Podcast: Stephen C. Meyer | Is God a Hypothesis?

Faith & Science Conversation
7

This was my favorite LOG podcast of all time. Loved the give and take between two professionals.

I thought of the topic of “theistic science” as Jim and Stephen were talking toward the end about demarcation issues setting off science from non-science. I read about the possibility of theistic science a long time ago and don’t recall it well. But perhaps Stephen was arguing for a kind of theistic science in blurring the lines between metaphysics and science in a quest for ultimate causal explanations.

1 Like
8

Good to see you here @RickM. I was pretty deeply into the academic debate about theistic science back in the day (which centered around a series of article by Notre Dame Christian philosophers Alvin Plantinga and Ernan McMullin). I don’t think any Christian scientist would disagree that our Christian faith commitments ought to bear on how we interpret the findings of science and incorporate them into the bigger explanatory picture we all have. The question is whether we ought to call that bigger explanatory picture “science”. And I totally agree with Meyer that too many of the high profile people on the atheistic side have allowed their metaphysical beliefs to influence their own bigger explanatory pictures and called that science. I also don’t think we can always draw a definitive line of demarcation between science and non-science (just like we can’t between species in an evolutionary development!).

But it doesn’t follow from those concessions that we can’t ever helpfully demarcate science from non-science. And Meyer agreed with that too. It’s just that we seem to draw those lines differently. One of the tremendous virtues of science is its ability to transcend metaphysical differences, such that you get the same experimental results no matter what your creed. That’s what I’d like to call science, and then say that we must also interpret those findings and our interpretations will of course be influenced by our creeds.

5 Likes
9

@jstump, thank you very much for the podcast. I hope that we can take this opportunity to reconcile the differences between BioLogos and ID.

My first comment is that Stephen seems to accept the claim that the biosphere is not designed, but just appears to be designed. I do not know for sure if BioLogos has taken a stand on this issue. I do not think so, which gives the appearance of agreement.

My research indicates that this claim is based on the book, Chance and Necessity by Jacques Monod originally published in French in 1970 and in English in 1972. Monod was a Nobel winning biologist, who fought in the Resistance in World War 2. He clearly states that he was a Marxist atheist, who left Marxism behind.

The problem with saying that life is only apparently designed is that we can say that the earth only appears to be round. If we know what designed looks like, which we do if something appears to be designed, then it is either designed or not. It can only be apparently designed if we have secret knowledge that it is not, which is what Monod says.
…
Monod says that natural entities cannot be designed because they are natural and nature cannot think. That also means that nature is irrational for the same reason, so science is also irrational for the same reason, because nature cannot think.

Dawkins says that animals including humans are survival machines. This must mean that they appear to be designed, because machines are designed by rational beings.

So this is where EC differs from Dawkins & Co. EC (and ID) say that we live in a rational universe designed for rational humans. The real issue for everyone is how is this design carried out.

ID says “evolution” is a mechanical, random, unguided process. The would mean that apparent design is nothing like real design. If Dawkins could show me how this mechanical, random, unguided process works, I would agree with him. Instead his chapters in The Selfish Gene, 10 and 12. he talks about zero sum game rather than natural selection.

In the other hand Christians are blessed with the concept of Jesus as the Logos, God’s Rational Word as found in John 1:1- 3, which tells that the Logos is rational, embedded in nature, and good, rather than evil. The Logos is not mechanical, random, and unguided. Either this understanding of evolution is wrong or the Gospel is wrong. My bet is for the Gospel, but I am willing to look at the facts.

Thus far no one has come close to proving it wrong. Fortunately God is smarter, wiser, and more powerful than even men like Charles Darwin. God can find ways to do things that we would not. That is the reason for good science that tells us we have to prove our ideas, not be satisfied with the fact that we think we are right.

God the Father gave us Jesus Christ, the Logos. God also gave us the idea that Jesus is the Logos of Life. It is up to us to fill out this idea with the facts.

2 Likes
10

How so? Science is the merely empirical domain of rationality. Eternity is a rational fact, it is so. The eternity of nature for a start. It cannot possibly be empirically, scientifically demonstrated; it doesn’t have to be, any more than abiogenesis or the emergence of shared intentionality between emergent consciousnesses does. The multiverse isn’t science so is it non-science [implying that it has no rational validity, when that’s all it needs and has]? Regardless of the fact that it is a rational fact derived from uniformitarianism, Kolmogorov complexity, common sense. That there is no alternative to it whether God grounds it or not.

