Some Great Readings on the Problem of Evil

The New Atlantis has just posted a very interesting article from their latest issue about Charles Darwin's personal sensitivity to the problem of evil and suffering in nature, and how it influenced his views on evolution. It is entitled "Darwin's World of Pain and Wonder." Excellent. I recommend it highly.

It calls to mind an excellent book I read on the same subject not long ago, entitled "Darwin's God" by Cornelius Hunter, about which I wrote some thoughts at the time.

Another very interesting article on evil I found via Wikipedia. It is by a Catholic theologian, explaining the theodicies, or defenses of God against evil and suffering, offered by Saints Augustine and Ireneaus. I found it interesting because it acknowledges how many puzzling issues remain for the believer even today. Of course, the author attempts to resolve some of those problems in his theory of "salvation." Which I will continue reading with interest.

"Darwin's God" Raises Troubling Questions for All

Darwin's God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil

I have finally completed Darwin's God by Cornelius Hunter. A very interesting read. Basically, quoting from the writings of Darwin and his disciples, Hunter argues that Darwinism is a kind of theodicy. The reason: nature is too violent and wasteful to attribute to God, so the scientists and other thinkers of the Victorian age attributed such imperfection to the workings of secondary causes.

Hunter identifies this as a kind of gnosticism, because of its dualistic overtones. The imperfections of the material order must remain separated from the perfection of the spiritual.

Such labelling sounds ominous, as if a great heresy has resurfaced, but it simply underscores the point that Christianity, in whatever age, must struggle with how the problem of evil affects the credibility of its claims about the benevolence of the Creator.

(People today are powerfully aware of evil in all its forms, from natural evil to the evil sometimes manifested in the workings of the church. See this interesting article from Christianity Today on Starbucks Spirituality, which highlights the level of distrust Christians face from historically conscious, cosmopolitan coffee lovers.)

Anyway, getting back to the book, quoting from "The Descent of Man," Hunter notes that Darwin's stated primary objective was to disprove the theory of "special creation" of each and every species by God. Secondarily he was out to prove the theory of natural selection.

Read or listen to any number of Darwinists, such as Richard Dawkins, and you will find repeated references to God, and attempts to discredit theories of special divine creation. Abstain from references to God, Hunter argues, all of the guesswork and speculation about vestigial organs, homologies, etc. would be glaring, and would never be accepted as "scientific."

Indeed, when many Darwinists argue that the theory is a "fact," what they mean is their interpretation of certain pieces of the physical record apparently falsify a particular account of creation. This despite the fact, as Hunter points out amply, that almost nothing in the physical record can falsify Darwinism. What Karl Popper would say is the mark of pseudo-science.

Indeed, the handwriting was on the wall when Darwin said about the complexity of the human eye that all he needed was to be able to conceive of a possible way, rather than show actual proof for, an evolution from less complex structures, and you see evidence of something other than science taking place here.

(My interpretation of this is that once "supernaturalism" is discarded as falsified by any one of millions of potential physical phenomena, a gestalt shift takes place and there is no choice but to interpret all physical phenomena through the lens of naturalism.)

This is exactly what I noted was troubling to me in a comment by eminent physicist Leonard Susskind's on Fora.tv, who blithely accepted such a speculative approach in response to questions about Paley's Watchmaker analogy and the "irreducible complexity" argument put forward by the "Intelligent Design" camp.

What do I take away from this work? An interesting, historically rich overview of Darwinism as attempted falsification of another theory, and/or a theodicy, full of insights into how the problem of evil vexed the Victorians.

But more importantly, Hunter's book, by its omission, painfully underscores the most pressing issue of modern Christianity. For if, as Hunter argues, Darwinism simply attempts to "falsify" one particular account of creation popular in a particular time, what is the alternative, more rational theory of creation, which can overcome the link between creation's irrationality and the Creator, without drifting into heretical dualism? Hunter doesn't answer that question.

Can anyone?

Darwin, God and Evil

If you look through the content of this blog, you might say that I am "vexed" by the question of God and evil. Funny then, that I happened to stumble across Darwin's God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil by Cornelius G. Hunter.

It's a fascinating read, about non-scientific influences upon the theory of evolution - particularly, the theological assumptions about what God would and would not do in the often violent, bloody world of nature.

These assumptions, Hunter argues, stand behind the science of Darwinism, which Hunter also argues, is quite "speculative" in the areas of phylogeny, homology, molecular clocks, etc.

Although "Darwin's God" is accessible, it's not exactly light summer reading. That's okay -- except for my brief Tom Clancy jag back in college and grad school, I've never been much for that anyway.

I'll have more to say about this book once I've finished it off.

A Philosophically Rich Slice of Web Television

Here is a marvelous video discussion on Fora.Tv with Leonard Susskind, one of the fathers of "String Theory." What will you learn from it? Some very interesting ideas from physics:

• That when you get to the "basement" of the world as Susskind calls it, you find material reality evaporating into numbers.
• That at the bottom of everything you discover multiple dimensions of reality, maybe up to 11, which makes you wonder why we only have three (or four!).
• The "multiverse" theory of the universe, which suggests that our world is but one emanation from the multiple potentialities that those basement numbers possess.

Also contained in this rich discussion is insight into the origins of the "Intelligent Design" theory, as championed these days by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, and its intellectual roots in philosopher William Paley's "watchmaker" argument for God. It states that basically some things are so complex (such as the "eye") as to not be reducible to bits of matter coming together randomly a la evolution.

Susskind takes issue with Intelligent Design. Call it his "argument from intellectual curiosity." He doesn't deny the existence of God. But, basically, he won't stop looking to reduce things, because he is naturally curious, and perhaps because there is a risk to science in doing so.

I can completely respect his point of view. He strikes me as intellectually honest. However, listen carefully as he describes the Darwinists' refutation of intelligent design of the eye. It sounds not so much as a description, but as enormous guesswork. See # 16, Q2. There is something odd about accepting that much guesswork as "satisfactory."

All in all, however, this is a fantastic presentation, and a demonstration of the cultural potential of the Web. Congratulations to ForaTv for capturing it.

A Follow Up Thought on Mr. Jobs' Speech

One additional thought on my last item, the video from Steve Jobs at Stanford. Clearly, he believes that there is an underlying purpose for his life. He is also willing to consider that some choices are not accidents, but part of a plan. Such as, for example, his choice of a typography course after he had "dropped in" on the college he dropped out of.

Because he enjoys remarkable goodwill with the students as an icon of creativity and inventiveness, it seems unlikely that he will draw the ire of any skeptics who doubt the existence of providence and wonder why he is turning these impressionable young minds into believers in the unseen forces of reality. These skeptics have bigger, and easier fundamentalist fish to fry. In other words, they might also be cowards.

The skeptic Michael Shermer said we are "pattern seeking beings" in the video I posted below. Seeking a pattern, he argues, must be restricted to the observable world of science.

While I have become much more suspicious of superstitious thinking about seeing "signs" in your life, I find it unsurprising how deep the hunger is to see such signs. The concern here is not with Darwinian survival, since purpose suggests finality. The concern is with meaning.

Try to deliberately not look for patterns in your life, as I have now, for a while. It's a remarkably difficult thing to do. Maybe you're in a casual habit of doing it yourself. Stop yourself for a while and see what happens.

As a young person, I looked for signs in everything, concerning my career, my romantic relationships, and more. I have stopped looking for signs in these areas because 1) I was often disappointed, and 2) (perhaps because of 1) I have stopped putting so much stock in these things to complete me as a person.

But sometimes, I also wonder if I'm not just clearing away the superstitious noise about every little thing so a bigger sign can make its appearance. LOL