Shades of Creationism: Introduction

Why don't I open us up in prayer first?

Father God, I thank you for this day.

I thank you for this opportunity for us to think about you and to learn about you, Lord.

I ask that you give me clarity of mind and clear speech,

and that this would be helpful and edifying to your body.

We love you, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, so let me start with a lot of preamble.

So the preamble is, this is like a really huge subject.

And when I was asked to give a class on it, initially I was like, okay, I'll do one tight class about it.

And then I realized that's not going to work. I had to do more than one.

And then the longer I was reading and looking, there's just no way for me to put everything that I would like to say into a class,

unless we want to go all year.

And so I had to focus on one specific thing.

So I'll talk about what the goal of this class is in a second.

But first, I'm Luke Batty.

I'm one of the deacons here at church.

I'm also what would be called a natural theologian back in the day.

And we'll get into that.

But this is a little controversial.

I don't know if you guys have noticed, but there is sort of a discussion going on in Christian circles.

And it has been for a long time.

And so what I hope to do in talking about creationism, intelligent design, theistic evolution, all these different topics,

is to provide a framework for unity in the body.

I feel like a lot of times among Christians,

when we want to be having useful, helpful discussions about these topics,

you know, sort of like Bilbo hanging out and smoking a pipe and talking to Gandalf.

We want to be doing that.

But a lot of times it's more like that, right?

We're kind of yelling at each other and we're just not connecting.

And so that's what I want to do.

My goal here was to provide a couple tools to help us to understand each other,

all the different positions that are there,

and more generally talk about two sort of big picture philosophical positions

that carry a lot of weight in this discussion.

So with that, let me go into what we're doing today, which is introduction.

I know everybody loves introductory classes,

but I felt like there really wasn't any way for me to avoid it

because to understand a lot of the tension and a lot of the rancor in the debate,

we have to really understand how we got where we are right now.

So I wanted to give sort of a historical overview of the debate in Christianity,

in science, and how science and faith sort of have been together and not together.

And then we can go into this specific part of that debate,

which is intelligent design and theistic evolution.

So I'm going to apologize ahead of time for this PowerPoint.

It is probably the most boring PowerPoint I've ever made.

But I promise next week it'll probably be as bad.

So let's be honest.

Okay.

So let's start with the rise of the scientific method.

Now, believe it or not, the scientific method didn't actually pop out of the Enlightenment

after those horrible dark ages.

But in fact, actually, the beginnings of the scientific method

were actually developed in medieval Christian universities.

And the way this developed is actually very interesting

because if you go back to antiquity, when thinking about the natural world,

especially if we're talking about ancient Greeks, for instance,

they would actually do propositional thinking,

which meant they would think about first principles

and then using reason apply those first principles to nature

and say this must be what's going on in nature.

Because their view of God and creator, the logos,

is reason sort of imprinted on nature.

And so you didn't have to go out and look at nature and, you know, observe.

You just had to think about it and be like, okay, that's what's going on.

And you didn't have to worry about it.

But with the rise of Christianity, we had the rise of a free creator,

a creator that was personal and that now he had a will.

And because God had will, that meant he could have done otherwise.

He chose to create things a specific way.

And so the only way that we can know what's going on in nature

is to actually observe it, to go and look at it and say,

this is what must be going on.

So empiricism, the view that we can look at nature

and over testing and observation,

we can learn something about the way that it works,

develops from Christian theology of the nature of God as a free person.

And the other component of this sort of development

is that God is rational and we are made in his image,

which means that we can actually,

we have reason to believe that we can go into nature

and determine what's going on, that we can understand it.

I mean, it seems obvious to us now,

but before Christianity, there was no feeling

that nature could be intelligible to human beings, right?

So with these two pillars,

we have the will of God and we have intelligibility,

we can now, as some of the early natural theologians,

which was what they called scientists back in the day.

So I'm a scientist, if that wasn't clear from earlier on.

These natural theologians sought to think God's thoughts after him

and by learning about how God created the world

to then glorify him and praise him for his amazing works,

which is the impetus for a lot of the early scientific breakthroughs.

But over time, this was formalized and systematized,

institutionalized throughout the 17th and 19th century.

Earlier, you know, as the effort of science sort of progressed,

we go from sort of medieval university professors

sort of thinking about it.

It wasn't a huge, it wasn't like it exploded, right?

But it started there.

And over time, you had a growth of sort of independent scientists

sort of doing their own thing, like,

oh, hey, I was, you know, out in my mansion

and I was looking in the backyard and I was like,

hey, what about these peas, you know?

So that moved on.

