Revisionist Accounts

Posted on August 4, 2008
Filed Under Free Will, Philosophy |

Folk Theories of PhysicsI wanted to finally get to the discussion of revisionist accounts of responsibility. I want to start though by getting some preliminaries in order. For one what do we mean by revisionist theories? I take to to be the claim that our general understanding of some theory is in order and needs to be revised. But what are our general understanding of theory? I think these are common sense theories that are typically called folk theories. We have folk psychology, folk physics, folk biology and folk views of free will (which is obviously tied to folk psychology). Revisionist theories take to task elements of the folk theories.

Now areas where science hasn’t shown folk theories to be false you will find philosophers defending (often vigorously) elements of folk theory. Why? I think this is somewhat complex. I think the typical reason though is historic. Philosophy has often been tied to what we call arm chair theorizing. That is philosophy tends to focus on what we typically call the a priori or what comes before experience. Thus there is an assumption that our intuitions can be a guide to truth. (This needn’t be a claim about some intuitive sense - merely that our intuitions from our chair are a good way to reach truth) Around the mid-20th century philosophy faced what was called the linguistic turn. Roughly that it was to language (rather than intuitions) that philosophy should turn. Once again I think there was a bit of armchair philosophy behind all this. After all as language speakers philosophers ought know what language says.

I want to consider physics though. What makes physics so interesting is that intuitions and language are so wrong. I fully admit that it is my experience in physics that makes me so skeptical about appeals to language and intuition.

Consider the separation between time and space. How separate are they? If we appeal to General Relativity we get one answer. If we appeal to our language and common sense intuitions we get an other. What about mass and energy? Are they different or the same? What about waves and particles? If you even ask the typical person to draw the curve of a falling object they get it wrong.

Consider recent moves in philosophy to appeal to empiricism. (See for example the blog Experimental Philosophy) These usually involve simple cases which then poll respondents to see what their answers are. (Say some test case which asks if a person is free or not) But if one were to do the same in physics would we trust the results? No. Why? Because the answers would typically be wrong.

What does this mean though?

Well what the physicist would say is that our intuitions don’t reflect reality. We can test what our intuitions are but we should expect our language to reflect what structures are innate in the universe. As physics has progressed over the centuries what we find is that the language and intuitions in society start to reflect the science. Thus the intuitions of people in say the 17th century are different from today. And even today the language of a person trained in physics typically is different from a lay person.

Now most people don’t get upset if a physicist suggests we ought be revisionist about our intuitions or words. Further I think we’d all agree that if we were to present various thought experiments trying to get out what people believe about energy or mass that it isn’t too informative.

All that revisionist accounts of responsibility do is the same thing. They suggest that there is something called “responsibility” but say that perhaps our folk theories about what it is are wrong. They need revision. They don’t want to say it’s improper to talk about responsibility. They just say that some of the ideas we have about responsibility need a little changing.

Now the big problem is that intuitions about ’stuff’ in the world seems different from intuitions about certain terms. We want to say that stuff like electricity, magnetism, mass, particles and so forth are real. That is our thoughts about them are ultimately irrelevant. Some would say that for some thoughts and ideas our thinking about them is very important. That is our thoughts might pick out real objects but that what is important is less the objects than our thoughts. We often say that the concepts are anti-realist since they depend essentially on what some finite community says. In that case what we are interested in is that community and not what they are referring to.

Now if we are interested in the community then revisionism makes no sense as we’re not looking to change what the community believes but discover what they believe.

Thus some will say that things like free will, responsibility and related concepts are really about our community and beliefs and not what is “out there.”

I raise this simply because people will disagree on this matter and how one decides what the focus is will determine how one views revisionist accounts.

Comments

47 Responses to “Revisionist Accounts”

I read two wonderful books related to this. One called “Folk Physics for Apes” by Daniel Povinelli and “Baboon Metephysics” by Dorothy L. Cheney. Both explore the Folk Physics and belief systems of social primates. Experimentally, what do we learn from these close relatives (well no so close in baboons, they have a tail after all)about intuitions? What do they expect when confronted with the physical facts of the universe? In these animals of course something seems wrong with asking the question, ‘if they believe true things’ or about ‘if they grasp the truth.’ What would that mean? But their intuitions do tend to play out in ways that matter for their survival and not always otherwise. They have both physics intuitions (how the objects in the world will behave or how they expect them to behave) and social intuitions, and both are finely tuned in those areas where mistakes will lead to disaster (or a loss of mating opportunity). I am too much of an evolutionary biologist not to suspect that we escape from this condition in our own intuitions. However, the realization (or supposition depending on your take, e.g. you buy into someone like Bas van Fraassen) that there is a real world, and that there are good and bad ways to get at it, have been very productive in moving us epistemically beyond these intuitions.

However, all these moves beyond intuition seem to me conditioned on language, models, and maps (and I don’t think they are the same things (and I just now wondered if there was a general term for covering all these cognitive representational devices?). But not language alone. I think there seems something wrong and right about the linquistic turn. Therefore, I vote (if I were at one of those vote for your philosophy places you mentioned) that the linguistic turn may have something to offer if you broaden its forms of representation. But I am suspicious of to much reliance on intuitions. They might be good for avoiding leopards, deciding which branches are in range of a jump, and finding a sweetheart, but after that . . . ?

How did biological evolution fit us to come up with relativity theory and quantum mechanics? As Plantinga argues, there seems to be a catch 22 here. If we accept the former, as physicists and anyone with a modern scientific world-view must, then our intuitions are called into question on a host of issues beyond the ken of our “normal” experience. However, if one accepts scientific approaches (such as neurological simulation of “the world” in experience), then we have no reason to believe that random survival of the fittest would fit us to be able to reason about such matters, thus calling the defeaters of intuition into question. Indeed, our experience is all chemical and cellular simulations of translated data on such a view. We have no way of testing our experience against what we seem to be experiencing. What are we left with? Extreme skepticism it seems to me. Not merely anti-realism, but complete denial that we have a clue about anything.

However, it just seems to me that equating moral intuitions with intuitions about particle physics and space-time is a vast category mistake. We don’t look to see what others are in fact doing or judging to determine whether we have a sense of right and wrong about something. We do. Comparing monkey intuitions about moral choices with human intuitions about moral choices just seems on the far side of ridiculous to me.

It is a bit disconcerting to realize that what humanity once thought was reality via its intuitions turned out to be false. The classic example is the earth centered, geocentric theory of the universe – this intuition-based theory was well tested and widely accepted by the scientific community. Will some of today’s “obvious” intuition-based theories become historical rejects in the future? Probably so, given enough time.

Even more disconcerting, however, is the extreme skepticism of empiricists like David Hume. He claimed that cannot directly experience the physical world as it truly exists, we can only view its properties. Thus, he claimed, we cannot have certain knowledge of matters of fact in the physical world. This skeptical viewpoint opened the door for social constructionism which, I think, is the system that you have delved into.

