Ted Davis Waxes Theological, Todd Wood Responds

Ted Davis, like the rest of us, is tired of how the origins debate is playing out between mainstream and non-mainstream science.  He has great praise for those that display clear-headed thinking on both sides in the debate such as Michael Ruse and Todd Wood.  He writes:

I also tip my hat to YEC proponents Todd Wood and Paul Nelson. Each was featured in the YEC film, Is Genesis History?, but neither dismisses proponents of EC with the back of his hand. They both have the courage and conviction to seek the truth, even if takes them places where their creationist friends don’t want them to go. For example, on the same day the film was released, Dr. Nelson dissented from how his ideas were presented in the film. Dr. Wood didn’t do that, but he does candidly admit elsewhere that “Evolution is not a theory in crisis,” that “it is not teetering on the verge of collapse,” nor has it “failed as a scientific explanation.” He finds “gobs and gobs” of evidence for evolution,” denies that it is “just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion,” affirms that it “has amazing explanatory power,” and frankly says, “There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well.”

I am quite sure that this last quote will haunt Todd Wood to the grave because most evolutionary creationists (including myself) keep it in their back pocket. Wood has taken on some heavy hitters who have misused science and has done so in an honest and thoughtful way and he has truly striven to understand biodiversity as it pertains to his way of thinking. Furthermore, unlike many in the young earth creationist camp, his posts are free of invective and insult.  For these things and others, he should be commended.

Davis continues:

There’s always the danger than one can overplay one’s hand, or forget that those who see things differently are also made in the image of God. Sometimes, one’s opponents in a public disagreement really are mean-spirited, arrogant, or intellectually dishonest, tempting one to respond in kind. In such situations, do your best to take the high road. Stick with the facts, spell out why you hold different opinions, and be fair to ideas defended by others, even when you strongly disagree: no one has a monopoly on truth. Intellectual honesty and humility do not imply cowardice or lack of commitment to the Gospel. 

This is something I am often guilty of. I find it all too easy to take a blowtorch to the writings of Answers in Genesis in a nasty way, typically because I am writing in anger.  This often happens when I discover a post or article in which it is clear that the person writing the article has little knowledge of the subject about which they write and their tone is insulting or condescending.  It is all too easy to open up both barrels. He finishes with an admonition to avoid indoctrination:

Individual Christians have every right to think for themselves, without being browbeaten into submission by fear, accused of holding dangerous views simply for favoring a different interpretation of Genesis, or publicly shamed as intellectual cowards for accepting consensus science.

There is a great danger in taking the attitude that if two people have a disagreement about something, that one of them is not in the spirit. This behavior results in arrogance, haughtiness, broken relationships and lots of finger-pointing. We are all guilty of sin, especially the sin of self-righteousness.

Todd Wood responds by adding another way that he would like to see the debate change: less of “diagnosing the enemy”: 

There's two big problems I see with Diagnosing the Enemy. First of all, it's just a profoundly arrogant thing to do. How can anyone seriously think that reading a Facebook comment or blog article would actually reveal all the intricacies and complexities of human thought? Some days, I can barely put two words together, and you think that's going to actually reveal the inner workings of my mind and years of study and research and prayer and thought?

Also arrogant is the ulterior motive of Diagnosing the Enemy: I have the cure. Because, let's face it, diagnosing a problem isn't really the point, right? The point is: if only my enemy would watch my video or read my book or do what I tell them, then everything would be fine. Because not only can I diagnose your problem by engaging in a superficial reading of superficial comments, I'm the guy who's gonna cure you! When you think about it like that, it's obviously and embarrassingly silly, but it still doesn't stop us from reading certain triggers and sticking people in that pigeonhole.

Which brings me to the second big problem: It's dehumanizing. Instead of complex people with complex thoughts and attitudes and personalities, we reduce our enemies to one simplistic issue. There aren't just ideas out there that float around having battles by themselves. Ideas are held by real people with real personalities, and histories, and values, and fears. And all of that immensely complicated personality gets entangled with the way we think about the world and our faith. When disagreements pop up, though, these people for whom Christ died suddenly become defined by one perceived "defect."

I am of two minds about this response. It is certainly correct that people are complex and that a single blog post or Bookface post does not remotely capture their complexity.  As noted above, it is all too easy to fire off a response to a post that you know has gotten some basic information wrong.

The problem is that when an entire body of work of an organization continually misrepresents science and the authors of that body of work show absolutely no interest in correcting this misinformation, a response is necessary. When an entire body of work is continually scientifically inaccurate, it begins to inform about the people who are producing it.  In short, at least on one level, it makes it possible to “diagnose the enemy.”

 If you read all of the posts on my blog or my writings on BioLogos, you would get a pretty good idea of what I think about science and theology. It might even be possible to “diagnose” me a bit. To be sure, you would not have insight into what I think about abortion, gun control or how good a father I am to my children, but it would be pretty clear that I am a card-carrying evolutionary creationist.

