I recently watched this informal debate or dialogue between Josh Swamidass and Doug Axe:
I thought it was pretty good on Axe's side. I'd recommend it for Axe's contributions.
Swamidass, however, was a challenge to listen to. For example, Swamidass frequently interrupted Axe (and Swamidass often interrupts others in several other videos I've seen). At times Swamidass didn't seem to try to make a good faith effort to try to understand Axe but perhaps even the opposite. Swamidass seemed condescending toward Axe around the 50 minute mark when he suggested to Axe that Axe's description of cancer is "not what we find" because Axe hadn't been through medical training (MD) or worked in a cancer lab. Axe's description of cancer was fine for his purposes.
At 56:20, Swamidass claimed "Dembski himself backed off from his book The Design Inference". However that's false. Dembski himself responded to Swamidass here.
Swamidass further questioned Dembski over on Peaceful Science. (By the way, the Peaceful Science forums seem anything but "peaceful" in my opinion.) Others replied including Paul Nelson. Nelson mentioned he'll do a 4-part series on Evolution News. This is the first one.
Thanks as always, Hawk. In addition to providing outstanding analysis of so many issues and topics, you Triabloguers have a knack for finding the most interesting, relevant articles and videos pertaining to faith and apologetics.
ReplyDeleteThanks, CWB! I guess the truth is I spend too much time online browsing random stuff. ;)
DeleteHawk--
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that Swamidass comes across as academically arrogant. "Look at me! I'm a fully-fledged scientist at a thoroughly secular university. I have to watch what I say and deal in acceptable argument and evidence. You're in your squeaky-clean Sunday-School bubble world and can say whatever you wish without much scrutiny."
Swamidass comes across as theologically naive. He's content with a God of the Gaps cosmology (which is what it is despite his protestations). He seems almost angry with Axe for peering into the mystery to see what he can find out. He doesn't like Axe's methodology, but doesn't propose a better paradigm.
I actually have a problem with definitive stances on the interplay between evolution and creation. The good arguments are so complex, involving a high level of competence in philosophy, physics, biology, cosmology, mathematics, and theology. How many people can do that? John Polkinghorne? John Lennox? Alister McGrath? The names would be very few.
I'm not young earth OR old earth. I'm very unsure of issues of descent and speciation and possible mechanisms of evolution. Theistic evolution is out because it rips providence to shreds. ID seems to be in its infancy and thus impossible to evaluate. Almost every single position creates more difficulties than it solves.
Everybody these days seems to have a political opinion in spite of an immense and pervasive, almost universal illiteracy on the topic. I can't help but thinking that, with a very few exceptions, the same is true concerning cosmological and biological origins.
Thanks, Eric. Good points.
Delete1. Regarding Swamidass:
Yeah, unfortunately, I think Swamidass (I hope unintentionally) treated Axe like Axe was a second-rate scientist in this interview. Despite the fact that Axe's credentials as an engineer-scientist are sterling - UC Berkeley undergrad, Caltech PhD, University of Cambridge Centre for Protein Engineering. I think Axe is smarter than Swamidass, but of course Axe couldn't advance in his career precisely because he was sympathetic to and later advocated intelligent design. Otherwise Axe would likely be a professor at a prestigous secular institution too. Swamidass is at Washington University in St. Louis which is indeed a prestigious medical institution.
Also, Swamidass often makes much of the fact that he published his book The Genealogical Adam and Eve before he received tenure. He makes it sound like he could have been "expelled" for his views in this book, just like Axe had been "expelled" by secular academia. However, though Swamidass couches his argument in the language of reconciliation between YEC and modern science, and though there are some differences, at the end of the day Swamidass' scientific views on neo-Darwinism aren't fundamentally at odds with mainstream secular scientific views on neo-Darwinism in ways that Axe's views certainly are. So I don't see how Swamidass was ever really under any serious threat like Axe and other ID theorists have been. Similarly, take a theistic evolutionist like Kenneth Miller or Francis Collins. They haven't been censured by secular science in the same way or the same degree as William Dembski or Richard Sternberg have been.
