My opinion on two controversies within Christianity

There are two controversies I've been mulling over for a long time now, and I thought I'd stick my neck out and express an opinion. I could be persuaded otherwise, so feel free to weigh in in the comment section.

The two issues are evolution and the Licona/McGrew disagreement on the genre of the gospels and harmonization vs. literary devices.

EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN

A little autobiography first

First, let me talk about evolution. I grew up believing in evolution. It's what I was taught in school, and nobody (including my dad and my grandmother who raised me) ever told me any different. I read Genesis at an early age and believed for a time that the earth was young and that God created Adam and Eve directly. When I got into middle school and learned about evolution, I remember goign home and writing a fictional story that attempted to reconcile the two views. In my story, Adam and Eve were part of a tribe of humans, but at some point, God made first contact with humankind through Adam and Eve. He separated them from the rest of humanity. I don't remember if I had the rest of humanity die off or what because I never finished the story.

I assumed evolution was true right up until my late 20's or early 30's. I was never even exposed to an alternative view until I got interested in apologetics. There were a handful of Christian apologists I followed who subscribed to intelligent design and seemed to deny evolution. Greg Koukl was one of them. I remember it made me very uncomfortable because I respected these people, but I thought their rejection of evolution was kooky. It was a bit of a scandal in my mind.

The first thing I actually read on intelligent design was Lee Strobel's book, The Case For A Creator. I didn't know what to think at the time. When I was in high school, I took physical science in the 9th grade, which was a precursor to chemistry and physics. Then in the 10th grade, I took geology and astronomy (one semester each). I took Chemistry I in the 11th grade and physics in the 12th grade. So I had no education in biology other than the 7th grade. So I didn't really have the background education to be able to tell whether the arguments for intelligent design were good arguments or not. They seemed reasonable, but that's about it.

In my internet discussions, I noticed quickly that just about everybody who was critical of intelligent design (which was practially everybody) didn't bother to understand it. I was constantly correcting misconceptions, even though I wasn't completely sold on ID myself.

For a while, I put the whole thing on the back burner because the amount of reading I'd have to do to bring myself up to speed on biology so that I could have an informed opinion was overwhelming. But eventually, I decided to give it a go. The first book I read was Vital Dust by Christian DeDuve, which was a mistake. That book was way over my head, and it left me discouraged, and I quit again.

But I did continue to be exposed to ID because of the circles I was running around in and the people I read. As my understanding of ID developed, I began to get the impression that ID was not necessarliy inconsistent with evolution. ID wasn't a very specific point of view. It only said that all the life we see around us couldn't have come to be completely on its own. An intelligent designer had to have been involved. But that is extremely vague since it doesn't postulate any sort of mechanism for how biological diversity came about. It was consistent both with theistic evolution and with special creation.

At some point, I decided to take another crack at tackling the subject. A friend let me borrow a copy of National Geographic that had a long article arguing for evolution. I figured it would be a good thing for me to read since it was aimed at a popular audience. I thought I would read it with an open mind, and try to do so carefully, and to blog on it with my impressions. Some of you reading this may recall those blog entries. After posting them, somebody came along and criticized some of the stuff I said, and it embarrassed me because it exposed just how little I knew and understood. So I deleted those posts.

The first thing I read that really got through to me and made me feel like I was starting to understand things was Signature In the Cell by Stephen Meyer. Since then I've read a lot of other stuff, and I've watched a bunch of YouTube videos on genetics and evolution and related things, and I think I have a much better understanding of biology than I had before. Just ten or fifteen years ago, I couldn't even explain how DNA and chromosomes were related. I remember being confused about that.

I'll leave it there as far as autobiography is concerned and just tell you what my position is and why I hold it. I believe in evolution. I believe in common descent and that probably all life on earth is related.

Why I believe in evolution

One of the strongest arguments against this view I've heard is the mathemetical improbability of getting a functional protein through purely natural processes. Paul Scott Pruett, who has the Pensees blog I have linked to on the right over there, made a post about it one time. But I also saw a video on YouTube that included Richard Dawkins in conversation with some other people about the mathematical obstacles to evolution, so it wasn't something cooked up by Christian apologists. It was a real problem.

The math is hard to dispute, but I do have serious reservations about the reasoning. In the reasoning, we try to calculate the probability of getting just one functional protein given a generous set of probablistic resources. It turns out to be highly improbable even given billions of years and trillions and trillions of chances. There are a handful of objections one might raise, but the biggest one in mind is the fact that any protein can be functional provided it's in an environment where it has a job to do. By specifying a specific protein, the argument makes it seem more improbable than it really is. Of course any specific protein is goiing to be wildly improbable, but the probablity that a bunch of random proteins would emerge in which they interact with each other in particular ways isn't nearly as improbable.

But life may still be extremely rare in the universe. That is what I suspect. It's how I answer the Fermi Paradox.

Whether we could have gotten a wide variety of life on earth without God intervening at various points to insert new genetic information or something like that, I don't know. I suspect it could have. But whether we would've gotten the particular life we have now, especially human life, without divine intervention, I seriously doubt. But it isn't for scientific reasons that I doubt it. It's for theological reasons. I think God had a sovereign plan, and I think humans are created in the image of God. So God must've had a purpose in things turning out the specific way that they did, and he must've intervened in some way to bring it about. This could've been anything as subtle as tweaking the environment in such a way that natural selection would make the selections that God wanted it to make. I don't know.

The argument in Signature In the Cell is that the only source of information we know of is intelligent minds, and since DNA contains a great deal of information, the most reasonable conclusion is that the source of the information in DNA is an intelligent mind. I think that's a reasonable argument, but it's also a little question-begging. If the issue under dispute is whether nature alone could've produced information in DNA, then to merely assert that information only comes from intelligent minds is to beg the question.

