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Friday, Aug 19, 2005

The Medieval Church

I went to a Jesuit high school, so perhaps I developed a distorted image of the Roman Catholic Church. In my experience the Jesuit order was much more intellectual and much less superstitious than other orders with whom I had contact. I know there are orders fascinated with bones and relics, with faith healing, with visitations by the Virgin, but the Church also runs universities in which science and technology play a major role.

This background perhaps explains my shock at the Church's pronouncement that acceptance of evolutionary theory is incompatible with Church teachings and, further, that evolutionary theory is not science. The first point is a bigoted stance against science, but the second point is downright medieval.

There are many who work in scientific endeavours who believe that science and faith are separate and complementary views of the world. Just as they wouldn't attempt to analyze the Holy Trinity with scientific theories or equipment, they don't look to the Bible or Catechism as a guide to molecular biology. Yet the Church is not happy with separate realms of faith and scientific knowledge. They presume to define what science is and is not.

Let's get to some specifics, to dismantle the Chuch's faith-based "science". This argument takes the form of an untestable hypothesis, since there's no basis for objective measurement of "divine providence". It is a faith based argument, and has no place in a scientific discussion. But I'll indulge it.

Consider the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, clearly an evolutionary process. Are we to assume that God hates tetracycline; that staph infections are the work of God's hand? By dispensing antibiotics are Catholic hospitals defying God's will by using medicine that God is trying to subvert, or are they acting in concert with God's will by hastening the end of the age of antibiotics? Or should we surmise that antibiotic resistance is the natural reaction of a natural system which is based on evolution? Being a fan of Occam's Razor, I'll go with plain, vanilla evolution, rather than a God who hates antibiotics. This teleological argument is again an untestable hypothesis, with a faulty analogy as a bonus. "Evolution ... presents an internal finality." How is this observed, with an intrinsic finality meter? I think I have one of those in the same cabinet with my infinite improbablility drive.

The false analogy is embedded in the implication that living beings are designed for a particular purpose. Here's a simplified example:

The elbow is similar to a hinge.
Hinges are designed for a particular purpose.
Therefore, the elbow is designed for a particular purpose.

The problem is that we can easily observe things in nature which have a pattern, but that pattern is arrived at by random interactions rather than design. Here's a striking example that artist Sally McKay highlighted on her blog.



In a spinning drum "an initially mixed distribution of grains sorts itself by size into almost periodic bands along the length of the drum." I selected this example, because it's visually interesting, but it's just one example from a plethora of self-organizing systems.

There is much chaos in nature, and much order in nature. One could argue that order in nature, any form of order, reveals design, underlying which is purpose. But chaos plays a role just as important. What's a river without turbulent flow? What's a wind without a gust? Are we to say that both order and chaos represent intrisic finality, and are in fact proof of a living designer who designed for a purpose? If so, then the existence of God is nothing more than an idee fixe.

But let me return to a point that appears throughout the editorial, and which first appears in the second paragraph. To paraphrase Senator Moynihan, everyone is entitled to his own articles of faith, but not his own definition of reason. The Church, backs its "reason" with faith. The Church has faith that there is purpose and design in the natural world, and asserts this to be a product of reason. If these assertions of "purpose and design" were based on reason, the Church could construct arguments from widely accepted axioms. But "purpose and design" are declared to be manifest, self-evident, readily discerned -- axioms.

This editorial is a declaration of irrationality by the Roman Catholic Church. The last time the Church attempted to define science and reason on this scale was a disagreement with Galileo about the nature of the solar system. It took the Church only three and a half centuries to express regret for its hubris. The key points that the Church makes above are that science and theology are a) different and b) complimentary. Why the Church fails to apply this lesson to the question of evolution defies reason.


- mark 8-19-2005 3:31 am [link] [3 comments]

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