Empirical Apologetics
by Steve PetermannThroughout history religious adherents have attempted to defend their positions against other systems and critics. This effort is often called apologetics. Now apologetics can come in many forms depending on the epistemic resources chosen. For example, within a given religious tradition the scope of an apologetic may be restricted to how scripture is interpreted. One finds this in the apologies presented by various "denominations" within a particular religious tradition. Or apologetics may branch out beyond a particular tradition to defend itself against other religious systems, i.e. Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Atheist, etc. When apologetics branches out from its provincial borders, as it has often had to, in order to be successful it must find some common epistemic ground upon which to argue. Otherwise it runs the risk of being defeated due to circular arguments.
Particularly since the Enlightenment religious apologists have had their work cut out for them as they have faced new challenges based on the epistemic resource of empiricism. By empiricism, what I mean is the stance that theories(and claims) must be evaluated and tested against observations instead of relying strictly on intuition or revelation. In this case the common epistemic ground is what can be gleaned from empirical observations. Now at this point it should be noted that religious folk are not the only ones who do apologetics. Those elements who were challenging religious sentiment during this period, particularly the scientific materialists, were engaging in empirical apologetics as well. They looked to empirical resources to support their own particular metaphysical leanings. Is there any doubt that Dawkins, Dennett, Pinker, Weinberg, and others are the modern day counterparts of these earlier materialistic apologists?
In this new arena of empiricism the religious apologists, in order to effective, could not use scripture or ecclesiastic authority as part of their argument. Instead they had to look to empirical observations to support for their claims. And this they have attempted to do. One prominent case in point has involved the biblical literalists, particularly the young earth creationists. Their foray into empiricism to support their position is well documented. However, the observations and their interpretations coming out of that movement have been, by in large, dismissed out of hand by not only the scientific community but also many of the scientifically educated public. Their presentation of empirical findings just hasn't gained any traction outside their own adherents. Very few, if any, prominent scientists lined up in support of their empirical claims. They just weren't taken seriously.
Today, however, the landscape of empirical apologetics has changed dramatically. Recently some of the discoveries of science that can be used to support a religious apologetic cannot be so easily dismissed. The discovery of the incredible fine tuning of the cosmos, friendly to life first comes to mind. It has been so difficult to refute on its own merits that strange apologetic alternatives like "multiverse" theories have sprung up.
Almost concurrently the microscopic exploration of biotic reality has also produced empirical observations that are ripe for religious apologetics. The mind blowing complexity that has been discovered has called into question the bedrock foundation of non-teleological apologetics, Darwinian theory. And these empirical observations are not just coming from religious apologists but from scientists on all sides of the aisle. And this time there are prominent thinkers supporting a teleological position. Has the high ground for apologetics shifted in favor of the teleologists? Perhaps not yet, but at least the landscape has leveled a great deal since earlier attempts. It will be interesting to see how further in-depth observations into cosmic and biotic emergence play out in the apologetics of opposing worldviews.
At this point I think it is also important to ask how far an empirical apologetic can go. Given the nature of empiricism, it can only go so far. Can empirical observations be stretched far enough to provide overwhelming support for a particular religious tradition? Not likely, in my opinion. Perhaps most religious traditions neither expect or even seek that kind of support. At the very least, religious empirical apologists may now be perceived as a significant force to be reckoned with.
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:12 pm
Those that do, do so at their own risk. As a Christian who hopes that ID will prevail in the intellectual community, and who thinks it quite possibly will, I put only a little stock in what it would provide by way of apologetical support for Christianity.
There are too many other potential interpretations of a designing intelligence, for one thing. If the multiverse can be considered a scientific argument against God–as Provine has insisted it is–then anything is possible. Setting that cynicism aside, ID theorists are correct to say that their empirical work does not imply any particular belief–because it just doesn't.
ID's prevailing, if it ever happened, would undeniably alter the plausibility structures of the university and society. It would probably not be so intellectually unfashionable–old-fashioned, rather–to bring up the possibility of a God. There's a significant patch of real estate, though, between that level of acceptance and embracing the living God revealed in Jesus Christ.
