Brownback is a lawyer and not the dumbest guy in Congress, but as public intellectual credentials go, not only is he no Daniel Patrick Moynahan, he's not even Newt Gingrich. Whatever good it may do him politically, the column is an intellectual muddle.
First, Brownback sets the stage by asserting "the complexity of the interaction between science, faith and reason." That's a nice touch, actually. The problem is that "faith" is a very ambiguous term. Faith of what sort and in what, exactly? We might reasonably claim that scientists, themselves, have faith in reason (and in evidence and so forth), but it is certainly not the sort of faith of which Brownback writes. What he means to imply but does not outright say is faith in the truth of certain specific doctrinal beliefs he happens to hold to be true, so it isn't the existence or nonexistence of faith, per se, that is at issue here but faith as belief in the correctness of certain substantive claims. Brownback writes:
The heart of the issue is that we cannot drive a wedge between faith and reason. I believe wholeheartedly that there cannot be any contradiction between the two. The scientific method, based on reason, seeks to discover truths about the nature of the created order and how it operates, whereas faith deals with spiritual truths. The truths of science and faith are complementary: they deal with very different questions, but they do not contradict each other because the spiritual order and the material order were created by the same God.
Let's dissect that. Why can't we "drive a wedge between faith [as Brownback understands it] and reason"? Because he wholeheartedly believes they cannot be contradictory? Why is that? Here he starts out reasonably well, noting that science and (Brownback's) faith address different questions; namely, questions about how nature operates and what he calls "spiritual truths." That's not so bad so far. If he had gone on to claim that their areas of concern were not complementary but incommensurable or merely that they bore no relationship to each other at all, rather like, say, there is no overlap between questions about auto mechanics and questions about music, I'd gladly agree with him. But he doesn't. What he does instead is simply assert his belief in God's agency. I don't happen to disagree with that belief as such, but the belief itself is no evidence or argument that scientific assertions and theological assertions cannot or do not contradict each other. As Brownback states it, it is merely a conclusion, an assertion of faith, actually, without any supporting argument or evidence. Viewed as an purported argument, it is entirely question begging.
Brownback then shifts from the notion that science and faith are complementary to the notion that faith supplements the scientific method "by providing an understanding of values, meaning and purpose." Certainly, religious beliefs can provide a context for and even, insofar as they are believed, a rationale for one's values, etc. But they are not the only possible such contexts or rationales, nor is it at all clear how any of these things supplements the scientific method any more than my discussing jazz with my mechanic supplements his ability to fix my car. What Brownback might have said is that, just as a knowledge of both mechanics and jazz lead to a fuller life, a life focused only on the sorts of questions science can answer is a less full life than one that includes other concerns. But that isn't what he said and what he did say, insofar as it is intelligible, is false.
Brownback tips his hand when he writes, "If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true." Implicit in this statement is that he does not believe, in particular, that our species evolved from other species (whether accidentally or not). This, of course, belies his purported belief that science and faith do not contradict each other, but we'll let that alone for now.
He goes on with the fairly typical Intelligent Design gambit of dropping the punctuated equilibrium hypothesis as evidence that real scientific questions remain unanswered in evolutionary theory. As others have written extensively, this is both true and irrelevant. What is especially relevant is Brownback's rejection of "arguments for evolution that dismiss the possibility of divine causality." This is the real heart of the matter and Brownback gets it exactly wrong.
I don't know a single scientist who believes as a matter of science that divine causality is impossible. I know some who do entirely reject the notion of divine causality as I know some who believe in it, but in neither case are they making a scientific claim and in neither case are their views at all relevant to evolutionary theory. The critical point here is that as far as the science of evolutionary theory is concerned, (1) its working hypothesis that divine causation is not necessary to explain how nature works has so far proved successful and (2) it is impossible, in any case, to either verify or falsify divine causation as we have come to understand what that assertion entails. I note, in passing, that some would claim the assertion is unintelligible or incoherent and, thus, incapable of being either true or false, but we'll leave that for another time.
Let's return to my mechanic friend who does not want to discuss why Miles Davis was one of the all time jazz greats but wants me to understand, instead, why I should get the oil changed regularly in my car and so explains how internal combustion engines work. He describes the pistons moving up in their cylinders, compressing gas vapors, then how the vapors are ignited, causing a controlled explosion pushing those pistons back down and, at the same time others on the crankshaft up, etc. He describes how the gears and such transfer that power from the rotating drive shaft to turn the wheels and so forth and why, therefore, the engine must be properly lubricated. Let's pretend I follow him but insist at every point in his explanation that this all happens because my personal deity, Mechano, makes it happen.
My mechanic, a more philosophically astute fellow than most politicians, points out to me that, while Mechano may indeed be the unseen force behind the workings of engines and motors, he does not need to believe in Mechano's existence to understand or to repair automobile engines. Maybe he does believe in Mechano, but none of the repair manuals and none of his training and experience have mentioned Mechano. In that sense, neither my nor his beliefs one way or the other about Mechano either complement or supplement his work. Whether they complement or supplement his or my life outside the area of auto repairs is another matter. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. In any case, this is the rough equivalent to evolutionary theory vis a vis Sen. Brownback's faith and this is why, again only roughly speaking, efforts to include non-evolutionary accounts of the origin of man in biology class curricula are met with the same sort of reaction I would get if I tried to pressure General Motors to include a chapter on Mechano in their service manuals.
