The Hump of the Camel

OK – let me build on some recent posts to look at what seems to be the state of theistic evolution in our time.

First, some basic definitions derived from Francisco Ayala. For the purposes of this discussion:
Final causation = external teleology = design (not taking design in the more restricted sense of engineering metaphors, etc)
This cluster is opposed to chance/necessity, seen as the outworking of the laws and initial state of the Universe. Thus Ayala would see the fine-tuned constants, etc, as final causation/external teleology/design, but nothing in evolution downstream of them as such. It’s a useful distinction that fits well with my previous piece.

To clarify this, suppose that hidden within these constants and laws was, say, a convergent evolution principle created so precisely as to be bound to lead to man. In that case, man would be a result of design in Ayala’s terms. But in fact (a) no such principle is certainly known and (b) Ayala says that the evils in nature show that God’s teleology is not at work in evolution. Note that such “evils” include death, waste and suffering, on which the whole of evolution hinge. So (at least to be consistent) Ayala must deny the existence of such “design laws” and restrict God’s purpose to what we know from physics: that he made the Universe broadly congenial to life. Continue reading →

Readers of this blog will be familiar with my antagonism to the “freedom of nature” school of theology seen in much theistic evolution and, notably, on BioLogos, where I’ve been critiquing it for the last eighteen months and failing to get any reply (at all) to my invitations to justify it. My latest attempt was on a post by Dennis Venema on evolution basics, in the comments of which he posted his clearest “statement of TE faith” to date. It’s here: Dennis’s comment is #76597, and mine #76711, though you should note that comments are now being removed at BioLogos after 180 days, which is a shame as it hides how ideas develop over time, or not. Continue reading →

In retrospect I studied zoology at a time when one of biology’s disciplines was on the cusp of change. In the sixth form we looked at ecology as a branch of biology (a rather boring one compared to all those interesting animals, I thought at the time). By the time I was doing medicine at Cambridge it had become a branch of sociology, to do with how “the ecology” gets polluted by us. By and large, the latter approach has predominated in the public eye, with most of us being more concerned about global warming messing things up than by how they work in the first place. Continue reading →

In the discussion on my last post  GD took the discussion into the area of human freedom (which, as usual in discussing origins questions, I had avoided because of the TE tendency to conflate free-will with free-nature, whatever they mean by that). But having raised it maybe looking at some aspects of free-will itself may be of value to some.

The discussion between penman, GD and myself suffers the disadvantage that we all agree, I think, on a classical theological concept of human freedom as being within, and subsumed by, God’s overarching sovereign purpose. But that’s not the commonest view nowadays. So I want to set up some questions and scenarios arising from what I take to be the more prevalent way of seeing things. Continue reading →

A good video of William Dembski with rubbish sound is posted on UD here. It confirmed to me the conclusion that the divisions in the science-faith spectrum are usually drawn in the wrong places. There are really only two important positions, corresponding to design and non-design. Period. Continue reading →