Theistic Evolution According to Francis Collins

 
Another kerfuffle over Theistic Evolution has broken out in response to PZ Myers' complaint about Mitt Romney [Mitt Romney, theistic evolutionist…and this is supposed to be a good thing?]. I've been reading the comments over at Good Math, Bad Math [Religion != ID]. There are others such as the discussion on Primordial Blog [Theistic Evolution].

Update: PZ asks someone to explain to him the difference between Theistic Evolution and Intelligent Design Cretionism [Romney redux]. So far nobody's been able to do it. Stay tuned, read the comments over on Pharyngula.

Part of the problem is that we don't have a universally agreed upon definition of Theistic Evolution. The Wikipedia site does a pretty good job of covering all the possibilities [Theistic Evolution] based mostly on the original statement by Eugenie Scott [The Creation/Evolution Continuum] who says ....

Theistic Evolution is the theological view that God creates through evolution. Astronomical, geological and biological evolution are acceptable to TEs They vary in whether and how much God is allowed to intervene -- some come pretty close to Deists. Other TEs see God as intervening at critical intervals during the history of life (especially in the origin of humans), and they in turn come closer to PCs. In one form or another, TE is the view of creation taught at mainline Protestant seminaries, and it is the official position of the Catholic church. In 1996, Pope John Paul II reiterated the Catholic TE position, in which God created, evolution happened, humans may indeed be descended from more primitive forms, but the hand of God was needed for the creation of the human soul. (John Paul II, 1996).

As I stated in my essay [Theistic Evolution: The Fallacy of the Middle Ground], the true deist end of the continuum does not conflict with science but most other versions do.

Let's look at the version promoted by Francis Collins in his book The Language of God. This version seems to be closer to the popular versions than the benign deist versions. Collins lists six premises of Theistic Evolution (page 200).

1. The universe came into being out of nothingness, approximately 14 billion years ago.
2. Despite massive improbabilities, the properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life.
3. While the precise mechanism of the origin of life on earth remains unknown, once life arose, the process of evolution and natural selection permitted the development of biological diversity and complexity over very long periods of time.
4. Once evolution got under way, no special supernatural intervention was required.
5. Humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the great apes.
6. But humans are also unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanation and point to our spiritual nature. This includes the existence of the Moral Law (the knowledge of right and wrong) and the search for God that characterizes all human cultures throughout our history.

I'd also add one further point to this list since it's an important part of the conflict between science and religion that characterizes the Collins' version of Theistic Evolution.

Miracles do not pose an irreconcilable conflict for the believer who trusts in science as a means to investigate the natural world, and who sees that the natural world is ruled by laws. If, like me, you admit that there might exist something or someone outside of nature, then there's no logical reason why that force could not on rare occasions stage an invasion. On the other hand, in order for the world to avoid descending into chaos, miracles must be very uncommon.

I think points #2 and #6 and the issue of miracles, all impinge on science. This is why Theistic Evolution conflicts with science although we all admit that the conflict is less obvious that the conflict between science and Young Earth Creationism.

What's at stake here is the separation of science and religion discussed by Stephen Jay Gould in Rock of Ages. He proposed that science and religion could be Non-overlapping Magisteria (NOMA). What this means is that religion is okay as long as it sticks to things that do not conflict with science. I'm not a big fan of NOMA but the basic concept is worth adopting as a point of discussion. Does the Collins version of Theistic Evolution respect the NOMA Principle?

Here's how Gould describes it (pages 93-94).

The fallacies of such fundamentalist extremism can be easily identified, but what about a more subtle violation of NOMA commonly encountered among people whose concept of God demands a loving deity, personally concerned with the lives of all his creatures—and not just an invisible and imperious clockwinder? Such people often take a further step by insisting that their God mark his existence (and his care) by particular factual imprints upon nature. Now science has no quarrel whatsoever with anyone's need or belief in such a personalized concept of divine power, bu NOMA does preclude the additional claim that such a God must arrange the facts of nature in a certain set and predetermined way. For example, if you believe that an adequately loving God must show his hand by peppering nature with palpable miracles, or that such a God could only allow evolution to work in a manner contrary to to facts of the fossil record (as a story of slow and steady liner progress toward Homo sapiens for example), then a particular and partisan (and minority) view of religion has transgressed into the magisterium of science by dictating conclusions that must remain open to empirical test and potential rejection.

So, what do you think, dear readers? Does the idea that the universe is "precisely tuned for life" involve a transgression of religion into the proper domain of science? Does the idea that "humans are also unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanation" violate NOMA? Are miracles compatible with science?

I think the Collins version of Theistic Evolution is not compatible with science and therefore Collins has not resolved the conflict between science and religion. I think that most versions of Theistic Evolution conflict with science. The only version that's compatible is one that should be called Deistic Evolution.