The purpose of theistic evolution

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Dr. Joshua Swamidass, a theistic evolutionist, joined us recently at TSZ. I think the following comment of his will lead to some interesting and contentious discussion and is worthy of its own thread:

Third, if we drop “Darwinian” to just refer to the current modern synthesis of evolutionary theory, you are right that the scientific account does not find any evidence of direction or planning. I agree with you here and do not dispute this.
 
So the question becomes, really, is it possible that God could have created a process (like evolution) with a purposeful intent that science could not detect? I think the answer here is obvious. Of course He could. In fact, I would say, unless He wanted us to discern His purpose, we could not.
 
In my view, then, evolution has a purpose in creating us. Science itself cannot uncover its purpose. I find that out by other means.

570 thoughts on “The purpose of theistic evolution”

  1. Fair Witness: Should I conclude it to be impossible because your attempt seems to have failed? Of course not. But the more people like you and Dembski try and fail, the more I lean toward thinking it may not happen.

    That is how it tends to work.

    I do the same thing when I see people try and fail to create things like life and consciousness.

    It does not mean such a thing is impossible only that it’s highly unlikely. The more failures there are the more unlikely it probably is.

    peace

  2. fifthmonarchyman: If I understand you correctly you are saying that you can’t do one of the most basic human activities.

    As usual, you’re not correctly understanding what someone else is saying. If you read beyond the first sentence you would see that Fair Witness is casting doubt on our ability to “detect intent” in tools, not in people. Autism has nothing to do with it, and methodological naturalism has nothing to do with autism. That’s just another confusion.

  4. Kantian Naturalist: As usual, you’re not correctly understanding what someone else is saying. If you read beyond the first sentence you would see that Fair Witness is casting doubt on our ability to “detect intent” in tools, not in people. Autism has nothing to do with it, and methodological naturalism has nothing to do with autism. That’s just another confusion.

    Not just tools; artifacts in general, I think. It’s a good point too.

  5. walto: Thanks. I was unfamiliar with that school.

    Wow, after reading two or three Wiki articles, I’m just glad you didn’t refer to me as a Pelagian. I don’t want to be burned at the stake!!

  6. keiths:
    dazz,

    Again, the outcome isn’t determined.

    The fact that God timelessly knows the outcome does not mean that the outcome is determined.If God knew the outcome before it occurred, then it would be determined, and all other possibilities would be ruled out. Since he’s outside of time, there’s no such problem.

    That’s right.God observes the outcome timelessly.He doesn’t determine it.If he did, it wouldn’t be random, as you point out.

    There is no such thing as “creating a trillion universes in a row” outside of time.“In a row”, in the sense of “one after another”, is inherently temporal.

    This doesn’t make sense Keith. Being “outside time” would be, in theory, little different than a human watching a movie. We are outside the movie time line and thus have no direct impact on the events occurring within the movie. But that we don’t cause cause any of the events that occur within that timeline does not change the fact that by knowing the outcome, it is the only possible outcome that could have occurred.

  7. Robin: This doesn’t make sense Keith. Being “outside time” would be, in theory, little different than a human watching a movie. We are outside the movie time line and thus have no direct impact on the events occurring within the movie. But that we don’t cause cause any of the events that occur within that timeline does not change the fact that by knowing the outcome, it is the only possible outcome that could have occurred.

    As indicated, I think you’re both wrong.

  8. Robin,

    The outcome of a movie has already been determined before you hit ‘Play’, so that’s a bad analogy for what we’re talking about here.

  9. keiths: The outcome of a movie has already been determined before you hit ‘Play’, so that’s a bad analogy for what we’re talking about here.

    Yes, but it’s not the “knowing” or the “truth” that has determined it.

  10. From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://www.iep.utm.edu/foreknow/#H8

    The argument (Logical Determinism) that a proposition’s being true prior to the occurrence of the event it describes logically precludes free will ultimately rests on a modal fallacy. And the ancillary argument that a proposition’s being true prior to the occurrence of the event it describes causes the future event to occur turns on a confusion (i) of the truth-making (semantic) relation between an event and its description with (ii) the causal relation between two events.

