Vibrant Dance: Communicating Science and Science/Theology Issues

There were three panel discussions at the conference, one on Wednesday morning, and two on Thursday morning, of which this is the first. I was generally able to summarize each statement made by each speaker, and so will present these as summarizing transcripts. Each speaker will be identified by their initials, listed after their name below. The listing below comes as presented in the symposium program. My comments will be bracketed.

This panel was entitled, “Panel Discussion and Q&A with Speakers: The Vibrant Dance of Faith & Science:  Communicating to our Churches, Communicating to our Cultures –Science and Science/Theology Issues,” and was moderated by Andy Crouch (AC). Panelists were Deborah Haarsma  (DH), Rob Norris (RN), Dinesh D’Souza (DD), Darrel Falk (DF), Hugh Ross (HR), Stephen Meyer (SM) and Ross Hastings (RH). {I apologize for all of the D’s, H’s and R’s! ugh!}

Start transcript summary.

Missed AC’s intro—apparently a survey that only 2% of scientists are evangelical. “How can we raise it?”

DF—We can’t convey an opinion that biology is fundamentally flawed—this is a missional issue as opposed to a scientific one

HR—Take a different survey:  instead of looking for evangelicals in science, look for those who respect the Bible

AC—True—what can we do to redeem the term “evangelical?”

RN—Teach Christian students in Christian schools not to be afraid of science. They also need to recognize there is a diversity of approaches to science/faith. This will discourage the defensive mentality we see among those coming from Christian schools.

DH—“AMEN!”

SM—Christian colleges should look at teaching models with flexible schedules to allow for research. The Discovery Institute has a research fellow program and try to help faculty at Christian colleges buy out a teaching schedule to allow research. We also have summer research institutes. Christians in academia and clergy should pay attention to the rising generation of scholars and mentor/nurture them.

DF—I believe strongly in Christian colleges. In effect, he seems to disagree with SM on balancing mentorship with research—taking SM’s comment to mean replacing mentorship with research

SM—Corrects impression—there is a need for Christian PhD granting institutions, also, not in place of Christian undergraduate only institutions.

AC--How can this group {the panel} interact with what’s going on at Christian colleges?

DH—Likes the current system of Christian colleges, but also sees need for Christian students in secular institutions—pastors can encourage students to be Christian scholars anywhere.

AC—{New topic} Instructed panel to offer ways to stay relatively well informed on new frontiers in science (WITHOUT referring to their own websites/books!) {jab at RTB in particular, who tend to mention a topic in passing, then send folks to their materials for the details before going to the next topic and doing the same thing. I understand they have such a vast amount of material and they give very similar talks repeatedly and it saves time. I get that, but they make such references so often, it becomes annoying to hear over and over and…GREAT folks, though! I recommend their stuff. Seriously.}

DD—The challenge for Christians is to be bilingual in secular culture. We think culture is made from the ground up, but it is often from the top down, especially in science, so we need to influence the influencers. Also, we tend to go from science to nature, rather than the other way around at times. Finally, we need to have ‘interpretive modesty.’ {i.e.-we should not be dogmatic about our interpretation, either of Scripture or the book of nature. Being tentative draws people in to examine our claims to see if they are true, rather than beating them over the head with them.}

HR—In his churches, they focus on teaching not preaching and they deal with controversial issues, which draws in unbelievers. Agrees with DD on top down—we need to engage the top scientists.

RN—As a pastor, he meets with the scientists who do keep up with the developments and has them give him a précis on what is going on, but pitched at his level. He needs to understand the issues so he can encourage others to face them.

DH—See the ASA journal on current science and faith. {ASA: American Scientific Affiliation—an association of Christian scientists}

AC—{New topic} DH’s husband has an article at bit.ly/fourmyths that gives 4 myths about ID and 4 about theistic evolution. Why don’t’ these issues engage both the scientific community and the faith community?

DH—Astronomy is starting to improve in this area. Women aren’t interested in the interface because few women are in either/both clergy and science. Also, they don’t see hard science as relevant or able to help people. {Comment based on general idea that women tend to be primarily concerned with compassion issues as nurturers.}

DD—sees this as a non-issue—the big issue is why evangelicals in general are drastically underrepresented in all areas of elite society. He calls for a well thought out strategy to infiltrate and engage debates legally and politically, not affirmative action. He objects to science books including metaphysical statements.

AC—Science and the church are some of the most diverse in society, yet the interface between them seems to be most interesting to European males.

HR—Are we merely dealing with demographics—are women are committed to supporting it, but maybe as a support role rather than reading the journals themselves?

DF—Sees origins as more of a hobby area than area of priority.