I just realized I accused Meyers of circular reasoning while saying his conclusion is reasonable. I don't mean to say circular reasoning is reasonable. Let me explain. What I mean is that it's reasonable to think a particular instance of information originated with a mind if minds are the only thing you know of capable of producing information. But if you are disputing with somebody over whether or not nature is capable of producing information, then to merely assert that minds are the only things that can produce information is to beg the question. I hope that's clear.

Anywho, while a lot of information can be cited in defense of evolution, let me explain briefly what most convinces me of common descent (and therefore, evolution). This is a little difficult to explain, so bear with me. All humans have the same set of genes. These genes code for proteins. Proteins are composed of strings of different kinds of amino acids in specific sequences. Those specific sequences cause the proteins to fold into specific shapes capable of performing specific jobs. So if you change the order of the amino acids or have longer or shorter strands, then you get a different shape. To use an analogy, you might get a nut, or a bolt, or a bracket, or a spring.

But within those strands of amino acids, it is possible to have slight variations. Some amino acids can be replaced by other amino acids without affecting the shape or function the protein at all. Others cause minor differences. That's why you have short people, tall people, white people, black people, and all kinds of variation between members of our species.

Given these differences, it's possible to look at the same genes in different people, and determine how they are related to each other. It works just like textual criticism. You can break texts up into families and groups (e.g. the Bysantine Text type and the Alexandrian text type) based on their similarites and differences. You could, conceivably, create a family tree just by looking at variations between people's genes.

Well, it turns out that we share a lot of our genes (and proteins) with other species. And just as you can apply textual criticism to arrange individual humans in a family tree, so also can you apply textual criticism to arrange members of different species into a family tree. I explained this in a bit more detail when I reviewed The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins. To me, this is compelling evidence for common descent, and therefore for evolution.

My position can probably best be described as theistic evolution. I think evolution happened, but I also think God was involved somehow. I don't make any claims about how God was involved except for speculations.

The subject of the origin of life is distinct from evolution. We know more about evolution than we do about the origin of life. The difficulty scientists have had in coming up with a chemical pathway from simple organic compounds to single celled organisms leads me to believe that whatever happened, it must've been a rare and improbable sort of thing. It's hard to say how improbable, but I suspect it was so extremely improbable the life is rare in the universe. I subscribe to what some people call the "rare earth hypothesis," which is an answer to the Fermi Paradox. It may be that the origin of life was so improbable that we are the only example of life in the universe. It could still have happened by chance, but it would seem more likely that it happened by design. I think God did create life on earth. Whether it could have happened on its own, I don't know. It is primarily for theological reasons, not scientific reasons, that I think it happened by the hand of God. But the scientific and mathematical reasons add some weight to it.

LICONA VS MCGREW

I won't go into as much detail here. I'll just say that I mostly side with Licona. Licona argues that the gospels fall under the genre of ancient biography. Prior to the 1970's, there was a lot of disagreement and speculation over the genre of the gospels. But then Richard Burridge published a book called What Are the Gospels?, and this seems to have changed everything. Now, most scholars have come around to believing the gospels are ancient (or Greco-Roman) biographies. And that is the view I now hold, too.

Licona thinks it is a mistake to try to harmonize the gospels because the differences in the gospels are better attributed to the authors using the conventions of ancient biographies. I think there are undoubtedly differences in the gospels, and that these differences can be attributed to certain techniques, like simplifying stories or spotlighting and things like that. We actually do those sorts of things in our daily lives. For example, when you play phone tag with somebody before finally getting in touch with them, and you talk about it later on, you don't go into the details of how you called them, and they called you, etc. You might on one occasion say, "I called Jim and told him. . .," and you might on another occasion say, "Jim called me, and I told him. . ." When Jesus healed Jairus' daughter, either Jairus came to Jesus himself, or he did not. So if you take the gospels at face value, there's a contradiction. But this is clearly just an example of simplifying a story.

Lydia McGrew critizes Licona on the basis that she thinks all these differences can be harmonized. You don't need to resort to "literary device" when a harmonization is easy to come by. I think Lydia makes some good points in her critism of Licona. In general, harmonization is also something we do in our day to day lives. If you're reading something, and a person seems to contradict themselves, the automatic reaction is to assume you have some misunderstanding, and you attempt to make sense of both statements by harmonizing them. And there are situations in the gospels in which it seems like a difference is better harmonized than chalked up to literary device.

So I agree and disagree with both of them. I think Licona is right that the gospels are ancient biographies, and that the authors used literary devices that account for a lot of the differences. But I agree with McGrew that Licona sometimes misidentifies differences as being the result of literary devices when they should be harmonized instead. I think Lydia goes to far in arguing as if every difference can be harmonized and none of the difference are the result of literary devices.

Ironically, I don't think McGrew is an innerrantist, but Licona is. Licona has gotten a lot of criticism on the basis that his views undermine inerrancy. I think these criticism are ill-conceived, but understandable. I consider myself an inerrantist, but you have to understand inerrancy in light of genre. For example, I don't think Job is an historical account. I think it's fiction. Or more precisely, it's wisdom literature. But identifying the genre as fiction or wisdom literature is not the same thing as saying it contains mistakes. It's only a mistake if it intends to record history but fails to do so. You have to apply inerrancy in light of genre. If the gospels are ancient biographies, and if it is part of the convention of ancient biography to use literary devices, then the presence of literary devices should not undermine inerrancy.