Social constructionists believe that reality is created through social processes. It has pros and cons, but to the question of whether free-will and responsibility are real external entities I think they would say “no”. These only exist in social experiences; take away these experiences and there is no more free will and responsibility. I like to think that because free will and moral agency are gifts from God, they do possess an ontological reality separate from this frail mortal existence.

Who is the person you are referring to when you say, “is the system that you have delved into.” Blake or myself?

To be clear, my position is that there is a reality to responsibility that we have only flawed partial knowledge of. That’s why right off the bat, ignoring other concerns, I suspect a revisionist theory is correct. While we can talk about how society holds others responsible and that is an interesting question what I’m interested in is how we ought hold people responsible.

Blake’s position is a kind of both worlds, as I understand it. He is a realist towards responsibility but believes we have an infallible (or nearly so) capacity to know what responsibility is. Thus the social view and the reality map exactly.

How did biological evolution fit us to come up with relativity theory and quantum mechanics? As Plantinga argues, there seems to be a catch 22 here. If we accept the former, as physicists and anyone with a modern scientific world-view must, then our intuitions are called into question on a host of issues beyond the ken of our “normal” experience.

Aren’t you confusing capacities with intuitions and instincts? One can have the capacity to discover and comprehend relativity while ones instincts don’t even describe Newtonian mechanics.

This seems an odd (and poor) argument for Plantinga to make. Where does he make it? There must be more to the argument.

Whether comparing moral and mechanics instincts is a category mistake depends upon how it is being used. My argument is more that instincts in general are untrustworthy. So it is an argument of where the burden of proof lays. Thus I don’t think it’s a category mistake as it acknowledges a difference but says that the burden of proof is on those who argue our instincts are accurate.

Dave: Humanity’s view that the earth was the center of the “universe” didn’t arise from intuition, but from empirical observation. From where a person stood to look at the world, it appeared from that experiential perspective as if the earth was the center of the universe. That was simply the best evidence and the inference to the best explanation that they had. Those who held that the earth was the center of the universe were just being good empiricists!

Clark: “what I’m interested in is how we ought hold people responsible.”

Now you’re talking! I have always understood your position to be that we look at how folks in fact hold others responsible and that is the basis for our knowledge of what we ought to do. I’m interested in the same question that cannot be answered by observing how others in fact may treat others; but in the question of how they OUGHT to treat others. That is a different question altogether.

Clark: “He [Blake == me] is a realist towards responsibility but believes we have an infallible (or nearly so) capacity to know what responsibility is. Thus the social view and the reality map exactly.”

What? Where in the heck did I say that we have infallible knowledge of anything? In fact I have been adamant that we hide responsibility for ourselves by self-deception and lack of consciousness, openness to others and attention. However, I do maintain that we have an instrument or sense of what is right or wrong inherent in the kinds of beings that we are in relation to others — it just is blocked from proper function by our humanness.

Clark: “Aren’t you confusing capacities with intuitions and instincts? One can have the capacity to discover and comprehend relativity while ones instincts don’t even describe Newtonian mechanics.”

Nope. The fact is that evolution is supposed to be an explanation of how we gain certain capacities. However, it doesn’t explain how we would gain such capacities because they aren’t relevant to the immediate task of survival. For Plantinga’s argument (which I am still undecided about), see: his Knowledge of God (a debate with Michael Tooley), Warranted Christian Belief; and Methodological Naturalism, here http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od181/methnat181.htm

When did I ever speak of “instincts”? Surely intuition cannot be equated with instinct — and your assumption that I somehow equate them is a mistake.

I have always understood your position to be that we look at how folks in fact hold others responsible and that is the basis for our knowledge of what we ought to do.

No. I merely think that for some cases that is sufficient to ground knowledge of some limited subset of the good. I’ve never claimed more than that. But then I also don’t think we can at this point in time say what the good is. Which isn’t a big deal to me since I also don’t think we can answer the equivalent far ranging claim about what the physical is.

But my position is that we don’t have to know everything to know something. That is I oppose anything akin to foundationalism epistemologically speaking.

What? Where in the heck did I say that we have infallible knowledge of anything? In fact I have been adamant that we hide responsibility for ourselves by self-deception and lack of consciousness, openness to others and attention. However, I do maintain that we have an instrument or sense of what is right or wrong inherent in the kinds of beings that we are in relation to others — it just is blocked from proper function by our humanness.

Umm. I don’t see how that’s different from what I said. We may “block” function but the capacity is there.

The fact is that evolution is supposed to be an explanation of how we gain certain capacities. However, it doesn’t explain how we would gain such capacities because they aren’t relevant to the immediate task of survival.

Umm. What? Evolution explains that quite well. A capacity need not entail something about immediate survival. It need only provide increased ability to reproduce compared to competitors in a particular environment. In other environments the capacity may remain but be tied to other purposes. And capacities are always general and thus go beyond the particular abilities to the environment and reproduction they provide.

So human abilities to count and do mathematics may not provide an obvious survival ability. But the underlying capacities that allow us to do mathematics may well have in the past.

This is why this whole line of thinking seems so odd to me. As I understand it this is pretty standard talk in evolution.

I have Warranted Christian Belief at home and will check it out. Something seems weird.

As to distinguishing instincts from intuitions it’s not clear how we separate them out. That’s rather my point. (And I add in linguistic and social habits)

To add, if our intuitions aren’t trustworthy on what basis can you say concept analysis of “responsibility” and “free will” is useful in the least? Given that this is the centerpiece of your approach and you adopt a realist approach to the topic I’m now somewhat flummoxed by your comments in the above. It would seem that a concept analysis is useful if and only if the topic is either anti-realist (i.e. community meaning is what counts) or if the community is a trustworthy source of knowledge on the topic. But you can’t simultaneously say the community knows what these things are while simultaneously ascribe the fallibilism you embrace at least rhetorically, can you?

Could you clarify what your position is here? I could see it working if our intuitions were at least close to infallible but not without that.

Clark: I address this at length in my second volume which I am sure that you have. For now, let’s just assume (since we both accept it) that we all have a basic faculty such as the light of Christ that gives us a gift or capacity for knowing right and wrong. That doesn’t mean that I always know what is given by the light of Christ since I can snuff out that light and even significantly distort it. So we can have an intuition, even a very basic and inherent capacity for intuition of right and wrong, but not be able to access it in the moment of assessing right and wrong due to our behavior and rationalizations and self-deception. However, that hardly entails that we don’t have a universal sense of right and wrong and moral responsibility that functions among properly functioning folks.

