The Speaker was Dr. Peter Wills, who, it turns out, is a naturalist (I also met and had a nice talk with a lady who shared that she no longer professed faith, . . . → Read More: naturalistic dualist?]]> I knew I’d have to blog about this one. I just got back from the latest TANSA (Theology and the Natural Sciences in Aotearoa) meeting at Laidlaw College.

The Speaker was Dr. Peter Wills, who, it turns out, is a naturalist (I also met and had a nice talk with a lady who shared that she no longer professed faith, so this was no Christians-only affair). Nicola, the chairperson for TANSA, opened with a lovely quote from theologian Michael Welker to give expression to the ‘T’ in TANSA, as Peter would handle the ‘N’ (couldn’t help but smile to myself seeing boxes of ‘Hell’ pizza behind this ‘godless’ scientist ;D ).

While I was able to follow the entire talk (I especially appreciated his honest personal intro about his upbringing in the fundamentalist Exclusive Brethren movement and his leaving of it and faith altogether), I was aware of my limited comprehension due to my not being up with microbiology (the notes below don’t represent full comprehension by me!). Wills is an interesting character who would have many enemies, but particularly interesting was his criticism of many of his biological colleagues, who according to him, don’t deal sufficiently enough with the question of biological ‘information’.

He said that you can’t have a theory of the origin of life without a theory of causation in the universe, and criticised reductionist accounts that were only ‘materialistic’ and ‘mechanistic’, saying that this was ‘dogmatism’ which should be absent in science. Following Schrodinger, he talked about the ‘information in a molecule’, and noted the fundamental and constantly overlooked distinction between the ‘representational’ (information) and the ‘material’ (molecule); questioning what the mechanism was for the evolution of the relationship between the two. He posed a kind of ‘chicken/egg’ dilemma wherein if you don’t have specificity of (biological/molecular/genetic?) action, the system breaks down. ¹

Along the way, he heartily recommended a recent book (at the 150/200-year Darwin marker) by an atheist author, Fern Elsdon-Baker called “The Selfish Genius: How Richard Dawkins Rewrote Darwins’ Legacy”, which criticises Dawkins’ presentation of genetics in ‘The Selfish Gene’. He agreed with her criticism that Dawkins’ treatment doesn’t satisfy the need for explanation of the relationship between information and the molecule, nor where the information comes from. He then moved on to provide his own hypothesis about what he called ‘spontaneous generation’ or ‘informed generation’. The term ‘informed’ doubly signalling that a) the generation needs the information to be there, and b) is formed within the system (not outside).

In an interesting point, he stated that genes need ‘interpreters’ to determine what they will do, and made reference to a programme he had which took the human genome and ‘interpreted’ it into Beethoven’s 9^th!! He argued for care with words and more honesty in biology, for example in reference to talk of ‘information’, which he insists must be non-material. He summed up by saying that we live in a universe of both physical/chemical events and information, which are in kind of an inseparable ‘marriage’ together in such a way that the world is very creative.

The Q&A time was quite interesting, and not a little over my head, but drew out things a bit further (esp. when Jonathan – who comments here from time to time – asked some questions with words I’d not heard before! Peter attempted a response and clarification for laypersons present, and then – probably wisely – deferred the question to be followed up afterward.) It did lead (not surprisingly) to a few philosophical/theological questions (warmly received by Peter – as he admits an interest in metaphysical issues).

My main reflection has to do with how to describe his worldview. He self-identifies as a naturalist, and does not believe in a God (though he didn’t elaborate on his absence of belief – and seemed quite happy for people to posit a First Cause and call that ‘god’). But he quite clearly seemed to be an ontological dualist of sorts (reality = material elements + ‘information’)? For me, this really puts him more in the category of a loose kind of Einsteinian or Spinozian sort of pantheism – an impersonal, yet ‘ordering’ kind of vague divinity.

Personally, I found it wonderful that TANSA would host a non-theist as a presenter, as it reflected a warm spirit of dialogue and respect across lines that often divide. The regular gathering (mostly Christians) engaged with him respectfully and robustly. Well done, TANSA.

1. I’d heard similar terminology from intelligent design proponents about later evolution, but to me it actually makes more sense as a kind of hard barrier at the level of abiogenesis.

I won’t bother dissecting its entire content, but in passing, found it opportunistic in both persons interviewed and interview segments used.  On the atheist side of the coin, you had Michael Ruse being interviewed along with PZ Meyers and Richard Dawkins, of which Ruse has . . . → Read More: eugenics thought]]> I finally got around to watching ‘Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed’, by Ben Stein & co.

I won’t bother dissecting its entire content, but in passing, found it opportunistic in both persons interviewed and interview segments used.  On the atheist side of the coin, you had Michael Ruse being interviewed along with PZ Meyers and Richard Dawkins, of which Ruse has expressed embarrassment about one, and probably feels similarly about the other.  On the theist side, you have Alister McGrath and John Lennox being quoted as if having the same view of the issue as William Dembski and all the others – which I’m almost certain they don’t.

But the main thing that I thought post-worthy was the realisation that came to mind regarding eugenics.  The film is careful to repeatedly clarify that they don’t think Darwinian evolution leads necessarily to Nazism or eugenics, but had rather strong implications about its tendency to (which took far too much run-time anyway).

I was already well aware of the absolute necessity for an ideology (of whatever variety) to link biology and ethics, and of the rather basic distinction between (so-called) ‘Darwinism’ and social Darwinism.  But the thing that struck me tonight (in spite of what the film was trying to say about the riskiness of holding to evolution) was that if indeed the proponents of Nazi-style eugenics were intending it to be ‘self-directed evolution’, then they had missed a rather obvious thing about evolution.

The goal of their self-directed ‘evolutionary’ eugenics was to advance ‘health’ and ‘strength’ and to produce fitter and better humans.  The massive disconnect here is not only that biology has no teleology (evolution qua evolution has no ‘goal’ to do anything – nature is, as C.S. Lewis has put it a ‘dumb witch’), but rather that their goal for eugenics (“good generation”; from eu|ευ |’good’ + genea | γενεα | ‘generation’) was actually was contrary to the apparent result (remember, not ‘goal’!!) of evolution, namely a diverse, rich, variety of living organisms.

The evolutionary process produced (again, not ‘intended’) a mixture of symmetrical and less-than-symmetrical bodies, weak and more-than-weak muscles; all kind of hair and eye colour, etc.  And they took this as a massive detour from the ‘course’ (there’s the teleologically-loaded word) of evolution.  They wanted it to get ‘back on track’ (but there was no ‘track’ – to speak strictly in terms of natural biology) making ‘strong’ humans – in other words, to make all humans fit a single mould – in other words to bring about the opposite effect, namely biological uniformity, than that of evolution, namely biological diversity.