Dembski, Falk and Wood: Is Darwinism Theologically Neutral, part 2

In a previous post, I referred to a debate on origins through posts to the BioLogos Forum's blog. William Dembski, a mathematician, philosopher and theologian, and a proponent of Intelligent Design, wrote a position paper, at the request of the BioLogos Forum. In it, he argued that Darwinism is not theologically neutral. Darrel Falk, an official of that Forum, and probably best classified as an evolutionary creationist, responded. Todd Wood, a young-earth creationist, also reacted, in his own blog. I consider Wood's response in this post.

I suppose that I ought to say that one can believe that God is intelligent, and a designer, or creator, without agreeing with all of the positions of the Intelligent Design movement. The ID movement argues that it should be possible to find scientific evidence that God not only created life, but there is what Michael Behe has called irreducible complexity -- there are processes, or structures, that are so complex that they could not have arisen by natural selection, but that God must have intervened during their development, if they arose over a long period of time. (Some ID advocates also believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old, but some are not convinced of that. See here for information on ID, and here for some contrasts between ID and young-earth creationism.) ID scientists have actually not really come close to proving scientific evidence of God's intervention. They have, instead, tried to show that natural selection couldn't have produced some structures, or processes. Behe and Dembski are tow of the most important scientists who have attempted this. Their work has been seriously criticized by other scientists, Christian and not.

Dembski's paper is in two parts, here and here. Falk's response is also in two parts, here and here. Wood's reaction is here and here.

I first repeat the heart of Dembski's presentation, what he says are four non-negotiables of Christianity, and four of Darwinism:

Non-Negotiables of Christianity:

• (C1) Divine Creation: God by wisdom created the world out of nothing.
• (C2) Reflected Glory: The world reflects God’s glory, a fact that ought to be evident to humanity.
• (C3) Human Exceptionalism: Humans alone among the creatures on earth are made in the image of God.
• (C4) Christ’s Resurrection: God, in contravention of nature’s ordinary powers, raised Jesus bodily from the dead.

Non-Negotiables of Darwinism:

• (D1) Common Descent: All organisms are related by descent with modification from a common ancestor.
• (D2) Natural Selection: Natural selection operating on random variations is the principal mechanism responsible for biological adaptations.
• (D3) Human Continuity: Humans are continuous with other animals, exhibiting no fundamental difference in kind but only differences in degree.
• (D4) Methodological Naturalism: The physical world, for purposes of scientific inquiry, may be assumed to operate by unbroken natural law. 

Wood has trouble with both sets of non-negotiables.Wood says that there is no mention of man's fallen, sinful nature, and that C2 and C3 are "weird." He thinks C3 is negotiable -- it is possible to believe we are in the image of God, and arose by evolutionary mechanisms. He also points out that there are differences among Christians as to what the image of God means, or is. On C2, he believes that it would be possible to believe that some aspects of creation were so ruined by the Fall that they don't reflect God's glory. Wood has even more trouble with the other four non-negotiables. He points out that Darwin, himself, was not convinced of D1 -- he thought there was more than one common ancestor. (Not thousands or milllions, by the way.) He goes on to say that D1, D2 and D3 are not so much presuppositions, as they are derived from evidence.

Wood also believes that Dembski has misunderstood methodological naturalism, D4, and confused it with philosophical naturalism:
Methodological naturalism is an epistemological position that recognizes reasonable limitations to human abilities to sense the supernatural. In other words, methodological naturalism is a limitation on what I think I can know. How can that possibly "tie God's hands?" A consistent methodological naturalist when confronted with Christ's resurrection (or any miracle) could only say that science is extremely limited in such cases to understand what happened or how. There is no way that methodological naturalism could rule out the miraculous. That's what philosophical naturalism does.
See here for the Wikipedia article on Naturalism, which includes a discussion of methodological naturalism.

Perhaps most importantly, Wood is familiar with the writings of Darwin, and although he doesn't claim that Darwin was a Christian believer, he believes, and presents evidence to back it up, that Darwin was, like Einstein, sympathetic to the view that there was a Creator. Wood quotes from a letter Darwin wrote:

I can see no reason, why a man, or other animal, may not have been aboriginally produced by other laws; & that all these laws may have been expressly designed by an omniscient Creator, who foresaw every future event & consequence. But the more I think the more bewildered I become; as indeed I have probably shown by this letter.

I hope to deal with Falk's reaction to Dembski in a later post. Thanks for reading.

Dembski and Falk: Is Darwinism Theologically Neutral?

The BioLogos forum has posted a position paper from William Dembski, on the subject of whether or not Darwinism is theologically neutral (he claims that it is not) as well as a response to Dembski from Darrel Falk. Dembski's paper is in two parts, here and here. Falk's is likewise in two parts, here and here. The BioLogos forum sets forth a list of 13 beliefs here. It is hard to imagine most Christians having any problem with those beliefs. However, quite a few have a problem with part of the opening statement, as follows: "committed to exploring and celebrating the compatibility of evolutionary creation and biblical faith, guided by the truth that 'all things hold together in Christ.' [Colossians 1:17]" Perhaps it's too simple, but the BioLogos forum team are often called evolutionary creationists. Dembski is one of the leading spokesmen of the Intelligent Design Movement, which rejects evolutionary creationism*. He has earned doctorates in mathematics and philosophy, and also advanced training in theology. Falk, who is President of BioLogos, is a biologist by training.

