Is it wrong to pay attention to Sarah Palin? Some people have the idea that if we ignore her, it’ll starve her of oxygen and she’ll disappear. Well, with her new book out, she’s getting the oxygen whether we pay attention or not. So I think it’s best to confront La Palin directly, unpleasant though it be.
The quote that got my attention was this:
— On her belief in creationism and how she debated McCain manager Steve Schmidt about it: “But your dad’s a science teacher,” Schmidt objected. “Yes.” “Then you know that science proves evolution,” added Schmidt. “Parts of evolution,” I said. “But I believe that God created us and also that He can create an evolutionary process that allows species to change and adapt.” Schmidt winced and raised his eyebrows. In the dim light, his sunglasses shifted atop his hear. I had just dared to mention the C-word: creationism. But I felt I was on solid factual ground.
But she’s not.
What she’s describing is theistic evolution, which is sort of like splitting the difference between science and religion. It’s now the philosophy of choice for believers who can no longer ignore the torrents of evidence for evolution, but who don’t like its inevitably atheistic implications. So they acknowledge that evolution is true, but then they say “But surely a god must have been involved somewhere. Maybe he invented evolution! Yeah, that’s it.”
Okay. So besides cowardice, what’s wrong with theistic evolution? Two things:
Lack of evidence. Is there any evidence that a god exists and made evolution? No? Well, all righty then.
That doesn’t stop believers from dreaming him up anyway, and explaining the lack of evidence by saying that he wants to hide himself because
– he wants us to live by faith
– we don’t seek after him earnestly enough, and
– he’s shy.
Funny thing about that — that’s the same explanation I use for the apparent lack of evidence for subterranean mountain goats on Venus. They’re there, I tells ya! but we never see them because scientists refuse to look for them in earnest. Plus the mountain goats hide when we turn our telescopes toward them. How do they know when our telescopes are trained on them? They’re omniscient.
Hmm. Seems like the only way you can have a decent conspiracy theory is by crediting someone with omniscience.
The lack of evidence leads us to point number 2:
Occam’s pesky Razor. This general (and very useful) principle states that there’s no reason to accept a more complex explanation when a simpler one will do. Evolution explains biological complexity and similarity between animals just fine all by itself. You could slap a god on top of it (and a walrus, and a monkey, and fries to go), but this doesn’t really do a better job of explaining things than evolution all by itself, so Occam’s Razor says we lose nothing by cutting it out.
Trying to throw a god into the mix really misses the point of evolution: the process isn’t directed by anyone. If a god were in charge of evolution, it would be the most cruel and unfeeling being imaginable. How many millions of beings had to suffer and die from disease so that our bodies could evolve an immune system? How many had to eat each other so they could evolve sharp vision, long fangs, thick skin, fast legs, good brains, poisons, spikes, or any of the hundreds of other methods they use to survive? Saying a god set up this wasteful and savage system means that he’s sent untold billions of souls to the meat grinder, when he could have magicked up an Eden that was perfect to start with.
That reminds me: How do the theistic evolutionists reconcile evolution with Eden? Not very well, I’m afraid. But that’s another story.
15 November 2009 at 6:15 pm
Reading your first point about lack of evidence somehow reminded me of that approach to dating "He's Just Not That Into You." It made me giggle to think that maybe a god exists but…he's just not that into us. Now that's disappointing! Surely the fact that he doesn't return my calls just means he's playing hard to get, right…because deep down he really likes me.
And while I'm on the subject, if god is the impetus behind evolution, we women sure could have used some spikes.
16 November 2009 at 2:27 am
In general (and you've done it in other posts) you can't use Occam's razor to show something is false, only to rank models of equal predictive power. Hence you can't prove the hypothesis that "there is a god and He doesn't intervene in the universe in any observable way" is false (as you imply in the title) with Occam's razor or any other empirical method, but you can show that it is a relatively poor model. I guess "Why theistic evolution is a poor model" doesn't have the same punch to it, though.
