Christian Research Journal Reads Episode 144: Near Darwin’s Portrait In The Biology Building, Whispers About The Creator: Deceived by a Fals

This is Episode 144 of Christian Research Journal Reads. This is an audio version of the CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL article, “Near Darwin’s Portrait In The Biology Building, Whispers About The Creator: Deceived by a False Image?” by Paul A. Nelson. This article first appeared in the Christian Research Journal, volume 40, number 03 (2017).https://www.equip.org/articles/near-darwins-portrait-in-the-biology-building-whispers-about-the-creator-deceived-by-a-false-image/

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
This is episode one hundred and forty four of the
Christian Research Journal Reads podcast. Near Darwin's Portrait in the
Biology Building, Whispers about the Creator Deceived by a False Image,
by paul A Nelson. This article first appeared in the
print edition of the Christian Research Journal, Volume forty, number

(00:28):
three in twenty seventeen. To read the full text of
this article and its documentation, please go to equip dot org.
That's e qu ip dot org.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Near Darwin's Portrait in the Biology Building, Whispers about the
Creator Deceived by a False Image. This article is by
paul A Nelson and is read by an automated voice.
Here is a seductive picture of the creation's slash evolution
origins debate that many readers very likely carry around some
were in their heads. Imagine sitting in front of a
university stage on which a debate about origins is about

(01:05):
to take place. On one hand, we have the evolutionists,
led by Richard Dawkins, Larry Craws, Jerry Coyn, Sam Harris,
and the other so called New atheists. They describe a
universe coming to be spontaneously out of nothing, but wholly
without God, who does not exist by the way in
which undirected physical and material processes bring into being galaxies, stars, planets,

(01:29):
and eventually life itself. Roughly thirteen point seven billion years
after it began, the universe brings humans themselves onto the scene.
No religion in this story, no theology, just science. On
the other hand, we have the creationists of various flavors,
motivated mainly by religious concerns. The Young Earth advocate Kenham

(01:51):
and his organization answers in Genesis, for example, or the
Old Earth astronomer Huross of the Apologetics group Reasons to believe,
although they don't agree with each other's interpretations of Genesis
one at eleven. Both Ham and Ross are outspoken Christians.
Their theology draws or science. So what's up there on

(02:11):
stage then? Under the bright lights atheism or agnosticism standing
at stage left, appealing to the authority of natural science
but lacking any religious motivations or convictions, versus religion stage right,
which also calls on science here and there or where
it can, but all the religious or theological content can

(02:32):
be found on the creationist's side of the performance space.
Crossover to where the atheists and agnostics are standing at
their podium and the religious assumptions and presuppositions disappear entirely.
This picture would not be as seductive as it is
if it did not draw on some measure of truth.
But every false image that draws us and incorporates some

(02:52):
truth along with the underlying falsehood to gain its attractiveness.
The underlying falsehood in this case is the claim that
all the religious content in the origin's debate is located
on the side of creationism. But evolution as a worldview
and as a scientific theory for that matter, has from
its inception been deeply entangled with theology. Consider, for instance,

(03:16):
the following passage from a late Harvard paleontologist Stephen J.
Gold's famous nineteen eighty essay on the Pandastan. If God
had designed a beautiful machine to reflect his wisdom and power,
surely he would not have used a collection of parts
generally fashion for other purposes. Odd arrangements and funny solutions
are the proof of evolution. Pads that a sensible God

(03:39):
would never tread, but that a natural process constrained by
history follows perforce. The God talk here is not incidental
to Gould's argument or mere rhetorical embellishment. Analyze his argument
in detail as I have done, and its theological content
plays an essential role for reaching the conclusion Gold wishes

(03:59):
to make, namely that pandas and all other living things
evolved via an undirected process. But that's a discussion for
another occasion. This article can be seen as a kind
of intellectual warning beacon, or a brief cautionary tale about
how not to fall prey to the false image of
science versus religion when confronting questions of origins. Recent scholarship,

(04:22):
for instance, from my Biola University colleague Cornelius Hunter and
from Street Edwards University philosopher of science Stephen Dilly, has
shown how evolutionary theory employs theological concepts and categories. The
false image of science versus religion is damaging because it
misconstrues what the origins debate is really about, thereby placing

(04:44):
Christians at a crippling disadvantage when they try to explain
or defend their faith in a hostile culture. Hunter and
Dilly correct the false image as I did with Gold's
pandace them essay, by analyzing the logic of evolutionary arguments,
demonstrating that the premises of Those arguments include theological assertions
any creator worthy of the name would have done or

(05:06):
why would God have made? And indeed, all similar phrases
diagnosed and appealed to theology once alerted to their existence.
A perceptive observer will see such appeals everywhere in evolutionary
writings at the popular and technical levels. When utlk about
that you can't avoid religion for clarity's sake, we can

(05:28):
have our take home lesson. Now you don't have to
wait until the end of this article. If the question
to be debated is how did the universe and life
come to be, and one of the possible answers on
the table is they were created by a supreme intelligence,
usually named God, then one cannot avoid engaging in theology,
even if once theology is cotched in strictly negative terms.

(05:51):
To claim that God, if he exists, would not do
whatever one's particular conception of God entails that he would
not do is to make a theologie claim, even if
one is personally an atheist or an agnostic. Take home lesson.
If evolution employs God talk for its support and justification,
whether there are any theists on the scene or not,

(06:13):
the theory and its proponents are committed to theology. Suppose
we define religion as a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature,
and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the
creation of a superhuman agent or agencies, which is the
first definition of the word found in my dest dictionary.
As Hunter has shown, if we accept this definition as

(06:34):
a working description, what may appear at first glance to
be outright atheism or philosophical naturalism, and thus not to
fall under the heading of religion, the being known as
God does not exist turns out, on closer inspection actually
to be what Hunter calls theological naturalism, where a God
of a certain fashion is still most definitely hanging around.