11

There are presuppositions involved in those statements that are not necessarily true. ‘Eternity’, God, exists without being constrained to sequential time. So the ‘eternity of nature’ is not a given, unless you lump God into your definition of nature, which rather makes the word meaningless.

17

This was my favorite episode of the LOG podcast. We need more conversations like this.

1 Like
18

Thanks GStanto!

1 Like
19

Would it make the word nature meaningless? Perhaps it give nature meaning as without God id does not have any - which is the problem that atheists have. Perhaps the confusion stems from people confusing natural with physical and then the expecting the supernatural to be not natural like super glue to be not glue :slight_smile:
To me nature is eternal in God as God transcends it, e.g. is everywhere in nature, like I am eternal in God. And that is the atonement I understood in Jesus that when I submit myself to God’s authority I can live with death and get through it.
So to me God is natural, but he is not physical / material as the material is not eternal but subject to time.

20

where do you take that from? I did read him as promoting the idea that if it walks line a duck and looks like a duck and quacks like a duck - it probably is a duck. In that way he coherently defended God as a rational cause of reality.

Pity Jim did not argue ownership of the evolutionary process by God which would overcome the ID communities fear of evolution to undermine the design argument. Instead of the God of the Gaps the should have addressed the “not God” of the gaps in the context of argument from ignorance

1 Like
21

As I said last night, but didn’t appear, which is either because responding to someone I’ve blocked goes to oblivion, or I didn’t actually hit [Reply]: Or it was simply censored because you are not reading for comprehension.

Paraphrased: (a) The presuppositions are yours. My statements and presuppositions are all necessarily true. (b) ‘Eternity’ != God as demonstrated by the fact that eternity is the natural attribute of sequential time, i.e. the given of the eternity that is nature. (c ) Your premiss is wrong and your nesting fallacy around that one is wrong, pantheism is heterodox and the meaning of nature is independent of the meaning of God unless He grounds it, which is no given.

22

By itself nature, the physical - there is no confusion - has no meaning, which doesn’t negate it. You are affirming the consequent again by declaring the supernatural to be natural, which makes both meaningless but enables you to do the same with your straw man ‘confusion’ of nature and physics which is no such thing. They are synonyms. If God grounds eternal nature, i.e. if the natural is God, then it acquires His supernatural purpose. The atonement.

23

@marvin, thank you for your response. I quite agree, but there are some problems there. One is that I do not think that BioLogos @jstump wants to say that God owns the evolutionary process and the other is I do not think that BioLogos knows what the relationship between God and evolution is.

God is not evolution, because that would be pantheism. Evolution is not separate from God because that would be dualism, which is where most people are. I would say that God is the Source of the universe and evolution, which means that there is an intimate connection, but they are not the same, but most modern folks do not accept this.

My hope in introducing Monod into the conversation was to put it on the right plane. We are talking not about science itself, but the philosophy of science. It is not a problem that the New Atheists have a philosophy, even though they might want to sweep it under the rug, but we need to examine it critically.

A sure path to confusion is talking philosophy to someone who is talking science or thinks that they are talking science. This seems that this is what ID tries to do. Of course. its philosophy is terribly outdated.

The Key is the Logos, which is a philosophical concept, a theological concept, and thanks to John 1, a scientific concept. He is just waiting there for someone to discover this goldmine of meaning and knowledge.

1 Like
24

I think the underlying supposition is that God has ownership of all creation, including evolution.

25

it was simply censored because you

 

Yes. I did not mean to equate God with eternity. I was too concise and inadequately precise. Like someone else.

 

It is not and it is not a given. God is eternal, nature is not. Only God possesses aseity, time does not. Big bang cosmology more than suggests that sequential time as we know it had a beginning. Please try and comprehend that, or at least apprehend it a little. Insisting it did not is merely supposition and assertion without evidence.

26

the linguistic problem you face is that for a lud of people the meaning of natural goes well beyond the material, which is why it is better to use the word physical and metaphysical or material and nonmaterial. If you study nature you study far more than physics which is why the choice of words is important. I demonstrated this with the use of the word superglue but it looks like you did not get that joke.