The judeo-christian rationalisation is obviously going to be inconsistent, but something along the lines of "an entity (call it God) initialised the universe with its physical laws and acted as a source of entropy at the quantum level thereafter, leading to the evolution of today's species" is entirely consistent with current theory (afaik): all you've done is given a label to something other than saying it "just is".
Rigour, Daniel, rigour!
16 November 2009 at 3:32 am
I did toss up putting the title as "Why theistic evolution is almost certainly false" in a nod to Richard Dawkins, as he used those two words as a chapter title in 'The God Delusion'.
But in the end I plumped for the current wording as a nod to Jerry Coyne's book 'Why Evolution Is True". The lesson here is: Choose your allusion. Which could be a nod to Guns 'N' Roses.
But yes, your caveat is noted. TE is a comparatively poor model that makes big claims with no evidence.
17 November 2009 at 5:39 pm
Before I jump in and, with uncharacteristic boldness, tell you that I think you're wrong, I want to check something:
When you talk about 'theistic evolution', are you referring only to Palin's quasi-ID view, or do you also include Ken Miller-esque assertions of compatibility between 'straight' evolution and theism?
18 November 2009 at 10:36 pm
I haven't read 'Finding Darwin's God' yet, so help me out. What are Miller's claims?
20 November 2009 at 2:58 pm
I haven’t read his book either; I’ve only seen his presentation on ‘The Collapse of Intelligent Design’. When I say Miller-esque, I mean those theistic evolutionists who don’t actually modify the theory in any way to accommodate their religious views. Miller is one of the strongest [i]opponents[/i] of ID, and doesn’t make any attempt to argue that evolutionary theory is deficient in any sense. For these people, ‘theistic evolution’ isn’t any different from straight evolution, it is merely an assertion of compatibility between their religious beliefs and their scientific ones.
21 November 2009 at 12:42 am
I think Miller's position is exactly what I'm talking about here.
If he's arguing that belief in a god is not incompatible with evolution, then strictly speaking, he's right. Atheism is one implication of evolution, but by no means an inescapable one.
Belief in the Tooth Fairy is not strictly incompatible with evolution either. Nor is belief in a god incompatible with general relativity. The theory simply doesn't address the issue. You almost wonder why people bring it up, except that they like the idea that a god exists, and they're trying to hold onto it, even though there's no solid evidence for it, and better alternatives exist.
At some point, it begins to look like grasping.
I understand grasping. I grasped for a while. My understanding that gods probably don't exist did not come easily. But I decided to man up and accept that it was the most likely scenario, given the evidence that we have.
That smart people like Miller, who knows a lot more than I do about evolution, and has all the evidence before him, still decides to hold out for a deity is rather sobering to me.
22 November 2009 at 12:38 am
There's one more thing.
The 'Miller-esque' position could be summed up as "Even granted evolution, it's still possible that there's a god." But notice something: when you've said that, that's all you can say about it. That one sentence is the outer limit of what you can say on the topic, without going outside the evidence. You can't go on to talk about the character of this god or its demands.
Unfortunately, people don't take it this way. They just use the argument as an excuse to believe in their favourite god, because hey, it might exist. And so they pray, get baptised, go to church, fly into buildings, and do all the things they think their god requires. People who advocate this 'not incompatible' argument are in fact enablers.
22 November 2009 at 11:20 am
These are all just problems with theism in general, not specific to evolution (which is kind of what I was getting at.)
Since theistic evolution isn't any different from evolution in its material implications, any evidence of God actively interfering would actually defeat the idea. Occam's Razor can't be used as a shortcut through the discussion because folks like Miller aren't positing God as a neccessary of their hypothesis; they assert his existence for other reasons which stand or fall on their own.
I'm not arguing for the coherence of theism here, I just don't see how evolution changes the landscape of the debate at all. All of the problems of theistic evolution are problems that exist -without- evolution. Evolution undercuts the teleological argument, yes, but that was a crap argument to begin with. Aside from that, it has no more 'atheistic implications' than gravity.
23 November 2009 at 1:34 pm
Now I'm wondering if you've become a deist!
