Thinking Christianly

about Science

Dr. Ard LouisDepartment of Physics

University of Oxfordwww.cis.org.uk

www.faraday-institute.orgwww.cpgrad.org.uk

Cross-cultural, broad-brush talk • Christian sub-

culture(s)• Scientific sub-cultures• culture is often

“caught” not “taught”WordsCustomsTraditions BehaviourBeliefsValuesAssumptions

Biological self-assembly

http://www.npn.jst.go.jp/ Keiichi Namba, Osaka

• Biological systems self-assemble (they make themselves)• Can we understand?• Can we emulate? (Nanotechnology)

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are needed to see this picture.

04/19/23

Virus self-assembly

• Self-assembled from identical subunits (capsomers).

• Characteristic number T.• Capsid T: 12 pentamers, 10(T - 1) hexamers.

viruses

Self-assembly of “computer viruses”

Monte-Carlo simulations: stochastic optimisationhttp://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/user/IainJohnson/

Computer viruses?

Self-assembly with legos?

Science has proven:There is no God

Christian reaction: Fear?

Science and faith?

Some Christian and Islamic writers seem unwilling to examine deeply held beliefs, presumably because they are afraid that this kind of thing is bad news for faith. Well, maybe it is -- for intellectually deficient and half-baked ideas. But it doesn’t need to be like this. There are intellectually robust forms of faith -- the kind of thing we find in writers such as Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, and C.S. Lewis. They weren’t afraid to think about their faith, and ask hard questions about its evidential basis, its internal consistency, or the adequacy of its theories

Alister McGrath in Finding Dawkins’ God, Blackwell (2004)

Big, fun! questions:

How do I obtain reliable knowledge about the world?

Fundamentally a (hard) philosophical question

OUTLINE

• What does the Bible say about the natural world?

• Thinking about science and certainty

• The Origins debate ...

God reveals himself through nature

• Romans 1:18 18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

God reveals himself through nature

• Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the

skies proclaim the work of his hands.

2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night

after night they display knowledge.

God reveals himself through nature

• Psalm 8: 3 When I consider your heavens,the work of your fingers,the moon and the stars,which you have set in place,4 what is man that you are mindful of him,

the son of man that you care for him?

Milky way: 100 Billion stars

Universe: 100 Billion galaxies

"he also made the stars" .. Gen 1:16

God reveals himself through nature

Thinking Christianly about the natural world....

• Wonder and Worship• Fearfully and wonderfully made ...

Francis CollinsDirector, National Human Genome Research Institute, USA

“The work of a scientist in this project, particularly a scientist who has

the joy of also being a Christian, is a work of discovery which can also

be a form of worship. As a scientist, one of the most exhilarating

experiences is to learn something….that no human has understood

before.

To have a chance to see the glory of creation, the intricacy of it, the

beauty of it, is really an experience not to be matched. Scientists who

do not have a personal faith in God also undoubtedly experience the

exhilaration of discovery. But to have that joy of discovery, mixed

together with the joy of worship, is truly a powerful moment for a

Christian who is also a scientist”

See also his book “The Language of God” (2006)

God reveals himself through nature

• Austrian Alps “It was a beautiful afternoon and suddenly the remarkable beauty of creation

around me was so overwhelming, I felt, ‘I cannot resist this another moment’.”

-- Francis Collins on his conversion.

God created and sustains the world

• “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” Gen 1:1

• “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Gen 1:2

• “For by him [Christ] all things were created … and in him all things hold together” Col 1:16,17

• “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory … sustaining all things by his powerful word” Heb 1:3

God created and sustains the world

• Psalm 104 (praising God’s creation)• “ He makes springs pour water into

ravines; it flows between the mountains; the wild donkeys quench their thirst’’ v10,11

• “Natural” processes are described both as divine and non-divine actions

• 2 perspectives on the same natural world

‘Science’ studies the “Customs of the Creator” • If God were to stop “sustaining all things” the world

would stop existing• Donald MacKay, The Clockwork Image, IVP

• “An act of God is so marvelous that only the daily doing takes off the admiration”• John Donne (Eighty Sermons, #22 published in 1640)

• “Miracles” are not God “intervening in the laws of nature”: they are God working in less customary ways

Interpreting the Bible• What kind of language?• What kind of literature?• What kind of audience?• What kind of context?

