Evolution is not what would expect of a happy-clappy, Deistic universe in which there is no such thing as evil (moral or natural).
It’s exactly what we would expect as an explanation of the origin of species, if we take seriously Our Lord’s statement that the devil is the prince of this world.

It should have been Michael Novak again. One of the really underrated theologians of the second half of the twentieth century.

…oh, and I forget to mention: happy Feast of the Annunciation, Rod.
I’ll light a candle for your sister next time I’m at church.

A very interesting choice for this year’s award, and one that is certain to draw attention. As I read the excerpts of his speech I myself in agreement with much of what he says in spite of my agnostic views regarding deity.
Especially interesting is this statement:
“Scientific knowledge, like the description of the size, materials, and geometry of Guernica, is satisfying and useful, but once science has its say, there remains much about reality that is of interest: questions of value, meaning, and purpose that are beyond science’s scope.”
This seems to be a logical dividing point in discussion of any subject. There is the objective/verifiable aspect, and the subjective/unverifiable aspect. Confusing one with the other is dishonest, and potentially dangerous. But kept in their separate arenas they can certainly complement each other, even enhance each other.

Seems like a good pick to me.

To determine existence, we use science; the application of reason to extrospection. To determine what we want of existence, we use evaluation; the application of reason to introspection. It is an error to use the fact that science doesn’t work for introspection as a premise to conclude that faith not reason is the proper method to determine value. (See ‘the straw man fallacy’ for more details)

I’m not sure religion, at least Christianity, makes no claims in the scientific sphere.
The claim of Christ’s Resurrection is a claim that could be falsified, in theory, by science (ie, by the discovery of a body proven to be Jesus).
Scientific proof for polygenism would seem opposed to a key Christian belief — the universal descent from an original couple. Christianity might be compatible with polygenism, but it is by no means obvious that this is so.
Alleged miracles such as the Shroud of Turin, the Tilma of Guadalupe, or the Holy Fire may or may not withstand scientific scrutiny. If the miraculous nature of these artifacts is debunked, that would seem harmful to certain religious claims — if not Christianity as a whole.
In short, it is simply not true that Christianity is simply about discerning non empirical meaning. Christianity in fact makes some empirical claims that in principle can be investigated and potentially falsified by science.

A good piece on science and religion:
http://www.alexandermen.com/The_Six_Days_of_Creation

Rick, to the extent that Christianity makes historical claims regarding events that either did or did not take place, I agree with you. Christ’s resurrection obviously falls into that category. However, alleged miracles are just that — alleged, and there are many devout Christians who are deeply suspicious (to put it charitably) of many of them, including those you reference. I would add that there are also contested texts, like the Genesis 1-3 account, in which hermeneutical disputes rage. On the one hand you have the post-fundamentalist evangelical view that the account is basically a scientific/history text (which is of course an oddly modern view). On the other hand you have orthodox Christians (N.T. Wright comes immediately to mind) who view the text as offering an account of God’s sovereignty through the type of origins text available in the Ancient Near East at the time it was handed down orally and eventually inscribed. Christianity’s truth claims certainly do not depend on the former hermeneutical approach to the OT, so to that extent its theology is not at all dependent on origins being located in two people.
Relatedly, and echoing Ayala’s point about the category mistake, the problem with both Dawkins and his fundamentalist antagonizers is primarily epistemological. Ironically, they each commit the same error of asserting that man can access truth through one and only one means–albeit very different ones – science for Dawkins and “literal” biblical interpretation for the fundamentalists. A commitment to the final authority of the scientific method is as much an a priori commitment as one to a literal biblical hermenuetic. Philosophers of science have been onto this for some time — see Thomas Kuhn by way of example. It’s a bit astonishing to me that Dawkins gets so much respect in the universities given the obviously thin philosophical underpinning of his argument.
(And before everyone flames me for questioning the scientific method, all I am saying is that the scientific method is very good at providing answers to the questions of cause and effect posed within a particular scientific paradigm and very poor at answering any questions about anything beyond that scope, particularly ones involving meaning or evaluation.

