Cancer and Evolutionary Theory

Faith & Science Conversation
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Chris

I don’t think your appeal to the history of determinism really holds water (though it admittedly holds more than Gershwin’s appeal to the discredited myth of the mediaeval flat earth in his first line). Since we’re treating Gershwin as an authority, though, It might be intereing, too, in the interest of accuracy in such an importamnt matter as the nature of reality, to check out the historical truth of his claims about Edison, the Wrights Marconi, et al… it could be that by overegging the historical skepticism, he’s over-optimistic about the soundness of modern ideas and the ignorance of the old.

And that’s before unpicking how there could be any possible relevance of “free will” to the discussion of alleged ontologically random events in nature. Free will has to do with the freedom for rational beings to determine matters - chance events restrict freedom, rather than being a manifestation of it. And determining things is freedom.

Regarding the history of determinism, there was indeed an almost universal consensus amongst Christians (as amongst many of the Jews) from the earliest days that God’s providence in some way governs all events, yet in keeping with human freedom. As far as creation went, the world was the world God made, in which we are privileged to exist. If Acts 17.24 reflects an outdated belief in determinism, there are good reasons to question the validity of its replacement.

But God’s government was always seen as the personal supervision of a king or householder, not as the implacable outworking of a mechanistic nature. Determinism as a scientific concept is a relative latecomer, and of course is exemplified in the Enlightenment mechanical philosophy which, because it couldn’t make room for God, either elevated him to a Deistic clockmaker or dispensed with him as an unnecessary hypothesis.

It is only that philosophy that is threatened by chaos theory and quantum theory. The former, to the majority of scientists, holds that chaos is actually lawlike, but unknowable to us because of the limits of measurement. On that basis God, lacking such human limitations, would know just as much as in a Laplacian universe - but even if he did not, having freedom and power to determine events he would be quite able to determine outcomes.

Chaotic “chance” events were well-known in ancient times, despite the lack of chaos theory: a cast lot could go either way, except that its every decision was from the Lord. Aquinas discussed the interaction of chance and providence at length… including Eddie’s point that providence must cover both individual events and generalities or have no meaning.
If God cannot design anteaters, he cannot answer my prayers. If he is not concerned with molecular outcomes, then large scale change will be undirected as well.

Therefore chaos theory, as science, has nothing to say against divine providence. In fact it has no bearing on it whatsoever.

Quantum theory, assuming the majority are right about the absence of hidden variables, merely says that there are no physical efficient causes in nature that determine the outcomes of quantum events. But divine action was never constrained to physical efficient causes, until the Enlightenment thinkers implied God was bound by what they decided were his “laws”. Quantum events are not uncaused (if they were, no statistical maths could handle them and half-lives would be indeterminate). If there are, indeed, no secondary causes for them, then they are, by deduction, directly the result of the First Cause of all things.

To postulate some other determining cause of events, apart from God, in the form of ontological randomness (or “the autonomy of nature”, if one prefers incoherent and misleading terms) is not a scientific necessity, but a theological preference in the face of Scriptural revelation - and one that raises far, far more questions than it solves.

I can’t cite the authority of a Gershwin song, I’m afraid, but Asa Gray had somewhat to say on the matter in response to Darwin:

So the issue between the skeptic and the theist is only the old one, long ago argued out — namely, whether organic Nature is a result of design or of chance. Variation and natural selection open no third alternative; they concern only the question how the results, whether fortuitous or designed, may have been brought about. Organic Nature abounds with unmistakable and irresistible indications of design, and, being a connected and consistent system, this evidence carries the implication of design throughout the whole [my italics]. On the other hand, chance carries no probabilities with it, can never be developed into a consistent system, but, when applied to the explanation of orderly or beneficial results, heaps up improbabilities at every step beyond all computation. To us, a fortuitous Cosmos is simply inconceivable. The alternative is a designed Cosmos.

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A theory in science is a confirmed hypothesis… …e.g. theory of evolution, big bang theory. Such theories are as I described them and differ from hyothesis such as abiogenesis, string, quantum loop and etc. The theory of evolution entails natural selection and that allows for no goal-directed human species necessarily appearing on this earth.

I was tryng to convey humour.

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[quote=“Rational_Theist_Matt, post:294, topic:5673”]
A theory in science is a confirmed hypothesis…[/quote]
No, a hypothesis has to have a long track record of confirmation before being considered to be a theory.

You’re just repeating your assertion. It’s not true.

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Hi Eddie and Jon,

I do not see why we must obligate our sovereign God to deal exactly the same way with every aspect and era of creation.

Knowing that every analogy in theology is insufficient, I will nevertheless offer one. When I create a “universe” via software with an evolutionary algorithm. I can run it in a debugger. The debugger allows me to stop execution at any time in the process, inspect the variables, and even change the values of one or more variables if I wish. After my intervention, I can instruct the debugger to continue execution of the evolutionary algorithm.

