David Hone, the mastermind behind the Ask a Biologist site, forwarded this cute cartoon from Fritz at b3ta. I think I could be persuaded to jump on the “Teach the Controversy” bandwagon in this one specific respect.
Let’s also see sermons on the lack of teleology, the cruelty and waste of nature, and the details of paleontology and molecular biology that make bible stories look like flimsy jokes.
There is of course an obvious flaw with the cartoon: It appears to depict a Catholic priest and Bishop. Catholics are fine with evolution and with cosmology. They don’t take the seven day thing literally.
Some people think that morality can only come from a god. Other people think that idea is both stupid and offensive. Teach the controversy!
I think this is how you meant to make that link.
Catholics are not “fine” with “life on Earth is actually the product of an accidental process of evolution”. The official church position supports “theistic evolution”, which postulates that all of the changes of evolution have been directed by God.
Catholics are fine with evolution and with cosmology.
That’s interesting.
Has Cardinal Christoph Schönborn changed his mind about evolution?
He wrote in 2005:
Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense — an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection — is not.
In a 2006 interview:
Q. What do you think of the Discovery Institute and its work promoting intelligent design?
A. I think they do interesting work that deserves attention. What bothers me is the unbelievable aggression unleashed by the questions that the Discovery Institute asks. Why do scientists have to react so aggressively?
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/182/story_18220.html
There is another obvious flaw in that cartoon, which is ascribing the “process of evolution” as “accidental”. PZ should be quite familiar with debunking that canard!
“The official church position supports “theistic evolution”, which postulates that all of the changes of evolution have been directed by God.”
Exactly. And “theistic evolution” is just another data point on a continuum such as:
TE is still drivel.
Hi, it’s my first post here!
Regarding comment #1, “Catholics are fine with evolution and with cosmology. They don’t take the seven day thing literally.”,
it seems the catholic church has second thougths on its endorsement of evolution:
http://www.biblicalcreation.org.uk/theology_philosophy/bcs152.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10007382/
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html
The catholics can be as fundamentalist and crazy as any other christian…
Oops. Part of my previous comment stripped. Should have been:
“The official church position supports “theistic evolution”, which postulates that all of the changes of evolution have been directed by God.”
Exactly. And “theistic evolution” is just another data point on a continuum such as:
Creationism—–ID———TE——————————–ToE
TE is still drivel.
Perhaps this isn’t the place for this but I’ve always wondered…
Why would God need to rest?
Hey! I was wondering the same thing Rich. I’ve never created everything, but I can imagine it would be kind of tiring (especially all those little details like acorns and sand). But, an infinitely active entity really shouldn’t need to rest. He probably should have invented Red Bull on the first day.
The book doesn’t say the rest was necessary (:
That said, the deity seems to grow bigger and more impressive as the story goes along. He starts out wandering into Abram’s tent and being served dinner, Zeus and Hermes style, and needing to cheat in order to win a wrestling match with … Jacob? I forget…
A few books later, one of his angels flippantly strikes an army dead, and by the end of the story he’s the omnipotent ruler you’ve heard so much about.
When I was Christian, I figured this said more about the bias of the authors of the particular books than about God’s actual nature. Now that I’m not, I’m just amused by how reflective he was of (what I know of) the other deities in each time period. I suspect they’re just different ways of saying the same thing (:
You don’t think he’d be tired after creating all that shit? Plus, he wasn’t even sure it was all good yet.
not sure why we haven’t thought of this before – ask the religious right to also teach the “controversy”. Though I suppose that would intimate that there was indeed a controversy and would just add fuel to the old “You people can’t even agree” bs argument. nevermind.
Maybe ‘he’ was masturbating? I mean, there don’t seem to be any female gods for ‘him’ to consort with.
Maybe ‘he’ was masturbating? I mean, there don’t seem to be any female gods for ‘him’ to consort with.
I was raised catholic and during all my CCD classes was taught that Genesis (and most of the Old Testament) was metaphor. As for evolution, I was taught that the universe was created by God to “work” the way it does without His direct intervention (in physical processes). Whether this is “directed” evolution or not, I’m not sure how you mean that. I did not think the RCC was implying that God would occasionally point his metaphorical finger at creation and force an evolution event. I understood the RCS position to be that whether Man was an “intended” consequence of evolution or not could only be decided as a matter of Faith; that God created the universe so as to be able to be completely understood rationally without recourse to the existence of God.