• All truth is God’s truth, so, properly interpreted, science and the Bible cannot contradict

The Bible...• The Bible:

• God created the world• Nature attests to God’s qualities (Rom 1,

Psalms)• God sustains the universe• Biblical language of Divine action (God

sent the rain)• Bible is not a science textbook, but ...

• world has a beginning• stars, sun, and moon are not Gods

etc...

OUTLINE

• What does the Bible say about the natural world?

• Thinking about science and certainty

• The Origins debate ...

Science/Religion and the conflict metaphor?

“Science and religion cannot be reconciled ... Religion has failed, and its failures should be exposed. Science, with its currently successful pursuit of universal competence … should be acknowledged the king” --Prof Peter Atkins, Oxford U, in 1995

Science/Religion and the conflict metaphor?

“I don’t know any historian of science, of any religious persuasion or none, who would hold to the theory that conflict is the name of the game between science and religion, it simply isn’t true.” --Prof Colin Russell, Open University, UK

Science/Religion and the conflict metaphor?

• Pervasive myth (Emperor has no clothes?)

• Scientists are about as religious as the general population (e.g. Oxford Physics)

• e.g. Galileo example far more complex• Really about Aristotle/Greek cosmology• “Galilieo Connection”, Prof Charles

Hummel, IVP (1986)

Christian origins of science

• Science has deeply Christian roots. • Uniformity• Rationality• Intelligibility • See e.g. books by Stanley Jaki; R. Hooykaas;

e.g. China

• Royal Society, the word’s first scientific society. Founded in London July 15, 1662, many were Puritans

Founders of Royal Society

• “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent being.”

• Sir Isaac Newton

Founders of Royal Society

• Wrote “The Wisdom of God Manifested in Works of Creation”, governor of the “Corporation for the Spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England

• Sir Robert Boyle(1627-1691)

Mechanism v.s. Meaning

• Conflating mechanism and meaning is origin of most confusion

why is the water boiling?

Nothing Buttery

enough P for 2000 matches

humans are collections of chemicals:

enough Fe for 1 nail

enough Cl to disinfecta swimming pool

enough fat to make 10 bars of soap

Nothing Buttery

enough P for 2000 matches

humans are collections of chemicals:

enough Fe for 1 nail

enough Cl to disinfecta swimming pool

Nothing Buttery

enough P for 2000 matches

humans are collections of chemicals:

enough Fe for 1 nail

enough Cl to disinfecta swimming pool

enough fat to make 0.1 bars of soap

Scientism“The cosmos is all there is or

ever was or ever will be”

“The most important questions in life are not susceptible to solution by the scientific method”

Carl Sagan, Cornell U

Bill Newsome, Stanford U.

Limits of Science?

• Science is a great and glorious enterprise - the most successful, I argue, that human beings have ever engaged in. To reproach it for its inability to answer all the questions we should like to put to it is no more sensible than to reproach a railway locomotive for not flying or, in general, not performing any other operation for which it was not designed.

-- Sir Peter Medawar, The Limits of Science, (Oxford University Press, Oxford (1987))

God of the gaps?

• that couldn’t have happened by “natural means” --> God into the gap• “When we come to the scientifically unknown, our correct policy is not to rejoice because we have found God; it is to become better scientists”

• Prof. Charles Coulson, Oxford U

Newton and the planets• “This most

beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent being.”

• Sir Isaac Newton

Newton and the planets

18th century Orrery from a London coffee house, used to show the perfection of the orbits, which reflect God’s perfection

Leibnitz objects“For, as Leibniz objected, if God had to remedy the defects of his creation, this was surely to demean his craftmanship”

•John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion, CUP 1991, p147

Immediatism: Leibniz objects

•“And I hold, that when God works miracles, he does not do it in order to supply the wants of nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God”

Laplace and Napoleon• Mécanique Céleste

(1799-1825)• Napoleon: Why

have you not mentioned the creator?

• "Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.”

Chaos and the planets

• Our understanding of the Solar System has been revolutionized over the past decade by the finding that the orbits of the planets are inherently chaotic. In extreme cases, chaotic motions can change the relative positions of the planets around stars, and even eject a planet from a system.

