Naturalistic Evolutionism and ID

Intelligent Design’s Struggle Against Naturalism

In addition to the four forms of creationism outlined above, the ideas of Intelligent Design have also been formed at least partly as a reaction against the perceived use of science as a weapon for atheism. ID’s vision is to unite all opponents of naturalistic evolutionism in

69 Pigliucci & Müller 2010. I will discuss the new developments and the structure of evolutionary theory further in chapter 6.2.

70 See e.g. the arguments of Behe 2007a and Behe’s autobiographical essay Behe 2006b. The relation of ID to different parts of evolutionary theory will be further discussed in chapter five.

71 Pennock 1991, chapter 1, Scott 1999, Scott 2004 and Ross 2005 all represent different attempts to map out the relationships between the varieties of creationism analysed in this chapter. Pennock and Scott present a model where the different views form a continuum based on how literalistically the Bible is read, whereas Ross argues that the relationships should be mapped out using more factors than used by Scott and Pennock, and that when this is done, the relationships of the views are far more complex than a simple continuum. For example, Old Earth -creationists and theistic evolutionists can also read the Bible literally. Furthermore, there is substantial variety within each of the viewpoints.

defence of a minimalistic idea of design. Those living inside ID’s “big tent” may disagree about particulars, but at least agree on the design argument and about opposing atheistic interpretations of science.⁷²

It seems that the Dawkinsian interpretation of Darwinian evolution is actually one of the major influences behind the emergence of ID theory.⁷³ Richard Dawkins’ book “The Blind Watchmaker: How the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without a Designer” (1986), in which Dawkins argues that the Darwinian theory of evolution supports atheism, is quoted prominently in many major ID works.⁷⁴ Phillip Johnson, the early leading visionary of ID, is reported to have begun formulating his new views on evolution after reading Dawkins’ Blind Watchmaker and Michael Denton’s Evolution together. After reading these works, Johnson was convinced that the creation-evolution debate had enormous implications for our worldviews and broader culture. He was also convinced that Dawkins’ naturalistic view was scientifically, philosophically and theologically problematic.⁷⁵ So, opposing the atheistic interpretation of evolution was part of the initial motivation of ID.

However, Dawkins’ prominence in the ID theorists’ works also reflects the public prominence of Dawkins’ argumentation. Dawkins’ Blind Watchmaker remains one of the most in-depth defences of the capability of evolution to explain the origin of complex biological adaptations like the human eye, and his arguments on this point are referenced even in some current textbooks of evolutionary biology.⁷⁶ The ID theorists are therefore not unreasonable to refer to Dawkins’ highly influential arguments on the central issue of the capability of the Darwinian mechanism to explain all of life’s complexity without design. However, as I will argue in more detail in chapter 6, there are also many other approaches to evolutionary biology besides Dawkins’ views.

It is also important to note that Dawkins’ anti-religious interpretation of evolutionary theory and his understanding of the mechanisms of evolution are not shared by all. Thus theologian Conor Cunningham argues in his book Darwin’s Pious Idea (2006) that the Dawkinsian new atheism and Intelligent Design both misunderstand evolution in just the same ways and fail to appreciate the true depth and complexity of evolutionary theory, which is congenial to a theistic interpretation.

Defining Naturalism

The meaning of the term “naturalism” has no very precise meaning in modern philosophy – there are many varieties of naturalists. However, the central meaning of the term derives

72 Nelson 2002, Giberson & Yerxa 2002, Numbers 2006, Johnson 2000, Dembski 2005c, Woodward 2003.

73 As Jonathan Loesberger (2007, 107-108) has also argued.

74 E.g. Johnson 1991, Behe 2006a, Dembski 2001, Meyer 2010.

75 Woodward 2003. William Dembski has also admitted that Dawkins was a central influence in his formulation of the concept of “specified complexity.” See the interview in Barham 2012.

76 E.g. Freeman & Herron (2007, 98-99).

from the work of self-proclaimed naturalistic philosophers such as John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, Sidney Hook and Roy Wood Sellars. The broad idea of naturalism is to align philosophy closely with science. The most important method for understanding the natural world is thought to be science, and it is believed that there is nothing outside of nature. It is further argued that the function of philosophy is not to construct grand metaphysical theories without science, but to support science in doing its job.⁷⁷

What then is a naturalistic view of evolution? Charley Hardwick gives the following five-point definition of naturalism:

(1) Outside of nature, which includes humans and their cultural creations, there is nothing.

(2) It follows from (1) that nature is self-originating.