Davis's post is a clarion call for both sides to take the high road.  That is often hard to do when you are being called “evil, stupid evolutionists” and you know that what they have written is just plain false.
Wood remarks that it is disheartening to see BioLogos identified as the “middle ground.” If we are not the middle ground, what are we? We are people who are firmly convinced in the salvation of Jesus Christ and the integrity and primacy of God's word to us.  We are also people who want to understand the universe that God has created, but to do so in an honest, forthright, and scientifically sound way.

Evolutionary creationists are dismissed by atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne and Sam Harris for believing in fairy tales and being scientifically compromised by their faith.  This is a false charge.  We operate within the scientific framework with the understanding that everything around us is God's handiwork.  We are dismissed by many young earth creationists as being “compromisers” and not taking the bible seriously.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

One of the things that seems to drive this invective is that atheists are convinced the Bible is false and that we are idiots for believing in it.  Young earth creationists are convinced that their understanding of scripture is absolutely correct, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

It is easy enough to understand where the atheists are coming from, since they see nothing beyond the observable universe.   It is the YEC perspective that I find perplexing. It leads to people like Wood, himself, saying about evolutionary creationists that they “ought to know better,” even though, by his own admission, there is a massive amount of evidence for evolution.  Ken Ham takes it a bit further by questioning whether we are, in fact, Christians at all, and that if we pass on the EC perspective to our children, we are endangering their salvation.

Is it possible that Wood and his fellow YEC supporters are correct in their scriptural assessment?  It absolutely is.  Is it possible that we have evolution wrong?  Is it possible that the earth was created six thousand years ago?  Again, it absolutely is.  But the weight of evidence currently doesn't support those positions.  In fact, there is little to no empirical support for them.  Many good, devoted Christians are out there are wrestling with these facts.  To be told that they “ought to know better” than to accept them or that they aren't Christians if they do is insulting.  Further, as noted above, it betrays a troubling aspect of this perspective: the idea that our understanding of scripture is unbiblical. 

Secondary to this is that, in all of the young earth creationist literature that I have read, there is a remarkable lack of self-examination when it comes to scriptural interpretation.  To those who support the young earth model: we might be wrong about our interpretation of scripture, but you might be, also.  For the origins debate to change, there must be an acceptance of this on both sides of the aisle.  Only then will progress be made and name-calling cease.  

A New Darwin Biography Gets Fisked

Jerry Coyne, a somewhat outspoken atheist and author of the book Why Evolution is True, has written a review of a new book on Darwin titled Charles Darwin, Victorian Mythmaker by A.N. Wilson.  Coyne is baffled:

Given that many of Wilson’s earlier biographies have been admired for their style and insight, and not criticized for pervasive errors, this new project is baffling. Where Darwin’s other biographers have seen a sensitive and kindly man, a scrupulous scientist who willingly credited his predecessors, Wilson finds a greedy “self-mythologizer” desperate to become famous, even if it required ignoring or plagiarizing his forerunners and fellow naturalists.

In every portrayal of Darwin I have ever read, he is constantly generous, respectful, and professional. Coyne suggests that the problem does not lie with Darwin but with Wilson, who evidently makes many errors in this book:

In the most embarrassing error, Wilson claims that the first 50 pages of an important Darwin notebook have been lost forever, asserting that Darwin destroyed them to hide his intellectual cribbing from his contemporary Edward Blyth. In reality, Darwin simply placed those pages in a folder for later use, and they can easily be found online. Whatever Wilson was doing during the five years he spent researching and writing this book, it bears little relation to what we call “scholarship.”

According to Coyne, the same problem that lies at the heart of the book is the same philosophical problem that affects every anti-evolutionist: Darwin simply had to be incorrect about his ideas.  He simply had to be:

Why the sustained animus against Darwin? I think Wilson’s issue is not really Darwin but his ideas. “Darwin was wrong,” is how he opens the book, referring to the theory of evolution. Wilson plainly dislikes evolutionary biology, but, lacking scientific credentials, is not in a position to provide a thorough scientific critique of the field. Instead, he seems to have written a biography — a task he is at least in principle qualified for, having written 20 books on history — as a platform to launch an assault on evolution. Darwin’s character is simply collateral damage.

This kind of book is frustrating on so many levels.  The author has no knowledge of the subject matter so he makes unsophisticated attacks, and he is philosophically opposed to the subject matter so he deems it “bad.”

I once likened this sort of thing to bugs and a bug zapper.  Evolution is such a tempting target that even people that are absolutely unqualified to address it simply can't stay away.  We have seen this with Nancy Pearcey, Eric Metaxas, and others.  It is unfortunate that the reading public find these people informative on the topic.  As someone (probably not Mark Twain) once said: “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”  Are these people absolutely lying?  Maybe not, but if they continue to repeat the same misinformation time and time again, even after they have been corrected, what difference does it make?

Hector Avalos on the Wisdom of Debating Creationists

Hector Avalos, of Iowa State University, has a thoughtful piece called Why Academic Biblical Scholars Must Fight Creationism.  His reasoning is very simple:

...Academic biblical scholars are the best persons to debate creationists. The reason is simple. The Achilles’ Heel of creationism is its biblical illiteracy, and not just its scientific illiteracy.