• The role of chaotic resonances in the Solar System, N. Murray and M. Holman, Nature 410, 773-779 (12 April 2001)

Arguments from science:

• Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics

• Fine-tuning in cosmology

Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics

+Schrödinger equation (Quantum Mechanics)

Energy-Momentum (Special Relativity)

= Dirac Equation (1928)

Electrons

Positrons (antimatter) discovered 1932

Quantum Mechanics + Relativity = Antimatter

See also: “The applicability of mathematics as a philosophical problem”, Mark Steiner HUP (1998);

E. Wigner

"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," in Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No. I (February 1960)

Science and BeautyA Scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.Henri Poincaré 1854 – 1912

Fine Tuning and the Anthropic Principle

• “The universe is the way it is, because we are here” – Prof. Stephen Hawking, Cambridge U

• If the [fine structure constant] were changed by 1%, the sun would immediately explode-- Prof. Max Tegmark, U. Penn

• “Just Six Numbers” by Sir Martin Rees

We are made of Stardust He C via a resonance

• Sir Fred Hoyle, Cambridge U

• “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics .. and biology”

• His atheism was “deeply shaken”

Fine Tuning and the Anthropic Principle

• Fine tuning is not a proof of God, but seems more consistent with theism than atheism

• Note the difference with “God of the gaps”• We seem to have three choices'... We can dismiss it as

happenstance, we can acclaim it as the workings of providence, or (my preference) we can conjecture that our universe is a specially favoured domain in a still vaster multiverse.’ If this multiverse contained every possible set of laws and conditions, then the existence of our own world with its particular characteristics would be inevitable.”• Sir Martin Rees (just 6 numbers) --

• John Leslie firing squad argument

Tapestry arguments and inference to the best

explanationThe Golemization of Relativity, David Mermin, Physics Today 49, p11 April 1996

Science is a tapestry -- you can pick at a few strings, but that doesn’t break the whole cloth

If we are to understand the nature of reality, we have only two possible starting points: either the brute fact of the physical world or the brute fact of a divine will and purpose behind that physical world

John Polkinghorne, Serious Talk: Science and Religion in Dialogue, (1995)..

Why do I believe in Jesus Christ?tapestry argument:

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen-not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory,Harper Collins, San Francisco (2001).

History of life on earth

• Does where we come from determine who we are and how we should live?

--OUTLINE --• Thinking about science:

• Mechanism and meaning• Nothing buttery• Scientism and the limits of science• God of the gaps and miracles• Tapestry arguments and inference to the best explanation

• Thinking about biological complexity• Language matters!

Aside: Defining Evolution• Evolution as Natural History

•the earth is old (+/- 4.5 Billion years)•more complex life forms followed from simpler life forms

• Evolution as a mechanism for the emergence of biological complexity

•generated by mutations and natural selection(note: most Christians agree that God created this mechanism)

• Evolution as a “big picture” worldview (scientism)George Gaylord Simpson: "Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have

him in mind. He was not planned. He is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort of animal, and a species of the Order Primates, akin nearly or remotely to all of life and indeed to all that is material."

or Richard Dawkins:"Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”

Language: Random or stochastic?

• Random mutations and natural selection...

• Stochastic (Monte Carlo) optimisation• e.g. used to price your stock

portfolio .....

Lego blocks or clay?

• Evo-Devo Lego Blocks:• pax6• sonic-hedgehog• shaven-baby• tinman

• Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the

Animal Kingdom. S.B. Carroll (Blackwell Science 2005)

Why so few genes?

C. elegans (19,500) & P. pacificus (29,000)

Drosophila Melanogaster

(13,500)

E.coli (5416)Mycoplasma genitalium (483)

(300 minimum?)

H. sapiens (22,000)

S. cerevisiae (5800)

Why so few genes?We share 15% of our genes with E. coli

“ “ 25% “ “ “ “ yeast

“ “ 50% “ “ “ “ flies

“ “ 70% “ “ “ “ frogs

“ “ 98% “ “ “ “ chimps

what makes us different?

Gene language

Why are there so few genes?

complexity comes from the interactions

gene networks

systems biology

transcriptional network for yeast: Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Gene language

[Genes] swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence.

Richard Dawkins --The Selfish Gene (1976)

[Genes] are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy that we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence.

Denis Noble -- The Music of Life: Biology Beyond the Genome (OUP 2006)

Contingency v.s.``deep structures’’: Re-run the tape of evolution?

“Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay.” In evolution, there is no direction, no progression. Humanity is dethroned from its exalted view of its own importance

S.J. Gould: “Wonderful Life”; (W.W. Norton 1989)

When you examine the tapestry of evolution you see the same patterns emerging over and over again. Gould's idea of rerunning the tape of life is not hypothetical; it's happening all around us. And the result is well known to biologists — evolutionary convergence. When convergence is the rule, you can rerun the tape of life as often as you like and the outcome will be much the same. Convergence means that life is not only predictable at a basic level; it also has a direction.Simon Conway Morris “Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe”; (CUP, 2003)

Convergent Evolution?

Convergent evolution in mechanical design of lamnid sharks and tunasJeanine M. Donley, et al. Nature 429, 61-65 (6 May 2004)

"For the harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty." (On Growth and Form, 1917.)

Convergent EvolutionNorth America:Placental Sabre-toothed cat

South America”Marsupial Sabre-toothed cat

Convergent Evolutioncompound eye camera eye

Convergent Evolution?

• Enormous number of examples ... from proteins to vision up to societies to intelligence.

• Are rational conscious beings an inevitable outcome? “

The principal aim of this book has been to show that the constraints of evolution and the ubiquity of convergence make the emergence of something like ourselves a near-inevitability. SCM, “Life’s Solution”, (CUP 2005) pp328

Christian approaches to emergence of biological

complexity• Origins: does where we come from determine who we are and how we should then live?

• Christian approaches:• Young Earth Creation Science

• Earth is about 10,000 years old• Genesis 1,2 are historical in the modern sense• mainly in the last 50 years

• Progressive Creationism• Earth is old• Complexity came about through miracles • Varied views on exegesis of Genesis

• Theistic Evolution• Earth is old• Complexity came about through normal processes of God• Genesis 1,2 are theological (framework view --prose poem)

• Intelligent Design• All the above views are strictly ‘creationists’ and believe in intelligent

design• Capital ID is a more recent movement, could be YECS, PE, or TE.

YECS•GOOD

• Motivated by desire to uphold scripture • easiest to rationalise with Genesis• great at popularisations• Good understanding of the dangers of evolutionism

•LESS GOOD• characterised by heated rhetoric and false dichotomies:

But can't we be Christian evolutionists, they say. Yes, no doubt it is possible to be a Christian and an evolutionist. Likewise, one can be a Christian thief, or a Christian adulterer, or a Christian liar! Christians can be inconsistent and illogical about many things, but that doesn't make them right. -- HM Morris, 1980, King of Creation, pp.83-84

• Reinforces conflict metaphor• Often fast and lose with quotes and science• Disconnected from scientific community and tapestry arguments• very hard to reconcile with science (Avaroism?)

• http://www.answersingenesis.org/• http://www.icr.org/• Ken Ham, Henry Morris, Duane Gish, Jonathan Safrati

Advice from Augustine

• It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, while presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, taking nonsense. We should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn .... If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well, and hear him maintain his foolish opinions about the Scriptures, how then are they going to believe those Scriptures in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead• St. Augustine

Advice from AugustineIn matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in the Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines our position, we too fall with it. We should not battle for our own interpretation but for the teaching of Holy Scripture. We should not wish to conform the meaning of Holy Scripture to our interpretation, but our interpretation to the meaning of Holy Scripture.

Progressive Creationism/Concordism

•GOOD• Motivated by desire to harmonise scripture with science

• often accepts most of Natural History• easier to rationalise with scripture than TE• a “middle way”?

•LESS GOOD

• No one clear scheme --• doesn’t solve some thorny questions (like death before

fall)• Not always as easy to reconcile with science

• http://www.reasons.org/• Hugh Ross, Norman Geissler

Theistic Evolution/Biologos •GOOD

• Motivated by desire to harmonise scripture with science • easier to rationalise with science• dominant view among professional scientists and

theologians

•LESS GOOD

• More difficult to harmonise with scripture• doesn’t solve some pressing questions (like death before

fall)• Sometimes misses the dangers of “evolutionism”

• http://www.cis.org.uk• http://www.asa3.org• Francis Collins, Denis Alexander, B.B. Warfield, Henri

Blocher

What kind of literature?• Genesis 1-2:3• Phrases that occur 10 times:

• 10 times “God said” (3 for mankind, 7 for other creatures)

• 10 times creative commands (3 x “let there be” for heavenly creatures, 7 x “let” for world below)

• 10 x To make• 10 x According to their kind

• Phrases that occur 7 times (heptads)

• “and it was so”• “and God saw that it was

good”

• Genesis 1-2:3• Phrases that occur 3 times

• God blessed• God created• God created men and

women• Other numerical patterns:

• Intro 1:1-2 contains 21 words (3 x 7) and conclusion (2: 1-3) contains 35 words (5 X 7)

• Earth is mentioned 21 times and “God” 35 times

• -- see e.g. H. Blocher “In the Beginning”, p 33 or E. Lucas “Can We Believe Genesis Today” , p 97

What kind of literature?