DH—True—people more concerned about evangelism than apologetics.

HR—Apologetics is part of evangelism.

DD—Do we meet needs of body or engage culture?

SM—ID does attack the foundations of the atheist culture, which is the public face of the secular worldview. He disagrees with DF, and thinks that origins is more than a hobby and is critical. It is one among several priorities or areas of interest.

AC—{Next topic} We should have public engagement with the way science is done—science has limits—what it can and should do. Scientists often want/try to push those limits. How do we make the case for those limits effectively and be part of the public debate, regardless of whether others come to faith?

DH—Best arena for these discussions is the professional scientific societies, which limits what the church can do.

DD—There are two things we can do 1)articulate the hidden faith-based assumptions of modern science (uniformity of nature)and  2) scientists think faith is a bad word, so we have to establish the reasonableness of faith (differentiate between evidence based faith and blind faith).

DF—The church needs to realize that science is capable of being pretty certain about some things.

HR—We need to not shackle the research of theologians, philosophers and scientists so that we can talk with each other.

RN—It is not the church’s role to police the scientific society, but to proclaim the kingdom of God, and equip the scientific members to responsibly act in their communities.

AC—There are lots of questions (pre-submitted from the audience) about details that we didn’t get to (such as was Adam really 900 yrs old, best dating systems, etc)

End Transcript summary.

SDG

Vibrant Dance: Science Supports Christianity

There were three panel discussions at the conference, this one on Wednesday morning, and two on Thursday morning. I was generally able to summarize each statement made by each speaker, and so will present these as summarizing transcripts. Each speaker will be identified by their initials, listed after their name below. The listing below comes as presented in the symposium program. My comments will be bracketed.

This panel was entitled, “The Vibrant Dance of Faith & Science:  Science Supports Christianity – Revealing the Congruence, Illuminating the Tensions,” and was moderated by Walter Bradley (WB) (Baylor). Panelists were Andy Crouch (AC), Ross Hastings (RH), Dan Heinze (DH), Hugh Ross (HR), Fazale Rana (FR), Darrel Falk (DF), Stephen Meyer (SM), and Deborah Haarsma  (DBH).

Start transcript summary.

WB—Design is synonymous with purpose, therefore, is Design scientifically detectable?

DF--“Entire process is God’s process and… has his fingerprint all over it” but in answer to the question, not yet, but maybe someday

FR—In principle, is it possible through objective methods

DF—If folks want to use science and go looking for evidence for design, go for it, but he’s skeptical, theologically if there is a way to do so—{sounds like he’s a fan of NOMA (non-overlapping magisterial—the idea that science and faith both answer questions about existence but they do not overlap in any way.}

HR—Should be possible-Scripture indicates that scientists should be able to, but we as scientists look for the wrong purpose, so miss God’s design.

WB—Unlikely to be able to prove God scientifically

AC—Disagrees with HR on point 1, we as human beings sense/intuit God from Creation, but detecting Him or Design through science methods/instrumentation, not likely.

DH— Atheistic physicists/cosmologists admit that the data runs against their favored viewpoint {i.e.- they detect design in the data}

SM—Which scientists are not convinced of it?-i.e. some have and are advocating for it. Why are some not convinced? Their methodological naturalism gets in the way

DBH- {missed due to phone call}

RH—Topic is subject to epistemology-what can we actually know? What is our level of uncertainty? What is the motivation behind one’s teleology? ‘Proofs’ are not sufficient due to people suppressing the truth

HR—Agrees with RH on proof, and asks, as we go forward and learn more, does God appear more likely or not?

WB—ID vs id (there is a difference between the Intelligent Design movement and the idea of intelligent design)—laws of nature not independent of God. He noted that folks are more comfortable with cosmological evidence for God and less with biological evidence for Him.

DF—We all believe in design and therefore in intelligent design, or id. As for the ID movement, it has helped focus the discussion, yet how helpful has what they have produced been in contributing to the science or has it discouraged the science community from buying into ID ideas.

SM—Consensus in the scientific community leads to diffidence.  We should be asking, what is the best model for the data? The shocking effect of Watson/Crick discovering that DNA was a digital code, that the cell uses same methods in coding info that programmers do— displayed a logic and elegance far beyond what we are able to do. Yet Francis Collins is still trying to hold on to naturalistic mechanism. {veiled dig at all theistic evolutionists?}

FR—In cosmology, the data confounded the naturalist philosophy; the same is occurring in origin of life research; The godfather {not sure who this is} of OoL (Origin of Life sciences) said it would be a miracle for RNA to form spontaneously in early Earth. They even acknowledge their research is inserting “id” into their work.

