Faith and Science: Observation, and Interpretation | Tim McGrew

Is God a science-stopper?

I'd like to revisit Richard Dawkins's "science-stopper" objection. He alleges that if you say "God did it," then there's no point seeking a scientific explanation.

i) At best, that only applies to miracles. Take a miraculous healing. There's no causal explanation beyond divine agency.

But even in that regard, there may still be a teleological explanation. If God miraculously heals somebody, there's still the question of why he healed that person rather than someone else. Does the healing have a larger purpose in terms of future outcomes?

ii) In addition, we can generalize the principle. Take the Antikythera mechanism. To ascribe the device to intelligent agency hardly nullifies a scientific investigation into how it works and what it's for. To the contrary, it's only because the product was designed that we presume it has a purpose. It if was like random patterns in sand dunes, we wouldn't ascribe any particular significance to the artifact. 

What is the creation model?

http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2019/08/what-is-creation-model.html

NOMA

The lack of conflict between science and religion arises from a lack of overlap between their respective domains of professional expertise—science in the empirical constitution of the universe, and religion in the search for proper ethical values and the spiritual meaning of our lives. The attainment of wisdom in a full life requires extensive attention to both domains—for a great book tells us that the truth can make us free and that we will live in optimal harmony with our fellows when we learn to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly. 

Religion is too important to too many people for any dismissal or denigration of the comfort still sought by many folks from theology. I may, for example, privately suspect that papal insistence on divine infusion of the soul represents a sop to our fears, a device for maintaining a belief in human superiority within an evolutionary world offering no privileged position to any creature. But I also know that souls represent a subject outside the magisterium of science. My world cannot prove or disprove such a notion, and the concept of souls cannot threaten or impact my domain. Moreover, while I cannot personally accept the Catholic view of souls, I surely honor the metaphorical value of such a concept both for grounding moral discussion and for expressing what we most value about human potentiality: our decency, care, and all the ethical and intellectual struggles that the evolution of consciousness imposed upon us. 

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html

That's a classic statement of the no-conflict thesis regarding the relationship between science and religion. They cannot directly compete with each other because they make claims about different domains. The scope of science is the physical real whereas the scope of religion is moral and spiritual realm–assuming such a realm exists.

Not surprisingly, Gould's position has been attacked as an ad hoc compromise by Christians and atheists alike. But ironically, Gould is taking the same position as proponents of methodological atheism, who insist on the same compartmentalization. They typically defend methodological atheism on three grounds: by definition, scientific method disallows supernatural or teleological explanations; supernatural are explanations are untestable; and making room for supernatural explanations would bring science to a grinding halt.

Atheists invoke the same strictures in reference to historiography. It's not that reported miracles are false; rather, reported miracles aren't even false. They fall outside the purview of what historians can take into consideration. So historians and scientists must be neutral on the supernatural. That's not something they're in a position to affirm or deny, for supernatural claims are both unverifiable and unfalsifiable–at least by scientific and historiographical criteria. 

But that generates an acute dilemma for atheists. Methodological naturalism commits them to the no-conflict thesis. 

In addition, W. V. Quine, high priest of scientism, had some radical concessions regarding the limitations of scientific knowledge:

It would address the question of how we, physical denizens of the physical world, can have projected our scientific theory of that whole world from our meager contacts with it; from the mere impacts of rays and particles on our surfaces and a few odds and ends such as the strain of walking uphill, From Stimulus to Science(Harvard 1999), 16. 

There is a puzzle here. Global stimuli are private: each is a temporally ordered set of some one individual’s receptors. Their perceptual similarity, in part innate and in part modeled by experience, is private as well. Whence then this coordination of behavior across the tribe? (20). 

The sensory atomist was motivated, I say, by his appreciation that any information about the world is channeled to us through the sensory surfaces of our bodies; but this motivation remained obscure to him. It was obscured by his concern to justify our knowledge of the external world. The justification would be vitiated by circularity if sensory surfaces and external impacts on nerve endings had to be appealed to at the outset of the justification,”Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionist and Other Essays (Harvard 2008), 328. 

