Redeeming science-3

ANONYMOUS SAID:

“To you they are not, I realize. But, consider someone who is convinced by the evidence for evolution. For that person it would be deceptive if God created the universe stocked with what he considers first rate evidence for gradual (or stepwise) descent if, indeed, evolution has not actually taken place. It depends on one’s perspective.”

Hi Andrew. Glad to see you back. Thanks for the follow-up questions. Let’s see if I can be more helpful thins time around:

Several issues:

1.I agree with you that I need to consider the perspective of the commenter. But unless the commenter identifies his perspective, I’m in no position to take his perspective into consideration.

If a commenter were to say, right off the bat, “I’m an old-earth creationist” or “theistic evolutionist” or “naturalistic evolutionist,” then I could adapt my answers to his operating assumptions, but unless he puts his cards on the table, face up, I can’t be responsive to his perspective.

2.You’ve also changed the subject from YEC to evolution generally. You’re welcome to change the subject if that’s what you really care about, but there are different arguments and counterarguments for these respective positions.

A critic of Darwinian, naturalistic evolution can be a YEC (e.g. Wise), OEC (e.g. Dembski), theistic evolutionist (e.g. Behe, Denton, Sheldrake), Lamarckian (e.g. Grassé), ufologist (Crick) or atheist/agnostic (e.g. Berlinski).

So the age of the earth/universe is a question distinct from the far broader question of evidence for gradual/stepwise common descent.

3.Speaking for myself, I’ve never been presented with first-rate evidence for Darwinian evolution. Rather, in reading the standard evolutionary literature, this is the sort of thing I run across:

i) An admission by someone like Mayr that the evidence is not that straightforward and unambiguous. Strenuous efforts are then made to patch-up the evidence.

ii) A surfeit of just-so stories and computer simulations.

iii) A failure to separate out evidence of macroevolution from evidence of microevolution.

iv) An a priori commitment to methodological naturalism.

v) A tendentious summary or theory-laden reconstruction of the evidence rather than showing the reader the actual evidence, viz., how many fossils are we talking about? Where did they come from? Which fossils from which sites? How are we to correlate fossils separated in time and place between one site and another?

vi) An appeal to certain commonalities which are equally consistent with common descent or common design.

vii) An appeal to “suboptimal” adaptations, is if there were such a thing as an ideal, all-purpose design.

viii) A multiplication of face-saving distinctions and disguised descriptions masquerading as explanation, so that evolutionary theory is made consistent with just about any pattern of evidence, viz. convergent/divergent evolution; coevolution/sequential evolution; biotic/organic adaptation; preadaptation/coadaptation; nonadaptive traits and/or spandrels; analogies/homologies/homoplasies; ancestral/derived homologies; primitive/acquired traits—to name a few.

ix) An iron-fisted effort to blacklist dissent.

x) A desperate attempt to find extraterrestrial confirmation of spontaneous evolution, viz. if not microbial life on Mars, then water; if not water, then fossilized riverbeds.

xi) Blustery rhetoric on the part of Dawkins and others to shame the reader into believing in evolutionary rather than reason him into believing in evolution.

“No, I got your point. It is just that naturalists have no good reason to appeal to some other brand of metascience until they find some useful reason for doing so. They take for granted the uniformity of nature and the reliability of natural and manmade periodicities in the same way that you, I and everyone do in day-to-day life. They do this because, thus far, it has worked out quite well for them, and they have nothing better to go on. If an alternative metascience had demonstrably superior utility, they’d have little trouble adopting it, I think.”

And up to a point, that’s quite reasonable. But when the charge of “deception” is leveled, then we’ve clearly moved beyond purely heuristic assumptions.

“If you consider your contentions concerning time and uniformity to be valid inferences from scripture, then that is *your* reason and that is just fine. But, what do you expect when you suggest to a naturalist who doesn’t subscribe to your metaphysical stance that nature is not uniform? Wouldn’t he reasonably consider it just another outlandish hypothetical, especially if the suggestion isn’t open to scientific inquiry (and on your explanation it wouldn’t be, of course)? To him it’d just be another one of a thousand unverifiable ways perception might not match ultimate reality. Or have I read to much into your explanation?”

1.There’s noting “outlandish” about treating the uniformity of nature as a convenient, but unprovable axiom.

Indeed, the uniformity of nature is, itself, a hypothetical. A hypothetical which is not open to scientific inquiry.