SM—We should use their work and celebrate it

HR—Agreed

FR—The data isn’t taking us in the direction of non-design

DF—All of us believe God is origin of life; the question is whether or not this is a gap or truly new doors; we should allow for natural mechanisms to be fully explored

WB—Shapiro {not sure who this is} believed that a naturalistic explanation would be found eventually; and was once asked how he can be a scientist and a Christian, and he said he is fine with it because he knows who did it and is now studying how. God works through process.

SM—Gaps arise from ignorance; however if it looks like design, then it isn’t a gap. ID is making provisional conclusions based on what we know, not what we don’t know.

WB—Even in the cosmological realm, we need to be tentative

SM—No distinction between cosmology and OoL in terms of issues, but it is matter of detectability

RH—What is/are the method(s) of design? The issue seems to be one of intervention and how it happens, not that God is involved. How do you detect natural or supernatural intervention? {see my posts Is it Nature or Magic?, Harry Who-dini?, or, The Problem of Expectation, "It's a Miracle!", and A Matter of Time}

SM—There are two types of power—‘ordinary’ power and ‘sovereign’ power; a difference between order and information, law and info; therefore God seems to favor a discreet intervention. {I believe he is saying that when a ‘miracle’ occurs, God is exerting His sovereign power over and above the ‘ordinary’ power of the natural functioning of His Creation. The main context of this discussion is the Cambrian explosion of vast amounts and very different types of lifeforms in a very short period of time geologically.}

AC—There is a difference between discontinuous intervention versus continuous intervention; we should be wary of attributing discontinuity to divine action; our instinct and sensibility about the world around us are as important as data; {In short, he renames SM’s dichotomy, and cautions against thinking that all discontinuities in the world are due to explicit divine action.}

SM—I’m not arguing from lack of data, but from sudden influxes of information.

HR—Discontinuities are opportunities for research to see which way {naturalism or design} is getting stronger

DH—There are no objective scientists; {that why we try for falsifiability} hence, the lack of interest in theistic implications; we as Christians and scientists should let naturalistic investigations go forward because they just give us more evidence that will ultimately lean against naturalism.

WB—Therefore scientists have lots of job security. Now let’s change topics and look at the Bible and science. Quoted Francis Schaeffer (that there is no final conflict)—we as scientific Christians have two non-negotiables:  that God created and there was a historical Adam & Eve; 

RH—Wish we had an OT theologian to address this; we tend to ask questions of Genesis it wasn’t designed to answer, so it becomes question of hermeneutics. There is no explicit biblical position on the age of earth. Genesis 1 and 2 are not about cosmology, but theology. There was a coronation moment at which God put His image into a fully evolved human.

FR—Paul refers to a real Adam, so if he’s confused about that, is he confused about Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection, if he is using it as a tie between the first and last Adam? {I Corinthians 15:45-46}

RH—I DO believe in a real Adam, but not a literalistic one.

AC—These are separate issues—the representative Adam versus a genetic Adam

DF—Collins would agree with RH

DBH—Clarify, please? About the separation? {Thanks! I sort of got it, but not really clearly.}

RH—It is confusing, but there seems to be a community of early humans known as Adam {known by whom?—i.e. is this a name backwards bestowed by modern scholars or what they called themselves or were known by this name to their contemporaries or…?}

WB—There may have been 1000 people on the early earth, but God picked out an Adam and Eve out to begin the relationship

DF—The Biologos perspective is that we’d be comfortable with that idea, but not limited to that idea.

DH—There is tension for me in any theological or scientific position. It also appears to be a possibility that a large supernova occurred ~50,000 years ago near Earth that could have changed our conclusions about early human life. {WHOA!? Elaborate please!}

HR—The book of Hebrews seems clear that GOD actively created Adam and Eve. The Bible indicates lots of offspring from them, so could have filled Earth if sin hadn’t entered.

AC—We must take the audience into account—we may take it literally, but how would an early middle east reader take it?

HR—But God wrote the Bible for all people, so it should have meaning for all

DBH—I agree with AC, chronology not important to many early folks, and the context we bring into it is important. The idea of God putting in hidden things that are only apparent to us is not consistent with Him. {Not sure I agree with this—much of the prophecy in the Bible doesn’t appear to be prophecy until after the fulfillment, yet the Bible declares it to be so. So, why not scientific info?}

RH—Hermeneutics says we should start by understanding how early readers read it first in order to inform our interpretation; to them the point was God reigns over chaos and brings order to it.

SM—Just as theological evidence is open to different interpretations, so also is the genetic evidence. Junk DNA is species specific, so it is evidence against common ancestry, so the science isn’t settled.

