Elegy for Scopes - Part 2

This article is the second of two parts looking back at 100th anniversary of the end of the Scopes Trial from a historical and scientific point of view, as well its implications for today.

In Part 1, the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee held a century ago carried implications with the American public between traditionally derived morals and academic discourse. In particular, pedagogy in publicly funded education came under scrutiny from advocates of determinist explanations for biological diversity and defenders of a more traditional moral regimen established from a literal reading of Genesis, particularly the first eleven chapters.

Four decades later, the U.S. Supreme Court stymied such efforts. In the wake of the Warren Court era that exhibited hostility to the first amendment’s Free Expression clause, opponents of evolutionary instruction gradually adopted an alternate approach to separate divine intervention from scriptural description. Efforts to cast doubt on empirical basis of natural selection produced an auxiliary tactic.

Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design (known as ID) has gradually replaced Young Earth Creationism over the past few decades. Based on irreducible complexity in biology rather than literal scriptural interpretation, ID presents an alternative avenue of skepticism towards naked materialism, while at the same time permitting divine interference in natural conditions.

The scientific community perceives ID as dodging legitimate inquiry by postulating external (i.e., transcendent) causes to account for “irreducible complexity” in anatomical features. In addition, its members refute such deus ex machina as inappropriate to ontological inquiry. The emphasis by ID’s proponents on biology garners suspicion from secular critics that evolution’s doubters clandestinely defend the Pentateuch’s supernatural creation account. However, one wonders: is their objection legitimate?

In physics, one of the most intractable conundrums concerns the dichotomy between general relativity (particularly gravitational space-time curvature) and quantum mechanics (such as particle-wave duality). But even a more mundane topic such as the chaotic nature of turbulence eludes formal description. As an example, envision low intensity smoke (e.g., from a candle or a cigarette). The plume rises smoothly and then suddenly undulates into unpredictable eddies while dispersing into the air.

Yet ID doesn’t propose angelic agencies to vortices or entangled particles. Instead, ID suggests some form of deliberate intervention in the nature of metabolic and reproductive activities together with transformative variegation supposedly ineludible to measurement. The notion that divine providence enables living organisms to enter existence and diversify by some eternally elusive process announces the futility of scientific endeavor. Needless to say, this irks its opponents because ID declares life to be a black box that nobody will understand and should be forbidden to attempt to quantify. On a more prosaic note, such prohibition also complicates acquisition of research funding. It is no wonder that it’s so unpopular.

Theology of Free Will

ID contends that random variation cannot yield order towards complexity. However, the term “random” should be understood in the context of feedback, and should be thought of as dynamically operating within dimensional constraints. As items gather together, subtle interactions can impose a subtle order combined with an altered quality called “emergence,” which is revealed from development of such patterns. Impetus on objects can impose an order within finite directionality, as shown by inert ball bearings affected by electric charge. Thus, order in nature seems inherent from physical laws, rather than externally imposed by conscious guidance.

Without formal background, I won’t presume the efficacy of natural selection or genetic mutation on life. But insisting that we can’t find out because “God did it” epitomizes less bad science (being unlikely albeit possible) than flawed theology. The mathematical behavior of somatic phenomena demonstrates that God probably doesn’t indulge in ham-fisted techniques. Moreover, the implicit determinism in divine compulsion from inhale-assumed destiny also negates free will. Following the Last Supper, it should be recalled that our Savior reluctantly but willingly chose to await his arrest outside Jerusalem’s walls.

From my perspective, a god-of-the-gaps notion implies not an ordering Creator, but a tinkering goblin who must bend, stretch or break the established rules to accomplish any intended objectives. Incidentally, we’re precluded from backtracking those steps to avoid heavenly displeasure. One might imagine a frustrated Being muttering “Oh my Me!” while struggling to splice nucleotides to their phosphate helical scaffold. But after all that exhaustive activity, it is no wonder God decided to rest at week’s end (Genesis 2:2 and Exodus 20:11). Such an unpalatable image of a clumsy Creator disparages the notion of a loving God.

Materialism – Good and Bad

What about the materialist worldview that animates secularist proselytization? That apprehension is based on a conflated misconception between methodological materialism and its pugilistic philosophical cousin. The former is an analysis technique essential for conducting scientific inquiry. The latter is a conceited extrapolation without empirical foundation.

Recall the scene in Apollo 13 (one of my favorite movies) when to prevent asphyxiation of the astronauts, Mission Control in Houston tasks its technical staff with the assignment: “We’ve got to find a way to make this [cubic cartridge] fit into the hole for this [cylindrical cartridge], using nothing but that [pointing to the table of counterparts to components aboard the Odyssey and Aquarius spacecraft]!”

