MetaCatholic

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.

From Jim’s blog today, first, on the fairly abstruse debate about the “Vision of Gabriel” stone:

To be sure, truth isn’t determined by majority vote. But arguments that persuade more folk familiar with the issues to one side or the other usually have truth on their side.

On issues of obscure archeological details, and overblown sensational claims about questionable finds, Jim gets quite het up about truth.

A few hours later, however, in reference to the teaching of the theory of evolution, Jim says:

If the theory of evolution isn’t a doctrine, why do its defenders expend such religious zeal to defend it? Frankly I couldn’t care less if its true or false. I am just amazed at the almost fundamentalistic zeal expressed by its caretakers.

So, when it comes to one of the major paradigmatic hypotheses of modern science, that touches on many of the ways we might understand ourselves and our world, biologically and philosophically, it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or false.

There you have it: human existence, clearly not as important as archaeological esoterica.

Oh, and an addendum: who was it who said “But arguments that persuade more folk familiar with the issues to one side or the other usually have truth on their side” Oh, yes, it was Jim West, just 4 1/2 hours earlier.

First, I acknowledge I’ve plagiarised the title of this post, from this video.

Fun though that be, I really want to comment on this event Jim draws attention to. There is something about this that reminds me rather of the way some Christians collect celebrity believers. So-and-so’s a Christian and they’re cool, ergo you should become a Christian because it makes you cool. X is a brilliant footballer, and he’s a Christian: shouldn’t you be one also.

So it is with Alan White, holder of a PhD in organic chemistry, Harvard Grad and author of 18 scientific publications. (Given that the only publication I’ve tracked down is an article on the “compostablity of cellulose acetate films”, I’m not entirely clear what expertise he might claim in evolutionary biology or cosmology.) Wow. Look, he believes in creation like the book of Genesis tells it, so that must be a proper scientific belief. He’s a scientist, so his opinions must be science.

Er … No. He’s just this guy, you know. The only relevance “being a scientist” has is that he appears to fit the stereotype of someone with no literary or poetic sensitivity, and so reads Genesis literally. But isn’t there something about this idea of “being a scientist” that seems to owe something to Hollywood images of men in white coats who will either solve every conundrum or else blow up the world.

I’s say it again. Scientist’s opinions are not science.

Why are you conspiring against me?

• You don’t talk about Shakespeare in my nursing course
• You don’t talk about tectonic plates in my cookery class
• You don’t talk about cosmology in my judo lessons
• And you WON’T talk about God in my biology class.

Both Jim West and Claude Mariottini link to the same review of Expelled. Both seem persuaded by the fundamental fallacy of the film, that there is a politically correct liberal conspiracy at the heart of a politico-media-scientific America, which is pro-gay, pro-abortion and anti-God. They seem to think that when the reviewer says “Evolution is another one of those one-sided debates” where “Christian” voices are stifled, he does, in Jim’s words “have a point”.

Er no, guys, he doesn’t. People’s stands on abortion, gay rights and God (funny how those get so regularly lumped together) are about doing theology, philosophy and ethics. Evolution is about science. They may not (and should not) exist in separate intellectual boxes, but they are separate things. The problem with “Intelligent design”  (ID) is that it is (bad) theology masquerading as science.

At the heart of the scientific methodology is the idea of exploring and testing possible mechanistic explanations of observable physical reality in the light of all the available evidence. The most astonishing current example of this is the building of the large hadron collider just coming on line. Fundamentally, millions of pounds have been poured into this project so that experiments can be carried out to see if current physical theories are wrong. That is how science proceeds, and one can hardly call it arrogant, or see what on earth it has to do with some atheist gay agenda. By contrast, ID sets out to prove that there is no explanation, and then say “see, that means God exists”.

Poor theology and apologetics has had a long history of looking for things that can’t be explained as proof of God. Unfortunately, science has had an uncanny knack of coming up with explanations. The current poster-child of the ID movement seems to be the bacterial flagellum and its “irreducible complexity”. There is good reason to think that this fence too is falling to an evolutionary explanation. The “God of the gaps” is scientifically and theologically unsustainable. Buying into ID is to buy into a pseudo-science that is being continuously discredited.

