David Bailey on Mormonism and Intelligent Design
by Christian Y. Cardall on July 19th, 2006David Bailey, a mathematician of some note who happens to be Mormon, was the speaker at the Miller-Eccles Study Group in southern California last week. I was not there, but Matt Thurston was kind enough to send me his thoughts on the presentation and a link to the slides Bailey used in his talk, entitled “Mormonism and Intelligent Design.”
Based on the slides the talk looks fine and nice, touching on a number of the general sorts of points one would expect a mainstream scientist who is also a loyal Mormon to make. In fact, despite the title, only about a third of the talk (in slides; I of course don’t know how it went down time-wise) directly addresses Intelligent Design, with the rest devoted to more general observations on the relationship between science and religion in general and Mormonism in particular.
He is critical of Intelligent Design—not only as a scientific endeavor, as I expect most working scientists would be—but also as a handmaiden to a Mormon worldview. His bottom lines, which I agree are the right positions for a Mormon to have, are that “I do not recommend ID (meaning the present-day movement and literature) as a foundation for religious belief” and “Ultimately we must find God the old-fashioned way: on our knees, in service to the less fortunate and in good, honest, Christian living.”
His overall approach is like that Stephen J. Gould labeled “nonoverlapping magisteria” (NOMA), an outlook described in a Wikipedia article as “science and religion deal with fundamentally separate aspects of human experience and so, when each stays within its own domain, they co-exist peacefully.” Bailey’s clever rendering of this idea, a play on Matthew 22:21, is “Render unto science the things which belong to science; and unto God the things which belong to God.”
It’s the expected and comfortable outcome of such a talk, and could ultimately be viable, but I am not sure the absence of conflict is quite as facile as presented. Some specific critiques in this respect:
- 1. He names several prominent scientists of other denominations who are deeply religious, yet have no problem with mainstream science, including evolution. But what they do not face—and what are left unaddressed in this talk—are difficulties with evolution that are peculiar to Mormonism, which stem from literal conceptions of mankind’s being in God’s image, being children of God, and the definition of divinity in D&C 132 as the capacity for eternal procreation.
- 2. He says “The LDS Church takes no official stance on scientific issues.” Surely this is too sweeping. Being both wise and shrewd, I seriously doubt you could get any General Authority to make this specific statement, particularly if “evolution” were substituted for “scientific issues.” It is also a statement that is belied by several examples of material more in line with creationist than scientific perspectives in very recent correlated Church publications (to his credit, Bailey points out several of these).
- 3. I worry that many difficulties are too easily swept under the rug with statements along the lines of: The LDS God is “a rational, comprehensible God who works within natural law.” I struggle in vain to understand what is meant by the common saying that God “works within natural law.” Is it the same sense that humans work within natural law—that is, God is using engineering and technology? Advanced alien technology, to be sure, but technology nonetheless? Do we imagine that when God created the earth he used cosmic cranes and backhoes of some sort? Or that in guiding evolution he sent agents to set up microbiology laboratories, alter specimens, and put them back into nature? Or that in turning water to wine he somehow managed to do real chemical engineering with some sort of remote-controlled hidden laboratory? Or that when he heals the sick in response to a priesthood blessing he somehow invisibly administers real drugs or performs microsurgery? The difficulty is to understand how such divine technology could be simultaneously (a) invisible to us, (b) nevertheless have effects visible to us, and yet (c) be compatible with the laws of nature of which we already are aware.
- 4. He includes a slide on free will, noting that quantum mechanics and chaos release the respective strangleholds of microscopic determinism and practical predictability (practical, that is, in terms of limitations on measurement precision and computational resources). Regrettably, however, the randomness and unpredictability thus introduced do nothing whatsoever to provide the kind of ’self-caused’ ‘control’ on which proponents of libertarian free will insist.
Nevertheless, on balance it is an interesting and eminently worthwhile talk. I commend the Miller-Eccles Study Group for their interest the subject, and Brother Bailey for providing a nice discussion.
Bailey makes a lot of worthwhile comments in that presentation, but his arguments on certain points are rather sloppy, as in they do not come anywhere close to passing philosophical muster.
The worst is his discussion of the metaphysics of free will and the relationship of free will to the accepted definition of naturalism. If you define Libertarian free will out of the “natural” (which I believe is an illegitimate move), then virtually everything God does is supernatural or a miracle. The only alternative is to turn God himself into a machine of sorts, whether deterministic or chaotic it hardly matters.