Nobody asked the reason for assembling the adapter – everyone inherently understood. They sought to learn how to do it. Science explores to reconstruct the underlying procedural instructions along with the parts catalog – that’s all. It doesn’t arrogate itself to discovering the motivation or purpose behind the list of things and operations. Scientists don’t inquire “why” – they merely want to know “how” (did all that we discern come into existence)?

Analytical models are based at least partly on reductionism – the isolation of contributing forces that affect an object so as to identify causes in echelon. This methodological technique avails in classical physics and chemistry, but gets complicated for elementary particles due to their probabilistic nature, and cellular microbiology from un-isolatable systemic interactions. Despite the tremendous progress of scientific comprehension at the theoretical level, as well as practical exploitation in sundry technological fields, much remains for further investigation.

In my labors, I discount mystical effects in explaining how something operates. We don’t attribute a rigid item’s fracture to mischievous demons but instead to applied kinetics and electrostatic bonding. Isolating and hierarchical ranking of contributing factors serves to assess performance and risk. These and other related analytical tools exemplify methodological materialism: the assumption that only derivable and repeatable phenomena will be assessed to predict corporeal responses. Might the absence of inference to phantoms lead to premature conclusions? Perhaps. But technical evaluation cannot operate otherwise.

ID’s philosophical counterfeit vies for popular notice, confidently denying God through bleak abstraction and proclaiming that nothing exists apart from baryonic matter. What we see is what we get. Well, no. Galactic behaviors do not conform to the discernible matter and energy, so such projection as yet lacks corroboration, not to mention the intentional dismissal of undiscovered emergence. The truth is, our species still has much to learn.

Truce for Truth

Theists ought not to waste effort on arguments deemed antithetical to those one hopes to persuade. Instead, focus could be redirected to greater benefit towards corroboration of “creation” in the Fine Tuning (FT) argument, as the esteemed Stephen Meyer explains through recent discoveries and their relationship to theistic belief (whether FT infers ID remains a separate issue). FT derives from the Anthropic Principle that asserts specific configuration of the cosmos towards cognitive scrutiny. The cosmos offers a plethora of measured phenomena that appear unlikely in their aggregate.

Australian cosmologist Luke Barnes explains precise details about how the laws governing physics together with various constants and initial conditions provide an intricate interlocking set of particles and interactions that enable the beauty of perceptible order. The New Atlantis has published an accessible summary. More ambitious readers might consider his comprehensive explanation by CSIRO and defense published in Ergo. His FT presentations are rather dense because the parameters he evaluates and juxtaposes don’t analogize at human scales.

A distinctive coterie of technical practitioners and creedal observers ought not be at odds. Each group seeks veracity – the material and the transcendent respectively. The postmodern Left demands the demise of both communities, so we need a reciprocal truce to attend to our shared adversary. Do other pressing concerns vie for awareness? Indeed they do. But acquiring allies while at the same time not accumulating foes nonetheless offer a prudent course of pursuit.

The late paleontologist and agnostic Stephen Jay Gould proposed that science and religion operate orthogonally – meaning at right angles to each other. He called their corresponding domains non-overlapping magisteria or NOMA. Unfortunately, occasional enthusiasts trespass onto another’s turf, generating impotent friction and discontent. For the common good, he argues that we should politely discourage such transgressions.

Scientists can embark on materialist analysis to smash fermions and compare type Ia supernovae without straying into whether or not a Creator had a hand at the start. On the other hand, the pious can devote their fealty towards holiness and avoid public pontificating on how sacred writings imbricates modern discoveries. Consequently, by humbly and politely respecting these “demilitarized zones,” we will permit discourse on ethical concerns in proper context to facilitate mutual consensus among ourselves.

Our reality is that the technical and traditional communities need each other. Absent the quantifying disciplines, infant mortality rates couldn’t improve from historical norms. Without comfort from presumption of a benevolent deity, the spiritual lives of many would be more tragic and empty. In contrast to most post-modernists, both sides seek the truth within our understanding. We must not be at each other’s throats, or grovel at another’s feet.

The Trial’s Legacy

The Scopes trial resonates in our minds even today because it symbolizes a political divide within the American psyche between the empirical and the moral. Perhaps more than any other nation, America celebrates technology. Paradoxically, at the same time Americans remain more religiously engaged than any other industrialized society. Whether this combination represents a conundrum or merely denotes an exotic or peculiar quirk in our exceptional nature can be a subject of another debate.

Our collective dissatisfaction compels us to change our nation, whether for the better – or for the worse, depending on one’s perspective and the inspiration of one’s faith. That churn can either be monstrously destructive, or enormously creative. Either way, such endeavors will keep us very busy. While time and effort may be wasted in the interim, they inhibit complacency from festering in society. Perhaps that’s how God chooses to keeps us on our toes.

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