True enough, scientists have done an excellent job in pointing the scientific flaws in creationism. However, the problem is that scientists usually don’t have enough knowledge of biblical scholarship to address or defeat some of the arguments creationists use to harmonize the Bible with science.

Scientists are not trained to recognize how creationists are distorting biblical texts. Thus, Jerry Coyne’s Faith v. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible (2015) does an excellent job of explaining scientific theory and methods, but one will not find any discussion of how most creationists are misreading Genesis 1-3.

Creationists in the pews tend to shrug off arguments about DNA, radioactive dating, and other technical subjects because they are not familiar with them. But one need not even go into these scientific intricacies if the Bible does not even say what creationists claim.

Those of us who are educated in a branch of science that bears on this debate tend to think that the science ought to be obvious and scratch our heads in amazement when people reject it.  This is especially compounded by the numerous instances when creationists go out of their way to intentionally distort the science to reflect things it cannot possibly mean.  I found myself in rueful agreement when a leading creationist was described as “horrifically, pathologically dishonest.”

On the other hand, these theological issues with creationism are not new.  Paul Seely, for example, was writing about the theological problems with creationism in the 1970s.  This has had no effect on the masses that accept the young earth model or those that teach them.  Why does this happen?

I think because learning curves are the same no matter what sphere of knowledge you examine.  Dr. Avalos comes from a background in theology, and has knowledge in that area that is far greater than your average church goer, who sits down, sings some hymns, and then opens a copy of their favorite bible, where there it is in black and white: God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh.  Why should they believe otherwise?  In order to “get them up to speed,” it would require effectively the same amount of theological education as it would to do the same for the scientific aspects of the argument. To Dr. Avalos, it is patently obvious that people have misinterpreted scripture, just as it is patently obvious to me that they have misinterpreted the scientific evidence.  To the average person, this just isn't so. 

Science, Faith and Cognitive Dissonance

Josh Rosenau, who used to write a blog called Thoughts from Kansas, has written a very thoughtful post on the world view as it applies to faith in God and the practice of science.  It has been argued by those who view faith dimly that to practice science and believe that God can work in the modern world is to hold two cognitively dissonant views.  If science is to be reliable, the world must be a spiritually closed system—no input from God—or else one can never reliably predict the results of a particular hypothesis without knowing for sure that God did not have a hand in the outcome.

For example, if a hurricane is traveling up the eastern seaboard and the people of the coastal town of West Noiseville pray that the hurricane misses their nice little hamlet, and, lo and behold, it veers off at the last minute, was that, in fact, the handiwork of God or did the naturally-occurring prevailing winds simply act to perform this action?  When testing atmospheric models to see where the hurricane is going to go, scientists do not take into account the prayers of West Noiseville's residents.  They cannot, because those are outside the purview of the scientific method.  Did God answer their prayers?  Science cannot tell us.  The problem, according to some, however, is that by entertaining a world view that even allows the actions of God, we are compromising our scientific endeavors.  We are allowing for untestable hypotheses.  Jerry Coyne, a notable atheist, makes this argument.  Coyne, however, argues that there are perfectly good scientists who believe in God and that this dissonance is almost subconscious.  He writes:

Although I think scientists who are religious are engaged in a form of subconscious cognitive dissonance, I’ve never said that religious belief automatically prevents somebody from doing good science. There were many believers, even in my own field (Ronald Fisher and Theodosius Dobzhansky, to name two) who made immense contributions to evolutionary biology. And although I vehemently object to Francis Collins’s touting scientific evidence for God (i.e., “The Moral Law”), I’ve said repeatedly that Collins was a good scientist and that I had no scientific objections to his heading the National Institutes of Health.

Here is how Rosenau characterizes Coyne’s position:

Coyne takes the philosophical stance that science and religion are, in some sense, intrinsically incompatible, and he believes that a consequence of this incompatibility will be some sort of psychological conflict in the minds of religious scientists.

I happen to think that his philosophy is flawed, simplistic, and ill-argued, but that’s for another day. He’s claiming that the philosophical point makes a prediction about people’s mental processes, which should be testable. Facts are stubborn things, and a good scientist ought to be willing to adjust his philosophy in response to stubborn facts that stand at odds with those predictions.

Rosenau then goes on to give a rousing list of scientists who were devoutly religious who not only performed excellent science but did so, they felt, in the service of their God.

I also think that Coyne is wrong but for a different reason.

How you view science largely depends on whether or not you take the “short” view or the “long” view of creation. For example, there is evidence that some very bad diseases that we as humans suffer from are caused or at least activated by endogenous retroviruses. These include some cancers and MS. The short view argues that the earth was created in the very recent past and that all bad things that occur around us are direct results of a tangible, physical fall from grace by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, subsequent to which the world was irrevocably changed. They are the “decay” of this fall.

But here's the problem. There is also very good genetic evidence that there has been incorporation of parts of some of these retroviruses into systems such as placental development, which means that, from a human survivability perspective, some of this retroviral DNA has resulted in a “good” thing.  Further, it seems clear that these responses have evolved over a considerable period of time.  These findings are clearly incompatible with the short view of creation.  But need these findings lead to philosophical conundrums?

