Evolution/creation: the underlying dilemma; explaining order
Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 7:33 pm
In the ongoing conflict between creationists (this post is concerned with biblical creationists) and evolutionists (this post is concerned with evolutionists who are also strong atheists), I find one recurrent dynamic to be very stimulating, and that is the common challenge from the biblical creationist, "Oh, right, so you think life just sprang up out of nothing at all. Well, the Big Bang is far more 'magical' in its essence than the idea that God did it", and the retort from the strong atheist, "Abiogenesis and cosmology are separate issues from evolution - don't conflate them".
Why do the creationists insist on raising issues that the atheists dismiss as irrelevant and distracting, and do these issues and retorts point to strategies and a bigger picture behind the war? I think that they do.
In these battles, evolution is wielded as a combat-hardened sabre in an attempt to slash away the creationists' belief in God by proving redundancy: that because evolution explains the development of life so comprehensively, there is no place for a creative supernatural force behind the variety of life that we observe. This underlying strategy is what leads the biblical creationists to issue the challenge that I noted in the introduction: the challenge is a strategy in itself; an attempt to fend off the purported redundancy by pointing to areas where explanations of ultimate origins are less established when it comes to mainstream scientific knowledge: where God might yet have a role even if the theory of evolution is correct.
The war between these two world-views (and yes, the strong atheists who wage war using a scientific theory of evolution clearly share to a significant extent a characteristic world-view, just as the creationists who hold up the Bible as God's word do) began when the argument from design, also known as the teleological argument - which many of us are familiar with in the form of the watchmaker analogy, in which living organisms are compared to a watch found by chance on the ground: the argument runs that in the same way that we would infer a watchmaker for the watch, so ought we to infer a designer for living organisms - ran into the new concept of natural selection.
I'm not concerned in this post with the details and plausibility of the theory of evolution and the process of natural selection, nor with the criticisms that creationists throw at these: instead I want to step back and highlight the primary dilemma pointed to by this war. That dilemma stems from a simple observation: that existence is ordered, and that order demands an explanation (there is actually an even more primary but related explanation that can be sought - that for existence itself - but it's not as relevant in the context of the biblical creationist versus strong atheist-evolutionist war, so I won't address it in this post).
There are of course degrees of order, so it might be argued that as an unqualified word, "ordered" is not very meaningful. For those who want to mount that argument, and who don't think that the order of our universe is significant in and of itself, I will qualify the observation to this: "that existence is ordered to the degree that it has become possible for parts of existence to contemplate the order of existence as a whole, and that order of that degree demands an explanation". I expect that even thus qualified, certain folk will continue to argue against the meaningfulness of the observation, but then, there's just no pleasing some people.
This is the backdrop against which the war is waged, and the fundamental dilemma which arises is as follows. On the one hand, order requires an explanation, and the explanation that the biblical creationists propose is that of an intelligent supernatural designer (God). On the other hand, God must in turn have been highly ordered to have been capable of such a feat, which in itself demands an explanation, which seems to lead to the absurdity of an infinite regress of intelligent supernatural designers, in which case we (and in particular the strong atheist-evolutionists) are left with no explanation.
There doesn't seem to be an easy way out of this dilemma. I can think of two possibilities. The first is that God has a nature which cannot be (or at least is not yet) understood by us, and which somehow avoids the infinite regress. The second possibility is to apply the thinking of the first possibility to the "creation" rather than the creator, and to say that its nature is so mysterious that it cannot be (or at least is not yet) understood, but that perhaps science or creative and critical thinking might someday lead to that understanding.
The latter possibility, however, is not as satisfying as the first: we know what it means to intelligently design - it is familiar to us - but as to an "uncreated" universe... this type of notion is one with which we are not experienced.
That this dilemma underlies the war can be seen by reflecting on the challenge noted in this essay's introduction: the biblical creationists are not far from saying, "Look, the universe is so well ordered that it is capable of producing life: even if life was produced according to some process of natural selection, how are we to explain the order underlying that process; the order of the material upon which natural selection operates; the order of all of the variables that go in to make the universe: time, matter, energy and all of the physical laws; the order that originated the very process of natural selection?"
Please let me know what you think - in particular:
Do you agree that this dilemma underlies the biblical creationist versus strong atheist-evolutionist war?