All three examples on Bailey’s page on Free Will have little or nothing to do with the topic, in fact they are not even incompatible with determinism. Quantum Mechanics has not been shown to be inherently stochastic - David Bohm developed a perfectly good Quantum Determinism that produces the same results. Chaos theory is well known to be based on strict determinism as well. And the supercomputer example is irrelevant - the problem there is missing information and computational capacity (a computer large enough to do the job properly would be as big as the sky itself), not a failure with determinism.
The relationship between free will and moral responsibility implies that the former is the criticial nexus between a scientific description of reality and a moral description of reality, or between the physical sciences and the social sciences. Are faith, repentance, and baptism laws of physics - I don’t think so. They are ordain-ances - that which God has ordained. And when was the last time you saw a machine ordain anything?
A few more observations re Bailey’s presentation at MESG…
1.) Bailey’s presentation closely followed the slides referenced in Christian’s post above. In other words, nothing noteworthy was said during the presentation that is not summarized in the slides. During the 15 minute Q&A that followed, Bailey opened up a little more and discussed some of the issues in more depth, including the issue of “free will”. If only my memory was better I’d report what he said…
2.) I wondered thoughout his presentation how much Bailey edited out his own opinion re I.D., Science vs. Mormonism, Free Will, etc. My guess is quite a bit. You have to remember the venue and the audience which was made up of mostly Active, Believing Mormons. I happen to know of at least one Intelligent Design Supporter in attendance who engaged in an e-mail correspondence with Bailey prior to his presentation. Said person saw a pre-MESG version of Bailey’s slides and found them “inflammatory”. Bailey responded that he had made several changes to the slides for the MESG presentation, and made a few additional edits (including removing a reference to “our four-footed ancestors”) based on this person’s suggestion.
Maybe Bailey’s personal opinions do not deviate much from his slides, but I can’t help but think his primary mission at MESG was to simply to encourage Mormons to leave Science to Science, and Religion to Religion; and not to delve too deep into anything more controversial than that.
Note: Observations above relate to Bailey’s presentation in Orange County. He gave the same presentation the next night to the MESG chapter in Los Angeles. That said, I doubt the substance of the issues discussed varied much from night to night.
Mark, I largely agree with your critique of the free will slide. However, I tend to disagree with you on the matter of determinism and free will (though I don’t really want to get into it here)… (Unfortunately the links on the page I point to are outdated, pointing to my old blog site. If by chance anyone wants to comment on those old posts you should find them at the new site by looking at their date on the old site and then using the archives on the sidebar at the new site to find them.)
Matt, thanks for the extra info. I confess my disappointment at the whiff of censorship manifest by MESG here. I can certainly understand a group not wanting open criticism of the Church, but calling a reference to four-legged ancestors “inflammatory”? Come on, common descent is bread and butter stuff even in biology classes at BYU. I’m regrettably not in a position to attend MESG, but I would have hoped that that kind of venue would be an ideal place to frankly discuss an issue like common descent.
Well that might be a good strategy, but it assumes that science can progress far beyond the present level of understanding without dealing with the world of the spirit.
I majored in Physics in college precisely to get insight in the application of natural law to spiritual phenomena. I think what I learned was helpful. However, I did not pursue further formal studies for two reasons - first, the anti-realism and subjectivism of the orthodox Bohr model of quantum mechanics rather disgusted me, and second, it was rather obvious to me that physics did not even attempt to deal with the bases of free will, perception, and morality. Determinism was okay, and randomness was okay, but intelligence or free will was verboten.
As long as science is determined to rule out the world of the spirit as an article of faith, the higher knowledge of God and how he leverages natural law to accomplish his purposes, through free will and common consent and other spiritual exercises we can only dream about, will remain an ultimate mystery to the world of science. Methodological atheism, or even worse, methodological determinism cannot explain any such things. Modern science is just another example of those who are ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth, because they have outlawed its very existence.
Coincidentally, I happened to look through the slides last night.
From time to time I think about what kind of presentation I would give if I were in a similar situation. I think the best approach is to honestly lay out the facts–both of Church history and science–and let people draw their own conclusions.
I thought Bailey did a decent job (judging by the slides) but I would have done some things differently, I think.
Matt, obviously none of that is directed at you… Just shaking my fist at the indifferent sky.
