Last Thursday evening, I saw Ben Stein’s documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed at one of our local Cinemas. After the film, four professors from Franklin and Marshal College graciously hosted a discussion panel for a sizable crowd. Under the moderation of Dr. Michael Murray (Humanities and Philosophy), each professor took a few minutes to respond to the documentary. Numerous questioned followed and things remained generally calm.
Although released in a limited number of theaters, according to one source, Expelled brought in over five million dollars in ten days and was ranked sixth in political documentaries. The film is provocative in its effort to give a voice to highly credentialed scientists who have been severely mistreated because they dared to make reference to Intelligent Design in mildly commendable ways.
Stein’s use of historical associations with the founding principles of America, Adolf Hitler’s atrocities and the Berlin Wall will deeply disturb some viewers as it did some of our panel members. Stein, however, is not merely interested in stirring extremes, he passionately (albeit with his typical dry humor) sets forth a case for the dangers of allowing academic elitists to profess commitment to freedom of inquiry and expression when in reality they vigorously suppress it and belittle those who disagree with them.
Not surprisingly, in an unintended way, many critics of Expelled substantiated the claims of the film with their biased rhetoric against it. In the movie reviews in the Sunday News of Lancaster, Expelled was ridiculed and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (well-known for its glaring mistakes) was praised—-go figure!
It is alarming when the academy launches irrational hostility toward reputable scientists who dare to attribute intelligent design to biological structures. C. S. Lewis foresaw all of this when he warned against the reign of philosophical naturalism in the academy. According to Lewis, naturalism is the view that the physical world is a self-contained system that works by blind, unbroken natural laws. Naturalistic philosophy declares that nothing beyond nature could have any conceivable relevance to what happens in nature. Let’s be honest: There is not one shred of scientific evidence for this conclusion. Only faith could allow you to believe it.
The real need in the discussion about intelligent design is, as one professor noted, “a separation of the philosophy from the real science, both in order to have an honest, unbiased scientific enterprise, and to protect the public from getting the false impression that scientific evidence has shown that the evolutionary process is our true creator.”
Steven W. Cornell 23 West Cottage Ave Millersville, PA. 17551
Supporting sources:
http://www.discovery.org/expelled/
Opposing sources:
http://www.expelledexposed.com http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=ben-steins-expelled-review-michael-shermer
Re: College professors host viewing of Expelled
Good post. A well written context for understanding this debate.
an important step
I think Ben Stein has done something important here. By using film to take the (lack of proper) debate into the cultural arena he has asked (more or less) the right questions.
Too many debates about evolution and creation are polarised and ill-informed of the philosophical worldview assumptions that underpin most people’s views.
Until we understand more about worldiews, paradigms and plausibility structures, intellectual empasse is always the result.
However, if this area of understanding can be opened up, the real reasons for the lack of debate about evolution and intelligent design can be understood. The philosophy can be seperated, within discussion, from the finer details of the science.
Lesslie Newbigin writes well about some of the themes raised here in "Proper Confidence: faith, doubt and certainty in christian discipleship" and is particularly good in exposing the failure of modernism as a cohesive philosphy — whether taken up by scientists in defence of rationalism or "philosophical naturalism" etc, OR by Christians or other fundamentalist religionists in defence of creationism or "innerrancy" etc.
shalom! - john (eternalpurpose.org.uk)
Personally, I have never
Personally, I have never understood what all the fuss is about. Why can’t naturalistic scientists be left alone to do naturalistic science? I find it hardly surprising that they get upset by the interference of people (even if some of them are reputable scientists) who believe that supernatural causation must somehow be part of the process. Science is by definition a naturalistic procedure. It’s like arguing with a mechanic that my car doesn’t start because gremlins have got into it.
I can see that there is a common perception that naturalistic science precludes faith, but I’m not sure that the answer is to attack scientific methodology - this is an issue of culture not of science. In my view the attempt to ascribe biological structures to intelligent design is misguided - indeed, I would argue that the theological motivation for the intelligent design argument is fundamentally misconceived. It makes much more sense to see these are parallel or analogous types of discourse rather than as interlocking or interdependent explanatory narratives.
Re: Personally, I have never
Amen!
Re: Personally, I have never
Andrew, when I hear this phrase I’m apt to wonder whether this might not be because the author has failed to listen properly to (the concerns and views of) those who (have begun to) understand what "the fuss" is about.
Have you read any of the significant texts which are forwarding the debate about Intelligent Design paradigm?
Re: Personally, I have never
Here is a review of Expelled from National Review Online.
Re: Personally, I have never
I’m sure you’re right, John. The operative word in my comment was ‘personally’!
Nevertheless, there are reasons why I have not jumped into the swirling and treacherous waters of the creationism / intelligent design / evolution debate.