Pedro, no flames coming from me, but I’d gently point out that the scientific method by definition sets hard limits to its scope, and only scientists with agendas claim its veracity beyond that scope.
Excellent post, sir.

I agree with Ayala that the conflict narrative between science and religion is a bad idea. But I don’t get Ayala when he says this:
“the irony that the theory of evolution, which at first seemed to remove the need for God in the world, now has convincingly removed the need to explain the world’s imperfections as failed outcomes of God’s design.”
He seems to be saying that if we are designed by evolution than our imperfections are evolution’s fault and not God’s. But that doesn’t seem like an escape from the problem of evil. God as the designer of evolution would known of outcomes like parasitic wasps or man’s inbred aggression. But now you no longer have the fall narrative to explain it. Indeed the more thoughtful rejections of evolution I’ve read were not because of biblical literalism, but centered around the problem of evil.

I contend that science and metaphysical naturalism need not be in contradiction. If they are properly understood, they cannot be in contradiction because science and metaphysical naturalism concern different matters. Science concerns the processes that account for the natural world: how the planets move, the composition of matter and space, the origin and function of organisms. Metaphysical naturalism concerns the meaning and purpose of the world and of human life
That works too.

At the moment, I’m sick at home with pneumonia while also taking care of a two-year-old. I am feeling disgruntled at the world of prizes. I will give anyone a prize who will come to my house and take care of my child a while so that I can rest.
Disgruntlement aside, I still vote for Roger Scruton. He boils the whole thing down so much more succinctly: Science attempts to answer the “how?”; religion, the “why?”.

Pedro, I’ll probably be flamed as a scientismist again. But Dawkins probably gets respect because science as a field is held in higher regard than philosophy. This is likely because science generally moves in a consistent direction and builds on itself*, while philosophy is all over the map.
Now Franklin has pointed out that science is not definitive in its conclusions. While true, when theories are revised they tend to augment rather than scrap the previous theory. Train wrecks like phlogiston theory are rare and most cases tend to follow the transition from Newtonian gravitation to general relativity.

What! President Obama wasn’t chosen? I think you’ve made a grave mistake–after all what CAN’T he do? Seriously, I’ll have to check out Mr. Ayala’s work.

I won’t dispute statistics with you, MH, but I will point out a notable “train wreck” in the last century: The replacement of steady-state geology (which roundly denounced continental drift as impossible) with plate tectonics.
In my reading of the history of science, theories tend to get augmented because of the disciplined application of the limits of the scientific method. It tends to minimize the sort of mistakes that would lead to a train wreck.

In my experience as a proponent of theistic evolution, I have only found one argument disturbing. A creationist friend of mine challenged that Genesis clearly states that the childbirth and work only became bothersome and death only came into existence after the Fall. According to evolution, however, man’s ancestors had been suffering and dying through no fault of their own for billions of years. Thus, evolution necessitates that suffering existed prior to man and cannot be reconciled with the Bible. Adam would have to have been destined to suffer and die before he ate the fruit. Any thoughts on how to reconcile this?

Franklin, both the steady state cosmos and steady state geology initially seem like reasonable extrapolations of present tends to longer time scales. The problem is that scientists had no information about the age of the Earth or Universe, so such extrapolations were flawed. The same problem is true for extending classical mechanics to quantum scales or relativistic speeds.
To their credit as new data became available the scientific community revised accepted theories and didn’t schism into different schools of science that no longer agree. Now the process may be messy, but the results tend to work out well in the long run.

