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This past weekend I attended a conference at Baylor University on "The Nature of Nature: An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Role of Naturalism in Science." It was held at the Michael Polanyi Center and sponsored by grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the Discovery Institute, as well as Touchstone magazine. You all know about the Templeton Foundation. The Discovery Institute and Touchstone magazine are Christian organizations whose purpose is to provide rational and scientific reasons to believe not only in God, but in the Christian God, and Christianity in general. Touchstone magazine's reading line is "A Journal of Mere Christianity" (in deference to C.S. Lewis). They recently (July/August 1999) devoted an entire issue to "Intelligent Design: A new paradigm in science that could revolutionize the way we view creation, the cosmos, and ourselves." Contributors are a who's who of the new creationism: Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, William Dembski, Paul Nelson, Stephen Meyer, et. al. I won't review all their specific arguments here. Robert Pennock's book, TOWER OF BABEL (MIT press) is a wonderful work that is a must-read to catch up on what the creationists have been up to in recent ?? We added this title to our skeptic book catalogue and you can order it online at www.skeptic.com.
Attending this conference, however, were far more than just these new "intelligent design" creationists, which is what enticed me to attend (as I will also be doing at their June 22-24 "Conference on Intelligent Design: A Critical Appraisal" at Concordia University near Milwaukee Wisconsin--contact angus.menuge@cuw.edu for information). Additional attendees included Alvin Plantinga, Robert Koons, Simon Conway Morris, William Lane Craig, Alan Guth, Everett Mendelsohn, Mancey Murphy, Ronald Numbers, John Searle, and even the Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg.
I was led to believe (or perhaps I was self-deceived) into thinking that this would be a scientific conference in which we would hear and discuss the absolute latest, newest, strongest, and best scientific/rational arguments for the existence of God, or at least an intelligent designer (Dembski is willing to discuss the possibility that this intelligent designer could at least conceivably be an advanced alien intelligence ala Clarke's 2001, but I don't believe for a moment that he actually believes that for if there is no God and the Intelligent Designer is just aliens, to whom would one pray, ask for forgiveness, hope for immortality, etc.? And since these guys are almost all traditional Christians it strikes me as disingenuous to make the alien argument.)
To be fair I only got to see one full day of the three-day conference as I had to depart the next morning to speak at the Western Psychological Association conference (more on this later as it too was very interesting and included much to be skeptical about, including canine grammar!). The first session I saw was on "Naturalism and the History of Science," featuring Everett Mendelsohn, Ronald Numbers, and Ernan McMullin. If this is all you saw you might not realize what was really going on at this conference. The guys all read their philosophical papers as if at a regular philosophy conference, and this was followed with a noncontroversial Question and Answer period. (And when I say "guys" I mean it. I would estimate that of the 200 or so attendees, there were about four women. Of the 62 speakers--plenary and concurrent--there were two women. There is no question that, for whatever reason, this is a guys thing.)
The discussion at hand was on the assumption of "naturalism" made in the sciences. What's really going on here is that the new creationists have been left out of the scientific debate because we don't allow supernatural explanations to enter the equation. You know, "hydrogen atoms condensed into stars in the interior of which were created the heavier elements, then nth-generation stars exploded their heavier elements into clouds of heavier atoms, then these clouds condensed into nth-generation solar systems with planets, then some of these planets generated primitive atmospheres with amino acids, then some of these amino acids generated protein chains--and then God created the complex cell--then evolution took over until it got to another sticking point at multicellular life--then God did another miracle--and so on." Sorry, the God stuff isn't allowed in science. Why not? Because of philosophical naturalism and/or methodological naturalism. How can we possibly test "God did it"? That's not a fair assumption, say the new creationists. That's leaving them out of the game of science.
This problem was quite evident in a later session I attended, after Robert Wright and I debated whether there is direction and purpose in evolution. I completely destroyed Wright. He was humbled and humiliated and is requesting a recall on his book, Nonzero, from the stores in order to rewrite it to take my devastating criticisms into account. Okay, it wasn't quite that lopsided, but I think I made some good points that will be the subject of an essay in an upcoming issue of Skeptic where I show, for example, just how contingent our existence is. (Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, for example, shows that the transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers was contingent upon having domesticable plants and animals. Turns out there are only a handful of these scattered about the globe in just a couple of places. Rewind the tape to 13,000 years ago, erase those few species, and we'd still be living as hunter-gatherers since no farming means no large population which means no division of labor which means no guns, germs, and steel, and no Tielhardian noosphere or Wrightian world wide web.) Turns out Wright's a pretty decent fellow despite his obsession with Gould. I spent a couple of hours chatting with him at the bar (always the best place to solve life's most difficult problems) and found him to be an intelligent and likable fellow. I guess we all have our white whale.)