(3) Since there is nothing beyond nature, there can be no overarching purpose or goal that would give any lasting meaning to the universe.

(4) There is no such thing as the “soul”, and no reasonable prospect of conscious human survival beyond death.

(5) The emergence of life and mind in evolution was accidental and unintended.⁷⁸ John Haught argues that scientific naturalism additionally includes the following two points:

(6) Every natural event is itself a product of other natural events. Since there is no divine cause, all causes are purely natural causes, in principle accessible to scientific comprehension.

(7) All the various features of living beings, including humans, can be explained ultimately in evolutionary, specifically Darwinian, terms. This belief may be called

“evolutionary naturalism”.⁷⁹

In the above definitions, “nature” is not defined except by its negation: what is not considered natural. Naturalism is understood to centrally include the denial of the existence of God and divine purposes in nature. However, beyond this point, naturalism includes quite a broad variety of conceptions of what is “natural”. A naturalistic definition of what exists might be that everything that exists is composed of the “stuff described by chemists in the periodic table of the elements”, though even more elementary levels can of course be studied.⁸⁰ However, this is still quite a vague description of what nature contains, especially as many naturalists allow for emergence of properties whose best description seems to more than just chemistry, such as consciousness.⁸¹

77 Papineau 2009; see also Ritchie 2008 for an overview of varieties of naturalism.

78 Hardwick 1996, 5-6; quoted in Haught 2009, 247.

79 Haught 2009, 247.

80 Drees 2006.

81 Though naturalism is often linked with physicalism, the belief that physical stuff is all that exists is not shared by all naturalists. Many also believe that non-physical properties can emerge through physical processes, but ultimately these non-physical properties are of course still dependent on physics. (See Ritschie 2008, chapter 6).

An important rough division can be made within naturalism into soft naturalism and hard, eliminative naturalism. A soft naturalist can accept the reality of mind and purpose, and allow for the emergence of strata of reality which are not reducible to physics and chemistry. A soft naturalist need not think that reductive evolutionary explanations for all of human life can be found. Hard, eliminative naturalists argue that our common beliefs about consciousness are merely “folk psychology” that will in time be replaced with a naturalistic understanding, in which terms such as intention and consciousness are not mentioned.⁸² Goetz and Taliaferro have argued that what the central unifying factor of the varieties of naturalism is actually atheism: what is natural is defined in opposition to belief in God.⁸³ This is perhaps simplistic, because naturalism would seem to (as Haught defines it) also include the denial of the soul and immortality after death. However, the denial of God or any supernatural reality is indeed a central factor in naturalism.

Based on this understanding, naturalistic evolution means simply evolution which can be understood without God. In theory, it is thus possible for a naturalist to believe that evolution was intelligently designed, as long as the designer was not God. For example, one could argue that the first living life form was designed by aliens, or even that the laws of nature we study were engineered by a race of extra-dimensional space aliens. These views would allow a naturalist to support a form of ID. Presumably, this would still be naturalism, as long as these intelligent beings would themselves have evolved from simpler, non-conscious precursors. However, the naturalists in the debate on ID prefer less fanciful explanations of the order of nature in terms of non-purposeful mechanisms. In any case, within naturalism, intelligence and purpose only emerge into the universe only after a long evolution – if their existence even in humans is admitted as real.⁸⁴

Naturalistic evolution can also mean the view that evolutionary biology is positively in conflict with religious beliefs. Even if evolutionary biology is logically compatible with the existence of a Creator, it can be argued that it makes some religious doctrines less credible.

The following are examples of proposed conflicts: (1) Contradictions between evolutionary biology and the literalistic, historical reading of Genesis. For example, according to standard Darwinian theory there was always a larger population of early humans, whereas in Genesis human beings can be traced back to one pair of humans. The ID theorists mostly avoid

The definition of nature is problematic. Human conceptions of what nature is have shifted through history, with different notions of nature being socially constructed. (McGrath 2001) A modern naturalist might say that nature is composed of matter and energy, but the boundaries of these concepts have shifted through their history.

Cunningham (2010, chapter 6) argues that if even a human mind can be just a clump of matter and energy, this stretches the concepts of matter and energy to the breaking point. Furthermore, if nature means all of reality as well as the foundations of reality, then that could in principle also include God, souls and angels. One could even argue that on the theistic understanding, God´s existence is natural, and the world’s existence is supernatural.

82 A naturalist can thus accept that reality can be studied on many different levels, each with its own appropriate methodology and concepts. For example, biology need not be reduced to physics or psychology to biology.

