http://biologos.org/blog/report-on-biologos-reasons-to-believe-dialogue/

I chimed in with my thoughts:

I prefer to use the term Evolutionary Creation rather than Theistic Evolution for at least two reasons:
1. EC makes it crystal clear that we stand in the same position as YEC and OEC in that we all believe “In the beginning God”
2. The noun is creation rather than evolution which indicates a better emphasis, ie we are creationists who also accept evolution not evolutionists who accept theism.
Yes I am probably tilting at windmills using a different definition, but this is one case where IMO it seems important but Biologos is fine by me if and when it gets accepted.

I certainly had not understood that this was their proposal but maybe I missed most of the early posts on the topic.

What do people think of the proposal?

Another very pleasant surprise is that Gregory Arago seems to be taking a much more reasonable position or maybe he is just expressing it in a better manner. He still objects to the use of evolution in contexts other than biology but then I object to the term TE although not in the fashion that he tends to.

I don’t usually attend the award ceremony but this year Francis Collins received the Philip Hauge Abelson award for outstanding service to science and society. He was only given two minutes for an acceptance speech but he did well as usual.

I was surprised that there seemed to be relatively few papers on paleontology and anthropology this year, at least compared to last year. I had thought Ardi would be featured but apparently that’s old news by now. There were many sessions on dealing with climate change. Comments on that will be posted in that thread.

One theme of great interest to me was the 50th anniversary celebration of the laser. Ted Maimon constructed the first laser on May 17, 1960, only a few years after Charles Townes had built the first maser and then published a design for a laser. Several symposia recounted the history of this development and went on to describe the impact of lasers in our world and to discuss future directions.

Ed Moses gave an excellent overview of the National Ignition Facility. Construction of this facility began about 15 years ago and is now poised to achieve fusion within a year or two. They have already successfully fired all the lasers and met the timing targets to impinge all laser pulses on a 5mm gold cylinder. I recall sending one of our x-ray lithography experts to NIF about 10 years ago to participate in a review of the feasibility of this incredibly large project. Their vote of confidence seems to have been well placed. They have built 192 lasers that generate a total of 1.8 megajoules and 500 terawatts of ultraviolet laser energy. Whether or not fusion will ever be an economically viable energy source is still unknown but the science and technology inventions underlying this project will undoubtedly pay off. More information can be found at the NIF website.

Another laser talk by Nobel prize winner David Payne focused on the use of lasers in telecommunications. Erbium doped amplifiers and Ytterbium doped fibers have literally transformed the field. I was impressed with the progress in fiber lasers. Using reflectors on the ends of a short piece of fiber and pumping it in the right way leads to a powerful continuous wave laser. They have now demonstrated a 10kW CW laser and think they can get higher. This is likely to open up lots of opportunities of new applications for lasers.

A topical plenary session by Carol Greider on her 2009 Nobel prize-winning work on telomerase, was very impressive. She described the importance of telomeres, the repeating sets of TTGGGG that terminate each chromosome. These telomeres tend to shorten during each cell division and can ultimately lead to cellular malfunction. She then showed how they designed and carried out experiments to elucidate the role of telomerase, which restores the length of telomeres. Even those of us who weren’t biologists felt we could understand and enjoy the talk.

Another plenary talk of interest was the future of stem cell research. I was particularly interested in the 5 year program recently started on ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) since my father died of ALS. This time they are focusing on astrocytes that surround the motor neurons.

Finally, several ASA’ers helped staff the booth which we share with several other organizations (Zygon, CTNS, and PASTC). There’s usually a slow stream of people coming by to talk. We can’t afford to give out fancy gizmo’s like many of the booths but we can attract those who are interested in science and faith. Those who stopped to talk include those who expressed zero interest, those who didn’t know the two could be connected, aggressive anti-genetic engineering advocates, young-earth creationists, Jewish scientists curious about the approach from Christian perspectives, and many more. We gave out lots of brochures as well as some journals and newsletters. Hopefully we can gain more visibility.

Next year, the AAAS meeting will be in Washington DC. Maybe some of you can come help us there!

