The thing about Creationism

I wasn’t planning to write any posts at all that dealt specifically with Creationism head-on; there didn’t seem to be much point. That was until I ended up in a discussion on a blog, one which I had the sense to keep brief – these kinds of discussions can get very entrenched and end up nowhere fast.

There are some odd things about Creationism and “Intelligent Design” (ID). The most notable is the obsession with evolution and Charles Darwin. It’s useful at this point to remember what evolution is about: it simply says that through natural selection, species either adapt to a changing environment – or die out. The same process – natural selection – gives rise to new species, when a population is separated and the number of adaptations begin increases to a certain point. That’s a rough outline – there is a whole debate as to what actually constitutes a ’species’.

Adapatations are brought about by changes – mutations – in DNA: something that Darwin had no knowledge about, although he figured that there must be something that was passed onto the next generation.

It’s odd that Creationists (including the ID people) should spend much time on this theory – not only is it so well established in the literature that it would be akin to challenging the concept of gravity, but it’s the way in which they try to select examples by way of counter example.

The arguments tend to be one of the following: given biological example is so complicated that it must be designed/created; and then conclude that it indeed has been designed/created (‘irreducible complexity’ in the jargon). The other tact is to deny that random mutation within DNA is possible, or, if it is, it is very rare and only produces negatives consequences.

This latter example was one recently presented to me elsewhere; the first time I heard it, oddly enough, was by Islamic Creationists from Turkey. So even if I were to be convinced by this argument, I’m unsure with the Creator is Allah or Jehovah! I joke, but the point is serious: what evidence can be brought to bear to prove one way or another, given that their respective holy texts cancel each other out?

Both tactics essentially try to undermine evolution as a theory. It doesn’t work because it doesn’t disporve the theory; at best, if there were no mutations, as the Creationists claim, and if there were irreducible complexity, it would suggest that the theory of evolution doesn’t apply in those given particular cases. Mutations, for example, occur in bacteria (hence resistance to anti-biotics) and so on.

What would disprove the theory of evolution would be a ‘counter-factual’. Irreducible complexity purports to be such a counter-factual, but evolution says precisely that which is denied by the Creationist: however incredible it may seem, and whatever teh appearnace of design, that particular biological phenomena did come about by evolution, and not by divine intervention. Simply claiming something is designed based on appearance is far from proving that it has been designed.

A true counter-factual would be something that was demonstrably against something that evolution predicts. Evolution predicts that complex organisms arose from simple organisms. By definition, if you found a complex organism in a geological era when there should only be simple ones (however old you think it is and whatever the geologists say) would be the kind of thing. So, if you found a modern human burial in the Jurassic, or JBS Haldane’s rabbit in the Pre-Cambrian period; that would be perfect.

The logic of the arguments are often faulty. For example, having established in their minds that evolution doesn’t work, they conclude that there is 1) the appearance of design which means that 2) there is a designer. Evolution says the opposite, that the appearance of design doesn’t imply a designer, so you would need to supply evidence to prove that the appearance of design really does imply a designer. The next fault is that, for some reason, it only implies a single designer – again, at the expense of evidence. Why not a team of designers, given that Boeing 747s (complicated pieces of machinary) use hundreds of designers? We are not told why (without resorting to the holy text of choice).

Finally, saying that the variety of life on Earth was because of a Designer, or God, is not an answer but raises two other questions: how, and what created this Designer/God? These cannot be answered without recourse to holy text; the text in question may be right, but given that the experience of God is a personal, subjective experience rather than an out-there, objective, experience, it really does take us away from the science that we were trying to do answer the kind of scientific questions that evolution answers.

Whatever else may be said about Creationism and Intelligent Design, science it most certainly is not.

Further reading: Steve Poole on ‘Intelligent Design’

Jonathan Edwards loses his faith

One of the more prominant ‘born-again’ Christians of recent years, the Olympic gold medallist Jonathan Edwards, has now apparently lost his faith. He makes some interesting remarks:

When you think about it rationally, it does seem incredibly improbable that there is a God [...] I am not unhappy about the fact that there might not be a God [...] I don’t feel that my life has a big, gaping hole in it. In some ways I feel more human than I ever have. There is more reality in my existence than when I was full-on as a believer [...] I feel internally happier than at any time of my life, more content within my own skin. Maybe it is because I am not viewing the world through a specific set of spectacles.

Welcome to the dark side, Jonathan!

The problem with ‘atheism’

Atheism is another of those problematic terms. There is, in fact, more than one type of atheist: at least five different variations have been delineated. These are:

Negative/weak atheism someone who to all intents and purposes doesn’t believe in a god, without necessarily going so far as to say that there is in fact no god.

Positive/strong atheism someone who simply affirms that there is no god as a statement of fact.

Explicit atheism somone who knowingly rejects any notion of god.

Implicit atheism someone who has not heard of a god, and cannot therefore decide whether belief in such an entity is reasonable or justifiable or worthwhile. Children especially are usually considered to be implicitly atheist as they have to be taught that there are such things as religious ideas and concepts of god.

militant atheism is a term one finds in the press; it describes any atheist – strong or weak – who argues vociferously against statements made by people of faith, and seeks confrontation with them. In the UK, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are the two best known examples.

religious atheism is how I choose to describe those religions, such as most schools of Buddhism (Theravadin, Zen, etc.) and the Advaita vedanta school of Hinduism.

An indication of the problem can be seen in the number of caveats and definitions. In particular, the idea that there are religious people who are themselves ‘atheist’ goes against intuitively what people would commonly take to be a feature of atheism – that is, its irreligiousness (if not anti-religiousness).

