Peeking through the Forrest to look at the trees ...

Christian Darwinists are fond of reassuring us all that Christianity and Darwinism are a natural fit. They don’t seem to have taught the chant to everyone yet. Old Earth creationist Stephen E. Jones has noted,

Barbara Forrest, has explored what she believes are the religious implications of neo-Darwinism and astronomy in her article, “The Possibility of Meaning in Human Evolution,” Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science 35.4 (Dec 2000), 861-889. She writes (p. 862, notes omitted):

We have established scientifically some disquieting facts: (1) human beings have evolved from nonhuman life forms, meaning that (2) at one time we did not exist, and that (3) according to paleontological and astronomical evidence, at some time in the future we shall cease to exist. Furthermore, from a scientific standpoint, there is no discernible reason that we had to evolve in the first place, and there is no guarantee that we shall continue to evolve successfully; more hominid species have become extinct than have survived. The price of such knowledge has been the gnawing question of whether human existence has genuine meaning if it was constructed with cranes rather than supported by skyhooks, as Daniel Dennett says.

The problem of meaning is easily resolved for those who embrace a preconstructed system of meaning such as religion. However, religion cannot help us find meaning in any honest sense unless it can assimilate the truth about where human beings have come from, and the only real knowledge we have about where we came from we have acquired through science.

It’s convenient for Forrest - who has been accused of making her living by bashing design principles without understanding them - that no religion other than Darwinism would thrive by assimilating the “truth” that she imagines to be established “scientifically.” Actually, Dennett, whom she mentions, doesn’t seem sure that the human mind really exists, a position which ends the problem altogether, I guess.

Huh? Frank Beckwith, of all people, attacked by conspirazoid prof Barbara Forrest?

Here's an interesting example of the way that any non-materialist draws fire from materialist atheists.

Baylor prof Frank Beckwith had a big tenure fight a while back, possibly connected with his view that it is not unconstitutional to teach that the universe is intelligently designed in an American school setting and that there is something wrong with killing our kids and then wondering who is going to work to pay our pensions.

And - while Beckwith does not endorse the ID view, and has often attacked it and its proponents - he was recently savaged at considerable length by conspirazoon Barbara Forrest (author of The Trojan Horse).

David DeWolf, a Catholic and one of the evil Discovery Institute types, who currently star as the villains in a local potboiler, offered me some thoughts on the difficulties that Catholics like Beckwith and he may face.

It took me a while to get to his comments, so I wrote back advising him that there is no shortage of dump bears from hell here either.

But here are his thoughts:

Speaking as a Roman Catholic, I would say that to the extent there is a lesson from the Galileo affair (and historians know how distorted the contemporary understanding of that business is), many Catholics, sadly, even those in positions of authority, have gotten it just backwards. Those who want to avoid another Galileo affair should be slow to identify the Church or the Faith with a particular scientific theory. After all, today's scientific confidence can be tomorrow's embarrassment.

But that's not what many prominent Roman Catholics have been doing. Instead, what we see today is an *embrace* of "evolution" -- even of Charles Darwin -- as though that theory had been proven and the Church wants to show it's on the side of the winner.

One might say it would be foolish to declare ID the winner in the debate, although Catholics (certainly those in the Thomist tradition) are already on record as affirming design and teleology. Why some Thomists want to draw such a sharp distinction between teleology as a philosophical matter and the evidence of teleology in biological structure is a mystery to me (I gather it is a mystery to Mike Behe, as well).

