Science and the Sacred

Every Monday, "Science and the Sacred" features an essay from one of The BioLogos Foundation's co-presidents: Karl Giberson and Darrel Falk. Today's entry was written by Karl Giberson.

"Christianity," wrote someone who likes to comment under the cover of an alias on the Science and the Sacred blogs, "is extremely anti-science. Every single Christian belief, especially the disgusting childish belief in the Resurrection, is scientifically impossible."

"The choice is Christianity or science," wrote this poster who prefers his world black and white. "A normal person couldn't possibly accept both."

This reaction is standard "New Atheist" fare and we hear it from Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, Christopher Hitchens, PZ Myers and countless other self-appointed watchdogs of rationality.

I would be the first to say that science and Christianity are very different and, certainly, if one goes at Christianity with scientific tools, it certainly does not do as well as, say, magnetism, which holds up very nicely under scientific scrutiny. But Christianity is not like magnetism.

Accepting both science and Christianity is a bit like accepting that the earth is both round and in the Milky Way galaxy. For most of human history we did not know about galaxies; as they gradually came into view a century ago, we learned that there is much more to reality than we thought. So we brought some new ideas into our worldview.

The belief that the earth is both round and in the Milky Way is not contradictory because they are different sorts of claims. One is a claim about shape, the other about location.

To be a Christian is to accept that there is another layer of reality that lies beyond the purely scientific. The evidence for this other layer is, of course, not like the evidence for magnetism or the shape of the earth. But it is not an unfounded belief, even from a scientific point of view.

Consider belief in God. Almost everyone throughout history, from Plato to Darwin believed in God, although Darwin developed some famous doubts along the way. Most people today believe in God, including a great many intellectuals. There are legitimate arguments for God's existence, some of which are present on the BioLogos website. One may not find the arguments convincing--Sam Harris certainly does not--but many smart people who, unlike Sam Harris, actually finished their graduate degrees, do find these arguments helpful.

If God exists, then all kinds of things become possible. The reality of God implies that the scientific picture is not all there is. Once we know that reality extends beyond science, new questions emerge: What is this reality that we call "God" like? Is God a super-intelligence? Can God communicate with beings like us? Is God powerful? Is God personal?

A reality that includes God is very different from one that does not. Consider the following analogy. Suppose you were the first human explorer on Mars. You examine terrain and weather and soil. But you are puzzled by what look like gardens and at night you hear what sounds vaguely like singing. Sometimes you find perfectly round granite marbles. These puzzling features of your experience make no sense.

But now suppose you come across the brow of a hill and discover a village, populated with creatures that are scurrying about in purposeful ways. Martian reality has just expanded dramatically. All manner of things have just become possible. Those gardens actually were gardens, those spheres were indeed artificially produced and that singing was singing.

The kinds of things that can happen in any world, from fictitious places like Hogwarts, Middle Earth, or Narnia, to real places like Mars or Earth, depends, in a detailed way, on what exists in those worlds. Narnia did not have airplanes so the children could not fly back and forth. Earth does not have time machines, and Mars probably does not have creatures that would cultivate gardens. But Narnia did have an Ice Queen, the earth does have jumbo jets, and Mars has a rover that NASA has sent there.

What is the nature of our reality if God exists? What kinds of new things are possible? What puzzling and unbelievable stories from the past become plausible if God exists? What claims made by people today have to be taken seriously if God is real?

The central idea of Christianity--that God raised Jesus from the dead--is, as our critic above has claimed "scientifically impossible." In fact, I think our mystery critic may not be aware that this is hardly a controversial claim. I am unaware of anyone who does not think the resurrection of Jesus is scientifically impossible. In a world where science is the only reality, such an event would indeed be impossible. Likewise, on a planet with no creatures it would be impossible to encounter gardens, marbles and music.

But, if God exists, might there be events that science cannot explain? The answer is obvious. So, when we read in the Bible that some people in the first century saw a resurrected Jesus and concluded that God had worked a miracle, we must not dismiss this as "childish." The biblical accounts certainly do not sound childish. First century Palestine is not Narnia.

This is not to say, of course, that God's existence provides a license for unbridled speculation, or somehow validates all past and present claims of miracles. It does, however, open reality to possibilities that go beyond what science can explain.