To take one example, suppose that science were to confirm the existence of ESP. Would a secular scientist ditch the uniformity of nature? No, he’d just expand his definition to cover ESP.

2.How do you verify a match between perception and reality? Perception is your only point of access. So you can’t compare your perception with reality according to some extraperceptual yardstick.

The most you can do is to establish a functional correlation between perception and reality.

3.I’d add that we cannot avoid certain metaphysical questions when it comes to such things as dating the universe.

For one thing, and I’ve discussing this before, dating is a question of chronometry: the measurement of time. That immediately raises the question of whether time has an intrinsic metric.

There’s no way of getting around this question by appealing to the pragmatic success of science or the reliability of the senses, for the results are consistent with metric conventionalism and metric objectivism alike.

“I guess I can think of it that way. But, if the alternative to the axiomatic assumption of uniformity is nonuniformity, what are we to do with that knowledge. How does it have any purchase on the way I order my world, or science orders its? Those things wouldn’t change at all on those assumptions, would they? It is just metaphysical talk, isn’t it? Science would go on as it always has and so would I.”

Except that you’re setting up an implicitly false dichotomy between uniformity and chaos—as if the only alternative to uniformity is sheer randomness.

“If the reasons you refer to are the appeals to metaphysics than I’d agree that I, by definition, can’t disprove them. I don’t deny them either. I just don’t think it is fair to call anyone childish who doesn’t subscribe to them.”

I didn’t call anyone childish for merely subscribing to the uniformity of nature or standard dating techniques.

Rather, what is childish is their reaction to anyone who questions their heuristic assumptions.

To level the charge of “deception” is childish because it carries the emotive connotation of betrayal, as if nature broke its promise in case nature is not uniform after all.

Where does this expectation come from? It personifies nature as if nature made a promise to the secular scientist to play by our rules, and if nature “backs out of the deal,” then it’s guilty of deception

“If, on the other hand, your refering to the science of Kurt Wise or Mayr, I’d say I’m impressed by the evidence to the contrary—though I’m not yet convinced one way or the other.”

Since Wise is a YEC while Mayr is a naturalistic evolutionist, I don’t know what this means.

Also, have you actually read YEC writers like Wise and Byl?

“I do, however, wonder how you can coherently invoke such evidence to the contrary, since it surely gains at least some of its force by appealing to the same principle of uniformity that you seem to disavow. I think I must be missing a nuance in your conception uniformity.”

What science requires is regularity, not uniformity.

The uniformity of nature is a dogma of methological naturalism.

No doubt absolute uniformity would be simpler and more convenient for purposes of absolute predictability.

But why assume that reality is as simple as it can possibily be?

There are conservative Christian scientists like Don Page who do first-rate science while believing in miracles.

“But I would argue that this is unreasonable only for someone who shares your worldview. That’s the point I tried to make at the beginning of this post.”

No, it’s not just a matter of my worldview. Rather, the irony is generated by a secular worldview.

It’s deeply anthropomorphic to equate a periodic process with a clock. The secularist is acting as if a periodic process was designed to tell him the time, so that, if it gives the wrong time, that would be deceptive.

But since that is not the natural function of a periodic process, there is no reason to assume that it must be reliable chronometer. To react in that fashion is to implicitly personify nature.

Or take the uniformity of nature. The scientific objection to miracles is that miracles would wreck the uniformity of nature, in which case we can no longer do science.

But even if that were true, why assume that nature is set up for the ultimate convenience of our scientific needs and wishes?

You see, the unbeliever subconsciously acts as if nature is his father’s house. As a child living under his father’s roof, he has certain expectations about how things are supposed to work—for his personal benefit.

If they don’t work that way, then Dad broke the house-rules. Dad is deceptive. Dad didn’t keep his word.

So, when I use the word “childish,” I’m not trying to be pejorative. There are plenty of other pejorative adjectives I could use if that was my intent.

No, I’m being quite literal about this. Although the unbeliever denies the existence of God, he acts as if he never left home.

“I wasn’t trying to be cute. It is very relevant to me personally in the context of this whole discussion.”

Since I deny your operating assumptions regarding the evidence for evolution and the age of the universe, there is no need for me to invoke the category of divine deception.

I don’t think the evidence is deceptive, even on my reading of the evidence.

And even if, for the sake of argument, it were, it is not only the reprobate who are taken in by this evidence.

So, once again, that theological appeal is irrelevant to this particular issue.