SHAPED• Day 1

• The separation of light and darkness

• Day 2• The separation of the

waters to form the sky and the sea

• Day 3• The separation of the

sea from dry land and creation of plants

INHABITED• Day 4

• The creation of the lights to rule the day and the night

• Day 5• The creation of the

birds and fish to fill the sky and sea

• Day 6• The creation of the

animals and humans to fill the land and eat the plants

Day 7: The heavens and earth were finished and God rested

FRAMEWORK VIEW

What kind of literature?• Is it chronological?• "Now what man of intelligence will believe that the

first and the second and the third day … existed without the sun and moon and stars?”

• Origen 185 - 254: First Principles, 4.3

• “On this subject there are three main views. According to the first, some wish to understand paradise only in a material way. According to the second, others wish to take it only in a spiritual way. According to the third, others understand it both ways, taking some things materially and others spiritually. If I may briefly mention my own opinion, I prefer the third”

• Augustine of Hippo (354-430) De Gen. ad litt VIII, 1. (on the literal interpretation of Genesis)

What kind of literature?• Strong internal hints at “elevated prose”, more like

Revelation than like Luke• Two separate narratives (tablets)• Numerical patterns• Thematic patterns• A common understanding of church fathers, early Jewish

commentators and early Evangelical leaders.

• Main theological teachings are crystal clear (perspicuity)• Physical interpretation less so -- there science can take a

“servant role” and help you decide.• We must be very careful not to import our own cultural

biases into interpretation

Aside:Emergence of Humans?

Advice from C.S. Lewis

When the author of Genesis says that God made man in His own image, he may have pictured a vaguely corporeal God making man as a child makes a figure out of plasticine. A modern Christian philosopher may think of the process lasting from the first creation of matter to the final appearance on this planet for an organism fit to receive spiritual as well as biological life. Both mean essentially the same thing. Both are denying the same thing -- the doctrine that matter by some blind power inherent in itself has produced spirituality. (C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock Eerdmans (1970), p 46)

e.g. at what age is a child spiritually responsible to God?John Stott on “Homos Divinus”

Advice from Billy Graham "I don't think that there's any conflict at all between science

today and the Scriptures. I think that we have misinterpreted the Scriptures many times and we've tried to make the Scriptures say things they weren't meant to say, I think that we have made a mistake by thinking the Bible is a scientific book. The Bible is not a book of science. The Bible is a book of Redemption, and of course I accept the Creation story. I believe that God did create the universe. I believe that God created man, and whether it came by an evolutionary process and at a certain point He took this person or being and made him a living soul or not, does not change the fact that God did create man. ... whichever way God did it makes no difference as to what man is and man's relationship to God.”

• - Billy Graham quoted by David Frost• Source: Book - Billy Graham: Personal Thoughts of a Public Man (1997, p. 72-

74)

Summary• Science/Faith is really about “how do I obtain reliable knowledge about

the world”• Key point is delineating the limits of science (Peter Medewar)• Conflict metaphor / mechanism&meaning / nothing buttery / scientism / God of

the gaps / anthropic principle/ unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics• Bible teaches: God sustains all the world - science studies customs of creator

• Origins questions are complex• Many different interpretations of nature and Genesis 1-3

• Our common enemy is philosophical naturalism

• The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism, Philo 4, 2 (2000)• by Quentin Smith http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm

• “The justification of most contemporary naturalistic views is defeated by contemporary theist arguments”• “Naturalists passively watched as realist versions of theism, most influenced by Plantinga’s writings, began to sweep through the

philosophical community, until today perhaps one-quarter or one-third of philosophy professors are theists, with most being orthodox Christians. “

History of life on earth

earth forms fromaccretion disk

Grandeur of God?•humans -- last 2 seconds of 24 hr day•not unlike astronomy: the heavens declare the Glory of God - Psalm 19•What is man that you are mindful of him? Psalm 8

Late Heavy Bombardement

4-3.8 Billion years

Brutal: some impacts probably vaporized the sea. Any life wiped out

First fossils?