As far as evolution, I haven’t heard anything but speculation that it is just possible that being fitted for survival led to some capacity ad extra for mathematics and quantum physics. The problem is that the probability is low because it is ad extra and completely superfluous to survival. So it isn’t impossible that evolution could result in such capacities, it is just that it doesn’t explain it and it doesn’t lead us to expect it as a likely outcome of a random process based on survival of the fittest. We have no reason to believe that our mental apparti and experience are anything but simulations that aid survival on such a view.

I’ll reread that part of the volume. I don’t remember you addressing that. But my point was more about how we distinguish various things typically characterized as intuitions. I’m more raising the epistemological problem of distinguishing what is instinct from some other kind of intuition.

The bit about evolution I mentioned is simply a broad characteristic of any trait selected. The bit about mathematics was admittedly just me making up a possible way this would work with a rational capacity. I guess I just don’t see the problem. Given that the happens with more narrow traits it seems the burden is on you to say it wouldn’t happen with any given trait for a capacity.

To add, when we turn to theology rather than general philosophy, I think there are many ways to interpret the Light of Christ. I think it could easily be a label that includes instincts and much else as they all interact.

Blake, I went through your book. But I must be missing something obvious. Now that I’ve reread the relevant sections starting around 157 I remember some of my objections from when I first read it. This passage in particular I find problematic.

The view that God has implanted the knowledge of the law in our hearts is key to this approach. In some sense, we already know the law of God because it is already in us. Yet we are blind to those truths we know because of “uncircumcised” or hard hearts or being closed to others. The concept seems to be that God has given us an instrument of knowledge in our very hearts.

[...]

Thus, to be good and to do good, we must be open to the Spirit and sensitive to its guidance. To do what is truly good, we must be good. We know what servers others because, if we are open to them, we will receive numerous messages, both verbal and nonverbal, that teach us what will serve them. The Christian walks in the Spirit, open to the promptngs and messages that arise from the light of Christ. (159-160)

Your position appears to be that there are some very general imperatives communicated or at least instincts developed in us. Things like “assist your wife.” But then the how is left to you to figure out. But then that entails that we don’t know the particular goods. We know some general imperatives. But the imperatives can’t be the good, can it? This seems to get at the same problem I mentioned in the Levinas post. We get a demand to the other but our actual judgments of good and evil aren’t the demand but something we determine empirically and in a flawed way.

It seems very problematic. Now it does support your earlier claim that you don’t have an infallible intuition of the good. But only because you don’t really have an intuition of good and evil at all. At best you have an intuition of some imperatives that are fairly separated from the question of good and evil and are tied up in developing a relationship. Which is fine, but inadequate.

More to the point though if this is the case and this is the only kind of intuitive knowledge we have (these general imperatives) how does this affect the question of revisionist accounts? It would seem first of all that such a knowledge tells us nothing of the nature of responsibility or free will. Thus a concept analysis based upon our intuitions is useless. (You may make appeal to a second kind of intuitional knowledge, but then I’m at a loss to understand the reference to your book in the context of this thread)

The whole point is either we’re given potentially exact concepts or we aren’t. If we are given exact concepts but they are very vague and perhaps easy to ignore and replace with other ideas, then I just don’t see how your approach works. It would seem you’d be forced into adopting the same position I have - a distrust towards our intuitions of certain philosophical concepts and folk traditions. The fact is that folk theories of ethics simply aren’t just imperatives. They are much more. So I guess I just can’t see how you wouldn’t be a revisionist.

Am I missing something?

Oh, I read the passage in Plantinga (pg.228). You were right. He really makes that mistake. Wow. He suggests that because selection isn’t for belief in truth but survival that belief in truth wouldn’t arise. This obviously ignores the great benefit for survival of truthful beliefs (or, with animals, barring beliefs at least accurate representation resulting in behavior) That’s just a horrible argument on his part.

Dang, living in Vienna I miss all the good conversations while they are going on in real time.

Oh well, Let me start with this one by Blake:

As far as evolution, I haven’t heard anything but speculation that it is just possible that being fitted for survival led to some capacity ad extra for mathematics and quantum physics. The problem is that the probability is low because it is ad extra and completely superfluous to survival.

As Clark points out it’s not just about survival, in some general sense, it’s about survival relative to your competitors. Evolution in many animals takes place in a social milieu that structures the way that those selective advantages play out. There are entire journals devoted to exactly the kind of selective advantage that social interactions can contribute to capacities. Some of the work on by Boyd and Richardson on social evolution is very accessible and provides models of how these capacities that Clark has been talking about can be enhanced and refined. These capacities are not just ‘superfluous’ and in fact lead us right to the conclusion that jsut these sorts of capacities we see in humans like language, art, and mathematics are expected “as a likely outcome of a random process based on survival of the fittest.” (And I’m not going to get into how badly the word random was misused here, as it off in is in discussions of evolution—but I’ll let is slide for now).

Let me give you an example. One of the things that was hard for early evolutionists to understand was why groups of people would cohere and work together. Groups should reduce costs for the entire group, but cheaters are always at an advantage because they can get group benefits without paying group costs, therefore cheaters should spread through a population. Models explored things like cheater detection, the ability of punish cheaters, signalling real intent to help the group, rewards for good group behaviour. These stablized the evolution of group behavior in ways that allowed them to evolve together(One of the atributes of humans that are are found irrespective of culture, like religion, smiling and music, is gossip (group policing and information exchange). These sorts of things, things that we see in most social animals like dogs, monkeys, social birds, chimps and humans all are thought to be evolved responses to group dynamics. Not simple survival like running from leopards.

There is no aspect of human biological and social behaviour that evolution cannot explain. But why do I detect in your arguments, Blake, an unnecessary appeal to the God of Gaps? If God used evolution by natural selection in his creation how does that diminish the creation? It seems to me that for his spirit children he would need a biological vessel worthy of the spirit’s complexity and responses. Evolution takes nothing away from Creation and trying to do an end run around it by claiming that –it’s just too hard to imagine all the cool things humans can do evolved–is a copout. Humans have been counting and doing art about 50,000 years. I personally don’t think they had spirit children of God in them for that time period (although I’m not making this as a claim, just a suspicion). And evolution sure gives a great explination for the “Natural Man’s” weaknesses and proclivities.

And our intuitions are really bad. Take probabilities. Humans are awful. It might properly be said that humans have no good intuitions when it comes to probability. We have good rational minds that have let us overcome this by using other things we have like if-then thinking and formal mathematics.

The light of Christ is an element of consciousness. It is personal and directive in that sense. While we often informally call it our conscious I’m not sure about that. Dogs and Apes have that kind of conscious (apparently feeling guilty for breaking social norms—i.e. doing something bad). I think too often we confuse the spirit with emotion, guilt with spiritual remorse, and the light of Christ with breaking taboo. Personally I think there is a big difference.