One can argue that as an empirical matter ID has failed to demonstrate that living things bear indicia of design.  Many scientists would disagree, but competing interpretations of the data are what good science is all about.  May the best interpretation prevail.  But some scientists go further than advancing competing interpretations of the data and argue that the search for indicia of design in living things is in principle illicit.

The bit about “in principle illicit” interests me in this post. While I agree that science should not include references to the deity as the casual factor and that the most teleology is out of bounds still it seems to me that there should be some name given to studies like ID that use the tools of mathematics and science but that desire to break the above limitations.

Maybe we should call it “Natural Philosophy” to reuse an old term??? Am wondering what Ted as historian of science would think of that or if he might have a better proposal.

Note I am not discussing the validity of ID in terms of demonstrating what they propose, just a name.

I wonder if such a name might quiet down the constant harping on the science issue by ID folks.

An Origins Parable

Over the years, there has been a great deal of blood spilled, or at least ink spilled, over the creation science and origins debates. What follows is an “intelligently designed” attempt to illustrate the differences between various positions on origins, using a somewhat humorous but generally accurate parable. This is presented in the form of position statements on the fictitious but highly controversial “embryology versus Bible” debate.

BACKGROUND

The science of embryology says that a baby is formed through natural processes, starting with the “conception” when a sperm cell joins with an egg cell. These two cells join their DNA and subdivide into multiple cells, which becomes a fetus. Over time, the fetus grows in size through cellular division, and various biological structures gradually develop into distinctive body parts. After approximately nine months, a normal pregnancy will come to full term, and the baby is born.

By contrast, the Bible declares that babies are made by God. Psalm 139:13-14 (NIV) declares, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” Also, “Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things” (Isaiah 44:24); and “Did not he that made me in the womb make him? and did not one fashion us in the womb?” (Job 31:15).

Does God create babies, or are they formed through gradual biological processes? The following statements outline various theological positions in this controversy.

ATHEISM / MATERIALISM

Babies are formed through purely natural processes of biological development. These processes can be studied and examined scientifically, and follow regular patterns of natural cause and effect. There is no reason to think that a divine being or miraculous intervention are required in order to help this process along. Physical matter is all there is, and nature is quite capable of getting the job done without the action of a god or gods.

NEW ATHEISM

Same as above, and anyone who still believes God is involved in the process of human birth is either a lunatic, an idiot, or both.

YOUNG EMBRYO CONCEPTIONISM (YEC) with APPEARANCE OF AGE and CATASTROPHISM

The godless embryologists tell us that babies are formed through naturalistic processes in the absence of God. This is known as “materialism”. They also mistakenly believe that babies are formed gradually over a process of many months, which is based on their naturalistic assumption of “uniformitarianism” – the belief that processes of biological development only take place uniformly and gradually. Yet they have no explanation for all the complex interactions that lead to the development of the various systems in our bodies.

Holy scripture, on the other hand, declares that God knits us together in our mother’s womb, and that He is the creator and maker of our physical bodies as well as our souls. Who are we to believe, human scientists with limited and incomplete knowledge, or God who knows all things and has declared Himself to be our Maker?

Since God is all-powerful, there is no reason to believe that He needed all those months and laborious activity in order to create a human body. Whereas secular, anti-Christian science declares that it takes nine months for a baby to form, the Christian assumption of “catastophism” says that things don’t have to necessarily happen slowly over long periods of time, but can actually develop quickly through a rapid succession of stages. New research indicates that babies may actually be formed in about ten seconds through a rapid process of development, not the nine months as generally assumed by materialistic scientists. All the presumed length of time and gradual steps of development over months of time, including the detailed history implanted in the memory of the mother, sonagram pictures, and doctor’s office records, actually just indicate an appearance of age and not actual age. God creates babies in ten seconds and implants a supernatural soul just before their eventual birth, but due to the effects of “appearance of age” it merely seems like it has taken place over a long period of time.

OLD EMBRYO CONCEPTIONISM (OEC)

The science of embryology is generally correct with respect to the physical sequence of the creation of babies, including the time of development from conception to birth, and the processes of fertilization, implantation, and gradual biological development. Yet science cannot explain exactly how the body of a fetus develops new body parts and internal organs, the development of the complexities of the eye, the circulatory and immune systems, etc. All they can do is presume that nature is capable of doing these things in the absence of God, without providing any sort of complete explanation.