There are legitimate questions to be raised about the practice of science. Is it limited by ideas of “acceptable” areas of research? (There’s no doubt that the makers of this film would like to so limit it.) Is it limited by the economics and politics of funding bids and providers? I would judge that it is. But so is every human endeavour likewise limited, and theology has been no exception, especially when it comes to acceptable areas of research.

Siding with people who defend God by bad arguments means that you are always in danger of seeing your faith fail when the bad arguments are exposed for the fallacies they are. ID and its friends pose very little danger to science. They are, however, a profound threat to sustainable and reasonable faith. I do not see liberalism as some big bad wolf out there waiting to devour little red riding believer. But for those who do, I strongly advise against getting into bed with a roaring lion. Your enemy’s enemy is not necessarily your friend.

I’ve received an extremely long comment which would seem to be connected to what I said yesterday about creation and evolution (which wasn’t very much). The problem is that it doesn’t actually respond to anything I said, and the commenter tried to leave it on my About page, rather than the post. I have no intention of letting it stand as a comment on that page, and can’t quite work out how to transfer it. But since it contained a number of views with which I am not familiar, and which seem exceedingly strange to me, I thought I would make it the topic of a separate post, and invite those who know more of the varied fundamentalist views to help me out.

In what follows I will quote the comment in its entirety, but intersperse my own comments and questions. I have put in bold the bits I want to comment on: there is no bold in the original. The first chunk, since it contains a fair bit of introductory material, is quite long.

Below is a letter written to reporter Jeffery Weiss, of the Dallas Morning News. He was the moderator of a “evolution/creation” panel discussion, which was held on March 11, 2008, at the University of Dallas. Coverage is found at: http://www.udallas.edu/ministry/evolutionpanel.cfm

Much of what is said applies to all churches and institutions of learning all over the world. They open their doors to false doctrines, yet refuse to hear the truth of Genesis.

* * *

Hello Mr. Weiss.

I viewed the video of the one hour and 41 minute panel discussion, and may I say that you performed the duties of a moderator “very well”.

I must confess that my antennae quiver whenever phrases like “false doctrines”, or the “truth of Genesis” get trotted out. At this point I was beginning to assume the rest of the post would be standard creationism.

As I wrote and told you earlier, there was no one present on the panel that could accurately represent the correct view of Genesis. Dr. James McGill misrepresents the Bible by saying that the scriptures convey “..a mess,… disassociated matter, turned into a life giving, life supporting world”.

That is a position of ignorance. Where Dr. McGill leaves the realm of ignorance, and enters into the realm of false doctrine is when he says ”the Bible denies creation out of nothing”. He also makes mention of there being two “creation accounts” in Genesis. That is not true. There are no creation accounts in Genesis. Moses wrote what God had let him see while he was on Mt. Sinai in 1598 BC. Nothing in Genesis was written during the Babylonian captivity. That was another misrepresentation.

I’m not sure if McGill is accurately quoted, and it’s certainly a partial excerpt, but I fail to see how, even by fundamentalist standards, the idea that a chaotic mess is turned into a life-supporting world is in any way a misrepresentation of the story. Now I have no great desire to listen to this debate to see exactly what McGill said. Creation ex nihilo is certainly not explicit in Genesis, and in some respects there is greater support for it in Isaiah and Job among the OT scriptures. I suspect what was said was more along those lines.

I was not at all surprised the letter writer did not like the long-standing critical consensus that there are two creation stories in the opening chapters of Genesis. I was very surprised to read that there were no creation accounts. Is this view totally idiosyncratic, or have others come across it? What on earth is this story if it is not a creation account? I also loved the very precise date for the Sinai story. I found myself wondering if the author realised that there are some people who see an exilic date for Genesis as very conservative.