One point. When I say ‘There is no aspect of human biological and social behaviour that evolution cannot explain.’ I don’t mean that it has explained it all or even that is scientifically possible, but it is conceptually possible (like the difference between Chalmers’ the hard and easy problems in consciousness). It may not be that we can actually get at all the problems of explaining evolutionary trajectories of human behavior. Because of lost information about the past, for exampole. But there is no in-principle reason that we cannot.

SteveP: “But why do I detect in your arguments, Blake, an unnecessary appeal to the God of Gaps?”

Well, I suspect that it is because you are just missing the point. The question was not what God could explain; but what evolution has a very hard time explaining. Your suggestion that something is just possible in terms of evolutionary explanation is the same kind of conjectural speculation about what might have been possible to be developed through evolution without any evidence at all to back up the speculation. I didn’t claim that it is impossible that evolution would come up intelligent beings who could do quantum physics, just wildly improbable because the neural development necessary for such things is so beyond what is necessary for survival. The massive complexity of the brain is way beyond what is necessary for the kinds of things you mention. Why would evolution be so wildly inefficient to weigh us down with such a prefrontal cortex when it served little purpose for millions of years? That is the question.

Plantinga says that we have no reason to believe that evolution would fit us with capacities such as detecting the truths of mathematics and quantum physics because they are not a part of the environment anyone had to negotiate until about the last 100 years. His point is well-taken.

Look, I don’t reject evolution. I reject mere random selection by survival of the fittest. My background is in neurophysiology. The sheer neural complexity required for the kind of massively parallel processing that we must have to do things like mathematics and physics is so beyond what is necessary to negotiate the kinds of social adaptation you speak of that it is really stunning. Bees have social adaptation without the kind of massive parallel processing we are capable of — and your assertion that social adaptation requires the ability to do quantum physics is just not believable in biological or neurophysiological terms.

“If God used evolution by natural selection in his creation how does that diminish the creation?”

Well, you see it is rather elementary. Random selection is merely genetically random and couldn’t begin to guarantee the development of humans or any other species. Indeed, it couldn’t even to explain how the capacity to develop properties of mind as we know them would or could be aimed at. Indeed, God couldn’t control the process of evolution at all if it were merely random mutations chosen by quite arbitrary ecosystems. Indeed, what role would God play in such development at all? The entire process of evolution is outside of anything God could control or predict if it proceeds by random selection.

SteveP: “Dogs and Apes have that kind of conscious (apparently feeling guilty for breaking social norms—i.e. doing something bad).”

Yeah, but do you hold them morally responsible for what they do? Of course not. So there is a vast difference that you’re overlooking.

Clark: “The whole point is either we’re given potentially exact concepts or we aren’t.”

Right. Except it massively misses again the point. Who spoke of exact moral concepts? My agape theory certainly doesn’t suggest any such thing. I don’t believe that moral intuitions are anything like exact concepts.

However, it essential to note that our sense of right and wrong in any given situation is quite different than our immediate experience of deliberation and ability to choose among alternative options. When you stop to think about whether you’ll have chocolate or vanilla, certainly you experience making a choice and having genuine options and choosing among them. You experience the exercise of the basic power in your selection. You may assert that we are just massively ignorant about why you “really” “chose” chocolate and it only appeared to you that you had a choice to pick vanilla — but you couldn’t conduct your life by the explanation of why that just ain’t so. It is pragmatically impossible. How could anyone truly act on the belief that they don’t have such basic powers and open options in their pragmatic lives as lived? Even acting on that belief that one couldn’t deliberate and choose would be a choice that is self-referentially contradictory. That is a different kind of immediate knowledge of what one in fact does based on immediate experience and it is pragmatically impossible for us not to so act and believe in action. That is a different kind of intuitive knowledge.

I hold my dog morally responsible for it what it does. It usually seems remorseful so I’m generally merciful.

I’m not really sure what you mean by ‘random selection.’ Selection acts on random variation provided by the genome. But because it acts on random variation does not make it a random process as if were where wandering around in blind search. It’s a population level attribute that acts to change gene frequencies. Its probabilities play out because it’s happening in a complex environment and there is stochasticity in the world certainly. But it’s no more random than you picking a book up a bookstore. Certainly there are lots reasons why you choose that book, your mood, interest, education, some stochastic elements like taking a left at shelf ‘A’ rather than ‘right’ and seeing something perfect on a shelf. But if someone asked you why you picked that book would you say, “It was random?” Selection, in an environment is picking out certain features of organisms based on match ups with their attributes and if they get to breed. If there is variation, selection and heritability. You get changes in those gene frequencies and evolution. It’s not predictable or directed but its not random.

Bees have social adaptation without the kind of massive parallel processing we are capable of

. Humm. . . . m bees are eusoical certainly, but that’s not the kind of behavioural complexity that we usually think of as complex behaviours (you gotta love their dance though) so that wasn’t a good pick (bees don’t move much out of their programmed behavioural range). If your background is in neurophysiology you’ll know that our brain seems to be built on more primative structures which are still present in what we call more primitive animals. We have a lizard brain handling the things lizards only need doing. Our brains seem to have added complexity piece meal with more complexity added as you move up social complexity.

But your argument seems to fail because they could be made embryologically as well. One could make the same arguments about a human ever developing these capacities from a sperm and egg. But, somehow genes translate into brains, if genes can translate into brains there is a selective space that can be traversed though selection.

I’m curious where your commitments come from on this. You seem to be making in principle arguments (and maybe you’re not). But this seems like a question for science to settle. What’s your stake in the matter? The case hasn’t been completely made in science but it’s pointing that direction, strongly. Do you see a problem theologically (and here your’re on your turf) if our brains did evolve?

I didn’t claim that it is impossible that evolution would come up intelligent beings who could do quantum physics, just wildly improbable because the neural development necessary for such things is so beyond what is necessary for survival.

But isn’t that the whole point Blake? It’s not just what is necessary for survival. Most things evolved aren’t necessary for the survival of the creature who has them. It is, as Steve mentioned, a relative issue. (i.e. who reproduces and survives better) But what was selected for in the past simply may have new uses in the future. So seeing everything, as Plantinga did, purely in terms of survival is just bad biology.

Now I’m not saying everything can be explained biologically. Although who knows what future science will discover. As Steve mentioned there are the so called “hard problems” like consciousness. But that’s not what you really addressed.

Further I agree that most Evolutionary Psychology consists of “just so” types of assertions. While I enjoy reading folks like Plinker I’m pretty skeptical about EP in general terms.

The whole point is a capacity should not be seen purely in terms of the environment in which the capacity arises. You are saying it does and that’s just wrong scientifically. Plantinga’s point isn’t well taken. It’s a horrible point that illustrates some basic misunderstandings of what’s going on.

