God and Nature Winter 2020
Two Kinds of Teleological Thinking |
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By Carlos F.A. Pinkham
The following thoughts grew out of a dialogue with a good friend who is a fundamental creationist; I am an evolutionary creationist (1). My friend mentioned Stephen C. Meyer's book Signature in the Cell (2). He was convinced that "intelligent design" is demonstrable science and not "mere religion." He pointed out that Meyer presents the odds of the "accidental" generation of a single, functional, simple protein of modest length (150 amino acids) as one in ten to the 164th power. Since the chance of finding a single, specific electron out of all the elements in the known universe is one in ten to the 80th (3), he recognized these were not good odds in anyone's book. They were too vastly against even one functional protein emerging randomly within the same eon.
In addition, the fact that all the pieces need to be integrated for cellular and universal functionality convinced my friend to favor a six-day creation. He argued there is no organism that could function and reproduce without all parts operating properly and synchronously to support and nurture its survival. The odds of one piece happening a billion years ago, another a million years later, and so forth would not be sustainable. There is either integrity or dis-integrity (disintegration), and we are told that in Christ all things hold together (Col 1:17).
The following thoughts grew out of a dialogue with a good friend who is a fundamental creationist; I am an evolutionary creationist (1). My friend mentioned Stephen C. Meyer's book Signature in the Cell (2). He was convinced that "intelligent design" is demonstrable science and not "mere religion." He pointed out that Meyer presents the odds of the "accidental" generation of a single, functional, simple protein of modest length (150 amino acids) as one in ten to the 164th power. Since the chance of finding a single, specific electron out of all the elements in the known universe is one in ten to the 80th (3), he recognized these were not good odds in anyone's book. They were too vastly against even one functional protein emerging randomly within the same eon.
In addition, the fact that all the pieces need to be integrated for cellular and universal functionality convinced my friend to favor a six-day creation. He argued there is no organism that could function and reproduce without all parts operating properly and synchronously to support and nurture its survival. The odds of one piece happening a billion years ago, another a million years later, and so forth would not be sustainable. There is either integrity or dis-integrity (disintegration), and we are told that in Christ all things hold together (Col 1:17).
"Infinity makes anything possible." |
At the time of this conversation, I was digesting Christian de Duve’s book Vital Dust (4). De Duve addresses my friend’s concerns in a mostly admirable way. Carefully and step-by-step, he takes us along the path cleared by natural selection, from the primordial chemical soup through the proto-cell to the primitive, prokaryotic cell to the complex, eukaryotic cell, and finally through the parade of multicellular organisms that led to you and me.
I say “mostly admirable” because I was surprised to see that even though he is Catholic, and even though, like Julian Huxley (5) and I, he feels this process could only have happened by logical events, he succumbs to the old argument against teleological thinking (6).
One example of teleological (from Greek telos, “end or purpose”) thinking is believing that mutations, the engine of the variation on which natural selection works, have a concept of where the evolutionary train is heading. In truth, they have none. This is a fundamental tenet of evolution, demonstrated every time one cares to test it. Mutations occur randomly with respect to just about any measure you can think of. Most are harmful, some are neutral, but a few now and again are innovative. Natural selection removes the former, ignores the middle, and favors the latter if their innovation affects the ability of the individual with such mutations to pass them to their offspring.
However, what de Duve did not acknowledge until the very end of his book (and then almost as a post-script) is that there is a second kind of teleological thinking that must be distinguished from the first. Let’s call the first one, described above, “teleology of the moment.” Let’s call the second one “teleology of the creation.” Just because the former is wrong doesn’t mean the latter is.
This distinction is very often overlooked. For example, in Peter M. Hoffmann's insightful book Life's Ratchet, How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos, he refers to natural selection as a "blind" process” (7). It is blind in the sense of the teleology of the moment, but it is not within the teleology of the creation. Just as a blind person must use a cane to "see" where to go, “blind” natural selection is obligated to use the cane of the criteria of selection to guide it along. These criteria (e.g., the ability to digest and metabolize vital substances, or the ability to move through the environment in a manner that successfully foils predators) are dependent upon forces, masses, and constants (FMC) that both shape the environment and determine how life subsequently interacts with it and itself.