What Moses wrote about was the geologic history of Earth, because that is what God revealed to him. Nowhere in Genesis is there any description of the creation of Earth. The only description of the creation of anything, were the celestial bodies of our universe. Also, we CAN use science to prove the existence of God. Because it is God that reveals to mankind what occurred on Earth before modern mankind existed. Creationism is not the opposing view of evolution, but rather it is the “Observations of Moses”. God created all science, and co-authored the book of Genesis. It is the public that is perpetually kept in the dark, because they only get to hear the “skeptics”, and those that are unqualified to expound upon the Word of God.

This view is, as I said, completely new to me. I can’t believe that these views are widespread. The logic seems to be that Earth already exists as a shapeless mess at the start of the account, and God then creates the sun, moon, stars and so on. That is certainly a possible (perhaps likely) reading of the account in its pre-scientific naivety. The complete impossibility of the earth existing without the rest of the universe, however, puts an even deeper gulf between science and religion than more conventional forms of creationism. What is baffling is that in saying this, the author seems to think he is reconciling the two, so that science can prove the existence of God, that creationism is not in opposition to evolution, and that science is created by God. How one can make those affirmations while at the same time affirming the scientifically impossible, I do not know.

Finally, Genesis does not support any “young Earth” doctrine. Genesis states that there was mankind in existence on Earth before the advent of Adam and Eve. Bible scholars, creationists, and theologians, who do not understand the Genesis text, fail to convey the truth to others. That is why I tried to get Dr. Matthew Ogilvie to allow a Genesis expert to come and present the correct view of Genesis, but he refused. He, like most others of religious persuasion, don’t want the truth to be known, for it would expose their own false teachings.

Sincerely,
Herman Cummings
PO Box 1745
Fortson GA, 31808-1745

This is again an example of literalism that I have not come across before. Does Mr Cummings take the Genesis 1 account to refer to a creation of humanity separate from and prior to that of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2? This is even more mind-boggling to me than bog-standard creationism. How on earth can one explain the complete absence of a woman at the start of the second creation account, if God has already made male and female human beings? Again, I ask, is this view common or completely idiosyncratic? How can you “rescue” one text at the expense of distorting another so violently?

I am not at all surprised that the organisers of the conference declined the services of an “expert” in Genesis. But I am totally baffled that the author seems to believe he has not only reconciled religion and science, but has found a truth in Genesis obscured by “most others of religious persuasion”. His convoluted attempts at explaining the text only make it more and more obvious that it simply cannot be read literally, historically or scientifically, only poetically and theologically.

Having been away, I find there are too many blogs to catch up with. These are some of the things I would have interacted with more if I had been around.

There’s always a constant low background buzz about creation and evolution. It’s been bursting out all over lately. I was particularly struck by Chris Tilling’s conversion story, and its follow-up. The story about the film “Expelled” seems to me to be (currently) mainly of local interest to Americans, but Chris Heard has a really interesting post on it here. I think these neatly illustrate and criticize the bizarre logic (CT), and the deceitful propaganda (CH) of the creationist movement. I remain truly baffled that it not only persists, but seems to be gaining ground. I am uncertain where to apportion blame for this. Competing (and probably complementary) explanations include biblical illiteracy and bad theology, scientific ignorance, or a bizarre mix of individualism and egalitarianism that says my ignorance is as valid as the next person’s expert knowledge. When this latter component is combined with an increasing distrust of “them”, it is particularly corrosive. (As far as I can see “them” is variously the Marxist bogeyman of the military-industrial complex, and a conservative bogeyman of liberal elitist scientists acting as the new reds under the bed.) There is an irony in this drivel originating in the most scientifically advanced country on earth.

Tim really seems to dislike PowerPoint, and he’s found an ally. I both sympathise and completely disagree. First the sympathy. The other day I was sitting through a presentation given by some local government officers. I gave up trying to read one slide because the words were so small. Instead I started to count them. I’d got past 200 when the slide changed! The problem is not with PowerPoint, but with its users. (Though I wish it were as easy to implement a taste, style and accessibility checker as to implement a spell-checker). In fact, good and appropriate visuals only enhance communication, and thinking through the demands of a visual presentation can work to clarify the presenter’s mind, and clear a lot of unnecessary verbiage out of a talk. It seems to me that those are desirable goals.