As to what God could control, (which is of course getting quite far afield from the topic of responsibility) is the environment. But I wouldn’t be bothered if it turned out he did the equivalent of genetic tweaking here or there to guarantee a desired end. Evolution would still be running and still be the major driving force. (This is obviously quite different from what ID asserts)

Getting back more on topic you say, “who spoke of exact moral concepts? My agape theory certainly doesn’t suggest any such thing. I don’t believe that moral intuitions are anything like exact concepts.” But that’s just the point. If they aren’t “anything like exact concepts” then concept analysis of the sort you engage in is worthless. i.e. you are brought to the position I’m espousing.

The point is that under your presentation we don’t have a knowledge of good and evil rather we have some good imperatives that are very vague.

But all this is still somewhat beside the point since my focus on intuitions was to ask less about knowing what good and evil were than about our intuitions on responsibility and free will. And the chapters on light of Christ as Grace and light of Christ as knowledge of good and evil don’t appear to shed much light on any intuitions of freedom or responsibility. At least that I can see. (And I did reskim those sections last night)

SteveP. — Yeah, which genetic variations arise from mutations is completely random in every sense of the word. Which are chosen by natural selection may not be random in the sense that there is absolutely no explanation for the fact that it survived or provided survival value, but it is random in that the ecosystem happening to be in that state and happening to provide that survival value is a result of the randomness that preceded. So genetic variation and mutation is completely random. Which ecosystems would emerge could not be predicted or controlled. In that sense, that too is random.

But the key point is one that you accept: “It’s not predictable or directed but its not random.” If evolution is theistic in any sense, then God directs it. He didn’t just start a biological process and was willing to take whatever came or did not come along. It was possible life would just be snuffed out at many levels. Is that what you think God does — a deistic God who does what? Gets it rolling and then sits back and watches in amusement as random mutations get selected in chaotic and unpredictable ecosystems.

I see God as a lot more involved than you do. Indeed, given your statements here, any invovlment by God would be more than you credit.

Look, I’m not making “in principle” or logical arguments. I’m making inductive arguments about what we could reasonably believe.

“One could make the same arguments about a human ever developing these capacities from a sperm and egg.”

Really? How? Genetic information in a given DNA is not variable as you seem to think. Mutations that happen at random could result it such variations at random, but remember I believe that such variation are directed by divine intelligence. So the argument doesn’t go through on my view.

What you propose is that God somehow organized the earth to begin the evolutionary process and then stepped back, deistic like, and watched helplessly to see what would happen not knowing whether human life would evolve or being able to bring about human life through such uncontrollable and unpredictable means. That isn’t much of a god in my view.

Clark: “Most things evolved aren’t necessary for the survival of the creature who has them.”

I don’t believe that is true at all. There may be happenstance developments, but massive parallel processing is not one them. Further, Plantinga’s point is well taken in the sense that evolution leads us to believe that those mutations that have survival value will be chosen; those that don’t will be weeded out. The extra weight of an oversized pre-frontal cortex has negative survival value. If consciousness is epiphenemonal as Plantinga argues to be a commitment of naturalism inherent in the physicalist stance of evolution, then consciousness serves no purposes and the negative survival value of the large cortex is contraindicated by what we should expect from evolution. His further point is that we have to adopt skepticism about everything because we have no reason to believe that we have reliable information forming systems. As I said, I’m not finally decided, but his arguments seem much more persuasive to me than your stance.

“But I wouldn’t be bothered if it turned out he did the equivalent of genetic tweaking here or there to guarantee a desired end. Evolution would still be running and still be the major driving force. (This is obviously quite different from what ID asserts)”

Well, that is just my view. God does tweaking here and there — I guess we get the horrible God of the gaps? In my view, such tweaking goes a long way toward explaining the vastly overblown cognitive abilities that we have, including the hard problem of consciousness.

“If they aren’t “anything like exact concepts” then concept analysis of the sort you engage in is worthless. i.e. you are brought to the position I’m espousing.”

What concepts are you talking about? I claimed that we have impressions and feelings that call to us in a relationship that form the basis of our knowledge of moral duties — but I didn’t claim that we had to have some clear concept of moral duties to know that call to duty. In fact, I claimed just the opposite. However, the kinds of concepts regarding free will and the fact that we have a moral duty are clearly grounded in pragmatic experience as I suggested. We immediately experience ourselves deliberating among chocolate and vanilla and we immediately know our exercise of the power of choice to choose chocolate. We couldn’t pragmatically avoid this awareness nor could we avoid acting on such powers to deliberate and choice in our everyday lives moment to moment. Concepts of power to choose and that we have choices among alternative that are open to us that are imbedded in such experience isn’t a leap at all.

So you’re mixing apples and oranges. Intuitions about what we ought to do and moral theory that arises from such experience is different than intuitions about free will and our power to choose among alternatives. It seems to me that you have shifted your view rather significantly. I believe that previously you were saying that to know what our moral duty is we study what others do and how they make moral or ethical judgments. It is a kind of anthropological study (which is exactly what I expect from one who is a disciple of Peirce). It seems that now you are saying that you want to know what we ought to do, not what we merely do. However, one cannot derive what we ought to do from observation of how others judge — that doesn’t tell us anything about what we ought to do. Have I misunderstood you?

Blake, I don’t disagree that variation and mutation are random. If that’s all you meant we agree. Your wording about random selection is what threw me. I think we also may disagree on what random means. There nuances between random, predictable, undirected play out important ways in evolutionary thought. So we get sensitive when things like random selection are bantered about. Unpredictable and random are not the same thing although they’re correlated (joke).

If evolution is theistic in any sense, then God directs it. He didn’t just start a biological process and was willing to take whatever came or did not come along.

How do you know this? It seems like in a universe as big as ours God has both time and space to let things run until our bodies arrive through whatever process works. There are lots of what we call probability 1, events. They are stochastic but certain things will happen with certainty although probabilistic given enough time. You don’t know where or when but you know it will. There are lots of models like this. So the human body could be an inevitability with no direct intervention from God, given the structure of this universe. Take for example the evolution of Sabertooth Cats. There are Marsupial and Placental versions, which both evolved from a rat-like ancestor. There is something about the ecological structure of having to eat large pray the tends toward this result. Two independent sabertooth cats-like things. design from natural selection in similar habitats solving similar engineering problems. Actually, I find the Harry Potter god who has to keep tinkering with the potion far less appealing than the God who lets things unfold. And I suppose I am a little of the deist when consciousness is not involved and believe that until consciousness arrives on the scene, there was no need for intervention. It’s consciousness which gives God a place to direct and inspire. And freedom.

Plus,

An evolutionary universe that unfolds gets God off the hook for Natural Evil. The only way to create is through the opposition that is natural selection (opposition in all things taken literarily). The utter barbarity of the natural world suddenly makes sense.

