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Reconciling Religion and Evolutionary Biology
Not that anyone has time, but I recommend a longish book review by Jerry A. Coyne in the Feb. 4 issue of The New Republic. Coyne reviews two books that set out to refute Intelligent Design. He says they do a good job, but then each also tries to show how religion and evolutionary biology can coexist without conflict or damage to either. Coyne makes a good case that this really can't be done. He says:
"Yet in the end they fail to achieve the longed-for union between faith and evolution. And they fail for the same reason that people always fail: a true harmony between science and religion requires either doing away with most people's religion and replacing it with a watered-down deism, or polluting science with unnecessary, untestable, and unreasonable spiritual claims."
Also: "The price of philosophical harmony [which some religious scientists say they achieve] is cognitive disonance."
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Bill, thanks for sharing this piece by Coyne. It is good. It opens up such interesting questions. My view is that Christianity and evolution are compatible, but only by reforming Christianity in a way that opens up key Biblical issues, especially around love and prophecy. The following quotes are from the article.
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But no serious scientist wants evolution to become anything like a religion, or even a source of ethics and values. That would mean abandoning our main tool for understanding nature: the resolution of empirical claims with empirical data.
If you read The Selfish Gene, making evolution a source of ethics is precisely what Dawkins was trying to do. A big reason the book is so compelling is his efforts to base philosophy and ethics on zoology. His point is that ethical values such as altruism and care derive from a desire of genes to reproduce themselves. I think his argument is sound. It is about basing values on facts - or basing policy on evidence. The idea of evolutionary ethics is that moral values which conduce to human flourishing are good. This is no ‘abandonment of empiricism’ but rather an extension of it into the moral domain.
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Given the way that evolution works, they claim, it was certain that the animal kingdom would eventually work its way up to a species that was conscious, highly intelligent, and above all, capable of apprehending and worshipping its creator... Miller and Giberson are forced to this view for a simple reason. If we cannot prove that humanoid evolution was inevitable, then the reconciliation of evolution and Christianity collapses.
As Coyne points out, this is creationist garbage, incompatible with the refutation of ID in the books under review. Human existence is an accident, cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis
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What, then, is the nature of "religious truth" that supposedly complements "scientific truth"? The first thing we should ask is whether, and in what sense, religious assertions are "truths."...there is a fundamental distinction between scientific truths and religious truths, however you construe them. The difference rests on how you answer one question: how would I know if I were wrong?
This gets to the heart of how I argue atheist scientists fail to see the evolutionary merit in Christianity. A key theme in the Bible is the distinction between true prophecy and false prophecy. True prophecy is based on deep insight and is vindicated by events while false prophecy represents wishful thinking and convention. In the modern world, we could say that scientists are the true prophets while fundamentalists are the false prophets. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Obadiah and Jesus all argued that their society believed falsehoods and would be wrecked as a result – exactly the point now made by scientists. For their efforts the prophets were condemned as blasphemers and atheists – because they rejected convention in favour of conscience.
At the centre of Jesus’s ideas was that God is love – as an ontological equation. Jesus saw that human instincts often support hate, revenge and other passions with negative consequences. God=love does not require any metaphysics but is entirely compatible with science. Jesus argued that we need to value counter-instinctive ethics such as love and forgiveness in order to become at one with the creation, and that these ethics would enable salvation of the world. As I read the Bible, this concept of salvation only makes sense interpreted as evolution into a global civilization. So the problem is that we have a mainstream superstitious Christianity which insists on magical thinking, while the prophetic ideas at its origin say that magical thinking is wrong. Australian researcher Hugh Mackay makes some good related points, suggesting we can reconcile atheism and theism by making love central.
Quote:
a true harmony between science and religion requires either doing away with most people's religion and replacing it with a watered-down deism, or polluting science with unnecessary, untestable, and unreasonable spiritual claims.
The deism of equating God and love is not watered down, but rather represents a path to use Christianity as a tool for the evolution of the world.
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I'm glad you found the article helpful, Robert. Wish I could match your industry in pursuing leads. I found the article gave me a perspective on the situation many Christians find themselves in: more or less believing in both their religion and in science. I think this is fine, though I could not perform the same feat of accommodation. These Christians are not going to push for teaching creationism in schools or accept the outlandish pronouncements of televangelists. So I have no need to argue with them and am certain that as a whole they are a benign force. What I think the article shows is that this accommodation is an unexamined one. As Coyne says, there is no way that either enterprise can remain integral when reconciliation is attempted. I think these Christians' reconciliation is illusory, but I don't come down hard on illusions since we all have and need them.
Robert Tulip wrote:
My view is that Christianity and evolution are compatible, but only by reforming Christianity in a way that opens up key Biblical issues, especially around love and prophecy.
I fully agree that evolution/science and Christian values and key ideas are compatible (I think the concept of sin is valid, for example). I would think that at this point, though, we are talking about gathering from ALL the world's religions their ethical cores, so that we don't have to talk about anyone converting to a particular religion. We can't escape, either, from the fact that if a few biblical concepts are to be used, much biblical content will have to be thrown out. How can the Bible, as we have it, continue to be a holy book? Just a single, major example: the Israelites as God's chosen people.
