Monday, 2 May 2016
Lamentations; Byington.
1 How lonely she sits, the city great in people!
she has become like a widow, the great among the nations.
Princess among the provinces, she has come to serfdom.
2 She is weeping in the night, has tears on her cheeks;
there is not a comforter for her out of all her lovers,
all her friends have played her false, become enemies to her.
3* Judah has gone to an expatriate life because of destitution and overwork;
she has settled among the nations but not found a resting-place;
everybody who was hunting her down has come upon her in a tight place.
4* The roads to Sion are mourning not to have people coming in to the holy dates;
all her gates are desolate, her priests are moaning,
her maidens are sorrowing, and she is in bitter grief.
5 Her foes are in control, her enemies are untroubled,
because Jehovah has reduced her to misery for her multitude of crimes.
The children in her have gone into foreign slavery before the foe.
6 And all the stateliness of the daughter of Sion has gone out of her,
her generals have become like deer that find no pasture
and have gone along strengthless before a pursuer.
7* Jerusalem remembers her days of misery and homelessness
when her people were falling by a foeman’s hand and she had no helper;
foemen saw her, laughed over her extinction.
8 Jerusalem did sin, so she has become a piece of garbage;
all who had been honoring her hold her cheap because they have seen her nakedness;
she too moans and retreats backward.
9 She has her defilement on her skirts; she did not bethink herself of her future.
She has come down extraordinarily; there is nobody to comfort her.
“Jehovah, see my miserable state, because the enemy is swaggering.”
10 A foe has spread his hand over all she held dear;
for she has seen heathens come into her sanctuary,
of whom you commanded “you shall not have them come into the assembly.”
11 All her people are moaning, hunting for bread,
have given what they held dearest for food to bring back life.
See, Jehovah, and look, because I stand cheap.
12 Not toward you, all passersby! look and see
if there is a hurt like mine that has been inflicted on me,
the sorrow Jehovah gave me in his day of anger.
13* From aloft he sent fire down into my bones,
he spread his net for my feet, drove me backward,
struck me desolate, sick all day.
14 He paid attention to my offenses; they interwove in his hands, they came up over my neck, he brought my strength to a fall.
The Lord gave me into the hands of those against whom I cannot stand up.
15* The Lord has spurned all my braves within me,
has called a convention against me to mangle my young men, trodden winepress for Judah’s maiden daughter.
16 Over these things I weep, my eye streams down water,
because far away is any who would comfort me, would bring me back to life,
my sons are desolate because an enemy is in power.
17 Sion spreads out her hands, has no comforter.
Jehovah has commissioned Jacob’s foes all round him,
Jerusalem has become a piece of garbage among them.
18 Jehovah is in the right, because I had disobeyed him.
Listen, all peoples, and see my hurt!
My maidens and young men have gone into foreign slavery.
19 I called to my lovers; they failed me.
My priests and elders breathed their last in the city
when they had hunted for food to bring their lives back with.
20* See, Jehovah, how I am distressed; my vitals are boiling,
my heart turns over in me, because I was disobedient.
Outdoors the sword bereaves, indoors there is death.
21 Listen when I moan! I have no comforter.
All my enemies hear of my calamity, they rejoice because you acted.
Bring the day you have announced and let them be like me!
22 Let all their viciousness come before you
and treat them as you treated me for all my crimes.
For my moans are many and my heart is sick.
2* How the Lord in his anger clouds Sion’s daughter in,
has thrown the magnificence of Israel from sky to earth,
and not remembered his footstool on his day of anger!
2* The Lord has unsparingly swept off all Jacob’s meadows,
has in his wrath demolished the fortifications of the daughter of Judah,
has laid in the dust, desecrated, a kingdom and its generals.
3 In his anger he has chopped off every horn of Israel’s, turned his right hand backward before an enemy,
and blazed in Jacob like a flaming fire devouring on all sides.
4* He has bent his bow like an enemy, brought up his right hand like a foe,
and killed all that were a delight to the eye;
on the tent of the daughter of Sion he has poured his choler like fire.
5 The Lord has been like an enemy, has swept Israel off,
swept off all his palaces, ruined his fortresses,
and brought into the daughter of Judah much of grievance and grieving,
6 And he has ruthlessly dismantled her lodge like a shack in a garden,
has ruined her meeting-place,
Jehovah has caused meeting-day and sabbath to be forgotten in Sion,
and in his angry hostility has contemned king and priest.
7 The Lord has repudiated his altar, ignored his sanctuary,
given up to an enemy the walls of her palaces;
they made a noise in Jehovah’s house that sounded like an annual feast.
8 Jehovah planned to wreck the walls of the daughter of Sion;
he stretched a line, did not turn his hand back from sweeping it down,
and let bulwark and wall mourn, forlorn together.
9* Her gates have sunk into the earth; he has destroyed and shattered her bars;
her king and generals are among the nations; there are no rulings on religion;
her prophets too have not found any vision from Jehovah.
10 The elders of the daughter of Sion sit silent on the ground,
have put earth over their heads, have belted on sackcloths;
the maidens of Jerusalem have put their heads down on the ground.
11* My eyes are used up in tears, my vitals are boiling,
my heart runs out of me for the broken bones of the daughter of my people,
when little boy and baby collapse in town squares;
12* They say to their mothers “Where is some grain and wine?”
while they faint away in city squares like a man mortally wounded,
while their life runs out in their mothers’ laps.
13 What shall I quote to you, what shall I compare you to, daughter Jerusalem?
what shall I parallel to you to comfort you, maiden daughter of Sion?
for your mauling is great as the sea; who shall heal you?
14*** Your prophets have furnished you futile and unctuous visions, have not spoken out about your guilt to bring you back
but have given you visions that are delusion, futility, and exile.
15 All passersby struck their hands together over you,
whistled and shook their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem:
“Is this the city that was spoken of as perfect in beauty, a joy to all the earth?”
16* All your enemies opened their mouths wide at you,
whistled and ground their teeth, said “We have made a clean sweep;
this is just the day we were hoping for; it has turned up, we see the sight.”
17 Jehovah has done what he designed, finished up his dictate
that he ordained from olden days, demolished unsparingly, gladdened your enemies over you, given your foes a high horn.
18*** Their hearts cried out to the Lord hotly; daughter of Sion,
pour down your tears like a flooded brook day and night,
take no anodyne, let your eyeball never be still.
19* Stand up and clamor in the night, at each new watch,
pour out your hearts in Jehovah’s face like water,
raise your hands to him for the lives of your boys and girls
who have fainted away with hunger at the tops of all the streets.
20 See, Jehovah! look whom you have handled so!
or should women eat their own fruit, their petted children?
or should priest and prophet be killed in the Lord’s sanctuary?
21 Boy and old man are lying on the ground in the streets;
my maidens and young men have fallen by the sword;
on your day of anger you killed, slaughtered, had no mercy.
22 You are calling my terrors on every side as if for the day of an annual feast,
and there were none on the day of Jehovah’s anger that escaped or survived.
Those that I had petted and brought up my enemy has swept away.
3 I am the man that saw hardship
by the cudgel of his wrath.
2 Me he drove along to go
darkling, unlighted.
3 Only at me all day
he kept turning back his hand.
4 He wore away my flesh and skin,
shattered my bones,
5* Built siege-works against me and surrounded
my head with hard experiences,
6 Seated me in places of darkness
like men long since dead.
7 He walled me off so that I could not get out,
made my fetters heavy.
8 Withal when I cried and clamored
he shut off my prayer.
9* He walled up my road with masonry,
kept me making detours.
10 An ambushed bear he was to me,
a lion under cover.
11 My roads he filled with briers and tore my flesh,
laid me desolate.
12 He strung his bow and set me up
like a target for the arrow,
13* Sent in the contents of his quiver
into my waist.
14* I became a butt for the laughter of all my people,
for their jingles all day long.
15 He filled me up with bitter greens,
gave me wormwood-juice for refreshment,
16 And rasped my teeth with gravel,
thrust me down in the ashes.
17* And you banned my soul from welfare;
I forgot such a thing as good,
18 And said “my continuance is lost,
and my expectation from Jehovah.”
19* The recollection of my miserable and homeless state is wormwood and opium.
20* Recollect my soul does,
and is downhearted within me.
