NeilUnreal

[I’m not nearly the new-age airhead this looonnng essay makes me seem. But maybe a bit of philosophical background about myself is the best way to explain why ID and YEC create a scientific and religious conflict for me that doesn’t exist with respect to mainstream science.]

I (and my sister, a biologist) had the advantage of being raised by parents who were scientifically literate Christians. My father has degrees in botany and chemistry, and my mother was (and still is) an avid amateur naturalist. I can still remember when the world was going through the “dinosaur craze” of my day (I was five); my mother spent hours in the library reading me books on paleontology. When I was about six, my dad bought me a microscope and telescope and helped me learn to use them. My dad also showed me the geology in road-cuts, told me about faults (etc.), and chauffeured us to half the natural science landmarks in the western hemisphere (and some in the eastern). Likewise, when we lived in Asia Minor, we visited many of the landmarks mentioned in the letters of the Apostle Paul. When we lived in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, we visited Buddhist shrines and learned about the religion and philosophy of our Buddhist friends and neighbors. I made it almost to the PhD ABD level in biogeography before deciding on a career in artificial intelligence.

I only mention all this because of what seems to be unusual about it in the BBS world: the idea of a conflict between faith and science and experience never once came up. We were taught that our brains were there to be used and the world was there to be investigated. Nothing was to be taken at face value simply because someone said it was sacred. Goodness and faith were always put in terms of doing the right thing and putting other people first (I rarely practice this as well as I should!) – not mere belief. In this respect also, our faith was expected to inform our science, studies, and all of life (e.g. “Don’t fake your research results, even if you know you know you won’t get caught.”).

My own view of God and faith is probably rather unusual from the standpoint of many Christians. A lot of what people call Christian theology is really Hebraic and Hellenistic philosophy (colloquially, “rationalism”). There’s nothing wrong with that, but my own philosophy is much more similar to Zen, so it gives me a different outlook on my faith. (For one thing, it seems to make me more like a Quaker than a Baptist!) Many atheists and agnostics also frame the world in terms of Hebraic and Hellenistic philosophies. So from my perspective, many of the arguments between Christians and atheists are philosophically moot (pardon the pun); they sometimes appear to me to be intramural arguments by proponents within a worldview which is different from mine.

It’s tough to put it in terms that a “rationalist” would understand. From my point of view, truth is something different than myth vs. reality, or even in truth in the Platonic or moralistic sense. This will sound a little “new-agey” (unintentionally), but for me truth and beauty are based on the direct perception of self-sacrificial love in the world – everything else is secondary, even intelligence is just a tool to assist this perception. I do desire and value a hard, open-eyed look at rational truth for it’s own sake – but for other theological ends as well. (And besides, logic is a big part of my profession!) I love the bits and bytes of evolution, but I also find it profoundly interesting that the most chaotic and selfish beginnings imaginable -- random mutation and natural selection -- so often give rise to altruism.

In traditional theological terms, I guess you could say my view of God is both immanent and transcendent. God is the writer and director, we’re the characters in the film. We’re real because of God, but God’s reality is beyond definition for us.

For me, ID is a case of Classical philosophy and Medieval Scholasticism gone berserk. It’s like Shelly’s vitalistic monster come to life and trampling my philosophical and theological garden. Both and ID and YEC have a rationalist hang up with proving their faith. Like the ancient Greeks, they’re actually just materialists and naturalists who believe that materialism should be extended to include supernatural materials! (Using science to support atheism is the same only the other way around, but that’s not what’s being discussed here.) Belief is cheap; if God wanted mere belief, evidence would abound.

Or as a Zen master might put it: don’t believe or dis-believe in your rice bowl, just eat out of it and wash it!

Plus I abhor bad science. ID and YEC don’t have a monopoly on bad science but it irks me to see it in my own household of faith. I think a lot of grass roots ID’ers and YEC’s really want to do good science, and this breaks my heart, because I so often see them swallowing a party line that leads them to bad science. In a theological sense, it’s like they’d rather turn on the TV than walk out into the wide and wonderful, but often scary world.

So yes, my views of faith were changed by my views of science – and vice versa – and why not? These views were different ten years ago, and they would have been more different still had I lived 1000 years ago. That’s the advantage of living at this end of time – we can take advantage of modern medicine and still think our way up and down the ages. And yes, to me everything is sacred, but we have a hierarchy of responsibilities: first to the sentient, then to the animate, then to the inanimate, but last of all to ourselves. Ability confers responsibility.

-Neil

p.s. I like hanging out here at “infidels” because it’s a pretty intelligent bunch with lots of challenging opinions. Maybe I feel relaxed because my philosophy both immunizes me from “de-conversion” and prevents me from irritating rationalists by feeling I can offer rational reasons why anyone should convert to my way of thinking. And darn it! I just like all the nice people here including scigirl and Rufus (and others), and even fellow Christians with whom I sometimes disagree.

scigirl

Thank you Neil!

I knew you'd come through!

scigirl

ohwilleke

This is not the whole point. The question is what sort religious drivel an ID supporter favors. Most IDers are Christians, but Christianity is not a religion that comfortably accepts ID.

I suspect that ID may fail ultimately, not because it is unscientific (although it often is), but because it is heretical, and thus will eventually lose its religious support.

GeoTheo

Yeah, that's kind of how I feel. Very intelligent discussions here and it makes me think.

Albion

The Christians I've come across who are attracted to ID tend to have higher education levels than most of the young Earthers (this may just be the statistics of small numbers, but it's holding up fairly well so far) and are people who see things in rather black-and-white terms. I had a long conversation with one of them where I was trying to get him to explain to me why it was so important that science be able to prove the existence of God, not just take it on faith and leave the scientific "evidence" out of it, and we got nowhere because he insisted that he wasn't trying to get science to prove the existence of God, it's just that when the proof is so obviously there, why are all these atheists (sorry, scientists) ignoring it?

It always seems to boils down to the fact that as long as science is based on methodological naturalism, that naturalism is at risk of spilling over into the rest of society and so science has this biased worldview that's ignoring clear evidence of divine intervention and is imposing its atheistic values on society. They want to remake science so that it includes the search for divine explanations and allows a theistic philosophy to be applied in every part of life.

The difference between that attitude and the young-Earth one seems to me that the ID approach just wants the Christian God to take centre stage in all aspects of life and is less specific about the details of what that means as far as the Bible is concerned. Strikes me aas a matter of degree rather than kind.

Maybe it's the theistic equivalent of Dawkins's comment about evolution and atheism - that ID allows people to be intellectually satisfied Christians.