Dear Dr Pitman Upon reading your conversation with Mr Long on

Comment on Adventist Education–at the crossroads? by Sean Pitman.

Dear Dr Pitman

Upon reading your conversation with Mr Long on Atoday’s SDA Education-Crossroads blog, I found myself having a comment and a question that might be better answered on mail than in the blog format. You mentioned Kuhn’s theory of science, and are therefore aware that paradigm shifts, if Kuhn is correct, are not caused by the prevailing theory having many unexplained and perhaps inexplicable questions but by a rival paradigm answering at least as much of the data including the problem questions in a better way. For example, the first people to adopt Kopernikus astronomy did not do so because Ptelemy’s had many errors but because it was easier to calculate astrology using Kopernicus method. Having that in mind, I wonder why the best that critics of modern biology seem able to do is to find fault with it. In the botany systematics lab where I work/study, it really makes no difference had the current theory of evolution had twise as many errors or faults, for there does not as far as I know exist a competing model which could be used analyse the data. Neither “your model is wrong because…” nor “God made it…” is at all helpful for daily science work.

Considering this, it frustrates me to read what you (and others at other times) wrote:

“The fact remains that the historic SDA perspective on origins is supported by a great deal of evidence â€“ I personally believe that it is supported by the significant weight of evidence. Scientific reasoning strongly suggests to me that current popular theories of origins are painfully mistaken. As just one example, the Darwinian mechanism of evolution (RM/NS) is clearly untenable beyond very low levels of functional complexity. There are no examples of evolution in action beyond very very low levels of functional complexity and, if you actually sit down and do a bit of statistical analysis, you will find that higher and higher levels of functional complexity are exponentially harder and harder to achieve in a given span of time.”

You begin by stating that the historic SDA perspective on origins is supported, but you never get into detail on what evidence this is, let alone what the SDA perspective on origins looks like on a scientifically operative level. Suppose you were to write a paper using sequences from 5 different loci including nuclear genes from 10 different primate species, what does the model based on the SDA perspective on origins that your analysis method is based upon look like? What kind of analysis will you be using and how do they treat the core data? Does such a working model even exist?

Could it be that the great deal of evidence which you mention only operates on your second sentence, namely for the purpose of disqualifying the currently popular theories in science? If so, this evidence is a problem for the theories in question but not much more. When we remember that a paradigm is not truly threatened by questions it cannot answer, but only by a competing paradigm which can explain all the data incorporated in it in addition to answering the outstanding questions. Does such a competing paradigm exist that does not operate as follows:

miracle3.gif

You have studied these questions more thoroughly than I and may have answers to my questions and concerns. I am anticipating your reply.

Sincerely

Anonymous

Hi Anonymous,

Your comments and questions are thoughtful and very compelling to many people. Your essential argument seems to be that it doesn’t really matter how good or how bad a given scientific model or theory may or may not be as long as there isn’t any other better model available. In other words, as long as there isn’t anything better, one must work with what one has despite it’s numerous flaws since it’s the best we have. Does that about sum up your main argument?

At least one problem I see with this basic argument is that it goes against the scientific principle of theoretical falsifiability. A truly scientific theory should be set up in such a way that it can be falsified regardless of if any other better explanation is or is not available. If a theory is not even theoretically falsifiable (regardless of what other viable theories do or do not exist), it really isn’t very helpful scientifically. A demonstrably false theory is not better than no theory at all. A theory that is effectively falsified should not be used just because no other reasonable theory is available. It’s better to simply say, “I don’t know” than to continue to present something that is known to be false as a solution to a given problem or phenomena.

Beyond this, especially when it comes to the origin and diversity of life on this planet, there is a much better “model” available compared to the popular mainstream theory of evolution. That model is a model that invokes intelligent design (ID).

At this point, let me digress a bit and note that I really like the cartoon you included at the bottom of your E-mail where a “miracle” is invoked in the middle of a mathematical argument. Of course, scientists universally shy away from invoking “miracles” to explain natural phenomena – or do they?

Miracle Cartoon

Let me pose a scenario. Say you walk into your house and on the table there in your kitchen is a freshly baked beautiful chocolate cake. It looks good. It smells good. It tastes really really good. What can be said about the origin of this chocolate cake? – scientifically? Detailed mathematical and chemical models can certainly be produced for the interaction of the various elements as the cake was being cooked, etc. But the production of the final form of the cake, with all the ingredients introduced at just the right time and place, is very difficult to put into the language of chemistry or mathematics alone. Something is missing…. and that something is the explanation for the specific order of the materials that make up the cake and how those materials interact with a specific level of heat at just the right time and for just the right length of time. In other words, an explanation for the informational complexity that was required to produce the cake is lacking in basic mathematical or chemical formulas. In fact, this required pre-existing informational complexity is so great that you would no doubt instantly assume that someone with access to at least a human level intelligence made the chocolate cake that you just ate. In short, a small “miracle” did in fact occur from the perspective of purely mindless naturalistic processes (miracles are relative things you know). If someone asked you what it would take to produce such a cake using only mindless nturalistic mechanisms you would no doubt say, “It would take a miracle”. This is why you reject the “mindless miracle” hypothesis in favor of deliberate intelligent design in such situations.

