Attention God: Please Beware of Gaps
A religious scientist explains why so-called "intelligent design theory " isn't so smart.
Attention God: Please Beware of Gaps
When it comes to religion, University of Pennsylvania paleontologist Peter Dodson and I fall on opposite sides of the tracks. He’s a practicing Catholic and I’m, well, let’s just say if he’s right, we won’t be neighbors in the afterlife.
But we agree about the nature of science and faith; we see them as separate modes of thought. In that I’ve run afoul of many religiously oriented readers and commentators who say I’m blind, or stubborn, or just plain stupid not to realize that science is just another form of faith.
That criticism has been particularly strong when I’ve touched on those dark areas in the map of human knowledge such as the origin of life. Scientists, my critics argue, are exercising blind faith that it was nature, not God at work. So I was eager to discuss this with Dodson, who is a member of the advisory board of the newly formed Institute for Religion and Science.
The IRS, has he calls it, is hosting a series of public lectures this spring, and Monday at 7 p.m. Dodson will speak about “Faith and Fossils” at Chestnut Hill College. In the talk, he said, he will recount some of his adventures and triumphs as paleontologist. He’s hunted dinosaurs from Madagascar to Argentina, and in Montana he discovered a new species, Avaceratops lammersi.
And he will talk about faith. Like many religious scientists, he thinks biblical literalists miss out doubly — since they can appreciate neither the wonders of science nor the poetry of the Bible. “There’s a passage that says the rivers clapped their hands and the hills ring out with joy,” he said. “How do you interpret that literally?”
On intelligent design theory, he says that an honest appraisal of nature shows both elegance and awkward contrivance. Scientists critical of intelligent design often point to the proximity of our excretory and reproductive functions and ask what kind of designer would put the sewer pipe through the playground.
But the biggest problem Dodson sees with intelligent design theory is that nobody has been able to use it to make any kind of advance in science. There are a few scientists devoted to promoting it, but they are not applying it to gain new insights into the natural world or human health.
In this view Dodson is closer to reflecting the views expressed by the pope than is Rick Santorum, who is often referred to as uber-Catholic. Intelligent design proponents insist that some aspects of the natural world must have required divine intervention. Santorum has advocated teaching this in school, but the pope himself has stated that he accepts Darwinian evolution as the explanation for the physical bodies of plants, animals and humans.
But these issues are not the places where science and religion have clashed most violently, at least in my in-box and voice mail. The real sparks fly over the contention that scientists are practicing a form of faith when they venture into the unknown and seek natural explanations for the origin of the universe and the origin of life.
I’ve argued that exploring unknown territory is what scientists do. If we knew all the answers there would be no reason to fund research. There’s no faith required to explore. If someone found incontrovertible, confirmed evidence that angels created the first cells, we’d have to accept that. But so far, the science is pointing toward self-assembly of complex, information-carrying molecules that were precursors of DNA.
My critics, even some who accept evolution, argue that reason leads to the conclusion that God is the originator of life and the cosmos. It takes more faith to consider the possibility of a natural explanation, they say.
Dodson says the assumption that there are divine answers to what science can’t explain is often called “God of the gaps” thinking, and it’s theologically shaky because the gaps can close. Isaac Newton, he said, couldn’t make stable orbits for the planets from his laws of motion, so he proposed that God had to occasionally nudge them back in place. When he was proven wrong, his God’s role was diminished.
“Which is a better concept of God — one that has to intervene repeatedly because he couldn’t get it right, or one that sets up a universe that operates by itself?” This is where our views diverge, since Dodson believes God created the universe, and I’m content not knowing exactly how the universe got here.
For Dodson, faith is, by definition, independent of scientific evidence. If scientists found a natural explanation for the origin of life, or even evidence for intelligent life on another planet somewhere, he said, “that wouldn’t shake my faith.”
If You Go: The lecture starts at 7 pm at Chestnut Hill College's Commonwealth Chateau, SugarLoaf Campus, 9230 Germantown Ave. Philadelphia, PA. For more details, click here.
Contact Faye Flam at 215-854-4977, fflam@phillynews.com, or @fayeflam on Twitter. Read her blog at philly.com/evolution.
More proof of the brain's wondrous ability to compartmentalize. Like all religious scientists he uses facts and logic when doing science and wishes and dreams when doing religion.— xdrta- Dodson is of a higher order of thinking and spirituality that some can not or will not understand. I give Flam credit for being open minded, a rare quality in punditry today.— varsity
Comment removed.- why should she accept his? If she were to accept faith, why not accept the faith of other scientists who "believe in science and faith"? How about agreeing with a scientist down in, let's say Texas, who believes in faith but also believes that Dodson is going to Hell as sure as Flam is? What good does faith do Dodson if the faithful scientist down in Texas right and all of Dodson's faith is for nothing? There certainly is no shortage of people of faith in this country who believe fervently that Dodson's faith id fool's gold.