” Let Guernica be a metaphor for the point I wish to make.”
Geez, Louise, Then I should have been given this award years ago. I’ve been making the “metaphor” example for years, right here on B’net and specificially on Rod’s threads.
If, as they used to say in the Holiness Church, “A thousand years is like the blink of an eye to the Lord”, then multiple the number of blinks of an eye times the METAPHORICAL 6,000 year-old earth the literalists would have you believe, and that’s an awfully long time for a lot of evolutionary stuff to happen.
But the literalists will have none of that. Sadly.
Good on Ayala.

before it starts to get out of hand, i would like to speak up for parasites.
while these things may characterized as a bane to human existence and destiny (and thus lumped in with earthquakes and cancer cells) what may be characterized in a scientific sense as parasitic, may still hold a position more meaningful in a divine view of the universe.
as humans, are we not parasites to the natural world ourselves? and a natural world that holds primacy both in scientific and religious chronology and basis.
so don’t go bustin’ on mosquitoes and bedbugs just because you think you can!

MH, “the process may be messy” is way too polite a description!
Kurtz (being serious now), there is no way to reconcile that dilemma. One is based on scientific analysis of evidence (fossils, mostly, but bolstered by advances in DNA technology), the other requires a deity. Unless one can find divine DNA somewhere, I submit that this dilemma will just have to go wanting.

“Ayala says that there are so many flaws in our biological design that it amounts to “blasphemy” to say that the immediate agency of God designed the mess that we are”
Although I am no Creationist, and i agree with Ayala that science and religion cannot contradict each other, I am dismayed by this statement. I have always been taught that this world, and the human race in particular, was fearfully and wonderfully made. Are not our physical bodies the handiwork of the Lord? For me, the process of reconciling evolution with my faith has always consisted largely of remembering that God is still sovereign even in all the “random” processes that take place in nature. It is an indispensible article of the Christian Faith that God is our designer (in no way implying anything to do with “Intelligent Design”). Is Ayala saying that isn’t so?
Perhaps I misunderstand him. This line confuses me a little:
“He refers to science-savvy Christian theologians who present a God that is continuously engaged in the creative process through undirected natural selection.”
I take this to me mean that he refers to them with approval. But if so, how does he reconcile that with what he said before. If God is continuously engaged in the creative process (which is what I firmly believe) then doesn’t that still leave us as open as before to the accusatioin that God is culpable for flaws and cruelty in nature?

Kurtz,
I believe the traditional answer, articulated by Aquinas and others, is that a sinless Adam would have been free from suffering and death not because of “nature,” but because of the gift of God.
Biological death existed before Adam, and this is simply part of the cycle of life; but human death did not. It is human death that is uniquely evil, since humans are made in the image of God.
In short, the Fall of Adam did not change nature. Rather, it deprived Adam, Eve and their descendants of God’s special gift that would have preserved them from suffering and death.

Re: Biological death existed before Adam, and this is simply part of the cycle of life; but human death did not.
I am not so sure I even agree with that, because the plain sense of Scripture seems to indicate otherwise. There was another Tree in the Garden, the Tree of Life and Death, which granted immortality, and Adam and Eve (we are explicitly told) had not eaten of that Tree.
Some years ago in First Things Fr Neuhaus speculated that maybe death in the unfallen world would not have been a rupture with the living maintaining communion with the Dead, removing cause for both grief and fear over it. CS Lewis in his Space trilogy also had a similar line of thought when he discussed his (unfallen) Martian race and how they departed with fear from among their fellows but were not lost to them.

Sounds to me like Ayala advocates the dread moral therapeutic deism. Back away from truth claims (when forced) and retreat into philosophical discussions of meaning and purpose. It’s probably wise advice for the health of both disciplines. Theology’s next task will be to provide ‘answers’ that are as satisfying to inquisitive, free minds as those provided by science; answers that are more universal than the conflicting ones provided within the many sects of each major religion; answers that rely less and less on authority. “These are some possibly useful suggestions of meaning and purpose because we feel them to be true, our book lists them, or our hierarchy says they are. No other evidence can or will be provided, and we define them to be in agreement with current science.” That’s religion I can get behind.

