Metanexus: Views. 2002.10.28. 2992 words In today's column there are two books under consideration" Robert T. Pennock, Tower of Babel; The Evidence against the New Creationism. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999; xxii + 429 pp. Index. $19.95). Langdon Gilkey, Creationism on Trial; Evolution and God at Little Rock. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998; originally published in 1985; xxvi + 301 pp. $17.50). And, in the opinion of today's reviewer, Andrew Porter, an adjunct faculty member in philosophy of religion at The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA, "Pennock's focus is on the logic of creationism and its scientific flaws; Gilkey supplies a better perspective on the cultural driving factors behind creationism." Moreover, Porter feels that these two books are "among the best books on the scientific and cultural aspects of the creationism controversies in America in the last two decades. Pennock's book is in the genre of Irenaeus's 'Refutation of All Heresies', a catena of Creationist texts and their errors. Gilkey's is an account of the 1981 Arkansas creationism trial, with extensive reflections on the cultural issues raised in it....Gilkey's perspective on the cultural issues is unmatched. These two books complement each other; when Pennock moves from philosophy of science (his specialty and his strength) to philosophy of religion or cultural issues, the results are uneven; sometimes real insight, more often just stereotypes. Gilkey treats only briefly the scientific issues, as he is not a scientist. The problems in Pennock's book are peripheral. Its strengths are central, and readers can only be grateful for his enormous labor in sifting through the tedious illogic of scientific creationism." Enjoy! -- Stacey E. Ake =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Subject: At Babel and Little Rock: Reviews of Pennock & Gilkey From: Andrew Porter Email: Robert T. Pennock, Tower of Babel; The Evidence against the New Creationism. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999; xxii + 429 pp. Index. $19.95. Langdon Gilkey, Creationism on Trial; Evolution and God at Little Rock. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998; originally published in 1985; xxvi + 301 pp. $17.50. (Contains the opinion of Judge William R. Overton in McLean v. Board of Education, and the text of Arkansas Act 590). In the reviewer's opinion, these are, respectively, among the best books on the scientific and cultural aspects of the creationism controversies in America in the last two decades. Pennock's book is in the genre of Irenaeus's 'Refutation of All Heresies', a catena of Creationist texts and their errors. Gilkey's is an account of the 1981 Arkansas creationism trial, with extensive reflections on the cultural issues raised in it. Pennock deals with the scientific issues pretty well, and can save the reader much labor by providing a guide to the creationist literature and its scientific and logical errors. Gilkey's perspective on the cultural issues is unmatched. These two books complement each other; when Pennock moves from philosophy of science (his specialty and his strength) to philosophy of religion or cultural issues, the results are uneven; sometimes real insight, more often just stereotypes. Gilkey treats only briefly the scientific issues, as he is not a scientist. The problems in Pennock's book are peripheral. Its strengths are central, and readers can only be grateful for his enormous labor in sifting through the tedious illogic of scientific creationism. For the history of creationism, Pennock's survey is adequate for recent developments, but a full history of the movement would require consulting sources such as Ronald L. Numbers' 'The Creationists' (University of California Press, 1993). Pennock's focus is on the logic of creationism and its scientific flaws; Gilkey supplies a better perspective on the cultural driving factors behind creationism. Numbers is a historian. The outlines and arguments of the two books: Pennock, 'Tower of Babel': 1 Creation and Evolution of a Controversy 2 The Evidence for Evolution 3 The Tower of Babel 4 Of Naturalism and Negativity 5 Chariots of the Gods 6 'Deus ex machina' 7 Burning Science at the Stake 8 Babel in the Schools Gilkey, 'Creationism on Trial' Part I: The Trial 1 The Initiation of a Witness 2 Preparation for the Case 3 Deposition 4 The Trial: Religious and Historical Backgrounds 5 The Trial: Theological and Philosophical Issues 6 The Trial: The Overwhelming Weight of Scientific Evidence Part II: Analysis and Reflection: The Implications of Creation Science for Modern Society and Modern Religion 7 Science and Religion in an Advanced Scientific Culture 8 The Shape of a Religious Symbol and the Meaning of