But Is It Science?

This week someone close to me brought to my attention an article in the online New York Times called God, Darwin and My College Biology Class, by Professor David P. Barash.

Not surprisingly, Barash refutes the literalist view of the Genesis creation narratives (which I, coming at the issue from the literary rather than the scientific side, actually agree with).  But Dr. Barash goes much further in his claims for evolutionary science; in fact, he stops just short of claiming that it renders belief in God impossible.  Barash takes exception to the view put forth by Steven Jay Gould that science and religion are "non-overlapping magisteria".  A "magisterium" is an authoritative source of knowledge, and "non-overlapping" means that religion and science as sources of knowledge are not actually in conflict, because they deal with entirely separate spheres of human experience.  Gould's view of science and religion in terms of non-overlapping magisteria is called "NOMA" for short.

Barash's article explains how every year he gives his new biology students "The Talk," in which he presents evolutionary science as progressively removing any place left in human thought for the existence of God.  As he puts it:

These magisteria are not nearly as nonoverlapping as some of them might wish. As evolutionary science has progressed, the available space for religious faith has narrowed: It has demolished two previously potent pillars of religious faith and undermined belief in an omnipotent and omni-benevolent God. The twofold demolition begins by defeating what modern creationists call the argument from complexity. . . Living things are indeed wonderfully complex, but altogether within the range of a statistically powerful, entirely mechanical phenomenon. . .

Next to go is the illusion of centrality. Before Darwin, one could believe that human beings were distinct from other life-forms, chips off the old divine block. No more. . .

Adding to religion’s current intellectual instability is a third consequence of evolutionary insights: a powerful critique of theodicy, the scholarly effort to reconcile belief in an omnipresent, omni-benevolent God with the fact of unmerited suffering. . . The more we know of evolution, the more unavoidable is the conclusion that living things, including human beings, are produced by a natural, totally amoral process, with no indication of a benevolent, controlling creator.

All this sounds fairly damaging to religion, and Barash concludes his article by pretty much giving God a pat on the head and saying He hasn't necessarily struck out yet-- but it's clear that in Barash's mind it's the bottom of the ninth and evolution has been pitching a no-hitter.  But what it looks like to me is not that science's magisterium overlaps to the point of overwhelming religion's magisterium-- rather, it's that Barash does not seem to understand the real difference between the two.

Barash conflates the functions of science and religion, treating religion as if it were just another way (a failed way) to answer the questions addressed by science, and treating science as if it were fundamentally capable of answering the questions addressed by religion or philosophy.  Joe Hinman on Metacrock's Blog: The Ideology of Scientism (Part 1) defines this common misconception of the nature of religion as follows:

God is evoked where knowledge runs out. That is a wrong concept because it imposes the wrong view of religion, that religion is failed primitive science. . .The problem with it is that it seems to imply that religion only takes over where we have no facts, thus implying that religion [like science] is also about understanding the workings of the world but it just doesn’t proceed by collecting facts.

But the primary purpose of religion has never been to answer questions about how the physical world works. It's true that humans have at times used religion to answer such questions, but those questions have always been a side issue for religion. The real purpose of religion is to address issues of transcendent value, meaning and purpose, and to mediate spiritual experience.

Science, on the other hand, is defined by the online Webster's Dictionary as:

knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method; such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena.

"Scientific method," of course, refers to the hypothesis-experiment process of collecting information about the world through data.  Webster's again:

principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.

So if science is ultimately concerned with the way the physical world works, why is it treated as if it were the arbiter of all reality, capable of shrinking any possible role religion might have played until it pushes religion out entirely?

Hinman's article explains the problem:

Modern thought tells us science is pure objective observation of facts and direct proof of all that is reality. . . [But] when we examine the nature of modern science, especially in so far as it is used in opposition to belief in God, we find that there is no pure objective science, unsullied by the ideological impulse to impose a truth regime upon reality. . . 