But then, that was the liberal, post Vatican II, Sixties. The RCS may have “evolved” away from that position. I’ve been an “ex” since the early 70’s :-)
Rich: Because in addition to all the other vile things he is (misogynistic, fickle, petty, jealous, genocidal), he’s also lazy.
I prefer to teach the following controversy:
“Some consider creationism and intelligent design ‘pure lunacy’. Others prefer to call it ‘intellectually disgraceful’.”
I prefer to teach the following controversy:
“Some consider creationism and intelligent design ‘pure lunacy’. Others prefer to call it ‘intellectually disgraceful’.”
CalGeorge and RickD,
Let me begin by saying that I am an atheist, lest there be any confusion. I was however educated at a Jesuit secondary school. It is quite clear to me from talking to these men that evolution (and cosmology and all the rest) sit perfectly well with their fate. I’m sure that know competent evolutionary biologist would suggest that evolution happens by random chance, but rather by a process of random mutations being selected for or against in an organised way through the process of natural selection. That said, I’m not a biologist.
The view that evolution is guided by the hand of some god is defensible in that there is no direct evidence against it. God could have set up the universe in such a way that certain species would emerge as the result of natural selection. If you want to create a hefalump it’s merely a matter of tweaking the laws and initial conditions of the universe. It is easy in this way to justify a view that man was in some sense destined to be, without contradicting known scientific results. Various theologeons will no doubt come up with variations, but the main idea is that you can claim that a god did something without violating physical laws. You can say he simply tweaked the initial conditions, or maybe he chose what way some wave functions would collapse, or any one of a myriad of other possibilities.
Catholics as a group are simply not young earth creationists.
And to close, let me just point out that even if the pope did declare evolution to be an evil conspiracy of atheist biologists, the vast majority of Catholics wouldn’t believe him. Just in the same way the vast majority of Catholics don’t believe in Papal infallibility. And please don’t say “Well then they’re not real Catholics”, since we’ll all fall into the no true Scotsman fallacy.
If we are going to criticize a group in its entirety then can we at least make sure we actually know something about the group, rather than what one or two of its members have said.
Joe
But, if it gives him wings, then why would he need a spaceship?
“The view that evolution is guided by the hand of some god is defensible in that there is no direct evidence against it.”
But given the fact that there no evidence for it, we can safely ignore it as a possibility until such time as evidence is forthcoming. There is plenty to do collecting and interpreting data and evidence from the actual Universe without inventing things that “might” be possible because there is “no direct evidence against” them.
Joe @ #1:
Artistic license. Criticism of religion works better with funny hats and robes.
Ian: I completely agree. As I said, I’m an atheist. I was just pointing out that it is not the same as believing that the earth is 6000 years old.
Rey: Yes, I suppose it does.
Ian: I completely agree. As I said, I’m an atheist. I was just pointing out that it is not the same as believing that the earth is 6000 years old.
Rey: Yes, I suppose it does.
It seems the old abrahamic god is pure, ideal, asexual. When it wanted us to die, it had to invent procreation and presumably had the first sexual thought.
Could explain why it now seems so jealous. Or perhaps it explains the host of angels that keeps him company.
But it isn’t evolution, instead it is a perversion of natural theories. Most versions makes a break with it, since you expect some deviation or you would be satisfied (no “guided”) with the natural theory. And the finetuning versions means that you must be ready to accept every possible result, including never getting away from monocellularity.
It seems the old abrahamic god is pure, ideal, asexual. When it wanted us to die, it had to invent procreation and presumably had the first sexual thought.
Could explain why it now seems so jealous. Or perhaps it explains the host of angels that keeps him company.
But it isn’t evolution, instead it is a perversion of natural theories. Most versions makes a break with it, since you expect some deviation or you would be satisfied (no “guided”) with the natural theory. And the finetuning versions means that you must be ready to accept every possible result, including never getting away from monocellularity.
Hmmm. In order to do what Joe Fitzsimons suggests, God would have to simulate at quantum resolution a sizable chunk of space. (For the want of a nail, the kingdom was lost, and all that.) To ensure that H. sapiens arises, you’d have to ensure that no gamma-ray bursts fry our planet, or that only the correct GRBs do so; that asteroids and comets only hit the Earth at certain times, wiping out only the correct species; that no other stars come close enough to our own Sun during their peregrinations about the galactic core to disrupt the Solar System with their gravity; that no other galaxies collide with the Milky Way and spill our Sun into intergalactic space, wrecking the orbits of the planets; and so forth. Whether that degree of foresight and pre-determination is compatible with physical law — and in particular quantum mechanics — is, I believe, an open question which cannot be resolved without further work, both experimental and theoretical. In fact, I’m pretty sure the question can’t even be well-posed without a precise mathematical knowledge of quantum behavior.