Creation Appendices: Legal Documents A. Arkansas Act 590 B. Judgment by the Federal Court Pennock begins with a brief history of creationism. There are many varieties; the traditional kind, which claimed that the earth is only a few thousand years old and that the fossils were deposited in Noah's flood, is only one. Today, "intelligent design creationism" (IDC) claims that God effectively directs evolution but does not deny the great age of the earth, nor the fact of evolution. Only the causes and processes are in dispute. Young-Earth Creationism (YEC) was forced to make falsifiable claims by its literal belief in Genesis 1, but all those falsifiable claims have been falsified well enough to satisfy any candid observer. The new creationism, typified by IDC, makes no falsifiable claims, but rather points to gaps in the present state of the theory of evolution and claims that God is responsible for the transitions in the gaps. The new creationism has been reduced to positing a God of the Gaps. Pennock notes that the dean of the old creationists, Henry Morris, held a doctorate in engineering, but does not notice the significance of the fact that most of the technical leaders of creationism are scientists. For that, see Gilkey. Pennock lays out well the criteria from philosophy of science that demarcate a good scientific theory from bad science, junk science, and pseudo-science. He notes (p. 38) that the recent creationist voices have called for a theistic science that would utterly revise the way science is done. For more on this, see Gilkey, chapter 7. Pennock and Gilkey are both alarmed at the ambitions of creationism to take control over science. Gilkey gives many examples when that has happened in the recent past. The evidence for evolution: Chapter 2 is anecdotal, a travelogue through both the evidence and the culture, including the Museum of Creationism in Santee, CA, the home of the Institute of Creation Research. He then moves to Darwin's own changing perspective, starting from the received literal reading of Genesis in the early nineteenth century in Britain. The summary of Darwin's evidence is very helpful. The remainder of Chapter 2 reviews some of the subsequent history of the theory of evolution. A reader interested in details would do well to supplement Pennock with David Depew and Bruce Weber's excellent history, 'Darwinism Evolving; Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection', MIT Press, 1996). Chapter 3, "The Tower of Babel," returns to the creationists. Scientists find it frustrating that audiences tend not to know enough science to understand the evidence for evolutionary biology (p. 119). Pennock takes it for granted that the problem is inadequate knowledge of science. Gilkey will question that presupposition. Along the way (pp. 166-172), Pennock nicely deflates the logic of Michael Behe in 'Darwin's Black Box', in which Behe imagines how a group of small animals could get across an eight-lane freeway alive. Behe overlooks the fact that in evolutionary theory, the analog would be not a single crossing of all eight lanes by all the animals, but a crossing of one lane, a stop to reproduce, then crossing the next lane with offspring only of the survivors of the first lane, and so on. Pennock's book is worth reading for this example alone. Chapters 4 to 6 carry the major weight of the argument. Chapter 4 takes the reader through the Creationist logic and methods; chapter 5 takes the reader through the Creationist evidence (and lack of it); chapter 6 starts from philosophy of science and concludes by observing that the Creationists have ironically naturalized the deity they argue for. Chapter 4 begins with Phillip Johnson's polemic against naturalism, and then explores some of the many meanings that the term "naturalism" has had in the literature. The technical reader will find this useful, but would do well to supplement it. Unfortunately, there is no single reference to inventory the many meanings of "naturalism." Pennock does, however, note the pivotal distinction: for some, naturalism is a thesis in ontology, about what sorts of things do or don't exist. For others, naturalism is a kind of epistemology, a commitment to a certain method of inquiry. Pennock does not note the source of the ontological definition of naturalism; FWIW, Johnson, the Creationists, analytic philosopher of religion Alvin Plantinga, and most Evangelical and Fundamentalist theologians follow C. S. Lewis's definition of naturalism in the third chapter of 'Miracles': naturalism is the denial of the supernatural and also, as a consequence, the denial of theism. This is an ontological commitment. Much of Continental philosophy, by contrast, typically defines naturalism as an epistemological category: a commitment to the method of the