id, evolution, science
Thinking about Thomas' and Karlo's comments on teaching intelligent design. Thomas reframes the debate as one that concerns the proper place, if any proper place exists, to introduce questions of epistemology into the cirriculum. I think he makes an excellent point -- this whole battle in the cultural wars could be avoided if we just had room to discuss the nature of knowledge itself.
Given that we'll never see philosophy classes squeezed into the public school cirriculum (I imagine school days are already overcrowded with No Child Left Behind test-prep, abstinence-only "sex-ed", pro-drug war propoganda, and military recruitment exercises -- please don't read that as an attack on teachers, by the way; I have the deepest admiration for anyone who manages or even tries to provide kids with an authentic education in this increasingly anti-intellectual society), I would agree with Thomas that ID should be presented -- but only on the following condition. Open every science class with a discussion on the nature not just of knowledge in general but on science in particular. Point out what it means for something to be a scientific theory, that science is a method, the very living history of its own self-critique. Don't shy away from talking about what science can't grasp, but also don't play-down the fact that the scientific method, properly carried out, produces an increasingly accurate portrait of empirical reality (though it will never, of course, manage to complete this portrait).
I'm a bit ashamed to admit this, but it wasn't until I was well into my adult life that I realized that science is more of a method than a doctrine. It is a body of knowledge, yes, but any and all of that knowledge is subject to change should reality turn out differently than we expected. That I graduated from high school without grasping this simple idea disturbs me greatly. Sure we talked about the "scientific method" -- but that was just to explain how scientists do experiments. Yet that very method carries deep implications for what we mean by "knowledge" when we talk about "scientific knowledge", and these implications were rarely, if ever, discussed. I'm sure part of it is my own fault -- I was far more interest in the arts than I was in dissecting frogs and solving chemical equations -- but part of this is because, I think, we're just not terribly interested, as a society, in talking about the nature of what we know, about what knowledge means. Consequently, we can hardly tell the difference between such things as facts, statements of opinion, religious beliefs, hypotheses, and theories.
6 Comments:
I've come to see a particular interpretation of the theory of evolution as a kind of "historical refutation" of God's existence. Just as Nietzsche proposed that, once you've explained the belief in God without having to refer to His existence, a proof of His non-existence becomes superfluous, so too can the theory of evolution be offered as a plausible account of the emergence of life that needs to make no reference to "design". Many atheists do actually think that, given an adequate evolutionary account, the belief in God becomes irrational, just as Nietzscheans might argue that the belief in God is a sign of weakness in the face of our knowledge of history.
Of course, everything then depends on the adequacy of the historical account, whether natural or cultural. And this is where ID has its word to get in edgewise.
It counts as a "scientific" hypothesis only if we are allowed to turn the historical refutation back on itself: suppose the history we give is insufficient. Suppose, that is, that we cannot explain the belief in God or the emergence of life without reference to a divinity of some sort. Would this (i.e., the manifest reality + the lack of an adequate theory of its "accidental" origin) then count as "evidence" for the existence of the divinity?
I think, yes, sort of. If we accept that evolutionary theory is the only way it could have happened "by accident", and if we can show that it couldn't have happend by evolution (if, as has been suggested, there just hasn't been enough time for evolutionary mechanisms to do the necessary selectin') then the world, at least OUR world, NEEDS God.
There are a lot of things evolution can in fact account for. But I'm still unconvinced that any earthly lifeform "needed" to evolve(i.e., become "fit" by evolving) the faculty of consciousness. And I'm certainly doubtful that anyone will ever come up with a satisfying evolutionary account of the phenomenological "here and now" (or historical account for that matter, Foucault be damned).
I'm wholly okay with the idea that my belief in God, such as it is, is an economical way of installing human ignorance in my metaphysics.
Atheists seem too certain that what they don't know, ain't important.
Thanks for your thoughts, Thomas.
I must admit I'm puzzled about something . . . many things . . . perhaps about your thoughts, perhaps about my own, perhaps about the whole debate.
I don't know how to sum up my puzzlement, so I'll submit a few different questions.
1) Does acceptance of the proposition (let's call it L) "life arose by accident" amount to atheism? (I think it doesn't).
2) What do those who accept L (regardless of whether or not they are atheists) mean by "accident"?
3) Do those who accept L presuppose a Newtonian clockwork universe or one with some kind of built-in quantum indeterminacy? How does the meaning of "accident" differ in each case?
4) Does belief in a Newtonian, determinant universe preclude belief in God? (E.g., couldn't God have set the whole thing in motion?) Does belief in an indeterminant universe preclude belief in God (E.g., could God really "play dice" with the universe?)
5) Are there really atheists who would wholeheartedly accept the following proposition (let's call it T, for Totality): "It is at least theoretically possible to construct/discover a set of coherent, consistent emperical propositions that amount to a perfect and complete description of the entire universe and which account for its origin(s) as well as its end(s)"? (There probably are atheists who accept T, but I can't imagine anyone seriously and thoughtfully defending such a position, especially post-20th century).