This latter common perception of what an atheist is (a view particularly in the US) is itself problematic, of course: a disbelief in something is now associated with a particular negative attitude. It is a situation made worse by the existence of ‘militant atheists’. It is this that gives atheism its increasingly sectarian and hostile nature, one which people such as myself would want to avoid: why should we define ourselves by something in which we do not believe?

Nevertheless, that there are indeed ‘religious atheists’ alerts us to a feature of atheism: that is that it is rooted in the Western and Islamic experience. The term ‘atheist’ has little meaning in China and India; it would not have had much meaning in the West more than 1500 years ago. It is defined against theism, which is at bottom a belief in a personal god of the Islamic and Judeo-Christian traditions. Atheism is defined by what it is not: it is not theism, perhaps because not being a theist was exceptionally rare in the Common Era up until three hundred years ago at the most. Atheism, by defining itself what it doesn’t believe in, rather than what it does, can be seen as ‘negative’ – it is the reason why the BHA sees humanism as ‘positive‘.

Finally, there is the point that the word ‘god’ is used too often as though it means the same thing to all people, or that there is an agreed definition. The responsible thing, when asked by someone if you believe in ‘god’, should be to ask what they mean by ‘god’. One of the traps that some atheists fall into is to define a god, and then say why they don’t believe in it. They may find that there are theists who would equally not believe in that particular definition of god.

Because atheism is related to a specific cultures and traditions, and in a specific time, and because it is sectarian, and increasingly seen as something hostile, I am personally reluctant these days to describe myself as an ‘atheist’.

On the other hand, insofar as atheism argues that it is encumbent upon theists – particularly those who are engaged in conversion – to prove their claims of the existence of a god, rather than for anyone to try and prove a negative and by proving that a given god does not exist, then in that sense I remain an atheist: this is a weak atheism that makes no claims to knowledge about the non-existence of god that one finds with ’strong’ or positive atheism, but one that says that it finds no reason to believe the claims for a particular god’s existence. It is not an atheism by which I would necessarily define my identity by, however.

Humanism: a flawed concept?

Is there such a thing as ‘humanism’?

The fact that ‘humanist’ exists as an adjective would seem to imply that there is. The word actually already has a related noun: human. To be a ‘humanist’ in the arts is someone who focuses on the human world and human concerns as oppose to the religious and the divine worlds (during the renaissance in particular, these were art, music, grammar, rhetoric, oratory, history, poetry, moral philosophy and classical Greek and Roman texts).

Humanism as a broad term might be understood, then, as areas of study, or an attitude, that foucesses on intellectual endevours that are characterised by human concerns – science, philosophy, etc. If you’re not interested in the divine as having any importance within the world, you are by definition a humanist.

Humanism has, however, been more precisely articulated as a particular philosophical outlook with which to guide one’s life. The British Humanist Association (BHA) defines a humanists as people who “make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared human values.” These “values” also appear on the International Humanist and Ethical Union’s (IHEU) website, and elsewhere are included with “natural values”. Precisely what these “human” or “natural” values are is not specified. Equally, it’s not clear that using “reason” and “experience” are the exclusive preserve of the non-religious, and nor is it clear that ‘humanists’ are the only people who try to “live happy and fulfilled lives and help others to do so.”

The BHA essentially exists to provide secular alternatives to baptisms, marriages and funerals; it also has a longstanding schools’ religious education campaign to raise awareness of secular lifestyles within that context. This is important work for anyone who cares about alternatives to religious ceremonies and religious thinking.

The BHA, however, also appears to give reassurance to people that lives without a religious framework are equally ‘good’, even though, humanism, as defined by the BHA, does not offer any guidelines as to what a ‘good’ life is, other than one that is not reliant on beliefs that are “religious or superstitious“.

In short, the BHA attempts to define a wider philosophy of life behind the word ‘humanism’. But despite these attempts to give it a particular meaning, it remains more a general label to an approach to life.

Organised humanism offers no distinctive philosophy as such – it takes a rationalist approach moral problems; it extols the scientific method to gain knowledge about the world; and it emphasises human rights; it promotes secularism; but none of those things require the label ‘humanist’. Again, it is difficult to see what is exclusively humanist in the Amsterdam Declaration, as being rational, or ethical, or supporting human rights, the responsible use of technology and democracy is not – many religious people would argue the for the same.

Organised humanism is in danger of creating a secular religion (if that’s not a contradiction in terms). Rather than a god, humanity is at the centre of this ‘religion’. It is arguably too focussed on humanity, at the expense of the world and its environment, for example.

Humanist organisations also have a habit of retrospectively labelling as humanists people who would not have encountered the concept. Given the vagueness of the concept, this makes it easy to co-opt people from the past – in fact, anyone who did not find t necessary to talk about god in their work. An interesting figure is Albert Einstein – because of his work, he is seen as “essentially humanist” on the BHA website. Yet he is frequently cited by Christians as a theistic scientist (for example, the fundamentalist (‘evangelist’) Christian website – BibleQuery.org – lists Einstein, as a god-fearing scientist.

Einstein certainly was not a ‘humanist’ over above him being a scientist. (And, in actual fact, as Richard Dawkins shows in his provocatively titled The God Delusion, Einstein was not a theist at all, and was criticised by Christian fundamentalists for his remarks on his disbelief in any god as such). Suggesting that Einstein’s work was ‘humanist’ adds nothing that the word ’scientific’ doesn’t already say, and perhaps a good deal less.

Humanism aspires to equate itself as anything and everything that is not religious, yet it fails to offer a distinctive doctrine or intepretation of (say) “human values” of its own, and as long as that remains the case, any conception of humanism as a philosophy to guide one’s life will remain flawed.