(06:57):
Under theological naturalism, a concept of God still hovers above
the room. Only he has now been rendered so remote
and detached from the universe that he cannot interact with
it in any detectable way. As Hunter explains, once one
accepts theological naturalism, God do not intervene in the creation
and care of the world. Nature should operate primarily or

(07:19):
even exclusively, via natural laws, and it is not exclusively
God's design. Naturalism in the sciences did not arise from
an empiricist urge, that is, focus on the evidence it
arose from several theological actions and concerns. In his new book,
Darwinism as Religion, historian and philosopher of science, Michael Ruse

(07:40):
lays this point open for inspection. While Hunter looks broadly
at the rise of theological naturalism and science taken generally,
Ruth's focus is on the origin and history of Darwinian
evolutionary theory. In particular, he argues that evolutionary theory began
in the eighteenth century as a somewhat disreputable pseudoscience and
then raised its status to popular science. Books about evolution,

(08:04):
for example, were best sellers in Victorian England, but only
in the mid twentieth century did the theory achieve respectable
professional standing as a bonafide science. Along the way, however,
Ruce continues, evolutionary thinking became something more. It became a
secular religion in opposition to Christianity. In the second half

(08:24):
of the nineteenth century and into the first part of
the twentieth century, Erwinian evolutionary thinking became a belief system
countering and substituting for the Christian religion. A new paradigm
rouse adduces abundant evidence in support of this thesis by
inspecting how authors such as the novelists George Eliot and
Thomas Hardy used an evolutionary lens to interpret human behavior, morals,

(08:48):
and the purpose of our existence. His theme is identical
to the one I have already sketched. When Party A
in a cultural debate talks about matters traditionally within the
province of religion, and party B is opponent, engages those
same matters, but from an opposing perspective, mister B is
going to find it difficult, if not impossible, to avoid

(09:08):
becoming entangled in religion himself. Ultimate commitments do not cease
being ultimate when one change is perspective. Tell me you
don't follow any religion, and after thirty minutes of Socratic dialogue,
we will identify just what religion you follow. Rus ends
his fascinating book with the following claim. In the past
three hundred years, something really important has happened. People have

(09:31):
come to see that there are no miracles, no creator
God pleased with the job he has done, no promise
or guarantee that we humans are special like all other organisms.
We have been produced by a long, slow, gradual process
of change of blind evolution. And that is it. Speak
for yourself, Michael, or look over your shoulder, here comes

(09:51):
Robert Wright. Religion ever, Really, Geo is away because it's
ce nt. In December twenty sixteen, writing in The New
York Times, science writer and public intellectual Robert Wright news
that maybe evolution has a higher purpose after all. He
was motivated to write his speculative piece after happening to
watch for the first time since it was taped an

(10:13):
interview he had conducted in the early nineteen nineties with
the late evolutionary biologist William Hamilton, an enormously influential figure
in neo Darwinian theory. Although a thorough going Darwinian and agnostic,
Hamilton had surprised Write in the interview by taking seriously
the possibility that Earth was a kind of zoo, as

(10:34):
he put it, for extraterrestrial beings who dwell out there somewhere,
the biology of this planet is their ongoing, intelligently designed
experiment into which, on rare occasions they intervene and maybe,
said Hamilton, those are the miracles which the religious people
liked to so emphasize. While allowing that he put the
idea forward in an almost joking spirit. Hamilton stressed that

(10:58):
it's a kind of hypothesis it's very, very hard to dismiss.
In his article, Wright explains why ultimate questions why are
we here? To what end is our existence? And so forth?
Once asked openly, we'll admit of a range of answers
that cannot be foreclosed except by note, by someone in
a position of control slamming his fist down on the

(11:19):
tabletop and commanding us not to speak about them. In
other words, by stipulating what topics we may discuss. An
authority may cut off debate, but the questions will be
alive in our minds. Nonetheless, only now with the added
kick that we know they are forbidden fruit, so to speak.
Questions can also become unfashionable right observes, which turns out

(11:40):
to be an even more effective way of censoring them.
Take as an example hypothesis given wide currency in two
thousand and three by philosopher Nick Bostrom, namely that we
are living in an intelligently designed simulation. You may scoff
not it's right scoffing, the course being a powerful form
of social censorship. But with a bit of tape learning

(12:00):
in language, Bostrom's hypothesis becomes technological, not theological, inform and
hence intellectually respectable. Right then draws out the inescapable irony.
If you walked up to the same people who gave
Bostrom a respectable hearing and told them there is a
transcendent God, many would dismiss the idea out of hand.

(12:21):
Yet the simulation hypothesis is a God hypothesis. An intelligence
of all inspiring power created our universe for reasons we
can speculate about but can't entirely fathom. Theology has entered
secular discourse under another name, Truth be told. Theology never
went away because the questions themselves never go away. The

(12:43):
healthy state for the origins debate, therefore is total candor.
Everyone puts hit his or her ultimate commitments on the
table for inspection. Don't tell others you have no such
commitments you do.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
Thank you for listening to another episode from the Christian
Research Journal Reads podcast, which provides audio articles of Christian
Research Journal articles. If you go to equip dot org
you will find a brand new article for the Christian
Research Journal published weekly. In addition, please subscribe to our
other podcasts. Wherever you find your favorite podcast, you will

(13:19):
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(13:42):
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At equip dot org, you will also find a lot
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(14:02):
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