21 This I will bring back to mind,
will therefore wait,
22 Jehovah’s friendlinesses, that they are not exhausted,
that his sympathy has not come to an end,
23 New every morning;
great is your loyalty.
24 Jehovah is my portion, my soul has said;
therefore I will wait for him.
25 Jehovah is good to those who hope in him,
to a soul that betakes itself to him.
26 Good it is that one wait, and in silence,
for Jehovah’s salvation.
27 Good it is for a man that he carry
a yoke in his youth,
28 Sit alone and be still
because it was laid on him,
29 Put his mouth in the dust,—
perhaps there may be hope,—
30 Give his cheek to the one who strikes him,
take his fill of humiliation.
31* For the Lord will not repudiate
man forever,
32 For if he causes misery he will have sympathy
in accordance with his great friendliness,
33 For he does not arbitrarily grind down
sons of man and bring them to misery.
34 To beating down underfoot
all earth’s prisoners,
35 To warping the law against a man
in the face of the Most High,
36 To circumventing a man in his suit over his rights,
the Lord does not assent.
37* Who is there that says a thing and has it come
when the Lord has not ordered it?
38 Do not evils and good come
out of the mouth of the Most High?
39* What should a living man bemoan,
a man over his sin?
40 Let us search our course and examine it,
and come back to Jehovah.
41 Let us hold up our hearts in our hands
to Deity in heaven.
42 We were criminal and disobedient;
you did not forgive.
43 You overspread us with anger and pursued us,
you killed without mercy.
44 You overspread yourself with a cloud
to keep our prayers from coming through.
45 You are making us an offscouring and a bit of refuse
among the peoples.
46 All our enemies have opened
their mouths wide at us.
47* We face dread and chasm,
breaking and crash.
48 My eyes run streams of water
for the breaking of the daughter of my people.
49 My eyes are running out and never halting
for lack of a soothing balm.
50 Till Jehovah from the sky
looks out and sees,
51 My eyes handle my soul cruelly
because of all the daughters of my city.
52 My unprovoked enemies hunted me
down like a sparrow.
53 They extinguished my life in the pit
and flung stones on me.
54 Water rolled over my head;
I thought “It is all over with me.”
55 I called your name, Jehovah,
out of the abysmal pit;
56* You heard my voice, “Do not let your ears
disregard my freedom, my clamor.”
57 You drew near on the day I called you,
you said “Do not be afraid.”
58 You upheld my right to exist, Lord,
you stood up for my life.
59 You, Jehovah, saw the chicanery against me,
did justice for me.
60 You saw all their revengefulness,
all that they thought of for me.
61 You heard their taunts, Jehovah,
all that they thought of against me,
62 My assailants’ lips
and their whispering against me all day.
63 Look at their sitting down and standing up;
I am the butt of their jingles.
64 You will give them back, Jehovah,
treatment that matches the work of their hands:
65* You will give them infatuated minds,
your curse for them,
66 Will pursue them in anger and root them out
from under Jehovah’s sky.
4 How gold is tarnishing, the best nuggets deteriorating,
Sacred stones being spilled at every street-corner!
2 Sion’s most precious sons, prized at their weight in red gold, how they were classed with earthen jars, work of a potter’s hands!
3 Even jackals offer a teat, suckle their cubs;
the daughter of my people became cruel like the ostriches in the wilderness.
4 A sucking baby’s tongue stuck to its palate for thirst.
Children asked for bread, had nobody that handed it to them.
5* Those who had been eating with dainties were starving about the streets.
Those who had been laid on scarlet hugged rubbish on the dumps.
6 And the guilt of the daughter of my people showed greater than the sin of Sodom
that was overthrown all at once and hands were not busy on her.
7*** Her devotees were more stainless than snow, more white than milk,
redder-limbed than coral, their tattooing lapis lazuli.
8 Their figures turned darker than charcoal, they were not to be recognized on the street;
their skins shrank over their bones, dried out, became like wood.
9** Those who were struck down by swords were better off than those who were struck down by starvation,
inasmuch as those, stabbed through, would flow out in field crops.
10 The hands of tenderhearted women cooked their own children,
they served as mourning-dinner for them at the catastrophe
of the daughter of my people.
11 Jehovah wreaked his ire, poured out his anger,
and kindled a fire in Sion which consumed her foundations.
12 The kings of earth, and all the inhabitants of the world, had not believed
that foe and enemy would come in at Jerusalem’s gates.
13 For the sins of her prophets, the guilts of her priests,
who shed honest men’s blood within her,
14 They wandered blind in the streets, polluted with blood,
with what they could not touch with their clothes;
15 “Away! unclean!” they called out, “away! away! do not touch!” because they had taken wing, were on the move; they said among
the nations “They shall not be harbored any longer”;
16 Jehovah personally divided them, will no longer look at them. They had no respect for priests, no grace for old men.
17 Our eyes are still exhausting themselves looking toward our imaginary help;
on our lookout we watched for a nation that does not save.
18 They spied our steps too closely for walking in our squares;
our end had come near; our time was up; yes, our end had come.
19 Our pursuers were swifter than vultures in the sky;
on the mountains they ran us down, in the wilderness they lay in ambush for us.
20 The breath of our nostrils, Jehovah’s anointed, was caught in their pitfalls,
he of whom we thought “In his shadow we shall remain alive among the nations.”
21* Be joyous and glad, daughter of Edom, you that live in the country of ʽUs:
to you too will pass such a cup that you will get drunk and show your nakedness.
22 Your guilt is all done with, daughter of Sion; no more will he have you deported.
He has paid attention to your guilt, daughter of Edom; he has exposed your sins.
5 Remember, Jehovah, what happened to us;
look and see our ignominy.
2 Our estate has swung to strangers,
our houses to foreigners.
3 We have become fatherless orphans,
our mothers the same as widows.
4 We have been drinking our water for cash—
our wood comes in at a price.
5* We have had the pursuers close at our heels,
have been tired out, have been given no rest.
6* We have given ourselves up in Egypt,
in Assyria, to get a full meal.
7 Our fathers sinned; they are gone,
and we have been carrying their guilt.
8 Slaves have become rulers over us;
there is nobody to tear us out of their hand
9 We get our bread in at the cost of our lives
because of the wilderness sword.
10 Our skin is hot as a baking-crock
by the fever of starvation.
11 They deflowered women in Sion,
maidens in the cities of Judah.
12* Generals were impaled by their hands,
to elders’ faces no deference was paid.
13 Young men carried mills
and boys stumbled with timber.
14* Old men have desisted from sitting in gates,
young men from their lute-playing.
15 The joyousness of our hearts has ceased,
our dancing is turned to mourning,
16 The crown on our heads has fallen;
woe is ours, because we have sinned.
17 It is for this our hearts have grown sick,
it is for these things our eyes are darkened,
18 For Mount Sion, that it is desolated;
foxes walk over it.
19 You, Jehovah, are seated forever;
your throne is for generations upon generations;
20* Why are you forgetting us permanently,
leaving us while time goes on?
21 Bring us back to you, Jehovah, and back we will come;
give us new days like the old time,
22 —But you have repudiated us outright,
are incensed against us to the utmost.
she has become like a widow, the great among the nations.
Princess among the provinces, she has come to serfdom.
2 She is weeping in the night, has tears on her cheeks;
there is not a comforter for her out of all her lovers,
all her friends have played her false, become enemies to her.
3* Judah has gone to an expatriate life because of destitution and overwork;
she has settled among the nations but not found a resting-place;
everybody who was hunting her down has come upon her in a tight place.
4* The roads to Sion are mourning not to have people coming in to the holy dates;
all her gates are desolate, her priests are moaning,
her maidens are sorrowing, and she is in bitter grief.
5 Her foes are in control, her enemies are untroubled,
because Jehovah has reduced her to misery for her multitude of crimes.
The children in her have gone into foreign slavery before the foe.
6 And all the stateliness of the daughter of Sion has gone out of her,
her generals have become like deer that find no pasture
and have gone along strengthless before a pursuer.
7* Jerusalem remembers her days of misery and homelessness
when her people were falling by a foeman’s hand and she had no helper;
foemen saw her, laughed over her extinction.
8 Jerusalem did sin, so she has become a piece of garbage;
all who had been honoring her hold her cheap because they have seen her nakedness;
she too moans and retreats backward.