Coyne has no bad things to say about the scientists that he mentioned (Fisher, Dobzhansky) because they performed science with integrity and honesty and yet were men of faith.  These scientists were not just old earth creationists, but, like their modern counterparts Francisco Ayala, Simon Conway-Morris, Dennis Venema and others, they were evolutionary creationists.  To these people, science is our way of understanding God's creation.  In the process of doing so, however, the first casualty is the short view. These folks found, as did 99% of other Christians practicing in the sciences, that, as Pat Robertson put it a few days ago, there just ain't no way the universe was created six thousand years ago.  They further found that, yes, by gum, evolution really does happen. 

Once you open yourself up to those possibilities,  there is no scientific endeavor that will lead you to any kind of psychological conflict because all roads lead to Rome.  If you truly believe that God created the heavens and the earth, then any research will simply be illuminating that.  Does this cause a rethink of the literal nature of certain scriptural passages?  Yup, sure does.  But there have been competing interpretive models of those passages for centuries. 

Coyne is quite correct that cognitive dissonance can occur in some instances.  If you pursue scientific research to its logical ends, and your scriptural hermeneutic is narrow, you will eventually suffer from this dissonance.  This is, in part, fueling some of the problems at Bryan College right now and is causing somewhat of a crisis of faith in evangelical Christianity. 

If, on the other hand, your understanding of scripture looks more like this, then the sky's the limit.  As Conrad Hyers points out:

...the Genesis accounts of creation do not prove to be in conflict with scientific or historical knowledge. This is not because the creation texts can be shown to be in conformity with the latest scientific and historical knowledge, or supported by it, but precisely because they have little to do with it. They belong to radically different types of literature, with equally different types of concerns and goals.

Where does this leave miracles? Dunno. I will tackle that on another day.

Gonzalez Won't Teach ID

Guillermo Gonzalez has made a public attestation that he will not teach intelligent design at Ball State University.  As the Muncie Star Press reports:

Gonzalez, who was hired by BSU this summer as an assistant professor in the department of physics and astronomy, is best known for his advocacy of intelligent design.

“As I communicated to members of the department during my interviews, I plan to continue my research on astrobiology and stellar astrophysics,” Gonzalez said in a statement issued this week.

The statement reported that he will not be discussing intelligent design in the classroom, and that he did not discuss intelligent design when he taught at Iowa State University, either

That may not be enough to soothe folks like Coyne and Harris but it is a huge step forward to placate the faculty at Ball State, I am sure. It is important for him to distance himself from the modern ID movement in this sense and for them to understand that. The anti-science comments made by the faculty at Iowa State are not without merit.

It is one thing for ID supporters to believe that the universe is created and guided by an intelligence. It is another for modern ID supporters to, having no theoretical constructs of their own, take pot shots at organized science in support of their ideas.  At least "mainstream" creationism, warts and all, has a testable framework. You can test the hypothesis "the earth was created six-thousand years ago." That's easy. Trying to test the hypothesis "God created the heavens and the earth," That's hard.  Add to that the fact that the public face of ID as purveyed by people like David Klinghoffer, Cornelius Hunter, William Dembski and David Berlinski is rabidly "anti-Darwinian," and you have a science credibility problem.  Gonzalez is wise to stay well away from that. 

Karl Giberson Weighs in On The Ball State Eric Hedin Case

Writing for HuffPo, Karl Giberson has suggested very politely that, with regard to the whole Eric Hedin Ball State controversy, Jerry Coyne go stick it where the sun don't shine.  He also cautions us about what academic freedom does and does not mean:

No evidence whatsoever supports Jerry Coyne's claim that Hedin is "proseletyzing for Jesus" in his Boundaries of Science class. Coyne is notorious for pretending not to understand the difference between a philosophically motivated theism and Christian fundamentalism and has waded into this controversy with his usual blinkered culture war mentality.

On the other hand, I can hardly agree with the intelligent design folk at the Discovery Institute that this is an academic freedom case. Academic freedom is a noble, if ambiguous, concept that can be invoked in support of many things but one of those is not the freedom to tell students things that are not true. If, as the syllabus suggests, Hedin's students are learning that the ideas of the intelligent design movement are the cutting edge of science and heralding a major revolution, there are grounds for concern. If the students leave Hedin's class believing that the scientific community is wrestling with the proposals that have come out of the intelligent design movement, then they have been misled and poorly served. Most practicing scientists understand that their disciplines have unanswered questions and "boundaries" of some sort. But virtually none of them are looking to an external "designer" to answer these questions.

I recently had a breakfast with a friend of mine who's set of twins are the age of my oldest son. They are all enrolled in a homeschooling co-op called Classical Conversations. Unfortunately, one of the books that has been assigned for this coming year is Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, a book of questionable value by Phillip Johnson.  My friend is a software designer/engineer and is, largely, unconcerned by the science/faith issues that cause me daily angst.  He was, nonetheless, quite surprised when I informed him that large sections of the Johnson book are not just different in opinion, they are wrong.  My friend was quite surprised to find that the theory of evolution is testable.  I outlined some basic instances in which this is the case.  If he has been reading any of the DI literature, I am not surprised that he thought that.  He also saw the wisdom of the question:  "how is it that all of the other major scientific disciplines have gotten their theoretical constructs correct and the evolutionary biologists have not?"  Even my pastor wonders about that.

