Creationism, Interventionism and Deism.

A rather anthropomorphic view of God's activity

In this post on Sandwalk Larry Moran adopts a new term for that category of evolutionist normally referred to as “theistic evolutionists”. The term, borrowed from a blog post by Jerry Coyne , is “New Creationist”. Although I wouldn’t quibble with the use of the word “creationist” here, I would question the appropriateness of the qualifier “new”. In this post on my church blog I submit some historical evidence indicating that the established prewar church was not inclined to question the findings of science, but rather to integrate those findings into its world view. In contrast contemporary Young Earth Creationism is a recent recrudescent phenomenon that started at around the time of the publication of “The Genesis Flood” by Whitcomb and Morris in 1961. So, in actual fact Young Earth Creationism may better qualify for the name “New Creationism”. A more appropriate name for the theistic evolutionists may actually be “establishment creationists” thus describing their identification with mainstream and established science.

In his “new creationist” post Coyne is responding to his antagonist Ervin Lazlo, a philosopher and system theorist. Laszlo must surely understand this subject and yet he is quoted by Coyne as appearing to promote “Hoyles fallacy”, a fallacy which estimates minuscule OOL probabilities by concatenating a set of assumed independent probabilities into a long product series. Naturally Coyne (and myself) would find fault with this kind of procedure. But in a further quote Laszlo appears to show an understanding that evolution requires peculiar preconditions in order to raise its probability to realistic levels – a point of view with which I would concur; if evolution and abiogenesis are facts then the improbability is not to be found in the way suggested by Hoyle’s fallacy, but instead can be traced back to the “one-off” prerequisite mathematical conditions grounded in the physics required by evolution. This “one-off-ness” is, as I have propounded elsewhere, a special case of a more general and abstract thesis that tells us that in the final analysis a great irreducible Logical Hiatus lies at the heart of all finite human theoretical schemes. However, it is the import and interpretation of this inevitable logical hiatus that causes the vexation between atheists and theists. For example, Lazlo effectively waves a red rag to the bull when after noting that evolution is conditional upon particular (and surprising) preconditions he goes on to say:


In the final count the evolution of life presupposes intelligent design. But the design it presupposes is not the design of the products of evolution; it’s the design of its preconditions. Given the right preconditions, nature comes up with the products on her own.

And:

Design is a necessary assumption, because chance doesn’t explain the facts.

Using his own words Coyne renders this sort of argument as follows:

…the evidence for all this is that life is complex, humans evolved, and the “fine tuning” of physical constants of the universe testify to the great improbability of our being here—ergo God.

Evolution started off simple and now many organisms are quite complex. Therefore God.

Here, Coyne is objecting to the God of the gaps argument, an argument whose general form is: “Logical Hiatus, ergo God”. I would concede that given a logical hiatus then an intelligent designer does not necessarily and obviously follow. The atheist has at least some room to play with other ideas in an attempt to “fill the gap” with a non-sentient and elemental cause before he gets to the divine “designer”: For example he might attempt to remove the ultimate improbability of the preconditions needed by evolution with the huge probabilistic resources found in some kind of multiverse model, although this model still inevitably has to make recourse to peculiar preconditions. In fact no matter how one tries to cut it, all human theories have an embedded logical hiatus in the form of given and particular preconditions. This truism leads me to commit myself to the view that logical necessity can only be found in the a priori complex rather than in the simple and elemental algorithmic laws of physics. The elemental is too simple and lacking in degrees of freedom to hide logical self-sufficiency. Therefore I conclude that infinite a priori complexity is the only place left in which Aseity is going to be found, if it can be found at all. Once one takes this conceptual step the possibility of Deity appears at once on one’s conceptual radar.

Although I agree with Laszlo’s theism I would not claim that theism is an obvious inductive leap that automatically follows from the Logical Hiatus that necessarily resides in all finite human theories. The step to theism is less inductive than it is deductive, although it would probably be better to describe theism as a totalizing world view, an all inclusive sense making framework that embraces a wide interdisciplinary experience of life from science, history, philosophy, metaphysics, and personal anecdote - even temperament may have a bearing. In the face of evidence that is sourced so comprehensively, arguments for and against theism will necessarily be narrative intense, absent of killer one-liners and inescapably idiosyncratic; least of all will these arguments meet the strict formal standards of proof that can be demanded of the simple objects dealt with by “test tube precipitating” science. For this reason belief in an intelligent designer is never going to be an obliging, authoritative and publicly shared conclusion. The latter is the preserve of the physical sciences where simplicity of ontology entails greater epistemological tractability.

Although I have some sympathy with Coyne’s objection to the “Logical Haitus, ergo God” type argument, I very much disagree with Coyne’s theology: He portrays the “new creationist” God as a part time deity who occasionally “intervenes”, perhaps only once at the beginning of things:

New Creationism differs from intelligent design because it rejects God’s constant intervention in the process of evolution in favor of a Big, One-Time Intervention,

In fact Laszlo himself encourages this view:

Given the right preconditions, nature comes up with the products of her own. (My emphasis)

The picture is anthropomorphic: The subliminal idea is that God creates in much the same way that a human creator constructs something by configuring elements capable of independent existence. He can then, to a lesser or greater degree, leave His creations to their own devices, perhaps occasionally returning from time to time to “intervene” in the operation of this quasi-autonomous creation. It is ironic that those Christian believers like Robert Sheldon who make a big deal of believing in divine “interventions” are not so far removed from Coyne’s portrayal of the deist’s God: The difference is that Sheldon believes not in a “Big, One-Time Intervention” but “Many-Time Interventions”. Deism lurks threateningly in the background of the Christian interventionist’s philosophy of God.

My concept of God is that of a God who “interrupts” the flow of normalcy rather than “intervenes”; that is, he interrupts or changes His mode of working, a working that in actual fact never ceases: “for in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). When we develop physical theories such as Gravitation or Quantum Mechanics, we do not picture such schemes as doing their work by “intervening” but rather see their action as relentless across all time and space. Likewise, if the ultimate underlying ontology of this universe is the Aseity of deity then I don’t expect that Deity to have the occasional role of the interventionist God, but instead to be a present tense continuous agent. As the sustainer of the cosmic order His role is relentless in time and space, interrupting the normal flow as and when He pleases.


Addendum: 29/4/10
Unfinished Business.
When I wrote about the concept of "divine intervention" here the following comment appeared:

Well it could be worse, we could be dealing with Pandeism, which proposes a God that is a quite logical and scientific entity which engineered a Universe that is truly random, and lacking in any of that unacceptable tinkering....

Clearly the person concerned never got to grips with the difference between "tinkering" and "interruptions". That person never turned up when challenged in a subsequent post and remains on my "unfinished business" list. It is ironic that those who are so vocal about believing in "interventions" support a philosophy that has a close relation with deism: "N interventions" very easily turns into "Zero interventions" when faith falls away and N slides toward zero.