1. I think that the creationist and intelligent design arguments are a priori misconceived. I do not believe that they are required by a reading of Genesis 1-2; and I regard them as theologically incoherent and basically dualistic. I see no reason why God should have left a few cracks in an otherwise self-explanatory, self-sustaining creation, cracks which can only be held together by the duct tape of direct divine causation. I do not expect God to be visible to the sciences.
To give an analogy: The bus I am travelling on breaks down; I have to walk the last part of the journey home, but because of that I bump into an old friend who is on his way to hospital to have a lump scanned; so I pray for him, and when he gets to the hospital, the scan shows that the lump has disappeared. I would argue that neither the coincidence of meeting this man nor the apparent effectiveness of the prayer can be demonstrated scientifically: they are highly meaningful and indeed real events for my friend and me, but they are necessarily invisible to science. Science cannot give a rational account of the chance meeting; and if it cannot explain the disappearnce of the lump, it will simply mark it as an anomaly: it cannot replicate the event, so there’s nothing more that can be done.
My assumption is that the meaning that we attach to our existence relates to scientific accounts of human origins in much the same way.
2. On the whole I find scientific accounts of our origins so stunning that for me they offer a far more compelling and awe-inspiring argument for creation than the blinkered apologetic case put forward by creationists.
3. I am not a scientist and connect expect adequately to evaluate the arguments for myself. Even if I could, it is a rapidly changing field of study and I would have very little confidence that what now looks like a crack in the theoretical edifice won’t be explained away in a few years time.
4. Even if scientists were to reach a consensus that the theory of evolution is wrong, I would still expect them to keep looking for a coherent and complete naturalistic explanation of human origins. As I said, I don’t expect God to show up in the theory.
Might then, your god be "too small"?
I understand your reticence at not baptising yourself in what appear to be treacherous currents. But such an awareness ought surely to imply the extension of a measure of respect to those theological and philosophical writers and scientists who are venturing forth there?
(Withal, given your influence and standing on the site, I cannot allow you to hide too far behind the ‘personally’ tag…thus:)
No doubt you might reiterate that correspondence such as this is exactly why you, personally (sic) don’t get much involved in it, Andrew, and I won’t castigate you for that…
However, for anyone who is interested in grasping what "all the fuss" is about from those entangled within the ID phenomena, such as the brilliant, if flawed, William Dembski, as well as the pioneering Micheal Behe and the combative Philip Johnson, as well as less well-known figures such as Micheal John Denton, Frank Tipler, Robert Koons, Marcel-Paul Shutzenburger and David Berlinski, I highly recommend "Uncommon Dissent," a Reader notably dedicated to Micheal Polanyi — one of the true heroes of post-modernism — for his role in "freeing inquiry from ideology", a brilliant thinker who also gets a good mention in the Leslie Newbiggin text I referred to earlier: "Proper Confidence, faith, doubt and certainty in christian discipleship"
shalom! - john (eternalpurpose.org.uk)
Re: Might then, your god be "too small"?
John, I can’t really do justice to your thoughts without giving this whole matter a lot more thought, so this may seem a little cursory.
1. How much of a difference is there between creationists and ID proponents at this theoretical level? Both argue that science cannot fully account for human origins.
2. I don’t think I’m saying that ‘science and god are separate entities’. In a theistic worldview God and his creation are necessarily ontologically distinct - that much dualism is unavoidable. Science, however, is not an entity - it is an account of how things are. If our account of how things are must entail both natural and supernatural causation, that sounds to me like an epistemological dualism. My assumption - and it is only really an assumption - is that we should expect epistemological coherence from a coherent universe.
That coherence can be described or made meaningful in many different ways, in terms of many different types of discourse. The scientific and the theological are only two types among many - we might add, for example, the poetic or the childish or the mythological. So I don’t think this argument against ID is susceptible to the charge of being dualistic.
3. I’m not sure what you’re saying here. Is it that proponents of ID share the postmodern resistance to totalizing modern scientific narratives? If that is the case, then fine - but I’m not sure they are resisting it on theologically valid grounds. I don’t think that scripture requires a God-of-the-gaps theory. I think that there are better ways of generating an integrated worldview and that ID is intrinsically sub-biblical.
4. No, what I find stunning about the scientific accounts is not that they point to a designer - that seems too simplistic and too easy an apologetic for faith. The biblical God is not a ‘designer’, he is a creator, and I think that that is an important distinction. In any case, I can’t see the ID argument ever escaping from the fundamental ambiguity or uncertainty of faith, and I think it is not a good thing to expect science to take faith into account.
5. My point 3 was not meant to be read prescriptively. I was simply stating my personal position. My problem is that I would take the latest thinking so seriously that it would become obsessive - and would always be inconclusive. The scientific debate over evolution is an important one, but the most I can reasonably hope to do is listen to other people’s opinions, which are bound to be prejudiced one way or another. If I thought that ID was theologically mandated, it might be different, but as it is, I’m not sure I want to get drawn into the conversation. Past experience suggests that I will be left with a lot of suspicions and unanswered questions.