In the end, Giberson concludes largely what I did, that this course is not what Coyne and other atheists call it and that Hedin has the right to teach it in the hopes of stimulating critical thinking in his students.  He does need to treat ID a bit more honestly, though. 

Victor Stenger on the Ball State Controversy

Victor Stenger has written a HuffPo article on why Eric Hedin's classes should be canceled.  Before we go into this, it should be pointed out that Stenger's views fit very comfortably with those of Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers and Sam Harris.  His books include God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist and God and the Atom: From Democritus to the Higgs Boson.  In short, he has no use for religion of any sort.  In his column, he writes:

In his April 25 blog Why Evolution is True, University of Chicago biology professor Jerry Coyne revealed that Hedin is using science as a guise for promoting his personal, fundamentalist Christian world-view. This is clearly evident from the course syllabus and is confirmed by students' comments and a perusal of his reading list.

The course includes scientific-sounding but highly dubious arguments for the existence of God and promotes intelligent design, miracles, and spirituality. The authors on the book list are almost all Christian apologists without a single dissenting view represented.
Hedin's reading list is headed by Michael Behe, the author of Darwin's Black Box (1998), which has been thoroughly refuted, and includes all the other cohorts of intelligent design as well as Christian apologists who are not scientists. There is no entry from any proponent of evolution or atheism. Hedin promotes notions that, for the most part, have as much honest scientific support as a flat Earth

As I mentioned in the last post: Does it focus on ID? Sure does. Does it include some scientifically dubious books in the reading list? Sure does. What is not evident is a fundamentalist Christian world-view.  I have not taken the course.  Neither have the people that wrote in and commented on Coyne's site.  There are other reasons that this vitriol is misplaced, however.  For one thing, it is an elective, which means that nobody has to take it.  People that are taking it are doing so because they want to.  Here is the course description:

In this course, we will examine the nature of the physical and the living world with the goal of increasing our appreciation of the scope, wonder, and complexity of physical reality. We will also investigate physical reality and the boundaries of science for any hidden wisdom within this reality which may illuminate the central questions of the purpose of our existence and the meaning of life. This course is designed to allow students to take a more in-depth look at the beauty and complexity of the universe and life and to give food for thought about deeper questions which remain central to human existence.

Yes, he does get into trouble with the Intelligent design books but there are other books there that don't toe that line. Are atheist books missing? It sure seems that they are. Would they be appropriate in this kind of course? Probably. It seems that he has chosen not to go that route, as is his prerogative. I am surprised and somewhat amused that both PZ Myers and Larry Moran (Sandwalk) have gone on record as saying that it is his choice to teach this if he wants to and people should butt out. Stenger and Coyne do not agree.  They argue that Hedin in teaching a patently false view of the universe.  I would challenge them to demonstrate that.  Stenger's logical error is especially egregious, given that he has argued that science can show the non-existence of God.  Science can do no such thing.

I tend to agree with Myers and Moran. I am no supporter of ID but it seems that people are getting some differing views, if not the atheist one.That a religious view is being vaguely promoted at all is what burns Stenger and Coyne up. 

Ball State Makes the Front Page

USA Today is carrying a story about a professor at Ball State that is, apparently, teaching creationism in science class.  Originally from the Star Press of Muncie, Indiana, the article, written by Seth Slabaugh, has this to say:

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, whose mission is to act as an umbrella for those who are free from religion and are committed to the principle of separation of state and church, filed an objection to Eric Hedin's teaching.

In a letter to BSU President Jo Ann Gora, the group claims Hedin's "Boundaries of Science" Honors College class "takes your school motto, 'Education Redefined,' too far."

"BSU appears to offer a class that preaches religion, yet gives students honors science credit," foundation attorney Andrew Seidel wrote to Gora. "BSU appears to have a class with a non-biologist undermining genuine science and scholarship of the Ball State biology department by teaching creationism, a religious belief ... masquerading as science."

If he were teaching these subjects in the context of differing perspectives on origins and creation along with mainstream scientific viewpoints, then the course would probably earn its name. Such would only be the case if the problems of these perspectives were pointed out, however. According to Jerry Coyne, however, that is not what is happening:

"All the books are by creationists, IDers (intelligent designers), or people who try to show that science gives evidence for God," evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, a professor at the University of Chicago, told The Star Press, referring to the bibliography for Hedin's course. "There are no straight science books."

It appears Hedin "presents a non-view of science in a science class," said Coyne, author of the book "Why Evolution is True."

"The students are being duped. It's straight theology with no alternatives. It's a straight Christian intelligent design/creationist view of the world, which is wrong. It's not science. It's not that it's not science, it's science that has been discredited. It's like saying the Holocaust didn't happen."