And then over time, it became,

there started to become philosophy of science

where people were thinking about how we do science,

what's best practices, what is the scientific method,

how can we best challenge hypotheses

and bring up evidence, et cetera.

And in the second half of the 19th century,

science over time gets continuously narrowed

and narrowed and narrowed down in its scope.

So in, oh, hold on, I skipped a thing.

But at the end of the 19th century,

that's when we have the narrowing of science

into sort of the epistemological method

outside of the supernatural, right?

So science now becomes this method

to determine things outside of theology and philosophy.

This is where we go out and we see what's in nature

and we don't, we try not to bring any philosophy

or theology into it.

And this is actually when this sort of assumption,

and it's informal,

it's not actually ever been formally inserted

into the scientific method,

but methodological naturalism is now assumed, right?

And what methodological naturalism is,

is the assumption that everything that we look at in nature

has a natural explanation, right?

So we do not appeal to agents.

We do not appeal to God.

We just say, this must have happened because of this.

And it's an endless sort of chain of causation.

And this is methodological naturalism.

Now, at the same time, throughout this period,

that science is becoming institutionalized,

we also have the rise of a variety of new sort of disciplines

and new discoveries from these disciplines.

So we have advances in geology, paleontology, biology.

And the interesting thing about these advances is that

while starting from a Christian foundation

of understanding how we can understand nature,

we started to discover things about nature

that didn't really gel easily

with the contemporary Christian worldview.

So, for instance, geology was moving away

from what's called catastrophism

and towards uniformitarianism.

Basically, the idea that most of the geological formations

that we see today

are the result of the same sort of forces

that we see every day on the street,

but over long periods of time.

So instead of there being catastrophic events

that produce these geological formations,

it's actually little tiny things

over a long period of time.

And so this implicated that the Earth

seemed to be very old.

Also, paleontology started to unearth

some pretty crazy things, you know?

Dinosaurs were showing up, you know?

Like, what are these?

We don't have these anymore.

You know, all these strange

and wonderful different created...

Well, I guess I'm inserting

my own worldview there, right?

But all these interesting new body plans

and biological systems

and new sort of creatures

we had never seen before

are being discovered,

their bones are being discovered

out of the Earth.

And so this sort of shakes the idea

that the biological makeup of the Earth

right now is permanent.

Like, this is how it's always been.

Apparently, this isn't always how it's been.

There were things around

that aren't around anymore.

And then finally, most famously,

Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace

were discovering mechanisms of adaptation

and natural selection,

which, in biology,

which now posited the possibility

that there were a continuum of animal forms

just slowly morphing one into the other.

And so, as you can see,

these new discoveries are sort of...

They're poking.

They're not very comfortable

with the traditional Christian theistic worldview.

Suddenly, things are starting

to look a little dissonant.

And this is actually when we get

the appearance of a new worldview.

And this new worldview is scientific materialism.

So, cumulatively,

all these different research areas

started to allow the creation

of a secular worldview.

Right?

So now we have a universe that is...

an Earth that is very old.

We have creatures that have been dying.

We have this new theory

that allows us to explain

how one animal can get into another animal

in principle.

And so this becomes scientific materialism.

Now, what scientific materialism is

is basically it marries

two different philosophical positions.

The first one is familiar to all of us,

which is materialism.

What materialism says is that

the world, the physical world,

is all that there is.

Right?

There is nothing but atoms

and other kinds of atoms.

And there's just a whole bunch

of different atoms

and different configurations.

And that's what we call

the physical world.

And that's all there is.

Now, this was actually married

to another view called scientism.

And so what scientism is

is that science alone...

Now, this is the hard version.

There actually is a soft version,

but I won't get into that

unless somebody wants

to ask a question about that,

which, by the way,

if you have any questions at all

about anything,

even in the middle of the class,

please raise your hand.

I wanted this to be clear.

But scientism posits

that the scientific method alone,

especially in the hard sciences,

is capable of explaining truth.

The only way to get at truth,

the only way to get

at verifiable information,

knowledge,

is through the scientific method.

Now, you can see how these both

sort of reinforce each other.

Right?

Science, as I had said before,

over the course of this period,

had continuously narrowed

and narrowed and narrowed

into the point where we have

this assumption

of methodological naturalism,

which says,

we're not going to appeal

to outside agents.

We're not going to appeal

to God for anything.

We're going to assume,

for the sake of argument,

let's say,

in the case of Francis Bacon,

he posited methodological naturalism

as a thought exercise.

Right?

I'm going to assume

that there's nothing supernatural

going on here.

There's no design going on here.

I'm just going to look at,

well, I guess he wouldn't say

there's no design,

but I'm going to assume

that a natural process

is going on.

