Philosophical foes Richard Dawkins and Phillip Johnson both miss the point of the argument from design.
Richard Dawkins is absolutely confident that science will finally accomplish what philosophy has been unable to do in more than 2,000 years -- make theism intellectually indefensible.
Dawkins, a fellow of New College at Oxford University and the author of several best-selling expositions of Darwinism, acknowledges that prior to Darwin, philosophers who rejected belief in a divine creator had no good explanation for the order and complexity of living organisms. An atheist like David Hume could only say to a theist: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." According to Dawkins, Darwin supplied that better explanation and "made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."
Dawkins is quite explicit that Darwinism is more than simply a scientific theory. In the preface to his most recent book, "River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life" (the title is taken from Genesis 2:10), Dawkins writes,
Not only does the Darwinian theory command superabundant power to explain. Its economy in doing so has a sinewy elegance, a poetic beauty that outclasses even the most haunting of the world's origin myths. One of my purposes in writing this book has been to accord due recognition to the inspirational quality of our modern understanding of Darwinian life. There is more poetry in Mitochondrial Eve than in her mythological namesake.
Indeed, Dawkins is a forceful and persuasive advocate of Darwinism precisely because he does not belittle the order and complexity of the natural world that theists point to as evidence of a creator. In "The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design," Dawkins attempts to better William Paley's description of the marvelous complexity of the human eye by describing the incredible engineering wonders that make it possible for bats to "see" with their ears. Dawkins insists, however, that the "good design" seemingly apparent in human eyes and bat ears is, in fact, the product of cumulative selection working on random errors in the genetic code.
The notion of cumulative selection is at the heart of Dawkins's argument. He agrees with many theists who argue that the odds against atoms bouncing around in the void and by chance arranging themselves into a human eye or a bat's ear are too astronomical to be taken seriously. Of course, pre- Darwinian atheists like Hume argued that in an infinite amount of time anything is possible. But while this argument might satisfy a philosopher, Dawkins does not think such a response will ever satisfy one who has spent much time examining the amazing complexities of nature.
To explain such wonders it is necessary, he says, that we understand the power of cumulative selection. Cumulative selection is simply the ability of living organisms to transmit to their progeny useful errors in the genetic code while weeding out those that are harmful to the organism. While the errors in the genetic code are wholly random, the selection of small but useful changes is not random. This is the all-important difference between Humean and Darwinian explanations of biological complexity. To illustrate this difference, Dawkins considers a single line from Shakespeare's Hamlet: "Methinks it is like a weasel." The odds against a monkey producing this sentence by randomly hitting keys on a typewriter, Dawkins calculates, are "about 1 in 10,000 million million million million million million. To put it mildly, the phrase we seek would be a long time coming, to say nothing of the complete works of Shakespeare." Since a single cell is vastly more complex than this line from Shakespeare, Dawkins says that it is simply not reasonable to believe that organic cells evolved by chance in a single step.
But suppose a computer starts with a random sequence of 28 letters (the number of letters in the sentence from Hamlet, counting each space between words as a "letter") and duplicates the sequence repeatedly, but with a certain chance of random error (or "mutation") in the copying. The computer examines the mutant nonsense phrases, the progeny of the original phrase, and chooses the one that, however slightly, most resembles the target phrase ("Methinks it is like a weasel"). Or, to use a familiar game analogy, consider the difference in the odds between rolling five dice in three tries so they all are sixes and rolling a Yahtzee -- five sixes in three tries but now allowing the player to select and keep any of the dice that serve his purpose and rethrowing the others. When Dawkins wrote a program to play computer Yahtzee with "Methinks it is like a weasel" as its goal, his computer came up with the winning combination in only 43 tries.
Now there is an obvious objection to this analogy that Dawkins anticipates. While the processes inside the computer may have been random, the target phrase was supplied by Dawkins himself, not random chance. Therefore, following the analogy, if evolution is to work, it must have a target or goal supplied by an intelligent being -- not a happy conclusion from Dawkins's point of view, since he says that evolution has no long-term goal and no controlling intelligence.
To circumvent this objection, Dawkins wrote a computer program in which extremely simple stick figures randomly evolve into complex figures. Using the principle of cumulative selection, within a period of only 30 to 40 generations, amazingly lifelike pictures evolve of everything from jumping spiders to a man wearing a hat. And in this case, there never was a preselected target. This illustrates in Dawkins's mind how evolution can proceed without any goal other than the survival of the individual organism.
But this leads to a second objection. To speak of an organism's survival presupposes the existence of creatures able to reproduce. "The theory of the blind watchmaker is extremely powerful," says Dawkins, "given that we are allowed to assume replication and hence cumulative selection." Dawkins realizes that this is a big assumption because he has already told us that the complexity necessary for even a single cell to replicate itself is much greater than the odds against the chance creation of a single hemoglobin molecule or "1 with 190 noughts after it!" To which he adds, "And a hemoglobin molecule has only a minute fraction of the complexity of a living body." In other words, cumulative selection can only provide a naturalistic explanation of the complexity if replicators exist. But cumulative selection cannot, without arguing in a circle, explain the existence of primitive replicators, which are themselves astronomically complex.
