Rate This
Article
[click here]
Publish
YOUR
Article
[click here]
Religion and physical truth,
a biologist's perspective
By O. Twist
February 10, 2006
|
This article is from an outside source
and |
Summary: Biologists are currently often the target of fervent assaults, based on the inflexible philosophy of christian fundamentalism. This article explores my emotional reactions over time as both a christian and evolutionary biologist.
Some weeks ago I received a spam e-mail advertising a book entitled
“the miracle of hormones”. The unwelcome advertiser summarized the book
as great example of the truth of creationism, as the many reactions and
intricate hormone interactions in the human body were a blatant example
of the unfeasibility of the evil theory of evolution. The summary ended
with a fervent attack on the moral motivations of Darwinists. This
message invoked a violent knee-jerk reaction inside me, which had
occured many times in the recent past and I proceeded to swallow the
vomit that had involuntarily accumulated in my mouth.
As a product of a devout catholic/protestant family, attacks of this
nature unfortunately have often inspired such violent reactions inside
me, as my limited perspective of the world appeared to constantly
reinforce the idea that Christianity and a belief in god was directly
proportional to mental retardation. This perspective, which I suspect
many biologists share, led to the potentially unfortunate conclusion
that, as life can be explained without the need of intervention of a
higher power and the constant harassment of the followers of such a
power, God did not exist. This frame of mind was most definitely imposed
by the presence of these attacks and my privileged specialisation and
understanding of the nature of life and its development. J. P. Sartre
remarked in his autobiographical account of his childhood “the Words”
that God had not been able to set root in his heart. I felt that my
upbringing had allowed this to happen, but religious fundamentalists had
unfairly deprived me of the privilege by uprooting him.
My time as a devout atheist, however, did highlight to me the enormous
psychological crutch that acknowledgement of a higher power provides,
irrespective of it being imaginary or real. This realization of course
served to increase my strong emotional opposition to the loonies that
appeared to lurk at every corner (even in my inbox!). After reading
Stephen Hawking’s extremely informative “Brief history of time”,
however, I realized that my atheism was based on comprehensive
understanding of only one paragraph of a medium-sized book, which
explained the evolution of life on earth. The remaining 223 pages
explained the world in a context that I was not as intimately familiar
with and convinced me that my and our understanding of the universe was
not likely to advance to a state that would eliminate the possibility of
God in my life-time. Hence I felt it may in fact be imprudent to base my
life-philosophy on existentialism.
On further reflection I felt that it was not unreasonable to assume that
an all powerful and also most definitely intelligent god would choose
the most elegant and maybe even only solution to creating a being
capable of acknowledging itself and him. One lesson learnt during my PhD
programme was, that it was much more convenient to develop elegant
simple solutions to a problem rather than solving it the hard
traditional way. Why would a creator bother to choose and define every
possible aspect of a living being, when he could just create an
environment for a self-replicator, go on a 3.5 billion year holiday
(which may only be seven days or so for him) and reap the rewards
without having to overexert himself by intervening. Another explanation
for the observed solution may be that to produce an outcome complex
enough to comprehend its own existence it may in fact be necessary to
have a self-sustaining system. My father happens to test computer
software for a living and observed that with increasing complexity in
programs very simple problems tend to have catastrophic consequences. By
hand-designing every parameter of something as complex as a human, it
may in fact not be possible to obtain a configuration that is
self-sustaining, rather than crashing after five minutes of standard
operation. Maybe software developers may find a way of writing programs
that develop themselves over time and evolve according to set selection
pressures, which would allow instability to be eliminated by natural
selection. The parallel, rather than linear nature of organisms, could
also be a hint for increasing complexity in computer technology. (For
example a genetic defect in an organism is often compensated for by
other genes, and is not necessarily fatal, whereas I am led to believe
that corrupt code in the much simpler system of a computer program is
much more problematic.) Thus the process of evolution may provide the
most elegant and possibly only path towards complexity resulting in
conscience, and may by analogy also be required to one day result in
conscious artificial intelligence.
If members of the Christian churches believe that humanity received a
message worth preserving 2000 years ago, I strongly feel they will need
to stop antagonising the idea of evolution, but will instead have to
initiate thought processes such as the ones presented. Within our
lifetimes we may expect the general understanding of the evidence and
reality of evolution to advance to the level currently reserved for
biologists, meaning that unless a logical and compatible explanation for
god’s actions (and thus inaction or indirect action) persists, rather
than violent ideological opposition to the behaviour of life,
christianity and the mentioned message will move into obscurity and
become the sole domain of hypocrites and narrow-minded simpletons. This
will at best deprive the world of a very powerful psychological crutch
and at worst lead to loss of a real and important message we have had
the privilege of hearing. In this way fundamentalist Christians are
actively working towards the demise of what they value the most.
As scientists it is our professional duty to at all times keep an open
mind and a plastic image of the world surrounding us. Thus for the
christian scientist the simple message provided by the bible must be
interpreted in the same plastic manner and its interpretation constantly
revised to fit closest with our current understanding of the world.
Fortunately it is written in a manner which facilitates this important
and necessary process and allows the many varied interpretations that
have resulted in the plethora of Christian denominations observed today.
Viewer Feedback
2006-02-28 Phil Schuster, Other, wrote
Interesting, Factual, Biased to Evolution
I think part of the problem, that gets labeled as "atheistic evo", is
Reductionism in science. Creationists & IDers look at this reductionism
(often refered to as "darwinism") and posit a Creator/Designer to solve
the problem in one grand stroke. This leads to what I call metaphysical
reductionism to counter the materialistic reductionism of these "darwinists".
This conundrum can be avoided by realising that there is a presence that
works on a grand scale through the laws of nature as an expression of
the complex relationship everything has with everything else.
Reductionistic approaches can't address this. Simplistic formulas that
separate the organism from its environment can't address this. And
neither can simplistic theistic explanations which view God as a single
agent planning everything out ahead of time. A better approach would be
a pantheistic, or panentheistic one, where the laws of nature are
working from a higher order of complexity than we can understand. What I
am so awkwardly saying is that you can't separate God from nature, and
you can't explain everything by the limited methods of empiricism. We
know evolution happens, but we may never be able to track down all the
complexities involved or understand the ultimate purpose of it all. That
is beyond the scope of science.
Add your Comments
Submit a
Rebuttal
Submit an
Article on another topic