As the designer of the program, I might be content to intervene only at critical junctures, rather than at every iteration of a processing loop. In the same way, perhaps God would choose only to intervene at critical junctures.

As Christians we are confident that we can identify some of the critical junctures in God’s plan. These would include the formation of every human soul, the revelation to the prophets, the incarnation and ministry of Jesus, etc. I personally am less confident that every event in the earth’s 4.5B year history is equally critical, however. Perhaps they are–who knows? I’m just saying I cannot discern the mind of God in this matter.

Blessings,

Chris

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Chris, you actually “interfered” by designing how the program would execute. That’s what an algorithm is. The degree of God’s “debugging” involvement in nature is a matter, primarily, of revelation, since we have no means of knowing for ourselves - what saith the Scripture? It’s certainly not to be discerned by empirical science.

But on general principle, our God is presented as a Father, not as a programmer - or more accurately as one who is both faithful in creation (so that it is his work that the earth brings forth reliably year by year), and concerned for each part of it (for each creature looks to him for its next meal - and we, in turn, are taught pray to him for our daily bread).

Yet my own objection is not, here, to the allocation of events between First and secondary causes, but to the presentation of the issue in terms of “freedom”, especially when that is opposed to “determination”. In the six years I’ve been raising the incoherence of that concept with respect to the irrational creation, nobody has ever mounted a rational defence of it.

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Hi Jon,

You are correct that I intervened with the execution of the program. That’s what makes it an (imperfect) analogy to how God intervenes with the execution of natural laws in our universe.

However, you seem to have misunderstood what an algorithm is. An evolutionary algorithm would be more like a law of physics; it accepts inputs, processes them, and produces outputs…which can then serve as inputs to another iteration of the algorithm.

I agree that the imagery of Father is better suited to understanding our relationship with God. Since it does not offer much explanatory power with respect to the manner of God’s interaction with natural mechanisms, however, I offered my own analogy.

I agree that my first post on the subject was poorly expressed. Let us bury it in the ignominy it so richly deserves.

“in pace requiescat”

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Chris

Thanks for your final clarification: just pass it on to the open-process guys within EC, will you, who see no ignominy in describing random changes imposed on molecules as “free-will”?!

On algorithms, the point is that even evolutionary algorithms move existing information around: and if the “sole user” inputting new information is also the writer of the program, then we still have to trace the outcomes back to the designer’s intentions… or else to unforeseen or unplanned outcomes, which may have a role in human computations, but scarcely divine ones. Omniscient programmers don’t need a de-bugger.

On the remaining question of the degree of divine supervision of outcomes, one could say many things from Scripture and reason, but I was intrigued by your reference to the individual creation of human souls. This, of course, is the Catholic formulation, and I might want to nuance its meaning, but it’s thought-provoking to run with it.

So let’s agree (if I correctly infer your meaning) that every human receives some unique creative input from God, and for convenience let’s conceptualise that as a Cartesian “immortal soul”. My first question would be whether that creative act is “forced” on God by the natural actions of humans.

My late reply to your post is because of being around for the birth of my 4th granddaughter on Friday (hooray!), who arrived by the usual biological processes after the usual intentional marital activities. One might also envisage, though, limiting cases of babies conceived through evil means such as rape or adultery.

It seems in accord neither with the nature of human life, nor the nature of God, that he would say, “I see Mrs/Miss X has a bun in the oven - I’ll need to fix it up a soul, then”. Apart from anything else, our “soul” is who we are, not just an impersonal added principle of life or immortality, off the shelf, like a set of AA batteries. More importantly, God is by nature a Creator-before-the event, not after-the-event: creation surely is an action, not a _re_action.

No, surely, we have to see the entire creation of a unified human life - albeit it involving both natural processes and human choices, both body and “soul” - as aspects of the creative work of God. Each human is important to God because each is created in his image, and (I suggest) therefore constitutes one of the “high priority” events of your discussion.

If that is so, we are in the world of dual action, of concurrence: God is, in fact, creating life in a hands-on, “designing”, way through the circumstances surrounding the procreation of a child - many of which appear fortuitous to us. And that makes even our planned parenthood something occurring neither before, nor in opposition to, God’s Fatherly creation, but within it.

That leaves us both with the entirely rational response of my daughter and son-in-law in giving thanks to God for their new baby (and not just for her “soul”, with thanks to biology for her body and self-congratulation for having the idea in the first place!). And it also includes the inevitable mystery of things going wrong within God’s purposes (“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened that the works of God would be displayed in him.")

