The Hump of the Camel

One argument often heard against Intelligent Design is that allowing it into science would put pressure on people to believe in God, to the detriment of faith. In its most extreme expression, one blogger said that a scientific proof of God would put our generation at an unfair advantage over all the previous generations, who did not have that proof.

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One of the things one often finds in discussion with theistic evolutionists, in particular, is an extension of the practical use of methodological naturalism to a, usually vaguely expressed, principle that God’s presence ought not to be detectable in nature.

I exclude here those heterodox ideas of a God who doesn’t actually create, but leaves a quasi-sentient universe “free” to experiment with evolution, and so on. No, the people I’m talking about are orthodox (especially Bible-respecting) Christians who believe God is “behind” creation, but who hold that on principle one is unlikely to detect that fact through science.

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Since Penman keeps asking me, and since he’s the only person who reads this blog apart from a few hundred spambots, here’s an attempt to summarise what James Shapiro is presenting in Evolution – a View from the 21st Century for a complete non scientist. Those with scientific training will realise it is grossly inadequate, but I’ve done a more critical review here!

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In my last post  I looked at how the real heart of Darwinian evolutionary theory is a mental concept, comparable to the Anthropic Principle, that enables one to conceive of design witout a designer. This is what makes the theory so malleable to any actual data.

I want to  carry on with the example I was using there of the first self-replicating molecule, as it’s relatively uncomplicated to imagine. The question, you’ll remember, is whether it makes any difference (for a theist) to consider such a complex and closely specified self-replicating molecule as the work of God-as-designer, or as the work of God-as-behind-a-rational-and-scientific-fluke-of-extreme-improbability. I concluded that the only real difference is that the latter demolishes what we know about chance from the rest of science.

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What did Darwin actually present in 1859? I suggest it wasn’t so much a scientific theory as a plausible new way of looking at things. It wasn’t his evidence that “swept away the illusion of design” but the mental flip that suddenly enables one to see how design could happen without a designer.

Darwin presented some evidence for descent with modification, but that in itself wasn’t new but common currency in the scientific community. His Big Idea was natural selection, and the only evidence he presented for that was a comparison with artificial selection. If a breeder can select for useful traits, why should not nature itself do so? It’s so obvious that it seems undeniable. Clearly some organisms survive better than others, so what dictates that? It can only be that they are better suited to live than the others. Carry that selection on long enough, and all the diversity of life might be produced.

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One thing you notice as soon as you participate in evolution discussions is that you don’t understand anything about evolution. This is true whatever your background. You notice in most of the criticisms of a biochemist like Behe or an origins-of-life PhD like Meyer that they somehow neglected to learn the rudiments of evolution. My own background was zoology and medicine, but it has never prevented the “You don’t understand the first thing…” accusations. Some people might argue that those with weak arguments prefer to say, “You wouldn’t understand…” than argue their case, but the alternative is to go back and try to reach that basic, essential comprehension.

So let’s start with the scientific definition of the theory, which is… well, it’s hard to be sure, because there seem to be so many. The broadest is “descent with modification”, but that’s hardly a definition as it would encompass Lamarckism, and other pre-Darwinian ideas like Lyell’s version of special creation. Continue reading →