Not to mention it's often easier for physicians (like Swamidass who is an MD-PhD) to land on their feet if they are "expelled" than it is for scientists (like Axe). For one thing, if a physician is "expelled" from academia, they can still find lucrative work (in fact, usually more lucrative work) in the community in private practice. Scientists would generally fare worse than physicians. And many institutions like physicians because physicians have more means to bring in money to an institution than scientists do (e.g. not only grant proposal but also seeing patients or in Swamidass' case slides and pathology reports can generate revenue for an institution). In short, Swamidass never had as much to lose as ID theorists like Axe have had to lose.
2. Speaking for myself, I'm probably not quite as impressed with John Polkinghorne, Alister McGrath, or even John Lennox as many other evangelical Christians seem to be, though I do respect them and I do see value in much of their work, and though I greatly admire Lennox in particular as a Christian gentleman. He's a far more godly man than I am. McGrath writes so much that much of what he writes is uneven. For the most part Lennox is regurgitating (in an intelligent way) arguments others have previously made in God's Undertaker.
Delete3. Intelligent design is relatively "new" in the sense that Dembski describes it in his chapter "How does intelligent design differ from the design argument?" in his book The Design Revolution (an excerpt is available here). However, ID is "old" in the sense that it's in the same or similar vein as teleological arguments (aka arguments from design, which would be more clearly termed the argument for design) stretching back at least as far as Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways.
4. I'm very sympathetic and greatly appreciate the work of the ID guys. That said, I'd side with philosophers like Alvin Plantinga (e.g. "design discourse") and Del Ratzsch (e.g. "the persistence of design thinking") when it comes to assessing their work.
5. Interestingly, secular physics (cosmology) seems to be more open-minded about arguments from design (e.g. fine-tuning) than secular biologists are.
Hawk--
DeleteThanks for the great reply. I wasn't so much commending Polkinghorne and McGrath as pulling off the top of my head some scholars that were trained in both theology and science. (Another is the Canadian apologist, Denis Lamoureux.)
So very many of those with skin in the game are trained solely as scientists. It matters when one doesn't possess all the necessary skills. It matters, too, where one procured one's scientific background...and where one did one's theology. Ideally, I'd love to see a guy with a doctorate in systematics from, say, Westminster and a doctorate in evolutionary biology from a Princeton or a Berkeley.
I really appreciate the ID guys, as well, and feel for them in terms of the sacrifices they have made. I'm impressed by Stephen Meyer, perhaps because he is quite articulate and makes things easy for me to understand.
Every evangelical Christian is a creationist by definition. Therefore, we are all teleologists and, at least in the broadest terms, part of the ID movement. I wish the evolutionary creationists and theistic evolutionists and such would have the courage to stand in unity with their young earth brethren (let alone with old earth Intelligent Design scientists!)
Instead, BioLogos and the like are often far more contentious with their fellow Christians than they are with their academic colleagues.
Thanks, Eric. Just to add to what you've said:
Delete1. Sometimes there are intelligent people who don't have a degree in a particular field, but who can make genuine contributions to the field mainly by their sheer intelligence. I'm thinking of people like Steve Hays and Lydia McGrew. A couple of the ID guys too.
2. I very much appreciate and like Stephen Meyer too. He is quite articulate. I think Meyer generally argues for intelligent design from inference to the best explanation (abductive argument for design) rather than, say, analogical or inductive arguments for design. Although I don't think he's opposed to other design arguments.
3. By contrast, Doug Axe isn't as articulate, though Axe does have thought-provoking ideas. Such as his idea of functional coherence.
4. I think there are at least a couple of fundamental differences between theistic evolutionists and creationists (e.g. YEC, OEC):
a. One of them is over God's intervention or guidance in creation or nature. Creationists tend to see God's guiding hand in nature (e.g. see what Stephen Meyer argues about the Cambrian explosion). Theistic evolutionists seem more deistic in this respect. They see God creating the universe "in the beginning", but effectively letting it unfold on its own from that point forward including with regard to the origin and evolution of life on our planet. That's not necessarily what theistic evolutionists would say (they'd say theistic evolution is guided), but that's what their position amounts to, I think. As such, one wonders how distinguishable the evolution (neo-Darwinism) of theistic evolution is from the evolution of atheistic evolution (neo-Darwinism). It doesn't seem to be very distinguishable to me. At best, the distinctions seem blurred. Hence the dilemma that theistic evolutionists have. On the one hand, theistic evolution accepts mainstream evolution (neo-Darwinism) which is an unguided process (e.g. Monod's Chance and Necessity). On the other hand, theistic evolutionists also want to argue God guided the process of evolution (neo-Darwinism). How can a process be simultaneously guided and unguided?
