One Hand Clapping

Musings theological

A Muslim Reformation barely brewing?
Intelligent Design or not
God and tsunamis

The NYT ran a story about how moderate Muslim scholars and intellectuals are promoting the view "that Muslims will untangle their faith from violence committed in its name only by reappraising sacred texts that are twisted by terrorists." What makes this item real news is that the scholars concerned are living in the Middle East. Islamic extremism has come under attack by Muslims living the the West almost since 9/11, a fact not well covered by American media, and about which I wrote a few essays (see here).

Also, the scholars' goal to reappraise sacred texts, including the Quran, is daring. In Islam, the Quran occupies the same theological space as Christ does in Christianity. There is no superior revelation of Allah in Islam than Quran.

Unfortunately, the NYT article is more than two weeks old and thus archived. But the first several paragraphs can be read and will give you the gist of the story.

The Intelligent Design debate continues. I have searched for a site that dispassionately defines the idea of ID but all I have found are polemic sites on one side or the other. So allow me to very briefly define what ID is, as I understand it.

ID is the proposal that the complexity of the universe and of earth's creatures cannot be explained by random processes. Hence, IDers (as ID's proponents are sometimes called), say that it is reasonable to posit that creation was designed by a power outside nature.

Now, I happen to believe that, but I also know that ID is not science. At best, Intelligent Design is a conclusion from science. The postulate of a Creator of nature is a non-scientific postulate.

Rand Simberg has an excellent post about this. However, Rand errs slightly when he says that ID may be taught in schools, but not in a science class. Evolution (and the debate always come down to evolution) is science only up to its own limiting point - which is when evolutionists claim randomness explains complexity and species generation. That is as much an ideological or philosophical claim as ID.

There cannot be a science of randomness, for science depends on repeatability. The conclusion that randomness explains the beginning and history of life is not really a scientific conclusion. It is one thing, and a properly scientific thing, to say that here are processes that seem to explain the evolution of species. But it is not science to say witgh finality that no intentionality was involved. The exclusion of intentionality is not a scientific conclusion, but an ideological one.

Unlike many of my colleagues, I am quite comfortable with the theory of evolution and have rejected the argument that evolution is faulty because it's "just a theory." As Rand points out, even the best science is, at bottom, "just a theory."

Rand also has this excellent point:

They seem to think that if science doesn't validate their faith, then their faith is somehow thereby weakened, and that they must fight for its acceptance in that realm.

In the 1995, Gerd Lüdemann, a German New Testament scholar, wrote, What Really Happened to Jesus (Louisville: John Knox Press). In it, he claimed to have developed a "scientific" explanation for Jesus's resurrection and surprise! it didn't happen. He drew this conclusion because he a priori excluded any account of Christ's post-burial appearances that were not amenable to scientific methodology. Chained to a scientific materialist world view, Ludemann could not envision God acting in any of the apostles’ experiences, and so he denied it could have been possible. But what Ludemann never explained is why I should be the slightest bit interested in a "scientific" explanation of Christ's resurreection in the first place. Science is a very powerful, reliable epistemology, but not the only valid one.

Update: David Mobley, a bona fide physicist (postdoctoral researcher in biophysics), comments at some length on Rand's post. He says that Rand's explanation of the falsifiability of scientific theories is not quite right. It is not true, says David, that all scientific theories are falsifiable. The Big Bang theory, for example, is not falsifiable, yet astrophysicists worldwide accept its validity.

I'd like to know why Simberg and Lindgren think the theory of evolution itself is falsifiable, while intelligent design is not. ... Let's consider the idea that we've evolved over time as the result of gradual changes which can eventually take something like a fish to become something like a human. How is that falsifiable? Particularly, what experiment could one do that would indicate that this is NOT true? ...

When it comes to the idea that all the species we see around us evolved from something like a bacteria, or many of the species or genera we see around us were designed by an intelligent creator, the theory of evolution and Intelligent Design are at least equally unfalsifiable. Certainly, microevolution is much more falsifiable -- and has indeed been confirmed in some cases -- but that's not what Intelligent Design is dealing with.

Speaking of God, Norm Geras offered "Perspectives on the calamity" a couple of days ago regarding the Indian Ocean tsunami. The issue of the divine presence (or absence) in tragedy is what theologians call theodicy, literally "the justice of God." It is the most difficult problem of Christian theology (though not, ironically, of religions of the East, where the tsunami hit). Anyway, I wrote about this issue before, based on the book of Job. Here are the links:

My Buddy God

God on Trial

God Answers

A warning, though: Job is an incomplete examination of the theological problem of suffering, although it is truly profound. More on this later, I hope.

Update: Dr. Edward Spence, a philosopher at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University, Australia, has a piece in the Syndney Morning Herald examining the theodical issues of the tsunami as well as a brief overview of historical theodicy thought.

[T]he problem of evil is an existential problem that confronts our own individual mortality and vulnerability to unknown and unexpected disasters.

Ultimately, heartfelt tears shed in earnest and with compassion, with offerings of charity for those who have suffered, are more meaningful than any theological and philosophical treatise on the problem of evil. Especially at Christmas when, according to the gospels, love is the single core message.

Perhaps this is the essence, if the legend is true, of what God learnt from us when He walked and suffered as a man among us. Ultimately, the problem of evil confronts us not as a puzzle to be solved but as a mystery to be experienced. And as Jesus and Plato before him indicated, the meaning of the mystery of life can be found only by experiencing another great mystery - the mystery of love.

Which is not far from what Job teaches, too.

by Donald Sensing, 12/30/2004 03:50:59 PM. Permalink |

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