There is much clarity to be gained by dropping the project of justifying our knowledge of the external world but continuing to investigate the relation of that knowledge to its sensory evidence. Obscurity about the nature of the given, or epistemic priority, is then dissipated by talking frankly of the triggering of nerve endings. We then find ourselves engaged in an internal question within the framework of natural science. There are these impacts of molecules and light rays upon our sensory receptors, and there is all this output on our part of scientific discourse about sticks, stones, planets, numbers, molecules, light rays, and, indeed, sensory receptors; and then we pose the problem of linking that input causally and logically to that output (328).  

Much as I admire [David] Lewis’s reduction, however, it is not for me. My own line is a yet more sweeping structuralism, applying to concrete and abstract objects indiscriminately. I base it, paradoxically as this may seem, on a naturalistic approach to epistemology. Natural science tells us that our ongoing cognitive access to the world around us is limited to meager channels. There is the triggering of our sensory receptors by the impact of molecules and light rays. Also there is the difference in muscular effort sensed in walking up or down hill. What more? Even the notion of a cat, let alone a class or number, is a human artifact, rooted in innate predisposition and cultural tradition. The very notion of an object at all, concrete or abstract, is a human contribution, a feature of our inherited apparatus for organizing the amorphous welter of neural input (402-03). 

The conclusion is that there can be no evidence for one ontology as over against another, so long anyway as we can express a one-to-one correlation between them. Save the structure and you save all. Certainly we are dependent on a familiar ontology of middle-sized bodies for the inception of reification, on the part both of the individual and of the race; but once we have an ontology, we can change it with impunity (405). 

This global ontological structuralism may seem abruptly at odds with realism, let alone naturalism. It would seem even to undermine the ground on which I rested it: my talk of impacts of light rays and molecules on nerve endings. Are these rays, molecules, and nerve endings themselves not disqualified now as mere figments of an empty structure? (405). 

Naturalism itself is what saves the situation. Naturalism looks only to natural science, however, fallible, for an account of what there is and what what there is does. Science ventures its tentative answers in man-made concepts, perforce, couched in man-made language, but we can ask no better. The very notion of object, or of one and many, is indeed as parochially human as the parts of speech; to ask what reality is really like, however, apart from human categories, is self-stultifying. It is like asking how long the Nile really is, apart from parochial matters of miles or meters. Positivists were right in branding such metaphysics as meaningless (405). 

So far as evidence goes, then, our ontology is neutral. Nor let us imagine beyond it some inaccessible reality. The very terms ‘thing’ and ‘exist’ and ‘real,’ after all, make no sense apart from human conceptualization. Asking after the thing in itself apart from human conceptualization, is like asking how long the Nile really is, apart from our parochial miles or kilometers (416). 

So it seems best for present purposes to construe the subject’s stimulus on a given occasion simply as his global neural intake on that occasion. But I shall refer to it only as neural intake, not stimulus, for other notions of stimulus are wanted in other studies, particularly where different subjects are to get the same stimulus. Neural intake is private, for subjects do not share receptors (463-64). 

But in contrast to the privacy of neural intakes, and the privacy of their perceptual similarity, observation sentences and their semantics are a public matter, since the child has to learn these from her elders. Her learning then depends indeed both on the public currency of the observation sentences and on a preestablished harmony of people’s private scales of perceptual similarity (464). 

These reflections on ontology are a salutary reminder that the ultimate data of science are limited to our neural intake, and that the very notion of object, concrete or abstract, is of our own making, along with the rest of natural science and mathematics (471).

On Quine's view, it's appearances all the way down. Not in the metaphysical sense that there's no bedrock reality which underlies appearances, but in the epistemological sense that bedrock reality is undetectable. Scientific observation, experimentation, and theorizing can never get behind perception to describe what the world is really like apart from perception. 

This, however, might have the ironic consequence that theological explanations, unlike scientific explanations, do have the potential to describe ultimate reality. In principle, there are two ways that could be the case:

i) Some theological explanations appeal to modal intuitions. They aren't filtered through sensory perception.

ii) If Scripture is divine revelation, then God's knowledge circumvents appearances. He doesn't know the world via sensory perception. Rather, he knows the world because it corresponds to his plan or idea for the world. And he can share his creative ideas with humans. 