Of course science is about a deeper understanding “of the world.” What does that mean? Is it about understanding the world of metaphysics? Or is it about understanding the world of politics, or the world of meta ethics? What kind of understanding? Is that quotation limited to the “natural” world? Does it mean all “worlds” of our conceptualizing? The more varied the definition the looser they become. We see the definitions drifting away form [sic] the concept of systematic understandings of the workings of the physical world and nothing more. It’s in those “stretches” of definition that are probably designed to allow flexible field of study that we see creeping in various agendas such as the ruination of religion. This is strictly speaking not a goal of science, not even part of science’s business.

However, if we look closely at the kind of claims that Barash's NY Times article is making for evolutionary science, he is actually addressing issues of philosophy or religion.

Any statement about what might or might not exist outside/above or in addition to the physical world is a metaphysical statement.  Even to say that there is nothing except the physical world involves making metaphysical assumptions that cannot be supported by physical evidence.  It cannot be proven scientifically that everything that exists can be proven scientifically.  This is because science by its very nature can only find physical phenomena-- either past or present.  To say science can prove that nothing except the physical world exists, is like saying there is no such thing as air pressure because you can't measure it with a ruler.  Anything non-physical, while it may cause physical traces or "footprints" in the natural world, cannot itself be directly tested or proven by science.  But that doesn't mean it cannot exist.

Science also cannot say that because there is suffering, there are therefore only natural, amoral processes. Barash has set up certain parameters for what kind of world he thinks God would create, and then eliminates God because this isn't that kind of world. But Barash's conclusions are not science, nor do they come from science. The questions, "Is this a good world? or "Is there any meaning in suffering?" are questions of philosophy. Not science.

To claim there is no God because humans are not apparently divinely central to the universe, is the same sort of thing.  Barash says that evolution somehow shows that there is no divine spark in humanity.  But any divine spark in humanity is exactly the sort of thing that science would be unable to find, because divinity is not part of physicality. And to claim there is no God because humans don't appear to be physically distinct from the rest of creation is to make an assumption about what God would be likely to do if God existed.  But "If there were a God, what would God be likely to do?" is a theological question.  Also not science.

Further, the point of religion is not to say something like, "The world is complex because God."  That kind of religion is a straw man that hides fearfully in the ever-shrinking gaps of what we still can't explain about how the physical world works. But religion, though it can be, and has been, used to explain the physical world, is not really about such explanations.  These things are completely peripheral to religion in terms of human religious culture and experience.

So what Dr. Barash has done is claim that religion is losing out to science because religion is meant to do the same things science does, but just doesn't do them very well.  Also that science is defeating religion because its methods alone (and not the philosophical conclusions of people like himself in interpreting its data) are succeeding in answering the questions of transcendent value, meaning and purpose with "no such things," and in mediating spiritual experience by denying it.

Bararsh is committing the error called "scientism."  Scientism is defined in Webster's as:

an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities).

Science can help us in matters of morality by informing us, for example, whether a particular thing is healthier for humans than another, upon which "do unto others" would kick in to instruct us to seek the healthier thing. But science cannot decide whether "do unto others" itself is morally good or not. That takes humans making philosophical or religious judgments.  Scientists make those kinds of judgments just as much as anyone else-- but what underlies them is not science.*

Barash would object to a religious preacher using the Creation narratives of Genesis to teach on matters of science. But I find it just as objectionable for a science professor to use evolutionary science to teach on matters of religion. Science professors should teach science.

Just because a person is a scientist or science professor, does not qualify them as an expert in religion or philosophy. In fact, a man like Dr. Barash, who is in a position of authority, lecturing to students whose grades are dependent on his favor, needs to be very careful on how he uses that authority. Barash's "Talk" is designed to undermine religious belief.  Sure, at the end he kindly gives his students permission to hold onto their religious beliefs-- if they can.  But Barash is a professor, and they are only college kids.  Barash speaks as an expert, while they sit in the position of learners. And these students, especially the young ones just out of high school, probably have not acquired enough understanding to see the flaws in Barash's assertions.

The power differential is completely in the professor's favor.  So I think he should be asking himself, "Is it right for me to attack the religious beliefs of young people who have neither the background nor the authority to be able to rebut me?"

One thing is for certain.  Whatever answer he gives to that question, it will not be science.



