Interesting book review

[laptoppop]

Dr. Kurt Wise (YEC) reviewing Dr Stephen Gould's book, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History

This is a good model for intelligent, respectful conversation.

http://www.arn.org/docs/orpages/or131/wise.htm

 

[Deamiter]

This seems to be the biggest issue -- and for the sake of argument, I'll assume that these highly disjointed quotes are put together in a way that's a remotely honest representation of Gould's position. To be fair though, this is usually a highly unethical way to represent somebody's position as picking 3-4 word quotes from an entire book and pasting them together is usually done to misrepresent the author, not to simply give a summary.

To conclude, as Gould does, that man is "...a wildly improbable evolutionary event..." (p. 291), "...a detail, not a purpose..." (p. 291), and "...a cosmic accident..." (p. 44) is disconcerting to some, but not to Gould. To him, release from any purpose is 'exhilarating' as it also releases any responsibility to any other, "...offering us maximum freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our chosen way" (p. 323). If ever evolutionary theory has been elaborated to the point of complete incompatibility with a Christian world view, it is by the pen of Stephen Jay Gould in this, his most recent tome.

The fact is that this is in no way incompatable with a Christian world view. Everything that happens in the universe is governed by probabilites as has been shown by quantum mechanics. That we should turn out the way we have IS highly improbable since there are literally an infinite number of variables that each had a specific value at a specific time that lead to our exitance. From the point of view of inside the universe, we ARE an accident.

Does the fact that God uses probabilities in the working of the universe He created indicate that he is not in control? Absolutely not!

Quantum mechanics suggests that not only are there just too many variables for us to predict the future, the future is utterly unpredictable! No amount of computational power can predict exactly where every particle will end up or at what speed it'll end up with.

But most of us believe that God knows the future. God designed the universe to use randomness and probabilities yet he knew and knows what would and will happen!

So from the perspective of somebody bounded by the universe, yes, it was a bit of amazing chance that we ended up exactly the way we are with two eyes, a backbone, feet and legs that are rather poorly adapted to bipedal locomotion... However, like the lottery where somebody always wins, God knew up front where each particle would end up and what each variable would hit at what time. Even if the universe is governed by chance, that in no way indicates that the universe is not guided or designed (though it's admittedly not at all evidence of design either).

It's simply severely limiting God to say that he can't have used the chance and uncertainty he designed into the universe around us in his ultimate plan to have relationships with us humans. What Gould has said (again in these highly disconnected and cherry-picked quotes) is in no way incompatable with a Christian world view, though I'll admit fully that it is incompatable with a world view that considers God incapable of using chance and probability in his creation.

 

[shernren]

As Gould explains so well, however, a scientifically orthodox understanding of earth history includes many facts that are at odds with the idea that man was a purposeful product of the evolution. Why is it, for example, that for two thirds of the history of the earth, life proceeded no further than bacteria? Why is it that for half of the remaining one third of earth history, life remained one-celled? What is to be made of the possibility that two unsuccessful attempts at multicellularity preceded the one that finally initiated the line to humans? Why was the evolution of mammals delayed for 100 million years by the parenthetical note of the development, domination, and demise of the 'terrible lizards'? Why is it that it took 99,999 out of the 100,000 units of time in the history of this universe for man to come about? And finally, if man is in God's image, does God look like the ape who bore us? Although not expressly designed as a polemic against theological theories of accommodation, Gould's arguments nonetheless bear upon them. The very nature of God comes into question if He chose evolution as a means to form man. The literal reading of the macroevolutionary history of the earth is that man is an accident--at best an afterthought of nature's process.

Why is it, for example, that for two thirds of human history, monotheism proceeded no further from a minority religion practiced by a persecuted people? Why is it that for the middle half of the remaining third, the Church was stuck in the intellectual Dark Ages? What is to be made of the fact that two other monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam, have arisen on the world stage besides Christianity? Why was the coming of the Messiah delayed for 400 silent years by the parenthetical development of the Greek and Roman civilizations? Why is it that this Messiah was absent for 199 of the 200 units of time that encompass human history? And since I should parallel by finishing off with a ridiculous question about the mystery of incarnation, does God have a mother and is her name Mary?

Kurt Wise is convinced that the sheer contingency of evolutionary history is a measure of its inaccuracy. Well, redemptive history is full of contingency as well, but I don't see any creationists complaining.

It's ironic that Gould, the champion of the NOMA understanding of science/religion relations, should be accused of bringing evolutionary theory to "complete incompatibility with a Christian worldview".

 

[gluadys]

I think of chance and contingency as part of the freedom God chose to give to his creation. God works with that freedom rather than overriding it.

It is high time we shed the theology which was tied to Newtonian concepts of a mechanistic universe. In a mechanistic universe God can only start up the machine and watch. If he doesn't like what the machine is doing, he has no option but to interfere with the mechanism.

A universe of chance and contingency is actually more conducive to seeing God as an active participant in its history since the many variables are open to many relationships with many results. As Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal once noted: "If Cleopatra's nose had been a little longer, the history of the world would have been different."

If we can and do reconcile human free will with the foreknowledge and oversight of God, there is no basis on which we cannot also reconcile chance and contingency in the non-human world with God's foreknowledge and oversight as well.

God is able to accomplish his purposes through all possible chance occurrences, just as he is able to accomplish his purposes no matter what decisions humans freely make.