FR—ALU  sequences are shown to play a role in stress response-when species stress, ALU levels spike and appear to be functional after all. {See Vibrant Dance: “God’s Creativity and Providence” }

DF—Appeals to the scientific consensus of interpretation as a justification of his position and above developments do not stop those consensual interpretations.

WB—A pinball machine is an analogy—the ball can take many paths but ends up at bottom of table always, so can we say there is a similar idea in evolution—no matter what the path, there is the same end result? (A deeper design that directs final result like the gravity in a pinball machine) Can this reconcile some of the confusion?

FR—Discussed convergence in his book, The Cell’s Design, and it has theistic implications.

SM—Likes the general idea of convergence, but has questions about the implications of front loading information into the Creation to prefer a final outcome.

RH—God and Creation both act and interact.

End Transcript summary.

SDG

Vibrant Dance: Signature in the Cell

The final position paper of the day was by Stephen C. Meyer of the Discovery Institute entitled, “Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design.”

As Meyer got started by talking about natural versus artificial selection, it occurred to me that artificial selection is even found in the Bible, as far back as Genesis, when Jacob was working for Laban to earn Rachel’s hand. In order to increase his herd at the expense of Laban’s, when the strongest and best animals were going to mate he did certain things so that the offspring would be marked as his, and when the weaker animals were mating, he left them alone so they would be marked as Laban’s. Thus he was using artificial selection to create a superior herd and a weaker herd. (Gen 30) (NB: Jacob’s method of marking is rather suspect, but the fact that he was selectively breeding the stronger animals together and the weaker ones together is the point!)

Meyer asked a couple of introductory questions:  Is adaptation the only appearance of design? And, if not, has natural selection explained away all other appearances of design? In other words, the naturalists say that nature has the “appearance of design,” but not actual design, and that adaptation is a key factor that gives the appearance of design.

In answer, he quotes natural philosopher Bernd Olaf-Kuppers, “the problem with the origin of life is basically the origin of new information.” So, can either adaptation or natural selection be given as an initial source of the information density required for life?

Naturalists initially offered up Chance as the origin of information, but even they have rejected this as being insufficient. The next theory was “pre-biotic natural selection”—that certain arrangements of non-living (pre-biotic) materials was better able to transmit/promote life than other arrangements. Meyer showed that this doesn’t work because it is a non-sequitor:  how can a non-functional system reproduce to form a functional system that functions better? In other words, natural selection is defined as “A process in nature in which organisms possessing certain genotypic characteristics that make them better adjusted to an environment tend to survive, reproduce, increase in number or frequency, and therefore, are able to transmit and perpetuate their essential genotypic qualities to succeeding generations.” So how can something that is pre-biotic (not alive) survive and reproduce better than something else that is also not alive? If it is not alive, then it is by definition incapable of survival and reproduction.

Even Nobel laureate Christian de Duve recognized the problem by saying that theories of origin “need information, which implies they have to presuppose what is to be explained in the first place.”

A third and more contemporary scenario Meyer offered from the naturalists was the general category of “self-organization scenarios.” Here, the idea is that in some solution somewhere billions of years ago, molecular bits bumping around aggregated together in a specific order due to certain attractive forces based on the unique compounds that make up the DNA ‘letters’ and formed the first DNA or RNA molecule, and presto, this random assembly of chemicals happened to code for the first living thing. The problem with this proposal is that it doesn’t work. The DNA letters are chemical units called bases, which are attached to a molecule composed of a sugar and a ‘phosphate group.’ This molecule to which the bases attach is like a vertebrae that when connected to others forms a backbone, and the bases stick out from the backbone like a half-rung of a ladder. The vertebrae are all identical to each other and the letters only attach to the backbone in a way that leaves a given vertebra to attach to any other vertebra, regardless of the base attached to it.

An analogy would be a set of train cars. You can have box cars, flatbeds, tank cars, cattle cars and so on, but they can be placed together in any order because the parts that link them together are universal and identical. The couplers ability to latch to each other is 100% independent of what kind of container is place on top of the undercarriage. It is only the presence of an intelligence, the loadmaster, that determines which order the cars should be linked for the train’s itinerary. {Meyer used a different analogy- a prop he brought, but this conveys better in print.}

Meyer then asked, “can the design hypothesis be transformed into a scientifically rigorous argument?”

To address this, he showed how Darwin explicitly used an approach called “multiple competing theories” in arriving at his evolutionary conclusions. In other words, he looked at various possible hypotheses for the data to explain a historical event (origin of life) and used “inference to the best explanation” to eliminate the bad hypotheses. In plain English, he used logical inferences to see which hypothesis did not adequately explain the data and eliminated them from consideration. Ideally, this leaves the strongest hypothesis remaining.