    The argument (Epistemic Determinism) that a proposition’s being known prior to the occurrence of the event it describes logically precludes free will, as in the case of logical determinism, ultimately rests on a modal fallacy. And the arguments that it is impossible to know the future are refuted by two facts. One is that we do in fact know a very great deal about the future, indeed our managing to keep ourselves alive from hour to hour, from day to day, depends to a very great extent on such knowledge. Two is that the objection that we cannot have knowledge of the future – because our beliefs about the future ‘might’ (turn out to) be false – turns on a mistaken account of the role of ‘the possibility of error’ in a viable account of knowledge. Beliefs about future actions, insofar as they are contingent, and – by the very definition of “contingency” – are possibly false. But “possibly false” does not mean “probably false”, and possibly false beliefs, so long as they are also actually true, canconstitute bona fide knowledge of the future.

  11. Once again, I think we’re losing track of the main point: it’s not about foreknowledge, it’s about purpose: Can god choose a random process to create some particular thing? It’s not that he knows what the outcome will be, the crux of the matter is that this random process must produce humans or serve no purpose. I don’t think playing the timeless card works at all because once you pick a time-bound process to produce the intended result, you can’t just pretend the nature of the process itself is not relevant to the outcome. It’s like saying that if god created the laws of physics to produce planets, those planets could somehow violate the laws of physics. So picking a random process means you can’t decide, timelessly or not, what that process will produce

  12. dazz:
    Once again, I think we’re losing track of the main point: it’s not about foreknowledge, it’s about purpose: Can god choose a random process to create some particular thing? It’s not that he knows what the outcome will be, the crux of the matter is that this random process must produce humans or serve no purpose. I don’t think playing the timeless card works at all because once you pick a time-bound process to produce the intended result, you can’t just pretend the nature of the process itself is not relevant to the outcome. It’s like saying that if god created the laws of physics to produce planets, those planets could somehow violate the laws of physics. So picking a random process means you can’t decide, timelessly or not, what that process will produce

    I wasn’t meaning to contradict anything in your posts, dazz. I agree that you’ve been focusing on a different matter. And it seems to me an interesting point.

  14. fifthmonarchyman: I think that would be an interesting topic.

    If I understand you correctly you are saying that you can’t do one of the most basic human activities.

    The inability to detect intent is a symptom of a serious mental handicap

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism

    I tend to agree that it’s impossible to detect intent when you are constrained by methodological naturalism. It’s a good thing we are not so constrained in our everyday experience

    As I previously explained to you, and you acknowledged, I am not concerned with inferring intent when access to the intender is possible, because that is a much easier task. Your statement above smacks of a strawman or moving of goalposts.

    I would ask Alan to remind you of the forum rule against implying a person has a mental disorder.

    The topic is Theistic Evolution and its “purpose”. Purpose is related to intent. Our dialog is only relevant to this topic in that it speaks to the difficulty in looking at nature and determining whether purpose or intent can be detected. We do not seem to have access to an intender in this case. If such an intender has communicated with you, please enlighten us as to what their purpose was in setting biological evolution in motion. Otherwise, I grow tired of your duplicity.

  15. walto,

    But this is not what the theistic evolutionists must argue at all. They must argue that God is pre-ordaining that this system we call evolution MUST make Man because he has a special purpose for man.

    How can one believe in the bible, and also believe in evolution as a purposeless, undirected process. This is the position that makes no sense.

  16. walto: I wasn’t meaning to contradict anything in your posts, dazz.I agree that you’ve been focusing on a different matter.And it seems to me an interesting point.

    Thanks for that IEP link. It’s taken me a while to wrap my head around all that but I think I finally understand it.

