Shermer, Volokh, Evolution, & God

by Will Wilkinson on June 16, 2005

Eugene Volokh comments on this passage from a Michael Shermer post:

In March of 2001 the Gallup News Service reported the results of their survey that found 45 percent of Americans agree with the statement “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so,” while 37 percent preferred a blended belief that “Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process,” and a paltry 12 percent accepted the standard scientific theory that “Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process.”

Eugene says:

Well, if “the standard scientific theory” is that “God had no part” in the process of evolution — not just that human beings developed in a particular way, but that God didn’t guide this — then it seems to me that the theory of evolution is a challenge to many people’s deeply held religious convictions. And that’s so not just as to the young-earthers who believe the Earth was created several thousand years ago, but also to people who are willing to embrace the scientific evidence but see the guiding hand of God in the process.

What’s more, how exactly do scientists come to the conclusion that “God had no part in this process”? What’s their proof? That’s the sort of thing that can’t really be proved, it seems to me — which makes it sound as if scientists, despite their protestations of requiring proof rather than faith, make assertions about God that they can’t prove.

I think Quinean ontological principles can help us properly understand Shermer’s statement, and avoid what seems to me to be a confusion on Eugene’s part.

Quine says that to exist is to be the value of bound variable in the formal statement of our best explanatory theory of the world. That is, if your best theory of something requires you to posit some entity or property in order to state it, then you are ontologically committed to that entity or property; you’re saying it exists. The best explanatory theory of the emergence of life and the development of biological variety is the theory of evolution by natural selection. The statement of this theory does not require us to quantify over, or commit to, any supernatural properties. That “God had no part in the process” is straightforwardly implied by the fact that the theory does not mention God or God-properties. The “proof” that God is no part of the process is simply the statement of the theory, and the fact that the theory is the best, whatever our criteria for “best” are. You can tell that something has no part in the process by checking the list of things one is ontologically committed to by dint of accepting the theory. If it isn’t on the list, it plays no part. Surely Eugene would agree that God is not on the ontological list we would compile by scouring the formulation of the standard theory of evolution to see the kinds of things it quantifies over. But that is, I think, all Shermer is saying.

Now, the fact that the theory of evolution by natural selection doesn’t quantify over God-properties does not, by itself, “challenge” the conviction that god exists, unless that conviction is based on the explanation of biological phenomena. If no part of our OVERALL best theory (or collection of theories) of the world requires God-properties, than that is a challenge to the conviction that God exists, because commitment to God’s existence just is the belief in the claim that Godmaking properties figure in to the best overall theory of the world. If he doesn’t figure in, then he isn’t listed in the catalog of things we have reason to believe in.

It seems that Eugene almost flirts with Meinongian nonsense, where not existing is a property something can have, just like existing, so that something’s not existing requires that it exist, in a superspecial not-existing way, in order for there to be something that is doing all that not-existing. In that case, the claim that something doesn’t exist (or does) is substantive, since one is attributing a property to it, and it makes sense to ask for evidence that it does have that property. But to say that something doesn’t exist is not in fact substantive. It is simply to point out a formal absence, like the fact that there is no ‘p’ in ‘beer’. (If you’re lucky!)