27

that is what I was trying to communicate. It is when you realise that the control mechanism of evolution is the word of God, e.g. to love thy neighbour like thyself that the perceived conflict with evolution disappears and questions like extinction of 99% of the previously existing life forms seize to be a problem, as death, e.g. to lay down your life for the benefit of others becomes something that is an ultimate act of love as it allows others to live. This is why Jesus died for us so we can live and understand that our life does not end with the physical death.

1 Like
28

@jstump, @marvin

Of course BioLogos (and ID) say that God created evolution, but we also share the Western dualistic worldview with science, which says that God and the universe (Nature) are very much separate. This allows for the God of the Gaps.

Until relatively recently, within the last 100 years or so, science assumed that the universe was eternal and static. There was no Big Bang. There was no Beginning. Now we know that this was false, but it has still strongly colored our thinking. God did not inherit the universe, but shaped it from nothing, and made it rational and good. That is not boasting, That is a true fact.

Now Meyer was clear that his thinks that evolution as understood by science is a mechanistic, random, and unguided process. BioLogos seems to agree. I do not because, while evolutionary change is real and true, scientific knowledge is historically imperfect.

Also it must be noted that evolution is a primarily a biological process, which would make it organic, rather than mechanistic, process. This is a very important difference.

Looking at the the evolutionary process as it has functioned at different times and situations, it is clear that it is not random in the ordinary sense, as opposed to the specialized, arbitrary statistical sense often used by science.

Random in the ordinary sense means without logic or purpose. Evolution is not random or haphazard. That does not mean that there are no random aspects of evolution, but it is a rational process designed to fulfill a rational purpose," to be fruitful, increase in number" (and diversity) “and fill the earth, the seas,” and the air.

In the same sense evolution, like all historical processes is guided by a purpose. While this purpose may not be obvious, we have science, philosophy, and theology to answer this type of question.

The point is that evolution is either random in the sense that it has no rational purpose, or it is designed and it has rational structure. Even if it is mechanistic, machines are designed, guided by rational purpose, and are not random, but rational.

Monod’s book is based on the assumption that God does not exist, and therefore the universe is not rational and not designed. The problem is that the evidence demonstrates that the universe is rational and thus rationally designed. Therefore we can logically assert that the assumption of the nonexistence of God is false also. Those who live by logic, can also die by logic.

So the issue is the character of the universe, which is the reason why it is so hotly disputed. Is the universe rationally structured or not? Is it designed or not? Is it good or not?

29

Kindly - all that Stephen C. Meyer has are ideas in his head… simply his own fantastical thinking…

I need to meet God - not just live all kinds of Stephen C. Meyer’s speculations, opinions, assumptions, mental gamesmanship - etc., etc.

My comment is not to suggest the discussion should not have happened - but to make certain it - and Stephen - are placed in proper context. Simply human ideational constructs - without any theological essence.

1 Like
30

@GregLogan,
Thank you for your comment and welcome back.
@jstump, @jpm, @Dale, @Mervin_Bitikofer

I can sympathize with what you say. I certainly do not agree with the theology of Stephen C. Meyer, but then I do not agree with the theology of Richard Dawkins, but I do not see that is the issue.

The issue is What is the nature of evolution? Is it mechanistic, random, and unguided, as Dawkins says, or not?

The problem is that many people, perhaps including myself, think that mechanistic, random, unguided evolution directly contradicts the Christian doctrine of Creation, so something would have to give if this is true.

BioLogos has yet to reconcile mechanistic, random, unguided evolution with Creation, and until it does the ideas of ID and YEC will still find many adherents.

1 Like
31

I see you are still misrepresenting Dawkins’ position on evolution.

“Darwinism is not a theory of random chance. It is a theory of random mutation plus non-random cumulative natural selection. . . . Natural selection . . . is a non-random force, pushing towards improvement. . . . Every generation has its Darwinian failures but every individual is descended only from previous generations’ successful minorities. . . . [T]here can be no going downhill - species can’t get worse as a prelude to getting better. . . . There may be more than one peak.” --Richard Dawkins, Climbing Mt. Improbable.

2 Likes