6. Again, I was only talking personally.
7. The ID debate may have exposed philosophical and scientific flaws in current evolutionary thought, but that doesn’t mean that we should expect direct, unequivocal evidence for design. Marxism freed a lot of minds from the ideological tyranny of capitalism, but that didn’t make Marxism ‘right’ or capitalism ‘wrong’: it merely relativized the capitalist worldview.
Perhaps one other point, on reflection. I wonder whether in a postmodern context many of our flawed rational arguments for God might not function better symbolically as part of a more complex story-telling process about the creator. So I would suggest that the ID argument might be more telling if an element of postmodern playfulness, of story-telling, of prophetic sign-posting, were introduced into the stolidly rationalist argumentation. By all means subvert the scientific worldview, but do so principally as an act of re-imagining creation rather than of scientific revisionism.
Tales of the unexpected
Ok, Andrew
I’m not sure that we are saying that must to each other that is useful to us or anyone else with our multiplying threads, so I’ll try to bring my objection to something quite simple:
The ID argument is important. It may be flawed, not least because it inhabits a zone that crosses the boundaries of science, faith, philosophy etc, but it has something to say.
For "laymen," it comes down to a basic observation and question: Is CHAOS and RANDOMNESS an adequate explanation for the extraordinary ORDER and POWER and INFORMATION that is self-evidently present within the natural order?
The evolutionary worldview claims it is. The creationist worldview claims it is not.
ID scientists are examining some of the underpinning arguments of the evolutionary worldview concerning randomness and information. They deserve to be allowed to speak as scientists, whatever their philosophical / religious position is. This is what "Expelled" is about.
A discussion between Ben Stiller with RC Sproul.
But they are not because they risk exposing a philosophical edifice which has been built upon the claims of evolutionary science and a lot of vested interests.
I say give them a break, don’t dismiss their work and even if elements of their enterprise seem flawed, resist the temptation to take the moral high ground against their efforts. ("Let those without philosphical sin, cast the first stone"?)
That’s my personal view and I’ll leave it there!
shalom! - john (eternalpurpose.org.uk)
Re: Tales of the unexpected
Thanks, John, the summary statement is helpful. I hope I didn’t appear to be taking the ‘moral high ground’ - theological high ground, maybe. My uneducated position would still be that a scientific account that relies on chaos and randomness does not preclude or invalidate a theological account of creation. The politics of the whole debate is another matter.
Re: Tales of the unexpected
Fair play, Andrew (though one might ask, in that sense, is anything capable of precluding "a theological account of creation" and doesn’t this set up a dualism of it’s own?)
Withal, your earlier point was also well-made.
My only response to this is that unless the scientists are enabled to undertake scientific enquiry, they cannot provide the poets and story-tellers and philosophers with the subversive material with which to be playful…and by similar token, it may be too much to expect scientists excited by the (apparently philosophical) implications of their scientific insight to avoid rationalistic interpretations…
(And, whilst I am surely whistling in the wind in hoping for anything other than many more rounds of head-breaking debates in the mainstream cultural forum, am I also expecting too much to hope that within the OST forum we might hold differing view in tension, without needing to dismiss either ‘camp’ to a place outside our own ‘camp’, if you follow?)
On a less direct issue of debate, I wonder whether the natural and supernatural dualism to which you referred can be considered a biblical categorisation?
The sense I was trying to bring out earlier was that whilst we might not expect certain evidence, or rational "proof" of God to be provided by science (and, as you say, it is not needed for a theologically grounded worldview), surely it is reasonable (sic) and biblical to expect that the natural order, the creation, would provide evidence that demonstrates and points towards his attributes of power, order, purpose…telos…design?
In similar vein, without expecting too much time to be given to it, I would value your expanding what you ascert is a vital distinction between "creator and designer."
shalom! - john (eternalpurpose.org.uk)
Re: Tales of the unexpected
I wonder though whether scientists need to do research specifically in the name of ID in order to subvert the rationalist worldview. Arguably they can make the point more forcefully by being expelled from the scientific community. As Tertullian said, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
Yes, we should be able to hold differing views in tension - and also seek to move beyond the impasse or reverse out of the cul-de-sac, or whatever it takes to deal intelligently and constructively and humbly with the issue at hand. But whether that should be achieved by suppressing strong views and convictions is another matter.
I have never much liked the word ‘supernatural’. It is not a biblical category. It would be interesting to look at how the Bible differentiates between God and not-God. Even the distinction between creator and creation is blurred by such statements as Genesis 3:8:
Perhaps ‘absence’ and ‘presence’ are more appropriate categories than ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’. Or ‘creation’ and ‘new creation’, which aligns with Paul’s psychikos and pneumatikos. Certainly, the Bible does not attempt to answer Enlightenment questions.