  • ZaPopper
    Hi - I'm new to blogging so bear with me if I transgress blog protocol.
    The topic rests on two concepts that cannot be reconciled:
    Faith and Proof
    An omniscient/omnipotent thing (presumably perfect in every sense according to theological philosophers) will not change a perfect creation because doing so would make the creation "not perfect". If such a thing creates it's own environment, it's reasonable to assume it would choose to make it perfect as well. It would be able to foresee the consequences of imperfection, and that would be anathama to perfection. There's no need to get into the concept of compassion for the thing created to demonstrate the following point. Evolution guided by God implies imperfection in the creation, and the inability to make everything perfect on the first try, or through subsequent efforts. (I enjoyed the treatment of this topic by Ken Miller in Finding Darwin's God).
    With regard to proof, one must decide to take one of two starting positions. Inductive/verificationist, or deductive/falsificationist. The inductive view allows one to argue that the postulate is true as long as there is no evidence of non-existence. It can be proven that there is no needle in one haystack, but it cannot be proven that there are no needles in a haystacks, unless one has the time and the means to search every haystack there is (or ever has been, or ever will be). The deductive approach allows one to postulate that needles are not found in haystacks. This remains a viable hypothesis (potentially useful) as long as a needle is never found in a haystack. But it's necessary to accept the possibility that one will be found. The first is absolutist, and can provide the rationale for faith in an omniscient/omnipresent guiding hand in the process of change. The second is conditional, accepting of doubt.
    People are welcome to believe whatever they want, whether verifiable or falsifiable. I prefer to go with Popper regarding the criterion of demarcation between science and metaphysics, that is, science and knowledge can only advance on the basis of falsifiable theories, and everything else is metaphysics, and while metaphysics can be useful in philosophy, metaphysical problems do not have answers, and metaphysics cannot be applied to matters of fact. Ipso facto, proof and faith cannot be combined.
  • Laplace was more succinct:

    "I had no need of that hypothesis."
  • brad
    will, interesting. note, though, that faith-based beliefs DO have a cognitive role. they mesh with all sorts of other beliefs, about the afterlife, grace, atonement, etc. those beliefs may not be based on evidence either, but i don't see why the belief in god can't be defined in terms of its relations to them nonetheless. and i still don't know what to make of georges' stuff on this.
  • There's an entire field, abiogenesis, which studies the appearance of DNA-based life. It mostly does so with the help of evolutionary thinking (in terms of selection).

    Also, evolution is not committed to DNA. It talk of natural selection and sexual selection in the context of inheritance and mutations. These notions can be, and have been, successfully applied to various fields of study, some of them non-biological.

    And, on a final note... I hate to be Kantian, but if we "suffer" from that kind of "epistemological modesty" as to postulate a noumenal-phenomenal distinction, one cannot deny the possibility that our profoundly-phenomenal Quinean theories can tell us anything about the allegedly-noumenal role of God in stuff. I think this allows us to interpret the thinking of believers: they know the noumenal and may I be damned for claiming otherwise. :-)

    On a personal note... Quine sounds very interesting. I read "the two dogmas", but can someone please suggest which of his books is best as an introduction?
  • Brad, Thanks. Agreed about the replicators and the emergence of life. I could have said it better. And, true, most people aren't Quineans. Though I agree with Georges and think many folks don't believe in many of the things that they think they believe in. Because many faith-based "beliefs" aren't explanatory, they have no function in they mental economy. They're just cogs that mesh with nothing. Which is the same as saying that they aren't really beliefs at all; they don't play the role that defines belief. But those PHIL 100 kids, and almost everyone under the sky, sure believe they believe in God. There's no stopping it!
  • brad
    hi will, i pretty much agree. just two quibbles. you say: "The best explanatory theory of the emergence of life and the development of biological variety is the theory of evolution by natural selection." not quite. natural selection needs some stuff that can replicate itself (like DNA) in order to work. it doesn't explain how replicators came into existence in the first place. unlike evolution, the theories on the emergence of life are far from well-confirmed. as far as i know, we're pretty clueless about this--it could've been lighting striking the soup, a meteor, some protein-like stuff bubbling up from under the earth's surface, etc. my other quibble: "commitment to God's existence just is the belief in the claim that Godmaking properties figure in to the best overall theory of the world." well, that's true if you think that to be is to be the value of a variable, but i take it most believers aren't quineans. for them god isn't an explanatory posit of any kind, and thus not part of their best theory of the world. don't most believers believe on faith and not for explanatory reasons? i mean, cmon, you've taught phil 100 right?!! thanks for the shermer link. -brad
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