9 She has her defilement on her skirts; she did not bethink herself of her future.
She has come down extraordinarily; there is nobody to comfort her.
“Jehovah, see my miserable state, because the enemy is swaggering.”
10 A foe has spread his hand over all she held dear;
for she has seen heathens come into her sanctuary,
of whom you commanded “you shall not have them come into the assembly.”
11 All her people are moaning, hunting for bread,
have given what they held dearest for food to bring back life.
See, Jehovah, and look, because I stand cheap.
12 Not toward you, all passersby! look and see
if there is a hurt like mine that has been inflicted on me,
the sorrow Jehovah gave me in his day of anger.
13* From aloft he sent fire down into my bones,
he spread his net for my feet, drove me backward,
struck me desolate, sick all day.
14 He paid attention to my offenses; they interwove in his hands, they came up over my neck, he brought my strength to a fall.
The Lord gave me into the hands of those against whom I cannot stand up.
15* The Lord has spurned all my braves within me,
has called a convention against me to mangle my young men, trodden winepress for Judah’s maiden daughter.
16 Over these things I weep, my eye streams down water,
because far away is any who would comfort me, would bring me back to life,
my sons are desolate because an enemy is in power.
17 Sion spreads out her hands, has no comforter.
Jehovah has commissioned Jacob’s foes all round him,
Jerusalem has become a piece of garbage among them.
18 Jehovah is in the right, because I had disobeyed him.
Listen, all peoples, and see my hurt!
My maidens and young men have gone into foreign slavery.
19 I called to my lovers; they failed me.
My priests and elders breathed their last in the city
when they had hunted for food to bring their lives back with.
20* See, Jehovah, how I am distressed; my vitals are boiling,
my heart turns over in me, because I was disobedient.
Outdoors the sword bereaves, indoors there is death.
21 Listen when I moan! I have no comforter.
All my enemies hear of my calamity, they rejoice because you acted.
Bring the day you have announced and let them be like me!
22 Let all their viciousness come before you
and treat them as you treated me for all my crimes.
For my moans are many and my heart is sick.
2* How the Lord in his anger clouds Sion’s daughter in,
has thrown the magnificence of Israel from sky to earth,
and not remembered his footstool on his day of anger!
2* The Lord has unsparingly swept off all Jacob’s meadows,
has in his wrath demolished the fortifications of the daughter of Judah,
has laid in the dust, desecrated, a kingdom and its generals.
3 In his anger he has chopped off every horn of Israel’s, turned his right hand backward before an enemy,
and blazed in Jacob like a flaming fire devouring on all sides.
4* He has bent his bow like an enemy, brought up his right hand like a foe,
and killed all that were a delight to the eye;
on the tent of the daughter of Sion he has poured his choler like fire.
5 The Lord has been like an enemy, has swept Israel off,
swept off all his palaces, ruined his fortresses,
and brought into the daughter of Judah much of grievance and grieving,
6 And he has ruthlessly dismantled her lodge like a shack in a garden,
has ruined her meeting-place,
Jehovah has caused meeting-day and sabbath to be forgotten in Sion,
and in his angry hostility has contemned king and priest.
7 The Lord has repudiated his altar, ignored his sanctuary,
given up to an enemy the walls of her palaces;
they made a noise in Jehovah’s house that sounded like an annual feast.
8 Jehovah planned to wreck the walls of the daughter of Sion;
he stretched a line, did not turn his hand back from sweeping it down,
and let bulwark and wall mourn, forlorn together.
9* Her gates have sunk into the earth; he has destroyed and shattered her bars;
her king and generals are among the nations; there are no rulings on religion;
her prophets too have not found any vision from Jehovah.
10 The elders of the daughter of Sion sit silent on the ground,
have put earth over their heads, have belted on sackcloths;
the maidens of Jerusalem have put their heads down on the ground.
11* My eyes are used up in tears, my vitals are boiling,
my heart runs out of me for the broken bones of the daughter of my people,
when little boy and baby collapse in town squares;
12* They say to their mothers “Where is some grain and wine?”
while they faint away in city squares like a man mortally wounded,
while their life runs out in their mothers’ laps.
13 What shall I quote to you, what shall I compare you to, daughter Jerusalem?
what shall I parallel to you to comfort you, maiden daughter of Sion?
for your mauling is great as the sea; who shall heal you?
14*** Your prophets have furnished you futile and unctuous visions, have not spoken out about your guilt to bring you back
but have given you visions that are delusion, futility, and exile.
15 All passersby struck their hands together over you,
whistled and shook their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem:
“Is this the city that was spoken of as perfect in beauty, a joy to all the earth?”
16* All your enemies opened their mouths wide at you,
whistled and ground their teeth, said “We have made a clean sweep;
this is just the day we were hoping for; it has turned up, we see the sight.”
17 Jehovah has done what he designed, finished up his dictate
that he ordained from olden days, demolished unsparingly, gladdened your enemies over you, given your foes a high horn.
18*** Their hearts cried out to the Lord hotly; daughter of Sion,
pour down your tears like a flooded brook day and night,
take no anodyne, let your eyeball never be still.
19* Stand up and clamor in the night, at each new watch,
pour out your hearts in Jehovah’s face like water,
raise your hands to him for the lives of your boys and girls
who have fainted away with hunger at the tops of all the streets.
20 See, Jehovah! look whom you have handled so!
or should women eat their own fruit, their petted children?
or should priest and prophet be killed in the Lord’s sanctuary?
21 Boy and old man are lying on the ground in the streets;
my maidens and young men have fallen by the sword;
on your day of anger you killed, slaughtered, had no mercy.
22 You are calling my terrors on every side as if for the day of an annual feast,
and there were none on the day of Jehovah’s anger that escaped or survived.
Those that I had petted and brought up my enemy has swept away.
3 I am the man that saw hardship
by the cudgel of his wrath.
2 Me he drove along to go
darkling, unlighted.
3 Only at me all day
he kept turning back his hand.
4 He wore away my flesh and skin,
shattered my bones,
5* Built siege-works against me and surrounded
my head with hard experiences,
6 Seated me in places of darkness
like men long since dead.
7 He walled me off so that I could not get out,
made my fetters heavy.
8 Withal when I cried and clamored
he shut off my prayer.
9* He walled up my road with masonry,
kept me making detours.
10 An ambushed bear he was to me,
a lion under cover.
11 My roads he filled with briers and tore my flesh,
laid me desolate.
12 He strung his bow and set me up
like a target for the arrow,
13* Sent in the contents of his quiver
into my waist.
14* I became a butt for the laughter of all my people,
for their jingles all day long.
15 He filled me up with bitter greens,
gave me wormwood-juice for refreshment,
16 And rasped my teeth with gravel,
thrust me down in the ashes.
17* And you banned my soul from welfare;
I forgot such a thing as good,
18 And said “my continuance is lost,
and my expectation from Jehovah.”
19* The recollection of my miserable and homeless state is wormwood and opium.
20* Recollect my soul does,
and is downhearted within me.
21 This I will bring back to mind,
will therefore wait,
22 Jehovah’s friendlinesses, that they are not exhausted,
that his sympathy has not come to an end,
23 New every morning;
great is your loyalty.
24 Jehovah is my portion, my soul has said;
therefore I will wait for him.
25 Jehovah is good to those who hope in him,
to a soul that betakes itself to him.
26 Good it is that one wait, and in silence,
for Jehovah’s salvation.
27 Good it is for a man that he carry
a yoke in his youth,
28 Sit alone and be still
because it was laid on him,
29 Put his mouth in the dust,—
perhaps there may be hope,—
30 Give his cheek to the one who strikes him,
take his fill of humiliation.
31* For the Lord will not repudiate
man forever,
32 For if he causes misery he will have sympathy
in accordance with his great friendliness,
33 For he does not arbitrarily grind down
sons of man and bring them to misery.
34 To beating down underfoot
all earth’s prisoners,
35 To warping the law against a man
in the face of the Most High,
36 To circumventing a man in his suit over his rights,
the Lord does not assent.
37* Who is there that says a thing and has it come
when the Lord has not ordered it?
38 Do not evils and good come
out of the mouth of the Most High?
39* What should a living man bemoan,
a man over his sin?
