In his post Torley quotes
atheist Sean Carroll (See quote below). Reading this quote I find it ironic
that Carroll actually succeeds in articulating a theological concept that I actually agree with,
although of course he wouldn't accept that this concept corresponds to any reality:
[T]he ultimate answer to “We need to understand why the universe
exists/continues to exist/exhibits regularities/came to be” is essentially “No
we don’t.”…
States of affairs only require an explanation if we have some
contrary expectation, some reason to be surprised that they hold. Is there any reason to be surprised that
the universe exists, continues to exist, or exhibits regularities? When it
comes to the universe, we don’t have any broader context in which to develop
expectations. As far as we know, it may simply exist and evolve according to
the laws of physics. If we knew that it was one element of a large ensemble of
universes, we might have reason to think otherwise, but we don’t. (I’m using
“universe” here to mean the totality of existence, so what would be called the
“multiverse” if that’s what we lived in.)…
There is no reason, within anything we currently understand about
the ultimate structure of reality, to
think of the existence and persistence and regularity of the universe as things
that require external explanation. Indeed, for most scientists, adding on another layer of metaphysical
structure in order to purportedly explain these nomological facts is an
unnecessary complication. (My emphases)
Where I agree with Carroll is
that he sees theology as adding another layer of metaphysical structure that purports
to explain the universe’s existence and the persistence of its regularities.
What Carroll has effectively put his finger on here is that he has identified
theology as a metanarrative that embeds science rather than competes as an
alternative narrative. Of course, as you’d expect, Carroll believes this meta-narrative
to be an unnecessary complication. This
post is not the place to critique Carroll’s dismissal of this meta-narrative.
Suffice to say for the moment that to Carroll’s “No we don’t..” I would simply reply at this stage with “Oh yes we do!…”. What concerns me more
here, however, is that as far as his theology is concerned Carroll seems to
have “got it” whereas Torley hasn't! Making theology a meta-narrative doesn't
bring it in to inevitable collision with Law
and Disorder science, whereas Torley’s commitment to the dualist idea that
God fills in the gaps where L&D science seems to fail gives rise to a
potential conflict.
Further on in his post Torley
quotes John Lennox:
There is an immense gulf between the non-living and the living that
is a matter of kind, and not simply of degree. It is like the gap between the
raw materials paper and ink, on the one hand, and the finished product of paper
with writing on it, on the other. Raw materials do not self-organize into
linguistic structures. Such structures are not “emergent” phenomena, in the
sense that they do not appear without intelligent input.
Any adequate explanation for the existence of the DNA-coded database
and for the prodigious information storage and processing capabilities of the
living cell must involve a source of information that transcends the basic
physical chemical materials out of which the cell is constructed… Such
processes and programmes, on the basis of all we know from computer science,
cannot be explained, even in principle, without the involvement of a mind. (p.
174)
My Comment: This quote probably appeals
to Torley because of its dualistic flavour. Here we see again the Western
dualistic outlook in action; that is, a matter
verses mind dichotomy superimposing itself on the language used to discuss
creation. The connotation of this kind of language is that matter is a passive medium
rather like the painter’s colours or the writer’s ink, with no life of its own and subject to the will of
an intelligent homunculus who comes along
and manipulates it. In this dualist context matter is not thought of as a proactive
medium with an associated immanent active intelligence. In the communities that
hold this dualistic paradigm talk of “self-organization” or “emergent properties”
is tantamount to conferring intrinsic creative powers on matter thus setting Mother
Nature against Father God. This dualistic paradigm does not conceive God as the
proactive agent immanent in the dynamic of matter, and therefore any notion of matter as an expression of (divine) "oomph" looks to them dangerously like a creative competitor to God.
We don’t have to go to
evolutionary theory to see God’s immanent intelligence at work: The growth of
an organism from a fertile seed is an act of so called “self-organisation”
whereby a total physical regime, a regime which includes initial conditions and
present tense continuous processes, succeeds in generating an autonomous
survival machine. Few would dispute this. Where the dispute lies is between dualistically
minded atheists and theists who are
divided on the question of whether or not this undisputed ability of a physical
regime to generate living structures can be applied recursively. That is: Is
the physical regime that generates organisms itself a product of a physical
regime? To the atheists, of course, the ability of a physical regime to recurse
clinches the case for “natural processes” being an alternative to a creator God. To the community that Torley represents this
concept of recursion is all but taboo because their “explanatory filter”, which
puts God on the same logical level as physical processes, means that recursion leaves God out in the
cold.
The
central claim of Dr. Stephen Meyer’s book, Signature in the Cell (HarperOne,
New York, 2009) is that the best explanation – indeed, the only causally
adequate explanation – for the digital code that we find in the cells of living
things is intelligent agency.
My Comment: This is plain old dualistic god-of-the-gaps; that is, intelligence vs. physical regime. The subtext is: “We can’t find a physical explanation for
life, therefore intelligence and therefore God!”. But this line of argument
all too easily prompts its anti-thesis; That is: “Natural processes explain life, therefore no intelligence and no God”!
In the next quote below we find that Torley’s biological “god-of-the-gapsism” is part
and parcel with that other god-of-the-gaps proposal, namely the cosmological argument:
Here is where the biological argument for Intelligent Design can
take us beyond the cosmological argument, which takes cosmic fine-tuning as its
starting point.
My Comment: Once again notice how Torley
has an implicit habit of mind whereby he exclusively identifies ID with his
brand of god-of-the-gaps. Torley goes on to suggest that those theists who,
because of considerations of intellectual elegance, favour the idea that life has
been generated as a result of a single divine dispensation embodied in the cosmic
physical regime have…
…a limited concept of beauty, which can account for some kinds of
beauty that we see in the world, but not the richest kinds.
My Comment: I'm not going to get into
this argument about the respective aesthetics of god-of-the-gaps vs. one-creative-dispensation. All I want to maintain here is that a physical regime based
concept of life’s origin can be construed as very much an Intelligent Design position
in spite of Torley’s subliminally dualistic habit of mind which prompts him and
his friends to exclude mono-dispensationalists from the intelligent design paradigm. (See my previous blog post here where “IDist” Granville Sewell
confidently pronounces “If you believe
that a few fundamental, unintelligent
forces of physics alone could have rearranged the basic particles of
physics into Apple iPhones, you are probably not an ID proponent, even if you
believe in God.”)
***
As I finish this second part let
me add my usual disclaimer: I don’t necessarily agree with the establishment’s
position about the mechanisms of evolution. However, I certainly wouldn't argue
against the establishment’s position in the way Torley does. The establishment’s
view is that the algorithmic functions of physics are likely to be sufficient for
evolution and that the evolutionary biologist's brief is to account for the
generation of life in terms of currently understood physics and chemistry –
this is evidenced by my observation that no biologist I've yet heard of is
looking for any new physics to explain evolution. In contrast as a private
worker there is no career pressure on myself to stop me entertaining ideas that
the immanent God provisions the cosmic physical regime in proactive ways we
have yet to understand, thus making it organically “fruitful” (“fruitful” is a
term I have got from John Polkinghorne). But in spite of classifying myself as
an Intelligent Design Creationist I have major problems with the approach of Torley’s “IDist” community who have help
create an inevitable conflict between their dualist theology and science.
This series will continue with an in depth look at Torley’s post, a post where, if anything, we go from bad
to worse.
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