Finding Darwin’s God (Part 3)

The book discussion I have been attending here at Purdue finished last week. You can view my previous two posts over this here and here. We finished Kenneth Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God and had a final discussion over it. Here is a quick rundown. The beginning of the book Miller dedicates to discrediting various creationist arguments and gives a multitude of evidences and proofs for evolution. In fact, the entire first half of the book is dedicated to this. He then redirects his attention from attacks by religious believers, mainly creationists, to attacks originating from within the scientific community. He explains that scientists themselves are partly to blame for the reactions against science from the religious community. He again provides quite a long list of examples of well known scientists using evolution to try and exterminate religious belief.

I believe much of the problem lies with atheists in the scientific community who routinely enlist the material findings of evolutionary biology in support their own philosophical pronouncements.

He explains that these atheists are attempting to put forth at type of absolute materialism in place of religion. He continues this section by explaining that evolution does not necessitate disbelief in a creator God. He also gives examples of how the two are perfectly capable of living in harmony with each other. I also liked his explanations how how if evolution were truly false, and the creationists were correct, the resulting god would be a "charlatan" and a "magician".

One part that came up during our final discussion over the book is Miller’s use of quantum mechanics as a way to explain the method of which God could allow humans to be truly free of a predetermined existence. He only spends a brief amount of time on this subject but it comes off as a kind of God of the Gaps theory, albeit a much more supportable version. He uses the fact that science has shown that there is an absolute limit to our knowledge to support his point (Look up the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle if you are unfamiliar with this). His theory is in stark contrast to the general God of the Gaps theory which tries to use phenomena which science has yet to explain, but still may, to provide support. I think this is the weakest part of his book but it also happens to be the smallest, and in the end is not critical to his final argument.

Overall I thought it was a good book and worth reading. I would recommend it to both the religious and atheist alike.  Miller provides a good explanation of the current state of the Religion vs. Science controversy. And I think he, again, does a good job at explaining that the two fields are not inherently opposed to each other.

There is no religious reason, none at all, for drawing a line in the sand at the origin of life. The trend of science is to discover and to explain, and it would be foolish to pretend that religious faith must be predicated on the inability of science to cross such a line.

There will be another book discussion next semester. The actual book has yet to be decided upon as they are  taking suggestions. When one is decided I will post which book and what dates we will be meeting.

Finding Darwin’s God (Part 2)

Today I attended the first in a series of book discussions on Kenneth Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God. It is being held by the Religious Studies program and the Purdue Religion and Science Group. You can read more about the specifics from a post I wrote previously about the event. We met in the round discussion room on the top floor of Beering overlooking campus which was very nice. That was the first time I had ever been in that room. There were roughly sixteen people who attended this first discussion although it sounds like there are around twenty who are participating as some were unable to be there today. Apparently, we also caused nearly every book store in the city to sell out of the Finding Darwin’s God as they ran out of copies to give out to those participating. The discussion was started by going around the table and having everyone introduce themselves. The group was largely made up of faculty and staff with some graduate students largely from the Religion and Philosophy departments. There were a couple people from the Biology department and even one professor from Civil Engineering. What I found interesting is, as far as I could tell, the only two undergraduate students were engineers, a girl from Civil Engineering and then myself. I would have expected at least one or two undergrads from the Liberal Arts department or possibly even the Biology department. During the course of the discussion a couple people came out and stated their religious position including one atheist who, if I understood him correctly, believed that evolution does not, in and of itself, lead to a belief in God but supports a naturalistic view of life. We also had another person identify herself as a Christian Biologist who saw no problems with the compatibility between religion and biology.

One of the topics that was brought up by one of the coordinators of the discussion was how, or if, science and engineering courses teach about the classics of their fields, such as Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and Newton’s Opticks. She mainly asked this of the engineers in the room as the majority of the people there were from liberal arts backgrounds and did not know how we, engineers, were introduced to this material. We basically had to tell her that we do not go over any kind of classic engineering or science material. That those works have become almost exclusively relegated to classes on literature or the history of science and technology.

The topic of evolution in High School came eventually came up as well. Professor Ryba, one of the coordinators of the discussion, brought up a point from Miller’s book were Miller said he never had any introduction to evolution through his High School classes. Many of the people there were roughly the same age as Miller and thought that kind of strange as they had evolution in High School. A possible reason that was brought up for this is the differences in location. Different areas of the country, and world, have brought evolution into the classroom at different points in time.

A good point was made by the person who stated they see evolution as supporting a naturalistic view brought up a point about one of Miller’s statements in the first chapter. In it Miller makes the statement,

And does [evolution] rigorously exclude belief in God?

He made the contention with Miller’s choice of the word “rigorous”. He argued that science rarely ever can be said to be rigorous in its definitions or predictions, possibly making the point of the book kind of specious.  Another point was brought up dealing, again, with Miller’s choice of words. This time it was with his choice of using the term “traditional” in reference to religion. It was brought up that the definition of “traditional” can by very vague and spread across a fairly large spectrum of beliefs. It will be interesting to see how Miller defines it further.

The next meeting is in two weeks for which we were asked to read up to chapter six and to come with questions and pages highlighted.

Finding Darwin's God @ Purdue

The Purdue Religious Studies department is having a discussion of Kenneth Miller's book, Finding Darwin's God, on Wednesday Oct. 21. If you are unfamiliar with the book here is a quick editorial review off of Amazon.

Though he takes a different tack than Wyller (above), Miller tries to draw a straight line between two apparently opposing ideas: the theory of evolution and belief in a creator. In a more humanistic account than Wyller's, Miller, a professor of biology at Brown University, explains the difference between evolution as validated scientific fact and as an evolving theory. He illustrates his contentions with examples from astronomy, geology, physics and molecular biology, confronting the illogic of creationists with persuasive reasons based on the known physical properties of the universe and the demonstrable effects of time on the radioactivity of various elements. Then standing firmly on Darwinian ground, he turns to take on, with equal vigor, his outspoken colleagues in science who espouse a materialistic, agnostic or atheistic vision of reality. Along the way, he addresses such important questions as free will in a planned universe. Miller is particularly incisive when he discusses the emotional reasons why many people oppose evolution and the scientific community's befuddled, often hostile, reaction to sincere religious belief. Throughout, he displays an impressive fairness, which he communicates in friendly, conversational prose. This is a book that will stir readers of both science and theology, perhaps satisfying neither, but challenging both to open their minds.

The discussion is being led by Professor Ryba. I took a class from him last year on Western Religions and really enjoyed it. I am sure this discussion will be very interesting and plan on attending. The Religious Studies department has a listing under its events page for the full information. Also, if you are quick, you can get a free copy. Click on the pdf flyer above the listing and you can get the information to acquire a free copy if you email the contact by the 14th, tomorrow. I was a little skeptical at first but I received an email saying my copy of the book is waiting for me.