Right, rant mode on now. This is provoked by Dave Walker, Lingamish and Peter Kirk. <RANT>The word “worship” does not mean “singing a particular sort of often repetitive modern song in a long series accompanied by modern instruments”. A “worship leader” is not someone who directs music. A “worship group” is not a group of musicians. In each case the first term may include the latter as part of what it is. This is a sloppy way of speaking that ought to be banished. FORTHWITH. AND IMMEDIATELY. Worship is far more inclusive than that, and the only “worship group” the New Testament and historic Christianity know is called a congregation, or church.

Peter actually wrote:

three quarters of an hour of worship sounds like heaven to me if it’s done well (e.g. by Matt Redman)

NO. Worship is only done well if it’s done by you. A skilled presider, minister, musician or other can facilitate it being done well by you and the congregation, but worship is not a spectator sport. </RANT> Now I know (I hope) that the aforementioned three would all agree with that. But please, guys, make your language about worship reflect that rather important point.

Claude Mariottini is clearly suffering from a burst of New Year optimism. In a post today on Science, Evolution and Creationism he draws attention to a new book available for free online reading, and says:

People who teach creationism and intelligent design may not like the conclusions presented in this book. However, both creationism and intelligent design proponents should read the third chapter of the book and see whether the arguments presented by the scientists are valid.

My own experience is that this is nothing to do with valid arguments, far less with the evidence. Creationists are interested in neither. For them a valid argument is one that supports their position, however supremely silly it is, and however cavalier with the evidence.

I learnt this lesson years ago as an undergraduate, when listening to two fellow students arguing their respective cases. As the argument went on, I became more and more stupefied by the case the creationist was putting forward. Finally, unable to resist it any longer, I intervened with a deeply ironic reductio ad absurdum. (At least that’s what I thought.) I suggested earnestly that what scientists didn’t realise was that as God created the world, the devil followed behind planting fossils in the rocks to confuse and tempt humankind.

Unfortunately, while my scientifically-minded friend laughed, the creationist nodded earnestly and said that was exactly the sort of thing that could have happened. Since then I have never believed any creationist to be susceptible to reason (or, indeed, to irony). They wouldn’t recognise a valid scientific argument if it kicked them in the balls. (I would apologise to all female creationists for this piece of sexism, but I suspect they just love patriarchy.)

Thanks to Iyov for drawing my attention to this brilliant little animation Duelity. (You need to click the “Watch” item and then for full effect the submenu’s “duelity” item.) I’m not entirely sure what the authors’ viewpoint is, but the juxtaposition of the biblical creation story told in mock scientific language, and the scientific account of origins told as a mythical narrative is really quite delightful. How very, very post-thingy.

Those many Christians who rightly reject the ramblings of the creationists often maintain that the Creation stories answer the “Why?” question, whilst science answers the “How?” question. There is a certain force, and truth, in that statement. However, I am increasingly dissatisfied with it as an over-simplification. I don’t know that I have any clearly better alternatives, but I want to offer four observations in the hope that others better versed in the questions will comment or offer posts in reply.