Rather, a naturalist can accept a stratified conception of reality (Bhaskar 1979). For an analysis of the many varieties of naturalism, see Ritchie 2008. For a defence of eliminative naturalism, see Churchland 2007.

83 Goetz & Taliaferro 2008.

84 Goetz & Taliaferro 2008.

getting into this discussion.⁸⁵ (2) Conflicts between Christian doctrine and the evolutionary account of human history. For example, it has been argued that Darwinian evolutionary biology may require changes to the doctrine of original sin.⁸⁶ (3) Conflicts between evolutionary explanations of religious belief and religious explanations of religious belief. If the cognitive faculties which produce religious beliefs are produced by evolution for some benefit other than creating true beliefs, does this mean we have no reason to trust in our faculties?⁸⁷ (4) Conflicts between traditional Christian morality and attempts to infer ethical principles from Darwinism, such as social Darwinism. Many in the ID community consider this to be a significant conflict.⁸⁸ (5) Conflicts between the Darwinian worldview and Christian doctrine. Michael Ruse argues that if we already accept naturalism in the case of evolutionary history, we should also be inclined to seek naturalistic (non-miraculous) explanations for things like the disciples’ experiences of the risen Jesus.⁸⁹ These are questions about the most credible philosophical interpretation of Darwinian evolutionary biology. (6) The conflict between Darwinian explanations of biological complexity and the theological idea that God has purposefully designed the cosmos and life the universe as designed.⁹⁰ Darwinism is though to reveal a universe without purpose, ruled over by uncaring chance and necessity rather than loving divine providence. This final proposed conflict is the most central in the debate on Intelligent Design, and the one that the present work spends the most time analysing. However, the moral significance of the issues is also in the background of ID’s argumentation.

Intelligent Design’s Moral and Cultural Critique of Naturalism

The importance of religious, cultural and political motivations for ID’s design argument is a contentious issue. Both critics and defenders of ID accept that the ID theorists do have moral and cultural motivations. Critics of ID tend to argue that these motivations distort the ID theorists’ capability to evaluate scientific facts in a trustworthy manner.⁹¹ In contrast,

85 On the conflicts between creationism and evolutionism, see Numbers 2006 and Ratzsch 1996.

86 Ruse 2003.

87 For critique of this idea, see Visala 2011 and Leech & Visala 2011.

88 For example, the point is argued in the books Moral Darwinism (Wiker 2002) and Darwin Day in America (West 2007). I will analyse this discussion in some more detail in chapter 8.3.

89 Ruse 2003.

90 E.g. Dawkins 1991.

91 The point of the critics such as Forrest and Gross (2004) is not that morality in itself is a bad thing for a scientist to have. Some morality is essential to science. For example, scientists should value the scientific project, value truth, co-operate with other humans and be able to admit their mistakes (Stenmark 2004, chapter 3; see also chapters 8 and 9 for discussion of ideological science). Saying that a scientist has moral motivations does not therefore imply that this scientist is not a good scientist. The argument of the critics is rather that the ID movement’s specific moral and religious motivations are not congenial to science, because these moral and religious motivations are thought to direct the ID theorists away from the truth. Preserving a baseless religious viewpoint about the world and advancing its influence politically are thought to be more important motivations

defenders of ID argue that seeking the truth is their primary moral motivation. The religious and cultural importance of the issues merely gives the ID proponents additional moral energy to spend time studying and debating the issues.⁹² Thus Johnson argues that ID wants to free “science from the thought control of a materialist ideology that forbids scientists to follow the evidence”.⁹³ The reconciliation of faith and reason is also acknowledged to be an important cultural purpose of Intelligent Design. Thus Stephen C. Meyer argues that “the theory of intelligent design generates both excitement and loathing because, in additin to providing a compelling explanation of scientific facts, it holds out the promise of help in integrating two things of supreme importance – science and faith – that have long been seen as at odds.”⁹⁴ Both of these purposes are broadly shared also by defenders of theistic natural theology and researchers in the science and religion community, but the means used are very different.⁹⁵

There is also a theistic argument, the moral argument, which claims that the existence of God has great moral importance at the level of moral ontology. If there is no God, it is claimed, then good and evil are not objective realities, but rather simply the subjective opinions and feelings of individuals and societies. If there is no good Creator who has designed our universe purposefully, then there is no objective purpose to our lives which has been set from the outside. Rather, we must create our own purposes.⁹⁶ Before the ID movement, literalistic and progressive creationists have already emphasized the moral importance of the creation-evolution debate for decades.⁹⁷

Though most of the ID literature emphasizes the importance of science and philosophy, the importance of morality and religious reasons is also prominently present in several

of ID than the search for the truth. It may be that this critique assumes the falsity of the ID theorists’ religion. If their religion were true, then presumably commitment to it would not lead them away from the truth.