Well, yes, maybe, given a prior belief in the existence of God - in other words on the presumption of faith. Paul’s argument in Romans 1:19-20 is not that the natural order discloses the existence of God; it is that the natural order should make it clear that God is powerful, a judge, not to be messed with, not reducible to images of man or animals, and so on. ‘For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened’ (Rom. 1:21). I’m not sure that your sequence of power, order, purpose, telos, design is really legitimate. It is one thing to speak of God’s purpose in creating the universe (though the Bible doesn’t have much to say about this). It is quite another to argue that divine intentionality must make itself apparent in the development of life.
Re: Tales of the unexpected
A interesting observation. If there were good reasons (philosophical, theological, possibly spiritual…) then this might explain the phenomena, even while critiquing the complaint evinced by ‘Expelled’.
This is effectively what I understand happened wth William Dembski. Just at the apparent moment of ‘triumph’ when he had been provided with an annexe within a campus, within which ID could be studied freely, under tenure, I believe, in spite of the opposition of many wihtin the University, his proclamation led to the rug being pulled from beneath him. He has found refuse within a Southern Baptist University.
Quite. The key, I believe, is to allow a culture to develop which doesn’t seek, demand, elevate, deify certainty, as Brueggemann so clearly sets forth here, (or is it here?), but which does not do so by theologically or spiritually dumbing down — surely a danger of elements under the emerging canopy — but by promoting the practice of properly listening to "the Other," recognising that this silent statement and posture is sometimes as or more profound than a dogmatic statement. Certainly debate carried on in a competitive spirit or even a soley pedantic (scholarly) manner is capable of missing the potential exchange of virtue which is arguably the true purpose of spiritual engagement. If it is possible to promote such a culture through a forum exchange, count me in.
I did some interesting work in my recent thesis about "breath", "heart" and "spirit, "which suggested that the process of being transformed by the spirit may be less ethereal (ghostly) than is often assumed. Becoming mature, becoming more spiritual, even more ‘anointed’, more wise in the things of God, may all be understood in terms of a changing / renewal of the inner heart-mind, through allegiance towards the thoughts which God has expressed through his word, his covenant and his covenant community. Something like that.
I’m not sure that that is such a poor argument — after all, most creators, of art or artifact tend to leave their imprint, don’t they. However, I don’t think that that is my argument.
My suggestion is that whether disposed towards a clearly articulable faith in a Creator or not, for those willing and able to hold differing ideas in tension, rather than seeking to invoke certainty in either a dogmatic form of evolutionism or creationism, there may be some elements within the natural order which are PRESENTLY best explained or acknowledged (whatever semantics are involved) by invoking the concept of telos, purpose. Just because enlightenment science has exposed some such similar thinking as "god of the gaps" thinking, ought not necessarily to force us to be overly timid about current scientific thinking which nevertheless speaks in this way. (Interestingly, prominent neo-darwinists, including Dawkins, cannot really tell their story without using the language of telos, or even "design". They simply accord that ‘design’ to the process of evolution by random chance and natural selection.)
An example is the presence of the fundamental, immutable laws which govern the natural order and the part they play in the so-called anthopic principle. It is arguably an expression of philosophical faith to do speak of the telos of these laws, but by no means a return to the "dark ages" of unscientific thought which is the kill-them-off accusation frequently levelled against dissenters of neo-evolutionary theory (Note: those dark ages were probably neither as dark nor as unscientific, as they are frequently assumed to be — Rodney Stark!).
But yes, we ought to be aware that this can ultimately still be considered an expression of philosophical, if not necessarily religious, faith. But so it is for evolutionists — that’s the point. It therefore ought not to be ‘out of bounds’ for scientists to express their belief that "this science" (whatever it is) is suggestive of telos, or design, or a Creator, as they see it. And, thus, it ought not be a requirement of the scientific establishment that one accept de facto all the assumptions of scientific naturalism, as though anything else is opening the door to darkness and ignorance. That fear is unfounded and unworthy and is surely tantamount to the totalitarian pre-Reformation grip held by the Catholic theologians , is it not? This is an issue for the Academy, not simply for Religion, as many non-religious scientists are now testifying…
Nevertheless, to return to where I came in, from a pragmatic p.o.v. it may after all be appropriate to recognise the way forward is to seperate out, when ‘expelled’ and to develop these ideas in parallel, just a Luther was eventually forced to do. Selah .
shalom! - john (eternalpurpose.org.uk)
A scholar's take
Without directly enterring this debate, I would request folks to take a look at a biblical scholar’s take on the movie HERE and then some later musings on the supposed link between Darwinism and Nazism
Live to serve : Serve to live