Category: Theology

I’ve been having an interesting conversation in an email forum with some relatively well-known ID advocates. The question under discussion is whether “information” is an ontological category separate from matter. One person suggested that transferring computer data from one hard drive to another shows that information is separate from matter; another mentioned one person telling a story to another. Here are some thoughts I had (for convenience I use the names “Ed” and “Dave” here):

But the information on Ed’s PC does not exist apart from the hard drives on which it is stored. And while it is true that the amount of information was essentially (though probably not perfectly) conserved in the transfer, that’s because it was a relatively small amount of information transferred a relatively short distance over a relatively short period of time into an identical medium. The amount of information would not have been perfectly conserved, for example, if it had been sent over the internet, because the necessary compression technology is lossy to some degree.

The information in Dave’s “story” is a good example of why information cannot be thought of as an ontological category. Stories are always bound by time, language and culture. It is impossible for you to tell me a story that perfectly and losslessly transmits to me all the information you are trying to encode in the story because I am not you. Some information is always lost because of the imprecision of language, the differences in our personal cultural and historical experiences, etc. This lossiness becomes greater as time increases — as our struggles to understand many of the ancient Bible stories about origins bears out.

What happens, then, to the information lost in the telling of the story? Is there any way to extract it from you without loss? Can we calculate the amount of information lost? I don’t think Shannon Entropy really works here, unless you buy into the concept of memetics, which I don’t. If you want to apply Shannon Entropy to cultural transmission, it seems to me you’re buying into an evolutionary view of culture that ultimately contradicts any meaningful Christian perspective.

Further, the “story” example illustrates that true “information” involves transmission, reception, and change. As Gregory Bateson put it, information is “a difference that makes a difference.” The data on Ed’s hard drive really is reducible entirely to matter until it makes some difference — by making his computer work, say, or by issuing in a document that human beings can read and act on. And until Dave tells me the story and it alters how I think, act, etc., the story is nothing but a neural pattern in Dave’s brain. It seems better to me to say that information is not an ontic entity; it is rather a term we use to describe change in ontic entities.

I’ve never understood ID to be primarily based on an essentially Platonic metaphysics of information. If it is, it seems to me that ID has an extraordinarily tough row to hoe. But I also don’t see why this is necessary. We could just as well say that certain patterns of producing change reflect the activity of purposeful, self-aware agents — such as the pattern of the “story” you might tell me, the patterns of the computer programs on Ed’s hard drive — or maybe the patterns of the physical laws, DNA, etc.

An entry on Evolution News and Views criticizing a lecture by Francis Collins caught my eye. I’ve previously offered some of my own criticism of Collins’ new book. However, the ENV criticism, I think, was unfair, and reflects a serious theological problem with some “strong” ID arguments.

On the ENV site, Logan Gage argues that Darwinism is fundamentally incompatible with theism, because Darwinian evolution is “unguided and unplanned”:

If Darwinian evolution–by definition–is “unguided” and “unplanned,” then Collins’s view seems logically incoherent. How can a process be both “guided” and “unguided” (or “planned” and “unplanned”) at the same time? Either evolution is “unguided” as the Darwinists contend, or it is guided in some way—which means that the Darwinian view of evolution must be false.

For the notion that Darwinian evolution is “unguided” and “unplanned,” Logan cites a letter sent to the Kansas State Board of Education by some Nobel laureates, which states that “evolution is “the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection.” Logan argues that Collins’ “theistic evolution” position is incompatible with the popular view of Darwinism identified in the Nobel letter.

Logan’s criticism is unfair because, to the extent the Nobel laureates meant “unguided” and “unplanned” in a metaphysical sense, their position is not a scientific view about evolution, nor is it what someone like Collins means by “evolution.”