40 Let us search our course and examine it,
and come back to Jehovah.
41 Let us hold up our hearts in our hands
to Deity in heaven.
42 We were criminal and disobedient;
you did not forgive.
43 You overspread us with anger and pursued us,
you killed without mercy.
44 You overspread yourself with a cloud
to keep our prayers from coming through.
45 You are making us an offscouring and a bit of refuse
among the peoples.
46 All our enemies have opened
their mouths wide at us.
47* We face dread and chasm,
breaking and crash.
48 My eyes run streams of water
for the breaking of the daughter of my people.
49 My eyes are running out and never halting
for lack of a soothing balm.
50 Till Jehovah from the sky
looks out and sees,
51 My eyes handle my soul cruelly
because of all the daughters of my city.
52 My unprovoked enemies hunted me
down like a sparrow.
53 They extinguished my life in the pit
and flung stones on me.
54 Water rolled over my head;
I thought “It is all over with me.”
55 I called your name, Jehovah,
out of the abysmal pit;
56* You heard my voice, “Do not let your ears
disregard my freedom, my clamor.”
57 You drew near on the day I called you,
you said “Do not be afraid.”
58 You upheld my right to exist, Lord,
you stood up for my life.
59 You, Jehovah, saw the chicanery against me,
did justice for me.
60 You saw all their revengefulness,
all that they thought of for me.
61 You heard their taunts, Jehovah,
all that they thought of against me,
62 My assailants’ lips
and their whispering against me all day.
63 Look at their sitting down and standing up;
I am the butt of their jingles.
64 You will give them back, Jehovah,
treatment that matches the work of their hands:
65* You will give them infatuated minds,
your curse for them,
66 Will pursue them in anger and root them out
from under Jehovah’s sky.
4 How gold is tarnishing, the best nuggets deteriorating,
Sacred stones being spilled at every street-corner!
2 Sion’s most precious sons, prized at their weight in red gold, how they were classed with earthen jars, work of a potter’s hands!
3 Even jackals offer a teat, suckle their cubs;
the daughter of my people became cruel like the ostriches in the wilderness.
4 A sucking baby’s tongue stuck to its palate for thirst.
Children asked for bread, had nobody that handed it to them.
5* Those who had been eating with dainties were starving about the streets.
Those who had been laid on scarlet hugged rubbish on the dumps.
6 And the guilt of the daughter of my people showed greater than the sin of Sodom
that was overthrown all at once and hands were not busy on her.
7*** Her devotees were more stainless than snow, more white than milk,
redder-limbed than coral, their tattooing lapis lazuli.
8 Their figures turned darker than charcoal, they were not to be recognized on the street;
their skins shrank over their bones, dried out, became like wood.
9** Those who were struck down by swords were better off than those who were struck down by starvation,
inasmuch as those, stabbed through, would flow out in field crops.
10 The hands of tenderhearted women cooked their own children,
they served as mourning-dinner for them at the catastrophe
of the daughter of my people.
11 Jehovah wreaked his ire, poured out his anger,
and kindled a fire in Sion which consumed her foundations.
12 The kings of earth, and all the inhabitants of the world, had not believed
that foe and enemy would come in at Jerusalem’s gates.
13 For the sins of her prophets, the guilts of her priests,
who shed honest men’s blood within her,
14 They wandered blind in the streets, polluted with blood,
with what they could not touch with their clothes;
15 “Away! unclean!” they called out, “away! away! do not touch!” because they had taken wing, were on the move; they said among
the nations “They shall not be harbored any longer”;
16 Jehovah personally divided them, will no longer look at them. They had no respect for priests, no grace for old men.
17 Our eyes are still exhausting themselves looking toward our imaginary help;
on our lookout we watched for a nation that does not save.
18 They spied our steps too closely for walking in our squares;
our end had come near; our time was up; yes, our end had come.
19 Our pursuers were swifter than vultures in the sky;
on the mountains they ran us down, in the wilderness they lay in ambush for us.
20 The breath of our nostrils, Jehovah’s anointed, was caught in their pitfalls,
he of whom we thought “In his shadow we shall remain alive among the nations.”
21* Be joyous and glad, daughter of Edom, you that live in the country of ʽUs:
to you too will pass such a cup that you will get drunk and show your nakedness.
22 Your guilt is all done with, daughter of Sion; no more will he have you deported.
He has paid attention to your guilt, daughter of Edom; he has exposed your sins.
5 Remember, Jehovah, what happened to us;
look and see our ignominy.
2 Our estate has swung to strangers,
our houses to foreigners.
3 We have become fatherless orphans,
our mothers the same as widows.
4 We have been drinking our water for cash—
our wood comes in at a price.
5* We have had the pursuers close at our heels,
have been tired out, have been given no rest.
6* We have given ourselves up in Egypt,
in Assyria, to get a full meal.
7 Our fathers sinned; they are gone,
and we have been carrying their guilt.
8 Slaves have become rulers over us;
there is nobody to tear us out of their hand
9 We get our bread in at the cost of our lives
because of the wilderness sword.
10 Our skin is hot as a baking-crock
by the fever of starvation.
11 They deflowered women in Sion,
maidens in the cities of Judah.
12* Generals were impaled by their hands,
to elders’ faces no deference was paid.
13 Young men carried mills
and boys stumbled with timber.
14* Old men have desisted from sitting in gates,
young men from their lute-playing.
15 The joyousness of our hearts has ceased,
our dancing is turned to mourning,
16 The crown on our heads has fallen;
woe is ours, because we have sinned.
17 It is for this our hearts have grown sick,
it is for these things our eyes are darkened,
18 For Mount Sion, that it is desolated;
foxes walk over it.
19 You, Jehovah, are seated forever;
your throne is for generations upon generations;
20* Why are you forgetting us permanently,
leaving us while time goes on?
21 Bring us back to you, Jehovah, and back we will come;
give us new days like the old time,
22 —But you have repudiated us outright,
are incensed against us to the utmost.
The anointing :the Watchtower Society's commentary
ANOINTED, ANOINTING:
The Bible often uses the Hebrew sukh and the Greek a·leiʹpho for the commonplace greasing, or rubbing on of oil. (Da 10:3; Ru 3:3; Joh 11:2) But for a special anointing with oil, it generally uses the Hebrew word ma·shachʹ, from which the word ma·shiʹach (Messiah) comes, and the Greek word khriʹo, from which comes khri·stosʹ (Christ). (Ex 30:30; Le 4:5, ftn; Lu 4:18; Ac 4:26) This distinction is maintained quite consistently both in the Hebrew and in the Greek. Some versions of the Bible do not maintain this fine distinction but translate all such words by the one term “anoint.”
Rubbing or Greasing With Oil. In the lands of the Middle East it was a common practice to rub oil on the body, and among other things, this helped to protect the exposed portions from the intense rays of the sun. The oil also helped to keep the skin supple. Olive oil was generally used, and often perfume was added to it. The customary practice was to apply the oil after bathing. (Ru 3:3; 2Sa 12:20) Esther underwent a course of massage treatment for six months with oil of myrrh and for six months with oil of balsam before being presented to King Ahasuerus. (Es 2:12) Oil was also rubbed on the body in preparing a person for burial.—Mr 14:8; Lu 23:56.
When Jesus sent the 12 apostles out by twos, they greased with oil many whom they healed. The healing of the ailment was due to, not the oil itself, but the miraculous operation of God’s holy spirit. Oil, which did have some healing and refreshing properties, was symbolic of the healing and refreshing experienced.—Mr 6:13; Lu 9:1; compare Lu 10:34.
Greasing the head with oil was a sign of favor. (Ps 23:5) The headmen of Ephraim took favorable action toward the captured Judean soldiers by greasing them and returning them to Jericho, as advised by the prophet Oded. (2Ch 28:15) Jehovah spoke of bringing about a lack of oil for rubbing as a sign of his displeasure. (De 28:40) To refrain from rubbing one’s body with oil was regarded as a sign of mourning. (2Sa 14:2; Da 10:2, 3) To grease the head of a guest with oil was regarded as an act of hospitality and courtesy, as is indicated by Jesus’ words regarding a woman who greased his feet with perfumed oil.—Lu 7:38, 46.