Jerry Coyne wrote:
But no serious scientist wants evolution to become anything like a religion, or even a source of ethics and values. That would mean abandoning our main tool for understanding nature: the resolution of empirical claims with empirical data.
Quote:
If you read The Selfish Gene, making evolution a source of ethics is precisely what Dawkins was trying to do.
I take what Dawkins is doing as explaining mechanism. My interpretation of Coyne is that he has in mind what social Darwinists did in the 19th and early 20th centuries in drawing spurious parallels between evolution and human society. I don't see signs that Dawkns et al are setting up evolution as our source of ethics, though its mechanism can help explain how we came to have ethics.
Jerry Coyne wrote:
If we cannot prove that humanoid evolution was inevitable, then the reconciliation of evolution and Christianity collapses.
Quote:
As Coyne points out, this is creationist garbage, incompatible with the refutation of ID in the books under review. Human existence is an accident
Your last sentence is atheistic, as I know you realize. I just wanted to point out the extreme unliklihood of reconciling Christianity and atheism, however you propose to modernize Christianity! Won't you have to call this religion something else?
Jerry Coyne wrote:
a true harmony between science and religion requires either doing away with most people's religion and replacing it with a watered-down deism, or polluting science with unnecessary, untestable, and unreasonable spiritual claims.
Quote:
The deism of equating God and love is not watered down, but rather represents a path to use Christianity as a tool for the evolution of the world.
It is a path that, in my view, is not Christianity but, as you imply, a use of some of its content.
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Reconciliation seems to be so much of an effort. I could hold love as my ultimate concern, and have no need to equate it with a superbeing. To reconcile my worldview would be to add ideas and beliefs that are completely unnecessary. It's like adding the letter A to the end of every word I type. I could do it, but why?
Robert, where does the desire to reconcile religion with evolution come from?
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Thanks Bill. The question of whether human life is an accident of nature is largely an empirical scientific one, and the evidence for that view is overwhelming. Christians set themselves outside rational discourse when they try to dispute such well supported scientific findings. The idea that humans evolved by divine necessity is merely speculative, more wishful thinking than reasoned case. And yet, the Bible calls on Christians to live by the truth (eg John 3:21). The content of truth is primarily empirical. Setting evidence as of lower value than authority or speculative desire is a basically corrupt approach.
The problem here is that you are effectively saying that Christianity is wrong in principle and by definition because it cannot be reconciled with the scientific findings that support atheism. If Christianity cannot reform to accord with the truth but must retain its illusions, then its claims to be the truth are hypocritical. I see this as an issue of similar scale to the Protestant Reformation, where the errors of tradition could simply not be accepted by the conscience of the reformers. Once they got access to the Bible, the reformers could see that the Roman church had been corrupted by centuries of tradition. The task of reform was to look at Biblical source material in light of modern understanding. Sadly, reform ossified in the 1500s, and Protestant theology has not really evolved much since then, retaining outmoded ideas about heaven, salvation and miracles.
A similar reformation of faith now needs to look at the Bible in the light of scientific findings on evolution and cosmology. The Biblical writers applied logical principles in developing their idea of God – essentially observing that a single cosmic reality provides the basis for human life. They elaborated this founding idea with narrative imagery to help people engage with it, but the church subsequently took the image for the reality, and augmented it with ideas that primarily served its temporal institutional ambitions.
Interbane, my desire to reconcile religion and evolution is based on my assessment that religion, which I understand as the ‘re-binding’ of humanity with our context, provides a framework for understanding reality and for the evolution of our world towards an ethical community. The story of Christ reads to me as a central tale of the results when the world is confronted by a person of total integrity. In my reading, Christ’s assessment that the world is headed for destruction is an evolutionary alert, suggesting that change in human society is an essential precondition for salvation=evolution.
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RT: "Interbane, my desire to reconcile religion and evolution is based on my assessment that religion, which I understand as the ‘re-binding’ of humanity with our context, provides a framework for understanding reality and for the evolution of our world towards an ethical community."
What ways does this rebinding help provide a framework for understanding reality? I would think this is precisely what a re-binding would not do.
Working towards an ethical community is more reasonable, but I would think the ethics mentioned are your own, as you've interpreted the bible. What is required for an ethical community is likely understood in many circles, and there are most likely many means of providing illustrations or examples. What is your reasoning for elevating the story of Christ above all others to provide an example? The problem is, there's so much in his story that should be excised, as it isn't in line with what's required to evolve toward an ethical community. Is your interpretation or 'summary' of the story removed enough from the original as to not make the mistake of including the negatives(people getting stoned with no weed in sight )? Why not work toward using the wisdom that is distilled without referencing the original so the negatives aren't associated?