First, there is not a single book by what is commonly known as a "creationist" on the list that Coyne produces in his blog.  Some are ID, quite a few are theistic evolution in bent and some address the fact that there exist components of life beyond science.  It would be more appropriate to call the course "theological ruminations on science," or some such thing but it is pretty clear that nobody is being taught young earth creationism.  I think the charge of undermining genuine science might have some merit with regard to the ID books, but given the reputation of people like Francis Collins, Karl Giberson, Nigel Brush and Roger Penrose, it is pretty hard to argue that genuine science isn't being taught at all.  It might be taught in a philosophical arena, with musings on the ultimate questions of life's origins and things like that but there is nothing necessarily inappropriate about that.   It seems to me that the professor wants his students to try to think beyond the realm of science to address ultimate causes.  It is not clear, in the least, that he "wants his students to believe in Jesus."

In this case, it appears that Coyne has a case of the vapors only because he can't stand religion of any kind.  It sounds like a fun course to take.

Religous Agnostic Wins Templeton Prize, Atheists Infuriated

That is a bit of a dramatic headline but the story is exactly that. The winner this year is Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal in Great Britain. Steve Connor, of the Independent, writes:

Martin Rees, the former president of the Royal Society and master of Trinity College, Cambridge, was given the award for "exceptional contributions to affirming life's spiritual dimension" through his research and writings on cosmology. Lord Rees of Ludlow, who has said he holds no religious beliefs, defended the prize on the grounds it was awarded by a foundation which has given money to fund important science projects at respectable research institutions, including Cambridge.

This did not sit well several members of the scientific establishment:

Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, said the Templeton Foundation is "sneakier than the creationists" by introducing the idea of faith into a discipline where faith is anathema. "Religion is based on dogma and belief, whereas science is based on doubt and questioning. In religion, faith is a virtue. In science, faith is a vice," he said.

Oddly, Coyne is correct here. Science, especially evolution, is demonized by many as being dogmatic and religious, yet Coyne is presenting it exactly as it is, a scientific discipline that proceeds along scientific principles. In other writings, it is clear that Coyne thinks that religion in general is a vice but that is not his point here.

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Jerry Coyne On Why Science and Religion Cannot Be Friends

Jerry Coyne, author of Why Evolution is True, has written a column for USA Today, in which he opines that science and religion cannot coexist. He begins:

Atheist books such as The God Delusion and The End of Faith have, by exposing the dangers of faith and the lack of evidence for the God of Abraham, become best-sellers. Science nibbles at religion from the other end, relentlessly consuming divine explanations and replacing them with material ones.

Gee, Jerry. Don't hesitate to tell us what you think. He is, of course, focusing on the "God of the Gaps" model of the universe, assuming that this is a valid picture of Christianity. For some, it might be. It is not for most. He continues:

But faith will not go gentle. For each book by a "New Atheist," there are many others attacking the "movement" and demonizing atheists as arrogant, theologically ignorant, and strident.

Can't imagine why that would be. I remember having a conversation with my pastor after "the talk." He had gone out and picked up something by Richard Dawkins. While he did not have the background to understand the arguments on evolution, what came out clear as a bell was the "strident" (he used that word) and arrogant wording of Dawkins in all things religious. Unlike the NCSE, of whom Eugenie Scott at least held religious belief in respect, if not something she believed herself, Coyne is insulting and disdainful in his view of religion. A bit later, he tips his hand, though:

Science and faith are fundamentally incompatible, and for precisely the same reason that irrationality and rationality are incompatible. They are different forms of inquiry, with only one, science, equipped to find real truth. And while they may have a dialogue, it's not a constructive one. Science helps religion only by disproving its claims, while religion has nothing to add to science.

He is correct. They are different forms of inquiry. The thing is that while others regard religious inquiry as valid, he does not. That is not a failing of religious inquiry, it is a reductionistic view on his part. That he does not find this level of inquiry does not mean, nor should it mean that others do not.
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Jerry Coyne on Religious America

Jerry Coyne wonders: Do religious Americans accept evolution? He writes:

Well, now I’ve seen it all. There are many ways that accommodationists try to show that faith and science are compatible, but never before have I seen a scientist with this aim play so fast and loose with the data. Dr. Joel Martin, the Curator of Crustacea and chief of the Division of Invertebrate Studies at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, has written an astonishing article in the journal Evolution: Education and Outreach, “Compatibility of major U.S. Christian Denominations with Evolution”.

He fails to mention that this article is now behind a subscription wall. This journal was offered free for two years by Springer but now the article costs 34 dollars. Onward. Even though Coyne has it in mind to ridicule scientists who have religious convictions, he makes a valid point with his analysis of Dr. Martin's paper:

When Martin totals up the number of American Christians who belong to evolution-accepting faiths versus evolution-denying faiths, he gets 94,050,000 Americans in the former class and 45,850,000 in the latter, with 9,800,000 belonging to the “unclear” category. Voila! Nearly 63% of American Christians are of evolution-accepting faith! (This is, of course, heavily weighted with Catholics, who represent 71% of the “evolution-accepters).

The problem is obvious: the proportion of faiths that accept evolution is not the same as the proportion of believers who accept evolution.