What is your take on this dilemma, and in particular how would you go about solving it? Do you agree that the order of the universe demands an explanation? If not, why not? If so, then what is your explanation for the degree to which the universe is ordered?
[edit: clarified the description in the seventh paragraph of the fundamental dilemma]
Why do the creationists insist on raising issues that the atheists dismiss as irrelevant and distracting, and do these issues and retorts point to strategies and a bigger picture behind the war? I think that they do.
In these battles, evolution is wielded as a combat-hardened sabre in an attempt to slash away the creationists' belief in God by proving redundancy: that because evolution explains the development of life so comprehensively, there is no place for a creative supernatural force behind the variety of life that we observe. This underlying strategy is what leads the biblical creationists to issue the challenge that I noted in the introduction: the challenge is a strategy in itself; an attempt to fend off the purported redundancy by pointing to areas where explanations of ultimate origins are less established when it comes to mainstream scientific knowledge: where God might yet have a role even if the theory of evolution is correct.
The war between these two world-views (and yes, the strong atheists who wage war using a scientific theory of evolution clearly share to a significant extent a characteristic world-view, just as the creationists who hold up the Bible as God's word do) began when the argument from design, also known as the teleological argument - which many of us are familiar with in the form of the watchmaker analogy, in which living organisms are compared to a watch found by chance on the ground: the argument runs that in the same way that we would infer a watchmaker for the watch, so ought we to infer a designer for living organisms - ran into the new concept of natural selection.
I'm not concerned in this post with the details and plausibility of the theory of evolution and the process of natural selection, nor with the criticisms that creationists throw at these: instead I want to step back and highlight the primary dilemma pointed to by this war. That dilemma stems from a simple observation: that existence is ordered, and that order demands an explanation (there is actually an even more primary but related explanation that can be sought - that for existence itself - but it's not as relevant in the context of the biblical creationist versus strong atheist-evolutionist war, so I won't address it in this post).
There are of course degrees of order, so it might be argued that as an unqualified word, "ordered" is not very meaningful. For those who want to mount that argument, and who don't think that the order of our universe is significant in and of itself, I will qualify the observation to this: "that existence is ordered to the degree that it has become possible for parts of existence to contemplate the order of existence as a whole, and that order of that degree demands an explanation". I expect that even thus qualified, certain folk will continue to argue against the meaningfulness of the observation, but then, there's just no pleasing some people.
This is the backdrop against which the war is waged, and the fundamental dilemma which arises is as follows. On the one hand, order requires an explanation, and the explanation that the biblical creationists propose is that of an intelligent supernatural designer (God). On the other hand, God must in turn have been highly ordered to have been capable of such a feat, which in itself demands an explanation, which seems to lead to the absurdity of an infinite regress of intelligent supernatural designers, in which case we (and in particular the strong atheist-evolutionists) are left with no explanation.
There doesn't seem to be an easy way out of this dilemma. I can think of two possibilities. The first is that God has a nature which cannot be (or at least is not yet) understood by us, and which somehow avoids the infinite regress. The second possibility is to apply the thinking of the first possibility to the "creation" rather than the creator, and to say that its nature is so mysterious that it cannot be (or at least is not yet) understood, but that perhaps science or creative and critical thinking might someday lead to that understanding.
The latter possibility, however, is not as satisfying as the first: we know what it means to intelligently design - it is familiar to us - but as to an "uncreated" universe... this type of notion is one with which we are not experienced.
That this dilemma underlies the war can be seen by reflecting on the challenge noted in this essay's introduction: the biblical creationists are not far from saying, "Look, the universe is so well ordered that it is capable of producing life: even if life was produced according to some process of natural selection, how are we to explain the order underlying that process; the order of the material upon which natural selection operates; the order of all of the variables that go in to make the universe: time, matter, energy and all of the physical laws; the order that originated the very process of natural selection?"
Please let me know what you think - in particular:
Do you agree that this dilemma underlies the biblical creationist versus strong atheist-evolutionist war?
What is your take on this dilemma, and in particular how would you go about solving it? Do you agree that the order of the universe demands an explanation? If not, why not? If so, then what is your explanation for the degree to which the universe is ordered?
[edit: clarified the description in the seventh paragraph of the fundamental dilemma]