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I agree that the evolution and modification of an original set of doctrines, beliefs, and stories reaches the point where the original becomes too dissimilar to the advanced thinking. To continue to use the name of the original then seems no longer appropriate.
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From that article, a quote by Pope Benedict. Something to do with theologians and metaphors. Put your foot in your mouth enough times, and I guess anyone would resort to whatever semantic structure is most obscure.
"If, however, reason ... becomes deaf to the great message that comes from the Christian faith and its wisdom, it will wither like a tree whose roots no longer reach the waters that give it life."
What on earth was the Pope saying? That only Christians can be good scientists? Sorry, Pythagoras; sorry, Galen; sorry, Einstein
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Interbane wrote:
RT: "Interbane, my desire to reconcile religion and evolution is based on my assessment that religion, which I understand as the ‘re-binding’ of humanity with our context, provides a framework for understanding reality and for the evolution of our world towards an ethical community."What ways does this rebinding help provide a framework for understanding reality? I would think this is precisely what a re-binding would not do?
The English word religion ... [derives] from the Latin religio, "reverence for God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things, ... The ultimate origins of Latin religio are obscure. It is usually accepted to derive from ligare "bind, connect"; likely from a prefixed re-ligare, i.e. re (again) + ligare or "to reconnect." This interpretation is favoured by modern scholars such as Tom Harpur and Joseph Campbell, but was made prominent by St. Augustine.
and
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The Encyclopedia of Religion defines religion this way: ... a depth dimension in cultural experiences at all levels — a push... toward some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life. ... Religion is the organization of life around the depth dimensions of experience.
So, authentic religion reconnects us to ultimate reality. The problem with modern objective thought is that this premise of a real connection between the personal and the ultimate is rejected a priori as unproveable. Religious thought proceeds from the observation that such a connection exists at a founding noumenal level, even though it can't be described empirically - we are the result of all we have been. Hence the religious 'framework for understanding reality' starts from the premise that our true identity is found in our relation to the whole.
Our identity is the result of all the causes which produce our character, but again, character is a wholistic term that resists the scientific method of part-whole analysis. Christianity holds that the whole has a distinct reality at the wholistic level, more than the sum of the parts, and this is what is meant by soul – who you really are.
The idea of rebinding arises from the teaching that the nature of the universe is love, through the Biblical equation between God and love, meaning that all things have an intrinsic bond to their origin in love when they are true to themselves. It is only the delusion produced by human arrogance and its pathological consequences that make us blind to the cosmic story, and to the real links we have to our origins.
The first book of the gospel of John is the classic statement of this 'rebinding' through the concept of logos (word or reason). The argument is that the universe has an ultimate rationality which was most fully expressed on our planet in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Clearly, orthodox dogma has strayed from this rationality through its populist ideas of miracles and reified myths. However, it remains possible to weed out these errors of church tradition which are incompatible with modern knowledge.
I like the definition Martin Heidegger gives of logos as 'the original connecting connectedness of being'. This is an entirely atheist conception which is also compatible with the original Christian teaching from the gospels. In An Introduction to Metaphysics Heidegger expands his ontology with a trinitarian atheism based on logos (the son), physis - nature (the father) and aletheia - truth/uncovering (the spirit).
Quote:
Working towards an ethical community is more reasonable, but I would think the ethics mentioned are your own, as you've interpreted the bible. What is required for an ethical community is likely understood in many circles, and there are most likely many means of providing illustrations or examples. What is your reasoning for elevating the story of Christ above all others to provide an example? The problem is, there's so much in his story that should be excised, as it isn't in line with what's required to evolve toward an ethical community. Is your interpretation or 'summary' of the story removed enough from the original as to not make the mistake of including the negatives (people getting stoned with no weed in sight )? Why not work toward using the wisdom that is distilled without referencing the original so the negatives aren't associated.
I like discussing these issues with you Interbane, as you make comments like this which reflect popular views that are easy to rebut. The Sermon on the Mount (the ethics mentioned) is the central teaching of the Gospels. I have simply taken the central ideas as they stand at face value. The problem is that these ideas are too difficult for conventional evangelical Christianity, which has ignored them in favour of the wishful unBiblical thinking of fundamentalism. I elevate the story of Christ because it speaks to me as a unique alert regarding how far our world has strayed from the evolutionary requirements of sustainable human community.
Your comment about stoning makes me wonder how familiar you are with the central idea of Christianity, namely that Jesus brought a new covenant, replacing the Mosaic law of revenge with a new teaching of grace and forgiveness - do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It was precisely because Stephen advocated the new teachings of Christ that he was stoned to death. (Acts 7). You can't blame Biblical Christianity for the things its persecutors did, and to which it was totally opposed.
The evolutionary merit of the Sermon on the Mount is that it presents a call to replace instinctive destructive ethics of revenge and hatred with rational constructive ethics of forgiveness and love. The fact that Jesus was crucified for this teaching shows how difficult this evolutionary step remains for our world.
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)? Why not work toward using the wisdom that is distilled without referencing the original so the negatives aren't associated?