    And about my point that evolution can’t have the purpose of creating humans, I just think Keiths and I have been talking past each other

  17. dazz,

    It’s like saying that if god created the laws of physics to produce planets, those planets could somehow violate the laws of physics. So picking a random process means you can’t decide, timelessly or not, what that process will produce

    You’re inadvertently slipping into temporality when you talk about “deciding what a random process will produce.” You’re envisioning God at a point in time at which the random events have not yet occurred.

    To a timeless being, all of time is equally accessible. He doesn’t have to decide what a random process will produce — he observes what it produces from his timeless vantage point.

  18. phoodoo:
    dazz,

    You are free to attempt to answer the question.How much suffering would you allow in your world?

    How about the least suffering I could possibly allow?

  19. keiths:
    dazz,

    You’re inadvertently slipping into temporality when you talk about “deciding what a random process will produce.”You’re envisioning God at a point in time at which the random events have not yet occurred.

    To a timeless being, all of time is equally accessible.He doesn’t have to decide what a random process will produce — he observes it from his timeless vantage point.

    I’m not inadvertently slipping into temporality. My contention is that once a temporal, and more importantly, random process comes into play, timelessness is completely irrelevant, and for the emptienth time, I’m not talking about knowledge this time, but purpose. If purpose involves intent, then yes, god must decide what evolution will produce, and the temporal reference makes sense because evolution operates within time, and it’s evolution that ultimately produces the outcome

  20. dazz,

    Do you think that a timeless God cannot observe (not decide) what evolution, operating within time, produces?

  21. fifthmonarchyman: I think that would be an interesting topic.

    If I understand you correctly you are saying that you can’t do one of the most basic human activities.

    The inability to detect intent is a symptom of a serious mental handicap

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism

    I tend to agree that it’s impossible to detect intent when you are constrained by methodological naturalism. It’s a good thing we are not so constrained in our everyday experience

    peace

    Just what you denied was possible (at least by the only way that it would be possible, via empirical evidence) a few days back:

    in order for you to know that I “insinuate things” you need to know my intentions.

    There can be no empirical evidence for intent because intent is a subjective thing.

    You know subjectivity it’s what minds have that brains don’t

    What is a decision in phoodoo world?

    Of course I disagreed, and now you’re writing as if ignoramuses like you are knowledgeable about these matters and that people who are constrained by “methodological naturalism” (who are they?) are those who can’t detect intent. Not to mention the fact that you didn’t understand that it was intent in objects that FW said was difficult to detect (which I think is a dubious claim).

    Any chance that you’ll ever deal with these things decently, and without your usual unsupported passive-aggressive attacks on others? Any chance you’ll ever admit you were wrong and passive-aggressively wrong when you wrote the nonsense you posted the other day?

    Glen Davidson

  22. phoodoo:
    walto,

    But this is not what the theistic evolutionists must argue at all.They must argue that God is pre-ordaining that this system we call evolution MUST make Man because he has a special purpose for man.

    How can one believe in the bible, and also believe in evolution as a purposeless, undirected process.This is the position that makes no sense.

    Yeah, I agree that’s an interesting puzzle. Fortunately, I don’t have to answer it!

    ETA: FWIW, I’d stop your question here myself:

    How can one believe in the bible….

  23. GlenDavidson: Just what you denied was possible (at least by the only way that it would be possible, via empirical evidence) a few days back:

    http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/what-is-a-decision-in-phoodoo-world/comment-page-24/#comment-141534

    Of course I disagreed, and now you’re writing as if ignoramuses like you are knowledgeable about these matters and that people who are constrained by “methodological naturalism” (who are they?) are those who can’t detect intent.Not to mention the fact that you didn’t understand that it was intent in objects that FW said was difficult to detect (which I think is a dubious claim).

    Any chance that you’ll ever deal with these things decently, and without your usual unsupported passive-aggressive attacks on others?Any chance you’ll ever admit you were wrong and passive-aggressively wrong when you wrote the nonsense you posted the other day?

