Bill Powers 2008-06-11
From Summa Bergania
Date: Wed Jun 11, 2008 11:15 pm
From: Bill Powers
To: David Bergan
Subject: Coming Clean
The purpose of this post is not so much to advance arguments for or against evolution (however understood), but to come clean as to why I resist it. I do this as much for myself as, perhaps, others.
First, I am a long-standing ASA (American Scientific Affiliation) member; and have observed close at hand the gyrations some go to and the positions they are drawn too because they believe, as Greg, that evolution is basically true.
I don't think that what I am about to say is foreign to most Christians. One merely has to remember what it was like before you accepted evolution.
Now I need to confess that I am old enough to have never heard, or heard next to nothing, of evolution until perhaps about 25 years ago. I was never subjected to the entire weight of our culture from a very early age pressing upon you the undeniable truth of the evolutionary story.
What I am ultimately interested in is why someone believes or disbelieves the evolutionary story, these reasons very likely not being founded upon a thorough going examination and evaluation of the theory and its alternatives.
Let me start by saying that the acceptance of the evolutionary story would seemingly have an enormous influence upon by beliefs. One might say, therefore, that it attacks core beliefs (one can envision this as something like Quine's web of belief).
Why is that? This is always less obvious than that you are under attack (anfechtung), but here's something of a shot at it.
Remember that Wm James spoke of "live options." The notion of live options is important because logically they act as exhaustive possibilities: Support for one, undermines the other and vice versa.
For me, as perhaps most Americans, there are only two live options: classical Christianity and some kind of atheistic materialism. I have direct and live experience with both, the latter drawing me close to suicide. So for me it is a matter of life and death. Perhaps all Christians do not feel and know this tension as intensely as I, but I have little choice about it. Evolutionary theory draws its sword to overthrow the King.
Here roughly is how it goes. Evolutionary theory, if taken literally, demands a reassessment of the Genesis account. Doing so means, not only that there is no Six Day Creation, but that there is no Adam and Eve, no Fall, no original sin, no order of creation. This, in turn, undermines a number of passages, including those given by Jesus, which presume part of this story. One is led, thereby, to develop some kind of revised theory about Scripture, examples including, some kind of accomodation, a theory of Scriptural genre, perhaps some kind of concordism (e.g., Hugh Ross), or the belief that Scripture is divided into some unspecified revelation and man's word, itself flawed and historically embedded.
Such machinations are essentially unstable. Once the lion is in the tent there's no containing him. Oh, it may not happen in one generation, but he is relentless. He must win. I cite but a few examples exhibited commonly in the journal of the ASA.
1) the complete acceptance of physicalism (after all if evolution is a completely physical process, where could spirit be introduced?) 2) the emergence of soul (sometime after birth) (after all if the mind must emerge from the physical, why not the soul?) 3) The rejection of specific divine action (SDA) (after all, the world being governed by physical law, there is no place for God to intervene, some even see such intervention as evil.) 4) the accidental and unintentiontal creation of man (indeed, any living thing might do).
What evolutionary theory, and a host of other derivatives of modern science, does is to move God further away. In discarding the Genesis account as factual, what was a story of God's intimate connection with the world, its creation, with us is broken, or, at best, deeply hidden, and is replaced by an indifferent, random process. Theistic evolution, if permitted by the stronghold science has upon the world, fairs little better.
The picture presented by such a science is vastly at odds with what we find in Scripture: a God who is intimately involved in the daily affairs of mere mortals, speaks to them, hears their petitions, even comes in the flesh to die for them. The picture science presents us, no, in fact demands, is one of, at best, secondary causes that strap God's Hands, leaving us only with General Divine Action (GDA), with no room for us.
What all of this leads me (and I emphasize me) to suspect is that the entire Scripture is man's work, a dream, a vision, a pseudo-science. If scientific materialism is supported, it must undermine Christianity. So either we ought to all be Barthians (something I could never do), or we ought to simply side with the Dawkins and admit this is all just a pleasant dream, something I have no interest in.
OK. I'm nearly done the rant. There's another side to this, one that as a physicist and one who has studied the philosophy of science for about 15 years annoys me (another rant?). It is that in this conflict between science and Scripture (and the importance of Scripture cannot be overstated, for we have no other revelation), there are least four possible responses:
(1) to modify our scientific beliefs; (2) to modify our scriptural beliefs; (3) to modify both; and (4) to modify neither and let the tension stand. Why is it that it is mainly the second that is considered? What does it say about us and our times?
What drew me to physics was that one could work out on paper what would happen (or nearly happen) in the real world. I could say that about no other science. Chemistry (my first major) is mainly a metaphorical, if not anthropomorized, story, and biology (my second major) is, at best, crudely statistical. Yet, I do not take physics as literally true. Why, then, must I take evolutionary biology as literally true? This is intended to be a rhetorical question. I don't mean this to be taken as an invitation to argument. It merely offers an alternative attitude, one that is readily at our disposal, and one supported by the bulk of modern philosophic attitude. What I want to know is why it so little adopted?
Evolutionary theory makes it respectable to be an atheist, we are told. If it should be so important for atheism, should we not be more reluctant to embrace it, for it is the only origin story open to the atheist?
There was a time when I "experimented" with double predestination. It caused a tremendous turmoil, leading me one lonely night to exclaim, "If God be a monster, let it be known." That is my view of evolutionary theory and the host of scientific derivatives favored by our generation. It unleahes a host of consequences, producing at best a variant Christianity, and at worst, unbelief.
I believe that reason and Christianity are at odds, because God's faith and reason are at odds. It is for these reasons that fundamentally reject the second alternative mentioned above.
Having said all of this perhaps it represents some kind of starting point for discussion, but I could be wrong about this. I have, after all, been deeply immersed in this issue for almost 20 years.
bill