Kurtz, your question is a variation of my question above which is reconciling evolution and the problem of evil. So obviously I think it’s a good question! From my point of view evolution is a serious challenge to the fall of man as a resolution to the problem of evil. It would seem we were created in a pre-fallen state. But it is not a challenge to the existence of a God of some sort.
Franklin Evans, I’m not religious, but I expect if I ever encounter God “the process may be messy, but the results worked out well in the long run.” will be the answer to the problem of evil too. ;^)

“But it is not a challenge to the existence of a God of some sort.”
Is anything a challenge to a God of some sort? Is anything a challenge to some sort of God? What’s a challenge an to evil God who’s just jerking us around? The apologetics can work in all directions.

meh, if humans discover that the universe is a closed manifold (both in space and time), I think that would be pretty much be the end of God. It would mean the universe was self created with no outside or boundaries.
There are several ways we might make such a discovery. The easiest to wrap your head around is if we studied distant galaxies and determined they were images of closer galaxies earlier in time. We might make such a discovery by observing a quasar in the far galaxy, and finding jets from the core of the closer galaxy which matched the jets, but later in time.

No way MH. There’d be a good reason why God made the universe a closed manifold. And an evil God who could take advantage of that good reason. For ever and ever, amen.

meh, well at least the atheists would have one heck of a rebuttal to the Primer Mover argument. Plus how could we go to heaven or hell after we die when we have to be back here for the next loop?

God is outside of space and time. God can do anything. God can explain anything. Geez, I hope He’s not evil.

Since any number of people–even adherents of the same religion–can find any number of “meanings” in life, it does not follow that religion has to be the source for that meaning. So while I appreciate the emotional gesture behind the many comments in this thread reiterating the old trope about how “science tells the what, religion tells the why,” I don’t find think they’re particularly useful. Well-meaning gestures are not automatically true.
Steven Jay Gould’s notion of “non-overlapping magisteria” is probably second only to his assertions of punctuated equilibria in terms of being recklessly overapplied by certain ranks of academics and thoroughly confusing general readers. If NOMA were really such a great system, it would have worked for the last 15 years and we wouldn’t still be having creationist incursions into schoolboards.

meh, well if he is evil we’ll need to find an answer to the problem of good, because he isn’t doing a good enough job getting rid of it.

Kurtz,
There’s absolutely no contradition there. St. Athanasius deals with that question in his ‘On the Incarnation of the Word’. Athanasius says that you have to distinguish between being subject to death _naturally_ versus _supernaturally_. In his view, the first humans were _naturally_ subject to death to the same degree as other animals, as a consequence of our biological nature. However, they had the opportunity to be immortal through a special grace of God which would allowed them to transcend their bbiological nature. This special grace was lost when the first humans sinned, and became subject to the law of death, but this is better understood as returning to the state of ‘nature’ rather then introducing into nature something that had not been there previously.
MH,
The imperfections of evolution can’t be fairly attributed to God. This has been a fallen world since the beginning (CHristians believe that there was an angelic fall which long predated the existence of any human or, for that matter, animal life, and therefore the entire history of life has taken place within the context that this is a fallen world).
Like I said, evolution can pose a theological conundrum for deistic, watered-down Christians who don’t believe in the devil, but for those of us who do believe in the angelic fall, evolution is exactly what we should expect (along with earthquakes, disease, etc.) if the devil is in fact ‘prince of this world’.

See MH, that’s consistent with an evil God. Leave enough good to keep stringing us along, setting us up for a Fall. Actually makes more sense than a good God leaving evil. Oh no. Oh God, no…

Hector, if there was no God, no devil, no angelic fall, then we wouldn’t expect evolution, earthquakes, disease, etc.? Why do we need a supernatural world for all those material things to happen?