At this stage, Dawkins admits that "we cannot escape the need to postulate a single-step chance event in the origin of the cumulative selection itself." While Dawkins believes the number of planets in the universe is large enough to make this single-step chance event sufficiently probable so as to have happened on at least one planet (ours), he does not hide the speculative nature of his argument at this point. "This chapter has had," he writes, "the modest aim of explaining only the kind of way in which it [the origin of life] must have happened." In other words, when it comes to the origin of life1, even Dawkins relies on philosophical arguments: Well, I don't know how life originated, but I know God isn't a good explanation.
If Dawkins represents Darwinian orthodoxy, Phillip Johnson is the Darwin establishment's most prominent critic. Johnson, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, entered the evolution debate with the bestseller "Darwin on Trial." He resembles Dawkins in his ability to present his views clearly and persuasively to a large audience.
Johnson says that he approaches "the creation-evolution dispute not as a scientist but as a professor of law, which means among other things that I know something about the ways that words are used in arguments." Now one of the first things lawyers learn is that the burden of proof falls on the prosecution, not the defense. Though the title "Darwin on Trial" is ambiguous, Johnson assumes the role of a defense attorney: he does not attempt to prove theism to be true; he only attempts to show that Darwin's case against theism is unproven. He objects that the National Academy of Science's "rule against negative argument automatically eliminates the possibility that science has not discovered how complex organisms could have developed. However wrong the current answer may be, it stands until a better answer arrives. It is as if a criminal defendant were not allowed to present an alibi unless he could also show who did commit the crime."
Further, the Academy of Science rules out a priori supernatural explanations as antithetical to the scientific method. Its position is "heads I win, tails you lose." If theists provide a supernatural explanation for biological complexity, naturalistic scientists rule such an explanation out of court. On the other hand, if creationists limit themselves to pointing out weaknesses in the evolutionists' arguments, evolutionists complain that creationists have no positive account to explain the evidence.
Johnson's frustration with the academy is understandable given his reliance on Karl Popper's philosophy of science. The last chapter of Darwin on Trial, "Science and Pseudoscience," begins by asserting that "Karl Popper provides the indispensable starting point for understanding the difference between science and pseudoscience." According to Popper, the mark of real science is that it makes risky predictions that open its theories to the possibility of falsification.Pseudoscientific theories, such as those of Marxists and Freudians, are formulated in such a way that no matter what occurs, they win. As Johnson wittily summarizes, "If wages fell this was because the capitalists were exploiting the workers, as Marx predicted they would, and if wages rose this was because the capitalists were trying to save a rotten system with bribery, which was also what Marxism predicted. A psychoanalyst could explain why a man would commit murder -- or, with equal facility, why the same man would sacrifice his own life to save another." Such "heads I win, tails you lose" arguments clearly deserve the label "pseudoscience."
So is the Academy of Science's defense of evolution itself a species of pseudoscience? The issues raised here go to the very heart of much-debated questions in the philosophy of science. One event in the history of science illustrates the problem.
By the late nineteenth century, Newtonian physics reigned without rivals. So much was this the case, that when slight irregularities (from the Newtonian point of view) in the orbit of Uranus were observed by astronomers, they refused to believe that Newton's theory was false, or even in need of correction. Instead, they calculated where and how big a heretofore unobserved planet would have to be in order to account for the irregularities of Uranus's orbit. Shortly thereafter, astronomers pointed their telescopes to the predicted location and were rewarded with the discovery of Neptune.
A short time later, similar irregularities in the orbit of Mercury were observed. Following the same procedures, theoretical astronomers calculated where the missing planet would have to be according to Newton. Given the previous successes of Newtonian physics, it did not seem to be an act of hubris when the missing planet was given a name, Vulcan, before it was ever observed.2
But this time, there was a difference. Observations never revealed another missing planet. However, this "negative evidence" was not considered either a reason to stop looking for Vulcan or proof that Newton's theories were imperfect until Einstein came up with an alternative naturalistic explanation for Mercury's irregularities.
It is events such as this in the history of science that have led to the negative-evidence rule and the requirement that naturalistic alternatives be provided. Philosophically speaking, it is not obvious that the Academy of Science has stacked the deck in its favor. After all, as physicist Owen Gingerich observes, "science's great success has been in the production of a remarkably coherent view of nature rather than in an intricately dovetailed set of proofs."3 Though followers of Popper had hoped to discover a clean demarcation between the sciences and philosophy, cases like this have led most scientists and philosophers to conclude that the division between cutting-edge science and difficult philosophical questions -- such as whether the universe is the result of chance or design -- is pretty fuzzy.
Whatever one thinks about the purely scientific case for evolution, few Christians would disagree with Johnson that evolution has become the idol of many moderns. As we noted earlier, when it comes to biogenesis, even Dawkins becomes openly philosophical: "The present lack of a definitely accepted account of the origin of life should certainly not be taken as a stumbling block for the whole Darwinian world view."
