Creator or Blind Watchmaker?

lippard@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard)

Johnson sent me a copy of the paper of this title from the January
1993 issue of _First Things_, and I thought some portions to be
worth quoting:

p. 9:  "Those who regard Scripture as more authoritative than
scientific theories, and who are confident that they know the
correct way to interpret it, may choose to defend the Genesis
account as literally true and employ scientific argument to
discredit the alternatives.  Fundamentalist creationists of this
kind make up perhaps half of the 47 percent that the Gallup
poll described as creationist.  Unfortunately, the commitment of
this large group to a literal interpretation of Genesis has
confused and divided the Christian world, and even played into
the hands of the evolutionary naturalists.  Darwinists assiduously
promote the notion that the only possible alternatives are six-day
Genesis literalism on the one hand, and fully naturalistic,
neo-Darwinistic evolution on the other."

[Johnson suggests putting aside biblical issues, the age of the
earth, and the method of creation on the same page.  He seems to
suggest that he is unconcerned about whether or not evolution
has occurred or not.]

p. 10:  "The theistic naturalists seem to share this fervent faith
that a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life simply *must*
be there to be found.  To suppose that God may have played some
direct, active role in creating the first life on earth would
reduce God to the status of a creature, would posit an impossible
missing relation between the members of nature, and would deny the
functional integrity of the universe.  One might almost say that it
would constitute blasphemy."

[This is the view he is arguing against.]

p. 12:  "In any case, Darwinistic evolution would be a most peculiar
creative method for God to choose, given the Darwinistic insistence
that biological evolution was *undirected*.  That requirement means
that God neither programmed evolution in advance nor stepped in from
time to time to pull it in the right direction.  How then did God
ensure that humans would come into existence so that salvation
history would have a chance to occur?"

[This is his critique of "theistic naturalism," which holds that
God exists but that nature proceeds without supernatural influence.]

p. 12:  "Of course, God *could* make some use of random mutation and
natural selection in a fundamentally directed creative process.  God
can act freely as He chooses:  that is just the problem for those
who would constrain God by philosophy.  God could employ mutation
and natural selction or act supernaturally, whether or not His choice
causes inconvenience for scientists who want to be able to explain and
control everything.  Once we allow God to enter the picture at all,
there is no reason to be certain a priori that natural science has the
power to discover the entire mechanism of creation.  Maybe science can
discover how living things were made, and maybe it can't.  Consistent
theists will therefore accept Darwinist claims for the creative power
of mutation and selection only insofar as those claims can be supported
by evidence.  That isn't very far at all."

[This seems to me to be Johnson's central claim.  That there is no
a priori reason to suppose that God doesn't intervene, and that
the empirical evidence for such things as common ancestry is so weak
that we should be at best agnostic, and more likely reject it in
favor of divine intervention.  Further, he argues that the only
reason people have thought that the empirical evidence for common
ancestry is strong is because of their presupposition that God does
not or cannot intervene.  His argument about the a priori doesn't
seem half-bad, but I think he is wrong about the state of the
empirical evidence--and that his *own* presuppositions are biasing
his own examination of it.]

p. 13:  "When people ask whether Darwinism and theism are compatible,
they normally take the Darwinism for granted and ask whether the theism
has to be discarded.  It is far more illuminating, however, to approach
the question from the other side.  Is there any reason that a person
who believes in a real, personal God should believe that biological
creation has occurred by Darwinian evolution?  The answer is clearly
no.  The sufficiency of any process of chemical evolution to produce
life has certainly not been demonstrated, nor has the ability of
natural selection to produce new body plans, complex organs, or anything
else except variation within types that already exist.  The fossil
record notoriously does not evidence any continuous process of gradual
change.  Rather, it consistently shows that new forms appear suddenly
and fully formed in the rocks, and thereafter remain fundamentally
unchanged.  ...  If Darwinian evolution is the only allowable source
for life's diversity and complexity, then the shortage of evidence
doesn't matter.  The only question, to borrow Darwin's own words,
is why 'Nature may almost be said to have guarded against the
frequent discovery of her transitional or linking forms.'"

p. 14, continuing immediately:  "Atheists can leave the matter there,
but theists have to go farther.  If God exists, then Darwinian
evolution is not the only alternative, and there is no reason for
a theist to believe that God employed it beyond the relatively
trivial level where the effects of variation and selection can
actually be observed.
   "In short, the reason that Darwinism and theism are fundamentally
incompatible is not that God could not have used evolution by
natural selection to do his creating.  Darwinian evolution might seem
unbiblical to some, or too cruel and wasteful a method for a benevolent
Creator to choose, but it is always possible that God might do something
that confounds our expectations.  No, the contradiction between Darwinism
and theism goes much deeper.  To know that Darwinism is true (as a general
explanation for the history of life), one has to know that no alternative
to natural evolution is possible.  To know *that* is to assume that God
does not exist, or at least that God does not or cannot create.  To
infer that mutation and selection did the creating because nothing else
was available, and then to bring God back into the picture as the omnipotent
being who chose to create by mutation and selection, is to indulge
in self-contradiction."

[Here Johnson seems to contradict his earlier statements about what can
and cannot be established a priori.  His sentence "To know that Darwinism
is true ... one has to know that no alternative to naturalistic evolution
is possible" is false, whether he means "logically possible" or "physically
possible."  Either way, it leads to a radical skepticism, to a rejection
of virtually all knowledge.  Ruling out all alternative *possibilities*
is far too strong a condition for knowledge.  I would challenge Johnson
to specify what *relevant* *probabilities* (as in probable explanations,
not numeric probabilities) have *not* been ruled out as an alternative
to "naturalistic evolution."  If there are no highly probable alternatives
to naturalistic evolution, then we *do* know that naturalistic evolution
has taken place.  Johnson suggests that there are such possibilities, but
never actually specifies any.  This is surely a tactic to avoid having
to defend his own views, as I suspect that any possible alternative he
would be happy believing suffers from problems of internal incoherence.
(E.g., if God is good and doesn't want to deceive us, why plant all this
misleading evidence for evolution?  Johnson's only response to this will
be to deny that there is such evidence.)]

Jim Lippard              Lippard@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU
Dept. of Philosophy      Lippard@ARIZVMS.BITNET
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721