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Paul Nelson, Discovery Institute Fellow, Philosopher of Biology and Intelligent Design proponent (just so no one is confused) has posted a review on Uncommon Descent, the pro-Intelligent Design weblog of William Dembski, Denise O’Leary and Friends (just so no one is confused) of Elliott Sober‘s new book, Evidence and Evolution, the Logic Behind the Science. Just so no one is confused, Elliott Sober is a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconson – Madison, and has written a number of papers critical of Intelligent Design. This is what Nelson had to say in his review:

Here’s a non-ironic blessing: May God grant us thoughtful critics. Sober has long been one such critic of ID, not to mention of much evolutionary reasoning, and I welcome this book for its challenging arguments.

So here’s what I like about this, so far: You have someone who critically analyzes arguments on various sides of an issue, and someone on one side of an issue who appreciates this. How refreshing!

That being said, the Cambridge site provides an excerpt from Chapter 1 that is very intriguing. Consider this:

If the evidence that science assembles does not provide certainty about which theories are true, what, then, does the evidence tell us? It seems entirely natural to say that science uses the evidence at hand to say which theories are probably true. This statement leaves room for science to be fallible and for the scientific picture of the world to change when new evidence rolls in. As sensible as this position sounds, it is deeply controversial. The controversy I have in mind is not between science and nonscience; I do not mean that scientists view themselves as assessing how probable theories are while postmodernists and religious zealots debunk science and seek to undermine its authority. No, the controversy I have in mind is alive within science. For the past seventy years, there has been a dispute in the foundations of statistics between Bayesians and frequentists. They disagree about many issues, but perhaps their most basic disagreement concerns whether science is in a position to judge which theories are probably true.

Another book to add to my wish list…

Quixote has an interesting post on his site on the expanding universe, dark energy, and how much science doesn’t know:

A philosopher would recognize in the language of this discussion a metaphysics that nearly tears any pretense of scientific materialism to shreds. What’s funny is that these scientists don’t seem to realize it. For example, assessing the current lack of scientific explanation for the accelerating expansion, Harvard astronomer Christopher Stubbs tentatively allows, “It could well be that there’s some big piece of reality that we don’t fully understand.” Gee. Ya think?

He closes the post with a quote from Stuart A. Kauffman’s Breaking the Galilean Spell:

… The Galilean spell that has driven so much science is the faith that all aspects of the natural world can be described by such laws. Perhaps my most radical scientific claim is that we can and must break the Galilean spell. Evolution of the biosphere, human economic life, and human history are partially indescribable by natural law. This claim flies in the face of our settled convictions since Galileo, Newton, and the Enlightenment.

Kauffman is somewhat of a mixed bag; as I commented on Quixote’s site, at times he is unusually perceptive:

The first injury is the artificial division between science and the humanities. C. P. Snow wrote a famous essay in 1959, “The Two Cultures,” in which he noted that the humanities were commonly revered as “high culture” while the sciences were considered second-class knowledge. Now their roles are reversed: on many university campuses, those who study the humanities are often made to feel like second-class citizens. Einstein or Shakespeare, we seem to believe, but not both in the same room. This split is a fracture down the middle of our integrated humanity.

I believe it is important that this view is wrong. Science itself is more limited by the un-prestatable, unpredictable creativity in the universe than we have realized, and, in any case, science is not the only path to knowledge and understanding.

He then goes on to decry what he calls a “reductionist scientific worldview,” which says that we live “in a world of fact without values.” Ah, but here’s the thing; his goal in all this is to reinvent the sacred, based on a new worldview where spirituality emerges creatively, in ways we are unable to predict.

But if we cannot even prestate the possibilities, then no compact descriptions of these processes beforehand can exist. These phenomena, then, appear to be partially beyond natural law itself. This means something astonishing and powerfully liberating. We live in a universe, biosphere, and human culture that are not only emergent but radically creative. We live in a world whose unfoldings we often cannot prevision, prestate, or predict—a world of explosive creativity on all sides. This is a central part of the new scientific worldview.

Like John Lennon, Kauffman is a dreamer, and like Lennon, he is incredibly naive. He means to redefine science to include this emergent creative spirituality (because, certainly, a real Creator God cannot exist), moving away from strict modernism, but holding on to a naive belief in progress, saying that we need a new vision of Eden. He actually believes that this new worldview has the potential of healing the rift between science and spirituality, that somehow materialists and supernaturalists will both be happy with his new worldview. I sincerely doubt he’ll have many takers.

The progress myth has failed; science cannot deal with the problem of evil, it only changes its form. We solve one problem only to create others, our cures for depression cause suicides, and our labor-saving devices have resulted in us working more on the average. You can try to embrace evil in a Zen-like fashion, as Kauffman seems to have done, but that too, is unsatisfactory.