Scripture provides the answer to these problems that continue to stump materialistic scientists. It says that God forms us in our mother’s womb, but it also says that God “fashions” us, using language similar to the working of an artisan, such as a potter. A potter uses raw materials such as clay and the spinning motion of a potter’s wheel, yet he imparts intelligent action at various points in order to shape the clay. In the same way, naturalistic forces and materials by themselves are unable to account for all the amazing complexity of the human body. God intercedes at various points during the process of fetal development in order to miraculously create elements of bodily function, yet in between times, He allows the natural process of biological development to proceed in normal fashion. Most notably is the injection of the human soul, which is an act of divine fiat and cannot be explained in naturalistic terms.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN (ID)

The intricate processes and systems in the human body are amazingly complex and cannot be accounted for in terms of materialistic assumptions. Systems such as the human eye, DNA, immune system, etc., have surprising levels of complexity and specificity which are best viewed in terms of information theory, using Shannon’s theorems. The degree of complex specified information (CSI) present in DNA and many other biological structures and systems are best explained as a designed system that originated from some intelligent source, rather than through a series of random, chance events.

Intelligent design is a scientific claim about design being evidenced by the information content, not a theological or philosophical claim. ID makes no claims as to the identity of the “intelligent designer” — it might have been from a God or gods, an alien, or possibly an intelligent stork that is capable of producing these designed features within an otherwise natural process. ID also makes no statement as to the length of fetal development — it could be ten seconds or nine months, but that conclusion is beyond the kind of scientific assertion that ID is able to make.

THEISTIC EMBRYOLOGY (TE)

The science of embryology is very well developed and has a great deal of accurate knowledge of bodily processes inherent in the development and birth of a child. While science cannot (and perhaps never will) have complete knowledge of every detailed step in this developmental process, the general conclusion that human fetal development occurs through essentially natural processes seems to be an inescapable conclusion based on the evidence at hand. There is no reason to assume that supernatural miracles are necessary in order to progress a fetus from one stage of development to another, and science continues to fill in gaps in our limited human knowledge as to the details of this process.

However, science is limited to studying only the natural, “secondary” causes and effects, and has nothing whatsoever to say about the presence or absence of a divine Creator. The belief in a divine Creator is a theological position, which is entirely justified based on the evidence, but which can neither be conclusively proven nor disproven by science. Among the evidences that point to a divine creator is the very fact that something exists rather than nothing, and the fact that life bears evidence of a beginning and progress toward a final end, rather than an eternal self-existence. As theists, we absolutely believe that God is the Creator and sustainer of all things, including fetal development, and that He is the “primary cause” of all things. The fact that He chooses to create human bodies through a progression of apparently natural, secondary causes is not surprising, because that is how all of nature appears to work from a scientific point of view.

Theistic Embryologists differ over the degree or manner of God’s involvement in fetal development. Some believe that God’s providence is universally and completely present within and through all things at all times, so that the development of a fetus is simultaneously the work of Providence (primary cause) and natural processes (secondary causes). Others prefer a view known as “front-loading” or “fully gifted conception”, which holds that God only needed to create the initial blueprint of how cells can fertilize, reproduce, and develop. After that, no more interventions or miraculous acts are required to progress the fetus through its development. TEs also differ on whether the soul is a supernatural creation that is implanted into the physical human body, or whether the soul is an emergent property of humankind.

Dr. Scott went out of her way to distinguish between religion and science. Surprisingly (to me), she from the outset made room for religion. When asked explicitly about her religious faith later in the Q&A, she distanced herself from the question and claimed that it had no place in this forum. This was a talk about science education and not about her private religious beliefs. It seemed clear to me that the questioner was pushing for a “Darwinian evolution leads to atheism” type position and Dr. Scott refused to go there. The talk was sponsored in part by a new student group at CSU, Leaders in Free Thought (LIFT), who were probably disappointed with all of this. I was glad to see it and it clearly set the tone of the rest of the talk. Given this I could have seen a local ASA chapter (not yet existent) or our CSU Christian Faculty Network help sponsor this talk.