    Glen Davidson

    I think he might be using “empirical” differently from you there. I.e., I take it he’d deny that empirical evidence is the only possible evidence as you suggest above. And “methodological naturalism” is, I think, his name for positions that restrict evidence to stuff that can’t distinguish zombies from people.

  24. Fair Witness: I would ask Alan to remind you of the forum rule against implying a person has a mental disorder.

    …Otherwise, I grow tired of your duplicity.

    LoL! Nicely done!

  25. walto: I think he might be using “empirical” differently from you there.I.e., I take it he’d deny that empirical evidence is the only possible evidence as you suggest above.

    I didn’t suggest that empirical evidence is the only possible evidence, but that it’s the only evidence for inferring intent in others. This in the context of his Wikipedia link, which isn’t about autistic people not being able to understand a “revelation” about intent (which may or may not count as evidence, and is not necessarily empirical evidence even when it counts as evidence, in my view), but about being capable of inferring intent via empirical information.

    Whether or not he has an idiosyncratic idea of what “empiricism” is does not happen to be my issue. That’s been all too apparent with respect to his concepts too frequently.

    Anyway, he was denying that I could properly infer his intent, and now he’s claiming that people with severe mental problems are the only ones so incapable. Was he saying that I am autistic, or what? I know that inferring intent on the internet isn’t perfect or exact, but it still happens correctly a lot.

    And “methodological naturalism” is, I think, his name for positions that restrict evidence to stuff that can’t distinguish zombies from people.

    I think it’s a term he uses as a general attack upon those who disagree with him about evidence and his extremely unlikely claims of revelation.

    Glen Davidson

  26. keiths:
    dazz,

    Do you think that a timeless God cannot observe (not decide) what evolution, operating within time, produces?

    Decide, no. Not if deciding involves causing it to produce a desired result. Well, I guess he could, but that wouldn’t be a random process anymore

  27. dazz,

    Decide, no.

    My question was about observation, not deciding.

    Again:

    Do you think that a timeless God cannot observe (not decide) what evolution, operating within time, produces?

  29. keiths: Do you think that a timeless God cannot observe (not decide) what evolution, operating within time, produces?

    Observe, sure…. I guess

  30. dazz,

    Observe, sure…. I guess

    But that’s something even we can do, once the events have occurred.

    So again, without realizing it, you are putting God in the position of a person within time, before the events have happened. In essence, you’re saying “the events are random, and they haven’t happened yet, so even God doesn’t know what the outcomes will be.”

    That simply doesn’t apply to a timeless God, to whom the ‘after’ is just as timelessly visible as the ‘before’.

  31. GlenDavidson: I didn’t suggest that empirical evidence is the only possible evidence, but that it’s the only evidence for inferring intent in others.

    Ah. Sorry. I agree with you about that.

  32. keiths:
    dazz,

    But that’s something even we can do, once the events have occurred.

    So again, without realizing it, you are putting God in the position of a person within time, before the events have happened.In essence, you’re saying “the events are random, and they haven’t happened yet, so even God doesn’t know what the outcomes will be.”

    That simply doesn’t apply to a timeless God, to whom the ‘after’ is just as timelessly visible as the ‘before’.

    FWIW, I think you are particularly good at conceiving stuff like that. I remember you being very helpful with respect to the Copernican shift too. I find things like this very hard to conceptualize myself. I don’t know if it’s from your computer background, but I think this is a particular strong point of yours.

    Other areas, you need to work on….. 😉

  33. walto,

    Thanks for the compliment — and for the caveat. Without the latter, I might have keeled over in shock. 🙂

  34. keiths:
    Robin,

    The outcome of a movie has already been determined before you hit ‘Play’, so that’s a bad analogy for what we’re talking about here.

    Well, according to the bible, that’s true of the Christian God too:

    Isaiah 46:10: Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:

    Ecclesiates 3:15: That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.

    John 17:24: Father, I desire that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, in order that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me; for Thou didst love Me before the foundation of the world

    …and so on and so forth.

