Bayes: A man of the cloth
I’m making available for download this paper entitled Bayes Theorem and God. It first appeared in two parts on my blog in July 2010. (See here and here)
The interest in this paper is, as far as I’m concerned, bound up with it
providing yet another angle on Western dualism; that is, an implicit philosophy
that sees the world through the two sharply distinguished categories of the natural and the supernatural. My oft quoted example, of course, is the way this
dualism makes itself felt in the North American Intelligent Design debate. This
debate casts the question of the origin of life in a dichotomised conceptual
mold: namely, that is life either the outcome of natural processes or supernatural intelligent agency and neither the
twain shall meet; if it is intelligent agency then
that is considered to be sure fire evidence for God, but if it is a natural product then absence of evidence may be evidence of God’s absence!
I have, of course, criticised this dualistic philosophy many times before; see here for example. The basis of my criticism
is that in the West God’s eminence is stressed at the expenses of His
immanence; the upshot being that God is then seen as a disconnected homunculus
who tinkers every now and again with his creation; if we see no evidence of
tinkering then that is taken to be evidence of his non-existence.
A consequence of homunculus Intelligent Design theory is
that it has become very dependent on disbelief in, not just current theories of
evolutionary mechanisms, but in fact any “naturalistic” scenario whereby it is
recognised that the physical regime has the potential to generate life. Dualistic
categories that polarise natural and supernatural categories against one
another inclines those who use those categories to draw conclusions like: “If natural processes did it, then supernatural processes didn't do it!”
or conversely “If God did it, natural
processes didn't do it!”.
Clearly, the existence of archaeological artefacts, like tools and buildings
etc point to the existence of the action of human intelligence (or perhaps even
alien intelligence if they surfaced on the Moon or on Mars!). But this homunculus
model breaks down with Divine Intelligence. The Christian understanding of the
Divine is that God’s Intelligence is totalising and immersive; being all around
us it does no justice to describe it soley in eminent terms (although that intelligence can, of
course, on occasion, interface with our world as if it were an homunculus). Therefore in the light of Christian
theology, natural processes and Divine Sovereign management are difficult to
disentangle.
If life has been generated by some kind of “natural process” (even if
it’s not evolutionary mechanisms as conventionally understood) then this rules
out the operation of an eminent homunculus who works within the rules of the
physical regime. Instead it leaves us with a far more startling option; namely,
that our universe is governed by an extremely rare and special kind of logic;
one that can generate life. Alien homunculi, presumably, can’t choose or
influence the logic inherent in the laws of physics. So if our universe is immersed
in a regime of logic which governs everywhere and everywhen, then whatever selects
and controls the operation of this very special logic is immanent and not just
eminent. Given the Western Christian theological background it is difficult to gainsay
the conclusion to be drawn from this; namely, that God’s presence is
manifest in the very fabric of the cosmos and not just in the occasional acts
of a homunculus. It is an irony that North American ID, with its dualistic categories,
is not helping us to see what could be staring us in the face.
Note:
The fine tuning argument is treated similarly by North American ID: See here: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/paul-nelson-computer-simulations-and.html
Note:
The fine tuning argument is treated similarly by North American ID: See here: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/paul-nelson-computer-simulations-and.html
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