Jesus told his disciples to grease their heads and wash their faces when fasting in order to appear normal, not making a show of sanctimoniousness and self-denial as the hypocritical Jewish religious leaders did to impress others.—Mt 6:16, 17.
James speaks of a spiritual ‘greasing with oil’ in the name of Jehovah for spiritually sick ones as the proper procedure for one needing spiritual help. That he refers to spiritual sickness is indicated by his statements: “Let him call the older men of the congregation,” not doctors, and, “if he has committed sins, it will be forgiven him.” (Jas 5:13-16) Jesus makes a spiritual application of the practice when he tells the Laodicean congregation to “buy from me . . . eyesalve to rub in your eyes that you may see.”—Re 3:18.
Anointing. When a person was anointed with oil, the oil was put on his head and allowed to run down on his beard and onto the collar of his garments. (Ps 133:2) During the times of Biblical history, both the Hebrews and some of the non-Hebrews ceremonially anointed rulers. This constituted the confirmation of their official appointment to office. (Jg 9:8, 15; 1Sa 9:16; 2Sa 19:10) Samuel anointed Saul as king after God had designated Saul as his choice. (1Sa 10:1) David was anointed as king on three different occasions: once by Samuel, later by the men of Judah, and finally by all the tribes. (1Sa 16:13; 2Sa 2:4; 5:3) Aaron was anointed after his appointment to the office of high priest. (Le 8:12) Afterward, Aaron and his sons had some of the anointing oil along with the blood of the sacrifices spattered upon their garments, but Aaron was the only one who had the oil poured over his head.—Le 8:30.
Things dedicated as sacred were also anointed. Jacob took the stone on which he rested his head when he had an inspired dream, set it up as a pillar, and anointed it, thus marking that place as sacred; and he called the place Bethel, meaning “House of God.” (Ge 28:18, 19) A short time later Jehovah acknowledged that this stone had been anointed. (Ge 31:13) In the wilderness of Sinai, at Jehovah’s command, Moses anointed the tabernacle and its furnishings, indicating that they were dedicated, holy things.—Ex 30:26-28.
There are instances in which a person was regarded as being anointed because of being appointed by God, even though no oil was put on his head. This principle was demonstrated when Jehovah told Elijah to anoint Hazael as king over Syria, Jehu as king over Israel, and Elisha as prophet in place of himself. (1Ki 19:15, 16) The Scriptural record goes on to show that one of the sons of the prophets associated with Elisha did anoint Jehu with literal oil, to be king over Israel. (2Ki 9:1-6) But there is no record that anyone anointed with oil either Hazael or Elisha. Moses was called a Christ, or Anointed One, although not anointed with oil, because Moses was appointed by Jehovah to be his prophet and representative, the leader and deliverer of Israel. (Heb 11:24-26) Another case in point is the Persian king Cyrus, whom Isaiah had foretold that Jehovah would use as His anointed. (Isa 45:1) Cyrus was not actually anointed with oil by one of Jehovah’s representatives, but because he was appointed by Jehovah to do a certain work, he could be said to be anointed.
In the Law Jehovah gave to Moses, he prescribed a formula for the anointing oil. It was of a special composition of the choicest ingredients—myrrh, sweet cinnamon, sweet calamus, cassia, and olive oil. (Ex 30:22-25) It was a capital offense for anyone to compound this mixture and to use it for any common or unauthorized purpose. (Ex 30:31-33) This figuratively demonstrated the importance and sacredness of an appointment to office that had been confirmed by anointing with sacred oil.
Fulfilling many prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures, Jesus of Nazareth proved to be the Anointed One of Jehovah and could properly be called Messiah, or Christ, which titles convey that thought. (Mt 1:16; Heb 1:8, 9) Instead of being anointed with literal oil, he was anointed with Jehovah’s spirit. (Mt 3:16) This was Jehovah’s appointment of him as King, Prophet, and High Priest, and so he was referred to as Jehovah’s Anointed. (Ps 2:2; Ac 3:20-26; 4:26, 27; Heb 5:5, 6) In his hometown of Nazareth, Jesus acknowledged this anointing when he applied to himself the prophecy of Isaiah 61:1, where the phrase appears: “Jehovah has anointed me.” (Lu 4:18) Jesus Christ is the only one in the Scriptures who holds an anointing to all three offices: prophet, high priest, and king. Jesus was anointed with “the oil of exultation more than [his] partners” (the other kings of the line of David). This was by reason of his receiving the anointing directly from Jehovah himself, not with oil but with holy spirit, not to an earthly kingship but to a heavenly one combined with the office of heavenly High Priest.—Heb 1:9; Ps 45:7.
Like Jesus, his footstep followers who have been spirit begotten and anointed with holy spirit can be spoken of as anointed ones. (2Co 1:21) Just as Aaron was directly anointed as head of the priesthood, but his sons did not have the oil poured on their heads individually, so Jesus was anointed directly by Jehovah, and his congregation of spiritual brothers receive their anointing as a body of people through Jesus Christ. (Ac 2:1-4, 32, 33) They have thereby received an appointment from God to be kings and priests with Jesus Christ in the heavens. (2Co 5:5; Eph 1:13, 14; 1Pe 1:3, 4; Re 20:6) The apostle John indicated that the anointing by holy spirit that Christians receive teaches them. (1Jo 2:27) It commissions and qualifies them for the Christian ministry of the new covenant.—2Co 3:5, 6.
Jehovah has great love and concern for his anointed ones and watches over them carefully. (1Ch 16:22; Ps 2:2, 5; 20:6; 105:15; Lu 18:7) David recognized that God was the one who chose and appointed His anointed ones and that it was God who would judge them. To raise one’s hand to do harm to Jehovah’s anointed ones or any whom he appoints would bring Jehovah’s displeasure.—1Sa 24:6; 26:11, 23; see CHRIST; INSTALLATION; KING (Divinely appointed representatives); MESSIAH.
The Bible often uses the Hebrew sukh and the Greek a·leiʹpho for the commonplace greasing, or rubbing on of oil. (Da 10:3; Ru 3:3; Joh 11:2) But for a special anointing with oil, it generally uses the Hebrew word ma·shachʹ, from which the word ma·shiʹach (Messiah) comes, and the Greek word khriʹo, from which comes khri·stosʹ (Christ). (Ex 30:30; Le 4:5, ftn; Lu 4:18; Ac 4:26) This distinction is maintained quite consistently both in the Hebrew and in the Greek. Some versions of the Bible do not maintain this fine distinction but translate all such words by the one term “anoint.”
Rubbing or Greasing With Oil. In the lands of the Middle East it was a common practice to rub oil on the body, and among other things, this helped to protect the exposed portions from the intense rays of the sun. The oil also helped to keep the skin supple. Olive oil was generally used, and often perfume was added to it. The customary practice was to apply the oil after bathing. (Ru 3:3; 2Sa 12:20) Esther underwent a course of massage treatment for six months with oil of myrrh and for six months with oil of balsam before being presented to King Ahasuerus. (Es 2:12) Oil was also rubbed on the body in preparing a person for burial.—Mr 14:8; Lu 23:56.
When Jesus sent the 12 apostles out by twos, they greased with oil many whom they healed. The healing of the ailment was due to, not the oil itself, but the miraculous operation of God’s holy spirit. Oil, which did have some healing and refreshing properties, was symbolic of the healing and refreshing experienced.—Mr 6:13; Lu 9:1; compare Lu 10:34.
Greasing the head with oil was a sign of favor. (Ps 23:5) The headmen of Ephraim took favorable action toward the captured Judean soldiers by greasing them and returning them to Jericho, as advised by the prophet Oded. (2Ch 28:15) Jehovah spoke of bringing about a lack of oil for rubbing as a sign of his displeasure. (De 28:40) To refrain from rubbing one’s body with oil was regarded as a sign of mourning. (2Sa 14:2; Da 10:2, 3) To grease the head of a guest with oil was regarded as an act of hospitality and courtesy, as is indicated by Jesus’ words regarding a woman who greased his feet with perfumed oil.—Lu 7:38, 46.
Jesus told his disciples to grease their heads and wash their faces when fasting in order to appear normal, not making a show of sanctimoniousness and self-denial as the hypocritical Jewish religious leaders did to impress others.—Mt 6:16, 17.