There are any number of other problems with Brownback's column, but I'll just make one final point. He writes, "While no stone should be left unturned in seeking to discover the nature of man’s origins, we can say with conviction that we know with certainty at least part of the outcome. Man was not an accident and reflects an image and likeness unique in the created order."
Whether the final sentence of that claim is true or not, it is worth noting that one can be certain in one's convictions but nonetheless entirely wrong.
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P.S. -- John Derbyshire likens Brownback on evolutionary biology to Paris Hilton on partial differential equations. The Derb goes on, as I did not, to do a nice job of tearing apart the implicit "science" of Brownback's weaseling over "micro" versus "macro" evolution.
9 comments:
Why do even Senators insist on embarrassing themselves and our country with this crap?
(OK, the jokes just write themselves, if you truncate that question a bit.)
I've gone back and forth on whether creationism is just red meat to get the rubes to vote GOP, or whether they actually believe this crap. Kenneth Miller seems to think that the ultimate agenda of the ID/creationist movement is largely social, theocratic, "family values" type stuff. I've met him twice and gotten the same answer to similar questions both times.
If this were only about proclaiming it from the school teacher's desk I'd be inclined to share that assessment. But when you look at the tricks that they want to use to include it in schools, redefining the what science has been understood to mean, "teaching the controversy", etc., it's easy to see how this reworking of science class could be adapted to serve a variety of other political and economic agendas. We could redefine scientific standards and burdens of in areas such as medicine, genetics, environmental science, engineering, etc., and serve any number of interests in the process.
I know quite a few people who believe in creationism literally and for whom, for that matter, their understanding of the Bible as the "inerrant" word of God means for them that any theory or account of the natural history of humanity that does not square with the Biblical account therefore cannot be true. They are quite sincere. Many are also quite intelligent and well educated. I might personally believe that such people are not only scientifically but also philosophically or conceptually confused and misguided; but one can just as easily say that their worldview not only precludes accepting any claims inconsistent with a literal reading of the Bible but also that, sooner or later, someone will manage to reconcile all the disconnects in their favor. Hope, like faith, springs eternal.
Beyond or behind that, there is also the culture war and the sense among an even larger number of people that "taking religion out of the public schools" was a very bad idea, that it was the work of those who oppose "the word of God" (as opposed to those who merely do not believe it as such) and who thus fall somewhere along the theoconservative end of social conservativism. That doesn't make them all theocrats, but it does tend to mean for many of them that religious pluralism means little more than tolerance for non-Christian beliefs and values as they understand them.
As for the politicians, themselves, who knows? Neither intellectual rigor nor intellectual integrity are necessary or even advantageous for a political career, so who knows what most of them really believe or why. Suffice it to say that if a majority of voters would throw their support to any candidate who promised to rid the number line of irrational numbers because [shrug] they weren't "rational," there'd be candidates galore rushing to introduce such legislation.
thoreau,
They actually believe this. I'm not quite sure why one would question that.
D.A.R.,
I think what you and a lot of folks miss is this: that reason and faith (in the sense of revealed religions) are ultimately incompatible. They draw on two very different authorities. This is in part why "liberal religion" which tries to do away with much of the miracles and other like notions associated with "revealed religions" has been such an abject failure and why more orthodox varities of revealed religion fill the pews.
D.A.R.,
Indeed, it also explains why the "Enlightenment Project" is so utterly hostile towards religion, particularly religions which claim any sort of everyday authority.
Grotius, in what sense and how specifically do you think am I missing that point?
D.A.R.,
I already explained that.
DAR,
Here, I'll quote you directly:
If he had gone on to claim that their areas of concern were not complementary but incommensurable or merely that they bore no relationship to each other at all, rather like, say, there is no overlap between questions about auto mechanics and questions about music, I'd gladly agree with him.
It isn't that they are "incommensurable" or that they are of two seperate worlds (a notion that Gould pushed a lot), the questions which they address do indeed overlap a lot (which is why conflict arises between the two worldviews). It is that they are hostile towards one another. There is in fact a real controversy here.
Oh, well, I don't know that I failed to take that into account so much as suggested that it is possible to make sense of religious discourse and its relationship to science in a manner in which the controversy does not arise. You may disagree and depending on the nature of the assertions of the revealed religion it may not be possible in some cases.
Whether there is a real controversy or not depends at least in part, however, on what work a religious assertion or a scientific assertion is intended to do.
Oh, well, I don't know that I failed to take that into account so much as suggested that it is possible to make sense of religious discourse and its relationship to science in a manner in which the controversy does not arise.
One side or the other will have to give since they are based on incompatible ways of thinking. That's why liberal religion constantly retreats in the face of reason's/science's assertions since it takes reason/science seriously. I don't see the reverse happening between reason/science and liberal religion.
Whether there is a real controversy or not depends at least in part, however, on what work a religious assertion or a scientific assertion is intended to do.
I think it depends on which worldview one takes seriously. Which side one takes.
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