Well, avoiding a discussion about why a God without robust free will is incoherent, or why an identification of causes is incompatible with strict determinism, or why the distinction between actual and potential is also incomprehensible in such a context, I must say that I find the separation of Church and science to be counterproductive and strictly contrary to the mission of an institution like BYU.
No reconciliation is possible if we refuse to study the subject. And why in the world do we have BYU, academically speaking, if not to attempt such a reconciliation in the minds of those who attend there? Students can get atheistic science and philosophy anywhere. Why should God support a department that methodologically denies the basis of his very existence?
I too would shake my fist at the sky if I thought MESG guilty of censorship. I doubt that is the case though. The person to whom I refer in #2 is NOT affiliated with MESG whatsoever, but an independent person who, upon learning of the subject matter and speaker, took it upon him/herself to correspond with Dr. Bailey in the days/weeks prior to his MESG presentation.
I suggested that Dr. Bailey may have “edited” himself somewhat, or softened his personal opinions, but I probably shouldn’t have made that statement in the first place since it is based on nothing more than my own biased impression.
If any of the “official” MESG powers-that-be asked Dr. Bailey to change, edit, or soften his remarks, I am not aware of it.
I think that the discussion would be furthered if he actually presented his opinions or even speculation on the substance of the reconciliation of science and religion, rather than implicitly promoting the idea that such a reconciliation is beyond our ken and should not even be attempted.
That just contributes to the present split brain syndrome between the man of science and the man of religion, and perpetuates the causes of the dispute in the first place.
I think a reconciliation discussion is worth having (hence this blog), but it can be tough in mixed company. One need not look far to find people who feel very threatened by the thought that traditional LDS theology may need to give a little bit.
Agree with #9 and #10.
It would have been fun to have Dr. Bailey give his prepared slides one night, and a more in-depth, personal-opinion presentation the next night. I think the “mixed company” (alluded to by Jared in #10) would have been more prepared to hear a more in-depth “I.D. Part II” discussion (a la Mark Butler’s suggestion in #9) following the table-setting Part I discussion last weekend.
How about an MESG free-for-all Mormons vs. Evolution panel featuring Christian, Jared, Jeff, and Mark?
BTW, upcoming guests include Jill Derr, and possibly Sheri Dew. I recently suggested Ed Kimball, Levi Peterson, Vickie Speek, and Wicks & Foister, (the guys who wrote Junius and Joseph), as potential invitees, though my voice carries very little weight.
Well what about the idea that scientific dogma (opinion) may need to give a little bit? The MESG sounds like a good forum for such a discussion, so why the defensive, leave us alone attitude? Anything *really* scientific is unchallengable. Of course theories about what happened several hundred million years ago, and how it happenned rarely reach that level. We need some reasonable sense of epistemic reliability.
For example, I am more than willing, on a combination of theological and scientific evidence to credit the idea that the Fall wasn’t an event that occurred several thousand years ago. However, I am not willing to buy into the scientific dogma that robust free will is wishful thinking (irony intended). Virtually all the religious, moral, and social evidence runs to the contrary, and the best scientific arguments for free will are not bad either.
Well what about the idea that scientific dogma (opinion) may need to give a little bit?
I’ve got no problem with that. As an example, I believe that we are intended products on this earth. But I also realize that my basis for that belief is largely religiously grounded (along with my own feelings)–not because some insufficiency in biology has been demonstrated.
Personally, free will isn’t something I think about much, and I’m guessing the arguments against it are ultimately rooted in physics and cosmology, so you won’t get any argument from me on whether we have free will. (Although I wouldn’t give free will a blank check.)
I still maintain that the biology of sophisticated organisms is completely unfounded in terms of doctrinaire Neo-darwinism on information theoretic grounds. In short, because there is not enough non-stochastic information (information that rises above the thermal noise level) available in the natural world (natural being that which is necessary given neutral assumptions about the initial state of the universe) to account for the phenotypic complexity of human beings and their creations. There is not enough there to explain a single really good book, let alone libraries full of them.
It is well known that any process founded on neutral assumptions cannot convert noise into information in the proper sense. i.e. no amount of massaging of ignorance can be expected to produce order and structure. The information theoretic complexity of any natural system either stays the same or declines.
It is the second law of thermodynamics - namely that which one materially does not know (entropy) degrades that which one materially does know (information). Or alternatively the absolute information content below the thermal noise margin degrades that information content above the thermal noise margin.