Using this approach, Meyer drew on another priniciple, that of uniformitarianism—“the present is the key to the past.” The natural laws at work today were at work in the same way throughout the universe’s history. Given that today, “the creation of new information is habitually the result of conscious activity,” he reasons that the creation of life from non-life is the creation of new information and therefore must be the result of conscious activity.

Thus, he argues for Intelligent Design. I agree with Falk on one thing at least, that ID is a one issue view—is design scientifically discernable? And therefore, it is an umbrella over all three main creationist camps (young earth, old earth and evolutionary creationism). While there is a wide variety of opinion on mechanism within ID, they are focused on the issue of whether agency can be detected. However, the ID folks at the conference from the Discovery Institute were definitely old earth progressive creationists and seemed to spend as much time trying to show why evolution is not a viable mechanism as trying to show that God’s agency is scientifically detectable. While there may be some correlation here, and at the moment I tend to agree with them, it does seem to be a distraction from their main point and creates unnecessary (at this point) division within the Christian scientific world.

Random question to the masses: I’ve noticed that in all of these discussions, plant life is virtually ignored and the focus in evolutionary discussions seems exclusively based on animal life. It seems that it would be worthwhile to examine how evolution would ‘explain’ which came first, plant or animal? How did the transformation occur between the two? Where do protists fit in? I think the naturalists’ answer would be that a protist that metabolized via photosynthesis was the first life form and eventually plants and animals diverged from that, but how does that affect the time needed and what genetic traits are common to plants, animals and protists that would give clues to this common ancestor if such a critter did exist?

SDG

Vibrant Dance Day 1 Recap

There were seven plenary sessions today and one breakout session. It was kind of a marathon, but worthwhile. The first two plenaries, by Andy Crouch of Christianity Today and Ross Hastings of Regents College, helped set the tone of unity in Christ and the fundamentals we agree on and therefore the proper place of the different theories of Origins in evangelical Christendom. Dan Heinze then discussed “What is Science?” to establish the extent and limits of science. The remaining talks were speakers from the three major ‘camps’ present at the symposium. Hugh Ross and Fuz Rana from Reasons To Believe presented the Progressive Creation view as applied to cosmology and biology respectively. Darrell Falk from BioLogos gave the theistic evolution (or Evolutionary Creation) viewpoint, and Steven Meyer from the Discovery Institute discussed Intelligent Design (ID). This way, the entire spectrum of what is to be discussed was presented on the first day, so that remaining sessions can refer back to this foundation. It is a good plan.

I plan to give a short recap of each day’s sessions and in future posts discuss each of the talks I attended, so that it can be delivered in blog-sized bites.

I missed most of Crouch’s talk because I was helping with registration, but it seemed pretty good. Hastings’ talk was similar (only heard part of it), but we had a lovely discussion over dinner, and I respect and like him a lot. Heinze’s talk on science was a good evaluation of what science can and cannot do and why. Of the four position talks, I have to say that Fuz’s on the biological story of the earth from a progressive creationist perspective was the most solid and tightest. Meyer’s was pretty good, but I think Falk has it right that ID is a single issue camp that is really an umbrella for the others (including the Young Earth folks):  Did God do it or not, regardless of the How. Ross as usual had the slickest presentation, yet his reliance on overwhelming the audience with improbabilities makes it hard to truly evaluate the solidity of his assumptions, and some of his predictive tests seem to be God-of-the-Gaps things—‘we haven’t found evidence of X yet, so as long as we don’t, then it makes God a plausible argument.” How often do we find out that God can do things differently than we expect? Finally, Falk’s presentation was poorly done with difficult to read slides, which made it a little hard to evaluate how convincing his arguments really are, and he tried to cram too much into too little time. This last point was a bit endemic to all, and while it is an understandable problem, it might be better to give a more surfacy overview of the position in a few minutes and then thoroughly explore a single point or area to demonstrate the power of that position on that topic as an example of the overall quality of the argument.

I will come back and address each talk more fully after the conference is over. Note: I have advertised this blog to most of the speakers, so I say these things knowing they may well read them at my open invitation. My spirit in these posts is constructive praise and criticism both, and would express these sentiments to them directly were we to sit down together to discuss them, so I invite dialogue. It is in the best interests of all of us for all of the positions to express themselves at their very best for good scholarship and constructive dialogue between them and with the secular scientific community. They are brothers and sisters in Christ, and qualified scholars in their own right. I also think I may do a post on effective PowerPoint presentations!

SDG