So that,

coupled with this new view

that the material world

is all there is,

you can see that

science is our method

of getting verifiable information

from the natural world.

and if the natural world

is the only thing

that exists,

then science

is the only thing

that can give us

any real information about it.

So this is how

we get to the point

where there is

an open hostility

between sort of

institutionalized science

and theistic worldview.

Right?

So we have these early

sort of discoveries

which are uncomfortable

with the contemporary

theistic worldview,

but not insurmountable.

But this new secular

comprehensive worldview

is very much

uncompatible

with Christianity.

And this is how

the scientific establishment,

you might say,

you know,

becomes hostile

to religious belief

in general.

And this institutionalization

has been

one of the major drivers

of most of the philosophical

and metaphysical trends

that we see

in our culture.

You know,

modernism,

postmodernism,

they're all

as a baseline

assuming scientific materialism

in many ways.

and they rely

on the authority

and the track record

of scientific discoveries

to sort of

prop up

that philosophical worldview.

And that's one of the things

that we're going to talk about

in this class

is that a lot

of the perceived hostility

between science

and specifically

the Christian worldview

is actually

a philosophical disagreement.

Where we,

as Christians,

reject scientific

materialism,

obviously,

right?

Because there's

at least one thing

that is not material

and that's God,

right?

And so

we have to reject that

and because

this has sort of been

this philosophy

has sort of been

interwoven

with the way

that we do science

and the assumptions

that we make,

this creates

a lot of tension

in our world.

So

this leads us

to the Christian

bind.

So if you're thinking

about the

development

of the scientific method

over time,

then we're going

to be looking

at the fact

that Christianity

at a base level

has the assumptions

that brought science

into the fore,

right?

we started off

talking about

how the theology

of God

as a independent

person

with a free will

and our status

as image bearers

is what

cumulatively

sets up

the system

for science.

but

over time

this has become

more difficult

and so the

Christian bind

is that we

acknowledge

wholeheartedly

that men

can understand

the physical world

and learn

something true

about God

and nature.

We're made

in the image

of God

and this is

what allows

us

to confidently

come

to nature

and say

we can learn

something.

But secondly

the world

view of

scientific

materialism

which has

been supported

by the

findings of

this method

are clearly

contrary to

scripture.