The very same type of argument is used in science all the time when it comes to detecting need for intelligent design to explain certain features found in the natural world. For example, this same type of argument is used in forensic science, anthropology, and even SETI science. As a specific hypothetical example, say that a NASA rover were to come across a highly symmetrical granite cube on the surface of Mars that measured exactly one meter on each side. You don’t think that such a find would hit the front page of every major newspaper in the world with the tag line, “NASA Finds Evidence of Intelligent Life on Mars!!!!”? Of course that’s what would happen.

So, onto your argument that the “Goddidit” model isn’t useful in your “daily science work”. First off, the basic theory of intelligent design need not explain the specific identity of the intelligent designer aside from the need for the designer to have been intelligent to at least a certain level of intelligence. You don’t need to know who, exactly, made your chocolate cake in order to know that whoever did it was intelligent to at least the human level of intelligence – right? The same thing is true for my hypothetical granite cube on Mars or for the narrow-band spectrum radio signals that SETI scientists are looking for.

But aren’t such arguments for ID based on falsifying models of mindless naturalistic origin? Of course they are. After all, if there is any viable model for the production of highly symmetrical polished granite cubes outside of deliberate design, that would call into serious question the ID-only hypothesis. The same thing is true for the origin and diversity of life. If any viable mechanism could be presented that could reasonably explain the origin and/or the diversity of life within a reasonable span of time, that evidence would effectively falsify the ID-only hypothesis for life and its diversity.

This means, of course, that someone like me who wishes to present the argument that life and its diversity can only be reasonably explained by appealing to a very high level of intelligence in play in the origin of life and its diversity, has better explain why the popular model of the origin of life and its diversity isn’t remotely tenable. Only if I can do that can I rationally conclude, scientifically, that the only other known origin of such high levels of functional complexity (i.e., Intelligent Design on a level indistinguishable by us humans as being a God or God-like) was most likely in play – just as you did with your chocolate cake…

Now, the only real question that remains at this point is if I can in fact demonstrate that the proposed evolutionary mechanism is in fact untenable beyond very very low levels of functional complexity. And, I think I can. But, that is an whole discussion all its own that is rather detailed. But, if you are interested in this evidence, please do visit my website for the details (www.DetectingDesign.com).

Or, if you prefer, I would also recommend an new book recently published by Stephen Meyer entitled, “Signature in the Cell”. This book is quite good and goes into the arguments listed above (and many more) in significant detail. You’d probably find it an interesting read at the very least.

Thanks again for your thoughts and comments.

Sincerely,

Sean

P.S. I hope you don’t mind if I post this exchange on the EducateTruth blog…

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Sean Pitman Also Commented

Adventist Education–at the crossroads?
@pauluc:

My point in quoting Davies’ review of Polkinghorne was to show that they base their ideas on God’s existence on evidence, on certain features within the universe, which they think can only be explained by deliberate intelligent design on the level of God-like intelligence. That is an intelligent design hypothesis on at least some level.

Just because those who appeal to intelligent design theories on at least some level may also believe in various aspects of the modern theory of evolution doesn’t mean that an ID theory hasn’t been invoked on at least some level. It has.

After all, even I believe in evolution via RM/NS as being responsible for many features of living things. Many features of living things are very well explained by neutral evolution or by low-level functional evolution. This doesn’t mean that all features of living things can be therefore be explained by RM/NS. It is this leap of logic or extrapolation of low-level evolution to much higher levels of evolution, within mainstream science, which isn’t scientific. Many features of living things go well beyond the creative potential of any known mindless mechanism while being well within the realm of ID. This is the very same argument used by Davies to support his belief in a God as the designer behind certain features of the anthropic universe.

By the way, I do know Norman McNulty. I’m just not familiar with his views on perfectionism – which is, in any case, irrelevant to this purposes of this particular website. Also, my transitional internship was completed at Eisenhower Army Medical Center (not an SDA institution) and my hemepath fellowship was completed at the City of Hope under the world-renown Lawrence Weiss (not SDA either).