• First chemical evidence for fossilized life -- 3.8 to 3.5 Billion years ago

• -- evidence is C12 enrichment

• -- Hopanes from cyanobacteria (microbes responsible for generating Oxygen) found 2.5 Billion year old shale

Origin of life

what happened here?Origin of life?

Cambrian Explosion

Origin of life• The problem of the origin of life has much in common

with a well-constructed detective story. There is no shortage of clues pointing to the way in which the crime, the contamination of the pristine environment of the early earth, was committed. On the contrary, there are far too many clues and far too many suspects. It would be hard to find two investigators who agree on even the broad outline of events.• Leslie Orgel (1998)

Advice from Schaefer

• We must take ample time, and sometimes this will mean a long time, to consider whether the apparent clash between science and revelation means that the theory set forth by science is wrong or whether we must reconsider what we thought the Bible says.

• Francis Schaefer

Intelligent Design (capitalised)

some key publications and people•The Mystery of Life’s Origin (1984)

•Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, Roger L. Olsen•Evolution, a Theory in Crisis (1986)

•Michael Denton•Darwin on Trial (1991)

•Philip Johnson•Darwin’s Black Box (1996)

•Michael Behe (CT book of the year)•Icons of evolution (2000)

•Jonathan Wells•No Free Lunch (2001)

•William Dembski

heterogeneous movement -- will focus on ID centred at Discovery Institute

What is ID• Intelligent agency, as an aspect of scientific theory making,

has more explanatory power in accounting for the specified, and sometimes irreducible complexity of some physical systems, including biological entities, and/or the existence of the universe as a whole, than the blind forces of. . . matter.’[1] That is, intelligent design is a better explanation for entities exhibiting complex specified information (CSI) than are appeals to the inherent capacities of nature (i.e. chance and/or physical necessity). ID suggests that the world contains objects that exhaust the explanatory resources of undirected natural causes, and can only be adequately explained by recourse to intelligent causation.

• (definition from Peter S. Williams)

Irreducible Complexity

This result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science ... The discovery [of intelligent design] rivals those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schroedinger, Pasteur and Darwin.”

•Bacterial flagellum, immune system, etc... are too complex to have evolved

Michael Behe (1996)

Complex Specified Information

• CSI -- information that could not have come there by chance alone?

• e.g. when we see a statue v.s. weathered rock• “Law of the conservation of information”

William Dembski

Intelligent Design

• Philosophical issues:• Definition of science (demarcation) ?• Problems, but why not follow the

evidence?

• Theological issues:• when/why does God intervene?• miracles?• Newman/Barth critique

ID and Christians

• Major issues is -- why these miracles?

“And I hold, that when God works miracles, he does not do it in order to supply the wants of nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God” Leibnitz

e.g. what is the Biblical rationale for supernatural action aiding the creation of the flagellum?

•Miracles occur to serve God’s redemptive purpose•Origin, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin etc...

Intelligent Design (capitalised)

•GOOD• Looking at complex questions in science/philosophy• counteracting evolutionism• middle road, broad church?

•LESS GOOD

• Detached from scripture• doesn’t solve some pressing questions (like death before

fall)• very political

• http://www.discovery.org• William Dembski, Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, Paul

Nelson

Summary

• Origins questions are complex• Immediatism• Anti-traditionalism• Populism …..

• Our common enemy is philosophical naturalism

• The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism, Philo 4, 2 (2000)• by Quentin Smith http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm

• “The justification of most contemporary naturalistic views is defeated by contemporary theist arguments”

• “Naturalists passively watched as realist versions of theism, most influenced by Plantinga’s writings, began to sweep through the philosophical community, until today perhaps one-quarter or one-third of philosophy professors are theists, with most being orthodox Christians. “

Calvin on using science• As far as I am aware, there is no evidence that Galileo had any direct knowledge of Calvin's writings.

Nevertheless his understanding of the nature of the language used by the Bible when referring to the natural world is the same as Calvin's as the following quotations from the Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina show.