Scientific

materialism

doesn't mesh

with scripture

and so

Christians

are seemingly

stuck

between

what I

call

truth

lowercase

t

truth

being

what we

can know

about

general

revelation

revelation

what we

can learn

about

the world

nature

you know

in the

bible

Paul

tells us

that

God

is clearly

seen

in the

works

of

nature

so

this

is

the

basis

of

what

we

would

call

general

revelation

but

we

also

have

a

capital

T

truth

right

which

is

scripture

God's

actual

revelation

to us

specially

and this

special

revelation

has its

own

truth

claims

right

and so

when

scientific

materialism

based on

lowercase

t

truth

and

Christianity

based on

uppercase

t

truth

come into

conflict

Christianity

Christians

feel like

right

because we

want to

affirm

that we

can learn

something

from nature

but we

also want

to

affirm

the truth

of

scripture

and so

historically

this

actually

developed

this

bind

sort

of

developed

sort

of a

split

in

at least

in

American

Christianity

between

what we

would call

the

fundamentalist

movement

these

were

Christians

that

above

all

wanted

to

protect

the

truth

of

special

revelation

and as

a result

they stayed

what we

would call

theologically

orthodox

but they

actually

became

intellectually

sort of

isolationist

they

stayed

true to

scripture

but they

no longer

wanted

to

work with

or

interact

with

that's the word

I'm looking for

they no longer

wanted to

interact with

the scientific

establishment

or many

other forms

of intellectual

pursuit

because they

thought that it

was all

sort of

corrupted

but on the

other side

we had

a different

group of

Christians

who tended

to side

more with

general revelation

than with

special revelation

and these

became what we

would call

the liberal

mainline

denominations

that we have

today

and they

became

less and

less

orthodox

over time

due to

a greater

and greater

desire

to fit

sort of

this

new

materialist

intellectual

milieu

into

Christianity

to the point

where a lot

of

times

they will

deny

the deity

or even

existence

of Christ

they will

deny the

resurrection

often

they will

reinterpret

the gospel

and maybe

even reject

theism

itself

so

I guess

what I'm

trying to

explain to

us as we

approach this

topic is

because a

lot of

the emotion

right

a lot of

the anger

in this

topic is

because we

have groups

of Christians

who guard

jealously

special revelation

right

because historically

we've had

situations

in which

Christians

have

slowly

disregarded

the authority

of special

revelation

and fallen

away

right

but then

at the other

end of the

spectrum

we have

Christians

saying

but

we have

every reason

biblically

to believe

that we

as image

bearers

have a

responsibility

and an

ability

to know

about the

natural

world

and so

there is

this

tension

right

and a lot

of it

has to do

with our

historical

situation

as we

are right

now

evangelicals

which

broadly

we are

right

evangelicals

didn't really

ever fit

neatly

in the

fundamentalist

category

or

the

mainline

category

so

in a

certain

sense

we are

like

hey

man

let's

all

be

together

but

at the

same

time

we can't

help

but be

influenced

by the

major

big

streams

of

Christianity

going

through

our

culture

and so

if this

is the

origin

of

this

view

of the

scientific

versus

science

versus

faith

dichotomy

this is

something

that we

need to

look at

how

do we

balance

general

revelation

and special

revelation

how do

different

people

different

Christians

come to

different

conclusions

about how

we do

that

and that

is going

to be

the

topic

of our

next

class

is

the

different

ways

of

balancing

general

and special

revelation

and the

different

ways

in which

this

influences

how we

understand

scripture

and the

natural

world

okay

this is

the most

boring slide

but also

the rest

are

equally

boring

so

let's

move on

to

what

we're

going to

be

talking

about

more

specifically

in this

wider

science

versus

faith

debate

which is

intelligent

design

and

theistic

evolution

so

today

I'm not

going to

go into

a whole

bunch of

details

about

what

intelligent

design

what are

the arguments

what are the

arguments

against

that's

going to

be

our

third

class

where

we're

going to

talk

about

a

different

sort

of

balance

but

I want

to

start

off

with

a

definition

right

I want

us

to

all

be

on

the

same

page

about

what

it

is

that

we're

talking

about

so

we

don't

get

confused

so

what

is

the

intelligent

design

movement

well

if we

take them

at their

own

word

which I

think

is the

intellectually

honest

thing

to do

intelligent

design

is

primarily

a

scientific

movement

or

ID

I'm

going to

call

them

ID

because

that's

how

they

go

they

have

a

variety

of

minor

sort

of

philosophical

metaphysical

arguments

associated

but

what

ID

really

seeks

to

argue

is

that

many

elements

of

nature

are

best

explained

through

the

activity

of an

intelligent

agent

they

try to

argue

that

design

is

scientifically

detectable

specifically

in the

biological

realm

and so

the

challenge

to

intelligent

design

often

is

actually

that

they

are

pseudoscientific

right

and

pseudoscientific

is a

way

of

arguing

that

their

methodology

methodology

is not

in line

with the

scientific

method

okay

let me

let me go

a little

bit

into that

so we

can

understand

that

criticism

before we

move on

to

criticism

of their

arguments

on the

merits

of their

arguments

this is

the

challenge

of

pseudoscience

is sort

of a

dismissal

and

basically

their

critics

argue

that

you

can't

appeal

to

an

agent

when

doing

science

that

this

now

puts you

outside

of the

scientific

method

but as

we talked

about

earlier

that doesn't

necessarily

need to

be the

case

right

you'll

find

that

most

of the

time

when

scientists

are

dismissing

the

intelligent

design

movement

on this

basis

they're

actually

arguing

implicitly

for

methodological

naturalism

right

now

interestingly

if you

actually

look

at the

various

explanations

and

demarcations

of what

the scientific

method is

you won't