It's analogous to the difference between seeing a movie and hearing to a director explain what he had in mind. That enables the viewer to get in back of the film. To access it from the privileged viewpoint of the film's creator. 

This upends the way many people relate faith and science: instead of science getting to the bottom of things while theology is about airy-fairy stuff and wishful thinking, it's theology that gets to the bottom of things.

Compartmentalizing miracles

http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2017/03/as-for-annunciation-artificiality-of.html

Fact and theories in theology and science

http://themelios.thegospelcoalition.org/article/facts-and-theories-in-science-and-theology

Is the scientific paper a fraud?

http://www.weizmann.ac.il/mcb/UriAlon/sites/mcb.UriAlon/files/uploads/medawar.pdf

The faith of an atheist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PHoMWIlklA

Scientific progress and stultification

Einstein had a good idea 100 years ago, and we need another one to take us forward. But the approach has to be more investigative than directive. If you try to direct science, you only get people going in the direction you told them to go. All of science comes from people noticing interesting side paths. You’ve got to have a very flexible approach to exploration and allow different people to try different things. Which is difficult, because unless you jump on the bandwagon, you don’t get a job.

Worrying about your future, you have to stay in line. That’s the worst thing about modern science. Fortunately, when you get to my age, you don’t need to bother about that. I can say what I like.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160303-michael-atiyahs-mathematical-dreams/

Two kinds of science

http://afterall.net/papers/duhemian-and-augustinian-science-and-the-crisis-in-non-empirical-knowledge/

Is Goddidit unfalsifiable?

i) We're living at a time when Christians are under increasing pressure to accommodate the Bible to the scientific establishment. The scientific arguments are complex and often highly technical. And the ground keeps shifting in light of new developments. Here's one way to simplify the debate. 

Unbelievers frequently raise two contradictory objections to creationism. I'm using "creationism" loosely, because unbelievers use "creationism" loosely to designate YEC, OEC, intelligent design, and/or the historicity of Gen 1-9. 

A. Science falsifies creationism

Take human evolution. Many books and websites say there's overwhelming evidence for human evolution. Creationism has been falsified by multiple lines of evidence from comparative anatomy, comparative genomics, and the fossil record. 

Obviously, this triumphalist claim hasn't gone unchallenged by creationists. Indeed, sometimes you have skeptics of the standard evolutionary paradigm within secular scientific establihsment itself. 

However, that's well-trodden ground. What is more striking is to compare this objection with the next objection:

B. Creationism is unfalsifiable

Let's quote a few representative examples:

Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.  

http://www.drjbloom.com/Public%20files/Lewontin_Review.htm 

The appeal to supernatural forces, whether divine or occult, is always available because we can cite no necessary constraints upon the powers of supernatural agents. This is just the picture of God that Johnson presents. He says that God could create out of nothing or use evolution if He wanted (JDT p. 14, 113); God is "omnipotent" (JDT p. 113). He says God creates in the "furtherance of a purpose" (JDT p. 4), but that God's purposes are "inscrutable" (JDT p. 71) and "mysterious" (JDT p. 67). A god that is all-powerful and whose will is inscrutable may be called upon to explain any event in any situation, and this is one reason for the methodological prohibition against such appeals in science. Because of this feature, supernatural hypotheses remain immune from disconfirmation.  

It is not that supernatural agents and powers could not explain in principle, it is rather that they can explain all too easily. As such we may think of them as the explanation of last resort, since, like the Greek god in the machine, they can always be hauled down to "save the day" if every other explanation fails. 

https://www.msu.edu/~pennock5/research/papers/Pennock_SupNatExpl.html 

Nye’s position relies upon the scientific method, summarized by the phrase “evidential evaluation of falsifiable hypotheses.” In other words, science aims to disconfirm its hypotheses and uses evidence to do so. This falsification process is a powerful way to eliminate bad ideas, and nothing proves an idea false better than its disagreement with reality…By contrast, faith—and theology more broadly—does not possess or employ a mechanism for falsification and appears only incidentally interested in observation.  

https://richarddawkins.net/2014/01/creationism-faith-and-legitimizing-bad-ideas/

The basic contention here is that science requires an unbroken chain of physical cause and effect. But once you make allowance for an omnipotent, interventionist God, a God who can instantly bypass natural processes to produce a physical effect apart from antecedent condition, then creationism is unfalsifiable–for anything in nature, anything pattern of evidence is explicable by appeal to this Deus ex machina. It severs the links in the chain of cause and effect, past and present. 

ii) Now, what's interesting about B is that it cancels A. These two objections can't both be true. 