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*In fact, from a naturalistic point of view which strives to be objective, it's debatable whether humans thriving is a good thing or not.  It's good for humans, certainly, but has historically been very bad for the thriving of many other species.

The Creation-Evolution Debate and the Genres of Genesis 1 & 2-3

A lot of people have been talking this week about the Bill Nye/Ken Ham Debate on Creationism vs. Evolution.  So I decided to weigh in with where I stand on this issue.

When I converted to Christianity at the age of 15, I was taught that one of the things I had to embrace if I was going to follow Jesus was young-earth creationism.  The Bible "clearly" taught that God had made the earth in six 24-hour days and that the earth is 6000 to 10,000 years old. So I read several books that supported creationism, and as far as I could tell with my not-particularly-scientific mind, it made sense.  I left what my parents and my teachers had taught me and became a creationist.

Something happened when I was nearly through my college years, though, that shook me up a little.

A public debate was scheduled on my college campus between a local biology professor and Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research, who had flown in specially for the event.  Since most of my fellow church members were attending, I went along.  As I listened, I couldn't help but think Dr. Gish was winning the debate.  After all, he was a gifted debater and public speaker, while the biology professor was-- well, a scientist who taught classes now and then.  And the audience was clearly on Gish's side.  Whenever Gish spoke, he was applauded.  When the local professor spoke, he was booed and hissed at.  And most of my friends were gleefully joining in.  This clearly bothered and rattled the poor guy-- and that was where my cognitive dissonance started.  My sympathies have always lain with the underdog, and I simply couldn't understand why good Christian people who were supposed to be following Jesus' teachings on loving your neighbor, would treat this poor man with this abysmal rudeness.

I left the debate wondering how, if we were in fact so very right, we could be so totally wrong about it.  I knew that what really mattered, what Christ really cared about, wasn't whether we believed single-celled organisms could slowly become human beings.  It was how we treated actual human beings.

I walked away from that debate feeling ashamed. I couldn't bring myself to join in with my fellow church members as they rejoiced in how thoroughly the biology professor had been humiliated.  As far as I could see, the main thing he was going to take away from that debate was not the reasonableness of creationism.  It was how little Christians actually practiced what they preached.

Years later, when I began the process I've mentioned before of laying all my beliefs on the table and finding what held true for me, creationism was one of the things that I took another look at.  I bought a book called A New Look at an Old Earth by Don Stoner.  He discussed how early Christians had considered God to have "written" another "book" in addition to the Bible-- the "book of nature," and how the created universe itself was meant to testify alongside the Bible, just as Psalm 19:1 and Romans 10:18 said.

He also talked about how very un-Christian it was to mock and ridicule evolutionists in public debates.

I thought he made a lot of sense.

So for a while I became an old-earth creationist and stopped believing that the "days" in Genesis 1 referred to actual 24-hour periods.  But I had learned in the process of re-examining my faith to hold my view lightly.  What I believed about human origins wasn't essential to my faith in Christ, and I knew I wasn't a science expert.

I kept on reading, and I kept on examining.  And some of the books and articles I read actually made even more sense than Don Stoner's book.  One of them was The Language of God by Francis Collins. Dr. Collins is the founder of the Biologos Foundation, and his view is called "evolutionary creation" or "theistic evolution."  Collins believes in the same foundational Christian doctrines that I do: in the Incarnation, death and Resurrection of Christ as the Son of God, in the authority of Scripture and the work of the Holy Spirit.  And the genetic evidence for theistic evolution presented in his book is hard to deny.

So the one obvious thing I have come to see is that it's quite possible for sincere Christians to believe any one of these positions.  So who is right?

I think the most compelling scientific view definitely lies with theistic evolution.  But I am an English graduate from the University of Oregon, and the best way for me to approach the topic is to look at it in terms of one thing I do really feel I have learned well-- how to read and understand a text.