And sorry Clark from taking this so far afield and to bring it back, if many of our intuitions are evolutionarily derived, that does not change that we can use these intuitions to make free decisions. Again, the free spirit in a body that has intuitions for freedom built in seems to make some sense to me.

Steve, I don’t think evolution gets God off the hook for natural evils in the least. To say that God used evolution is not the same as saying God could only have used evolution. Further even with evolution that doesn’t justify all the kinds of natural evils we encounter. But I don’t want to go down that tangent. I’ll just say that God using evolution actually magnifies the problem of natural evil given the amount of suffering inherent in evolutionary process. (Something many atheists are quick to point out)

Blake, I don’t have much time to write. I’ll just say that I think many issues have become conflated and muddled. So I’ll try and write a post clarifying them. I will say that the appeal to pragmatism only works if our intuitions of what is going on are correct. I thought we’d established that long before. But I’ll outline what I see as the issues when I get a chance.

SteveP:”How do you know this?”

Because the scriptures say that God created the earth and humankind; it didn’t occur by random mutations that may never have created humans at all. In fact, the likelihood that human life would be created is so remote that no intelligent being would have banked on it. Your God is the god of deism it seems to me. A hands off god who is anything but the hands-on God of scripture.

Further, I agree with Clark the evolution doesn’t get God off the hook for natural evils. In fact, it makes it much worse. God has all the caring of an absentee father who couldn’t care less and frankly couldn’t do less. Calling such a being good or loving is hardly what I mean by such terms.

Blake, that scripture is so vague there is absolutely zero way you can say it necessarily entails what you say it does.

I haven’t seen any scripture anywhere that says “it didn’t occur by random mutation.” And I’ve always worried when people start there sentences, “Because the scriptures say . . .” I heard it a lot as a missionary in Arkansas.

So Blake and Clark you think God is responsible for the unimaginable torture of most of the creatures who live here suffer? How does a view that evolution is necessary make things worse? We know He is constrained by Natural Law. Evolution is a Natural Law. (There is a nice defense of this by Christian Illies in Ho:sle and Illies edited volume Darwin and Philosophy”)

And besides, It’s absolutely and abundantly clear that is how it happened on this Planet.

The question Steve is whether God could have created us without evolution (say by genetic engineering) and could have prevented certain aspects of evolution from taking place. If he could (and it seems hard to say he couldn’t) then God is responsible for the suffering.

The only real possibilities are to say

1. God couldn’t create our bodies via some other means - which seems ludicrous given the technology likely available to us in the next 500 years.

2. It was necessary for God to create our bodies by evolution - but this needs at least some argument justifying it and I just can’t imagine a plausible one at this stage.

3. Suffering by animals doesn’t count as suffering. i.e. animals aren’t conscious.

In any case even if you grant the above 3 it still doesn’t resolve the problem of natural evils since we’re still left with the question of why now there are still earthquakes, shark attacks and so forth. i.e. once evolution developed bodies why continue evolution and the environmental queues of an active earth? Why continue to allow pestilence and plague?

Do you see the problem? The only way out is to make God so weak that he’s weaker than the human race itself is.

I see your point. I guess I’m just curious about why He did use evolution. There seems to be some things God stays clear of (like sin). I suppose that’s why I’ve come to think he only enters the world through consciousness (and I do think animals are conscious) and there really is a tick-tockishness to the rest of the universe and I lean to your #2 because so much of the Natural world seems inexplicable if God can easily fix things, Not even the LDS standard fixes to the problem of Evil seem to touch these cruelties, inefficiencies, and just plain blind suffering that occurs in the Natural World. In Philosophy of Biology we never wander into theology so I’m clearly out of my depth.

I think though Steve that this supports Blake’s claim that you are making God so non-interventionist that he becomes more a Deist God. Which is fine if you’re a Deist but in an LDS context seems much more problematic.

As you say, much of the natural world seems inexplicable if God can fix it. That’s why I think the problem of natural evils is by far the biggest problem any believer faces philosophically. It’s the strongest argument by far for atheism. (And at a certain point the Deist God and the Atheist non-God become pretty similar - as we see with Spinoza and others)

But what of a God that does Act (and in big ways) in Consciousness and so moving people to action thereby: building boats, lopping off heads, translating plates deposited by people led in their conscious to make them and hide them? That doesn’t seem to capture what Deism implies–which I think would include us as clocks.

Right, but if God could act in peoples heads why not teach them technology to deal with all the natural evils? He could have done that with Adam, couldn’t he? It’s certainly more interventionist than the Deist God but doesn’t resolve the problem of natural evils in the least.

Actually, I don’t worry much about Natural evils on people, they are getting tested so let them be tested. It’s the Nature on Nature evils, horrors inflicted on creatures that seem to be getting the brunt of this and it’s those I’m trying to rescue God from (that didn’t come out right but it’s late here). If they, as Blake said, are not morally responsible, what is the purpose of their suffering? I know these are unanswerable. It’s just one of those things on my shelf. (and just what I need to think about before I go to bed).

32 Another Steve on August 6th, 2008 2:42 pm

Blake, your reasoning feels something akin to that of saying, “the probability is so low as to be unbelievable that a bird can fly,” all while watching birds fly by the window. You state:

“As far as evolution, I haven’t heard anything but speculation that it is just possible that being fitted for survival led to some capacity ad extra for mathematics and quantum physics. The problem is that the probability is low because it is ad extra and completely superfluous to survival.”

How is this argument fundamentally different than the ID argument of irreducible complexity? I don’t view any of this as a probabilistic logic test. What we have is the reality that humans have the capacity for abstract mathematics and that evolution exists. Regardless whether this outcome is a low probability event is rather immaterial. It is a low probability event that a specific person will get hit by lightning on a specific day at a specific time but that doesn’t negate the existence of lightning on a day when someone does get hit. The fact is, low probability events do happen. You can count on it. Maybe God did exactly that. He counted on it.

ASteve: The problem is both that the probability is low and that there needs to be some explanation. So far, I’ve seen absolutely nothing that comes close to explaining consciousness. You are quite correct that low probability events occur — but that isn’t the question. The question is whether the explanation given is really explanatory. The kind of explanation you give isn’t: well we’re here, evolution is true, God didn’t do it, so evolution must explain it. Well, that isn’t explanatory because it merely asserts without explaining. That something is possible and that it in fact obtains and that evolution occurs in some way doesn’t entail an explanation for why e.g. consciousness obtains. However, I agree with you that that just is kind of nonsensical kind of explanation generally given in terms of evolution.

If God counted on low probability events that he couldn’t control, then he is literally taking one hell of a risk. So perhaps human life just doesn’t come about but god is just lucky that it did? What kind of god is that? How is that being created by God? I’m more inclined to say that it just happened by natural law without God.

