Re: [asa] Jerry Coyne's Confused Attack on Religion

Randy -

1) Of course we always have to be careful about trying to discern God's purposes in creation because there's the danger of thinking that God _had_ to create in one way or another. I think one can make a good theological case that God created a universe in which intelligent creatures would come into being in order that (a) God might have a personal relationship with creatures & (b) so that there would be an intelligent species in which God could become incarnate & in that way be united with creation (Eph.1:10). Tht could be so if evolution produced _any_ intelligent species on any planet. Thus theology could be compatible with the type mof contingency of evolution for which Gould argued.

OTOH in Barth's theology creation is for the sake of election not just of incarnation in an intelligent species in the abstract but of the specific person Jesus Christ. This then clearly requires the evolution of Homo sapiens & a view of evolution more like that of Conway Morris.

I used to be much more positive about the 1st alternative - cf. my PSCF article "The Third Article in the Science-Theology Dialogue" some time ago. Recently I've been tending more to the 2d but I don't think the 1st possibility is heretical & it's certainly an overstatement to sat that Christianity lives or dies by it.

2) I am no expert on the biology but on general principles we can say that the "movie" of evolution would be completely different if it were run again (a la Gould's "Wonderful Life" analogy) since we in fact only get to watch one showing of it.

3) What happens to individual bases in DNA is at the quantum level. That indeed is not the whole story, & chaos theory-type unpredicability also plays major roles. But even here it is the ultimate quantum indeterminancy that tells us that there is a limit on olur knowledge of _classical_ initial conditions, so that "sensitivity to initial conditions_ must always be taken into account even in principle.

Shalom,
George

---- Randy Isaac <randyisaac@comcast.net> wrote:
> Thanks, George. Could you expound on some of this a bit further so I can understand it better?
>
> 1. I think the idea is that in Christian belief, from the beginning of creation, there was an intent for humans to appear at some point. God wanted to create humans. What theologies differ from that perspective, other than, possibly, process or open theology?
>
> 2. Agreed. Though I suspect Coyne would say that the scientific evidence is not consistent with an intent for convergence to humanoid creatures. That's a little softer than disproving it but close.
>
> 3. True, Russell's approach is a possibility, though it still makes me a little uncomfortable. I still can't articulate why. I guess part of it is that the type of contingencies that make evolutionary direction unpredictable are not really quantum indeterminacies.
>
> Randy
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: George Murphy
> To: Randy Isaac ; asa@calvin.edu
> Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2009 9:47 PM
> Subject: Re: [asa] Jerry Coyne's Confused Attack on Religion
>
>
> 1) The claim that humanoid evolution is necessary for Christianity is an overstatement. It is for some theologies (e.g., Barth's doctrine of election) but not all.
>
> 2) Even granted that it is necessary, it is still an overstatement to say that the reconciliation of Christianity & science demands proof (by which I'm sure Coyne means proof by the standards of the natural sciences). It is sufficient that science has not disproven it.
>
> 3) Finally, it is possible to hold - as Bob Russell has argued - that God could direct the process of evolution at the quantum level in a way that is undetectable by, but not inconsistent with, science. See, e.g., his chapter in Perspectives on an Evolving Creation.
>
> Shalom
> George
> http://home.roadrunner.com/~scitheologyglm
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Randy Isaac
> To: asa@calvin.edu
> Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2009 9:18 PM
> Subject: Re: [asa] Jerry Coyne's Confused Attack on Religion
>
>
> Mike,
> Thanks for drawing attention to this review. I was struck by his comment: "If we cannot prove that humanoid evolution was inevitable, then the reconciliation of evolution and Christianity collapses." and later "Giberson and Miller proclaim the inevitability of humanoids for one reason only: Christianity demands it."
>
> This is where Coyne may have a point. If humanoids were the end target from the very beginning, then they would qualify as Dembski's "specified complexity" and would either need to be the result of inevitable convergence (the front-loaded option as dubbed on this list) or of supernatural guidance along the way. Conversely, the idea that humanoids were the goal from the beginning is not discernable from science but only from revelation. Ergo, Christianity demands it but not science.
>
> As for convergence, Coyne notes that "We recognize convergences because unrelated species evolve similar traits. In other words, the traits appear in more than one species. But sophisticated, self-aware intelligence is a singleton: it evolved just once, in a human ancestor."
>
> Randy
>
> Mike wrote:
> Jerry Coyne has written a lengthy, critical review of Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution by Karl W. Giberson and Only A Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul by Kenneth R. Miller. You can read it here:
>
>
>
> http://www.tnr.com/booksarts/story.html?id=1e3851a3-bdf7-438a-ac2a-a5e381a70472
>

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Received on Thu Jan 29 19:38:43 2009