Evidence is accumulating that because of the natural consequences of these FMCs, there is a correct (and perhaps only one correct) way to go from a Big Bang, through cosmological and chemical evolution to a primordial soup of chemicals, and from there through chemical and biological evolution to you and me. The universe follows the recipe for this soup and no others because at the instant of the Big Bang, the universe was endowed with about 20 fundamental FMCs with precise values, from which all subsequent FMCs are derived. The fundamental and derived FMCs interact in such a way as to cause the universe to combine ingredients so that the soup becomes you and me by a long series of logical, inevitable steps.
More on these fundamental FMCs and a selected few of these steps can be found in a paper I presented in 2006 at Oxford (8) and in 2008 at the annual meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) (9). It is these steps that Steven Meyer sees in their culmination that do, indeed, make the process look so implausible as to be impossible.
Meyer is mostly correct. If they had to occur randomly, without any chance of there being a plan, then the only way this could have happened was by deferring to the power of infinity—an infinity of universes or an infinite universe. Infinity makes anything possible. (That is something many non-mathematicians don’t realize.) But if this whole process was planned, then we can justifiably be blown away by the awesomeness of the Infinite Mind that thought it all up. Einstein once quipped, “I do not believe that God plays dice with the universe.” What he really should have said was “I believe God plays dice with the universe, but He uses loaded dice.”
It has been pointed out (10) that if we have to rely upon infinity, that means somewhere there must be a universe with an all-powerful, perfectly evil god in control (remember, anything is possible with infinity). That god would be in direct conflict with ours, and since both were all-powerful, they would destroy each other. Since you and I are still here, infinity in that manner, as an explanation for what we know, seems pretty flimsy.
I would take it even one argument further. If we insist upon falling back on infinity, then there also has to be a universe with an everlasting, all-powerful, loving God who created that universe with the sole intent of generating intelligent beings via natural processes that would have “natural” explanations. Because they do, these processes wouldn’t prove God, leaving room for choice. Thus, the gift of faith by grace is available to allow the free agents created by this process to experience God’s love now and forever, of their own free will. If that is so, how can these scientists be sure they are not in that universe?
References
1. https://biologos.org/common-questions/how-is-biologos-different-from-evolutionism-intelligent-design-and-creationism,
2. https://signatureinthecell.com
3. Meyer, Steven C., 2009, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, Harper One, New York, p 212.
4. de Duve, Christian, 1995, Vital Dust, The Origin and Evolution of Life on the Earth, Basic Books, New York, 362 pp.
5. Huxley, Julian, 1948, Man in the modern world. New York: Mentor Books, pp 7-28 (see especially his first full paragraph on page 13).
6. Ibid. 5, 147
7. Hoffman, Peter M., 2012, Life's Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos, Basic Books, New York, p 42.
8. Pinkham, C.F.A., 2007, Evolution is not the Enemy, Intelligent Design is not the Answer, Forum on Public Policy Online, Winter 2007 edition, http://www.forumonpublicpolicy.com/archive07/pinkham.rev.pdf
9. Pinkham, Carlos, 2008, Nine Phenomena That Recur Throughout Cosmological, Abiological, and Biological Evolution, https://www.asa3.org/slides/ASA2008Pinkham.pdf
10. Mann, Robert, in a discussion at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation.
Carlos Frank Amory Pinkham has a PhD in evolution from University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, 1971. He is a COL, U.S. Army, Retired, 2003. and Professor Emeritus of Biology, 2009, Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont. He has recently published a book, “The Trouble with the Trinity, A Layman-to-Layman Study of the Biblical Evidence for the Triune Nature of God.”
I say “mostly admirable” because I was surprised to see that even though he is Catholic, and even though, like Julian Huxley (5) and I, he feels this process could only have happened by logical events, he succumbs to the old argument against teleological thinking (6).
One example of teleological (from Greek telos, “end or purpose”) thinking is believing that mutations, the engine of the variation on which natural selection works, have a concept of where the evolutionary train is heading. In truth, they have none. This is a fundamental tenet of evolution, demonstrated every time one cares to test it. Mutations occur randomly with respect to just about any measure you can think of. Most are harmful, some are neutral, but a few now and again are innovative. Natural selection removes the former, ignores the middle, and favors the latter if their innovation affects the ability of the individual with such mutations to pass them to their offspring.
However, what de Duve did not acknowledge until the very end of his book (and then almost as a post-script) is that there is a second kind of teleological thinking that must be distinguished from the first. Let’s call the first one, described above, “teleology of the moment.” Let’s call the second one “teleology of the creation.” Just because the former is wrong doesn’t mean the latter is.