I have yet to hear anyone give an explanation for *any* information content above the thermal noise margin except for the fundamental laws of physics, laws which hardly have the information complexity of the simplest proto-cell - far from it. So where does all this super-thermal information come from?
The standard answer is to punt the question of abiogenesis and argue natural selection, i.e. the information comes from “nature”. But what is nature? The fundamental laws of physics only have a few hundred bits of complexity at best, so we have to find the rest of the information in the environment, ultimately the non-biological environment to avoid a vicous regress.
Well what sort of reliable (i.e. above the spatial noise margin) information is available in the environment so that we can get even single bits of adaptive information into population genetics, and accumulate enough of a difference to speciate?
Well we have differences in climate, exposure, land vs. sea, geo-chemical nutrients, and that is about it. All said not very much information content above the spatial noise margin. (Spatial noise is that variation in environmental configuration that is not dominant enough to produce a long term material difference in habitability, e.g. dunes in the sand, or the pattern of trees in a forest, or leaves on a tree - fractal noise in other words).
That should be “hardly any”.
New visitors to this site, pointed specifically to this post, may not have noticed that I have responded here to Mark’s comments on this thread.
Also, for some of my thoughts on why arguments from design are a Bad Idea, see this post. If God is to be found, I agree with David Bailey’s bottom line that it will have to be by what he calls “the old-fashioned way.”
I was at the MESG, and I’d like to make one minor clarification to this post’s characterization of Bailey’s presentation. He actually started the talk by saying that he did believe in intelligent design (lower case i and d) if defined in the sense that there is an intelligent designer that he calls God behind the creation of the universe. However, he does not align himself with Intelligent Designers who make more specific claims, such as that God’s hand can be proven by science.
Mike, Did Bailey say whether he was an interventionist or a non-interventionist? I suspect the latter, following the tradition of a string of thinkers from Aristotle to Paul Davies, but I am just guessing.
Christian,
There is never any whiff of censorship at Miller Eccles Study Group. I am a director and I am the one that invites the speakers. Dr. Bailey sent me a set of his proposed slides before the meeting simply as a courtesy, since I never ask a speaker to send me a presentation for prior review. I circulated them to our directors. I also followed up with an email to Dr. Bailey with my own comments on his presentation. I did not ask him to change anything. He used a slightly revised set of slides for the presentation. After the meeting, I circulated his set of slides. As far as I could tell, he gave his honest opinions.
At Miller Eccles, we have about about 75 minutes for both presentation and O&A. Although we can discuss somethings in more depth than other venues, we cannot cover a complete course in both scientific historp, evolution, and philosophy in one meeting. Questions will always remain. In fact, after the meeting, I asked some in attendance if they would like to have future meetings on some of the questions raised, such as cosmology and the Latter-day Saints.
Look forward to many more stimulating meetings at MESG.
Brother Frandsen, many thanks for your clarification. I’m very glad you’re here so I can apologize and ask your forgiveness. After Matt Thurston’s comment #8 and subsequent email exchange with him, it was clear to me that my interpretation of his comment #2 was incorrect. Your point about time constraints is also well taken: instead of referring to “critiques” I should have called them “opportunities for further exploration.”
It sounds like a wonderful group. I wish I lived close enough to attend. Congratulations on being responsible for fostering such a nice ongoing opportunity, and best wishes in all your future meetings.
Having once been a fully trained and fully committed evolutionist, I understand the arguments in favor of evolution.
However, lifelong training in chemistry, physics, biochemistry, physiology, clinical medicine, and surgery; and having authored papers that changed the way medicine is practiced; and having had the responsibility of authorizing grants as a part of the National Advisory Council on aging (Reagan administration), I am now equally committed to the concept of intelligent design. This orthopaedist has pursued an almost 35-year quest to answer the question: which hypothesis better explains the diversity of life on Earth, evolution or irreducible complexity (together with intelligent design)? The answer is unequivocally irreducible complexity and intelligent design. The reason is that the concept of self-organization from inorganic material and evolution are untenable concepts from the standpoint of basic science.