As Dawkins here admits, and as Johnson will not allow us to ignore, evolution is more than a purely scientific theory; it has become part and parcel of what might be called the "naturalistic popular culture." In "Scientific American," "The Sciences", and other leading magazines, in the steadily increasing output of science books for the general reader (by Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, and a host of other scientists who are also skillful writers), in television documentaries such as the Pbs-aired "The Human Quest" -- in these and many other forums (including countless classrooms), the compelling evidence for evolution and the dubious dogmas of naturalism are presented as a seamless whole, under the unchallengeable authority of Science.
In his new book, "Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law, and Education," Johnson clearly demonstrates this cultural connection between evolution and naturalism. He also addresses the difficult legal and political issues that such a connection raises. If evolution is more than a scientific explanation of the observed data, then how should evolution be taught in the public schools? And how should Christian scientists respond to dominance of their disciplines by naturalistic philosophy? Johnson's advice to Christians seems to be this: fight in the courts and actively resist in the academy.
While the general thrust of Johnson's position is clear, several of the particulars need further clarification. In the opening chapter of Reason in the Balance, Johnson reviews the 1987 Supreme Court decision Edwards v. Aguillard, in which the Court declared unconstitutional the Arkansas statute requiring that creation science be taught whenever evolution was taught. He writes, "suppose the basic claim of 'creationism' is that God created us, whether he did so suddenly a few thousand years ago or gradually over a much longer period of time. Suppose further that creationists claim that certain features of living organisms, such as the extreme complexity of even the simplest living organism, give support to their claim that a preexisting intelligence was necessary for biological creation" (emphasis added). Having clarified the essential issue, Johnson argues that it was the Court's naturalistic bias, not sound legal reasoning, that drove them to forbid the teaching of creationism in public schools.
The problem with Johnson's argument is that his two essential suppositions are quite different. The first supposition focuses on the fact that God created us, not on how he created us. It defines a position that theistic evolutionists such as Nancy Murphey, William Hasker, and Owen Gingerich could all endorse. As someone said of astronomy in Galileo's time, the Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. The second supposition, on the other hand, is really a summation of Paley's teleological argument for the existence of God, a standard topic in Introduction to Philosophy courses taught to college freshmen around the nation.
Commenting on the Court's decision, Johnson writes, "the majority opinion in Edwards said that the state was not only permitted to exclude the creationist viewpoint but was required to do so -- and not because belief in a supernatural Creator is necessarily false or irrational, but precisely because it is religious. The logic implies that creationist arguments must be excluded regardless of the merits and that students may hear only the naturalistic viewpoint on the subject of origins." But what is "the creationist viewpoint": the first or the second supposition? It cannot be the first, because theistic evolutionists have no desire to restrict the current teaching of biological evolution. But if it is the second, then Johnson is implicitly requesting that standard issues in college philosophy courses be taught in high-school biology courses. And if the unbiased treatment of Paley's argument is to be maintained in the public schools, then philosophers will insist that it be balanced with something like David Hume's "Dialogue on Natural Religion."
The issue is further complicated when Johnson writes, "Science always has to fight the prevalent bias of the age if it is to be free to follow the evidence where it leads. In the past, geology had to free itself from religious bias so that it could consider possibilities like an old Earth or the occurrence of ice ages rather than a worldwide flood. That job was accomplished long ago, and now scientific thought is restricted by naturalistic bias." Comments such as this, repudiating the ten-thousand-year-old Earth and the flood geology of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), have led scholars such as Mark Noll and Alvin Plantinga to speak of Johnson as a more reasonable critic of evolution than his young-Earth predecessors. But to say that the refutation of young-Earth creationism was accomplished long ago is itself problematic. Does Johnson simply mean to say that there is no credible scientific evidence in favor of a young Earth? Or does he mean that young-Earth creationists are as nonexistent as flat-earthers?
Either interpretation causes difficulties for Johnson. To say that almost no one believes in a young Earth is simply false. According to a 1991 Gallup poll, 47 percent of Americans believe that God made man -- as man is now -- in a single act of creation, and within the last ten thousand years.4 And, of course, this is the position taken by the ICR.
The other interpretation, however, causes even greater difficulties for Johnson's criticism of the Edwards decision. He writes, "If a high-school curriculum incorporates the subject of biological origins, and if supernatural creation is a rational alternative to naturalistic evolution within that subject, then it is bad educational policy as well as viewpoint discrimination to try to keep students ignorant of an alternative that may be true. Of course, this reasoning does not apply if the excluded alternative is irrational or demonstrably false. We do not give the view of the Flat Earth Society a respectful hearing in geography classes." The problem for Johnson is that the Arkansas case was about a law that defined creation science as including "the occurrence of a worldwide flood and a relatively recent inception of the Earth and living kinds."5 Now, Johnson cannot have it both ways: he cannot reject flood geology and a young Earth as refuted long ago and still find the Supreme Court guilty of bias in requiring that such positions not be taught in biology courses.