    So it’s not merely a case of some god being “outside time” and simply being aware of what may unfold, but actually knowing before any creation that will unfold and then being the creator of that plan to boot.

  35. dazz,

    I agree that its logical sensible that God outside of time could know about events, but as you said, if we are going to call it random, he certainly can’t have anything to do with making them happen.

    This is why I find Swamidass’s and other theistic evolutionists position, unsustainable. But in Swamidasses case, its not so much that his position makes no sense, its rather his name for his position. He believes God does influence the direction of evolution. So really all he is saying is that he is an ID’ist. For some reason he just doesn’t like to be called that. I guess because he works in academia. Fair enough.

  38. keiths: Thanks for the compliment — and for the caveat. Without the latter, I might have keeled over in shock.

    Dangit walto. Next time just leave off the caveat!

    😀

  39. If one assumes for the sake of argument that evolution (aka universal common ancestry through descent with modification) is true, and if one assumes there is a God with a mind (like say the God deduced from the Quantum Mechanics), we can make an inference from scientific evidence that there could be (not necessarily is) purpose in biology as evidenced by convergent evolutionary features that should be selected against, not for.

    For example, if the SINE pattern in the Sternberg Collins paradox is not explicable by ordinary chemical and genetic mechanisms, it is suggestive of parallel designs aimed at the same target.

    The FBI used convergent patterns to catch casino cheaters as I described here:

    Coordinated Complexity — the key to refuting postdiction and single target objections

    There are convergent patterns in biology. Natural selection should select against the evolution of complex systems that require several simultaneously present and functioning well matched parts, hence natural selection is a lousy explanation for convergences such as those depicted below.

    Hence even assuming UCAT-DeWM (universal common ancestry through descent with modification), one can reasonably suggest appearance purpose in duplicating a target pattern, just like the FBI inferred purpose. Whether the appearance is in fact real is unfortunately dependent on having seen adequate designers to create such convergences in the first place. Convergence is very much in line with the notion of Homology as coined by creationist Richard Owen (Owenian Homology), not Homology in the Darwinian sense.

  40. Sal,

    like say the God deduced from the Quantum Mechanics

    What god is that then? Care to share the reasoning you used to arrive at that ‘fact’?

  42. I see your UD post and raise you a RationalWiki post

    This interpretation is based on the idea that consciousness is a separate entity from the material world and the mathematical descriptions of it; after all, the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics does not explicitly describe a collapse. The idea is that the intersection of consciousness and the physical world is what causes a collapse. This idea is logically consistent, and there are, and have been, a fair number of respected physicists that took a very long look at it. However, you can probably already see that there’s a ton of room for pseudoscience to operate here, and it has.
    An interesting argument against this interpretation has been put forward by Shimon Malin.[3] Malin’s argument is presented below.
    Suppose a measurement of an electron’s spin component along some direction is being measured. The result can either be “up” or “down”. The result of the measurement is automatically communicated to a printer that can either print “up” or “down”. If human consciousness is what causes the collapse to the observed state, then the collapse would only occur when someone read the printout, and not before. Now suppose that the printer has just enough ink to print “up”, and not enough ink to print “down”. Furthermore, if the printer runs out of ink, a bell sounds in a secretary’s office. If the secretary hears the bell, a collapse to “down” has clearly occurred before the bell sounded. If the secretary does not hear the bell, a collapse to “up” must have occurred–and no human interaction was necessary at all.
    Some people have suggested that the consciousness involved in the collapse process is not a human consciousness, but God himself. That type of idea is not the kind of thing that science can address. However, it can be considered logically. One problem with it is that it would require that God be less than all-knowing, because otherwise he would always be observing all particles at all times – in which all particles would remain in a “collapsed” state, and collapse wouldn’t even exist as a scientific idea.

    http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quantum_collapse

    There seems to be no need for a universal observer any more.

    Plus there are papers further supporting the idea: http://www.danko-nikolic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Yu-and-Nikolic-Qm-and-consciousness-Annalen-Physik.pdf

    Which concludes:

    : Conscious access to the information about the outcome of a measurement is not necessary for the collapse of the wave function – a
    conclusion similar to those suggested elsewhere

    So, no, no observer/god required.