Applying this to the question of individual species, or of individual events within species, and whether they are of interest to the designing God, we might instead consider how few causes of events are actually even conceivable within the world:
(a) Acts of God’s free-will, whether through “algorithms” (aka natural laws) or “inputs” (whether as initial conditions, or by subsequent Fatherly acts). He is omniscient, and so fully knows, and therefore plans, all the outcomes of all his own acts.
(b) Acts of other free-wills, of which we know about only humans, angels and (arguably) some higher animals - none of which would be relevant to the vast majority of evolutionary history - and even later, they matter only very indirectly, for evolution is not usually conceived as a naturally teleological process: nobody chooses to evolve. Theologically, as I have pointed out regarding childbirth, it is unsafe to assume that even human will operates independently of divine will, but that’s irrelevant to evolution.
© Events of “ontological randomness”, entailing that God has created processes that are not governed by his loving will, but by Epicurean chaos. This would make them unpredictable to him and outside his control - they would be forces of non-design, disrupting the choices both of his divine will, and of created wills. Within evolution, such would be the only possible kind of events not determined or designed by God.

That screams out the question of why God would create such Epicurean randomness in the first place. The only answers I’ve heard are:

(a) That it gives created things freedom. That’s nonsense on stilts. Free-wills have freedom by being allowed to make effective choices, not by suffering meaningless changes.
(b) That it allows variety and interest. That implies that God, as Creator, is not actually very inventive, and needs some random ideas to work on. Of course it’s even a question whether it’s conceptually coherent for him to design non-design. But are there any ideas that chance, undirected by divine providence or divine law, could conceivably come up with that the all-wise God wouldn’t come up with sooner?

Personally, I think the problem is neatly solved by saying that Epicurus has no role in a Theistic universe. That’s what historical Chroistian theology has concluded since New Testament times. And in that case, it is hard to see any way in which God would not be the governor - as well as the sustainer - of every natural event.

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Hi Jon,

I appreciate your detailed analysis, and the specific application (cute babies!). I have four children and two grandchildren, so the application is quite apropos to me.

The only area where I am not in full agreement is on the question of what you have called “Epicurean randomness.” I am assuming you mean by this ateleologic randomness. I disagree with the notion that randomness must inherently be ateleleogic.

Let’s see what the Bible says. Many passages depict a kind of chaos upon which God nevertheless sets boundaries. The (chaotic) seas may go this far, but no farther. In the Apocalypse, we see chaotic forces at work (stars falling from heaven, earthquakes, etc.), but God sets limits upon them. They operate for a specific time, and they can only do so much damage. So the Bible depicts, as far as I can tell, a world which is neither absolutely deterministic nor ateleologically random. There is chaos, but it is bounded.

Thus I see no reason why God could not use randomness as part of His creative process, just as I as a software developer can use randomness in computing algorithms. You say that my case is different from God’s because I have to use randomness due to limitations that God does not have. True, I have plenty of limitations, but at the same time, the opposite proposition–a human’s insistence that God cannot choose to use randomness–carries its own irony. Can not a sovereign God choose whatever means He wills?

So here’s my conclusion: the randomness that scientists observe in evolutionary processes can be traced back ultimately to a designer’s intentions (i.e., God’s). I don’t see a problem here, at least a problem which is somehow more difficult than the mystery of prayer, or the mystery of man’s role in God’s salvation, or any other sacred mystery that could touch off thousands of vigorous discussion threads. Which is not my intention, btw. :smile: We have plenty of science/faith matters on our plate already.

Cheers,
Chris

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I suggest a great deal of confusion exists in discussions on randomness - since scientists who define and discuss evolution do so on the basis that variation and selection are grounded in a random process, it is inappropriate (and confusing) to say it shows God’s intention as a designer. To make the latter leap, one needs to redefine ToE and show it is grounded in a non-random process (and the non-random aspect must be scientifically defined).

The discussion becomes confusing when the scientists claims are somehow mixed with theological claims which are statements of belief. That is why I have mentioned that often, evolutionary statements are beliefs (and often ideological) instead of rigorously examined scientific statements.

So here is my conclusion Chris :heart_eyes: we must get the science to be correct and then examine it within a theological context - we cannot say that God makes it ok when the science says it is random as science understands the term.

I agree completely that we have far weightier matters on science/faith than arguing about one fairly crude paradigm of biology - science is far bigger than evolutionary biology and it has much to offer regarding the glory of God’s creation.

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Wildly unrelated, but this, almost verbatim, was Jeremy Bentham’s description of Natural Law theory (the legal kind, not the scientific kind). A fantastic phrase, although I think he was quite wrong (though you quite right!) in what he was applying it to.

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Hi George,

I heartily agree!