Occam's Razor can't be used as a shortcut through the discussion because folks like Miller aren't positing God as a neccessary of their hypothesis; they assert his existence for other reasons which stand or fall on their own.
I have to ask: what reasons do they give? Because I'm still waiting for one that doesn't involve clinging to preconceptions.
Look, I agree with what you're saying on a philosophical level. The problem is that this debate is playing out differently in the practical sphere. Out there, people (on both sides of the debate) do see evolution as a threat to religion. So if evolution doesn't really preclude a god, why do so many people think it does? Or if we can do no more than declare that a god is 'not impossible', why do so many people take this as license to cling to their favourite dogma?
It would be wrong for us to say that evolution doesn't figure into the whole god argument — clearly it does. Evolution does provide an alternative to god-belief — one that works without resorting to metaphysics.
24 November 2009 at 3:34 pm
Nah, not a deist. I'm probably more of a radical finitist (when I'm in a religious mood anyway.)
I have no idea what reasons Miller personally gives, since I've only ever seen his anti-ID arguments, not his pro-God ones. From what I understand, he has some philosophical reasons, and I suspect the rest stem from spiritual experiences.
I think those are really the only two categories of reasons that work for religion. There are no evidenciary grounds for belief in God, so it's really only philosophy and revelation that's left. Personally, I don't find any of the philosophical arguments convincing, but that's just me.
Spiritual experience is trickier. I still think they can form a rational basis for religious belief (and I'd think that even if I was an atheist.) At any rate, all of these things operate independent of evolution.
In a practical sphere, the people who have trouble with evolution are the ones who want to harmonise it with an incompatible belief in creation myths, not with theism itself. I guess it also has a tendency to undercut the teleological assumption, but that's more a belief about humanity than it is about God.
The ID crowd bothers me as much as it does you, but if somebody like Miller can maintain his religious views without selling out in his science, then I don't have a problem with that.
26 November 2009 at 4:49 am
I agree with you as to the evidentiary and philosophical weaknesses of theism. Thanks for your candour.
But you must also realise that the revelatory avenue is weak too. Just because we have a feeling about something doesn't mean that it's true. It's really easy for us to be wrong about that stuff. Surely you realise this?
30 November 2009 at 11:48 am
I'm more curious about what triggered your change of belief system after so long, from one extreme to another???
30 November 2009 at 12:47 pm
Well, first off, I don't think of atheism as extreme. It's quite a fitting position to take, given the paucity of evidence on the god side.
For the whole story of my deconversion, check the label 'Deconversion Stories'.
Oh, and welcome! Comment often.
30 November 2009 at 12:56 pm
I would have thought atheism was stronger than a weaker form of agnosticism, where most of us tend to be positioned, because don't forget there is actually no proof either way. Arguably atheism is the most challenging position to take in the debate; I certainly can't quite get there.
30 November 2009 at 2:12 pm
Well, remember that atheism isn't a denial of gods. That would be a tough position to take. Rather, atheists (that I have known) say that gods are unlikely given the evidence we have.
don't forget there is actually no proof either way.
It doesn't work like that. The burden of evidence is on the claimant. It's like with unicorns. We don't have to prove that unicorns don't exist, if we don't believe in them. Instead, if someone wants to claim that unicorns exist, they need to bring the evidence.
People sometimes claim to be absolutely certain (beyond the shadow of a doubt!) that their god exists. But they don't have solid evidence for it, so I don't believe them. If they come up with the goods, I'll change my mind. But I'm not holding my breath.
30 November 2009 at 3:13 pm
Ye-owch. Your blog often suggests a sharp reaction against religion – after previously living with it as a set of core beliefs -rather than just a little doubt or scepticism. Despite any agnostic tendencies that I have, I suspect I will be hedging my bets in old age.
30 September 2013 at 9:26 am
It takes just a much faith to believe that we came from nothing having no purpose than to believe that God created us for a purpose. I dont believe in theistic evolution as its either God or mans thinking (evolution). It all comes down to faith and where you put your trust. Creation and evolution are both theories … they cannot be proven. Therefore it takes faith to believe in it.