Very Weak Anthropic Principle: Is this the Principle going, going gone?

Friends tell me that British theistic evolutionist* Denis Alexander of the Faraday Institute spoke at Baylor University recently on the "Very Weak Anthropic Principle."

I've heard of the Anthropic Principle, which essentially means that the universe appears fine-tuned for intelligent life.

I've also heard of the Weak Anthropic Principle, namely,

The weak anthropic principle states that the ways that the universe might be observed to be is limited by the fact that observation requires the existence of observers. It is impossible to observe a universe that does not permit the existence of observers; only a universe that permits the existence of observers could be observed.

So what's the Very Weak Anthropic Principle, I wonder? The observers are a buzz of neurons that have evolved in such a way that they imagine that a self exists and is observing? Or?

Anyway, if neo-Darwinists take Dr. Alexander seriously, won't he get rolled no matter what he says - if it isn't strict materialist Darwinism? Anyone remember Michael Reiss?

I am not picking up much on the 'Net.

* God indeed dun it, but there is almost no evidence for that fact.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

A handy, and pretty skeptical, guide to modern Brit theistic evolution

David Anderson's review of the Faraday Institute's Denis Alexander's book, Creation or Evolution: Do We have to Choose? (Monarch Books, Oxford, 2008):

If evangelicals take the contents of this book to heart, they will not only be endorsing a certain set of conclusions regarding origins; they will also be embracing a seriously erroneous approach to interpreting the word of God as a whole, and its relationship to other areas of knowledge. Such an approach, if carried out consistently, will ultimately damage the whole structure of Biblical revelation and the gospel itself - a road which I believe Dr. Alexander in this book has already travelled a long way down. I agree with Professor Andrew McIntosh, whose review in "Evangelical Times" published in September 2008 asserted as follows: "By writing this book, Alexander has placed himself on the side of liberal theologians and, in this reviewer’s opinion, has departed seriously from the evangelical faith."

Well, if so, that would be nothing new.

The main thing to see, regarding "theistic evolution" (Alexander's position) is that, by itself, it means nothing.

Intelligent design theorist Michael Behe is a theistic evolutionist insofar as he thinks that design can be coded into the world from the Big Bang, and that subsequent individual creation events are not necessary. That is a possible interpretation of the universe's history from a Christian perspective

But Behe is despised by many "theistic evolutionists" because they in fact support propositions that cannot be defended by orthodox Christians - for example, that God does not know what will happen, is imperfect and therefore evolving along with creation, is not responsible for the way things are, and so forth. Also,

The purpose of this 19-page chapter is to have some discussion of the "Intelligent Design" movement, associated with such names as Philip Johnson, Michael Behe and William Dembski. I got the feeling in reading it that DA felt obliged to include something about it, but was a bit tired (or just contemptuous) by this stage, and the chapter is a bit of a damp squib because it neither goes here nor there, but remains content with some rather general arguments and statements - except for some more detailed discussion of the bacterial flagellum. It's all a bit of a damp squib, because packed into these 19 pages DA wants to survey the history of the movement, its personalities, its claims, and then comprehensively refute them such that he can conclude that the whole thing's a waste of time. That's a book-length project in itself. There's no problem with brief discussions of these things that skim the surface, but in these days of avalanches of free articles available from the Internet, you need to do a bit more than the kind of surface-level chatty repeating of talking points that this chapter is mostly made up of. It's rather disappointing that so many of those talking points seem to have been cribbed from village atheist websites - we expect better, particularly from someone who spends a few pages opining on how proper scientific research is done. We even get a celebrity appearance of the Pennsylvania school board court case and "Judge Jones, a practising Lutheran and Republican appointed by President Bush", the claim that ID does not fall within the definition of science (though DA concedes that it is in principle falsifiable) and such gems of self-delusion as the claim (made earlier in the book in the context of creationists) that editors of science journals would be falling over themselves if anyone had any legitimate criticisms of Darwinism and would gladly make any scientist who had them an overnight star! Puh-lease.

The fact that I have yet to hear that Alexander said anything about the firing of Michael Reiss pretty much tells us what we need to know. Liberal churches are collapsing, so the real action is in getting evangelical churches to front the village atheists.

Debate: Agnostic thinks the universe shows evidence of design while Christian disagrees, but praises Jesus anyway?

Surprise? Not to me ...

Friends have drawn my attention to this supposedly surprising announcement, that in an upcoming debate, the intelligent design sympathizer is an agnostic and the guy who doesn't think there is evidence for design in the universe is a Christian.

Faraday Institute Newsletter No 32 (September 2008)*

The Faraday Course entitled ‘Science and Religion for Church Leaders’,
also intended for those training for ministry, will take place Nov
4-6^th . As usual full details are up on the Faraday web-site
(www.faraday-institute.org). . . .

