Chapter 4. Creationism Lite

Troubles in Paradise-Downard 322 Chapter 4. Creationism Lite The World of Michael Behe: minus Populations and Gene Duplications – p. 335 Intelligent Design Teleology: Titanic or Iceberg? – p. 354 A Whale of a Tale: Michael Behe & Phillip Johnson in the Firing Line – p. 366 Theistic Science: “knee-jerking” Eldredge & the “very atheistic” Weinberg – p. 386 Are there really any such things as vampires? In a sociological sense, yes. There appears to be a certain subculture of jaded urban youth who affect a nocturnal lifestyle, dress in black outfits, don pasty-faced makeup, and go so far as to sup blood for a hobby when they can manage it. But are they vampires? Well, those with a firm grip on the naturalistic assumption would reply with a flat, “no.” The contemporary “vampire” will not be able to turn into a bat, nor seep through keyholes in the form of a supernatural fog. And should you slap a mirror in front of their heavily decorated face, they will cast a reflection. Our present understanding of optics absolutely precludes the idea that an object visible to the eye (reflecting light into our retina) can fail to produce an image in a mirror. This is not to say that someone wedded to scientific naturalism wouldn’t be open to new evidence. Should the spiritual descendant of Dr. Van Helsing burst into the room, alleged vampire in tow, and demonstrate by active experiment that the “creature of the night” really doesn’t have a reflection, that would be data to sink your teeth into (so to speak). Anyone with a modern scientific sensibility would be genuinely flabbergasted by such a discovery, of course, and may be distracted for a time trying to decide whether first to alert the local health authorities or notify the nearest tabloid newspaper. So, from our present understanding of things, science is extremely certain that “vampires” as they are traditionally conceived don’t exist—in fact, that they never existed. Such a broader conclusion comes from rigorously applying present conceptions to an irretrievable historical circumstance. But would such a line of reasoning be all that permissible in the new regime of Theistic Realism? Our Van Helsing Mirror Test cannot in principle be performed retroactively. There is no way then to really “prove” that there weren’t objective vampires in the past, from the days of Vlad “the Impaler” Tepes in 15th century Wallachia all the way down to suspicious Transylvanian tourists in Victorian London. It is purely the application of contemporary scientific experience that allows the naturalistic thinker to be so smug here. Nor is this attitude one without substantive repercussion. To deal with modern vampirism, the naturalistic recommendation would be to call in the psychotherapist or counselor—it would never cross the rationalist mind to order garlic or sharpen wooden stakes.1 Ideas have consequences, remember? The larger philosophical concept here is that it is possible to reach a sufficient understanding of a phenomenon to rule out as a practical matter a supernatural explanation. As noted, this most certainly does not mean you wouldn’t be willing to look at evidence for a non-naturalistic alternative. But you would need some evidence, tangible observations you could grab onto within the context of your honed contemporary view. Historic tales of vampires wouldn’t cut it on their own—it would help to see some successful Van Helsing Mirror Tests before the “vampire hypothesis” could be taken seriously. These days such supernatural options are not considered viable research topics from the start because of this combination of theoretical comprehension and practical experience. It is the difference between “ontological naturalism” (where non-natural causation is rejected on principle) and the workaday “methodological naturalism” practiced by scientists.2 But that rather basic distinction is precisely what Intelligent Design philosophy is out to rid science of. In the course of laying out “What Every Theologian Should Know about Creation, Evolution, and Design,” mathematician William Dembski declared that the two versions of naturalism were “functionally equivalent.” That questionable conclusion jumped, Intelligent Design was now free to pry both concepts loose with the same draconian crowbar: “The ground rules of science have to be changed.” Into what, Dembski didn’t specify. But not to worry, though, since Troubles in Paradise-Downard 323 this happy state of affairs “happens once we realize that it was not empirical evidence but the power of a metaphysical world view that was all along urging us to adopt methodological naturalism in the first place. Yes, the heavens still declare the glory of God, and yes, God’s invisible attributes are clearly seen from God’s creation. But to hear what the heavens declare and to see what the creation makes manifest, we need to get rid of our metaphysical blinders.”3 And what about those methodological purists who object to