James speaks of a spiritual ‘greasing with oil’ in the name of Jehovah for spiritually sick ones as the proper procedure for one needing spiritual help. That he refers to spiritual sickness is indicated by his statements: “Let him call the older men of the congregation,” not doctors, and, “if he has committed sins, it will be forgiven him.” (Jas 5:13-16) Jesus makes a spiritual application of the practice when he tells the Laodicean congregation to “buy from me . . . eyesalve to rub in your eyes that you may see.”—Re 3:18.
Anointing. When a person was anointed with oil, the oil was put on his head and allowed to run down on his beard and onto the collar of his garments. (Ps 133:2) During the times of Biblical history, both the Hebrews and some of the non-Hebrews ceremonially anointed rulers. This constituted the confirmation of their official appointment to office. (Jg 9:8, 15; 1Sa 9:16; 2Sa 19:10) Samuel anointed Saul as king after God had designated Saul as his choice. (1Sa 10:1) David was anointed as king on three different occasions: once by Samuel, later by the men of Judah, and finally by all the tribes. (1Sa 16:13; 2Sa 2:4; 5:3) Aaron was anointed after his appointment to the office of high priest. (Le 8:12) Afterward, Aaron and his sons had some of the anointing oil along with the blood of the sacrifices spattered upon their garments, but Aaron was the only one who had the oil poured over his head.—Le 8:30.
Things dedicated as sacred were also anointed. Jacob took the stone on which he rested his head when he had an inspired dream, set it up as a pillar, and anointed it, thus marking that place as sacred; and he called the place Bethel, meaning “House of God.” (Ge 28:18, 19) A short time later Jehovah acknowledged that this stone had been anointed. (Ge 31:13) In the wilderness of Sinai, at Jehovah’s command, Moses anointed the tabernacle and its furnishings, indicating that they were dedicated, holy things.—Ex 30:26-28.
There are instances in which a person was regarded as being anointed because of being appointed by God, even though no oil was put on his head. This principle was demonstrated when Jehovah told Elijah to anoint Hazael as king over Syria, Jehu as king over Israel, and Elisha as prophet in place of himself. (1Ki 19:15, 16) The Scriptural record goes on to show that one of the sons of the prophets associated with Elisha did anoint Jehu with literal oil, to be king over Israel. (2Ki 9:1-6) But there is no record that anyone anointed with oil either Hazael or Elisha. Moses was called a Christ, or Anointed One, although not anointed with oil, because Moses was appointed by Jehovah to be his prophet and representative, the leader and deliverer of Israel. (Heb 11:24-26) Another case in point is the Persian king Cyrus, whom Isaiah had foretold that Jehovah would use as His anointed. (Isa 45:1) Cyrus was not actually anointed with oil by one of Jehovah’s representatives, but because he was appointed by Jehovah to do a certain work, he could be said to be anointed.
In the Law Jehovah gave to Moses, he prescribed a formula for the anointing oil. It was of a special composition of the choicest ingredients—myrrh, sweet cinnamon, sweet calamus, cassia, and olive oil. (Ex 30:22-25) It was a capital offense for anyone to compound this mixture and to use it for any common or unauthorized purpose. (Ex 30:31-33) This figuratively demonstrated the importance and sacredness of an appointment to office that had been confirmed by anointing with sacred oil.
Fulfilling many prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures, Jesus of Nazareth proved to be the Anointed One of Jehovah and could properly be called Messiah, or Christ, which titles convey that thought. (Mt 1:16; Heb 1:8, 9) Instead of being anointed with literal oil, he was anointed with Jehovah’s spirit. (Mt 3:16) This was Jehovah’s appointment of him as King, Prophet, and High Priest, and so he was referred to as Jehovah’s Anointed. (Ps 2:2; Ac 3:20-26; 4:26, 27; Heb 5:5, 6) In his hometown of Nazareth, Jesus acknowledged this anointing when he applied to himself the prophecy of Isaiah 61:1, where the phrase appears: “Jehovah has anointed me.” (Lu 4:18) Jesus Christ is the only one in the Scriptures who holds an anointing to all three offices: prophet, high priest, and king. Jesus was anointed with “the oil of exultation more than [his] partners” (the other kings of the line of David). This was by reason of his receiving the anointing directly from Jehovah himself, not with oil but with holy spirit, not to an earthly kingship but to a heavenly one combined with the office of heavenly High Priest.—Heb 1:9; Ps 45:7.
Like Jesus, his footstep followers who have been spirit begotten and anointed with holy spirit can be spoken of as anointed ones. (2Co 1:21) Just as Aaron was directly anointed as head of the priesthood, but his sons did not have the oil poured on their heads individually, so Jesus was anointed directly by Jehovah, and his congregation of spiritual brothers receive their anointing as a body of people through Jesus Christ. (Ac 2:1-4, 32, 33) They have thereby received an appointment from God to be kings and priests with Jesus Christ in the heavens. (2Co 5:5; Eph 1:13, 14; 1Pe 1:3, 4; Re 20:6) The apostle John indicated that the anointing by holy spirit that Christians receive teaches them. (1Jo 2:27) It commissions and qualifies them for the Christian ministry of the new covenant.—2Co 3:5, 6.
Jehovah has great love and concern for his anointed ones and watches over them carefully. (1Ch 16:22; Ps 2:2, 5; 20:6; 105:15; Lu 18:7) David recognized that God was the one who chose and appointed His anointed ones and that it was God who would judge them. To raise one’s hand to do harm to Jehovah’s anointed ones or any whom he appoints would bring Jehovah’s displeasure.—1Sa 24:6; 26:11, 23; see CHRIST; INSTALLATION; KING (Divinely appointed representatives); MESSIAH.
The Darwinian establishment decides to leave the barrel and go to the tree.
Evolution in Kindergarten: Now Brought to You by the National Science Foundation
Sarah Chaffee
I wrote here the other day about UK developmental psychologist Nathalia Gjersoe who supports reeducating kids as young as five years old to reject "promiscuous teleology" -- that is, the intuition that life reflects purpose and design ("Evolution in Kindergarten"). She drew on the research of Deborah Kelemen at Boston University who "published a promising, child-friendly intervention: illustrated storybooks about natural selection."
Now your taxpayer dollars will be going toward research on preconditioning young minds to accept evolution.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) just awarded Boston University a grant of just under $1.5 million for their project, "Evolving Minds in Early Elementary School: Foundations for a Learning Sequence on Natural Selection Using Stories."Yes, the principal investigator is Deborah Kelemen. This research focuses on students in grades K-2. The NSF abstract for the study notes:
Research shows that world-wide, despite its importance to the life sciences, natural selection remains one of the most widely misunderstood processes in biology. Specifically, studies reveal that scientific misconceptions about natural selection not only persist among high school students and undergraduates who are usual targets of instruction on evolution by natural selection, but, disturbingly, also among many of the teachers trained to teach them. Research further reveals that the origin of many of these misconceptions can be traced to intuitive cognitive biases found at the elementary school level. This project will address this problem by building and testing a learning sequence on natural selection at the early elementary grades before intuitive theoretical misconceptions are likely to have become entrenched. This effort will expand existing infrastructure for research and education currently supported through a university, to school partnership involving elementary educators, curriculum developers, professional development providers, interdisciplinary academic researchers and cognitive development expert consultants.
...The two central aims will be to: (1) develop the core architecture and explore the feasibility of an expanded elementary school learning sequence on natural selection; (2) examine the educative professional development benefits to elementary school teachers of the developed story-based intervention materials....Materials and products (storybooks, animations and assessment tools) will directly benefit schools, teachers, children and parents in the State of Massachusetts and nationally.
Wow. One-sided promotion of neo-Darwinism, to disrupt natural human biases in K-2 students, with effects at least in one state if not across the country.
What's wrong with that? First, this research project ignores ongoing scientific debate about the creative limits of natural selection acting on random mutations. The controversy is not limited to advocates of intelligent design. Very mainstream scientists associated with The Third Way of Evolution reject ID, but question the ability of natural selection and random mutations to generate diverse biological species. The late biologist and member of the National Academy of Sciences Lynn Margulis stated, "New mutations don't create new species; they create offspring that are impaired." Over 950 PhD scientists have signed the "Scientific Dissent from Darwinism" list, affirming that they are "skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutations and natural selection to account for the complexity of life."