SteveP: I’ve outlined and elucidated at some length natural law theodicies and how they function. They just don’t do the entire work of explaining evil. However, first you’ve got to come up with a sound argument that evil is inconsistent with God’s existence. I haven’t seen one yet. There is always the profound possibility that, given our ignorance, God could have some really good reason that is beyond my ken that justifies allowing the evils that in fact obtain.

If God counted on low probability events that he couldn’t control, then he is literally taking one hell of a risk.

Given your view on foreknowledge that seems like an odd tact to take. What was the probability in 600 BC that the Romans would be using crucifixion and that Jesus would be condemned to die on a cross?

Given that Christ himself went into Jerusalem and called the Pharisees and scribes hypocrites and whited sepulchers right within the temple walls, I’d say that the probability was about .9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 %.

Randomness and predictability are completely compatible. (as your quote above demonstrates) If you flip a fair coin a zillion times I can tell you exactly what the ratio of heads to tails will be. I take no risk in making a bet of .5 (and if you want that within some accuracy, you just tell me the accuracy you need and I’ll tell you how many flip you need to guarantee it). I don’t control anything about the flip. I just understand the probabilities.

You seem to state without reasons that God can’t use randomness to create. Why? And I don’t think ASteve was arguing against God and you mischaracterized his argument. I don’t think he said:

“well we’re here, evolution is true, God didn’t do it, so evolution must explain it. Well, that isn’t explanatory because it merely asserts without explaining. ”

I think he said that Evolution is the best and only explanation for life on earth that engages with all the evidence. If your theology denies that based on excluding low probability events then your theology is flawed.

I agree with him. Because most glaringly it confuses the who, why and how of creation. The first two are theology. The second is science. If you are going to take on the ‘how’ in theology you are making a theological error that has plagued the discipline since the early Greeks.

No fair bringing up consciousness. I don’t think subjective experience is a scientific question at all so can’t be addressed by evolutionary biologists. Most agree (there are acceptations of course), that it can’t be touched because if we thought we understood enough to create it, say a machine that could do it, we still could never have a test for it. I can’t even tell if my neighbour is having subjective experience.

But everything else is open game.

I can buy your thoughts about theodicies. I recognize we can’t understand everything. (I often in my classes compare it to an ant trying to understand the postman’s shadow. He could know nothing of the postman’s life, his marriage, his dreams, his plans for lunch etc.).

But if your theology demands that Darwinism not be the ‘how’of creation. It’s got something very wrong.

37 Another Steve on August 7th, 2008 5:49 am

SteveP is correct, I wasn’t arguing against God. I don’t know that I would go so far as to say that evolution is the “best and only” explanation of creation but I do believe that evolution is the best current explanation of the HOW of creation that is consistent with the evidence. Rather than try to dismiss the evidence for evolution in hopes of salvaging a preconceived notion of God, I ask myself, “What does this teach me about God?”

Why does consciousness obtain? I don’t know. But I don’t see how the lack of an evolutionary explanation should invalidate the physical evidence for evolution as the creative process or the subjective evidence for God. Is your point here that unless you know the WHY then you will not accept the HOW of creation? There is much about God that I take on faith that is not subject to any external verification.

I disagree with the comment: “If God counted on low probability events that he couldn’t control, then he is literally taking one hell of a risk.” Like SteveP stated (but let me change the setup and the probabilities), if an unbalanced coin has a probability of heads of 0.000001 then it is really unlikely that a head is going to come up. If God were to engage in a creation process that necessitated a single flip of the proverbial coin, then I would agree with Blake that God would be taking a great risk. But that description is not consistent with what we know of the creation process. This earth has been in existence for approximately 4.5 billion years. With all the life on the planet, that is a lot of coin tosses. With my unbalanced coin, if I tossed it just once a year for 4.5 billion years I could predict with great confidence that I would have approximately 4,500 heads by the end of the process.

What does the external world and evolution teach me about God? What I have come up with so far is that God is patient. He is willing to wait millions of years — even billions of years for an outcome in which he is confident. He trusts in the process. And that trust is not the equivalent of rolling dice in Vegas hoping for a seven because evolution is not the single rolling of a dice. Evolution may involve random processes but random processes produce predictable results when executed enough times. The casinos in Vegas know this and bank on it — their fortunes don’t rise and fall on a single roll of the dice. Their fortunes occur over many rolls. And, I would argue, so do God’s.

Pursuing my previous question a little further, I ask myself, “If He can trust in such a process, what should be my approach to the vicissitudes of life?” Right now I’m pondering the word “patient.”

Just for example:

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/517857

Given that Christ himself went into Jerusalem and called the Pharisees and scribes hypocrites and whited sepulchers right within the temple walls, I’d say that the probability was about .9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 %.

Come on Blake, I’ve brought this one up before so I know you’re familiar with it. The issue isn’t whether Jesus could figure a way to piss people off enough so they’d kill him. The issue is whether, given robust Libertarian free will and no foreknowledge he could know in 600 BC that they’d kill him by crucifixion. There’s obviously no way to even figure out absolute probabilities for that given your views on foreknowledge. But let’s say God does something Bayesian like. I suspect the probability is pretty darn low.

Unless you think God went about encouraging people to engage in crucifixion so his statements would be true. But that obviously raises even bigger theological problems.

I’m not saying you can’t believe this. Just that one should watch out for double standards.

Clark: Of course God could know it. Crucifixion wasn’t at all uncommon in 600 B.C. — BTW could you show me some prediction in the bible from anything written before the crucifixion that refers to crucifixion as the mode of death? How about the Book of Mormon? There is only one reference in Nephi’s vision which is obviously actualized by the KJV presentation and even the exact language. It is a fairly easily spotted expansion.

That Christ would be killed was virtually certain because of his actions. Did he bring it about by what he did? Of course he did. What he did and said led the Jewish leaders to desire his death and the Romans to be willing to acquiesce with them.

Steve and Steve: You are entirely incorrect that mutations can be predicted. They are random in the unpredictable sense of the term, not in the chaotic predictability sense of the term. You may believe in a God who is so hands off and who doesn’t have any clue at all about what his actions will bring about, but that isn’t the God of scripture or any reasonable trust as far as I can see.

SteveP: Did you notice all of the weaseling in the article’s abstract that you gave us?

“Many human virtues MAY have evolved in both sexes through mutual mate choice to advertise good genetic quality, parenting abilities, and/or partner traits. Such virtues MAY include kindness, fidelity, magnanimity, and heroism, as well as quasi-moral traits like conscientiousness, agreeableness, mental health, and intelligence. This theory leads to many testable predictions about the phenotypic features, genetic bases, and social-cognitive responses to human moral virtues.”

This article is, like evolutionary psychology generally, long on speculation and short on any evidence that any such thing actually happens. All of the evidence waits for what they call testable predictions. Why didn’t they get to the testable predictions and give us some evidence?