Comment by TomG — June 23, 2006 @ 9:12 pm
June 24th, 2006 at 10:57 am
I don't see ID as an apologetic weapon for Christianity. It is, however, a powerful indirect weapon against naturalism/ atheism/ materialism/ scienticism. Christianity does not preclude evolution, but naturalism is _fundamentally_ dependent on Darwinism, (cf. Dawkin's "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.")
If blind watchmaker theory falls, so does the entirety of the naturalistic establishment, already looking very shaky. This, by the way, is I believe the primary motivation for methodical naturalism; were Darwinism to be replaced with another naturalistic theory, the naturalists wouldn't have any of their own comfortable beliefs challenged, but should a non-naturalistic theory (such as ID which posits intelligence as a distinct causal category) replace it then they would have to abandon their own personal naturalism.
Comment by BenK — June 24, 2006 @ 10:57 am
June 24th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
Hi BenK,
"If blind watchmaker theory falls, so does the entirety of the naturalistic establishment, already looking very shaky."
As one who has argued that aliens-not-accounted-for are no less (and no more) intellectually satisfying than a God-not-accounted-for, I disagree.
Comment by Krauze — June 24, 2006 @ 12:59 pm
June 24th, 2006 at 2:20 pm
ID is an "apologetic weapon" for Christianity in the grand tradition of "tearing down strongholds and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God". Not every such action needs to point directly to Jesus in order to serve God's purpose in bringing people to Himself - removing stumbling-blocks on the road to spiritual truth is one worthy work in the mission to lead people to Jesus.
Comment by Douglas — June 24, 2006 @ 2:20 pm
June 24th, 2006 at 3:11 pm
BenK, I very much agree with you. Naturalism is opposed to Christianity. Anything not naturalistic, whether that be the big bang and the strong anthropic principle, or whether it be first life, or whether it be the development of biodiversity — if there is anything not naturalistic about any of it, well naturalism falls. It is an imperitive for the naturalist, therefore, to find a naturalistic explanation for everything. So far the most progressive challenge to naturalism is the strong anthropic principle.
If naturalism were to fall, would Christianity rise to the top of necessity? No! Certainly none of the sciences discussed here would support Christianity over two other major religions, Judaism and Islam. All three of these religions, after all, have effectively the same creation story. All three of these religions suggest a single creator. However, (though I don't know that much about Islamic theology) these religions struggle in that their creation story and ancient history (Noah) are not all that good of a fit with ID. Science, ID style, still challenges the infalibility of the Scripture of these religions.
As far as the two other great religions, Hindu and Buddhist, however, my understanding is that both of these religions are uncomfortable with a big bang. As I undersdand it, from the perspective of these religions the yo-yo theory — big bang followed by big crunch — felt comfortable, but the demise of the big crunch hypothesis has created a universe that is not very compatible with these religions. Alas, these two religions would be reasonably comfortable, I understand, with a multiverse model.
ID = Chritianity? No way! ID supports Christianity? Only poorly. ID is incompatible with naturalism? Oh my yes! Though it is always possible for a worldview to find a way of justifying itself, a successful ID certainly will give naturalism a lot of work in finding a naturalist explanation. However, there are lots of solutions to this problem too: aliens, aliens from other multiverses, etc. If, however, naturalism must conjur up such explanations, it will no longer be seen as the "scientifically supported" worldview. If ID is successful, naturalism will no longer be able to claim science as its holy writ.
Comment by bFast — June 24, 2006 @ 3:11 pm
June 24th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Any being capable of the perfect complexity and efficiency we see in life would be indistinguishable from a god.
Comment by Guts — June 24, 2006 @ 3:31 pm
June 24th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
Hi bFast,
In my view the core principal of an apologetic based on ID is that reality intentionally emerges. By emerges I mean a strong emergence (not a weak one like that of deism). If this is the case it would be compatible with many world religions. Beyond that there could be a remarkable variety of religious frameworks that could build on that. This would certainly be the case for theistic religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam and many varieties of Hinduism. I think that Buddhism supports the notion of purpose in the emergence of reality but it might reject the notion of intentional or intelligence emergence (if there are any Buddhists out there I would appreciate a comment on this).