For a summary of weaknesses along with links to scientific articles challenging the major mechanisms of neo-Darwinism, read Casey Luskin's article, "The Top Ten Scientific Problems with Biological and Chemical Evolution."
Second, the idea of interfering with children's thinking processes to inculcate a pre-determined opinion is disturbing. Kelemen would like to disrupt children's understanding of teleology and essentialism before they "have coalesced into a coherent theoretical framework that gets in the way of contradictory scientific explanations."
Her previous research used a storybook, aimed at kids between ages 5-8, to describe a fictional animal and its evolution. The story has to do with the survival of those of the species with thin trunks that, as a result, can gain access to an underground food source. While Kelemen's book about the made-up "Pilosas" touched just on microevolution, this research goes further. The NSF notes, "Six interventions will be conducted...to explore the viability of mechanistically teaching K-2 children about within- and between-species adaptation by natural selection." Indoctrinating young children with macroevolution? This seems like a group with an agenda to push.
No matter which side of the debate you're on, it's important to have an accurate understanding of the scientific evidence. There may indeed be teachers who do not fully understand that evidence. However, if you don't completely buy into evolution, that doesn't mean you are the victim of false representations of the theory. Many thoughtful adults are skeptical precisely because they've looked into the subject so carefully.
To train a new generation of thinkers, evolution must be taught objectively, presenting both its scientific strengths and weaknesses. This approach helps students to practice scientific inquiry -- to think critically and examine the evidence. Yes, that carries the risk that a student might emerge from her studies as an evolution skeptic. That's the way it goes when you think for yourself.
As the American Association for the Advancement of Science's document Science for All Americans notes:
In science classrooms, it should be the normal practice for teachers to raise such questions as: How do we know? What is the evidence? What is the argument that interprets the evidence? Are there alternative explanations or other ways of solving the problem that could be better? The aim should be to get students into the habit of posing such questions and framing answers.
Avoid Dogmatism
Students should experience science as a process for extending understanding, not as unalterable truth. This means that teachers take care not to convey the impression that they themselves or the textbooks are absolute authorities whose conclusions are always correct. By dealing with the credibility of scientific claims, the overturn of accepted scientific beliefs, and what to make out of disagreement among scientists, science teachers can help students to balance the necessity for accepting a great deal of science on faith against the importance of keeping an open mind.
The AAAS generally does not extend its emphasis on scientific inquiry to neo-Darwinism. They should reconsider. Dogmatic teaching of evolution and brainwashing young children doesn't foster scientific literacy. America's future scientists must be able to examine data and come to informed conclusions.
To propel our technology and engineering industries and to fuel medical advancement, we need innovators. That means being willing to question the status quo. When it comes to evolution, promoting inquiry-based methods -- not funding research into preconditioning K-2 students to reach a favored conclusion -- is a good place to start.
Sarah Chaffee
I wrote here the other day about UK developmental psychologist Nathalia Gjersoe who supports reeducating kids as young as five years old to reject "promiscuous teleology" -- that is, the intuition that life reflects purpose and design ("Evolution in Kindergarten"). She drew on the research of Deborah Kelemen at Boston University who "published a promising, child-friendly intervention: illustrated storybooks about natural selection."
Now your taxpayer dollars will be going toward research on preconditioning young minds to accept evolution.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) just awarded Boston University a grant of just under $1.5 million for their project, "Evolving Minds in Early Elementary School: Foundations for a Learning Sequence on Natural Selection Using Stories."Yes, the principal investigator is Deborah Kelemen. This research focuses on students in grades K-2. The NSF abstract for the study notes:
Research shows that world-wide, despite its importance to the life sciences, natural selection remains one of the most widely misunderstood processes in biology. Specifically, studies reveal that scientific misconceptions about natural selection not only persist among high school students and undergraduates who are usual targets of instruction on evolution by natural selection, but, disturbingly, also among many of the teachers trained to teach them. Research further reveals that the origin of many of these misconceptions can be traced to intuitive cognitive biases found at the elementary school level. This project will address this problem by building and testing a learning sequence on natural selection at the early elementary grades before intuitive theoretical misconceptions are likely to have become entrenched. This effort will expand existing infrastructure for research and education currently supported through a university, to school partnership involving elementary educators, curriculum developers, professional development providers, interdisciplinary academic researchers and cognitive development expert consultants.
...The two central aims will be to: (1) develop the core architecture and explore the feasibility of an expanded elementary school learning sequence on natural selection; (2) examine the educative professional development benefits to elementary school teachers of the developed story-based intervention materials....Materials and products (storybooks, animations and assessment tools) will directly benefit schools, teachers, children and parents in the State of Massachusetts and nationally.
Wow. One-sided promotion of neo-Darwinism, to disrupt natural human biases in K-2 students, with effects at least in one state if not across the country.
What's wrong with that? First, this research project ignores ongoing scientific debate about the creative limits of natural selection acting on random mutations. The controversy is not limited to advocates of intelligent design. Very mainstream scientists associated with The Third Way of Evolution reject ID, but question the ability of natural selection and random mutations to generate diverse biological species. The late biologist and member of the National Academy of Sciences Lynn Margulis stated, "New mutations don't create new species; they create offspring that are impaired." Over 950 PhD scientists have signed the "Scientific Dissent from Darwinism" list, affirming that they are "skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutations and natural selection to account for the complexity of life."
For a summary of weaknesses along with links to scientific articles challenging the major mechanisms of neo-Darwinism, read Casey Luskin's article, "The Top Ten Scientific Problems with Biological and Chemical Evolution."
Second, the idea of interfering with children's thinking processes to inculcate a pre-determined opinion is disturbing. Kelemen would like to disrupt children's understanding of teleology and essentialism before they "have coalesced into a coherent theoretical framework that gets in the way of contradictory scientific explanations."
Her previous research used a storybook, aimed at kids between ages 5-8, to describe a fictional animal and its evolution. The story has to do with the survival of those of the species with thin trunks that, as a result, can gain access to an underground food source. While Kelemen's book about the made-up "Pilosas" touched just on microevolution, this research goes further. The NSF notes, "Six interventions will be conducted...to explore the viability of mechanistically teaching K-2 children about within- and between-species adaptation by natural selection." Indoctrinating young children with macroevolution? This seems like a group with an agenda to push.
No matter which side of the debate you're on, it's important to have an accurate understanding of the scientific evidence. There may indeed be teachers who do not fully understand that evidence. However, if you don't completely buy into evolution, that doesn't mean you are the victim of false representations of the theory. Many thoughtful adults are skeptical precisely because they've looked into the subject so carefully.
To train a new generation of thinkers, evolution must be taught objectively, presenting both its scientific strengths and weaknesses. This approach helps students to practice scientific inquiry -- to think critically and examine the evidence. Yes, that carries the risk that a student might emerge from her studies as an evolution skeptic. That's the way it goes when you think for yourself.
As the American Association for the Advancement of Science's document Science for All Americans notes:
In science classrooms, it should be the normal practice for teachers to raise such questions as: How do we know? What is the evidence? What is the argument that interprets the evidence? Are there alternative explanations or other ways of solving the problem that could be better? The aim should be to get students into the habit of posing such questions and framing answers.
Avoid Dogmatism
Students should experience science as a process for extending understanding, not as unalterable truth. This means that teachers take care not to convey the impression that they themselves or the textbooks are absolute authorities whose conclusions are always correct. By dealing with the credibility of scientific claims, the overturn of accepted scientific beliefs, and what to make out of disagreement among scientists, science teachers can help students to balance the necessity for accepting a great deal of science on faith against the importance of keeping an open mind.
The AAAS generally does not extend its emphasis on scientific inquiry to neo-Darwinism. They should reconsider. Dogmatic teaching of evolution and brainwashing young children doesn't foster scientific literacy. America's future scientists must be able to examine data and come to informed conclusions.
To propel our technology and engineering industries and to fuel medical advancement, we need innovators. That means being willing to question the status quo. When it comes to evolution, promoting inquiry-based methods -- not funding research into preconditioning K-2 students to reach a favored conclusion -- is a good place to start.
Sunday, 1 May 2016
Darwinism and the cosmic lottery.