Every Friday, "Science and the Sacred" features an essay from a guest voice in the science and religion dialogue. This week's guest entry was written by David Opderbeck. Opderbeck is a professor of law at Seton Hall University School of Law and serves in the school's Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology. His blog Through a Glass Darkly addresses issues in theology and the science and religion dialogue. This is a follow-up to his post "In Defense of Dover".

This post will discuss how the law interacts with "science." The interaction of law and science is a vast and fascinating topic. I can mention here only some brief highlights of a handful of the important issues. As part of this discussion, I'll offer some thoughts about Judge Jones' treatment of "science" in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District intelligent design case. At the end of the post, I'll suggest some resources for further reading on the relationship between law and science.

The Gatekeeper Function

One of the most significant ways in which law and science relate is in the use of "expert" testimony. Federal Rule of Evidence ("FRE") 702 states that

If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise. . . .

For example, in a product liability case, engineering experts might testify as to the soundness of the design of the product at issue, and medical experts might testify as to the nature and extent of the plaintiff's injuries.

When a party seeks to introduce expert testimony, the court must serve as a "gatekeeper" over what can be presented to the jury. According to FRE 702, when the court exercises this gatekeeper function, it must ensure that "(1) the testimony is based upon sufficient facts or data, (2) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods, and (3) the witness has applied the principles and methods reliably to the facts of the case." These criteria were grafted into the FRE as a result of the Supreme Court's opinions in Daubert v. Merrill Dow Pharmaceuticals and Kuhmo Tire v. Carmichael, in which the Court discussed the gatekeeping functions of trial courts with respect to expert testimony.

The Daubert standard represents both a pragmatic and an epistemological limitation on the adversarial trial process. The scope and propriety of this limitation has been hotly debated among legal scholars, lawyers and judges. It seems clear, however, that there must be some limits on what can count as "expert" testimony, and that the trial courts, in their traditional role as evidentiary gatekeepers, must to some extent determine what can be presented to juries as "scientific" evidence. We lack the judicial and social resources to turn every trial into a perfect search for the truth. The best we can do is come as close as possible to the truth as the time, cost and functional limitations of the judicial system can accommodate. This means there must be some limits on what testimony can be presented under the "expert" umbrella.

Gatekeeping and Kitzmiller

Supporters of Judge Jones' approach in the Kitzmiller case suggest that a similar gatekeeping function is important with respect to public education. Without some demarcation of what can be taught as "science" in the public schools, aren't we opening the floodgates to the teaching of all sorts of pseudo-science, such as astrology and young earth creationism? I think this is a valid concern. For this and other reasons, I personally don't agree with the "teach the controversy" approach promoted by many ID advocates. If I were to serve on my local school board, I would not vote in favor of introducing ID materials into the science curriculum, primarily because I don't believe the ID program has generated sufficient results to reach the public schools. Like the courts, the public schools lack the time and resources to address views that fall far outside the scientific mainstream.

In my view, however, when the issue is the local public school curriculum, the political level at which such resource allocation decisions should be made ordinarily is that of the local school board, in conversation with the academic community and under the broad oversight of state and national standards-setting bodies. The judicial scientific gatekeeping role usually should relate only to traditional judicial functions, such as what sorts of evidence can be considered by juries.

What if a local school board gets a curricular decision "wrong" and there is no improper religious purpose or other illegality? In my view, that concern ordinarily should be addressed through the process of open debate and political action. The reality is that local political bodies sometimes make "bad" decisions that are not unlawful or unconstitutional. The possibility of bad local decisions is one of the costs of democratic governance. It's a cost that usually is mitigated by the self-correcting processes of democracy. Concerned parents remain free to elect new local officials.

In the relatively rare circumstances in which the local political body acts for clearly improper religious purposes (such as the Kitzmiller case and the McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education and Edwards v. Aguillard cases), the courts can remedy those actions under the establishment clause of the first amendment to the Constitution. The primary inquiry in such cases, however, is not to ask if it is "science", Even if this demarcation question could be answered definitively in a philosophical sense (which I believe is doubtful at best), this still would not necessarily resolve whether the governmental decision involved an improper religious purpose or entanglement.

