Metanexus: Views. 2002.06.07. 3273 words "We are educating children badly" claims today's author, Jeff W. Dahms, MD. And how did Dahms come to this conclusion? Well, he goes on to say that "The first time PBS ran its documentary series, 'Evolution' I missed the program, but a few nights ago I caught the final episode, 'What about God' largely set at Wheaton College, a private coed Christian college in Illinois. What struck me most was the distressing effect on these students of our inability to simply and systematically present an important 'coming of age' issue. The contextual issues and choices surrounding this topic and particularly the implications of those choices were completely absent." Perhaps part of this "inability to simply and systematically present" the issues and items surrounding evolution, creation, science, and religion has to do with our own lack of clarity about what those issues and items are? As Dahms observes, "Difficult questions in science and life generally are at least better understood and sometimes successfully resolved by a process of restructuring and reframing." And often this is the case, for answers usually come readily to those who do not quite know what the real questions are. Thus, according to today's author, "What is need is some scaffolding for thinking - a series of choices in a decision tree with each of the branching points up for debate." And in today's columns, this is precisely what Dahms is doing. Today's columnist, Jeff Dahms, is a physician-surgeon and research scientist associated with Sydney University's teaching hospitals and who works intermittently in primary care in the developing countries of Asia and the Americas. For the last two years he has worked on the design of what will become the first international health information utility, an internet service that will provide doctors and patients in the developed world, as well as field workers in the developing world, with the up to the minute, complete, and accurate decision making information about all major health issues. His scientific interests are in mind/brain evolution and the philosophy of science, particularly in the fundamental areas of physics and biology, and in relational areas such as the science religion discussion. Enjoy! -- Stacey E. Ake =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Subject: Science, religion, evolution, and creation - a phylogeny. From: Jeff W. Dahms Email: We are educating children badly. The first time PBS ran its documentary series, 'Evolution' I missed the program, but a few nights ago I caught the final episode, 'What about God' largely set at Wheaton College, a private coed Christian college in Illinois. What struck me most was the distressing effect on these students of our inability to simply and systematically present an important 'coming of age' issue. The contextual issues and choices surrounding this topic and particularly the implications of those choices were completely absent. Many students come to the college with a literal biblical account of the scheme of things in which the personal and academic choice comes down to that versus a hopefully palatable alternative presented by the college. The intellectual input from the college seemed well intended but grossly inadequate. Given the way professors at the institution understand the issues themselves one can feel sympathy for their bind. This criticism is not aimed at the college specifically but at the misplaced and simplistic approach it exemplifies. We all get into trouble like this. Firstly the college accepted the common framing of the issue - biblical creation versus evolution - the unquestioned view that the locus of the question is evolution. Secondly in introducing students to the very wide question of religion, God and the world and the manifold question of interaction, the alternatives were extremely narrowly portrayed. The approach was to accept the common structuring of the issue and provide a simplistic single alternative by a religiously inclined biology teacher. That alternative vision came down to an evolutionary schema in which it is asserted that God infused souls into a pair of hominids at some point in evolutionary history in reconciliation with a biblical vision. Difficult questions in science and life generally are at least better understood and sometimes successfully resolved by a process of restructuring and reframing. This can be very difficult for many simply because of the attachment we all have to the 'how we first picked up the stick.' Ironically, being a little more intelligent often means we hang on more tightly to how we happen to stumble onto something. But for people new to an area, before concrete certainty has set in, there is the opportunity to expand the vision of what might be going on. Without it, we all go on to become possessors of simple, bad ideas. We can make this much easier and more open. I do not of course mean that even well formed questions have easy answers but at least a well formed question gives one a fighting chance. Scholars of renown in their own disciplines can come to grief very publicly in this arena. What is need is some scaffolding for thinking - a series of choices in a decision tree with each of the branching points up for debate. A scaffolding can enable one to quickly orient, see what the central issues and their implications are and then make choices understanding the consequences near and far. Interestingly it even makes it much easier to propose alternative scaffoldings. It is important that this structure be as open as possible. It is not pretense at neutral arrangement of the field. How one sees the outcome necessarily shapes the guiding framework to a degree. What it does do is open up the territory in a way that will enable others to explore and even build alternative maps to the one you have initially drawn. Bigness is the best defense against bias not the pretense that the bias doesn't exist So the following is a proposal for such a broad systematic approach to the issues of science and religion, to the specific issue of God interacting with the world and thence to that almost uniquely American cultural black hole - the question of evolution. The schema is sketched and linked with the briefest of comments and without intending to develop any of the local arguments. The point is to demonstrate the value of such a schema rather than to sell this crude outline. In the beginning In the beginning the defining issues about science and religion are the broadest assumptions about methodology. The one that is most relevant to the issue of religion is the decision about what will count as explanation. Science runs on methodological naturalism (MN). This is an empirical observation not prescriptive metaphysical fiat. Open any scientific journal anywhere and the attempted explanations are coherent. And it is not OK in the explanation to introduce a supernatural