It seems that Johnson has at least three distinct understandings of what constitutes a creationist. The first (theistic evolution) is simply the belief that God created the Earth and everything on it irrespective of how or when he accomplished this.6 The second (Paley's argument) is the belief that the biological complexity exhibited on Earth can only be adequately accounted for by positing the existence of a supernatural creator. The third (icr's position, and the most common meaning of "creationist") entails belief in a universal flood and a relatively recent creation of the Earth.
While Johnson moves back and forth among these three definitions as the argument necessitates, it is only the second that he does not himself repudiate in other places. As we have just seen, he explicitly rejects flood geology and a young Earth. And concerning theistic evolution, he has said that this "manner of thinking is profoundly atheistic.... That is why I think the appropriate term for the accommodationist position is not 'theistic evolution' but rather theistic naturalism. Under either name, it is a disastrous error."7
Though Johnson's conclusion is, in one sense, diametrically opposed to Dawkins's viewpoint, in another sense he and Dawkins are not that far removed: both assume that a current biological theory will have substantial effect on a perennial philosophical issue. Dawkins explicitly sets out to refute Paley's explanation of biological complexity by replacing it with cumulative selection (biological evolution), while Johnson's defense of creationism is, in fact, no more than an attempt to save Paley's argument from the attack launched by Dawkins. Both assume (wrongly, I believe) that the argument from design as formulated by Paley is an essential element of Christianity.
Theistic evolution, Johnson argues, is fundamentally misguided in its willingness to accommodate Christianity to the course of modern science. In Johnson's mind, accommodation is but the first step to appeasement, and we all know what happens when we try to appease a tyrant. As William Jennings Bryan once said, theistic evolution is an anesthetic used to remove a Christian's faith without pain. Once it is assumed that evolution and Christianity are compatible, there is a slippery slope where the slide to atheism is unstoppable. The assumption of compatibility implies that one day science might incontestably prove that evolution is true. And if this occurs, then sooner or later Christianity will be viewed as merely the disposable belief of a few religious fanatics.8
The argument here is historical. Once people accept a scientific explanation for what was long held to be the result of divine agency, then, within a few generations or centuries, belief in God's power is seriously eroded. Early Christians prayed to God for healing. Now that we know about bacteria, we ask a doctor for penicillin.Prayer for healing seems natural to moderns only after doctors determine there is nothing more medicine can do.
This is a sad truth in the history of Christendom. As our knowledge of God's creation has increased, our trust in the Creator has decreased. But science itself is not the problem. Luke records the time Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God while in prison, when all of a sudden the gates of the prison flew open. In his description (Acts 16:26), Luke makes no attempt to hide the fact that it was an earthquake that caused the gates to open. And why should he? If this event in Paul and Silas's missionary work is recorded in Scripture to increase our trust and confidence in God, there is no reason to hide, ignore, or explain away the efficient cause God used to do his will.
There are two compatible understandings of the events recorded in Acts: first, its efficient cause was the shifting of geological plates along fault lines; second, it was a display of God's providence and his sovereign control of creation. The second explanation adds to without subtracting from the first.Many theistic evolutionists defend an analogous understanding of God's creation of the universe and all that it contains.
When Asa Gray, a Harvard professor of botany, friend of Darwin, avowed Christian, and perhaps the first explicit theistic evolutionist, made similar arguments, his critics replied, "Professor Gray simply says that development [evolution] is harmonious with theism. But we want what will prove theism."9 Professor Johnson has the same desire. If human existence, he says in Christianity Today, is merely "a combination of chance events and impersonal natural laws ...[then] Christian theists would deserve their marginalized status in the academic world." He repeats this point in "Reason in the Balance." Theistic evolution (a position Johnson prefers to call "methodological naturalism") "seems to rely on 'faith' -- in the sense of belief without evidence," and that, he says, "is why theists are a marginalized minority in the academic world and always on the defensive."
While Dawkins and Johnson represent important positions in the ongoing debate over evolution, they do not exhaust the alternatives. There is, for example, a powerful alternative viewpoint from the Thomistic tradition.10 Thomistic Christians share Johnson's distaste for those who, out of timidity or ignorance, leave their faith at the laboratory or library door. But they would insist that there is no incompatibility between the best scientific account of the efficient causes operative in the natural world and the psalmist's assurance that "The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork" (Ps. 19:1). And when scientists leave their area of expertise to boast that biology will soon discover the answer to all our questions about where humans came from and where they are going, then they are engaged in philosophical speculation that Thomists are quick to critique.
In doing so, Thomistic Christians follow Aquinas's dictum that grace always completes nature, it never contradicts nature. Thus, they argue that evolution and theism are compatible, but that an evolutionary explanation itself requires a theistic foundation.11 Like all foundations, it is not on the same level as the house it supports.