b. I should note I'm generalizing, for there are different theistic evolutionary positions, and not all of them necessarily fall prey to what I've just said above. Yet, even for those that don't necessarily fall prey to what I've just said, they seem a bit cagey on design detection. Some or many theistic evolutionists don't think one can even detect design in nature. Otherwise if they could detect design in nature, then they might have good reason to accept intelligent design. They'd have to accept a position like Michael Behe's position, Behe being a theistic evolution who accepts intelligent design. Of course, many if not most theistic evolutionists wouldn't accept Behe's position. And there are also theistic evolutionists who are methodological naturalists in their approach to science, which has its own significant problems.
Thanks for the corrections. I was not meaning to diss on Steve or Lydia. My argument is with those scientists who pontificate on a spiritually saturated topic without caring that that their theological proficiency is on a popular level at best.
ReplyDeleteI believe theistic evolutionists tend to front load the whole notion of providence or guidance. In other words, there is an undetectable guidance system as part of the software installed at the moment of creation. That way, they can be thoroughgoing Neo-Darwinists but have a handy "out" to make room for their compartmentalized "faith."
I haven't kept myself as up to date as I ought. Some, like Lamoureux, who used to call themselves theistic evolutionists, are now calling themselves evolutionary creationists. Do you know what that's all about? Are they trying to deflect criticism of their stance on Providence?
Thanks, Eric. Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to imply you were trying to "diss" Steve or Lydia. I was just using them as examples of people who are super smart and have contributed to a field but don't have the relevant degrees in the field. Neil Shenvi may be another example since he's been working on critical theory but his background is scientific (though I haven't read enough of Shenvi's work on critical theory to know for sure). Anyway it's a kind of credentialism, or even the credentials fallacy, depending on how it's used. And I suppose we could even say if someone has a doctorate in a field, then that means they have expertise in the field, but a lack of a doctorate in the field doesn't necessarily mean they lack expertise in the field.
DeleteI think Lamoureux is confused or conflicted or something along those lines in his arguments for evolutionary creationism. (I guess he's kind of like Swamidass in this respect.) Not to mention Lamoureux likewise talks about "intelligently designed evolution" which piles on the muddle-headedness. On the one hand, Lamoureux wants to say God used evolution (neo-Darwinism) to create all life on our planet including humans. On the other hand, he also wants to maintain evolution (neo-Darwinism) is a fundamentally random process, which in turn would seem to commit him to evolution (neo-Darwinism) being an unguided process. So I think this would go back to my earlier point about how can a guided process (evolutionary creationism) be unguided (atheistic evolution)? Otherwise, if Lamoureux is willing to accept that God guided "random mutations" in a way that we can detect evidence of design (e.g. God's infusion of de novo information) in these guided random mutations, then why doesn't Lamoureux become a full-blown intelligent design advocate? That's why I think his position is a conflicted position or at least a position in tension with itself.
By the way, this is in addition to Lamoureux's other significant problems. For example, he denies the historical Adam: "This is the Gospel as stated in the Bible, and there is no mention whatsoever of Adam and whether or not he existed. Christian faith is founded on Jesus, not Adam. This religion is called Christ-ianity, not Adam-ianity...we must also separate, and not conflate, the historical reality of Jesus and His death and bodily resurrection from the fact that Adam never existed, because Adam’s existence is rooted in an ancient biology of human origins."
Another example is the fact that Lamoureux thinks Genesis 1-11 is more mythology than history. (William Lane Craig seems to think similarly. That Gen 1-11 are more like mythohistory. I wonder if it's in part because of Swamidass' influence.)
And Lamoureux has even flat out said Scripture is mistaken in his Four Views on the Historical Adam chapter: "Holy Scripture makes statements about how God created living organisms that in fact never happened."
A lot more could be said about him, but it's getting a bit long and late, so I'll stop. I hope this helps a bit.
I haven't read it, but it looks like Stephen Meyer has a chapter dedicated to Lamoureux's evolutionary creationism in the book Theistic Evolution. The chapter is titled "The Difference It Doesn’t Make: Why the 'Front-End Loaded' Concept of Design Fails to Explain the Origin of Biological Information".
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