Whether God guided and planned evolution (if and to the extend evolution happened, a question I’m not addressing here) is a metaphysical question that is not addressed by evolutionary science. When evolutionary science speaks of planning, guidance and randomness, it means that the natural processes involved suggest no statistical correlation with any influences external to those natural processes. Even within that context, evolution is not “random” in the sense that anything at all can and does happen — evolution happens within a framework of deeper natural laws, including the laws of genetics and inheritance. As some evolutionary theorists, such a Simon Conway Morris (a Christian) observe, the operation of these laws can give rise to remarkable regularities, including the convergence of different pathways on a relatively small number of sensory organs and body plans.

I would agree with Logan, then, that if the Nobel laureates were using “unguided” and “unplanned” in a metaphysical sense, they were stepping far beyond the bounds of evolutionary science, and were suggesting something that is utterly incompatible with theism. It isn’t clear to me whether that was the sense intended. It certainly is not the sense in which someone like Francis Collins uses terms like “random” in relation to evolution.

If “random,” “unguided” and “unplanned” with regard to evolution are understood simply to mean “uncorellated with any external causes,” I don’t see how this is inconsistent with a theistic understanding of creation. As I sit here in New York typing this today, it is raining lightly outside. Meteorologists can explain this weather pattern fully in naturalistic terms. It is an “unguided,” “unplanned,” and “random” pattern, in the sense that there is no way to correlate the pattern with any external causes. It is of course an orderly pattern, based on deeper natural laws, which makes it explainable and to some extent predictable. But it can be explained solely through the apparently unguided process of natural laws.

I say “apparently unguided” because, as a Christian, I don’t believe for a moment that this weather pattern is “random” or “unguided” in a metaphysical sense. I believe in a God who is sovereign over all creation, upon whom all creation depends, and in whom all creation is held together. God didn’t merely wind up the processes that led to the rain in New York today and let them go off randomly on their own — He is above and in and through them completely as sovereign creator and sustainer. The fact that I can’t directly perceive or correlate God’s will and action in this regard with the rain I observe doesn’t mean God is elided or elidable.

In fact, this is exactly what I expect within the rich framework of the Christian doctrine of creation. I don’t expect God ordinarily to manifest Himself in miraculous ways that contradict the deep natural laws He established and sustains. Indeed, the very orderliness and normality of the everyday working of creation is one of the principal reasons I can make reliable observations and rational judgments, and is a central expression of God’s wisdom and beauty.

Given that I think and feel this way about the rain in New York, why should I think or feel differently about the natural processes through which living organisms change over time? There is no theological reason to think God should act or manifest Himself differently with respect to living organisms in relation to natural laws than He does with respect to processes such as the weather. In fact, there are very good reasons to suspect He would not make such a distinction — the reasons of orderliness and beauty mentioned above.

Does this mean I settle the issue in favor of theistic evolution? No. There are, I think, hermeneutical questions about how to understand the language in Genesis 1 and 2 concerning God’s creation of the animals and of human beings. Does the phrase “after their kinds” require separate creation and a fixity of species? Does creation of Adam from the “dust of the earth” and creation of Eve from Adam’s “rib” require a separate, special creation of human beings? These are reasonable questions. There are also, I believe, reasonable questions about whether Darwinism completely succeeds scientifically on its own merits. There is very convincing genetic and fossil evidence, in my opinion, for gradual organismal change over time and the relatedness of different species. The mechanisms posited for such change — such as natural selection and genetic drift — however, often seem like hand waving to me. But I think it’s important to be clear about the issues, and the broad theological issue of God sovereignly directing creation is not one of them.

LIterary and cultural studies prof Terry Eagleton savages Richard Dawksins’ new book in this LBR review. A brief sample:

What, one wonders, are Dawkins’s views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus? Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope? Has he even heard of them? Or does he imagine like a bumptious young barrister that you can defeat the opposition while being complacently ignorant of its toughest case?

….

Dawkins speaks scoffingly of a personal God, as though it were entirely obvious exactly what this might mean. He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized. He asks how this chap can speak to billions of people simultaneously, which is rather like wondering why, if Tony Blair is an octopus, he has only two arms. For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or ‘existent’: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects.

Priceless.