Shielding Hostility with Science

Science Vs. Religion (PartI) is a Viewpoint article. It begins:

The recent issue of The New Republic contains an essay by Darwinian biologist Jerry Coyne on why he believes there can be no rapprochement between science and "religion."

This is another chapter in the continuing war on religion waged by the New Atheist community. Science is used as a front to shield personal antipathies. RLC quoting Coyne:

The ideas that made Darwin's theory so revolutionary are precisely the ones that repel much of religious America, for they imply that, far from having a divinely scripted role in the drama of life, our species is the accidental and contingent result of a purely natural process.

RLC responds with this:

This is an important point, one that's often lost on people. The intellectual conflict today is not between "religion" and evolution. There's no necessary incompatibility between the two, not even between young-earth creationism and evolution (as I hope to point out in a future post). The conflict, rather, is between Darwinian evolution and the belief that an intellect is involved in the creation of the world. Darwinism denies any role for purpose, intention, or mind in the generation and diversification of life and it is this view, which is at bottom a non-scientific, philosophical belief, which many religious people reject.

RLC gets to the root of the conflict with this observation. In thinking that humans are "the accidental and contingent result of a purely natural process" Coyne and his fellow believers think they have closed off a "divine foot in the door" as Lewontin eloquently put it. Their encounter with expressions of belief to the contrary might explain the anger and hostility that accompanies their visits to forums focused on discussions of Intelligent Design.

Borking Palin through Unethical Reporting

Palin and Evolution is an excellent blog entry about Sarah Palin's much distorted views about teaching as it relates to creation and evolution.

If mainstream journalism had a shred of integrity left, prior to the designation of Sarah Palin as the vice-presidential candidate, it seems determined to shed it in the interest of unabashed and shameful political campaigning. There was a time when the reporting of news stories was guided by a sense of professional ethics. Reporters at least attempted to lay aside their personal preferences in an effort to report facts. No longer. What we witness now are distortions and selective reporting of facts to mold reader viewpoints rather than provide objective news. The mainstream media does not merit our trust. Sadly, it has become irrelevant as a reliable source for those interested in the truth.

Anti-Christian Rhetoric- the Reason

A paragraph from a blog entry at Stephen Jones's CreationEvolutionDesign titled "Q-R" contains a paragraph that I will break down into parts for the purpose of commentary. (Quotes in blue):

"Mistakes peculiar to scientists. Just as there are certain mistakes that a theologian is susceptible to there are ones that the scientist is just as susceptible to in the relationship of theology to science. The first of these mistakes is to have an anti-religious attitude. No system of knowledge can be learned without some sympathy or kindly feeling toward the system- something pointed out long ago by Augustine but never fully appreciated by educators or epistemologists.

The study of nature and the natural laws which govern it is not intrinsically anti-Christian. However superfluous philosophical assumptions can become part of the "system of knowledge" associated with science. For example, science entails the study of natural phenomenon. The sympathy or kindly feeling referred to by Augustine is, of necessity, focused on the assumption that what we test must conform to predictable natural laws. The universe of science is natural and the philosophy of naturalism a predictable outgrowth of this. But if the belief that reality is confined to nature gains the sympathy of a student, opposition to any doctrine encompassing a wider view of reality it is the next step in a progression of thinking. Naturalism precludes God and miracles become equated with mythology.

Dogmatists study science as well as theology. The evangelical indicates that man is a spiritual rebel and his spirit of rebellion is reflected in all his activities. Unregenerate man opposes the doctrines of creation, sin, redemption, and eschatology. A man may be religious and yet anti-Christian. Opposition to Christianity at the level of science is in many instances simply localized or vocalized opposition to Christianity in general.

Cherry picked scientific data become the club and public forums, hosting exchanges about the origin and diversity of life, the arena for bashing Christianity and all that is associated with it including Christians in such forums.

Therefore anti-Christian man takes pleasure in making the gap between science and Christianity as wide as he can make it, and will heartlessly ridicule any efforts at reconciliation. In this instance, the gap between science and Christianity is in reality the gap between faith and unbelief." (Ramm, 1954, p.38).

This is why you will often see critiques of Noah's flood and other biblical incidents at sites said to be focused on evolution and intelligent design. Belief and unbelief is the real dividing line for most.

Design, Teleology and Magic

TP posted this comment at Telic Thoughts which contains the following remark (in red):

The Magic of Intelligent Design

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of The Future

One of the biggest obstacles to accepting ID hypotheses as scientific endeavors is their appeal to magic-like mechanisms. But what if a magic-like aspect in nature has been around so long that we don't see it for the magic it is? I suggest what we think of as randomness is, for all practical purposes, magic.

TP is onto something. I'm an optimistic IDist with respect to the amount of supporting evidence I believe exists in its favor. Clearly my view is far from universal so an analysis as to what are the real obstacles to its acceptance intrigue me. Obviously ID needs testable hypotheses that support a sound theoretical framework. But there is more.

ID critics and IDists cannot even agree on what would constitute acceptable supporting evidence. For some critics there is no possible evidence short of a personal encounter with the creator. Enough said about them.

However, there are others who TP alluded to when he mentioned magic. These critics are conflicted by a conceptual clash between how they view science and the nature of possible causal scenarios involving a divine designer. For these critics even if cellular structures like DNA admittedly provide evidence of having properties consistent with known products of intelligent causality, the methodology of a designer signifies a process more akin to magic than known, observable generating mechanisms. Since science and magic appear to be polar opposites so too would science and any scenario invoking causal mechanisms reminiscent of magic.

Is that magician causing the contained fluid to flow up the container sides or is that a superfluid? And look at that! One substance passess right through another. Don't spoil the illusion by telling me the holes are measured by the widths of a few atoms. So what's the point? Simply that what appears magical to one generation can yield to a scientific explanation for the next one. There's no limit to this trend and no telling what the future holds in terms of present day counterintuitive concepts that lose their "magical" hold on the imagination.

One does not have to cite an abstruse quantum physics example either. The ancients knew that rain falls from the direction of the clouds toward earth. But there was a time when the statement that rocks fall from the sky led to the view that the holder of such an idea had rocks in the head. The discovery of meteortites and increased knowledge of the cosmos turned an absurd idea into an accepted scientific norm.

While it is true that metaphysical views predominant in western societies made the advent of science possible it is also true that scientific developments can change metaphysical views. Einstein did that with respect to space and time. That aging rates could be linked to velocity or that space itself could be warped by gravitational fields ran counter to ingrained views of such concepts in prior eras. The more recent multi-universe concept is relevant to an ancient theological concept that God is independent of time and able to operate outside our universe. That position was once debunked as contrary to physical reality.

Intelligent design could be linked to a triad of issues. The observation that the universe is fine-tuned to support life supports teleology. The realization that nucleic acid polymers are ordered symbolic sequences is consistent with both teleology and intelligent causality. There is no "poofing" or magic entailed in these assessments. A rational approach yields the obvious parallels. The third part of the triad is consciousness and it is this one that is likely to be influenced by scientific progress relevant to what we now view as properties of matter; specifically particular types of brain cells. Materialists assert that intelligence is nothing more than an "emergent property" of matter. That metaphysical position is set in stone exposed to to empirical erosion.

When ID critics conflate magic with ID they are providing their personal, subjective view of reality. It is one based on a metaphysical perspective likely to be influenced by the course of scientific progress. History indicates that the metaphysical anchors of one generation will give way to empirical results of the next. Present day wisdom may equate to a future anachronism.