"Science" and "religion" use different methodological tools and varying rules of discourse, but both disciplines inquire into the same ultimate reality. It is therefore entirely possible for interdisciplinary approaches to exist that are neither purely "science" nor purely "religion." In fact, much of today's serious faith-and-science scholarship relies on this notion of interdisciplinarity. (For a discussion of this notion, see Alister McGrath, A Scientific Theology: Reality (Eerdmans 2002)). There is nothing facially unconstitutional about exploring such interdisciplinary approaches in a public educational setting.

This leads to my primary criticism of the Kitzmiller decision. I don't believe Judge Jones should have ventured a broad definition of "science" in the Kitzmiller case, as though such an exercise necessarily ends the discussion of constitutionality. Under the applicable standards for establishment clause cases, the proper inquiry is into purposes and effects: was the government's purpose "secular" and was the primary effect of the government's decision to advance or inhibit religion or to produce an excessive entanglement of government and religion? Whether an idea is labeled "religion" or "science," in itself, is irrelevant to the constitutional question. "Religion" is a constitutionally proper subject of study in the public schools, provided that the purpose and effect of that study is not sectarian.

Rather than wading into the deep waters of defining "science" over against "religion," then, Judge Jones should have focused primarily on the purposes of the Dover school board, which clearly were to proselytize for a particular kind of creationism, rather than to explore interdisciplinary approaches to science and religion generally.

This analysis, of course, begs one of the big questions in the ID debate: is ID inherently entangled with religious purposes? Should efforts to introduce ID into the public school science curriculum always be met with skepticism under the establishment clause?

The looming presence of this question is one of the key reasons I don't believe Judge Jones played the role of "activist judge" in Kitzmiller, even though I am critical of the opinion. The question whether ID, like "creation science," is inherently religiously motivated, is a live concern, and was extensively briefed and argued to the court by both sides. In order to address the question of religious motivation, the court could not have avoided some consideration of the essential nature of ID theory.

In my view, however, there is a significant qualitative and quantitative difference between giving an issue some consideration and making it the central issue in the case. The court could easily have said something like this, and nothing more than this, on the demarcation issue:

The question of ID theory's scientific merits, and indeed whether ID theory is properly considered 'science,' is hotly disputed by the parties. The court finds, after hearing extensive testimony, that the mainstream scientific community generally does not consider ID theory to be valid science. Combined with the clear overriding religious purposes of the school board members, this finding establishes that there was no valid secular purpose for the school board's actions and that the proposed curriculum would result in excessive government entanglement with religion.

In this context, the Judge Jones' effort to define "science" in a broad sense was unnecessary, but not "activist." In any event, the term "activist judge" generally sheds far more heat than light on the complex nature of the judicial function.

What, then, should we make of the link between ID theory and religion? I'll address this in my next post. I'll also offer my views about ID theory as a form of "natural theology."

Some general resources on the intersection of science and law:

• Robin Cooper Feldman, The Role of Science in Law (Oxford Univ. Press 2009)
• Carl F. Cranor, Toxic Torts: Science, Law, and the Possibility of Justice (Cambridge Univ. Press 2006)
• David L. Faigman, Laboratory of Justice: The Supreme Court's 200-year Struggle to Integrate Science and the Law (Times Books 2004)
• Sheila Jasanoff, Science at the Bar: Law, Science and Technology in America (Harvard Univ. Press 1995)

Though originally scheduled to take place today, volunteers gathered yesterday on college campuses across the United States to distribute free copies of Darwin's seminal work On the Origin of Species. The volumes included one extra item not found in the original book: an introduction by creationist Ray Comfort, which offers arguments against the theory of evolution. Among his challenges are the common ad hominem attacks against Darwin: accusing him of being a racist and sexist; assertions that Darwin's theory is directly responsible for eugenics, euthanasia, infanticide, and Hitler's philosophy; claims about the lack of transitional fossils; claims that DNA and other complex biological structures could not possibly have emerged via evolution; and even the claim that evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. He also implies that one must reject evolution to be a good Christian.

The National Center for Science Education has already created their own online resource -- The Don't Diss Darwin Institute -- to counter the arguments used by Comfort in the introduction. The site offers a detailed analysis of Comfort's introduction along with explanations for why his challenges don't stand up. They also provide a printable pamphlet and bookmark to help "correct" Comfort's materials. The NCSE are not the only ones tackling Comfort's "edited" Origins, however. Christian and evolutionary biologist Ken Miller has also released a pamphlet addressing the preface that was included in the distributed copies.

