I wonder whom this quotation will annoy more
I’m currently reading the very provocative (politically more than theologically) the book Subverting Global Myths by Sri Lankan theologian Vinoth Ramachandra. He’s not often very quotable since he goes in more for sustained argument, but today this one caught my eye (p174)
Creationism and evolutionism are simply mirror-images of each other. The former reduces the Christian doctrine of creation to the level of a scientific account of chronological origins, and the latter elevates the biological theory of evolution into a total worldview. Paradoxically, creationists and evolutionists have more in common than they each realize: both work with a “universe-as-machine” picture of the world, so that God’s relationship with the world can only be conceived in the form of engineering interventions which have to be scientifically inexplicable.
September 2nd, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Well, it might annoy me, because I wasn’t aware that evolutionism posited *any relationship of God (about whose existence it is agnostic) with the world.
September 2nd, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Fantastic, Doug! I was thinking about this very thing this weekend. Looks like I might have to get a copy of this book!
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:19 pm
I know a few creationists and evolutionists to whom that statement would apply, but very few. Mostly, it appears to refer to some caricature(s).
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Interesting proposal. I would be interested to hear more about what he means by “evolutionism” in terms of specific examples of it. I am not sure I have been witness to many who support evolutionary processes as “a total worldview” from whence the notion of evolution as ideology arises.
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Doesn’t annoy me at all. I’m not sure I agree with the last half, but I certainly agree with the idea that creationism and evolutionism are two sides of the same rationalistic coin.
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:36 pm
I think he tries to make almost too much of a catch-all term of evolutionism. It includes a thorough-going naturalism (i.e. that the natural at a particular scientific level is the only explanation at all levels) which seems to me to be the main idea in view in this bit of the book. By talking about it’s relationship with God, he effectively means that it has decided that the only sort of relationship with God it could admit to is one which works in non-scientific and non-natural ways. Since there are no non-scientific ways (for the theory) there is no God. QED. The possibility of a God who sustains the universe in being, in ways beyond scientific knowledge, and who is the guardian of the processes science explores, is ruled out of consideration.
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:19 pm
If by “evolutionism” he means that thorough-going naturalism, then I’d agree with him. To me, and to most Christians I know who accept the theory of evolution, it is merely the physical explanation/description of how life diversified on earth. It’s a physical view or tool that produces, unsurprisingly, results that are limited to the physical.
If one stops there and also says, “this is all there is” then I see how one would see creationism/evolution as two sides of a rationalistic coin. But while such voices are shrill and get more public play, I think they are a minority.
I opposed young earth creationism strongly in this physical sense, but I can sit down with young earth creationists and agree on much of what Genesis teaches theologically and what it means to me spiritually. There are obvious differences in what is physically manifested, but spiritually there is much connection. The idea that creationists think Genesis teaches only about the physical history is a caricature as is the idea that most theistic (or more specifically Christian) evolutionists think that evolution is the final answer to all questions of origins.
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:03 pm
My perspective is that of a minister’s son growing up in the Southern U. S. in a fellowship that straddled the conservative/fundamentalist line. In the 50’s and 60’s, we were not so much creationist as anti-evolutionist. Creationism was not yet well developed. Our group was/is strongly rationalistic and wary of emotional expression. And by the end of my journey through my church-related university, when the arguments against evolution appeared to fail, it sure did seem like the only alternative was a mechanistic impersonal universe. That was the only alternative that had been presented and it fit with the approach. It was years before I learned of the emergent character of reality, the possible role of relationship and narrative as fundamental attributes of the unfolding cosmos, and the postmodern critique of the enlightenment that had formed my earlier fundamentalist and later naturalistic views. Based on the excerpt, Vinoth’s book appears intriguing to me as it may continue the critique.
September 4th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Steven Allison writes: ‘It was years before I learned of the emergent character of reality, the possible role of relationship and narrative as fundamental attributes of the unfolding cosmos, and the postmodern critique of the enlightenment that had formed my earlier fundamentalist and later naturalistic views.’
Steven, what exactly does this mean? What ‘relationship’ and what ‘narrative’? Who or what is ‘in relationship’ and who (it has to be personal) is telling what ‘narrative’? I don’t know any scientist who thinks postmodernism is anything but seriously muddled thinking. As an exercise in language it may ‘work’ in some literature classes (up to a point - I’m rigidly premodern on my employment contract), but it makes no sense at all in science textbooks.
If evolution by random mutation (genetic miscopying) and natural ’selection’ (accidental adaptation to the environment, favoring survival and reproduction) is a true account of how human beings - and all other life forms arose (and I honestly don’t know if it is) - then it raises its own set of problems for Jewish and Christian believers, such as the origin of the soul or the origin and significance of animal suffering. Atheist evolutionists have no problems here, since they deny there is a soul or any teleology in existence. If a Christian believes in evolution, then he must believe the Sovereign Lord planned and directed the process to this end - and beyond, as Teilhard imagined.
September 4th, 2008 at 8:55 am
Doug comments on one view: ‘The possibility of a God who sustains the universe in being, in ways beyond scientific knowledge, and who is the guardian of the processes science explores, is ruled out of consideration.’
I haven’t read much McGrath in recent years, so I am not up to speed on how he handles the science-faith interface. But I’ve always found it helpful to be reminded by his earlier writings, and by others, that science itself depends on (strictly speaking) non-scientific principles and presuppositions (ones that can’t be empirically demonstrated but must be taken ‘on faith’) for its truthfulness. Natural Science as the rational investigation of the empirical world is a truly wondrous thing but it isn’t, and never will be, a self-contained and self-sufficient world. It seems to this interested non-scientist that the more we learn (delving further into space and further into the sub-atomic world) the more we discover how truly mysterious the world is.
September 13th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Good stuff!
September 15th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Mark B. writes “I don’t know of any scientist who thinks postmodernism is anything but seriously muddled thinking.” Well, now you know of one. My final degree was Engineering Physics and have spent my working life involved in R&D on sensing with lasers and fiberoptics. Have my name on a few papers on experimental gravity physics too. Back when my view of postmodernism was at the cartoon level, I derived satisfaction from M. Sokal’s famous hoax. But the Christian postmodernism of Stanley Grenz, John Caputo, James K. A. Smith, Brian McLaren, Leonard Sweet, Merold Westphal, and the like have provided me with different view and I’m a happier man because of what they have taught me. You are right the world is truly mysterious.