Of course, if Zeus or Isis did simulate a Universe with such fidelity — a “rough draft” Cosmos invented to see what’s necessary for humans to arise — then whatever simulated beings which evolve to consciousness within the Rough Draft must be as conscious as we are. Why? First, we began with the assumption that all phenomena are material in origin, with the initial configuration determined by Prometheus or whomever. Second, if the simulated beings aren’t as conscious as we, then they’re no good for solving the problem which Prometheus set himself.
Hey, gather round, everybody — I’ve solved the problem of evil! Isis wants to be kind, you see, but She just doesn’t quite know how, and we’re living in one of Her trial runs.
Finally, I note that if the view that the hand of some god guides (or guided) evolution is “defensible,” then the view that evolution was guided by Dream of the Endless is equally defensible. One could take any Bronze Age fantasy — astrology, say, or the practice of telling the future from sheep’s livers — raise it to a high level of metaphorical abstraction, and make that your deep meaning behind evolution. Why did this course of events happen and no other — why does the tree of life include our branch but not computer-savvy velociraptors or telepathic jellyfish? Naturally, because all the other possibilities were filtered out of the cosmic lifeblood by the Invisible Sheep Liver.
Blake: Their god is allegedly both omniscient and omnipotent, so your proposal the he “would have to simulate at quantum resolution a sizable chunk of space” is not really an issue.
As I have already said a number of times, I do not believe in such a god. However, the question is presently undecidable in that you can’t prove that some god didn’t tune the universe. Sure, there is no hard evidence for it, but that doesn’t rule it out completely. In essence this reduces to the argument over whether or not a god exists. It is impossible to prove either way for a sufficiently deist interpretation of a deity. The lack of evidence is not actually a proof that some god does not exist. Again, I severely doubt that any exists, but that doesn’t prove anything.
This is in stark contrast to the beliefs of many of the more fundamentalist Christian sects that take the account in Genesis literally. Their beliefs are testable, and Catholic beliefs about creation tend not to be testable.
Of course — omni is omni. I just think it’s interesting to see what would actually be required — assuming that you don’t throw basic logic out the window — to do the job.
I suspect that the testability of predictions is yet another arena in which the theologians’ take differs radically from that of the people “on the ground.” What’s more, I definitely get the feeling that the learned professionals who justify the untestable god on weekdays believe in a different kind on weekends. Honestly: who would pray to a god who is indistinguishable from no god at all?
I hear that the god-whose-effects-cannot-be-tested is really concerned about drugs, alcohol, globalization and Marxism.
Indeed, but that is another issue. As far as creation stories go, the Catholic interpretation and evolution do not contradict each other directly. Hence the flaw in the cartoon.
I’m curious as to how theistic evolution sits with a religious, but not dualist, conception of free will. To set the initial conditions and rules precisely enough to guarantee the evolution of mankind, or a heffalump, you surely have to set them precisely enough to predetermine the molecular interactions that generate our thoughts and actions. So long as you accept that the brain is the seat of our will (in a moral agency sense), not some immaterial soul, how do you get around the free will problem? It’s even more difficult than the problem for specially created humans. You can make it work by using a conception of free will along the lines of Dennett’s or Blackmore’s, but I doubt a Catholic or other theistic evolutionist would be happy with that.
Actually, God can’t be omniscient. Presumably omniscience requires knowing the quantum state of each quantum particle or event at each instant of time. However, it requires some time for one quantum state to transition into another. If the quantum state is interrogated (or otherwise known) before that time, the quantum state doesn’t change.
If God were truly to have omniscient knowledge about a region of space, no quantum effects could occur in that space. Light would not be able to propagate.
Daedalus2, you seem to be misunderstanding the quantum Xeno effect. Knowing the state of a particle has no effect on it. It is the measuring of a quantum state in a particular basis that effects the state. The way this appears to us is that the wavefunction has collapsed into that particular state. If you measure in the same basis repeatedly and fast enough, a particle will indeed remain in the same state. This is known as the quantum Xeno effect.