Interestingly, during the panel discussion this thread was continued. The question of religious belief came up again and all of the panelists were quick to say that education about evolution had nothing necessarily to do with religious belief. One panelist was a self-admitted religious person but from a non-Christian perspective. During the panel Q&A a couple of apparent evangelical questioners asked about how the teachers handled or should handle students who were convinced young-earth creationists (YEC) or intelligent design (ID) advocates. Somewhat shocking to me, all agreed that the issue was not whether the students agreed with what they were being taught, but whether they understood the material. Frankly, I was pleased to hear this and was glad that public school educators respected the private opinions of their students and their families. Their goal was to teach science (at least the content side–there was a significant emphasis on the importance of teaching scientific methodology) as what scientists currently think.

There was a certain inconsistency, however, and I attempted to raise this in the Q&A time. I’m not sure I was clear, because the responses were somewhat generic. Both Dr. Scott’s talk and the panel began with a reference to surveys that indicated that most Americans don’t accept evolution and that this indicated a failure of American science education. The inconsistency that I see is that “accepting evolution” doesn’t seem to be the goal of science education if all that is important is that students understand what scientists think. Thus, the framing of the question is critical here. Is the question “Do you accept evolution?” or “Do you understand evolution?” The only answer I got was that in polls the framing of the question is critical.

I’d be curious about what ASAers think about this issue. Is the goal of science education (at least the content side) merely knowing what scientists think or is it accepting it as true (within the limitations that all scientific knowledge has a certain tentativity to it)? At what point in the science education or science practice process does the requirement that scientists accept the conclusions of science kick in? Granting of the Ph.D.? Granting of tenure? Peer review? Obviously, the answers differ depending on the institution and the nature of the research journal.

The title of Dr. Scott’s lecture was “Not Over After Dover” and was a review of the various court rulings forbidding the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in the public school. While in general I am not very sympathetic with demarcationist arguments and I’m not at all convinced that the current views of separation of church and state are the right interpretation of the Constitution, I was nearly in total agreement with the scientific arguments presented (critical of YEC and ID). Her clear definition of evolution, her distinction between common ancestry and various mechanisms of evolution, and her rebuttals of Dembski and Behe were all things that I agreed with and have used in my own presentations. In general, I would call NCBE a friend of ASA.

I had two pieces of advice for Dr. Scott.

1. That she recognize that the search for and recognition of intelligent agents is scientific. After all, her background is physical anthropology. Anthropology, archaeology, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), forensics, etc. are all scientific. Social and human sciences all deal with intelligent agents. Admit it, and then explain why ID is different. When I mentioned this, her response was positive. Her explanation had to do with the identity and scientific accessibility of the designer. We recognize ID because we are familiar with designers that design similar things. All the disciplines mentioned follow that pattern. I think this is close to what Randy Isaac is getting at in his review of  Meyer’s Signature in the Cell (most recent post in that series). God as designer is unlike any designer we know. Not only is his handiwork designed, he upholds and controls the very substances things are made of, the laws that govern it all, and any evolutionary history that may have led to their being.

2. That she appeal to evangelical supporters of evolution (ASA, Francis Collins, Denis Lamoureux, B.B. Warfield, John Stott, perhaps Tim Keller, etc.). Appeal to Roman Catholic or even mainline Protestant thinkers, doesn’t really help convince an evangelical. The evangelical needs to see fellow evangelicals that they trust in order to move ahead here. Appeal to Catholic or possibly theologically liberal theologians does no good. Even appeal to ASA, Collins, Lamoureaux, and others willing to “give up” a historical Adam and Eve or a historical Fall will not be accepted. While I’m not questioning anyone’s evangelicalism in saying this, it is largely the case that once you have given up a historical Adam and Eve that many (maybe most) evangelicals will suggest that you have moved significantly in the direction toward the theological liberal. The fact that there are examples of thinkers on this issue who don’t do this (Warfield, Stott, Keller, myself, etc.) will enable some to accept evolution. Dr. Scott agreed with my assessment here but pointed out that her motivation was primarily to show that accepting evolution was not inherently atheistic. In other words, it was part of her setting the context that being pro-evolution is not to be anti-religious.