The level of denial that Kauffman and others have attained is incredible. If, as Kauffman says, “the science itself compels it,” then see the evidence for what it is – not evidence of some mysterious emergent creativity, but of a continuity of creativity which goes back to the beginning. He is perceptive enough to grasp that there is knowledge which current science cannot acknowledge; but he fails in denying the obvious.

Here’s one of the more creative, over-reaching attempts at framing (aka spinning):

“Stein employs the common dodge of enumerating all the admittedly unanswered questions in evolutionary theory and using this to refute the whole idea. But all scientific knowledge is built this way. A fishnet is made up of a lot more holes than strings, but you can’t therefore argue that the net doesn’t exist. Just ask the fish” (Jeffrey Kluger, “Ben Stein Dukes it Out with Darwin“, TIME magazine, Thursday, Apr. 10, 2008).

Kluger doesn’t say very much in this very brief dismissal of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, but does say just enough to embarrass himself.

Speaking of embarrassing themselves, the National Center for Science Education is doing it’s part, putting up an anti-Expelled site called Expelled Exposed. They’re obviously afraid, of this movie which, as they say, “is not a documentary at all, but anti-science propaganda aimed at creating the appearance of controversy where there is none.” There is no spoon. Apparently the NCSE is now resorting to postmodernism to make their case. The current mantras for scientism appears to be “we aren’t trying to hold water, we’re just catching fish” and “there is no controversy.” Now, sit in the lotus position and chant… What is ironic is that their website only lends credibility to the claims of Expelled, which is focused on the suppression of free thought with regard to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. One reviewer’s impression coming away from the movie was that the science community was “scared to death of God.” Of course, this doesn’t apply to all of science, but I think this is correct with respect to scientism (the worldview that only that which is known through science is valid or real).

Remember, the movie isn’t even out yet. The real fireworks will start Friday… which reminds me, I should probably get my ticket now. I’ll write my own fair and balanced review after I’ve seen it.

I’ve got to admit it’s getting better
A little better all the time
(it can’t get more worse)
- Lennon/McCartney, “Getting Better”

You could say I’ve lost my faith in science and progress…
- Sting, “If I Ever Lose My Faith”

Most people in the Western world probably know who Charles Darwin is, and understand that that he had something to do with formulating the theory of evolution. If they haven’t learned about him in school, they’ve seen his name inside the little walking fish emblems on many cars. It seems lately that he has become something of a poster child for evolution, scorned by some and sainted (in a matter of speaking) by others.  If he were still alive, he’d probably be wishing people would stop talking about him and leave him in peace.

A few days ago I wrote about the arrogance that is attached to modernism, still the pervasive worldview in the West. Modernism, I think, is essential to our current understanding of science, or at the very least is so intertwined that it’s hard to tell them apart. As I wrote, I think this is true of much Evangelical theology as well, where elements of the scientific approach to knowledge has permeated our thinking. Modernism, growing out of the Enlightenment and the rediscovery and molding of Greek philosophy, focused knowledge on the part rather than the whole, on the individual rather than the community. As a result, you could say that Modernism often fails to see the forest for the trees. Modernism also brought us the myth of objectivity, and the fundamental belief in progress.

In NT Wright’s Surprised by Hope, he discusses the myth of progress and it’s impact on the church as well as on society. He had this to say about Darwin, and the rise of Darwinian thought:

… Darwin was himself not so much the great new thinker, coming from nowhere to his radical new idea, but rather the exact product of his times, one particular high-water mark in the onward rush of liberal modernist optimism, himself the product of a particular evolution of Western thought. The eagerness with which his ideas were embraced and reapplied not only in the narrow biological sphere in which they belonged but also in far wider areas such as society and politics indicates well enough the mood of his times.  …  Evolution, in this more general sense of progress, was already widely believed; it was a deeply convenient philosophy for those who wanted to justify their own massive industrial and imperial expansion; Darwin geve it some apparent scientific legitimacy, which was quickly acted upon and which, within half a century, had been used to justify everything from eugenics to war.  

Wright talks about how this notion of progress – that change is ultimately for the better, and that the future is necessarily better than the past – was adopted by the church as well as by science, and social Darwinism became the social gospel, the belief that the meddling of the church could solve the problem of evil. Not that social work (what we call the mercy ministries) isn’t good, but we can see every day in the news that we as a race - and even as Americans – are no less evil than we were 150 years ago.

What I am asking myself is what is probably the foundational post-modern question (or at least should be): “If we were able to remove the elements of modernism, what would we have left of Christianity, and of science?”  It’s one thing, of course, to ask this question (i.e. “deconstruct”) of Christianity, but altogether another thing to ask this of science.  Without the foundational worldview of modernism, could science survive?  If so, what would it look like? 

I have some thoughts, and I think that especially in areas like quantum physics, where cause and effect sometimes breaks down, we are beginning to see some of this.  To quote from yet another song, “The times, they are a changing.” If Darwin was a product of his times, what kind of scientist is a product of our time?  These are some of the things I think about when I should be sleeping.