Those in the Birmingham UK area might be interested to know that on Saturday, 27^th September, at 4.0 p.m. in the George Hotel, Lichfield, the Institute Director will be in debate with Prof. Steve Fuller (Prof. of Sociology at Warwick University) at the Lichfield Literary Festival (http://www.lichfieldfestival.org/) on the subject of Intelligent Design. This is a somewhat counterintuitive debate in that Prof. Fuller, an agnostic, is an ID supporter whereas the Director, a theist, is a critic of ID. Hopefully the exchange of views will clarify rather than
further obfuscate a topic perennially surrounded by a thick fog of confusion.

Denis Alexander

Director, Faraday Institute

And here's more (but you must scroll).

I don't personally see anything counterintuitive about this at all.

I have covered contentious issues most of my life. I have learned, people do not always have the positions you expect. Often, the best way to understand what is happening is to ask why this? Why here? Why now? Philosophy comes into it, but so do other things.

Consider American Scientific Affiliation (ASA). It is a group of some thousands of self- identified American Christians in science. It is the best-known of the sort of group that Britain's Denis Alexander - the theist who apparently doesn't think the universe shows detectible evidence of design - represents. ASA got started mid-twentieth century, when materialism was all the rage. The neo-Darwinian synthesis, the Miller-Urey experiment, the Drake equation ... all these high science events pointed to a universe that had sort of randomly coalesced from rubble, and somehow everything just sort of happened after that. The question was (and for ASA still is), "How to be a Christian when it looks like the evidence is against you".

So far as I can determine, from observing and interacting with the ASA figures involved in the intelligent design controversy for a number of years, theirs is the "respect Christians in science" model.

They want respect for scientists who are people of faith so that they can interact with other scientists on an equal basis, despite the handicap of faith. But for all practical purposes, the facts favour materialist atheism, in their view.

So a sort of inner sight, inner light, some light of faith, is required to see otherwise. Varieties of "theistic evolution" have proliferated ever since - all are responses to materialist atheism and all agree that agree that the materialist atheist's interpretation of the evidence is true, but perhaps defective or unsatisfying ...

That is the basic theme of Francis Collins's The Language of God, where he cautions: Never depend on the facts to support you. And Collins is ASA's poster boy.

Surviving materialist atheism is ASA's reason for existing, and the organization is co-dependent with the environment in which it took root. All organizations are, unless they radically transform themselves.

One outcome is that for ASA, intelligent design (ID) - not materialist atheism - is the enemy. ID, not materialist atheism, threatens to destroy ASA's basis for existence.

Why is that? Well, for one thing, the ID guys started to gather at a time when the evidence base for materialist atheism was beginning to collapse. The universe does show unambiguous evidence of design (fine tuning). Only completely wild theories can even attempt to explain that away.

In that case, the many varieties of "theistic evolution" (ASA's brands) are an answer to a problem that doesn't exist. One need not grant any materialist premise in principle. That fact immediately raises the question of why ASA even exists any more.

If this analysis is correct, it explains several puzzling features of the political landscape. Here are a couple:

1. ASA can be in talks with science groups of whom the majority are probably atheists but not with the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. That is because ASA needs militant atheism to prop up its own existence. By contrast, intelligent design theory is a threat to ASA's continued existence, unless it greatly changes - which the older people who are in charge of ASA are not likely to want to even contemplate.

2. ASA's failure as an institution to express much interest in the recent attacks on scientists like Gonzalez and Sternberg (as documented in Expelled). They were clearly doing science and were attacked because their science did not support materialist atheism. I don't buy the claim that "ASA isn't that kind of an organization" because - while it is startlingly evident that ASA is not that kind of organization - the fact requires some explanation.

3. ASA sponsors the publicly archived ASA list, an online water cooler for self-identified Christians who oppose ID. No similar ASA list devotes as much attention to opposing materialist atheism on behalf of fine tuning of the universe.

I could go on, but you get the picture. There is nothing unusual about this kind of situation. It is quite common, actually. In Canada, we are dealing with an unrelated though analogous issue around "human rights" commissions, where early human rights organizations are co-dependent with the most illiberal forces in the nation - complicating the problem of just getting rid of the latter.

Note: Right now, the legacy media - also co-dependent with materialist atheism - are essentially performing a holding action by keeping the public from realizing what has happened in the sciences, so key markers may be hard to discern without study.

But anyway, no, it is not counterintuitive to me.

Is intelligent design biblical?

Apparently, Brit evangelical boffin Denis R. Alexander wants to know whether intelligent design of the universe or life forms is a biblical doctrine, and concludes somehow that it isn't.

Alexander seems to miss the point that if the universe or life forms are obviously not - or not obviously - intelligently designed, then it pretty much does not matter what the Bible says - including the fact that the Bible seems to think that you can and should know that they are intelligently designed.

The "Political Church" of the West is not a communist church as in the East, but it is definitely a materialist one.