We continue to experiment with the best way to encourage participation. All members of this blog currently have Contributor status. This means that you can create a blog post (rather than just make comments). To do this, first log in, then click on the Site admin link on the right panel, and then under the Posts heading at the top left, select Add New. An edit window comes up and you can type your post. Please  contribute a new post only when you are starting a new thread; otherwise keep Commenting on existing posts. Posts contributed in this way will be moderated, but I hope to have a moderation policy akin to what we had on the old email list, i.e. if it’s on-topic (faith-science) and respectful in tone, we will post it. If there seems to be an excessive delay in your post appearing, feel free to contact me by email (grayt at lamar dot colostate dot edu) to encourage me to get to your post.

Thanks for your participation and for your patience while we work the bugs out of this system.

The picture above illustrates the extreme deforestation of Haiti. You can literally see the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic from space. How and why did this happen and what are its effects? Haiti is one of the most deforested countries in the World with only 2% forestation. The reason why it’s that way is because the trees have been cut down for fuel and specifically to make charcoal because it’s one of the few commodities that can be sold to get the essentials of life. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Here’s an interesting blog post that explains part of why Haiti is so impoverished, the disappearance of the coffee crop and Creole pigs:

As recently as 1949, Haiti had been the third-largest coffee exporter in the world, and the beans had been the main source of the foreign exchange the country needed to develop. Pierre Marcelin gestured out into the surrounding trees as dusk fell, and said: “There are still some coffee bushes out there. But we don’t bother harvesting them anymore.”
The Marcelins offered a comprehensive explanation, with several features. They got quietly but particularly angry when they reached one of their points. “We lost our pigs,” they said, and Milfort and I looked at each other with immediate understanding.

In the early 1980s, African Swine Fever was detected in Haiti, and the United States and other international aid agencies spent $23 million to eradicate nearly 1 million black Creole pigs. But Haitians, and others, still question whether the mass slaughter was necessary. The Haitian black pigs had survived for 500 years and become resistant to disease, and by the time the killing started in 1982 the local pigs had already stopped dying. Critics still argue that the United States was truly only concerned about protecting its own pig industry.

The destruction was devastating to millions of poor rural Haitians. One agronomist estimated the loss at $600 million – in a country where people are lucky to earn a few hundred dollars a year. Compensation was never adequate, and the dictatorship of Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier passed little of it along to people like the Marcelins anyway. Creole pigs had been scavengers. The new replacement pigs from Iowa needed special food and medicine, far beyond what people like the Marcelins could afford. They did have a few of the newer pigs up the road – they offered to show us – but they complained the new animals were weak and prone to disease.

Creole pigs had also been a source of savings, which steadily appreciated as the pigs grew. All over the third world, farm animals serve the same function as a store of value. The mass pig slaughter was roughly equivalent to the collapse of American banks in the early 1930s, before federal deposit insurance, which cost many of our grandparents their life savings.
The destruction of the Creole pigs also had reduced coffee production, the Marcelins explained. They had used pig droppings, high in nitrogen, to fertilize their crops. The imported fertilizer they would need today costs 1000 gourds (about $25) a sack, which they cannot afford.

In addition to the issue with the ill-advised culling of the pigs, Haiti’s agriculture was environmentally unsustainable with its rice crop eradicated:

Rice production and trade in Haiti is affected and influenced by a number of environmental factors. Haiti is a mountainous country that has a relatively small amount of arable land. A significant portion of Haiti’s arable land is being lost every year because of the interrelated environmental problems of deforestation, soil erosion, and decreased rainfall which have all come about because of unsustainable agricultural practices dating back to the agricultural systems established by European settlers and the peasant agriculture which followed. This lost of productive land has intensified stagnation in the agricultural sector, which has lead to the adoption of more intensive, unsustainable agricultural practices which intensify the environmental problems. “Approximately 15,000 hectares of cultivated land have been lost to erosion yearly.”[51]. Haiti is caught in a vicious cycle connecting environmental degradation, poverty, and agricultural stagnation.