explanation at, say, line fifteen. There has never been a vote of a science world congress to declare this the universal policy. If such a congress existed we could of course decide whatever we like and admit supernatural explanation - or not. Supernatural here means a complete discontinuity in the explanatory system. It means much more than some phenomenon requires novel theory or even completely new scientific laws as happens occasionally. It means we are claiming that the explanation for what is going on is forever in principle completely discontinuous with the rest of our explanatory universe. It refers to a hole in the explanatory fabric not simply a different local weave or color. The reason we have arrived at methodological naturalism by gradual undirected consensus is that it is widely if unconsciously appreciated that with explanatory holes that can occur anywhere the weave would unravel. It could be the case in the future that there are such discontinuities which we would have to deal with but science is far to valuable to admit such permanent crippling disabilities lightly. In spite of this high degree of pragmatic unanimity on how to do science, from the very outset many scientists function with a dichotomous vision. Surveys suggest that some 45% believe in a personal God. This number reduces to about 5% at the level of the National Academy and membership of the academy may or may not be indicative of some kind of gradation of scientific vision. Nonetheless some significant proportion of scientists necessarily compartmentalize their psyches. They are methodological naturalists but philosophic supernaturalists. In the following I will assume that these compartments are watertight. Methodological naturalists may be philosophic naturalists or supernaturalists. Methodological supernaturalists are those who would include the supernatural in the practice of science. So here is the first decision point. Should we stay with methodological naturalism (MN) in science or allow for some mix of natural and supernatural explanation (MSN)? Let us first consider a few of the many implications of adopting MSN The issues are so substantial that those who would wish to assume MSN would far prefer that the majority of scientists go along with this than go it alone by forming a completely discrete branch of the whole scientific enterprise. Since there are an infinite number of alternative versions of MSN, it would be necessary to get consensus on which one would be adopted. Where and in what circumstances will supernatural explanation count? In practice no one even dreams of doing this; the logistics are impossible. What they do instead is simply try to introduce supernatural explanation in some area without any agreement from scientists at large about any ground rules. The chief difficulty that then arises is that for the MSN scientist to make sense of their explanation to others in standard science, they need to lay out and convince others of their methodological assumptions before proceeding to the specifics of their research account. The price is significant scientific isolation which can look like conservative establishment reaction until one realizes the enormous science wide implications of the relatively narrow issue on display. New ideas quite legitimately are hard enough to sell without having to convince scientists of the complete methodological restructuring of science additionally entailed in the account. There is also the unappreciated irony that the working fabric used by the MSN scientist is generated and maintained by MN assumptions. MSN is in some sense parasitic on MN. There are enormous scientific hurdles to overcome on the MSN route but what one gets for one's efforts is the religious options are wide open. MSN allows for a whole series of choices about God interacting with the universe. The alternatives can be listed on a sliding scale of subtlety. It might even be thought of as the 'graininess' of the intervention. Here are the options Big interventions short time frame. * God made the world step wise in seven days some 6 - 8K years ago and has miraculously intervened in the universe in major ways ever since then. * The preferred model of most fundamentalist Christian churches * A literal biblical account with many major miracles. Modest interventions long time frame * God made the world some 14 B years ago using some general laws which are mostly responsible for phenomena. He has intervened in the course universe in a number of big miraculous ways but mostly using smaller scale interventions. There are special versions of this format such as those proposed by the intelligent design proponents. Here God directly or indirectly inserts the difficult bits so that nature can bridge across some critical design chasms which nature cannot manage. In this way god gets to direct the process. Whether or not God needs to also engineer the direction of some of the non-critical parts is not spelt out. * Many mainstream religious accounts are like this but usually there are no specifics about the mechanisms. * A selectively literal account of the bible with some big and many small miracles. Micro intervention long time frame * God made the world some 14 B years ago using some general laws which are mostly responsible for all phenomena. He has intervened in the universe in a very few big miraculous ways but these are the very rare exception. He generally uses micro scale interventions to achieve his ends. There are a number of adventurous highly speculative versions of this. E.g. God influences critical determining events like genetic nucleotide sequences or neuronal firing by intervening at the level of quantum indeterminacy. There are as you would expect many deep reservations even by MSN scientists about whether this means anything even in principle * God influences large scale events by micro determination of the statistical properties of atomic matter or the initial micro conditions of complex evolving systems to produce macro outcomes. * A mostly allegorical account of the bible with literal interpretation of a few critical parts. * These accounts are usually favored by the sub group of scientist theologians * Most everything is nature. God influences by using an extremely light touch in many places. The theological effort is to try to get God as 'hands off 'as possible - preferably leaving no fingerprints at all - hence the mechanisms chosen. Miracles are kept to the absolute minimum. Ultra subtle intervention longtime frame * God made the world some 14 B years ago using some general laws which are co-responsible for all phenomena. He may or may not have intervened in the in the universe in any big miraculous ways but these are the very rare exception. God's interaction with the universe is in ultra subtle ways even more adventurously described than the above speculations. Issues about the logical and scientific meaning of what is proposed