SteveP: I am perfectly aware that other Steve didn’t say what I asserted — I was doing a parody of his position. However, it doesn’t get very far to them misrepresent my position: “If your theology denies [evolution], then ….” Well, you know that my theology doesn’t reject evolution or evidence suggestion evolution. It rejects the explanation for which there is not and cannot be any evidence: random selection and survival of the fittest. I claim that it isn’t an explanation (which you seem to miss and ignore) and that what we know cannot be squared with mere randomness. BTW, it would take much longer to develop the kind of complex life that in fact obtains given mere random mutations. I don’t deny that it could happen as a logical possibility, only that it doesn’t function as a scientific explanation but as a boundary assumption and that it is contrary to the evidence as an explanation because it would take much longer to develop the kind of neural complexity that in fact obtains.

SteveP: “Evolution is the best and only explanation for life on earth”

I’m sure you don’t really mean that there aren’t other possible explanations as you assert here. There are of course other logical possibilities — unless you believe that God is logically impossible.

SteveP: No fair bringing up consciousness. I don’t think subjective experience is a scientific question at all so can’t be addressed by evolutionary biologists.”

Really? By what scientific arrogance to you rule scientific exploration out of bounds for science? Of course it is amenable to scientific study — what to you think anesthesiologists have been doing all these years? Pain is just such a subjective conscious experience. It has been studied at great length. Those who are neuropsychologists will be interested to find out they are not doing science.

Clark: Of course God could know it. Crucifixion wasn’t at all uncommon in 600 B.C. — BTW could you show me some prediction in the bible from anything written before the crucifixion that refers to crucifixion as the mode of death? How about the Book of Mormon? There is only one reference in Nephi’s vision which is obviously actualized by the KJV presentation and even the exact language. It is a fairly easily spotted expansion.

Of course the problem is any prophecy I give you’ll say is an expansion. (As you made clear at the SMPT conference) I don’t see 1 Nephi 11:33 as an obvious expansion. Actually I’d say that the structure suggests it isn’t an expansion. The issue of crucifixion in the 6th century BCE isn’t whether it was there but whether it would remain there and, out of all other execution methods, be the one used.

I’d also say you are wrong claiming that’s the only example. There’s also Jacob 1: 8, 1 Ne 19:13, 2 Ne 6:9, 2 Ne 10:5, 2 Ne 25:13, Mos 3:9, Mos 15:7, and probably a few others I missed. Were there just one you might have more of a case for expansion (other than the structural problems). When it’s this widespread I just think the evidence is strongly against you.

You may believe in a God who is so hands off and who doesn’t have any clue at all about what his actions will bring about, but that isn’t the God of scripture or any reasonable trust as far as I can see.

????

But Blake, that is the version of God you promote. God doesn’t have foreknowledge and can’t know what any individual’s choice is. Therefore if he acts and the consequences of his acts depend upon even one free choice he can’t know what his actions will bring about.

The view Steve is presenting is basically the same thing but just expands what gets treated freely.

I’m sure you don’t really mean that there aren’t other possible explanations as you assert here. There are of course other logical possibilities — unless you believe that God is logically impossible.

I think his point is the issue of reconciling all the biological evidence we have. God may well have been involved but either he used evolution, wasn’t involved, or he artificially made it appear like he used evolution. (The “liar” theory that some Young Earth Creationists propose) I’m simply not aware of a single other thesis that attempts to wrestle with the scientific data we have.

Clark: It is interesting that virtually every quotation that refers to “crucify” is from the KJV. I’ll leave it there since it is fairly clear that the language of the KJV couldn’t reflect the 6th century BCE. I also note that there isn’t a single prophecy in the OT or elsewhere of death of the Messiah by Romans or on a cross.

Further, that death would be by crucifixion was not a large stretch — except that the notion of cross as the means of death isn’t necessary to the underlying notion of death by “crucifixion”. You seem to think that pointing to BoM passages that refer to taking up the cross (quoting or paraphrasing Hebrews in the NT) or to being crucified shows that the manner of death was exactly known. The word “crucify” takes on that meaning in the Latin (which means to die by torture on a Roman cross), but in Hebrew and Aramaic, to die in such a way is just to be caused to be put to death by involuntary and violent means. So here is a better and more precise test: Show me any scripture that says that Christ will be killed by Romans on a cross — not merely that he would be killed by involuntary torture (which was virtually the universal practice to kill political enemies throughout the ancient Near East). That Christ would be scourged and killed by violent means because he was opposed by whatever political leaders were in power was no big stretch since it was the universal practice. So your point about the being killed by Romans on a cross is anachronistic. It ain’t in the scriptures as a prophecy. That Christ would be killed was virtually certain given that what he did and said.

You are just wrong that the kinds of hands off God of deism suggested by the Steves is somehow entailed by the open view of God that I adopt. There is a pretty vast difference. God doesn’t get it going and then just sit back watching whatever randomly comes up in the open view. He is actively involved in bringing it about and adjusting moment to moment to insure his purposes. That is what I claim God did with evolution as well. So it is a big difference and that is why we disagree.

With respect to the young earth creationists, I think that they think they are dealing with the evidence. I agree that they misread it; but it is a mistake to say that they just ignore it. I once again emphasize that evolution per se isn’t the issue. The evolution of species by random natural selection is the issue. I took the Steves to say that this random explanation is the only possibility. As you point out, it ain’t.

that death would be by crucifixion was not a large stretch

I have a really, really hard time seeing that unless God intervened to ensure the methodology. The Persians for instance had tons of ways to kill. Why assume that 600 years later the Romans wouldn’t? For that matter that the Romans would be in charge? There’s a lot of free choices in the formation of empires.

I recognize your position is that the underlying text is too vague. So I’ll not push that too much since it’s kind of irrelevant for the track you are taking.

The word “crucify” takes on that meaning in the Latin (which means to die by torture on a Roman cross), but in Hebrew and Aramaic, to die in such a way is just to be caused to be put to death by involuntary and violent means.

Umm. My understanding is that there is no Hebrew word for crucifixion. The closest is talah. We don’t know what word was used in the Book of Mormon obviously. I don’t think you can simply discount the translation as given as expansion though. To simply discount the Book of Mormon here is problematic in my view.

But I recognize I won’t convince you here. I just see it as a problematic hermeneutic.

Regarding evolution I think you misunderstood me. I don’t think there is an other explanation for evolution. Now in terms of history we just don’t know the environment and to me God is part of that environment. But the process is fairly easy to understand as I see it. (And as nearly all scientists do)

Sorry to drop the ball on this discussion. I’m on vacation and won’t be back give a longer answer to this discussion for a week or so, but Blake I want to address the mistakes I think you are making about natural selection and explanatory power and why Natural Selection does explain and how it explains, so I’ll pick this up when I’m done vacationing. Maybe over at my blog.

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