So here's the thing.  Both young-earth and old-earth creationism approach the first two chapters of Genesis as if they are historical/scientific prose about the origins of the universe and of humanity. Young-earth creationism says that each detail should be read according to its most obvious, plain-sense reading, including the "days" as literal 24-hour periods.  Old-earth creationism says that the "days" actually represent periods of time lasting thousands and thousands of years. It says that the passage that says that God made the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day should be understood as God revealing the functions of the sun, moon and stars as they would exist for humankind.  It says the current Cenozoic period is the extended "seventh day" of the creation.  But it still approaches the text as a scientific, historical narrative.

And that is exactly what I can't, as an English graduate, view as the actual genre of these first chapters of Genesis.

I find, in fact, that I agree with Old Testament Theologian Bruce K. Waltke in his article The Literary Genre of Genesis Chapter 1, when in response to the identification of Genesis 1 as a "straightforward historical narrative"  he says, "The text, however, is begging us not to read it that way."

When I look at other portions of Genesis, this is the type of thing I read:

After Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Abram's wife Sarai took Hagar the Egyptian, her maid, and gave her to her husband Abram as his wife. (Genesis 16:3)

That's it.  Straightforward prose, recounting events more or less in chronological order.

When I read Chapter 1 of Genesis, however, here's what I see:

Then God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with seed in them, on the earth; and it was so.  And the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, with seed in them, after their kind, and God saw that it was good.  And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.

The italicized parts mark phrases that repeat themselves over and over throughout the text. The two phrases picked out in green mark text that repeats itself within the same section.  The entire chapter works this way.  Each section has a "Then God said," a statement what He is making, then a phrase "and it was so" noting what God has made, followed by a repetitive detail of what was made. Then, each time, God sees that what He has made is good, and we get a repetition of "there was evening and there was morning," denoting a day.

This is not quite poetry, but it is, as Dr. Waltke says, highly stylized, didactic prose, intended not to give a straightforward recounting of events so much as to show the power of God and the order and beauty of His work:

[W]e argue that [this text] cannot give a satisfying scientific account of origins, for it is not scientific literature. . . The Bible is concerned with Ultimate origins ("Where did it all come from?") not scientific questions of proximate origins ("How did A arise out of B, if it did?").  [Also] its language is non-scientific. The account reports the origins of the cosmos phenomenologically, not mathematically or theoretically. . . We come back to [this] genre identification: it is a literary-artistic representation of the creation. To this we add the purpose, namely, to ground the covenant people's worship and life in the Creator, who transformed chaos into cosmos, and their ethics in His created order. [Emphasis added.]  

I also note that as far as the specific things being made, there are three pairings, occurring in two groups.  On the first and fourth days God creates light and the orbs that convey the light. On the second and fifth days God sets apart the "expanses" of the sea and the air, and then makes creatures (birds and fish) that will live in them.  On the third and sixth days God makes the dry land and its vegetation, and then the animals (and finally humans) that will live there.  The whole pattern up to the seventh day goes as follows:

Creation of an element (light)
Creation of an element (air, separated from water)
Creation of an element (land) 

Creation of things for the light (sun, moon, stars)
Creation of things for the air and water
Creation of things for the land

I find this reminds me of the kind of stylized, didactic order shown in parts of the Proverbs, such as in Chapter 2, where the pattern is:

My son, receive my wisdom
Here are the results of my wisdom 

For the Lord gives wisdom
Here are the results of the Lord's wisdom 

They will keep you from the ways of evil
Here are the results of the ways of evil 

So you will walk in the way of the good
Here are the results of doing good
And here are the result of doing evil.

In short, I think the first chapter of Genesis is a kind of didactic prose, similar to but not identical to the opening chapters of Proverbs.  I think it was written for the purpose of revealing the nature of God as Creator, not for the purpose of detailing scientific facts about the processes of our origins.  Dr. Waltke says that "Genre identification depends on a text's contents and function."  By the context and function of Genesis 1, it simply is not in the genre of historical/scientific prose.