Moreover, these are asymmetrical objections. B can rule out A in a way that A is impotent to rule out B. For if B is true, then nothing counts as evidence for A. 

Ironically, this is a secular objection to creationism. But if we take the secular objection seriously, it destroys secular science. In their effort to shoot down creationism, the bullet ricochets on their own position. 

Of course, they regard this as an unacceptable consequence of theism. But to claim that theism has this consequence in no way invalidates or undercuts the unwelcome consequence. 

In this respect, Christians don't need to produce any evidence to refute A. We don't need to mount our own independent argument to refute A. We can simply redeploy an argument that secular scientists keep repeating. If, according to secular scientists, methodological naturalism is a necessary presupposition of science, then by their own admission, the existence of an omnipotent interventionist God nullifies all their evidentiary objections to creationism. 

That's not some ad hoc argument that Christians concoct to deflect the scientific evidence. Rather, that's a tacit concession which the secular scientists are making. All we need to do is agree with them, thank them for pointing that out, and kindly showing them that their objection backfires. 

iii) From a theological standpoint, B is fairly overstated. According to Biblical theism, God hasn't made an Alice in Wonderland world where effects routinely materialize out of the blue. Every possibility is not a plausibility.To the contrary, Biblical theism has a doctrine of ordinary providence. 

However, that observation does nothing to support A or undermine creationism, for that's a theological restriction. It presumes a theological framework. 

iv) Finally, if creationism is unfalsifiable, that doesn't make it unverifiable. And that doesn't mean naturalistic evolution is unfalsifiable. Once again, these are asymmetrical positions. Naturalistic evolution can still be falsifiable on its own terms. 

By contrast, creationism isn't falsifiable on its own terms–given the limitless explanatory power of an omnipotently resourceful God. Conversely, if some biological events are inexplicable apart from superhuman intelligence, then the evidence selects for theism rather than naturalism.

It always comes back to methodological atheism

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/01/at_biologos_ste092841.html

Ex nihilo nihil fit

One presupposition of cosmological arguments for God's existence is the axiom that nothing comes from nothing. 

Unsurprisingly, in order to attack cosmological arguments, some atheists deny the axiom. 

However, to deny the axiom is to deny causality. If something can come from nothing, then you have uncaused effects. 

But that instantly dissolves many things that atheists typically hold dear, like induction, the uniformity of nature, and scientific explanation.

The clockwork universe

While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease (Gen 8:22).

The scientific method treats the world as a closed system. A continuum of physical cause and effect. Nothing from the "outside" bypasses the chain of cause and effect. 

And that's the basis for induction. The present resembles the past, and vice versa. And that, in turn, forms the basis for sciences of origins (e.g. cosmology, geology, paleontology, paleoanthropology). 

And there's some truth to that. In the Biblical worldview, nature generally operates as if it's a closed system. Ceteris paribus, there's nothing wrong with presuming continuity. 

And yet, according to the Biblical worldview, nature is actually an open system. Open to agents (e.g. God, angels, demons, ghosts, sorcerers, miracle-workers) who can, and sometimes do, bypass the causal continuum. Open to the introduction of causes outside the ordinary chain of physical cause and effect. 

As Christians, we must make allowance for the possibility, and actuality, that induction breaks down at unpredictable points along the line. A miracle both interrupts and restarts the process. The natural order resumes after the miracle. But it resumes at a different point than if the miracle had not occurred. A miracle may not mere restart, but jumpstart or reset the process. Advance the outcome or change the outcome. Take miraculous healing. 

That's not some ad hoc consideration. It's fundamental to the Christian worldview. To Christian supernaturalism and dualism. 

And that's something which theistic or deistic evolutionists refuse to take into account. They don't take that seriously. They operate as though nature really is a closed system. Indeed, some of them think that's the case. They are really back to the clockwork universe.  

