anti-militant II

This article is inspired by an exchange in www.firstthings.com, a magazine edited by John Richard Neuhaus. It mostly concerns issues of culture, art and theology, issues which are of little interest to me. But on the sidelines they discuss science, and in particular the relationship between religion and so-called “neo-Darwinism.” This I do find interesting.

The latest exchange is between Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, and Stephen Barr, professor of physics at the University of Delaware. Now I confess that I do not understand the issues under debate. Perhaps it is because I do not have easy access to the Bishop’s initial essay in which he allegedly disputed Catholic teaching on evolution, or perhaps it is because the issues under discussion are so sophisticated and subtle that a rube like me cannot hope to comprehend. Or perhaps I am no longer sufficiently in tune with Catholicism to take the dispute seriously. Whatever, it seems to me that the parties agree on nearly everything.

They both, for example, do not necessarily subscribe to the Intelligent Design idea. They are smart enough to know that that theory is far too weak to stand up to mainstream biology. Professor Barr ends his article with the statement “I personally am not at all sure that the neo-Darwinian framework is a sufficient one for biology.” This is as close as he gets to denying evolution. And despite the initial charge, the Bishop states only that “for now, I happily concede that a metaphysically modest version of neo-Darwinism could potentially be compatible with the philosophical truth (and thus Catholic teaching) about nature.” This, as far as I can see, means roughly the same thing. There is not much daylight between these two gentlemen.

What does the Bishop mean by “metaphysically modest?” He means (as far as I can tell) that just because something appears to be random does not mean that it really is random. Anti-religious bigots, of which neo-Darwinists can boast a few, make the mistake of saying that because God cannot be detected in the data, therefore there is no God. The Bishop begs to differ, essentially relying on the “you can’t prove a negative” defense. And of course he is right: no amount of data can possibly prove that God does not exist. But the burden of proof is on the Bishop, and he rises to the occasion by invoking Revealed Truth, something that is not available to those of us outside the sainted fold.

By my reading Professor Barr makes nearly the same arguments, but he has some interesting things to say about random. His point seems to be this: just as a correlation does not demonstrate cause and effect, lack of correlation does not prove lack of cause and effect. It is still possible for God to hide in dusty corners of phase space and manipulate the results without human science being any the wiser. But again, the burden of proof is on the Professor, and he rises to it in the same way as the Bishop: Revealed Truth.

The Bishop and the Professor want, as their main goal, to preserve the centrality of the human experience in the universe. To this end they worry about human creation, and while they acknowledge the possibility and even probability of evolution, they insist that God still has a hand in determining the result. There is nothing I can do to undermine their faith, and I won’t even try. But an implicit assumption of their arguments is that human evolution has stopped; that we have reached the pinnacle of our existence and that we are the final end of God’s creation. They have done what they can to explain the past, but what happens when we look into the future? I’d be interested in hearing their response to the following:

The universe appears to be about 14 billion years old, and looks set to survive in much its present form for another 10 - 20 billion years or so. Surely our two friends do not expect the human species, or for that matter, life on earth or even the earth itself to last that long. But maybe Revealed Truth will come to the rescue and stop the whole shebang within the next century or two: some Protestants believe in the Rapture. That’s a cheap and easy way out of the argument, and if that is the position of the Bishop and the Professor this discussion is over. But failing that, our two friends need to explain why a species that, in its modern form, is only 30,000 years old and will, if lucky, survive another 10,000 years, is still the ultimate object of all creation.

But even this is too easy a question for them, for they assume that human evolution has stopped, and that human nature now reflects what God has intended for us. But this is surely not true - we continue to evolve as we always have. Here are some very safe predictions about the future:

• The people who live 1000 years from now will be descended from those people who have children today.
• Further, the people who live 1000 years from now will be descended from that subset of today’s children that also successfully have children. And so on, for generations.
• Since most women successfully reproduce, evolution is driven disproportionately by the large differential in male success: some men have lots of children, and others none. Thus, over the next 1000 years, male behavior that leads to successful reproduction will be strongly preferred over male behavior that does not.
• Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that birth control, abortion, and other facets of modern medicine become permanent features of the human environment. (This is a risky assumption, but almost any other assumption will have consequences analogous to those which follow, so my central argument does not depend on this.)
• Those males who successfully reproduce will have to do so despite birth control, abortion, etc. They will behave differently than men do today. For example, in a birth control world consorting with prostitutes is reproductively sterile, and thus is disfavored. A male tendency to visit prostitutes will be bred out of our species. Indeed, casual sex generally will not be a successful strategy.
• Thus 1000 years from now, human nature will be different - men will not seek casual sex.
• So how does Revealed Truth stack up against this state of affairs? The significance of Jesus’ conversation with the woman at the well will have lost its significance, if not its meaning. People 1000 years from now will look at that and wonder what He was talking about.

If you don’t like my speculation about the future, pick your own. But whatever conditions you put on the future - existence or non-existence of birth control, for example - the facts of sexual reproduction still win out and evolutionary consequences follow. And if you think 1000 years is too short for evolution to happen, then I’ll happily give you 5000, or 10,000, or for that matter anything up to around 10 billion. Thus it is not necessary for humans to die a sudden or dramatic death - we could simply and rather gradually evolve into a slightly different species. And given enough time, that is exactly what will happen.

With this in mind, I would like the Bishop and the Professor to tell me what the significance of their debate is.