Johnson's confusion, from the Thomistic point of view, is that he looks for evidence of theism in the house itself -- that is, the chain of efficient causes leading to the existence of life on Earth. Hence, he points to gaps in the fossil record and "the failure of molecular evidence to confirm either the reality of common ancestors or the adequacy of the Darwinist mechanism." Thomists, on the other hand, argue that the evidence of final causation is conceptual and is observed at a higher level of analysis. Final causes do not exist between efficient causes or at the beginning of a temporal series of efficient causes. Instead, they are the logically necessary foundation of efficient causes. Any attempt to make science self-sufficient is doomed to failure.
Whatever one thinks about the purely scientific case for evolution, few Christians would disagree with Johnson that evolution has become the idol of many moderns. As we noted earlier, when it comes to biogenesis, even Dawkins becomes openly philosophical: "The present lack of a definitely accepted account of the origin of life should certainly not be taken as a stumbling block for the whole Darwinian world view."
As Dawkins here admits, and as Johnson will not allow us to ignore, evolution is more than a purely scientific theory; it has become part and parcel of what might be called the "naturalistic popular culture." In "Scientific American," "The Sciences", and other leading magazines, in the steadily increasing output of science books for the general reader (by Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, and a host of other scientists who are also skillful writers), in television documentaries such as the Pbs-aired "The Human Quest" -- in these and many other forums (including countless classrooms), the compelling evidence for evolution and the dubious dogmas of naturalism are presented as a seamless whole, under the unchallengeable authority of Science.
In his new book, "Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law, and Education," Johnson clearly demonstrates this cultural connection between evolution and naturalism. He also addresses the difficult legal and political issues that such a connection raises. If evolution is more than a scientific explanation of the observed data, then how should evolution be taught in the public schools? And how should Christian scientists respond to dominance of their disciplines by naturalistic philosophy? Johnson's advice to Christians seems to be this: fight in the courts and actively resist in the academy.
While the general thrust of Johnson's position is clear, several of the particulars need further clarification. In the opening chapter of Reason in the Balance, Johnson reviews the 1987 Supreme Court decision Edwards v. Aguillard, in which the Court declared unconstitutional the Arkansas statute requiring that creation science be taught whenever evolution was taught. He writes, "suppose the basic claim of 'creationism' is that God created us, whether he did so suddenly a few thousand years ago or gradually over a much longer period of time. Suppose further that creationists claim that certain features of living organisms, such as the extreme complexity of even the simplest living organism, give support to their claim that a preexisting intelligence was necessary for biological creation" (emphasis added). Having clarified the essential issue, Johnson argues that it was the Court's naturalistic bias, not sound legal reasoning, that drove them to forbid the teaching of creationism in public schools.
The problem with Johnson's argument is that his two essential suppositions are quite different. The first supposition focuses on the fact that God created us, not on how he created us. It defines a position that theistic evolutionists such as Nancy Murphey, William Hasker, and Owen Gingerich could all endorse. As someone said of astronomy in Galileo's time, the Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. The second supposition, on the other hand, is really a summation of Paley's teleological argument for the existence of God, a standard topic in Introduction to Philosophy courses taught to college freshmen around the nation.
Commenting on the Court's decision, Johnson writes, "the majority opinion in Edwards said that the state was not only permitted to exclude the creationist viewpoint but was required to do so -- and not because belief in a supernatural Creator is necessarily false or irrational, but precisely because it is religious. The logic implies that creationist arguments must be excluded regardless of the merits and that students may hear only the naturalistic viewpoint on the subject of origins." But what is "the creationist viewpoint": the first or the second supposition? It cannot be the first, because theistic evolutionists have no desire to restrict the current teaching of biological evolution. But if it is the second, then Johnson is implicitly requesting that standard issues in college philosophy courses be taught in high-school biology courses. And if the unbiased treatment of Paley's argument is to be maintained in the public schools, then philosophers will insist that it be balanced with something like David Hume's "Dialogue on Natural Religion."
The issue is further complicated when Johnson writes, "Science always has to fight the prevalent bias of the age if it is to be free to follow the evidence where it leads. In the past, geology had to free itself from religious bias so that it could consider possibilities like an old Earth or the occurrence of ice ages rather than a worldwide flood. That job was accomplished long ago, and now scientific thought is restricted by naturalistic bias" (emphasis added). Comments such as this, repudiating the ten-thousand-year-old Earth and the flood geology of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), have led scholars such as Mark Noll and Alvin Plantinga to speak of Johnson as a more reasonable critic of evolution than his young-Earth predecessors. But to say that the refutation of young-Earth creationism was accomplished long ago is itself problematic. Does Johnson simply mean to say that there is no credible scientific evidence in favor of a young Earth? Or does he mean that young-Earth creationists are as nonexistent as flat-earthers?
Either interpretation causes difficulties for Johnson. To say that almost no one believes in a young Earth is simply false. According to a 1991 Gallup poll, 47 percent of Americans believe that God made man -- as man is now -- in a single act of creation, and within the last ten thousand years.4 And, of course, this is the position taken by the ICR.