God didn’t create a universe that ran like clockwork, nor did he create a race of preprogrammed robots in his own image. Don’t forget free will. We have the opportunity to make of this earth what we can, or will. God doesn’t make every decision for us. Perhaps he eases our way, when we let him, or sustains us through the trials, if we seek the sustenance. If the world isn’t perfect, that’s because the story of creation isn’t over, and we haven’t finished doing all we were created to do. All is not yet as God would have it be.
Galileo said much the same as Ayala: if science and Scripture are properly understood, they cannot be in contradiction, because God’s creation cannot be contrary to his word. James Dobson said that too. But understanding it all properly, aye, there’s the rub.

Hector, the problem is that argument opens up more questions than it answers. God is omniscient, so why would he create a world knowing it would be created in a fallen state? Is the Devil playing a part or is he a complete idiot and thinks he can out smart God? How can humans be considered to blame for our nature if the universe was a botched job to begin with?
Indeed it strikes me as essentially ditheism which I thought was a big no no for Christians. Plus in Isaiah 45:7 doesn’t God claim to be the author of evil:
1. “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.”
meh, LOL.

MH,
Proof-texting is a fool’s errand. Scripture is inspired but tht doesn’t mean every word (particularly in the OT) must be taken as 100% gospel truth. I’d say that the verse from Isaiah has been greatly over-quoted and misunderstood, including by you. I’m not sure what Isaiah meant to say, but I do know that God cannot create evil literally, as it is contrary to his nature.
In the traditional Christian understanding, the Devil is a created being, and isn’t a God for that reason. Those who thought the traditional Christian understanding was mistaken (e.g. the Persians) generally still thought that the devil was in some way inferior to God, and could not be viewed as an alternate God. My own views on this are complex, but I’d be happy to discuss it more on my blog. After all, God is by definition a perfect being, so an evil power can’t be a god, by definition. And yes, as Ezekiel tells us, the devil did think (and does) that he could be ‘like the Most High’.
Regarding humans, God gave us the means to overcome our animal natures (with all the liability to natural evils therein), and our turning away from that is what leads to human moral evil.
St. John tells us that the devil ‘sinneth from the beginning’, which is, however you interpet it, a clear indication that the existence of evil in the cosmos greatly precedes the human fall (and I would think, the origin of life as well).

Hector, I didn’t know you had a blog, post a link and I’ll take a look as I enjoy your writing here (even when you say I’m on a fools errand).
We obviously disagree on the problem of evil. From my point of view it’s a complete rats nest which seems unsolvable. But I would be curious what you have to say.
Coming from a conservative protestant background literalism is the default mode of reading things. Plus there’s the issue of once you begin editing where do you stop?

God could be perfectly evil, by His definition, which is the one that will count in the end.

meh, saying something is perfect implies being able to measure it against a standard. God’s claim that he precedes all other things means there is nothing else God could compare himself against. Comparing a thing to itself doesn’t seem meaningful, so the claim strikes me as pointless.
You also don’t know what you don’t know. For example if God was flawed in a way the made God unable to perceive his flaws. Then he would think he’s perfect, but be wrong.
This is all way off topic though.

MH, I’m sorry I am late getting back to this thread — a couple of quick comments. First, may I highly recommend to you Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions? He makes a very strong case against the common understanding of science as accumulating an increasing body of knowledge regarding ontological reality and argues in favor of a view of science as a historical discipline in which a series of highly sophisticated theoretical languages successively reign until the dominant theory fails to explain some significant fact and a better theory comes along that can do so. Like the theory that (perhaps? one presumes?) might eventually come along to unify quantum mechanics and relativity, possibly/probably displacing both.
Also, while the “literal” hermeneutic (at least as I recall it being practiced from my own conservative evangelical background) is deeply flawed, rejection of biblical literalism does not necessarily entail rejecting scripture as a source of divine revelation, nor does it necessary imply a looseness with the text — well, unless one wants to take a deconstructionist hermeneutical approach, for example.
…and I agree with your point about the better arguments against Christianity having little to do with literalism and much more to do with theodicy and related philosophical concerns.

Pedro, thanks for the book suggestion and reading my posts.

You’re welcome, MH — I enjoyed reading your comments!