The big showdown event of the conference, however, was Steven Weinberg versus Henry Schaeffer. Imagine this: You're a Christian organization who wants to be taken seriously in the scientific community. You unload all the baggage from the past, dumping young earth creationism, Duane Gish, dinosaurs in the Ark, and all that flapdoodle. You focus instead on "irreducible complexity, "intelligent design," "abrupt appearance," and the "anthropic cosmological principle." You get yourself a list of real academics at real universities with real degrees and books from real publishers who support your Christian beliefs. You get funding and recognition from Sir John Templeton's foundation and the support of a prestigious institution like Baylor University. You've got the dough to attract some big names outside of your own circle in order to bring additional prestige and attract media attention to tell people that, perhaps, there really is something worth debating here.
Then you get your big break: you land none other than Steven Weinberg, one of the world's greatest scientists, Nobel laureate, member of the National Academy of Sciences, member of the Royal Society and the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Science, author of some of the most important papers and books written in 20th century physics, and arguably the harshest and most outspoken critic of scientistic arguments for God's existence. There he is, sitting in the room with you. Against this heavyweight champion of the world you certainly do not want to throw up your welterweight has been. So you get Henry Schaefer, a quantum chemist with a Ph.D. from Stanford University, a professor of chemistry at U.C. Berkeley, and now a professor of chemistry at U.T. Austin where he is also the director of the Institute for Theoretical Chemistry and formerly the director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at
the University of Georgia. He has received five honorary degrees, is editor-in-chief of the journal Molecular Physics, President of the World Association of Theoretically Oriented Chemists, and winner of numerous Chemical Society awards.
Weinberg goes first and does his usual thing of equating Jesus, Buddha, Zeus, and all the rest with belief in "fairies," and proceeds to make mince meat of arguments that allegedly prove God's existence. Weinberg is like a steam hammer with his staccato beat of point after devastating point, hammering away without flinching. No smile cracks his face. He does not suffer fools gladly. This is serious business and he's not taking this task lightly. A hush falls over the room as he finishes. Why in the world did they invite this guy to a Christian science conference?
Schaefer, presumably, will answer that question. Schaefer is going to line up Weinberg's ducks, chamber load his 12-gage shotgun shells, and proceed to blow them apart like sparrows on a wire. Now we will surely hear the best of the new creationists, their would-be challenger, Sonny "the big ugly bear" Liston about to be KOed by Cassius "ain't I pretty?" Clay. Schaefer comes out dancing, prancing, dodging and weaving, tassles on his ankles and a smile on his face. Weinberg is his hero. Weinberg is God. Weinberg is The Man. You hate to destroy a God, but here goes. Ready? Here it is. Here is why a scientist should be a Christian: Because Kepler was a Christian, and Newton was a Christian, and famous scientists X, Y, and Z were Christians. How can all these smart cookies be wrong? After all, they're smart, and they're Christians, ergo . . . .
Forty-five minutes of this. I am not exaggerating. Overhead after overhead until he was in over his head in the argument from authority. No rattling off of the dozen or so anthropic principle arguments put forth by Frank Tipler and others. No listing of the thousands of conditions that must be present to give rise to intelligent, complex life. No irreducibly complex cellular structures and functions. No intelligently designed mouse traps or body parts. No abrupt appearances of impossible structures or species. A simple acknowledgment that he knew he wasn't speaking to a bunch of college freshman would have been appreciated. He giggles through his concluding remarks. I sit there wound up like a spring. I can hardly contain myself. It's Q & A time.
Question: "I'm Michael Shermer from Skeptic magazine. I just flew 2,000 miles to hear the latest, newest, and best arguments for God's existence based on intelligent design theory. Please tell me you have something better than the argument from authority. Is that all you've got? And what's all this Christian scientist stuff? If you like I'd be happy to supply you with a list of Jewish scientists with quotes from them. Or Muslim scientists with quotes. And what has Jesus got to do with all this? I thought I was attending a SCIENCE conference at a science center with scientist speakers and a science audience. Please tell us why you believe in God."
Answer: "I only had 45 minutes so this is all I could do. I believe in God because of the historical proof that Jesus was resurrected from the dead and died for my sins."
That's it? That's the best of the new creationism? You invite Mike Tyson to a fight and you put in the ring against him Pee Wee Herman? Thank God (or whomever) this wasn't a pay-per-view event. You would have had an ugly crowd on your hands. Refunds all the way around, thank you.
Actually, the best question of the day came from someone in the audience whom I did not recognize:
Question: "Please tell us how your Christianity informs your research in quantum chemistry."
Answer: "The walls are sure vertical today." (Okay, I don't remember what he said because he rambled on and on about absolutely everything but the answer to the question. The reason he dissembled is because the answer is: "It doesn't. Science and religion have nothing whatsoever to do with each other."
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Michael Shermer
Publisher
mailto:skepticmag@aol.com
http://www.skeptic.com
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