Here are a few of the scientific facts that absolutely refute the concept of self-organization and evolution: 1) a primordial cell could never have formed because of the chicken and egg relationship between protein, DNA, and RNA. You cannot produce one without having the others first. 2) No one has ever produced protein in vitro under the primordial conditions that existed on Earth. Experience shows that the Urey-Miller experiment produced a few amino acids, and other experiments produced a few thermal proteins. None of the proteins could have been considered functional structural or enzymatic proteins. Accordingly, it would have been impossible to form a functional cell membrane or the enzymatic processes necessary for cellular metabolism or division. 3) the first primordial cell forming on Earth would have been a prokaryocyte. Prokaryocytes cannot survive alone. They require many such organisms, acting in concert, to produce enough digestive enzymes to utilize the substrate in which they exist. In bacteriology, there are three factors which determine whether or not an organism survives. They are: the size of the innoculum, the virulence of the organism, and the host resistance. The original Earth was an extremely hostile environment for any newly self-organizing organism. A lone organism would have died. 4) Everyone accepts the fact that 99.9% of all mutations are deleterious; that means that good mutations are outnumbered 1000 to one by bad mutations. Thus, the chances are that any good resulting from natural selection would be undone by chance mutation within the genome, at the molecular level, in the ratio of 1000 to 1. 5) The chance of integrating the basal ganglia of the brain with the cortex has the same probability of occurrin by chance as finding one red meter stick in a series of white meter sticks (laid end-to-end) stretching from Earth to Alpha Centauri and back twice, while blind folded.
I encountered this web site while searching for the Salem hypothesis. The hypothesis is correct. Orthopedists have to know a good deal about bioengineering. We think like engineers and we understand the engineering difficulty in producing organisms of any type. That is one of the major reasons many of us do not believe in evolution. The form and function of all organisms are perfectly matched, utilizing the best possible engineering solutions. Chance origin and evolution could never have produced this perfect match of form and function.
For any who are interested, additional information is available at designofthespecies.net
ETD
Just a question to Russ Frandsen? My stepdad was Orlan D. Frandsen that lived in Pocatello, Idaho and had three children Mona L. Frandsen, Orlan G. Frandsen and Joseph C. Frandsen. Are you a direct relative to Orlan Frandsen?
My e-mail address is: Robertbharris@verizon.net
I would like a response if possible.
Thanks,
Bob
After reading all of the recent, I’m still left to ponder the meaning of life. This thing about free will. Free will seems to extend into all regions of debate. It seems to be a dominant factor in creation and evolution, as well as mortal behavior and choice making, etc.etc. Yet learning to become a recognized “Physicist”, a master of the sciences, and yet getting no closer to spiritual explanations of fact upon fact, reminds me of that society of people who thought that building a tower to heaven would get them all the answeres they were looking for. Not to knock physics by any means,(I study physics myself and do dearly love the sciences), but it just seems to me that we are simply not going to get very far with it in this life, especially if we ignore the far more important matters that the restless toss about in arrogant disdain. I wonder if , (and there appears to be evidence of it from the book of Genesis) if the so-called evolution didn’t take place on this earth, or the fragments that now compose this earth and that the creatures there underwent a somewhat type of evolutionary process, much like the butterfly, but constrained to a limit. Is it possible that these creatures could have breathed a different type of gas than what we breathed and thus it had a particular effect on their decompositions and so forth?
It seems to me that God does order the elements by verbal command and then He patiently watches until the elements obey the order. Since it would be rather silly to attemt to employ cosmic bulldozers, dirt haulers, cement trucks, backhoes or whatever, then there must be a way to take controll of the elements to organize them into intelligent and progressive, purposefull things. An intelligent being cannot play the bored little child for too long.Unfortunately, there is absolutely no solid confirmed evidence of the evolution of man. There is a whole lotta guessing going around but thats all. We are using our planet to established the truth of other planets and events in the universe. Iwould venture to ask to examine all of the so-called evidence of pre-historic man. I mean after all when is the last time anyone did an open view exam of these findings for the public to view? I know for myself that some are just man made. It’s cartoon vs. fact. Now the Bible says that God made every creature after his own kind. This seems to take the shine off of evolution. Here shows that God is applying both free will and acting within the boundries of existance. And furthermore, He apparently isn’t troubled by it at all! WOW!
What a Guy! If the earth is made up of fragments of another or other planets, then we must focus on that and vigourously and patiently examine the elements.
P.S. can anyone comment on the need for an evolving dna system?And also the mechanism to activate?
Larry,
A while ago I did a post on the idea that the earth is made of recycled parts. You can read it here. It has problems of its own, but postulating such a thing does not help with genomic evidence.
As for your comment #24, you are getting into the origin of life, which is a murkier topic than origin of species. For this and other topics you may find this free book of interest.