I remain as perplexed as ever how you can hold views on the the nature of intelligent design as a natural phenomena and the requirement for faith to be subservient to reason and evidence but deny anyone in church employ any leeway to explore or articulate anything beyond what you consider truth.

It isn’t what I consider truth. It is what the Church as an organization considers to be fundamental “present truth”. All are free to join or to leave the Church at will. This is a free civil society in which we live – thank God. However, the Church, as with any viable organization, must maintain a certain degree of order and discipline within its own organizational structure if it is to survive. The Church simply cannot afford to hire those who are ardently opposed to the basic fundamental goals and ideals of the Church as an organization and who go around teaching and preaching against the fundamental positions of the organized Church.

You may not consider the organization of the Church to be all that important. I think that without organization, and the order and control that goes along with maintaining any organization, that the Church would quickly fragment into a meaningless hodgepodge of isolated groups with widely divergent ideas. The organizational aspect of the Church is what gives it its power to spread a unified Gospel message more effectively.

I appreciate your responses to my questions and the glimpses I have gained into the mind of a person who seems to discern truth and sees the justice in imposing it on others.

What employer doesn’t impose various rules and restrictions on its paid employees? – rules that are known upfront before the employee agrees to take the job? You very well know that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t be paid by an organization for doing whatever you want. You are paid to do what the organization wants you to do. If you don’t like what the organization wants you to do, you don’t have to take the job. Again, it’s as simple as that. This isn’t some deep philosophical mystery here.

It is self-evident, is it not, that when one takes on employment in an organization of one’s own free will, one is obliged to take on the restriction, the rules, of that organization. Is it wrong of Reebok to require its own employees to only promote and even wear Reebok shoes? Would it be wrong of Reebok to fire and employee for publicly promoting Nike as making a superior product?

Come now. If you really believe that Nike makes the better shoe, and you are bound and determined to be honest to yourself and tell everyone about the superiority of Nike, why on Earth would you expect to be paid by Reebok to promote Nike? You’re simply making no sense here. You’re basically an anarchist who thinks you deserve to be paid simply for your honesty. I’m sorry, but no viable organization works that way. An honest Catholic should work for the Catholic organization. An honest Baptist should work for the Baptist organization. And an honest evolutionary scientist should work for those numerous organizations who would be more than glad to pay such an individual for their efforts. Why should the SDA Church pay anyone who doesn’t actually want to promote what the SDA Church, as an organization, wishes to promote?

God bless and give you as much insight into his Grace.

Likewise. God is a God of order and disciplined government – not anarchy. All are free to come and enjoy the gifts of God as given through the inspired organization of the SDA Church. However, not all are free to expect payment from the SDA Church for their services since not all are well suited to be official representatives of the Church as an organization.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Adventist Education–at the crossroads?
@Eddie:

I’m a partner in an independent pathology practice. We do some contract work for a Catholic hospital, but I have not been hired by the Catholic Church to be a representative of the Catholic Church or to promote Catholic doctrinal positions.

Teachers in our SDA schools, on the other hand, are specifically hired by the SDA Church to actively promote SDA goals and ideals within the classroom – specifically with regard to the topic of origins. This has been made very clear, in no uncertain terms, by the General Conference Executive Committee:

We call on all boards and educators at Seventh-day Adventist institutions at all levels to continue upholding and advocating the church’s position on origins. We, along with Seventh-day Adventist parents, expect students to receive a thorough, balanced, and scientifically rigorous exposure to and affirmation of our historic belief in a literal, recent six-day creation, even as they are educated to understand and assess competing philosophies of origins that dominate scientific discussion in the contemporary world.

http://adventist.org/beliefs/statements/main-stat55.html

Science teachers, in particular, are not hired to actively undermine the SDA position on origins in our classrooms. Clearly, such activity is counterproductive to the stated goals and ideals of the Church. Why would the Church wish to hire anyone to go around and tell people that the Church’s position is irrational and part of the “lunatic fringe”? – as so eloquently put by LSU science professor Gary Bradley? – in an interview with a secular journal?

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Adventist Education–at the crossroads?
@pauluc:

J H Kellogg’s ideas were pantheistic – i.e., God actually within everything. This is not quite like suggesting that various features of the universe in which we live can only be rationally explained by invoking intelligent design on at least the human level of intelligence or beyond. Quite a number of old world and even modern physicists have come to this same conclusion as well. My position is more along the lines of Sir Isaac Newton or of the well-known Australian astrophysicist, Paul Davies, who writes:

The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is “something behind it all” is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists…

The equations of physics have in them incredible simplicity, elegance and beauty. That in itself is sufficient to prove to me that there must be a God who is responsible for these laws and responsible for the universe.