Coyne is quite correct. Poll after poll have shown that a large percentage of all polled Americans do not accept evolution and that the correlation between lack of acceptance of evolution to religious expression is very high. In fact, recent earth creationism has taken hold in evangelical Christianity so much so that, as the Internet Monk put it a bit back:

Creationism has become a main plank in the platform of conservative Christian culture warriors. As a result, this issue has become more than a debate among Bible scholars who differ on their interpretations of Genesis. It has become a “litmus test” issue for many, identifying who is and who is not a faithful Christian.

So, unfortunately, despite the fact that Bruce Waltke’s views on these matters have been published in his writings for years, the BioLogos video was too provocative in the culture of fear that marks today’s climate in American Christianity.

As we have found out, now that we are home schooling once again, if one prowls the Home schooling resources, the YEC position is not just popular, it is the de facto position. Coyne ends by writing:

It is individuals who reject evolution, fight science textbooks, and make trouble for evolution—many of these in opposition to the “official” positions of their faiths.

I believe that he is correct.

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Josh Rosenau, Jerry Coyne, and the "New Creationism"

Jerry Coyne is an atheist. He makes no secret of it and, while he is considerably less acerbic than either Richard Dawkins or P.Z. Myers, it does spill out sometimes. Josh Rosenau noticed, in his zeal, he got some things wrong. Coyne writes:

I’m coyneing the term “New Creationism” to describe the body of thought that accepts Darwinian evolution but with the additional caveats that 1) it was all started by God, 2) had God-worshipping humans as its goal, and 3) that the evidence for all this is that life is complex, humans evolved, and the the “fine tuning” of physical constants of the universe testify to the great improbability of our being here—ergo God. New Creationism differs from intelligent design because it rejects God’s constant intervention in the process of evolution in favor of a Big, One-Time Intervention, and because these ideas are espoused by real scientists like Kenneth Miller and Simon Conway Morris. (Note that Miller, though, has floated the possibility that God does sometimes intervene in the physical world by manipulating electrons.) New Creationism is bad because, while operating under the deep cover of real science, it tries to gain traction for dubious claims about the supernatural.

Aside from the oh-so-cute play on his name, his closing premise is wrong. But first, Josh:

Two main thoughts occur. First, this is the creationism that preceded the Enlightenment. It's not, in any sense, new. And there's already a term for it: Theistic Evolution.

Second, the term "New Creationism" is not new. Creationist Henry Morris used the term "neo-creationism" to describe his strategy in 1997. A chapter in Scott's sourcebook on the controversy has a chapter titled "Neo-creationism." Barbara Ehrenreich and Janet McIntosh used the term "New Creationism" in 1997 to describe a particular front in the Science Wars then waging, in which certain social scientists rejected biological explanations for human behaviors. Creationist Paul Garner titled his work of young earth creationism The New Creationism. It was published last year.

His main complaint stems from the belligerence with which Coyne presents this, however. He has his own definition to add:

coyne: (v) To invent a new pejorative which adds heat, not light, and which tends to collide with established usage.

Back to Coyne. The closing premise to his paragraph is incorrect. Evolutionary creationists do not use science as a "deep cover" to gain traction for anything. One of the complaints that theistic evolutionists/evolutionary creationists have about the "science" that is performed by recent earth creationists is that the science is always secondary to the particular theological perspective such that if it conflicts with the literal reading of scripture, it must be disposed of and "right thinking" science instated in its place. Theistic evolutionists understand that the physical world is the creation of God but that it behaves in accord with laws and processes that God has laid down.

When Jesus came to earth, he didn't say "I have come to make you understand science better." He came to save our souls. The world kept spinning on its axis and things kept evolving. Coyne gets that there are differences between ID supporters and TEs but because he has adopted a reductionist way of thinking about the universe, anything beyond the observable world doesn't exist. Consequently, any appeal to it, even outside the realm of science, is unacceptable. It isn't the science of Kenneth Miller that Coyne objects to. It is the religion of Kenneth Miller.
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Jerry Coyne Reacts to the Home School Ruckus

Jerry Coyne, who, if you will recall, co-reviewed sections of textbooks by Apologia and Bob Jones and gave them failing grades, began receiving email from "Christians." Here is an example of what he got:

Dear Sir,
I am very upset with what you said within a recent article on yahoo. Sir, I’m going to tell you something that you need to hear. Sir, You are going to HELL. Because when GOD CREATED the Earth HE made everything perfect and in GOD’s perfect plan humans didn’t need to be evolved from monkeys. So there evolution is wrong. GO Read the bible it tells you the truth, see what GOD said about creation, not what some Man thought were we came from. Because I believe that WORD OF GOD is the truth and nothing else is.
Yours truly,
a GOD fearing Man

That was the nice one. Here, from another post by Coyne, is the not so nice one. I have altered it just a bit in obvious ways:

Hey Jerry Coyne f**k you. You evolution faggot. Darwinism and evolution are the biggest pile of s**t lies ever made on the face of GODS green earth. People in the 1800’s thought Darwin was a dumb ass f**king lunatic. Home school books are lying to children? On no you son of a b**ch you and all these liberal piece of shit scum bag evolutionists are lying to children and every public school in the world. . . So go f**k your self or an ape and evolve some grotesque ape kids you loser fuck. I beat the s**t out of people like you, you cock smoking douche nozzle.