However, if you know the initial state of a particle and the Hamiltonian under which it evolves, then you can calculate the state of the particle at any subsequent time. This does NOT collapse the wave function.
Looks like omnipotence is required to make omniscience possible.
Well then.
Looks like omnipotence is required to make omniscience possible.
Well then.
On a brighter note, Jerry Falwell is still dead :)
“The view that evolution is guided by the hand of some god is defensible in that there is no direct evidence against it.”
Bulllshit. There is direct evidence against it.
If there was an intelligent signal directing genetic drift, then it would be detectable as a statistical deviation from a pure random source. It’s not, and there isn’t.
s9, I’m afraid I can’t agree with you there. It is quite possible to setup circumstances where something planned happens in a way that looks completely random to an outside observer.
Imagine we are playing cards, and I have determined that I want to win the 13th hand out of,say, 100. If I am sufficiently skilled at manipulating the deck during my shuffle in this 13th hand then I can deal myself a winning hand. If I play fairly for the other hands, then the signal is completely swamped by noise, and it is impossible for you to tell with any degree of certainty that I cheated.
Also it is probably worth mentioning that if random drift would be sufficient to reach our current point on the evolutionary ladder, then a believer could claim that everything was fine tuned for it to be that way.
As SteveM mentions, the implication is that God set up physics and the initial conditions in such a way that man was inevitable, not that at certain point in our evolution has he zapped us so that we sprouted legs.
As SteveM mentions, the implication is that God set up physics and the initial conditions in such a way that man was inevitable…
But you can’t include any unpredictable or random element in the process AND be sure to get your desired result if you are only allowed to set up the *initial conditions*. In your card example, you would only be allowed to determine the initial order of the deck. Manipulating the 13th hand would constitute mid-game “zapping” and is not allowed. Unless you can control the actions of the other player, the process is no longer deterministic from your POW. And to get humans out of a contingent evolutionary process, it’s not enough to get one hand right, you would have to cheat at almost every hand (natural selection might correct tiny misses, but not huge ones).
One way for God to ensure the origin of humans is to make the universe completely deterministic – if the current state is dependent on initial conditions alone. But then what about free will and the problem of evil (see #32)?
The other way would be to “pick the winner” as Blace Stacey hints above. But there does not seem to be much difference whether God creates a deterministic universe or picks the desired outcome out of all possible universes being simulated in his omniscient mind. Free will is screwed anyway. (Unless everything was determined until the first Homo sapiens, and then Isis introduced randomity in her simulation? ;)
Why assume that humans are the final result. Maybe god was just trying to make zillions of cockroaches and we are just noise from the process.
Or maybe the real “true” results are happening in another galaxy. Or here on earth in another billion years.
Or maybe it was the dinosaurs and this experiment has been finished for 65 million years.
Anyway, if god had better representation, he would have gotten 2 days off.
Hi Windy,
I’m not entirely sure how I’ve wound up arguing the theist side, but I may as well keep it up. A good debater should be able argue both sides, and all that.
The problem of free will does not come in to conflict with evolution, since only man is given free will, and for that to happen man must already have evolved. Don’t ask me when specifically he gains free will. Maybe its an incremental thing, like developing awareness of the outside world.
Bertrand Russell’s teapot and Carl Sagan’s dragon also have no direct evidence against them. That doesn’t make the argument for their existence “defensible.”
I’m not entirely sure how I’ve wound up arguing the theist side, but I may as well keep it up.
No prob :)
The problem of free will does not come in to conflict with evolution, since only man is given free will, and for that to happen man must already have evolved.
But if humans are guaranteed given the right initial conditions, that would mean that the universe is physically quite deterministic (billiard ball universe). If the universe is deterministic, humans (being entirely physical creatures) don’t really have free will.
I don’t think that follows. What it means is that the universe up to the first human was deterministic. Once the first human arrives on the scene it would no longer be deterministic. Also presumably anything outside the backward light cone of the first human could also be random.
Oddly you could do this without ever changing the laws of physics. Up until the first person is born, god decides which way wave functions collapse, after it, he decides he doesn’t care and lets them collapse randomly. For us there would be no way of telling that this has happened, since there would have been no detectable interference at any stage.
I should at this point note that this is not necessarily what I would expect a Catholic theologeon to say, but rather a sample justification. A sort of proof of principle.