- That logic doesn't follow. He accepts her world because it's based on observation and reality. His world and yours isn't, unless you can prove otherwise... Why should someone accept a reality that doesn't exist accept in your mind. — Aquanerd09
- The arguments for God are faith (hunch, credulousness) and word play of the theological kind. There are no arguments based on data. Cheers for Dodson, but if he doesn't take the Bible literally, what about parthenogenesis and resurrection? Not buying them should make it Christianity with an asterisk.— jxxphilly
- It would be nice to have a Pastafaran weigh in on this topic.— Daniel Hoffman
- Another way to look at faith is, well, faith. I mean that as trust in our fellow man,in this case it would be faith in fellow scientists. Fields are so specialized today that we need to have faith in our fellow scientists. I tend to think that faith and trust are things that could be fostered by the church. Science itself is based on cause and effect that can be measured in some way and really doesn't require faith in and of itself. But the various fields of research are so complicated that one could spend a lifetime researching a single hypothesis and only other scientists in that field would really understand the data. The rest of us need to have some sort of trust in these people ie. faith.— normd
- I salute Faye for putting this announcement up, and urge those who have prejudged Dodson's views to attend his talk (if possible) and get his side of things. If I were in the area, I would go. There are many varieties of Christianity and Biblical figurativity/hermeneutics plays a large part in their differing flavors.— nerdyseahorse
- Often religious faith is practically indistinguishable from clinical delusion. It is factually wrong - if there are gods, show me one! - it is based on incorrect inferences about reality, and it is impervious to contrary evidence, or to the utter absence of evidence, or, indeed, to change of any kind. Perceptive religious believers concede that they "cannot help but believe" (Andrew Sullivan) or "If you've never had faith, I probably sound like a nut." (Todd Wood). Contrast these helplessly obsessed believers with the rationality, the openness to error and to change, the recognition of the supremacy of objective evidence, and the
other signal properties of scientific thought.
Religious faith and scientific conviction are very different modes of
thought. Only a confused and desperate defender of religious delusion would attempt such a false equivalence.— phhht - thank you, thank you, thank you for writing about someone who more accurately reflects the catholic point of view on science and faith. as a catholic with a wide-cultural range of friends, i get very tired explaining to my atheist loved ones that no, i don't reject evolution, and no, i'm not on the 'intelligent design' bandwagon. when i was in catholic school, science and religion were 2 different classes. santorum is trying to play to a fundamentalist base, and therefore misrepresenting what he professes to be his faith. again, thank you.— WisshickonGirl
- The paper version of this story today has a picture caption that reads Dodson "sees problems with the theory of intelligent design." Intelligent design was never, and is not now, a "theory." Puh-Leez!
— Rich Henson - The problem with most Christian’s logic about science is that they try to play both sides of the fence. The only way they know of a "God" is through a “holy book” not science. We would not know anything about a “God” & his "Rules" for how we are to live if it wasn't for a book (Bible). Yet they distance themselves from the literal interpretation when it comes to the numerous scientific errors & untruths in it. The bible is either true or it is not. You can not play both sides of the fence. The basis of your faith resides in the book. If you don’t believe the Bible is 100% true then your version of “God” does not exist. How can the bible be proved so wrong about something’s but yet be right when it comes to whom we worship or how we live our lives? Christians try to lump a Creating Force / Creator & God as one in the same. Since science can not disprove a creating force yet, Christian’s use that as a basis of why they believe the “God” of bible is true. God is something we are required to worship & obey. A Creator is something that creates. “God” and all the baggage that comes with it are not same as the possibility of a creating force or “Creator”. If the bible is wrong about a “God” but there is in fact a "Creating Force" why would I have to worship “It”. Why can't we live without the burden of worshiping & obeying a higher power. If there was a “Creator” why would that be a requirement? Humans & a Creator can co-exist independent of each other. We never cross paths and we never have too. I do not have to acknowledge a creator and it is not a requirement of me. Christians & other people of faith in general need to understand the difference. We have learned so much about ourselves through science, fossils, & DNA that we should stop holding on to these outdated believes about our origins. We may not know what sparked life but we have a very good idea what happened since the spark.— rozman20
- I like to hypothetically ask people of faith, "if you could create life in a petri dish, and this life developed the ability to critically think, would you be angered at them if they denied your existence? Would you be mad at your creation if they didn't pay homage to you?".
Any rational person would say of course not... Yet that's exactly what people believe and practice.— Aquanerd09 - Comment removed.
In pursuit of her stories, writer Faye Flam has weathered storms in Greenland, gotten frost nip at the South Pole, and floated weightless aboard NASA’s zero-g plane. She has a degree in geophysics from the California Institute of Technology and started her writing career with the Economist. She later took on the particle physics and cosmology beat at Science Magazine before coming to the Inquirer in 1995. Her previous science column, “Carnal Knowledge,” ran from 2005 to 2008. Her new column and blog, Planet of the Apes, explores the topic of evolution and runs here and in the Inquirer’s health section each Monday. Email Faye at fflam@phillynews.com.
Reach Planet of the at fflam@phillynews.com.