There are scientists with a very literal-minded view of reality. Victor Stenger is a case in point. They have a rule-bound mindset. They think nature always follows the rules. Indeed, they think nature ought to follow the rules. As though nature made them a promise. If a miracle happens, then nature broke its promise. A miracle is "cheating." They indulge in that childish personification of nature. 

Adam-of-the-gaps

I've been reading Adam, the Fall, and Original Sin, Hand Madueme and Michael Reeves, eds. It's an uneven collection of essays. For now I'd like to focus on the scientific question. Mdueme puts his finger on one difficulty with theistic evolution and/or old-earth creationism:

One weakness, however, is the potential of an Adam-of-the-gaps fallacy. Paleontology, paleoanthropology, and associated disciplines are judged basically reliable as sources of truth and they provide the main story; the task of the theologian is then to find a way to identify the historical Adam within that story (237).

That certainly looks like an ad hoc amalgam of two divergent paradigms. Young-earth creationism doesn't have that problem. But it trades that problem for a different problem: challenging the science that drives old-earth creationism and theistic evolution. 

1) Let's some general observations about the scientific method. All things being equal, an operating assumption of scientists is that the past produces the future. Antecedent conditions effect subsequent conditions. 

The same physical causes produce the same physical effects. In that respect, past and future resemble the present.  Therefore, taking our knowledge of the present as a frame of reference, we can extrapolate forward and backward. 

For instance, dating techniques presume constancy in the rate of natural processes. Likewise, evidence for human evolution based on population genetics (e.g. the "bottleneck") presumes constancy in the rate natural processes. 

Physical causes operate with mechanical regularity. They do whatever they were programmed to do–no more and no less. 

2) Up to a point, that's a reasonable assumption. And it has some theological warrant. We call this ordinary providence.

So, for instance, a Christian goes to the doctor, under the assumption that diseases typically have physical causes which are physically treatable. 

3) However, that's qualified. If nature takes its course, a terminal cancer patient will die. 

Sometimes, however, a terminal cancer patient undergoes remission in answer to prayer. In that situation, past conditions don't produce or predict for future conditions. In that case, the outcome doesn't belong to the chain of events (i.e. physical causation). 

That's because physical causes are not the only causes. Not even the only causes of physical effects.

That, however, interjects a degree of unpredictability into the presumption of continuity between past, present, and future. 

The history of the world contains singularities. Outcomes discontinuous with prior states. Indeed, the world began with a singularity: fiat creation.

In addition to that macrocosmic singularity, the history of the world is punctuated by microcosmic singularities. Miracles which bypass the causal continuum. 

All things being equal, linear extrapolations from the present into the past are reasonable. But that means bracketing kinds of mental agency which produce immediate physical effects. By "immediate," I mean apart from an intervening physical medium. Candidates include God, angels, demons, ghosts, and human psi. 

Because God usually operates behind the scenes, working via physical means, it's easy to ignore God when we do science. God is like a necessary background condition. Unobtrusive. We don't expect God to intervene at any particular time and place, so our default policy treats the course of nature as the norm. 

But it's precisely because divine intervention is unpredictable that scientific prediction or retrodiction is unreliable to some imponderable degree. We can't quantify when or where God (or other agents) will interrupt the course of nature. That interjects an unstable element into historical reconstructions. The scientific method is arbitrary in that respect. It's true–except when it's false. 

That's why pious Christians have a two-track policy. We presume ordinary providence, but we also pray.

Nature is like a machine. It has a default setting. But it also has a manual override. God can break the cycle in answer to prayer. 

4) Moreover, this isn't just hypothetical. There's more to human history than ordinary providence. There's special providence. And miracles. And answered prayer. And the occult. 

Let's consider some of the putative evidence for human evolution:

i) Comparative anatomy. There are fossil remains of creatures that have a humanoid appearance. Hands. Skulls. Bipedalism. 

There are, however, problems with that line of evidence:

a) Ostriches and kangaroos are bipedal. But that doesn't relate them to man. Some bats, marsupials, and chameleons have opposable digits. But that doesn't relate them to man. 

b) Moreover, bipedalism is unrelated to cognitive ability. 

c) Modern humans coexist with apes and monkeys. We share morphological similarities, yet there are drastic cognitive differences. Why think fossil "hominids" must be anything other than extinct apes and monkeys? 

ii) Apropos (i), some "hominids" use tools, yet that, by itself, isn't probative. There are animals that use tools, viz. crows, sea otters, green jays, trapdoor spiders, and woodpecker finches. 