I also think that ID could be used as a form of natural theology which could extend this core principal into other characterizations of the divine (how ever that is developed).
ID does not, in my opinion, necessarily mean that the term "naturalism" must be abandoned and relegated only to the non-teleologists. Of course, if "naturalism" is used as a religious term to reject divine intent then it would not fit ID. That, however, need not be the case. Divine activity need not be thought of as "interventionist" as it is often framed in the natural/supernatural duality. There are plenty of panentheistic approaches coming from both the West and the East that are not dualistic where the intentional emergence of reality is not interventionist but intrinsic to the processes of reality and life. Thus ID could be thought of as naturalistic while still maintaining the strong intentional emergence of reality.
What an ID apologetic can do is affirm the core intuition that most people on the planet have that life emerges intentionally and purposefully. Given that in this age of science many have viewed this intuition as intellectually weak or nonsensical, that would be a major accomplishment. Although adherents wouldn't necessarily need a confirmation of ID for their beliefs, it can obvert the accusation of fideism.
Comment by Steve Petermann — June 24, 2006 @ 4:35 pm
June 24th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
BenK,
"If, however, naturalism must conjur up such explanations, it will no longer be seen as the "scientifically supported" worldview."
But we already have this situation. The NAS has stated that science doesn't take a position on the supernatural, and even Darwin's
pit bullpuppy has acknowledged that evolution's support for atheism is really just a result of his own "personal feeling".Guts,
"Any being capable of the perfect complexity and efficiency we see in life would be indistinguishable from a god."
I disagree. Most people who believe in God thinks he answers prayers of the type "Please help me come to terms with your decisions for me", that he can remove the effects of sin, and that he underwrites issues of morality. An alien civilization with an advanced knowledge of nanotechnology hardly fits this bill.
Comment by Krauze — June 24, 2006 @ 4:57 pm
June 24th, 2006 at 7:30 pm
Agreed. But such advanced technology would look like magic to us less advanced than those of that hypothetical scenario. Interestingly and quite relevant, we would think so because we could not imagine how it could be reduced to mechanism.
Comment by Guts — June 24, 2006 @ 7:30 pm
June 24th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
Krauze: "Most people who believe in God thinks he answers prayers of the type "Please help me come to terms with your decisions for me", that he can remove the effects of sin, and that he underwrites issues of morality."
This certainly is a valid definition of God-a-la-Bible. However, we are now deep into a discussion of the nature of God/god. I tend to agree with Guts that if we are the product of some individual intelligent agent(s), we would view that agent as a god even if that god maintained no personal response to our pleas. However, if it were discovered that the agent we refer to were a member of a society of peers, that (s)he created our universe as a sciece experiment, unlike the experiments that his peers created, well, at some point we would come to conclude that he is just an advanced being, like ourselves only moreso.
Comment by bFast — June 24, 2006 @ 7:47 pm
June 24th, 2006 at 10:54 pm
This discussion illustrates again the limits of scientific method. Science can lead us to the door of questions about God, but it cannot walk us through to answers. It's the flip side of what has often been said about science and materialism (or naturalism), which is that science can introduce us to the idea of materialism, it can even use it as a methodological principle, but cannot begin to prove its ontological correctness.* We have to approach these metaphysical and theological questions from metaphysical and theological angles.
Nevertheless, Steve is correct in that the landscape for discussion would be changed–and probably is changing already–by new directions in empirical apologetics.
*Setting aside the problems for materialism in philosophy of mind, that is, which tend to make that materialism incoherent.
Comment by TomG — June 24, 2006 @ 10:54 pm
June 24th, 2006 at 11:03 pm
Krauze,
Hmm. I'll concede that ID doesn't, strictly speaking, violate MN; 'intelligence' could be a purely material process. However, I maintain that as ID undermines Darwinism then it undermines philosophical naturalism as a project.
The challenge for the naturalist is to explain all things in terms of purely 'natural' causes; it seems to me that 'natural' in this case is precisely synonymous with 'impersonal'. Darwinism purports to explain at least biological complexity in terms of impersonal processes, and this creates room for a faith that future scientific theories will be able to explain abiogenesis, fine-tuning, and consciousness etc. Take Darwinism away, and philosophical naturalism becomes a position of pure blind faith.