As I read this, at least part of me wondered aloud "is this a troll?" Due to the nature of free speech being what it is, there are trolls out there on the internet. I have had trolls try to post on my site. It is my sincere hope that this is an example of the writings of a troll. If not, this is exactly the kind of ammunition Jerry Coyne, P.Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins need to say "See, Christians are even nastier than we atheists. Where's the love of Christ here???" Interestingly, in the comments sections, a number of people have suggested the same thing I did. There are probably other Christians that read Coyne's site that were caught between the eyes like I was.

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More Home Schooling Frustration

After a year and a half, Melanie and I are removing our two older children from the Christian school that they currently attend. The reasons for this are three-fold: first, it is eating us out of house and home. Even with financial aid, at my associate professor-equivalent salary, the bottom is dropping out. Second, Melanie feels that she has lost touch with them in some ways and wants to reestablish this contact. Third, I have a growing unease with the science curriculum and want to be able to control the kind of instruction that they receive in this area. The school is, otherwise, top flight and it is clear that Marcus and Madeline have been challenged and strengthened in their education and faith in most areas. For that we are very grateful and we have told the headmaster that we don't want to close the door on our involvement with the school, science reservations aside. It is clear that the children made a substantial positive impact on the school and he said that we will be sorely missed.

So, since we have never seriously considered public education, we are going back to the home schooling route, which worked pretty well before the private school. Welcome to the science minefield. Dylan Lovan, of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has a story about what to expect from your average home school curriculum. He writes:

Christian-based materials dominate a growing home-school education market that encompasses more than 1.5 million students in the U.S. And for most home-school parents, a Bible-based version of the Earth’s creation is exactly what they want: Federal statistics from 2007 show 83 percent of home-schooling parents want to give their children “religious or moral instruction.”

It is worth pointing out that those are not necessarily the same thing. We want to give our children religious and moral instruction as well. We just don't want it to be young earth creationism. Therefore, it is not clear how many of those 83% are YEC-oriented . It is clear that this is part theology but part business as well:

The size of the business of home-school texts isn’t clear because the textbook industry is fragmented, and privately held publishers don’t give out sales numbers. Slatter said home-school material sales reach about $1 billion annually in the U.S.

Publishers are well aware of the market, said Jay Wile, a former chemistry professor in Indianapolis who helped launch the Apologia curriculum in the early 1990s.

“If I’m planning to write a curriculum, and I want to write it in a way that will appeal to home-schoolers, I’m going to at least find out what my demographic is,” he said.

So, is it about the science or is it about the Benjamins? When Jerry Coyne, author of Why Evolution is True, and Virginia Tech professor Duncan Porter reviewed some of the textbooks from Bob Jones University and Apologia, they gave them Fs for failing to teach basic biology and evolutionary theory. That brought this response:

Wile countered that Coyne “feels compelled to lie in order to prop up a failing hypothesis. We definitely do not lie to the students. We tell them the facts that people like Dr. Coyne would prefer to cover up.”

That's contemptible. What is Coyne lying about? Why would he lie? What evidence does Wile have that it is failing? My son uses an Apologia science book for his class at school. After reading that quote, I am sorely tempted to burn it the minute he has his last day at class! The book is called Exploring Creation with Botany and is part of the "day" series and I have blogged about my experience with this book here. The writer didn't just get things wrong, she got BASIC things wrong—as though she had no familiarity with what she was writing about. Is this academic integrity? Is this how we want our students and children to learn?

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Raining on Other Writers' Parades

Josh Rosenau wonders why people who write books about evolution are both critical of a book lamenting the state of U.S. science education. PZ Myers and Jerry Coyne are both critical of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future, by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, despite agreeing with the premise. He writes:

I find it odd that the author of a book intended to bring already published information to a new audience would criticize another author for publishing material already available in the technical literature in a way more accessible to the general public.

I find it doubly odd that PZ would echo this criticism. Not only did PZ rise to fame by rendering the technical literature in developmental biology accessible to those outside his field (adding not argument, but clarity), he is now famous for plowing the fields of atheism with arguments not dissimilar to those already made famous by recent writers Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Chris Hitchens, Vic Stenger, etc. He is (I believe) writing yet another book in that vein. It is a well-worked vein, with works touting evolution as an attack on theism dating back to Darwin's day, and no discernibly novel arguments in these popular atheist writings since that time. As one student of the field writes: "There's really only a handful of arguments for atheism in the first place."

This kind of squabbling is not helpful at a time when it is becoming clear that the average person knows little about science, even less about biology and next to nothing about evolution. That is exactly the way that groups like the Discovery Institute, the Institute for Creation Research, and Answers in Genesis want it. Why are we trying to help them? A book that is well-written and sourced that is supportive of evolution should be trumpeted.

Furthermore, I have no sympathy for arguments for atheism by evolutionary biologists in the first place. All they do is cement in the eyes of the general public the already perceived link between evolution and atheism. This just makes it harder for everyone concerned who think that evolution and faith can coexist.


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