92 E.g. Menuge 2003.

93 Johnson 2006, 317. According to Johnson, it is the naturalists who are bound by their metaphysics, since materialistic scientism requires a wholly naturalistic story of creation. In contrast, the theism of the ID theorists allows them to consider the evidence more openly. I will come back to this theme in chapters 3.4 and 3.5.

94 Meyer 2013, 513.

95 Meyer (2013, 513) approvingly quotes Whitehead's statement: “When we consider what religion is for mankind and what science is, it is no exaggeration to say that the future course of history depends oupon the decision of this generation as to the relations between them.” (Whitehead 1926, 260).

96 There are several ways of answering this problem. First (1), the atheist could change his position and become a theist. If an atheist believes both in the existence of objective morality and that objective morality requires God, then this logically leads to theism. On this view, if one does not want to give up objective morality, one must become a theist. Second (2), the atheist could argue that objective morality does not require the existence of God, but that it can be grounded in something else – Platonic universals, perhaps. Third (3), the atheist could recognize the subjective nature of morality, but argue that this makes no practical difference. All sides of the debate typically agree that atheists can behave morally even if they do not believe in God; the main issue is the logical consistency of atheists rather than their morality. The morality of the atheists is actually presupposed by the argument – the atheist is assumed to seek “good” and evaluate behavior in the light of what he believes to be good. Fourth (4), the atheist could admit that we indeed cannot have morality without God and that this is indeed problematic for our behavior, but that the desirability of the existence of God does not make it true. Fifth (5), the atheist could admit that we cannot have morality without God and celebrate this as a liberating license to do whatever one wishes. So, a multitude of different attitudes and philosophical responses is possible. See further King & Garcia (ed) 2009.

97 For some examples, see Numbers 2006, chapters 4 and 5.

works. Phillip Johnsons’s works Reason in the Balance (1995) and The Wedge of Truth (2001) begin and end by emphasizing the religious and moral significance of the debate on evolution. For Johnson, our culture’s creation myths determine the standard reasoning which our culture applies to “all questions of importance.”⁹⁸ The theistic creation story grounds belief in the purposiveness of our existence and the objectivity of morality, while naturalistic Darwinism undermines both.⁹⁹ In Johnson’s strategy for changing culture, Intelligent Design functions as a “wedge of truth” which shows the baselessness of materialistic scientism and thus makes room for broader conceptions of rationality. This in turn will make it possible (Johnson hopes) for Western culture to return to belief in objective morality and to approach believing again in the objective truth of the Biblical revelation.¹⁰⁰ For Johnson, Darwinism is thus a worldview and a way of thought, not just a scientific theory. He argues that Dennett and Dawkins give the correct interpretation of evolution, where Darwinian evolution is seen as the universal acid which eats through traditional beliefs, and (if true) as the logical starting point of understanding all of life and culture.¹⁰¹ Johnson’s views are highly significant for the ID movement as a whole, since Johnson is universally regarded as the central visionary and leader of the ID movement in the 1990’s.¹⁰²

works. Phillip Johnsons’s works Reason in the Balance (1995) and The Wedge of Truth (2001) begin and end by emphasizing the religious and moral significance of the debate on evolution. For Johnson, our culture’s creation myths determine the standard reasoning which our culture applies to “all questions of importance.”⁹⁸ The theistic creation story grounds belief in the purposiveness of our existence and the objectivity of morality, while naturalistic Darwinism undermines both.⁹⁹ In Johnson’s strategy for changing culture, Intelligent Design functions as a “wedge of truth” which shows the baselessness of materialistic scientism and thus makes room for broader conceptions of rationality. This in turn will make it possible (Johnson hopes) for Western culture to return to belief in objective morality and to approach believing again in the objective truth of the Biblical revelation.¹⁰⁰ For Johnson, Darwinism is thus a worldview and a way of thought, not just a scientific theory. He argues that Dennett and Dawkins give the correct interpretation of evolution, where Darwinian evolution is seen as the universal acid which eats through traditional beliefs, and (if true) as the logical starting point of understanding all of life and culture.¹⁰¹ Johnson’s views are highly significant for the ID movement as a whole, since Johnson is universally regarded as the central visionary and leader of the ID movement in the 1990’s.¹⁰²