The other interpretation, however, causes even greater difficulties for Johnson's criticism of the Edwards decision. He writes, "If a high-school curriculum incorporates the subject of biological origins, and if supernatural creation is a rational alternative to naturalistic evolution within that subject, then it is bad educational policy as well as viewpoint discrimination to try to keep students ignorant of an alternative that may be true. Of course, this reasoning does not apply if the excluded alternative is irrational or demonstrably false. We do not give the view of the Flat Earth Society a respectful hearing in geography classes." The problem for Johnson is that the Arkansas case was about a law that defined creation science as including "the occurrence of a worldwide flood and a relatively recent inception of the Earth and living kinds."5 Now, Johnson cannot have it both ways: he cannot reject flood geology and a young Earth as refuted long ago and still find the Supreme Court guilty of bias in requiring that such positions not be taught in biology courses.
It seems that Johnson has at least three distinct understandings of what constitutes a creationist. The first (theistic evolution) is simply the belief that God created the Earth and everything on it irrespective of how or when he accomplished this.6 The second (Paley's argument) is the belief that the biological complexity exhibited on Earth can only be adequately accounted for by positing the existence of a supernatural creator. The third (icr's position, and the most common meaning of "creationist") entails belief in a universal flood and a relatively recent creation of the Earth.
While Johnson moves back and forth among these three definitions as the argument necessitates, it is only the second that he does not himself repudiate in other places. As we have just seen, he explicitly rejects flood geology and a young Earth. And concerning theistic evolution, he has said that this "manner of thinking is profoundly atheistic.... That is why I think the appropriate term for the accommodationist position is not 'theistic evolution' but rather theistic naturalism. Under either name, it is a disastrous error."7
Though Johnson's conclusion is, in one sense, diametrically opposed to Dawkins's viewpoint, in another sense he and Dawkins are not that far removed: both assume that a current biological theory will have substantial effect on a perennial philosophical issue. Dawkins explicitly sets out to refute Paley's explanation of biological complexity by replacing it with cumulative selection (biological evolution), while Johnson's defense of creationism is, in fact, no more than an attempt to save Paley's argument from the attack launched by Dawkins. Both assume (wrongly, I believe) that the argument from design as formulated by Paley is an essential element of Christianity.
Theistic evolution, Johnson argues, is fundamentally misguided in its willingness to accommodate Christianity to the course of modern science. In Johnson's mind, accommodation is but the first step to appeasement, and we all know what happens when we try to appease a tyrant. As William Jennings Bryan once said, theistic evolution is an anesthetic used to remove a Christian's faith without pain. Once it is assumed that evolution and Christianity are compatible, there is a slippery slope where the slide to atheism is unstoppable. The assumption of compatibility implies that one day science might incontestably prove that evolution is true. And if this occurs, then sooner or later Christianity will be viewed as merely the disposable belief of a few religious fanatics.8
The argument here is historical. Once people accept a scientific explanation for what was long held to be the result of divine agency, then, within a few generations or centuries, belief in God's power is seriously eroded. Early Christians prayed to God for healing. Now that we know about bacteria, we ask a doctor for penicillin.Prayer for healing seems natural to moderns only after doctors determine there is nothing more medicine can do.
This is a sad truth in the history of Christendom. As our knowledge of God's creation has increased, our trust in the Creator has decreased. But science itself is not the problem. Luke records the time Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God while in prison, when all of a sudden the gates of the prison flew open. In his description (Acts 16:26), Luke makes no attempt to hide the fact that it was an earthquake that caused the gates to open. And why should he? If this event in Paul and Silas's missionary work is recorded in Scripture to increase our trust and confidence in God, there is no reason to hide, ignore, or explain away the efficient cause God used to do his will.
There are two compatible understandings of the events recorded in Acts: first, its efficient cause was the shifting of geological plates along fault lines; second, it was a display of God's providence and his sovereign control of creation. The second explanation adds to without subtracting from the first.Many theistic evolutionists defend an analogous understanding of God's creation of the universe and all that it contains.
When Asa Gray, a Harvard professor of botany, friend of Darwin, avowed Christian, and perhaps the first explicit theistic evolutionist, made similar arguments, his critics replied, "Professor Gray simply says that development [evolution] is harmonious with theism. But we want what will prove theism."9 Professor Johnson has the same desire. If human existence, he says in Christianity Today, is merely "a combination of chance events and impersonal natural laws ...[then] Christian theists would deserve their marginalized status in the academic world." He repeats this point in "Reason in the Balance." Theistic evolution (a position Johnson prefers to call "methodological naturalism") "seems to rely on 'faith' -- in the sense of belief without evidence," and that, he says, "is why theists are a marginalized minority in the academic world and always on the defensive."
While Dawkins and Johnson represent important positions in the ongoing debate over evolution, they do not exhaust the alternatives. There is, for example, a powerful alternative viewpoint from the Thomistic tradition.10 Thomistic Christians share Johnson's distaste for those who, out of timidity or ignorance, leave their faith at the laboratory or library door. But they would insist that there is no incompatibility between the best scientific account of the efficient causes operative in the natural world and the psalmist's assurance that "The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork" (Ps. 19:1). And when scientists leave their area of expertise to boast that biology will soon discover the answer to all our questions about where humans came from and where they are going, then they are engaged in philosophical speculation that Thomists are quick to critique.