* Davies, Paul C.W. [Physicist and Professor of Natural Philosophy, University of Adelaide],”The Christian perspective of a scientist,” Review of “The way the world is,” by John Polkinghorne, New Scientist, Vol. 98, No. 1354, pp.638-639, 2 June 1983, p.638

* http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2006/1572643.htm

You don’t seem to grasp my argument that the term “natural” is a relative term. What seems “natural” to you may seem supernatural to someone else with less knowledge than you have. If God does in fact exist, his own intelligence and power would seem perfectly “natural” to him.

In short, the term “natural” is meaningless without a much more specific definition as to what you’re talking about when you use this word. Simply saying that science is restricted to examining “natural” phenomena does not mean that science cannot therefore detect an intelligent origin behind certain types of phenomena… even if that intelligent origin just so happens to be God. While a God could certainly hide himself from us quite easily. It is most certainly within God’s power to reveal himself to us in a manner that we can in fact detect as requiring a very high level of deliberate intelligence. Certainly you can recognize this as at least a possibility given the hypothesis of God’s actual existence – can you not?

You seem to be able to do this, on at least some level, for you write:

I do agree with you that nature is not enough and is an insufficient explanation of the universe. There is an intelligibility to the Universe and that things like Love, suffering and beauty call out for higher level explanations. But in this I agree with theologians such as Haught, McGrath and Polkinghorne who see the intelligibility of the universe and the anthropic principle as well as those higher functions as supporting a notion of the divine but do not simplistically restrict the divine to [plugs] for the holes in our knowledge or immediate explanations for origins.

Scientific theories are the plugs for the holes in our knowledge. We have limited knowledge. If we had perfect or absolute knowledge, science would no longer be needed. It is because we have limited knowledge that scientific methodologies become helpful to bridge the gaps or “holes” in our knowledge. The ID hypothesis is often a valid scientific bridge for certain types of holes in our knowledge. The notion that intelligent design cannot be invoked by science is simply mistaken.

Did you leave the armed forces when the government became Democrat rather than Republican? (I am of course assuming you are republican in political persuasion but given the statistics I have a high probability of being right). Do you agree in every point with your current employer? Will you resign when they express for example a view on abortion with which you disagree? Like the pharisees of old you are placing on church employees a burden much more than I suspect you would be prepared to bear.

If I felt I had to publicly counter my employer on some issue considered “fundamental” by my employer, and I was originally hired to promote this particular position of my employer, I would most certainly resign. If an employer hires me to do a particular job, and that job is made quite clear when I am hired, it would be morally wrong of me to undermine the clearly stated fundamental purpose of the job for which I was hired. That would be, in effect, stealing money and time from my employer. I would have misrepresented myself to my employer to get paid for something I never intended to deliver to my employer. Such activity is very deceptive and underhanded. It is a lie calculated to rob the employer of what the employer hired me to do – no bones about it. And that, I’m afraid, is a moral problem in anyone’s book.

If you think the SDA Church was somehow unclear about what it expects from its science professors regarding the topic of origins, think again. The following statement of the SDA General Conference Executive Committee is very clear in this regard:

We call on all boards and educators at Seventh-day Adventist institutions at all levels to continue upholding and advocating the churchâ€™s position on origins. We, along with Seventh-day Adventist parents, expect students to receive a thorough, balanced, and scientifically rigorous exposure to and affirmation of our historic belief in a literal, recent six-day creation, even as they are educated to understand and assess competing philosophies of origins that dominate scientific discussion in the contemporary world.

http://adventist.org/beliefs/statements/main-stat55.html

Regarding Brinsmead’s teachings, and their dramatic evolution over time, I’m sure I’m not aware of all of the subtleties of his numerous theological positions as they changed over time, but I think I’m well enough informed.

Also, Des Ford (since you brought him up) was not simply let go from Church employment for some minor issue. He was attacking clearly stated fundamental pillars of the SDA Church – to include the Church’s position on origins. Ford believes in and strongly supports theistic evolutionary ideas where life has existed and evolved on this planet over hundreds of millions of years of time. Ford does believe in the Divine inspiration of Genesis, but not based on the straight forward reading of the text so much as on a hidden mathematical code similar to the “Bible Code” of Michael Drosnin – on the same level as astrology if you ask me.

It is for such reasons that the likes of Ford and Brinsmead cannot represent the SDA Church in any sort of official capacity.

Really though, I do not want to get off on a debate on perfectionism. I do not agree with Brinsmead, and am not familiar with the views of Normal McNulty on this issue, but that isn’t the purpose of this particular website.

The purpose of this website is to inform members of the SDA Church as to what is really being taught in some of our schools on the issue of origins… a fundamental issue for the SDA Church.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com