential consequence. She changed her theological perspective because she realised she was advocating a perversely naive theology, one that would ultimately cause her to lose that which was precious to her.
So we arrived at a point where we obviously disagreed about a huge number of things (virgin birth, divinity of Jesus, supernatural miracles etc etc) BUT her theological perspective had been sufficiently changed that she could at least rationally confront aspects of the world around her without fear that her profound faith was a potential casualty of that confrontation. Maybe FTK and her theological ilk would argue I'd somehow harmed my friend by destroying her faith, and admittedly I feared that this dogmatic route was one my friend might take. I was pleasantly surprised that she didn't. The thing these chumps are missing, were they to argue thus, is that her faith is very much intact, all she has discarded is the naive and erroneous doctrines of a specific theology. She's also now a keen reader of theology, philosophy and different branches of science. One suggestion she particularly liked was that one could think that there are two revelations, the first of nature, the second of scripture. We know the second has been adulterated by humans, the first is direct access to the creator...if you believe such things.
The militant atheist in me might see this as a failure, she is still a person who has specific faith in certain supernatural events and advocates a good deal of anti-reason, but even though I am confessedly a militant atheist of the most brutal kind, I can't help but see our discussions, and their result, as a massive success. We might disagree about the irrational, anti-reason elements of her faith BUT I am more than content to let that disagreement stand because her faith is now at least partially informed by the world around her, NOT completely by some specific doctrinaire theological ideology that she really hadn't thought through. I think that's the best we can hope for in general.
Sure I think that the natural world will present her with more challenges to her faith (not merely her theology), and sure I think that the careful and reason-based examination of the natural world is antithetical to that faith in an epistemological sense. We don't, perhaps sadly, live in some rationalist utopian idyll. Whilst I might prefer that people realised the limitations of faith in toto I'll cheerfully settle for people realising the limitations of specific theologies and abandoning those in favour of more reason-centred ones. Shades of grey, not black and white.
So perhaps I've nipped off at one of my usual large tangents, perhaps not. The problem I have is I agree with you. A decent understanding of the best evidence and data we have regarding the natural world is entirely at odds with the things you mention (souls, god's image, universal anthropocentirc moral code imprinted on the universe etc) to name just a few. However these, while certainly deemed articles of faith for some theological stances, are the merely trappings of specific theologies, it is possible to formulate other theological positions that are not in contradiction to the available data. I think that is an important point we can make in our combatting of certain theological stances. It's (at least initially) not necessary to abandon faith whole cloth, it is only necessary to abandon certain theological positions that may be held by faith.
However, this sows the seeds of theistic faith's own destruction, I think it at least leads logically to deism or some kind of theistic agnosticism, if not a lack of belief in the supernatural all together. I agree that we are highly mistaken if we try to claim that certain traditional theologies have nothing to fear from any aspect of science or rational enquiry, specifically evolutionary biology in this instance. I'd also go further and say that in the cases where people DO shift their theological perspective to be more congruent with the products of reasoned enquiry (and the process of reasoned enquiry itself) they can end up occupying a philsophical position in all ways indistinguishable from a completely rational one. This is where people become de facto atheists, their claims of faith are so malleable on the basis of the evidence that they are not really claimed by faith at all.
Didn't Dennett once describe the scientific method as a kind of philsophical universal acid? It eats away a cherished notions unsupported by the data. Perhaps what FTK and others fear is that once they apply that universal acid to one thing....
Perhaps they simply deliberately don't understand the relevant issues at all and have constructed some naive , hypocritical relativism in order to defend their naive theology.
Louis
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Bye.
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