In doing so, Thomistic Christians follow Aquinas's dictum that grace always completes nature, it never contradicts nature. Thus, they argue that evolution and theism are compatible, but that an evolutionary explanation itself requires a theistic foundation.11 Like all foundations, it is not on the same level as the house it supports.
Johnson's confusion, from the Thomistic point of view, is that he looks for evidence of theism in the house itself -- that is, the chain of efficient causes leading to the existence of life on Earth. Hence, he points to gaps in the fossil record and "the failure of molecular evidence to confirm either the reality of common ancestors or the adequacy of the Darwinist mechanism." Thomists, on the other hand, argue that the evidence of final causation is conceptual and is observed at a higher level of analysis. Final causes do not exist between efficient causes or at the beginning of a temporal series of efficient causes. Instead, they are the logically necessary foundation of efficient causes. Any attempt to make science self-sufficient is doomed to failure.
Though he is certainly no Thomist, Hilary Putnam makes this point with simple elegance. We all understand perfectly well what it means to say that the cause of the pressure cooker exploding was a stuck valve. Now, from a purely technical standpoint, we could say that the reason the pressure cooker exploded was the absence of randomly placed holes in its lid. The only reason for preferring the stuck-valve explanation is that pressure cookers by design are made with a single hole in the lid controlled by a valve. Had pressure-cooker makers not intended there to be a single hole in the lid, we would not identify a stuck valve as the cause of the explosion. A purely "scientific" explanation begs the question, because, as Putnam concludes, the "notion of things 'causing' other things is not a notion which is simply handed to us by physics."12
The same problem arises when one tries to give a purely "scientific" explanation of any biological organism without invoking intentional terms. It is impossible to say what a heart is, much less what it does, without specifying what a heart is for. Organisms conceptually must be intentionally ordered such that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A heart that serves no function is no heart!
The ultimate failure of biological reductionism is that it assumes the whole is nothing more than the sum of its parts. But as Aristotle noted a long time ago, this is a fallacy of composition. Music is composed of acoustical disturbances, but it is not merely acoustical disturbances; written words are composed of ink lines on paper, but they are not merely ink lines on paper.
When doing biology, Aristotle himself made this point absolutely clear. Asking whether a philosopher's explanation of animal behavior in terms of efficient causes or an explanation in terms of intentional causes (or final causes) is to be preferred, he concluded, "Is it not rather the one who combines both in a single formula?"13
Darwin's response to Asa Gray's theistic understanding of evolution is instructive here. Darwin well understood that the issue -- Is the universe the result of chance or design? -- is one of philosophy, not science. Did God ordain, Darwin asked, "that the crop and tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary in order that the fancier might make his grotesque pouter and fantail breeds? Did he cause the frame and mental qualities of the dog to vary in order that a breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity, with jaws fitted to pin down the bull for man's brutal sport?" Surely no one could admit divine providence in these matters! Darwin concluded, then, by parity of reasoning, that "no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that variations, alike in nature and the result of the same general laws, which have been the groundwork through natural selection of the formation of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially guided."14 Darwin's objection to Gray is not that he is importing illicit matters of faith into science; rather, it is that Gray's theistic evolution creates an insuperable philosophical problem: What kind of God would permit so much evil?
Once again, our analysis of evolution leads to a perennial philosophical issue, exactly as Thomistic philosophers have long been saying it must. Christians can thus approach the purely biological evidence with the calm assurance that wherever it leads, the really difficult philosophical issues will remain the same, and the standard philosophical defenses of the faith that have served Christians well since the time of Augustine will continue to serve us well in the future.
Phillip Johnson responds:
I see no reason to complain about a review that pairs me with Richard Dawkins as setting the boundaries of the debate over evolution and creation, regardless of what intermediate position the reviewer personally favors. So, with appreciation for the attention, I will respond only on one important point.
The question whether Darwinism fits the scientific evidence is prior to the question of whether Christianity can or should be reconciled with Darwinism. Although he relegates the prior question to an endnote, Mr. Machuga actually agrees with me that Darwinism does not explain "biogenesis" (origin of genetic information), but only "diversification of existing species."
Although this distinction leaves open the question of exactly where the line between origin and diversification is to be drawn, it acknowledges that there are scientific as well as philosophical defects in Dawkins's Darwinian argument for atheism. I urge theists (and atheists too, for that matter) not to overlook the scientific objections to the more expansive Darwinian claims in their determination to pursue a philosophical objective -- whether that objective be to further materialism, or to show that Thomistic philosophy can incorporate just about any scientific theory about material causes.