  43. stcordova, OMagain:

    Yeah, to my knowledge, the idea that consciousness is needed to collapse wave functions was shown to be false quite some time ago. Murray Gell-Mann explains in his book from 1995, “The Quark and the Jaguar”, how interaction with other matter can decohere the quantum state of any particular particle.

  44. Fair Witness:… how interaction with other matter can decohere the quantum state of any particular particle.

    Translation: how matter can become conscious. As in brains.

  45. phoodoo:
    dazz,

    I agree that its logical sensible thatGod outside of time could know about events, but as you said, if we are going to call it random, he certainly can’t have anything to do with making them happen.

    This is why I find Swamidass’s and other theistic evolutionists position, unsustainable. But in Swamidasses case, its not so much that his position makes no sense, its rather his name for his position.He believes God does influence the direction of evolution.So really all he is saying is that he is an ID’ist.For some reason he just doesn’t like to be called that.I guess because he works in academia.Fair enough.

    We finally agree on something.

  46. keiths: In essence, you’re saying “the events are random, and they haven’t happened yet, so even God doesn’t know what the outcomes will be.”

    Are you kidding me? That’s NOT what I’m saying

  47. petrushka: Translation: how matter can become conscious. As in brains.

    Is that how you think it works, or are you emphasizing that that is how stcordova thinks it works? (not sure if sarcasm)

    If the former; how does that work?

  50. The point of citing Richard Conn Henry’s 2005 quantum viewpoint that God exists is to show that arguments at ID can be framed within the context of scientific knowledge without recourse to religious or philosophical considerations. Whether the arguments are correct is a separate question, but they can formally be put on the table based on interpretations of accepted science.

    The FBI casino cheating exmaples shows that convergent patterns can be used to identify the possibility purposeful events or configurations of matter. Convergent biological forms (like the placental and marsupial convergences) are suggestive of some proximal purpose. Inferring proximal purpose however does not imply we can reverse engineer ultimate purpose. For all we know God may have put convergences to make monkeys of evolutionists. We can reasonably think there was a purpose, but we may not know what that purpose was.

    Along the lines of convergence is an almost forgotten essay of cellular biologist Jonathan McLatchie describing his encounter with developmental biologist PZ Myers.

    McLatchie posed 10 questions about developmental biology that challenge evolutionary theory. PZ Myers was unable to answer them:
    http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/colliding_with_the_pharyngula_047281.html

    During the course of the Q&A, I raised a question concerning the lack of congruence between homology and developmental pathways, citing several papers to substantiate my claims (which I gave to PZ following the talk). What ensued was an eruption of jeering and mocking from the floor. It became so loud at one point that it was difficult to audibly articulate the point.

    That was gutsy on McLatchie’s part to go into pub and take on such a hostile crowd.

    Homology and Development
    The point which I had raised in the Q&A concerned the fact that there exists widespread variation in embryological processes and genetic mechanisms giving rise to apparently homologous organs, and there is also the related problem of homologous structures arising from different embryological sources. I provided several examples of this which have been documented in the literature. Remarkably, Myers seemed to contest my claim that this was actually the case, and I delivered a few papers to him afterwards in support of this contention, and I would also direct my readers to these papers to verify that my claim is both true and very well documented (e.g. Alberch 1985; Scholtz 2005). According to the Alberch paper (the claims of which remain true to this day), it is noted that it is “the rule rather than the exception” that “homologous structures form from distinctly dissimilar sites.”

    One doesn’t need to be a theistic evolutionist to suspect purpose. A straight forward examination of convergences suggests at least the appearance of purpose. Science probably can’t formally settle whether the appearance of purpose is actually real, but it can say that according to human conventions, the convergences in biology looks like it was purposefully designed. That inference of purpose remains even if one assumes UCA through descent with modification.

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