6) Are the atheists mentioned above roughly equivalent to the set of scientists who believe in evolution? Who believe that life arose by accident? (I don't think that they are . . . but then I don't know many scientists).
7) Are there atheists who don't accept T? (I personally imagine that there are many -- I sometimes consider myself such and atheist, though this may be changing). Put another way, is it possible to deny T and still be an atheist? (I think it is).
8) Does acceptance of L entail acceptance of T? (I don't think that it does).
Ok, some things are starting to come together for me . . .
You say "manifest reality + the lack of an adequate theory" = "evidence (sort of) for divinity" . . .
I guess what I'm trying to say (very poorly and haphazardly) is that it seems to me that both Kant and Wittgenstein pointed out that the very structure of consciousness precludes the possibility of an adequate explanation of manifest reality (or even of the manifest reality of consciousness). Is it possible to accept what Kant and Wittgenstein pointed out and still be an atheist? Maybe yes, maybe no. I think so. Because I don't think that atheism necessarily implies acceptance of T. But it would be difficult, to say the least. If it is impossible (that is, if atheism implies acceptance of T), then I'd have to say that belief in divinity is built-in to the structure of consciousness, that ontology would always = ontotheology and there's just no way around it.
But this strikes me as a somewhat different conversation than that concerning the origin of life. Only if acceptance of T implies acceptance of L does ontology necessarily have anything at all to do with the question of the origin of life. Though I will add a small disclaimer -- inasmuch as the question of the origin life involves the question of a psychologically satisfactory description of the nature and origin of human self-awareness, ontology and evolution might indeed have something to do with one another.
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Here's another take (for what it's worth) . . .
Whether or not natural selection can actually account for the diversity of life and the presence of human consciousness says absolutely nothing about whether or not our world needs God.
What might, perhaps, say something about whether or not our world needs God is the question of whether or not there are limits to reason's ability to fully and adequately account for "manifest reality".
We conflate the question of the origin of life with ontology inasmuch as the question of the origin of life involves the question of the origin (and nature) of human self-awareness. (And these two questions involve one another inasmuch as the question of human self-awareness involves the question of "manifest reality").
Ok, one last comment. Sorry. In a way, I think this whole debate could be mapped onto Zeno's paradoxes.
Zeno says it's inconceivable that I should be able to walk across the room. First I half to be halfway there, but to be halfway, I have to first be halfway to halfway, and so on, to infinity.
Let's assume there's no linguistic sleight-of-hand going on here (and, personally, I don't think that there is), that Zeno is really pointing out something about the limits of reason and knowledge.
Now let's say that a group of scientists starts calculating whether or not I have the physical power to move myself across the room. Who cares how it ultimately happens -- what they're concerned about is whether or not I do can do it given my muscle mass, bone structure, and so on.
The scientists conclude that, yes, I do indeed have the phsycial power to move myself across the room.
A certain subset of the scientists declares, "ergo, Zeno was wrong!". Then a certain subset of religiously-inclined people, who have always relied on Zeno's paradox to support their belief in God, see the scientists' demonstrations as an affront to their belief and so hire their own scientists to try to prove that the conclusions of the original scientists are wrong, that I do not have the physical power to move myself across the room.
But both the subset of scientists and the subset of religious people have missed the point.
Whether or not my muscle mass, etc., is adequate to move me across the room has nothing whatsoever to do with what Zeno's paradox suggests.
I think you're onto something with the Zeno analogy, Jay. No matter how naturalistically tight the evolutionary account is, there'll always be room to raise the question of a God, if only to set the whole thing in motion. But I think evolution is such a promising theory that it ought to disturb the idea of God a little more deeply.
After all, after a Nietzschean refutation of God's existence, which amounts to nothing other than a plausible account of how people might come to believe in God even if He didn't exist, we could still ask whether God didn't set that whole business in motion anyway (since it would *still* be a way of revealing Himself to us, I guess.)
Here the atheist would, I think rightly, simply say, "That's cute, guys, but then there's no longer anything to discuss."
So consider the stronger situation where we grant that a trait's evolutionary history back to, say, the paleo-proterozoic era counts an explanation of how it arose without divine intervention, simply by making the organism that exhibited it more "fit" under current conditions.
(One mystery that sometimes keeps me awake: what entity became more fit by beginning to exhibit vegetal properties in addition to mineral ones?)
I still say that on this view, God remains "necessary" in an account of such manifest realities as the phenomenal "here" or "now". The other day I walked past a motorcycle and thought to myself precisely that evolution would never be able to explain it: not the bike, of course, but the moment of my apprehending it as the sublime piece of machinery it may or may not have been.
Evolution may have no desire to explain that sort of thing, to be sure. But then the evolutionary account simply ceases to be a historical refutation of creation.
It seems silly to me to propose that we have a theory of the origin of the human species that has nothing interesting to say about the evolution of consciousness.
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