I found Dembski's writing to be respectful of Christians who disagree with him, and he seems to understand at least some of the thinking of such people.

In Dembski's part 1, he sets forth these non-negotiables:

Non-Negotiables of Christianity:

• (C1) Divine Creation: God by wisdom created the world out of nothing.
• (C2) Reflected Glory: The world reflects God’s glory, a fact that ought to be evident to humanity.
• (C3) Human Exceptionalism: Humans alone among the creatures on earth are made in the image of God.
• (C4) Christ’s Resurrection: God, in contravention of nature’s ordinary powers, raised Jesus bodily from the dead.

Non-Negotiables of Darwinism:

• (D1) Common Descent: All organisms are related by descent with modification from a common ancestor.
• (D2) Natural Selection: Natural selection operating on random variations is the principal mechanism responsible for biological adaptations.
• (D3) Human Continuity: Humans are continuous with other animals, exhibiting no fundamental difference in kind but only differences in degree.
• (D4) Methodological Naturalism: The physical world, for purposes of scientific inquiry, may be assumed to operate by unbroken natural law. 

At least some of these non-negotiables can be questioned. One question that occurred to me is in relation to C3. I would say that all creatures (and, for that matter, all rocks) are made in the image of God to some extent. They bear unmistakable marks of their creator. I would agree that humans are more in the image of God than any animals, or other organisms, or than any non-animate entities. It is possible that we may have computers or robots that are also more in the image of God than any animals, but we aren't there yet, and may never be. (See here and here for more about the idea of the image of God.)

His strategy is to explain how the two sets are in tension. He specifically avoids using "conflict," because he says that the languages of religion and science are different enough that it is difficult to know if you have found a real conflict.

Then, in part 2 of his essay, Dembski explains why he thinks that there are tensions, and which tensions are most important.

One tension, in Dembski's mind, at least, is that "it seems odd, given (C1), that God would create by Darwinian processes, which suggest that unguided forces can do all the work necessary for biological evolution." These unguided forces, if they are so important, are not evidence of God's wisdom, he says, nor do they reflect God's glory. (C2)

On the contrary, it seems to me that if there were a God who was able to create a universe, with properties such that unguided forces could bring about living things, in all their diversity, that would be strong evidence of His wisdom, and add to His glory. 

Dembski sees another problem. He says that "Francis Collins . . . denies that our moral capacities represent the natural development of the same essential capacities in other primates. Yet to say that our moral or cognitive or linguistic capacities are unprecedented in the rest of the animal world flies in the face of Darwinian evolution, certainly as Darwin conceived it." (Collins is a Christian, an author, and one of the most important scientists of our time. He is the founder of the BioLogos forum.)

I see what Dembski is talking about, but it seems to me that it could have been that God took some sort of pre-human, and, by miracle, installed those moral capacities. Also, it could be that the appearance of language, spoken and as thought, changed moral capacity by itself.

But Dembski also makes another important point. He claims that there is not sufficient evidence that natural selection can produce the complex structures we see in living things, and, thus, wonders why Darwinianism is important enough to examine. He writes ". . . the evidence for the creative power of natural selection to build complex biological forms is nil."This claim has been disputed at considerable depth, and some of the disputation is by Christian scientists who are convinced that natural selection can, and has, produced complex structures. In fact, there is a series, published by BioLogos, entitled  "Evolution and the Origin of Biological Information," which is reasonably accessible to the intelligent non-scientist, and refutes this claim of Dembski, and the ID movement, with examples. Here's a link to the final installment of that series. There are links to the other parts in that post.

As I write this, I have not read Falk's response to Dembski. I have read an important response to Dembski, by a Young-Earth Creationist, Todd Wood. I hope to post on what Falk and Wood have to say about Dembski soon.

Thanks for reading!

*There are several positions on origins among Bible-believing Christians. They include Intelligent Design, Young-Earth Creationism, and Evolutionary Creationism. See here for a summary, giving the weaknesses and strengths of these and other such beliefs.

Another Anti-Dembski blog post

David Heddle, over at the He Lives blog, has written yet another cogent criticism of William Dembski and the Intelligent Design (ID) political movement. He points out, as others have, the ID has both political, religious, and scientific aspects. It is all too easy to confuse these. I have no problem with ID as a religious stance, and I don't think Heddle does, either. But Dembski and others have gone way beyond that, attempting to have ID taught as part of the science curriculum in the public schools, and enlisting Young-Earth Creationists (YEC) as foot soldiers in this cause.

There are real tragedies in all this including:
A) Thousands, maybe millions of conscientious Christians are being taught:
1) that YEC and ID are the same thing, when they are not
2) that ID is good science, and therefore deserves a place in the public school curricula
3) that no Bible-believing and Bible-understanding Christian disagrees with points 1 and 2

B) Honest, genuinely seeking non-Christians may evaluate Christianity based on the stances I listed above, and believe, based on scientific or political ID nonsense (and/or YEC nonsense), that Christianity, the Bible, and Christ's redemptive work are also nonsense, and be eternally lost.

Thanks for reading.

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The remarks above are slightly modified from a comment I made on the post on the He Lives blog. Less than two days later, there are 26 comments on this post, some of which are challenges to my comment, by apparent atheists.