Or take beehives and spiderwebs. If apes and monkeys did that sort of thing on a larger scale, Darwinians would chalk it up to simian brainpower.  

Most fossil artifacts aren't uniquely human in that regard. Cave paintings and musical instruments are unmistakably human. But much of the other "evidence" is quite ambiguous. 

iii) Another line of putative evidence is the alleged correlation between cultural evolution and encephalization. That, however, is tricky to parse. 

a) To begin with, the relationship between minds and brains is somewhat baffling. For instance:

http://www.psych.ufl.edu/~steh/PSB4504/brainnecessary.pdf

b) Knowledge is cumulative. Knowledge builds on knowledge. And the rate of progress can accelerate. We see that in the rapidity of technological advances. It takes a long time to get to the tipping point. After that, the rate of progress picks up pace. Crossing that threshold is the hard part. 

Gen. Curtis LeMay reputedly said we should bomb the Viet Cong back to the Stone age. Suppose something like that happened to human civilization.

As long as modern know-how survived, we could probably get back to where we were in a few decades. If, however, the knowledge was lost or forgotten, then it would take centuries or probably millennia to start from scratch. 

You can't have a Newton without a Kepler. You can't have an Einstein without a Riemann or Mach. If Einstein was born before Riemann or Mach, he wouldn't develop Relativity. 

And it's a matter of space as well as time. If Linus Pauling, Paul Dirac, or Claude Shannon were born in the Amazon jungle, and never made contact with the outside world, their genius would go to waste. 

In addition, some scientists, like Newton or von Neumann have a unique skill set. If we had to start all over again, you wouldn't have a Newton, Einstein, or von Neumann. You'd have other geniuses with different skill sets. 

Although we might make the same scientific breakthroughs, we wouldn't make them in the same order. It might be sooner or later. You might have scientific theories which overlap with the theories we have, but the pieces would be rearranged. The pieces would come together in different ways at different times.     

A rule no one needs or obeys

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/09/methodological_1089971.html

Is science self-correcting?

Atheists allege that Christian theology is unfalsifiable, unlike scientific theorizing, which, because it's fact-based rather than faith-based, is not only falsifiable, but according to Carl Sagan, "self-correcting."

Here's an example of self-correcting science:

During a talk at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Nima Arkani-Hamed, a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., paced to and fro in front of the blackboard, addressing a packed room about the future of supersymmetry. What if supersymmetry is not found at the LHC, he asked, before answering his own question: then we will make new supersymmetry models that put the superpartners just beyond the reach of the experiments. But wouldn’t that mean that we would be changing our story? That’s okay; theorists don’t need to be consistent—only their theories do. 

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6836

Simplicity and theism

http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2014/03/simplicity-and-theism.html

The invisible navigator

But how do we know that evolution is nonteleological or that any teleology in it must be scientifically unascertainable. Imagine you are on an ancient ship and observe a steersman at the helm. The ship traverses difficult waters and reaches port. You conclude that the vessel’s trajectory at sea was teleological. Why? Two things: you see a steersman controlling the ship’s rudder who, on independent grounds, you know to be a teleological agent; also, you witness the goal-directed behavior of the ship in finding its way home. 

Now imagine a variation on this story. An ancient sailor comes on board a twenty-first century ship that is completely automated so that a computer directly controls the rudder and guides the vessel to port. No humans are on board other than this sailor. Being technologically challenged, he will have no direct evidence of a teleological agent guiding the ship—no steersman of the sort that he is used to will be evident. And yet, by seeing the ship traverse difficult channels and find its way home by exactly the same routes he took with ancient ships guided by human steersmen, he will be in his rights to conclude that a purpose is guiding the ship even if he cannot uncover direct empirical evidence of an embodied teleological agent at the helm. 

http://evoinfo.org/papers/ConsInfo_NoN.pdf

Statistical errors

"P values, the 'gold standard' of statistical validity, are not as reliable as many scientists assume."