• We can’t simply brush aside the fact that the creation stories are “How?” stories in the way that they are shaped and narrated. That is not a complete objection, for creation myths are usually narrated in ancient cultures as “How?” stories: it belongs to the genre. Insofar as they are “How?” stories, we need honestly to admit that they are wrong. They are, however, not simply “How?” stories, they are also “Why?” ones. In the way they tell the story, the “Why?” questions are less “Why does the world exist?”, and more “Why are things this way?”. They are about locating humans in the world, and interpreting the human situation. They are not as interested in the question of origins as they are in the question of the present, despite their form. Perhaps this indicates that reading them primarily as origin stories is (at least in part) to misread them.
• We make a mistake when we think of Genesis 1- 2 as the totality of what the Scriptures say about creation. They are part of what is said, but other passages also need to be considered. Among them we might note Isaiah 40, where the power of God in salvation is equated with the power of God in creation, so that the former is possible because of the latter. Here the doctrine of creation is primarily a story about God’s power in the present and the future, undergirded by the apprehension of his universe- creating history. Creation is not understood simply as past event, but part of a continuous activity. Reducing this to a doctrine of origins is to miss a significant part of the point.
• When we come to God’s answer to Job (chapter 38 ff) the doctrine of creation takes on a new aspect. It is a kind of anti-theodicy. Questioning God is both a type of faithfulness to be rewarded by an encounter with the divine, and a temerity that will receive no answer other than the “God-ness” of God. Creation is something that only God can understand, and correspondingly we will never fully understand the “Why?” we ask about our location in the universe, neither our pain nor our pleasure. The doctrine of a transcendent Creator is not a full answer to “Why?” questions: it is rather a pointer to their lack of a satisfactory and complete answerability.
• Finally, on a different tack, I want to suggest that there is one vitally important area where the accounts of science and faith both need to align, and in fact do align, in the understanding of the world. The first, priestly, creation account, whose canonical position privileges it in relation to the succeeding stories and poems, is above all an account of ordering. The creation is the organisation of randomness into coherency. This not only gives a significant place to human reason and observation (as the linkage of Wisdom and creation elsewhere implies) but is the fundamental presupposition of scientific investigation. The accounts of Scripture and science are in this particular case making the same assertion about reality: the former seeks to know how to live within that reality, the latter to understand how that reality works. Both are “How?” questions, albeit of a different and complementary sort.

It is in this last area that I believe we can (and must) argue that science with God is more rational than science without God, and why these two accounts need each other as friends, rather than treating each other as enemies (always with the proviso that a doctrine of creation is about more than origins). It is not just that the observable universe is susceptible of rational investigation, but that science can’t work if it isn’t. We have an apparently random quantum fluctuation resolving with great speed into a universe that is not only organised, but finely tuned. We cannot tell whether that fluctuation that began things was actually random or not: whether it was one instant of a typical behaviour pattern that had occurred so many millions of times that the type of inflation that occurred was not in fact as improbable as it looks. It is equally a matter of faith that it was random as that it was the work of God’s mind, since science can’t look below, behind or beyond the event horizon to a non-universe: it can’t even fully approach it. Given the apparently rational and mathematical nature of the world, in which reasonably constructed experiments work, one might be tempted to see greater coherence in postulating a rational rather than a random cause.

When we look at the improbabilities involved in the fine-tuning of the universe, the so-called anthropic principle, we can come to three possible conclusions. The first is that all we can say is that the universe just is, but can give no reasons. A major improbability, but a necessary one given that we can observe it. This is, of course, to say that no explanation at all is possible, which frustrates the scientific and religious spirit in equal measure, and feels intellectually unsatisfactory. The second is to postulate the multiverse, in which all possible universes exist, and in which in millions and millions of other universes life has never formed, or the inflation ran away with itself, or collapsed back on itself, and so on, pretty much ad infinitum. Again, the multiverse is as much a matter of faith as belief in God: as an answer lying outside the bounds of the observable and knowable universe it has no claim to be science. There is, for those of us who tend to appeal to Occam’s razor, something inherently unsatisfying, and less rational about preferring such a complex solution as the multiverse over the simple explanation of God.

The third explanation is God. The existence of a Creator not only explains (with the limitations noted above of it being an transcendently incomplete and partially unknowable solution) the existence of the universe, it explains, at least by way of analogy, the rational nature of the observable universe. Our explanations of the universe are not simply rational because our minds are rational, and therefore construct a rational account, but because the universe is itself objectively rational. I do not think I want to press this as far as, say, Polkinghorne’s theory of mathematics as the equivalent of Plato’s forms, or indeed the mind of God. I do, however, want to suggest that it is more reasonable to see this rationality as a reflection of God’s ultimate reason, than it is as a product of an inherently irrational randomness. Creation is, I submit, ultimately more rational than happenstance.