natural sciences as applicable also to realms of inquiry outside of the sciences. Johnson's position is that methodological naturalism (the naturalism of mere scientific method), if followed to its logical conclusions, leads inescapably to a dogmatic and comprehensive naturalism that dictates the only method for knowledge in all fields of inquiry. Some biologists agree with Johnson and Plantinga (E.g., William Provine; see his review of 'Trial and Error: The American Controversy Over Evolution', by E. J. Larson; in 'Academe' 73#1 (1987) 50-52), and disagree only over whether to accept this kind of naturalism or not. Biologists who are also religious do not agree with this definition of naturalism, but they (and humanities scholars with them) seem to be drowned out in the uproar between the creationists and anti-Christian biologists such as William Provine and Richard Dawkins. In chapter 5, Pennock reviews the rebuttal of positive creationist arguments. The IDC arguments are just heckling at the gaps in evolutionary theory. The chapter is a good guide that can save the reader a lot of time. Along the way, the example of the evolution of eyes is mentioned, and Richard Dawkins reviews it in both 'The Blind Watchmaker' (Norton, 1986) and 'Climbing Mount Improbable', ch. 5 (Norton, 1996). It turns out that photo-receptors have evolved in about 40 different ways; Dawkins cites an article by L. v. Salvini-Plawen and Ernst Mayr, "On the Evolution of Photoreceptors and Eyes," 'Evolutionary Biology' 10 (1977) 207. Before Darwin, the eye was cited as prime evidence in the design argument for God; Darwin himself thought the evolution of the eye a pivotal test of this thesis. Salvini-Plawen and Mayr have collected the evidence together and put paid to the complaint that complex organs could not have evolved naturally or without intentional design. Chapter 6 observes that supernatural explanations don't really explain; they just introduce a Deus ex machina to account for the unaccounted. Yet in the end, Johnson and the Creationists have reduced their God to something that could be tested on naturalistic grounds. Their only disagreement with Provine, Dawkins, Weinberg, and the like is about whether the empirical tests favor the deity or not. Chapter 7 surveys the Creationist legal campaign against the sciences and chapter 8 the implications of their campaign for public education. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Gilkey's book grew out of his experience as the lead theological witness in the 1981 creationism trial in Little Rock, Arkansas, in which the constitutionality of Act 590, mandating the teaching of creationism, was successfully challenged. The plaintiffs were mostly religious organizations; the only technical party among the plaintiffs was the National Association of Biology Teachers. The defense of the law was by scientists, albeit Creation-scientists. The first three chapters are Gilkey's personal reminiscences. They are colorful and highly entertaining. The remainder of Part I, on the historical, theological-philosophical, and scientific backgrounds, treats the substantive issues. Chapter 6 has some of the testimony and cross-examination at the trial. Chapter 7, the first in Part II, is Gilkey's cultural analysis of the problem that the continuing popularity of creationism is symptomatic of. The book is worthwhile for this chapter alone. The real problems, contrary to Pennock, are not lack of science education, but lack of education in the humanities. I know that this is highly counter-intuitive, but Gilkey's case for it is pretty convincing. He observes that anyone who has the slightest familiarity with history and historical thinking is neither seduced nor spooked by creationism. Scientists who have no education in the humanities, however, supply most of the recruits for creationism. And again, scientific defenders of evolutionary biology who have no education in the humanities have real trouble seeing the source of creationism. They can only cite the empirical evidence, and are helpless when that is not enough. My experience of academic and general culture corroborates Gilkey's thesis. He reminds the reader that science in America today is not a beleaguered or persecuted opposition movement, science in America today is 'the' Establishment, in control of mainstream culture, and with more money at its disposal than any comparable knowledge industry in history has ever had. This culture trusts science to deliver both real knowledge and engineering applications as no other has ever before, and in Gilkey's view (and this reviewer's), that trust is amply justified, as long at is is really about scientific matters. Yet people tend to assume that a theologian must be a creationist; some of my friends make this mistake