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FOOTNOTES
1. Darwin's title, "The Origin of Species," hides an ambiguity. The "origin of species" can refer to either biogenesis (the origin of life) or the diversification of existing species. While Darwin is himself clear that these are two distinct issues, and that he only has an answer to the second, other writers have glossed over the distinction and treated them as a single issue. But even speaking from a wholly scientific view, these are distinct issues. There is a wide range of arguments, each supported by independent evidence, to support that claim that, on the whole, older species tend to be biologically less complex or developed than younger species. The geographic distribution of species, vestigial organs, similar anatomical structures put to differing uses, the distribution of fossils in the geologic column, and so on all point to the same explanation -- natural selection, either gradual or punctuated. However, when it comes to the origin of life, while there are a number of independent explanations that scientists are currently exploring, the evidence does not currently converge toward a single explanation. The convergence of many arguments and independent sources of evidence toward a single explanation is a measure of the coherence of a theory -- that is, a theory's ability to organize a wide range of data into a single, interconnected whole. It is now generally acknowledged that the truth of a theory is more established by the theory's coherence than any single fact or observation. It is thus misleading for Dawkins to treat the origin of life and the diversification of species as if their scientific status were the same. Dawkins needs a scientific theory of the origin of life if his assumption -- that science will refute theism in a way that philosophy has not -- is to remain even plausible. But philosophical needs are nothing more than wishes in science!
2. Though these events are a commonplace among historians of science, one place to begin study is W. M. O'Neil's "Fact and Theory: An Aspect of the Philosophy of Science" (Sydney University Press, 1969).
3. "Science and Theology," edited by Murray Rae, Hilary Regan, and John Stenhouse (Eerdmans, 1994), p. 43; see note 1 above.
4. Ronald Numbers, "The Creationists" (Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), p. ix. In a response to William Hasker in a recent theme issue of Christian Scholar's Review (Vol. 24, No. 4 [May 1995]) focusing on "Creation, Evolution, and Christian Faith," Johnson writes, "Let's face the facts. All the leading scientific authorities who write for the general public -- including Weinberg, Hawking, Davies, Sagan, Crick, Futuyma, Dawkins, Johanson, and Gould -- are engaged in promoting metaphysical naturalism." While there is no question that these scientists are so engaged, the poll numbers belie Johnson's worry that Christians are in danger of losing the propaganda war to pbs and the popular press.
5. "Historic Documents of 1982" (Congressional Quarterly, 1983), p. 9.
6. "A creationist is simply a person who believes that the world (and especially mankind) was designed, and exists for a purpose." "Darwin on Trial," p. 115.
7. "Christianity Today," Oct. 24, 1994, p. 26.
8. See "Reason in the Balance," pp. 225-26.
9. A. Hunter Dupree, "Asa Gray 1800-1880" (Harvard University Press, 1959), p. 368. Paley's own famous proof is not itself inconsistent with an evolutionary account. If a person found a watch in the desert, he would immediately infer the existence of a designer. But what if, says Paley, "The watch is found, in the course of its movement, to produce another watch similar to itself; and not only so, but we perceive in it a system or organization separately calculated for that purpose. What effect would this discovery have, or ought it to have, upon our former inference? What, as hath already been said, but to increase beyond measure our admiration of the skill which had been employed in the formation of such a machine?"
10. For an excellent, philosophically informed critique of Darwinism from a Thomistic point of view, see Etienne Gilson, "From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species, and Evolution" (University of Notre Dame Press, 1984).
11. Asa Gray, in response to his critics said, "As I have said before, what you want is ...[a system] which theism only can account for. That, it seems to me, you have. And again, It has been and always will be possible to take an atheistic view of Nature, but far more reasonable from science and philosophy only to take a theistic view.... It is the best, if not the only, hypothesis for the explanation of the facts." "Natural Science and Religion" (Cambridge University Press, 1880), p. 91.
12. "The Renewal of Philosophy" (Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 50.
13. "On the Soul," 403b7. See also "On the Parts of Animals," 642a.
14. "Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, II" (D. Appleton and Company, 1875), p. 415. And as Johnson himself notes (but without drawing a similar conclusion), the problem of evil was more than a mere philosophical puzzle for Darwin. Johnson quotes from Gertrude Himmelfarb's "Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution" (1959): "One of the passages which was deleted from [Darwin's] autobiography explained why Charles not only could not believe in Christianity but would not wish to believe in it. Citing the 'damnable doctrine' that would condemn all disbelievers to eternal punishment, he protested that 'this would include my Father, Brother, and almost all my best friends.'" Himmelfarb concludes, "There may be more sophisticated reasons for disbelief, but there could hardly have been a more persuasive emotional one" (quoted in "Darwin on Trial," pp. 163-64).
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Books discussed in this essay
Richard Dawkins, "The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design" (Norton, 349 pp.; $10.95, paper, 1987 [first published 1986]).
Richard Dawkins, "River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life" (Basic, 172 pp.; $20, 1995).
Phillip E. Johnson, "Darwin on Trial," 2nd ed. (InterVarsity, 195 pp.; $10.95, paper, 1993).
Phillip E. Johnson, "Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science," Law and Education (InterVarsity, 245 pp.; $19.99, 1995).
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