This distinction is very often overlooked. For example, in Peter M. Hoffmann's insightful book Life's Ratchet, How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos, he refers to natural selection as a "blind" process” (7). It is blind in the sense of the teleology of the moment, but it is not within the teleology of the creation. Just as a blind person must use a cane to "see" where to go, “blind” natural selection is obligated to use the cane of the criteria of selection to guide it along. These criteria (e.g., the ability to digest and metabolize vital substances, or the ability to move through the environment in a manner that successfully foils predators) are dependent upon forces, masses, and constants (FMC) that both shape the environment and determine how life subsequently interacts with it and itself.
Evidence is accumulating that because of the natural consequences of these FMCs, there is a correct (and perhaps only one correct) way to go from a Big Bang, through cosmological and chemical evolution to a primordial soup of chemicals, and from there through chemical and biological evolution to you and me. The universe follows the recipe for this soup and no others because at the instant of the Big Bang, the universe was endowed with about 20 fundamental FMCs with precise values, from which all subsequent FMCs are derived. The fundamental and derived FMCs interact in such a way as to cause the universe to combine ingredients so that the soup becomes you and me by a long series of logical, inevitable steps.
More on these fundamental FMCs and a selected few of these steps can be found in a paper I presented in 2006 at Oxford (8) and in 2008 at the annual meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) (9). It is these steps that Steven Meyer sees in their culmination that do, indeed, make the process look so implausible as to be impossible.
Meyer is mostly correct. If they had to occur randomly, without any chance of there being a plan, then the only way this could have happened was by deferring to the power of infinity—an infinity of universes or an infinite universe. Infinity makes anything possible. (That is something many non-mathematicians don’t realize.) But if this whole process was planned, then we can justifiably be blown away by the awesomeness of the Infinite Mind that thought it all up. Einstein once quipped, “I do not believe that God plays dice with the universe.” What he really should have said was “I believe God plays dice with the universe, but He uses loaded dice.”
It has been pointed out (10) that if we have to rely upon infinity, that means somewhere there must be a universe with an all-powerful, perfectly evil god in control (remember, anything is possible with infinity). That god would be in direct conflict with ours, and since both were all-powerful, they would destroy each other. Since you and I are still here, infinity in that manner, as an explanation for what we know, seems pretty flimsy.
I would take it even one argument further. If we insist upon falling back on infinity, then there also has to be a universe with an everlasting, all-powerful, loving God who created that universe with the sole intent of generating intelligent beings via natural processes that would have “natural” explanations. Because they do, these processes wouldn’t prove God, leaving room for choice. Thus, the gift of faith by grace is available to allow the free agents created by this process to experience God’s love now and forever, of their own free will. If that is so, how can these scientists be sure they are not in that universe?
References
1. https://biologos.org/common-questions/how-is-biologos-different-from-evolutionism-intelligent-design-and-creationism,
2. https://signatureinthecell.com
3. Meyer, Steven C., 2009, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, Harper One, New York, p 212.
4. de Duve, Christian, 1995, Vital Dust, The Origin and Evolution of Life on the Earth, Basic Books, New York, 362 pp.
5. Huxley, Julian, 1948, Man in the modern world. New York: Mentor Books, pp 7-28 (see especially his first full paragraph on page 13).
6. Ibid. 5, 147
7. Hoffman, Peter M., 2012, Life's Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos, Basic Books, New York, p 42.
8. Pinkham, C.F.A., 2007, Evolution is not the Enemy, Intelligent Design is not the Answer, Forum on Public Policy Online, Winter 2007 edition, http://www.forumonpublicpolicy.com/archive07/pinkham.rev.pdf
9. Pinkham, Carlos, 2008, Nine Phenomena That Recur Throughout Cosmological, Abiological, and Biological Evolution, https://www.asa3.org/slides/ASA2008Pinkham.pdf
10. Mann, Robert, in a discussion at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation.
Carlos Frank Amory Pinkham has a PhD in evolution from University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, 1971. He is a COL, U.S. Army, Retired, 2003. and Professor Emeritus of Biology, 2009, Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont. He has recently published a book, “The Trouble with the Trinity, A Layman-to-Layman Study of the Biblical Evidence for the Triune Nature of God.”