being hijacked along with their more rigid ontological cousins? It is the reluctance of rationalist scientists to toss off their “metaphysical blinders” and join in the triumphant creation chorus without some fairly solid supporting reasons that Phillip Johnson or William Dembski are ultimately objecting to when they castigate “methodological naturalism.” That Intelligent Design hasn’t gone on to apply this extraordinary principle to vampires is only an accident of their theology—not any fundamental feature of the underlying creationist logic.4 Frankly, vampires are the easy game. If they really existed they themselves would constitute a supernatural phenomenon, but what Intelligent Design creationists are envisaging is something far more subtle, and consequently more difficult to pin down. It is the inference of a supernatural agency within the confines of an otherwise natural world. Consider the parting of the waters for Moses during the Exodus. It might have been a truly miraculous event—or a natural occurrence mistaken for a divine act. For the more conservative, a resonant tidal wave from the eruption of Thera has its defenders, while the cataclysmic passage of Velikovsky’s cometary Venus might be more up the non-Biblical alleys of Vine Deloria or Richard Milton. But that is assuming that the historical Exodus even took place as advertised—as well as begging the antecedent geological question of how the Sea of Crossing came about before it had a chance to be crossed. You can see that moving from a direct supernatural phenomenon like vampires to the activities of a supernatural force complicates the problem of verifying that action in a historical or scientific sense. But design theorists think they have a surefire way out when it comes to at least some elements of the divine handiwork. The escape hatch here is about as far from the exciting world of vampire lore as you can get, and concerns the humdrum essence of pocket watches. Back in 1802 theologian and naturalist William Paley set down one of the most enticing and influential creationist design arguments with his famed Watchmaker analogy. Supposing you found a pocket watch lying on the ground, it would never occur to you that the timepiece was a sport of nature. Its very existence would suggest a watchmaker. And since living “watches” are no less intricate a piece of work, reasoned Paley, the divine craftsman may be inferred in exactly the same way … QED. Now Paley recognized that living things differed from watches in one fundamental respect: they reproduce. But as far as he was concerned that only helped his case. Just think how much more challenging it would be to create a self-replicating watch—certainly animal reproduction even more clearly illustrated the Watchmaker’s sublime craftsmanship!5 What Paley didn’t stop to consider was how this exultant little step brings with it some thoroughly “awkward” logical packaging. For at that moment the watch on the heath itself ceases to be the artifact of design, but only the continuing product of a presumed original prototypical created watch. In that case, unless the copying process were absolutely perfect, the watch would be potentially liable to natural modification, varying to some degree from the purported ideal source. Once you allowed for that, you’d have to answer some basic questions. First, how much can natural watches vary? How does one define watch “models,” and can one “model” transform into another entirely on its own? If it can, then how do you identify what the original watch models were? Once you’ve accepted the possibility of watch modification, any and every watch you encounter would carry around it a host of possible variants—and watch taxonomy would consist of trying to work out where natural lineages leave off and basal created watches began. That is, if there were any basal created watches. Independent of whether “creation” or “evolution” was responsible for some or all of its salient features, a sound comprehension of the historical record of “watch” production would seem in order. But we’ve already seen that is not a comfortable habitat for creationists. As documented in the last two chapters, the record of fossil “watch” turnover is exactly the topic they have the most trouble with. Kenneth Miller put this in stark terms when he criticized the Creation Science Troubles in Paradise-Downard 324 version, but his remarks are no less applicable to Intelligent Design, since Young Earth Flood Geology is not robust enough to rescue either of them: Accepting the premise of divine creation and the impossibility of evolution, we would have to suggest that a creator formed the first jawless fish vertebrates some 600 million years ago by an act of special creation, so that these animals appeared suddenly and without ancestors. Nearly all these jawless fish forms died out shortly after being created, and those that do survive are quite different.

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