Jesus Creed Admin: July 2009 Archives

Chapter 14 of Alister McGrath's book A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology deals with the question of teleology and directionality in evolution.

The neo-Darwinian paradigm, (that popularized by Richard Dawkins for example), is that evolution is an undirected, highly contingent, random process.  Evolution simply operates to preserve the replication of genetic information.

McGrath quotes Stephen Jay Gould:

"We are the accidental result of an unplanned process.... the fragile result of an enormous concatenation of improbabilities, not the predictable product of any definite process." ... The influence of contingency is such that what happens is the product of happenstance. "Alter any early event, ever so slightly and without apparent importance at the time and evolution cascades into a radically different channel." (p. 189-190)

This description of the process poses serious problems for reconciliation with a Christian view of creation. But it is not at all clear that Gould or Dawkins are correct in this regard. The evolutionary process need not be highly contingent nor intrinsically unpredictable. In fact there appears to be a remarkably robustness in the outcome - a distinct directionality to the process. This does not deny the basic facts of evolution - as an explanatory tool evolution is essentially proven.  Yet the fitness landscape that governs the process may place tight constraints on key features of the outcome.  There are only so many ways to make an eye, or to harvest solar energy.  Similar themes recur, ... independently...constrained by physics, chemistry, and biology; constrained by the nature of the universe.

There is a new book out Why Us?: How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves by James LeFanu (HT TG).  I have not read this book (yet anyway) - but it has received a fair bit of attention lately. It was also cited by AN Wilson in the interview Scot linked to in Weekly Meanderings last Saturday. 

James LeFanu is a medical doctor, a general practioner, in London. He also writes a weekly column for the Daily Telegraph. The central theme of Why Us? questions the validity of an "exclusively materialist view of Man." This doesn't make LeFanu a creationist or a "closet creationist".  In fact he points out in his blog that he doesn't deny the basic facts:

This is not to deny the 'fact' of evolution as there can be nothing more self evident than that the history of the universe is an evolutionary history - from the simplest elements of matter to the evermore complex. Nor is it to deny the 'fact' of natural selection, as again it is self evident that nature selects the strong and robust over the frail and vulnerable.

Yet he claims:

But the findings of genetics and neuroscience of the recent past have changed all that, buttressing the commonsensical scepticism about Darwin's (evolutionary) 'Reason for Everything' with the extraordinary revelations and hard empirical data of the Genome Projects and the findings of sophisticated brain scanning studies. Memorising, perceiving and interpreting the world out there. Together they tear away at science's façade of knowing to reveal the depth of our radical ignorance of the most elementary principles of genetic inheritance and brain function.

You can find an interesting review of the book from The Literary Review here and a more critical review from The New Scientist here.  

Is there a profound mystery in nature of human experience and conciousness?

Is there evidence for design in biology? Or for that matter, what would constitute evidence of fine-tuning in biology?

This is the next question arising as we continue on with Chapter 13 of Alister McGrath's book A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology:

If there is any question guaranteed to excite some controversy in the science/faith debate this is it. After all - fine-tuning leads to intelligent design and intelligent design to creationism. Well, in the minds of some the connections are obvious - both those who wish to discern empirical evidence for the hand of God in creation and for those who insist that science disproves the existence of God. 

On one level "fine-tuning" in biology is obvious, imperfect, and a result of evolutionary mechanisms themselves.  After all, the premise of evolution is that nature fine-tunes itself. This is the standard Darwinian answer to questions about functional precision and design.  According to McGrath At first sight, the neo-Darwinian model seems to undercut any possible appeal to the biological domain as evidence of design or fine-tuning." Even if we move beyond the reductionist approach of the selfish gene to a systems based approach there is still no need to invoke other than natural mechanism to account for the appearance of design and fine-tuning. But perhaps it is still the possible to discern fine-tuning in biology. The question is where to look. 

The July/August issue of Books and Culture contains an interview by Karl Giberson with Francis Collins on his views of science and faith - now available on line: Evolution, the Bible and the Book of Nature.

Here is a brief taste of the article - read the whole - better yet subscribe! (pictures from wikipedia)

On the general approach Collins takes to issues of science and faith:

Giberson: You take both the Bible and evolution seriously. Did the harmony you find between evolution and your faith just come naturally?

Collins: You know, it really did. When I became a believer at 27, the first church I went to was a pretty conservative Methodist church in a little town outside Chapel Hill. I'm sure there were a lot of people in that church who were taking Genesis literally and rejecting evolution.

But I couldn't take Genesis literally because I had come to the scientific worldview before I came to the spiritual worldview. I felt that, once I arrived at the sense that God was real and that God was the source of all truth, then, just by definition, there could not be a conflict.

RJS points us here to a major, major issue in the relationship of science and faith: the necessary distinction between "evidence" or "facts" and "interpretation." Not all, including Richard Dawkins, are careful to distinguish the two and this post helps us. Where are you seeing this problem today?

Chapter 13 of Alister McGrath's book A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology poses some interesting questions about evolution and the language used to describe evolutionary mechanisms. (For those paying attention - I've skipped Ch. 12; it is worth reading, but poses questions quite similar to those considered in our last post on the book.)

There are three factors at play in much scientific writing: empirical observation, scientific interpretation, and metaphysical assumption.  The first two are always at play - one of my mentors emphasized the importance of separating data from discussion and interpretation as much as possible. I in turn emphasize the distinction with my students. The experimental results or observations should always stand the test of time, the interpretation may or may not. The third factor above - metaphysical assumption - is always present at one level, but is not always important.  But it is often significant when the discussion borders on issues of science and religion or faith, and this is certainly true in evolutionary biology and speculation on the origin of life.

How carefully do we, should we, analyze the levels of observation and interpretation in what we read?

For those who don't follow such news with bated breath - President Obama has nominated Francis Collins to head up the NIH (National Institutes of Health).  This is, in my opinion, a great choice.  He is an accomplished scientist and...

Over the last year or so I've written a number of posts that have reflected on various aspects of the intersection of science and faith.  These are issues and questions that I've thought about and wrestled with most of my...

Can These Bones Live? This is the question posed in Chapters 10 and 11 of Alister McGrath's book A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology where he gives a brief overview of the chemical requirements for...

The second section of Alister McGrath's new book A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology deals with fine-tuning and natural theology in the context of a number of scientific theories and observations. The first of...