Haiti has been through deforested. Its original forest covered 93% of the country, today 3% of that forest remains (see Table 9). In 1873 Samuel Hazard wrote that Haiti’s mountains “with occasional exceptions” are covered with “vegetation of some sort, but principally of the most valuable kinds of tress.”[52] Many of those trees mentioned were cleared to make way for sugar cultivation by the Europeans by the mid-seventh century[53]. Lumber was also shipped to Europe (which had been all but completed deforested by this point) for commercial purposes. Later when steam power emerged as the dominant source of power for sugar mills, the forests were depleted so that they could serve as fuel for the mills[54]. Following the Haitian revolution, the plantation system was destroyed, the land was divided into small portions which was owed and cultivated by the peasantry. Constrained by the relatively small amount of arable land apportioned to them, these small farmers cultivated marginal land on the mountains. Over time the use of intensive, unsustainable agricultural practices emerged as the Haitian peasantry has tried to meet its growing subsistence needs in the face of growing population pressures and decreasing soil productivity.

The massive deforestation and unsustainable agricultural practices that have contributed to two problems which threaten the cultivation of rice as well as other crops: soil erosion and a drop in rainfall. The land in the Artibonite where most of the rice is grown, is becoming more dry and less productive every year. This trend seems unlikely to change given the structural reasons maintaining the environmental crisis in Haiti.

In an article published in 2001, Dr. Elizabeth Thomas-Hope summed up the findings of her study on the connections between economic development and the environment in Haiti as follows:

Haiti… not only demonstrated a downward cycle of environmental and economic trends, but also the role of governance in the generation and reinforcement of the relationship between the options available in the environmental resource base and the economic decisions. The characteristics of governance have impacted upon the interrelationship of environment and economy at all levels of scale, from the household to national government, with intervening factors involving access to markets, issues of resource ownership, and the capacity to effectively manage both human and environmental resources.[58]

It seems unlikely that Haiti’s government, with its weak institutions will be able to address the country’s environmental problems under current conditions.

And that was before the earthquake… Scripture teaches us that we are to be stewards of the land, even giving it a sabbath rest. As scientists we also can help here to try to minimize the law of unintended consequences and help with sustainable development. There are 10,000 aid agencies in Haiti that haven’t properly dealt with the grinding poverty. There’s got to be a better way.

Many, many people seem to misunderstand the relationship between Intelligent Design and Common Descent. Some view ID as being equivalent to Progressive Creationism (sometimes called Old-Earth Creationism), others seeing it as being equivalent to Young-Earth Creationism. I have argued before that the core of ID is not about a specific theory of origins. In fact, many ID’ers hold a variety of views including Progressive Creationism and Young-Earth Creationism.

But another category that is often overlooked are those who hold to both ID and Common Descent, where the descent was purely naturalistic. This view is often considered inconsistent. My goal is to show how this is a consistent proposition…

I see no reason that the descent has to be purely naturalistic. It seems to me that most EC/TEs accept that God is in control of the development of life.

A couple of interesting comments from UcD

I don’t see a large philosophical or theological gap between theistic evolution and common descent ID. What does common descent ID demand theologically that theistic evolution will not allow?
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In its most basic form, all ID says is that some things are designed. Of course that is not incompatible with common descent. That is not incompatible with
anything. That’s why people say it’s not scientific.
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As Dr. Behe stated:

Scott refers to me as an intelligent design creationist, even though I clearly write in my book Darwin’s Black Box (which Scott cites) that I am not a creationist and have no reason to doubt common descent. In fact, my own views fit quite comfortably with the 40% of scientists that Scott acknowledges think evolution occurred, but was guided by God. Where I and others run afoul of Scott and the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is simply in arguing that intelligent design in biology is not invisible, it is empirically detectable. The biological literature is replete with statements like David DeRosier’s in the journal Cell: More so than other motors, the flagellum resembles a machine designed by a human (1). Exactly why is it a thought-crime to make the case that such observations may be on to something objectively correct?