• B1. These propositions set down by the Holy Ghost were set down in that manner by the sacred scribes in order to accommodate them to the capacities of the common people, who are rude and unlearned. (p. 181)

• B2. It is necessary for the Bible, in order to be accommodated to the understanding of every man, to speak many things which appear to differ from the absolute truth so far as the bare meaning of the words is concerned. (p. 182)

• B3. For that reason it appears that nothing physical which sense-experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words. (p. 182f)

• B4. ...having arrived at any certainties in physics, we ought to utilize these as the most appropriate aids in the true exposition of the Bible and in the investigation of those meanings which are necessarily contained therein, for these must be concordant with demonstrated truths. (p. 183)

• The first two quotations express the same 'accommodation' understanding of biblical language as Calvin adopted. The third recognises that, as a result of this, the literal sense of the biblical text may sometimes be at variance with the scientific understanding of the natural phenomenon described. In the final quotation Galileo makes the point made by Prof. McKay that one reason why biblical interpreters should take scientific knowledge into account is that it will help them to recognise when the biblical writers are using the language of appearance or cultural idioms, and so help them avoid the kind of misinterpretation made by those who condemned Galileo.

lehttp://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/cis/lucas/lecture.html

• 1: Isis. 2000 Jun;91(2):283-304. B. B. Warfield (1851-1921). A biblical inerrantist as

evolutionist.• Livingstone DN, Noll MA.• School of Geosciences, Queen's University of Belfast, Northern

Ireland.• The theological doctrine of biblical inerrancy is the intellectual basis for modern

creation science. Yet Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary, the theologian who more than any other defined modern biblical inerrancy, was throughout his life open to the possibility of evolution and at some points an advocate of the theory. Throughout a long career Warfield published a number of major papers on these subjects, including studies of Darwin's religious life, on the theological importance of the age of humanity (none) and the unity of the human species (much), and on Calvin's understanding of creation as proto-evolutionary. He also was an engaged reviewer of many of his era's important books by scientists, theologians, and historians who wrote on scientific research in relation to traditional Christianity. Exploration of Warfield's writing on science generally and evolution in particular retrieves for historical consideration an important defender of mediating positions in the supposed war between science and religion.

James Orr

• One of the original “Fundamentalists”• There is not a word in the Bible to indicate that in its view

death entered the animal world as a consequence of the Sin of man.

• When you say there is the “six days” and the question whether those days are meant to be measured by the twenty-four hours of the sun’s revolution around the earth -- I speak of these things popularly. It is difficult to see how they should be so measured when the sun that is to measure them is not introduced until the fourth day. Do not think that this larger reading of the days is a new speculation. You find Augustine in early times declaring that it is hard or altogether impossible to say what fashion these days are, and Thomas Aquinas, in the middle ages, leaving the matter an open question.

C.S. Lewis

When the author of Genesis says that God made man in His own image, he may have pictured a vaguely corporeal God making man as a child makes a figure out of plasticine. A modern Christian philosopher may think of the process lasting from the first creation of matter to the final appearance on this planet for an organism fit to receive spiritual as well as biological life. Both mean essentially the same thing. Both are denying the same thing -- the doctrine that matter by some blind power inherent in itself has produced spirituality.......

Does this mean that Christians on different levels of general education conceal radically different beliefs under an identical form of worlds? Certainly not. For waht they agree on is the substance, and what they differ about is the shadow. When one imagines his God seated in a local heaven above a flat earth, where another sees God and creation in terms of Professor [Albert North] Whitehead’s philosoph[loosely, process theology], this difference touches precisely what does not matter.

(C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock Eerdmans (1970), p 46)

The Westminster Confession's doctrine of the clarity of Scripture (1:7) goes hand in hand with its inspiration, infallibility, and

authority. Yet it implies that not all parts of the Scriptures are equally clear or full. Here we must follow Calvin's great motto that where God makes an end of teaching, we should make an

end of trying to be wise.(11) With Augustine and E. J. Young, the revered teacher of our senior faculty members, we recognize that

the exegetical question of the length of the days of Genesis 1 may be an issue which cannot be, and therefore is not intended by God to be, answered in dogmatic terms. To insist that it must

comes dangerously close to demanding from God revelation which he has not been pleased to bestow upon us, and

responding to a threat to the biblical world view with weapons that are not crafted from the words which have proceeded out of

the mouth of God.

http://www.wts.edu/news/creation.html

Westminster Theological Seminary

Bible is not a science textbook

• The whole point of scripture is to bring us to a knowledge of Christ --- and having come to know him (and all that this implies), we should come to a halt and not expect to learn more. Scripture provides us with spectacles through which we may view the world as God’s creation and self-expression; it does not, and was never intended, to provide us with an infallible repository of astronomical and medical information.

John Calvin1509-1564