Though we see no need to compile a pamphlet of our own, the BioLogos Web site and Science and the Sacred have already addressed many of Comfort's arguments against evolution:

• Karl Giberson's post "Who Cares About Darwin?" looks at why ad hominem attacks against Darwin do nothing to disprove the validity of his theory, and addresses the supposed "link" between Darwin and Hitler.
  
• Our question "How is BioLogos different from Darwinism or Social Darwinism?" explains why the scientific theory of evolution is not the same as Social Darwinism -- a gross misapplication of the theory. The two do not go hand-in-hand.
• Our question "What Does the Fossil Record Show?" gives several examples of transitional fossils, dismissing the idea that no transitional fossils have been found.
• Our question "How can Evolution Account for the Complexity of Life on Earth Today?" and our series of blogs "On Reducing Irreducible Complexity" show why many so called examples of "irreducible complexity" can be explained via evolution, and why the idea of irreducible complexity is philosophically unsound.
• Our question "Does Thermodynamics Disprove Evolution?" address this commonly used but scientifically flawed challenge to evolution.
• Finally, our Questions section, as well as many of our suggested books, challenge the myth that one must choose between Christianity and evolution.

Ultimately, despite its unique pairing alongside Darwin's work, Comfort's new preface adds nothing new to the dialogue on creation and evolution.  Comfort would have us believe that science and faith don't mix.  For a different perspective, have a look at the upcoming statement generated by the participants at the recent BioLogos workshop.  
 

(Image courtesy of Wired.com)

How many times have you heard someone ask the question: "Have scientists ever actually observed the formation of a new species?" Our standard answer is that speciation is an event that occurs over thousands of years, one would not expect to be able to observe it. However, a fascinating paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) appeared this past Monday written by Peter and Rosemary Grant -- a husband-and-wife research team who have spent the last 36 years studying Darwin finches on the Galapogos Islands. Never in the history of biology has a single set of scientists so thoroughly studied a group of organisms in their natural environment, following them through the span of multiple decades. The work, outlined in a book we highly recommend, The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner, has been a masterpiece--science at its very finest. So thorough is their analysis that in this PNAS article they are able to actually demonstrate the key events in the formation of a new species as it occurred before their very eyes. A single species has diverged to become, in essence, two species--they are no longer inter-mating. One would have to follow the organisms for a longer time to see if they become firmly established as two distinct species, but the important point is that as we approach the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species next Tuesday, careful analysis has showed that it is actually possible to observe the key events of speciation. And the events associated with it happened in less than one human lifespan!

The findings describe the mini-evolutionary saga that took place on their island of Daphne Major in the Galapagos chain. The Darwin finches of the Galapagos islands (technically from a family called "tanagers") first provided Darwin with a clear picture of evolutionary divergence, as birds from each island have adapted unique traits to meet the unique conditions of their respective islands. The new species observed by the Grants can be traced back to a medium ground finch (Geospiza fortis) that arrived from a neighboring island in 1981. The bird was "unusually large, especially in beak width and sang an unusual song" (The Grants tape recorded the immigrants song!)

Despite being a newcomer, this ground finch was able to successfully mate with a female from the local island. Together, they produced five sons. However, because young Darwin finches learn their songs from their father, the offspring learned a new variation of the local bird call, a product of the song being mimicked through the voice of their foreign father, similar to a human singing a song in a language they do not know.

Despite this slightly different tune and their unusual size (which they also inherited from their father), this new generation was still able to find mates. However, the Grants theorized that within a few generations, this new lineage would become reproductively isolated from the local population. Sure enough, after four generations when a drought killed off all but a brother and sister of the new lineage, the remaining siblings mated. Their children began to do the same. After three generations of reproductive isolation, the Grants have declared that the birds are now in the "secondary stages" of species formation.

The ultimate future of the newly reproductively isolated group remains to be seen. Will they be out-competed for resources or will genetic problems from the variations in the patriarch and matriarch of the lineage become magnified over time? Perhaps, even, members of this new group will return to the island of their forefather and interbreed with them, leading to even more genetic diversity.

At the very least, the saga of these finches shows that while rarely observed, speciation can occur quickly given the proper circumstances.

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