Moreover, while ID doesn't strictly violate MN because we can suppose that a given intelligence might be explicable in purely impersonal terms, ID doesn't seek to develop such terms but rather uses 'intelligence', a decidedly personal concept, as a distinct causal category.
Comment by BenK — June 24, 2006 @ 11:03 pm
June 24th, 2006 at 11:49 pm
Nonetheless, the mere possibility that the question can be answered through empirical means should be taken seriously.
Comment by Guts — June 24, 2006 @ 11:49 pm
June 25th, 2006 at 11:59 am
Guts, I agree with TomG when he says, "This discussion illustrates again the limits of scientific method. Science can lead us to the door of questions about God, but it cannot walk us through to answers." This is where physics has led us, this is where ID leads us. But I beieve that science will not fully discover God.
Comment by bFast — June 25, 2006 @ 11:59 am
June 25th, 2006 at 10:57 pm
This entire conversation makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to me.
What do Christianity, theism, ID, etc., have to gain by blurring the lines between science and theology; by attacking MN and the scientific method; by conflating atheism and science;….
Why does religion need empirical support? Faith is based upon the simple truth that some things are worth believing in even in the absense of evidence to support those claims, right? I would think that the pursuit of empirical support of Faith debases what religion is all about in the first place.
Ha! Not likely.
But at least you don't mince words when you say your views are religious, and not scientific. Why, though, do "religious apologetics" need to falsely claim that evidence for the divine hand of God in biology is within reach, to reaffirm their Faith? Is their Faith so weak as needing validation?
Comment by Daniel — June 25, 2006 @ 10:57 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
Is the faith of scientists so weak as to need validation? What about athiests, where does their faith obtain its validation?
Comment by Mung — June 26, 2006 @ 2:27 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
Mung:
Huh?!?!
Either you're misusing the word faith (science has nothing to say for or against articles of Faith) and are once again conflating science and religion, or you must have meant atheists instead of scientists - because yes, scientific theories require empirical data and validation. That's what makes them scientific.
Faith doesn't require validation.
Faith is built upon the view that some things in this world are simply worth believing in, regardless of whether they're scientific or demonstrably valid - this is true for atheism just as much as theism. Some people think that this includes the belief in a deity among other articles of Faith, others don't.
Comment by Daniel — June 26, 2006 @ 2:40 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 10:03 pm
It would be a strange creature who could believe something for no reason at all; I have never yet met such a person. Your definition of faith is ridiculous.
Moreover your understanding of the relationship between atheism and science is naive. Darwin avoided using the word 'evolution' in the first five editions of the Origin because of the anti-religious connotations the word had already attracted; prior to darwin evolutionary ideas (ridiculed by the best biologists of the era) were being advanced by atheists and political radicals as a means of undermining what they saw as the oppressive cultural influence of the church.
Have a look at the wikipedia article.
In any case, arguing that origins theories have no philosophical implications seems obtuse at best and willfully deceitful at worst. Do you really believe Darwin's popularizers like T.H. Huxely and Herbert Spencer then, or Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennet now, have a purely dispassionate scholars' interest in the subject?
Comment by BenK — June 26, 2006 @ 10:03 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Yet many people believe in specific claims on nothing more than 'because my reverend or pastor or the Bible says so.' Those people would call such beliefs Faith, yet I wouldn't call that much of a reason at all.
Personally, I'd rather having those sources explain to me why such beliefs are important, not that it is 'just so.'
For the wiki citation, how objective is the information in that article? (we all know that wiki can be biased depending upon who's maintaining the individual site)
However, that Darwin's theory was a divergence from Paley's Watchmaker thesis, which Darwin admired greatly (esp. pre-Beagle), and that he was arguing against the previous Creationist paradigm of "centers of creation" is nothing new. I won't claim to know much about the reactions and discussions that immediately preceded and followed release of Origin of Species, but even if Darwin's writing was influenced by trying to be delicate when criticizing the Creationist paradigm, what of it?