actually find

methodological

naturalism

it is not

a

expressed

tenet

of the

scientific

method

right

so a lot

of times

because

the ID

crowd

rejects

methodological

naturalism

right

because their

argument is

that we

can actually

see

the

activity

of God

in

nature

now of

course

they don't

make

well I'll

explain that

what they

aren't

but

this

sort of

tension

between

methodological

naturalism

and the

ID

crowd

is really

what I

think is

at the

root of

this

challenge

of

pseudoscience

now

the

problem

is

because

methodological

naturalism

isn't a

core

tenet of

the

scientific

method

they

actually

can't

argue

for it

so

often

times

they

will

argue

that

the

ID

community

doesn't

present

falsifiable

claims

or that

it's an

argument from

ignorance

or doesn't

make

predictions

these are

all

different

tenets of

the

scientific

method

but

I

don't

think

most of

those

challenges

actually

pass

muster

I think

most of

the time

they are

confronted

critics of

intelligent

design

are confronted

with the

fact that

they are

expressing

rejecting

methodological

naturalism

and being

brought to

the fore

and they

are like

oh man

I can't

actually

argue

the problem

is

with

scientific

materialism

is that

scientism

one of

those

pillars

that

the hard

sciences

are the

only way

to

get

true

knowledge

is

not

is a

self-refuting

statement

right

so

that

the

sentence

science

is the

only way

to get

true

knowledge

is not

testable

by

science

you see

the

problem

and so

because

that

sentence

is not

testable

by

science

it

cannot

be

true

by

its

own

argument

right

and so

a lot

of times

when

the

ID

crowd

brings

up

their

arguments

methodological

naturalism

starts to

come to

the fore

and then

scientists

are like

well I

can't

argue

for

methodological

naturalism

because

that's

a

philosophical

argument

and

based on

scientific

materialism

I can't

argue

for that

so

they're

putting

a

bind

I

think

it's

an

uncomfortable

position

and I

don't

mean

to

dismiss

the

critics

of

intelligent

design

because

there

are

legitimate

criticisms

of

the

different

claims

on

scientific

grounds

on

philosophical

grounds

I

think

what I

want

to

say

is

I'm

not

going

to

really

focus

primarily

in

this

class

on

the

challenge

that

it's

pseudoscientific

I

think

it's

not

really

worth

our

time

and

I

think

it's

not

worth

our

time

because

it

doesn't

really

work

so

that

is

what

intelligent

design

is

what

isn't

it

okay

it

is

not

a

religious

movement

so

ID

proponents

don't

make

arguments

from

scripture

they

don't

they're

not

expressly

Christian

they're

not

even

all

theists

to be

honest

with

you

there

are

agnostics

part of

the

ID

crowd

there

are

Muslims

there

are

what's

up

I'm

sorry

say

yeah

yeah

I mean

there's

there's

just a

whole

bunch

there's

like

neoplatonists

as part

of it

you know

so

there's

like

a

whole

it's

a

hodgepodge

so

I

think

to

argue

that

it

is

sort

of

a

creationist

group

is

not

necessarily

true

although

the

implications

of

intelligent

design

really

point

to

the

fact

that

there

is

some

sort

of

intelligent

agent

so

you know

they would

argue

that

when they're

given the

charge of

creationism

that they

would say

well

it doesn't

have to

be

God

it could

be

you know

like a

super

advanced

alien

right

that's

doing

it

but

really

when

we're

I mean

when we're

talking

about

the kinds

of

things

that

the

ID

movement

is saying

has been

done

in the

history

of

biology

it

looks

a lot

like

God

so

I

understand

the

sentiment

but we

want to

understand

what

the

movement

is

on

its

own

grounds

right

they

would

never

argue

from

scripture

and

they

would

never

argue

from

theology

either

now

individual

ID

proponents

will say

yes

but I

also am

a

Christian

and so

to

Christians

they will

talk about

theology

and stuff

but not

as a

major part

of their

scientific

work

so they

do

take great

pains

to separate

theological

arguments

from their

scientific

case

they don't

make

interpretations

of

Genesis

although

if you

were to

take a

poll

you would

find

that

most

Christians

who are

in the

ID

movement

would be

called

old earth

creationists

is the

general

field

and they're

not dedicated

to any

specific

designer

it could

be

anything

that has

the

power

and capacity

to design

which

in our

situation

let's

call this

guy

God

so

that's

intelligent

design

again

I'm

happy to

take any

questions

after

the lesson

or during

the lesson

but my

goal here

in this

class

is to

try to

present

what the

arguments

is that

each

side is

actually

presenting

for

themselves

and not

caricature

them

so that

is what

we're doing

today

is trying

not to

caricature

each

side

so

what is

theistic

evolution

so theistic

evolution

as you

might

imagine

has something

to do

with evolution

and something

to do

with God

as well

so what

theistic

evolution

is

it is

a movement

or actually

I shouldn't

say movement

it is a

theological

slash

philosophical

position

so

they don't

really

make

specific

scientific

claims

what they

do

is they

argue

that

the

Darwinian

macro

evolution

is

compatible

with

theistic

belief

that's

the

through

line

in all

of the

different

sort of

groups

within

what could

be called

theistic

evolution

because the

problem

is

unlike

ID

which is

a specific

thing

you know

it's ID

trademark

there are

groups

saying like

we are

part of

the

intelligent

design

movement

they have

institutions

etc

theistic

evolution

isn't like

that

it's not

a group

you know

it's not

like

there isn't

the theistic

evolution

center

right

it's a

position

it's a

philosophical

position

and what

that means

is that

there's

like a

huge

super

broad

category

of

different

views

that could

be

identified

as

theistic

evolutionary

right

so

and

depending

on

where

you are

on that

spectrum

within

theistic

evolution

you're

going to

get

very

different

interpretations

different

ways that

this is

going to

play out

in

in your

arguments

so

just to