There is a danger in identifying only *some* events as displaying teleology, suggesting that God is in direct control of some things, but on sabbatical (so to speak) with respect to, say, an apparently random pile of rocks at the bottom of a hillside. As with most things, I repair to Scripture for assistance: the Gospels repeatedly refer to various events in Jesus' life as being a fulfillment of prophecy. To point out, say, that none of Jesus' bones were broken during the crucifixion, is not to suggest that only the events specifically identified as a fulfillment of prophecy were planned, while the rest of Jesus' life just sort of happened. But there is a reason for pointing out that certain events support a logical inference of design, and these are significant precisely because the question of design in history, in the universe, is very much in dispute. Therefore, it baffles me that, rather than embracing ID as a plausible account of biology (plausible, but far from being what the Darwinians claim about evolution -- more firmly established than the law of gravity), many otherwise loyal Churchmen run for the exit door as if the place were on fire. Sure, there are ways to distort ID to turn it in a bad theological direction. But there's nothing that I can detect that should make a Roman Catholic any less enthusiastic about ID than any other variety of Christian.

It's never been any kind of a mystery to me. Many terrified Christians feel they need to accommodate atheism, and that means selling out Christians who come up with reasons why atheism might not be true, as opposed to finding ways to somehow sneak out to holler for Jesus while letting atheists rule.

(Note: Some people believe in conspiracies, and some don't. My own experience as a hack inclines me to the latter, skeptical view. Few can resist the self-importance of spilling their guts to an obliging hack. So the conspiracies that really exist are small, highly focused, and often involve people [think 9-11] who get themselves killed. Didn't the 20th jihadi start to spill? Could be torture? I'd never torture the fellow myself, because if you just lock up people like him up for a while, they start to spill to a polite and friendly interview officer - usually through a desire for importance and meaning in life.)

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

New ID threat assessment lists Akyol, O’Leary, ... oh and the Pope too, by the way ...

A friend draws my attention to a recent squawk in TRENDS in Biochemical Sciences Vol.32 No.7 (July 2007) by Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross, who - so far as I can tell - make a career out of opposing the intelligent design theorists.

Squawks about the alleged threat posed by the ID theorists are nothing new - this one (“Biochemistry by design”) is aimed mainly against Mike Behe - but my friend called my attention to the fact that it mentions me (and my friend Mustafa Akyol) - and in a most curious context too:

Nature recently featured a ‘special report’ cataloging problems with creationism in western Europe, Turkey and Russia [10]. Turkey harbors a particularly active network of creationists, one of whom – Mustafa Akyol – is a prominent Discovery Institute ally, appearing publicly in America with ID supporter and spokesman Denyse O’Leary. (O’Leary is a Canadian journalist with no scientific background, who typifies the ID movement’s support base [77–80].) Unsettling signals are coming even from the Vatican, where Cardinal Christoph Schönborn’s July 2005 public statement of support for ID, released by the public relations firm of the Discovery Institute, was followed by ambiguous comments from Pope Benedict [81]. Statements from the pope released in April 2007 have not dispelled concerns about this ambiguity [82,83].

I am, of course, pleased to be mentioned alongside my friend and fellow journalist, Mustafa Akyol, one of a growing number of voices of reason in the Muslim world.* But to mention either of us in the same paragraph as Christoph, Cardinal Schonborn or the Pope?

That’s the trouble with alarmist theories. All sense of proportion ... poof!

Believe me, if the Pope isn’t buying into Darwinian materialism, it will hardly matter to the world’s Catholics what O’Leary or Akyol think. But no, wait, that’s too sensible. We can’t think of things that way. So, realizing that you ought to be concerned, your best protection is to buy and read these books. It’s all in here, folks, all in here:

Here’s the abstract:

Creationists are attempting to use biochemistry to win acceptance for their doctrine in the public mind and especially in state-funded schools. Biochemist Michael Behe is a major figure in this effort. His contention that certain cellular structures and biochemical processes –
bacterial flagella, the blood-clotting cascade and the vertebrate immune system – cannot be the products of evolution has generated vigorous opposition from fellow scientists, many of whom have refuted Behe’s claims. Yet, despite these refutations and a decisive defeat in a US federal court case, Behe and his associates at the Discovery Institute continue to cultivate American
supporters. They are also stepping up their efforts abroad and, worryingly, have achieved some success. Should biochemists (and other scientists) be concerned? We think they should be.

*We’d been asked by the McLaurin Institute to talk about ID and the media.