Similarly, when I read the second and third chapters of Genesis, here is what I see:

A garden at the source of four great rivers
Two highly symbolic trees: the "tree of life" and the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil"
A serpent that talks
God walking in the garden
A prophetic speech of God (the curse) spoken in the prose style of the Books of the Prophets

I don't actually know of any Christian group that takes all of this literally-- particularly not the talking snake. Based on other biblical texts such as Revelation 20:2, Christians identify the serpent with Satan-- that Satan appeared in the form of a serpent, not that Satan actually is a literal serpent. Similarly, when the text says God "walked" in the garden, most Christians don't take this to mean that God literally has legs like a man.  Christians believe, on the basis of texts like John 4:24, that God is a Spirit, not a big manlike being like the Greek god Zeus.  The walking of God in the cool of the day may mean that God appeared in the form of a man, or it simply may be a metaphor for the Presence and Voice of God moving through the garden.

Since no one knows what kind of fruit a "life" fruit is, or a "knowledge of good and evil" fruit is (it's only tradition that calls it an apple), these trees are meant to be symbols.  Were they also literal trees, somehow bearing these abstract concepts as actual fruit?  I'm not at all sure that we're meant to understand the text that way.

In fact, Genesis 2 and 3 are no more straightforward historical prose than Genesis 1 is.  This second part of the creation text is not stylized didactic prose, but bears more in common with the symbolism of the Book of Revelation, or with the metaphorical language of some of Jesus' teachings ("the tree is known by its fruit" in Matt. 12:33 is not a reference to actual trees) than it does with the straight prose of the Abraham-Isaac-Jacob narratives.

Does this mean there was no actual, real Adam and Eve?  I don't know.  Since both Paul and Jesus speak of Adam and Eve, they may actually have been real people.  They may have been the first humanoid creatures that God chose to bear His image.  Or this may be a true story of the universal human condition, told metaphorically/symbolically (that from the beginning, when free to choose to believe God or believe the serpent, humanity, as one, has ended up choosing the serpent).  In this case Paul and Jesus, understanding that their audiences also understood it symbolically, may have felt free to speak of Adam and Eve according to the truths their story conveyed without needing to mention a shared understanding of the story as non-literal-- in the same way we might speak of Dorothy and the lure of "over the rainbow" today.

You may have a strong conviction one way or the other.  But this is not a primary, foundational doctrine of the faith, so I'm simply going to allow it to remain a mystery in my mind.  Either way, there is certainly a heavy metaphorical/symbolic emphasis in the Adam-and-Eve story. And the intent of the story is manifestly not to give a scientific account of how humanity came to exist on the earth.

I don't think the original audiences, either of the oral or written traditions, thought according to our post-Enlightenment emphasis on fact and procedure.  I think God accommodated His revelation to their mindset, not to ours.  In fact, to insist on reading these stories as scientific explanations of origins is, in a way, enslaving our minds to Enlightenment ways of thought.  Rather than examining the biblical texts according to what they themselves seem to be saying they are, we impose upon them what we believe they ought to be-- and what we think they ought to be is directly determined by the Enlightenment's emphasis on fact and historicity.

According to Dr. Waltke in the article above, "Natural theology and exegetical theology are both hindered by a continued adherence to the epistemic principle that valid scientific theories must be consistent with a woodenly literal reading of Genesis."  In other words, whether our theology focuses on understanding God through the "book of nature" or the "book of scripture," when we make it a rule that the only way we can know either book is according to a strict literal reading of these texts, we keep our thinking inside a very small box and try to drag the limitless God to fit in there with us. And it doesn't really work.

What it all comes down to is that I have come to embrace evolutionary creation, also known as theistic evolution, on the basis of the biblical texts themselves. I think young-earth creationism and old-earth creationism both show too much dependence on Enlightenment mentality to be true to the pre-Enlightenment revelation of God to the pre-Enlightenment original audiences.  The point of these texts is that God created, not how God created-- and this is also the main point of theistic evolution.

Since I also find the evidence for evolution more compelling than the evidence for either young-earth or old-earth creationism, the cognitive dissonance of my college years is resolved.  But my position is based more on how I understand the Bible than on how I understand science.

So to Ken Ham and Bill Nye, I would say this.  This science-faith schism is unfortunate and completely unnecessary.  I hope that in the future we can find the openness-- and the humility-- to move past it.