The whole “only man is given free will” thing drives me nuts. Why assume that only humans have free will?? Humans are no more special than other critters, remember? Today, one of my critters detected a short in the electric fence and as an act of free will, crashed the fence and ran up to the barn and gobbled grain. His buddy “chose” to stay in the fence and cry loud and long about it. Faced with the same situation, they made different choices.
I think the “humans are so special” thing is a lot like “humans are the pinacle of evolution”. Not true. We are animals, like all the others, doing our thing at some point in the long line of evolution.
Sorry, minor point in discussion.
Presumably there would have to be something to keep humans around, if that were the case. No use having a bunch of humans around for a week and letting them all die if they’re supposed to the cumulation of God’s plan and all. I don’t see how free will could do that – it would probably even be a factor in species destruction. The world might not be truly deterministic, but not entirely left to nature’s devices.
Also, just wanted to say thanks to Mr Fitzsimons for taking the obviously fallacious side of the argument for the sake of debate, and at risk of some serious flaming.
Oddly you could do this without ever changing the laws of physics. Up until the first person is born, god decides which way wave functions collapse…
All right, but God is still cheating :) Your given hypothesis a few messages back was that God decides the initial conditions and everything runs without intervention from there. The wave function thing would mean that God has manipulated every hand played at the cosmic poker game up until the last few rounds!
Richard said:
[Insert second coming joke here]
I’m sorry, I just HAD to do it!
Hi PZ,
Sorry for a bit of a threadjack here but at least it’s teaching-related. I’m thinking of taking a post-grad course in secondary teaching in a year or two and the subject I’m qualified for is RMPE – Religious, Moral and Philosophical Studies (this is in the UK by the way). I figured I can bring a healthy dose of atheism, scpeticism and rationality to the mix if nothing else. That was until I started looking into some of the course materials…
I have no objection to teaching kids about various religions, indeed I can’t understand the moves by the National Secular Society to do away with such classes – they’re vital for an understanding of our culture as well as problems in the modern world providing they’r etaught objectively. However, some of the curriculum is just plain anti-science and full of woo and religious ass-hattery. See the following document on one of the modules, Science and Belief.
It includes such gems as “It is now clear that far from making the world a better place, science has contributed to some of the worst aspects of modern life.” and “The world itself is not just a physical object but also includes a non-physical or spiritual dimension.”
So, any chance of doing a Pharyngula scalpel-job on it? It’s making me right angry…
PS – Orac, if you see this post you should read it, some nice defence of woo-based medicine in there!
To play devils advocate, I don’t think there is anyone arguing against the philosophical possibility of solipsism or last thursdays. However, proposed physical mechanisms are arguable.
Specifically here, I’m not sure how you collapse wavefunctions causally locally without introducing local hidden variables.
In a similar argument to collapsing wavefunctions, one can propose Boltzmann’s Brains spontaneously assemble by vacuum fluctuations and have a memory of emulating a universe by the BB ‘god’.
But supposing a probability over expanding Hubble volumes could be established, they would be much less probable than anthropic habitable volumes.
windy:
That is my standing complaint about last thursdays and other “behind the curtains” philosophies as well, it is a bad theology of Cosmic Cheaters. (Or, in the case of the poor deluded BB’s, Cheated Cosmoses. :-)
To play devils advocate, I don’t think there is anyone arguing against the philosophical possibility of solipsism or last thursdays. However, proposed physical mechanisms are arguable.
Specifically here, I’m not sure how you collapse wavefunctions causally locally without introducing local hidden variables.
In a similar argument to collapsing wavefunctions, one can propose Boltzmann’s Brains spontaneously assemble by vacuum fluctuations and have a memory of emulating a universe by the BB ‘god’.
But supposing a probability over expanding Hubble volumes could be established, they would be much less probable than anthropic habitable volumes.
windy:
That is my standing complaint about last thursdays and other “behind the curtains” philosophies as well, it is a bad theology of Cosmic Cheaters. (Or, in the case of the poor deluded BB’s, Cheated Cosmoses. :-)
Incidentally, the idea that there were initial conditions is itself unsupported (at best) by evidence.
That is a strong assertion. At present there are many physical constants which are not known to be dependent upon one another. We also know little about the exact configuration of the universe prior to decoupling. Even within approaches such as string theory, we still find arbitrary variables appearing (i.e. the landscape).
I realise that if there was a lack of choice in how the universe could be configured, it would be seen by atheists, at least, as evidence against even deism. I do, however, think you are substantially overstating the case for this, as it presently stands.