Re: [asa] What is exactly is a TE?

> Let us start from the assumption that 'the universe' also includes human
> persons, who are more than 'just' natural beings. If this is recognized,
> then 'things' do not "generally work by 'natural' causes," when those
> 'things' we are talking about are human. I agree with your rejection of
> _only_ natural causes, David, yet at the same time see no diversity of
> thought in your approach that would allow a non-natural category to enter
> the dialogue other than 'super-natural.' I make no objection to your (and
> many other people at ASA's) suggestion that "that God is at work in and
> behind natural causes." The problem is that you seem to deny/object to my
> categories, as a person who is trained to observe things that are
> 'more-than-natural' in the case of human actions. As a consequence, I must
> persist that there is an unfair privileging of certain 'sciences' above or
> ahead of others in your overall view of knowledge.

Although humans are more than just natural beings, 'natural" causes
play at least some role in almost everything, if not everything, we
do. E.g., laws of chemistry and electricity play a role in the
actions of neurons that are involved in our thinking. Also, as humans
constitute only a few billion out of the total number of "things", the
general statement that "things generally work by natural law" holds.
It's also necessary to distinguish between "works by natural law" and
"fully explained in every detail by natural law". E.g., if I throw a
ball, its trajectory can be calculated quite precisely by natural law,
whereas my decision to throw it cannot.

I'm not sure exactly what need you see for a category for humans
besides natural and supernatural. I think of humans as having
components of both, probably not actually separable, but in theory the
different aspects could be allocated to one or another.

Also not sure how this priviledges certain sciences over others. Some
approaches work better for some questions than others.

> "a widespread misperception that a miraculous explanation is more
> desirable." – David C.

I was thinking of popular theological perceptions. This misperception
is not widespread in the sciences, including social sciences; even
young earth and ID versions typically want to have lots of physical
explanations linked by miracles rather than simply saying "God made it
that way."

> Though I agree with the spirit of this message, when we look at the letters
> we find an issue more complex than it at first appears. In doing so, we find
> that it applies equally as criticism of ASA-TEs/ECs. TEs/ECs have bought
> into modernism too!! Though they may say with their lips that "scientific
> evidence is NOT necessarily better than other evidence," in their hearts
> such a view is, I imagine, not held very deeply, if at all. One reason for
> this, I suspect, is because they hold a 'hard-soft' or 'real-less-real'
> distinction (see A. Moorad's philosophy of 'science'), or otherwise to a
> hierarchy of knowledge that disallows a 'science of human beings' to be as
> legitimate or effective as 'modern natural science' or 'the science of
> natural things.' I have been recently reading an insightful Christian
> philosopher whose criticism of modernism is quite impressive; he would
> equally attack TEs/ECs for their scientism (e.g. super-cali-universalistic
> evolutionism!) as he would ID and YEC views which, yes, do admittedly
> sometimes, imo, "fall under scientism's influence." Let it be noted,
> additionally, that most of the IDers and YECers that I have witnessed in
> dialogue openly exclaim their desire not to be scientistic, which of course
> makes the charge that they are 'under the influence of scientism' even more
> ironic!

EC or TE, if truly theistic, clearly endorses other sources of
evidence as valid, because it typically asserts that divine revelation
provides the evidence that points to the C or T; physical evidence
indicates E but is of rather little use in addressing the more
important questions of theology, ethics, etc.
Science of human beings is at two inherent disadvantages relative to
natural science at doing natural-science style studies. First, humans
are both ethically and practically less amenable to experimentation
than most natural entities. Certain experiments with humans can be
tested fairly precisely, and certain informative experiments on other
things are not as easy; this is merely a somewhat higher median
difficulty out of two wide distributions. Similar gradations exist
within natural sciences, with physics generally most amenable to
precise quantification and biology and geology less so. Of course, as
humans do not often behave in precisely quantifiable and predictable
manners, this is in large part an attempt to impose inappropriate
expectations on social sciences rather than a deficiency on their
part, as long as the social scientists recognize this error and are
not themselves trying to produce something that resembles physics more
than it resembles the reality of dealing with humans. Secondly, more
people have strong ideas about what the results ought to be when
humans are the subject than about, e.g., mollusks. The dangers and
frequency of ideology rather than data directing the claims of social
science (especially given the greater difficulty of producing firm
data) thus are generally more severe than in natural science. In
large part the real problem lies in trying to present a
philosophically or religiously-based idea as scientific. Such ideas
are of critical value, but generally science doesn't much help in
addressing the ethical and metaphysical issues that those ideas seek
to address.

Social science and natural science can both be legitimate and
effective or illegitimate or ineffective. Identifying the proper
roles and reasonable expectations for each field (which requires much
finer subdivision than social/natural; certain fields of social
science are much more similar to natural sciences than others, for
example) helps greatly in this regard.

Yes, YEC and ID typically openly disavow scientism, but they typically
are very weak in theological self-examination. As I said, I mainly
see such rejection of scientism within the context of rejecting
scientific data they don't like, whereas their practice of scientism
is concealed within their apologetic and exegetical assumptions.
Insistence that the Bible to be true must be conveying modern science
is a form of scientism practiced by essentially all YEC and many ID
advocates. The commitment to making scientific claims in their
apologetics shows an undue weight on science as a source of evidence.
The prominence of science claims and absence of Christ shows that
creation science or ID, rather than Christianity, is what they are
truly defending in their apologetic work.