I agree here, too. I think we can say that from the scientific perspective, the birth of a baby boy or girl has no teleological end. But from a theological context, we very much affirm God’s purposes. The pull of gravity on atmospheric particles has no teleological end, but God uses it to supply important gasses to all of life. Likewise, the randomness of mutations–or perhaps we could say the stochastic variance in genetic transcription–has no teleological end from the scientific perspective. But from a theological perspective, I affirm that God uses it for His ultimate purposes.

Cheers,
Chris

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Hi Chris,

I need to disagree with your last paragraph (surprisingly :confounded:). The birth of a baby is scientifically understood to occur because a male and a female made a decision to copulate. Science can never say that random events occurred and, oh yes, a baby was the result.

On matters such as gravity, the argument is also weak - science states that where you will find matter, there you will find gravity, and the larger the mass of matter the greater the gravity - so science understands this as fact, and from this discusses the solar system and stars etc. If we wish to formulate theology from, say, gravity, we are left with larger questions, but we do not modify theology, because of our understanding of these properties.

I keep on this theme mainly because Christians were gullible centuries ago, in mixing Hellenic notions of natural philosophy (i.e. immovable earth, eternal matter) with scripture that spoke of God as creator and the creation that is immovable and set. This erroneous mixture still haunts some Christians, and I think we would be better to refrain from an eager acceptance of any and all of science, and modify theology to suite.

Life and how it propagates and the extraordinary diversity (and lengthy time scales) testify to the brilliant and awe inspiring creation - Christians can be fully confident that any truly, rigorously examined science will bring further insights of this creation. We do not need to “jump” on any popularised theory to maintain our theological outlook.

I have come to understand that much of the arguments and disagreements are the result of other theologically erroneous viwes (e.g. YEC), but I do not think that additional errors can make it right.

Mutations are part of the great complexity of life, and if some play a positive role in the complexity and diversity of bio-forms, then so be it - but scientists must establish this in a coherent, scientific manner. To argue that the vast majority are deleterious, and then argue the reverse, strikes me as anything BUT stochastic processes - more in keeping with wishful thinking. But be that as it may, it cannot lead to conclusions of non-teleological (or otherwise) from such speculation.

Cheers, and Chris, as always, good to read your opinions.

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Thanks for your considered reply, Chris.

It’s another “devil in the detail” issue to discuss the biblical view of “chaos” and relate it to (a) the scientific concept of randomness, and (b) the popular concept of randomness.

As John Walton points out, Genesis is written viewing creation as a “bringing to order and/or function”, and being written in the ANE context, reads as if ordering what already exists. If that were all there was to it, then chaos would be “ontological randomness”, co-existing with God from the beginning and, essentially, a god.

But the Bible progressively makes clear that God creates “from what does not appear”, ie that what he is “ordering” through creation is also what he has first created ex nihilo. This sovereignty over the “tohu wabohu” is shown in all kinds of ways, for example in Psalm 139 where “If I go to the depths of the sea [the epitomy of disorder] you are there”.

Therefore, we would seem to agree that, whatever remains of “primordial chaos” in the world, it is neither ontologically independent of God, nor beyond his knowledge and control. But beyond that, since the Bible is starting from a different concept of chaos, order and creation than the discipline of science, one needs to establish by arguments any proposed link of them with something like “random variation” or even “unplanned outcomes”.

The simplest reason for this is that if one is applying the label “Evolutionary Creation” it is all about the bringing of intentional ends (order and function) into being. If there are undirected elements in that process, the very fact of “creation” is the ordering (ie the direction) of such elements. And since,specifically, species and ecosystems are the outcomes of that creative process, it’s not logical to regard them as other than intentional.

Second to consider is the detail about which, I think, George is concerned: the randomness of variations is, scientifically, simply their human unpredictability - no more, no less, as I’ve been arguing all along. Only by illegitimately shifting the meaning to the colloquial understanding of “random” as “undirected” is there any plausibility in equating that with a biblical idea of primordial chaos… but what justifies the shift, other than the metaphysical habits of some secular scientists?

Can God use “human unpredictability” (the scientific definition) in creation? That scarcely needs unswering when creation itself is unpredictable to us, its product.

Can he use “real unpredictability” in creation? Well, define what that means and I’ll try to suggest an answer. If it means “Can God produce outcomes from what he can’t predict outcomes from” it seems to be in the same category as creating a square circle, a logical impossibility.

If, instead, it means something like, “Can God produce outcomes from what would produce no outcomes on its own?” then you’re just describing design and creation.

I would thoroughly endorse that - only it has sequelae, in relation to your original uncertainty about whether God orders only some events, or maybe doesn’t intend all the species like Eddie’s anteaters. Perhaps I could put it thus:

“The random events and of-the-wall species that scientists observe in evolutionary processes can be traced back ultimately to a designer’s intentions.” How is that different from saying “God designed them”?

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