about me, and Gilkey has run into it often enough. When he was invited to visit a Purdue biology class, the biology professor thought he must be a creationist because he was a theologian (pp. 188 and 254, note 11); when the facts emerged, she was utterly unprepared for a theologian from the University of Chicago who would support evolution. No one in Purdue's small but excellent philosophy and religion department would be caught dead being a creationist, though there were four (4, count them!) in Purdue's science departments. Scientists don't hear in good humor that the creationists are the beleaguered minority, but they are. Gilkey is no supporter of creationism -- hardly; in his later work ('Blue Twilight: Nature, Creationism, and American Religion', Fortress Press, 2001), he is even more alarmed by creationists than he was in 1985. Gilkey lays out the case that creationism is 'science'; bad science, junk science, pseudo-science, to be sure, but it is still science. It is not theology, even though it is based on theology. Anyone familiar with Evangelical or Fundamentalist theology can tell the difference between real theology and "creation-science." And one familiar with the Neo-Orthodox or other twentieth-century theological movements can easily see how to do a theology of creation that has no problems with evolutionary biology. Creationism is fake science that travels with bad theology, but that doesn't make creationism itself a theology. This, too, is counter-intuitive, but I think well supported by the evidence. When people want solutions to their human problems, problems that science of necessity cannot address (at least not within the limits of methodological naturalism), and when they nevertheless think instinctively in scientific and naturalistic terms, they tend inevitably to seek a scientific expression for their humane commitments. The form those commitments take is creationism. This is what Pennock bumped into in his chapter 6, when he calls Phillip Johnson a "crypto-naturalist." Neither author explores in sufficient detail the logic of the creationist account of divine actions; this reviewer would contend, were there space, that it is indeed a deviant kind of naturalism, but it is a naturalism by other means. In effect, having accepted from the culture the idea that genuine knowledge comes only from the natural sciences, creationists produce the required naturalistic knowledge of God. But Pennock has seen the theological/philosophical root of the problem, and Gilkey does a good job of tracing its cultural origins. Chapter 8 is about the doctrine of creation (not to be confused with creationism). Gilkey treats creation as a symbol; this is probably in keeping with a transition from the Barthianism of his youth to a theology closer to Paul Tillich in his later years. It is a good example of creation theology, but there are more varieties than Gilkey (or any other single book) could give us. The chapter is well worth reading, however, for its emphatic claim that the symbol of creation has its home in an essentially historical religion, and if that focus on history and historical living is forgotten, the symbol of creation loses (or changes) its meaning. Gilkey could have said more, but I think he treated this problem to his satisfaction in earlier works ('Maker of Heaven and Earth' (1959), in his Barthian younger days; and 'Reaping The Whirlwind' (Seabury, 1976), his theology of history. Chapter 7 is in part and implicitly an indictment of those Christian denominations that are the carriers of modern biblical criticism and the theological and philosophical consequences of that biblical scholarship -- not for what they do say, but for what they do 'not' say. We generally don't tell small children that there is not "literally" a Santa Claus, and the effect of biblical scholarship on most congregations would be similar. Pastors tend to be pastoral and let the faithful find out the truth about the Bible on their own. Most never do. You would think that the experience of growing up to still believe in Santa Claus even after we know there is no literal Santa Claus would provide some comfort and strength, but it does not. This is what Gilkey called one of the "puzzles in the data." But the problem of biblical education, intimately related though it is to creationism, would take us too far afield to fit even into this review; not even into any of the books reviewed. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This publication is hosted by Metanexus Online . The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Metanexus or its sponsors. To comment on this message, go to the browser-based forum at the bottom of all postings in the magazine section of our web site. 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