At what point was Darwin an atheist or political radical? He was a devout Christian and admirer of Paley right up until a few months following the Beagle voyage, when trying to rationalize the expansive radiative adaptations in the animal specimens he brought back from the Galapagos islands, as he not?
When did I argue that theories had zero philosophical implications? I'm saying that Darwin proposed his theory on new evidence unexplainable by "Centers of Creation," not because of political motivation.
Maybe they do. But they're not Darwin himself, nor are they me, nor are they conducting research on atheism - they're populizers, just as you said. Big deal.
Comment by Daniel — June 27, 2006 @ 12:09 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
Coming back to this thought:
… I wonder, if you're going to hold me accountable for what Dawkins, Dennet, et al. have said, can I hold you accountable for what Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and others like them have said about science in the past?
Comment by Daniel — June 27, 2006 @ 1:56 pm
June 28th, 2006 at 2:43 am
Bull. I'm sorry, the human mind simply doesn't work that way. All of us accept some ideas on the basis of authority, but we don't arbitrarily assign authority to people or texts at random.
Darwin himself wasn't. Darwin was an eminently respectable Shropshire gentleman. But from before the publication of the Origin all the way through the history of the idea, evolution has been championed by vocal critics of organised religion.
You ask why theists would 'blur the lines between science and theology'. My point is simply that in the area of origins theory no such line exists. It did not exist for prominent darwinists like Spencer and Huxely, it does not exist for prominent Darwinists like Dawkins and Dennet, (it did not exist for Darwin either, really - the development of his own theological and scientific views are deeply intertwined).
I say again, Christianity is not incompatible with evolution per se, unless you maintain that the opening chapter of Genesis is intended to be read as a literal acount of the creation (an idea apparently rejected by Augustine and Aquinas, the great classical and medieval theologians of western christianity), but the whole Atheistic project is deeply enmeshed in Darwinism (ala Dawkins 'Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist…'). The attraction for an assault on Darwinism is not, for the theist, that it is a primarily apologetic tool but rather an assualt on the atheistic worldview so prominent in the academy.
Comment by BenK — June 28, 2006 @ 2:43 am
June 28th, 2006 at 9:50 am
I'm not the one equivocating over faith and Faith. That's you. Why do you do it? Scientists have little f faith whereas religion has big F Faith and that's how we tell science from religion? And science can say nothing about either?
Comment by Mung — June 28, 2006 @ 9:50 am
June 28th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
BenK -
Yes, we all accept a certain amount on mere authority, but some do more than others. And, as I was arguing, this seems to happen frequently between poorly educated folks and their clergy - from the recruitment at churches for the KKK during the civil rights' era, to the references to Bush in MegaChurches of the Bible-belt.
Now, don't mistake me though, there are a LOT of more intelligent and thoughtful religious folks out there, but blind agreement with clergy does happen in some congregations, to greater or lesser extents.
If Darwin wasn't influenced by them, and there are legitimate "gentleman" scientists out there working on evolutionary biology as science (i.e. not as atheism), what does it matter? Why conflate science with atheism? Your apparent answer to that question:
Interesting point, and yes, I suppose that's what calling some views "theistic evolution" refer to. Yet even for such "TE"-ers, they can make a distinction between their philosophical views on origins of life, etc., and the more empirically studied topics in biology. I would argue that many (most?) IDers fail to make such a distinction, thus blurring the lines between science and theology (paraphrasing my earlier comments). On the other hand, the prominent Darwinists you mention could perhaps be found guilty of blurring the lines between their atheistic philosophy and empirical biology.
Very good points - thank you for reminding me of them.
Mung -
Huh? I wasn't aware that we had made a distinction between "faith" and "Faith," I think I was using the caps version the entire time (sorry if I slipped up once or twice), referring to the higher philosophical or theological Truth that religion lays claim to. But since you brought it up, I'm not sure what you mean by science having "faith" - science has demonstratable facts, accepted natural laws, and rigorously tested theories, but none of it is taken on faith as far as I can see. Unless, maybe, you're equating "faith" with the acceptance of reasonable assumptions, which necessarily plays a part in deductive reasoning.
Comment by Daniel — June 28, 2006 @ 12:09 pm