> To discuss 'scientism' even-handedly, after all, one has to step outside of
> the 'natural sciences' themselves and put on their philosopher-hat or their
> theologian-hat or their humanitarian-hat simply in order to participate.
> Likewise is the case, David, I would argue with 'naturalism.'

Yes, both are metaphysical concepts. This is part of why it is
inappropriate to try to link methodological naturalism with
philosophical naturalism. PN implies that MN would be the appropriate
approach in all circumstances (ignoring PN's difficulty in rebutting,
e.g., extreme skepticism where everything is assumed to be merely
products of one's own imagination.) However, many other views also
suggest that MN is likely to be useful much of the time.

> The last two sentences above provide a reason why 'obnoxious atheism' sees
> no reason to 'attack a TE-type position,' which I prefer to call an EC
> position, after our discussion this month on the ASA-list – 'obnoxious
> atheists' are under the same 'big tent' with TEs/ECs when it comes to the
> acceptance of 'evolutionary science' and even sometimes 'evolutionism.'

Actually, obnoxious atheism of the sort I have in mind (Dawkins,
Harris, etc.) does attack EC/TE positions, albeit rather
ineffectually, in the course of attacking all religious positions.
The basic approach is to equate religion with brainwashed dangerously
violent numbskulls, a description that rarely holds up well in
comparison to an actual person. EC/TE is primarily associated with
academics, and one generally doesn't advance far in academics without
gaining some skill in reasoning and in avoiding physical conflict as a
way to settle disagreements (often by deciding that the pen is
mightier rather than by being nicer) and thus are not very effectively
portrayed as terrorist extremists. Even milder versions of
atheist/agnostic response often inadvertently attack EC through lack
of comprehension, either of the difference between EC and YEC or ID
(not to mention difference between YEC and ID) or of the theological
issues involved. That's a major reason why I haven't joined the NCSE,
for example-Scott means well but seems to have no clue how many
statements sound from a theistic perspective. On the other hand,
there are plenty of scientists who don't care about theology,
philosophy, etc. but do object to bad science. They won't care
whether someone is an atheistic evolutionist or an evolutionary
creationist, but they will object to many YEC and ID claims. Also, if
someone's attention is focused solely on claims presented as science,
they will notice YEC and ID but won't notice that the person whose
science agrees with conventional views.

> That is, nobody at ASA speaks out in support of R. Dawkins' science because
> they reject his philosophy of science, his humanitarian views and his
> atheism, NOT because they reject his science or his views of evolution as a
> legitimate scientific research programme.

I'm confused by this sentence. On the overall context in the
discussion, anyone can go look at the physical world and make
legitimate observations, no matter what his philosophy. Thus,
Christians and atheists alike should be expected to arrive at fairly
similar conclusions about the physical aspects of creation. It is in
the theological understanding where they will differ sharply. Dawkins
and Johnson alike have this backwards, agreeing on a wrong
understanding of the theological implications of evolution and arguing
about the physical data.

> "Dawkins et al. are just as much part of the problem as the bad theology and
> bad science of antievolutionism. The two camps largely agree on the bad
> theology and argue about the science." – David C.
>
> I must take exception with the linking of 'bad theology and bad science'
> with 'anti-evolutionism.' Surely you do not so easily link 'good theology
> and good science' with 'evolutionism?'

No, I do not. Just because antievolutionism is characterized by bad
theology and bad science does not mean that evolutionism is guarenteed
to be good. I'd be inclined to associate evolutionism with bad
theology and bad science too, in fact. Evolution is a major component
of good biology to the best of our knowledge. Not getting preoccupied
with evolution (or many other things) is an important component of
good theology.

> It would be much clearer if you could please separate out the ideology from
> the science and from the religion/theology. Then you too would openly
> acknowledge that 'evolutionism,' that is, the ideology of using evolutionary
> theory as an explanation or description for more than it is meant to explain
> or describe, is, really, a problem. Linking evolutionism, as an ideology, to
> 'good theology' is really thus also a problem (due respect to Teilhard and
> Doby aside). I get the feeling that many people on this list are willing to
> agree with that observation while at the same time they are especially
> careful to defend the legitimate 'science of evolution,' which is NOT the
> same as 'evolutionism.'

Yes, evolutionism is a big problem, as is false accusation of evolutionism.

> Alternatively, David, perhaps what you need to see is a type of
> 'anti-evolutionism' that does not foist either 'bad theology or bad science'

Actually, I do acknowledge that is a possibility, with the caveat that
I do not think anything that has its primary identity in attacking
evolution will not be bad theology and bad science. Rather, I
acknowledge that a legitimate study of theology, etc. could
potentially arrive, among other things, at a rejection of evolution.
To some degree the examples that James has brought up of young earth
or ID folks who acknowledge the problems of popular claims would fall
into this type of category. In dealing with the topic, I try to
distinguish between the observation that current creation science is
not honest from the possibility of saying, e.g., "I believe that the
earth is young and have no idea how to deal with the geologic
evidence." ID is much more in this category, where a number of
legitimate points are, in current practice, entwined with the bad
theology and bad science of Wells et al. The standard secular science
response fails greatly in this area. For example, the arguing over
the definition of science readily comes across as (if it isn't
deliberately intended as such) an exclusion of religion on the part of
advocates of evolution. ID as currently practiced does not belong in
science curricula because it's wrong. However, only metaphysical
assumptions can rule out or in the possibility of natural scientific
methods finding evidence of supernatural design.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama
"I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
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