abound. E.g. God intervenes in the universe continuously by a mechanism described as top down causality loosely analogous to the causal notion invoked when I say I moved my arm. No actual mechanism is invoked. God intervenes in the causal schema by inputting information to the system with no thermodynamic impact. * These accounts are generated by the most adventurous of the scientist theologians. The attempt is to get an account of an all-pervading God influence which at the same time is no physical influence - to avoid all the interaction problems. * This is the God/nature coupled model in which god is somehow co-influencing without any specific locus of interaction. In the above context of MSN one can choose from a whole smorgasbord of alternative mechanisms if one is concerned about human evolution. At one end miracles are strongly mandated at the other every striving is to eliminate them as an embarrassment. Each of the above approaches to MSN though has its own specific problematic issues along with the general difficulties of MSN. The alternative route is to assume (MN) This makes the science vastly easier but many of the issues about religion are constrained by this decision. Seamless MN, by definition only allows for relationships to religion which leave the fabric of science completely intact. In this context the question of biological evolution is a non-issue. On the assumption of MN, evolution just means history. Biological evolution means the seamless process whereby we got from bare rock 4B years ago to here - whatever the mechanism. The issues of the mechanisms are up for ongoing debate just like every area of science but if you are a MN then it is completely a technical question. Seamless MN allows for two classes of God universe interaction one deist and one theist, both 'push' models, but the theist model has the additional option of a pull component. MN is also consistent with non-theistic and pantheistic religious visions. Deist MN * In this schema god designs the principles of the universe but never again intervenes in any fashion. It is thought by proponents such as Paul Davies that such a system ensures the high likelihood that, somewhere, some time, complex systems will arise from which in turn might arise biological complexity. It doesn't specify humanity as an outcome. * Popular with those who favor a non-personal abstract explanatory force unifying and underlying the scheme of things. Much more common in the scientific than in the general community. Theist MN * In this schema God designs the principles of the universe but never again intervenes in any fashion and humanity and specific individuals are the outcome. This is proposed but without any suggestion for how a physical system could be specified in this manner even in principle - making it a very rare proposal. * There is an addition pull component sometimes added which might also be considered the ultimate 'hands off' intervention. The proposal is one for which no mechanism natural or supernatural is suggested. Archetypal is Chardin's end of time teleological attractor. God shapes the causal flow of the universe in some global but unspecified supernatural (?) sense by pulling it towards some predestined final state. Non theistic religious accounts Non theistic religious accounts come in two major varieties: * A traditional religion focus in which religion including all God reference is transposed into completely natural language - the natural religionists * A religious impulse focus in which traditional religions are but examples of a general human cognitive activity. This activity relates self to others and the scheme of things at large in a mixture of aesthetic emotional and cognitive components - the religious naturalists. Pantheistic religious accounts * Pantheistic religious accounts again have some varieties, for example the pantheistic and either a traditional religion reinterpretive vision as above or a cognitive focus. A third way - the postmodern reinterpretation Eschewing all the above MN and MSN alternatives there is an approach which attempts integration of the issues by attempting to dismantle the categories in which the above is framed. Science, religion, naturalism etc become diffuse somewhat arbitrary social constructs and coherence is then quite unproblematic. The issues for this approach are the general critiques of postmodern epistemologies. Unanimity is easily achieved but the cost is the degree to which it can be claimed that anything meaningful is being said at all. The scaffolding for the above viewpoints is the alternative form of explanation in science, MN or MSN. Each class of explanation has substantial and specific consequences for the perspective on science and religion. In opting for a particular class of explanation options can be arrayed along branches of the decision tree and most of the alternative explanatory niches are occupied. This is an example of the kinds of explanatory schemas that might help people new to the arena to work their way through the issues. It is not an argument so much for this particular schema as for the importance of having some simple scaffolding on which to lay out the decisions. What is discovered is that every position that is taken up is bought at a price. There are often deep implications for the kinds of intellectual and emotional choices we make. Not having a grasp of the logic of the alternative visions has lead to enormous misunderstanding and waste of energy. The massive displacement of cultural energy into the arena of the evolution debate when the loci of choice and disagreement are actually elsewhere is perhaps the worst but not the only example of this problem. For example the move to scientize religious belief by for example attempting to demonstrate the supernatural efficacy of prayer can only be undertaken in ignorance of the processes of both science and religion. It underlies the misunderstanding of much of the cultural venture of science and religion. Setting off into interpretive ventures ignorant of their implications of what is being undertaken is demeaning to both science and religion. The outcome is the worst of both worlds. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This publication is hosted by Metanexus Online . The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Metanexus or its sponsors. To comment on this message, go to the browser-based forum at the bottom of all postings in the magazine section of our web site. Metanexus welcomes submissions between 1000 to 3000 words of essays and book reviews that seek to explore and interpret science and religion in original and insightful ways for a general educated audience. Previous columns give a good indication of the topical range and tone for acceptable essays. Please send all inquiries and submissions to Dr. Stacey Ake, Associate Editor of Metanexus at . 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