What's in a Word? "Randomness" in Darwinism and the Scientific Theory of Evolution
Jay W. Richards
This is the third in a series of reviews of Alvin Plantinga's important new book, Where the Conflict Really Lies. For parts one and two, see here and here. For Plantinga's reply, see here.
One of the more difficult parts of Plantinga's book is his discussion of "randomness" in Darwinian evolution, and the related questions of "Darwinism" and the "scientific theory of evolution." In fact, the discussion is easily misinterpreted and potentially confusing, so let's consider it at length.
Plantinga offers several important clarifications on these subjects. Unlike so many who occupy the overlapping space of science and religion, he recognizes that the word "evolution" can refer to many things, and he's careful not to hide his own views in the ambiguity. "Evolution" can refer simply to change over time, or to the idea that the universe and earth are billions of years old. It can refer to the common ancestry of life. It can even refer, confusingly, to the chemical origin of life, which wasn't part of Darwin's theory. It can also refer to common descent, the idea that all living things are descended from one or a few common ancestors. And it can refer to that idea plus a mechanism for change. In the case of Darwinism, the mechanism is natural selection sifting the random variations in reproducing populations -- or what Darwin often called "chance" variations. In the modern form of the theory -- Neo-Darwinism -- new variations are identified with mutations in DNA.
Plantinga argues, plausibly, that most of these senses of "evolution" present no logical challenge to Christian theism. In Darwinism, however, many perceive a conflict. Isn't the whole point of the theory to provide a process or mechanism that can overcome the prohibitive barriers of mere chance and can mimic the work of an intelligent agent? When most biologists claim that adaptive complexity is largely the result of natural selection and random genetic mutations, don't they intend to provide an alternative to design? Don't they claim that selection and mutation, considered together as a single process, are unguided?
Despite appearances to the contrary, Plantinga thinks these questions are based on misunderstanding. He sees denial of purpose not as a part of Darwinism or the scientific theory of evolution, but as merely a metaphysical or philosophical add-on. There's "Darwinism," and then there's "unguided Darwinism." In his view, the scientific theory, which we can call Darwinism, affirms natural selection and random genetic mutations as the engine of adaptation, but makes no claims about purpose or the lack thereof in the history of life.
Getting the Main Issue Right
The word "random" (and its near synonym "chance") is a notorious source of mischief in science and religion discussions, so it's important to follow Plantinga's argument closely. Leaving terminological difficulties to the side for a moment, Plantinga must be commended for getting to the heart of the question over the compatibility of theism and evolutionary theory and for coming down on the right side: namely, purpose or guidance. Christian theism is committed to the idea that God intends certain things to come out a certain way in history. He intended human beings, for instance. He knew you before he knit you together in your mother's womb. So theism will be incompatible with any view, including any evolutionary theory, that denies that life and its history were purposively guided to accomplish God's ends.
On this, the central question, Plantinga gets it exactly right. Contrary to some contemporary theistic evolutionists, he understands that an event can't be both guided and unguided, both purposeful and purposeless. Far too many discussions of "God and evolution" appeal to God's mystery or his transcendence or his majesty or the fact that he's "not a Cosmic Tinkerer," to disguise a contradiction. Plantinga doesn't talk about "horizontal" versus "vertical" causality (as physicist Stephen Barr does). He doesn't cite St. Thomas' references to "contingency" and "chance," which had different meanings for Thomas than they have in the modern Darwinian context. And he doesn't make reconciliation easy by just stipulating a teleological definition of "random." He does discuss the possibility that an event might appear unguided to us but still be guided by God. There's no contradiction in that case because the event isn't really unguided. Looking unguided and being unguided are two different properties.
At the same time, he wants to show that there's nothing in theistic religion that conflicts with "science." This goal is nowhere more difficult than when he deals with the reigning theory of biological evolution, depending as it does on the Darwinian process of natural selection and "random" mutations. As a result, Plantinga must find a "scientifically reputable" definition (my phrase) of the word "random." This will be a definition that doesn't assume that the history of life either has or has not been guided. Natural science, we're told, is supposed to be empirical and not beg big metaphysical questions. If that's true, then we need a sense of the word that is metaphysically neutral. Plantinga finds just such definitions offered by Ernst Mayr and philosopher of biology Elliott Sober.
"When it is said that mutation or variation is random," Mayr explains, "the statement simply means that there is no correlation between the production of new genotypes and the adaptational need of an organism in a given environment."1 Sober defines "random" even more carefully: "There is no physical mechanism (either inside organisms or outside of them) that detects which mutations would be beneficial and causes those mutations to occur."2 Mutations' "being random in that sense," Plantinga notes, "is clearly compatible with their being caused by God" (p. 13).
Certainly, given theism, it's logically possible that an event such as a genetic mutation could be guided directly by God and independently of any physical mechanism. As a result, Plantinga can say that the Christian view "that God intended to create creatures of a certain kind" is "consistent with Darwinism, the view that the diversity of life has come to be by way of natural selection winnowing random genetic mutations" (p. 11). Note that he's defined Darwinism using Sober's, um, sober definition of "random."
Plantinga's logical point stands. Unfortunately, practically no one restricts the meaning of the word "random" in this way, and, a fortiori, few if any see Darwinism as limited to such a narrow definition. There are really three related terms at issue here: "random," "Darwinism," and the "scientific theory of evolution." In fact, even if all Darwinists adhered to Sober's precise definition, most would assume that Sober is offering a distinction without a difference, since physical mechanisms are the only mechanisms that exist.
Plantinga recognizes that it's "not entirely easy to say" what "contemporary evolutionary science claims" (p. 15). And yet in describing Darwinism he says: "If these mutations are random, aren't they just a matter of chance? But randomness, as construed by contemporary biologists, doesn't have that implication." This implies that contemporary biologists do have some unanimous sense of "random" to which they adhere, and that there is an official definition of the theory. But Plantinga has merely given two very narrow definitions of the word "random" in evolutionary theory by one scientist and one philosopher; he hasn't shown that these definitions are representative.
For Darwin and most Darwinists, in fact, random doesn't just mean uncorrelated to a physical mechanism that works in favor of organisms. Random mutations have some or another cause, to be sure, but the cause, in the Darwinian view, is blind, unguided, and purposeless. Unlike the meter, for example, which is officially defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum in 1?299,792,458 of a second, there is no standard definition of Darwinian Theory. So we are left with the intentions of Darwin and those who follow him, and, to some extent, the ordinary meanings of the words they use.
What the Dictionary Says
And given ordinary English usage, Darwinists are quite right to use the word in that sense. Here's how Merriam Webster defines the adjectival form of the word:
1 a : lacking a definite plan, purpose, or pattern
Even the statistical meaning of the word in Merriam Webster has to do, not just with a lack of correlation, but with having an equal probability of success:
2 a : relating to, having, or being elements or events with definite probability of occurrence ‹random processes›
b : being or relating to a set or to an element of a set each of whose elements has equal probability of occurrence ‹a random sample›; also : characterized by procedures designed to obtain such sets or elements ‹random sampling›
When used as a noun, Webster's gives fewer options:
: a haphazard course
-- at random
: without definite aim, direction, rule, or method ‹subjects chosen at random›
I checked five other English dictionaries. They say more or less the same thing. It's no wonder, then, that when Darwinists use the word "random," they mean, and are rightly understood to mean, purposeless and unguided, even when they don't use those additional adjectives. This is not the result of confusion. It's the result of Darwinists using the standard meaning of the word. Besides, it's their theory, so they have the privilege of defining it however they see fit. Our task is to evaluate it based on reason and evidence.
You don't evaluate an argument of philosophical significance by citing the dictionary, of course. My point is to make it clear that using the word "random" in a highly circumscribed, metaphysically neutral way and then importing that to "Darwinism" is largely a private game. Clearly neither Darwin nor his followers have chosen to play the game by the same rules.
Darwinists Normally Intend to Offer an Alternative to Real Teleology
Even when they do not explicitly deny the possibility of purpose and design, Darwinists intend to make teleological explanations in biology superfluous. Darwin, unlike some earlier materialists who were content to appeal to blind chance, wanted to accommodate the appearance of purpose and teleology in the biological world. "Chance" determines which variations arise (to speak commonly though somewhat paradoxically), but not which variations are selected and perpetuated. This has led some scholars to describe Darwin's theory as itself teleological.3 But this is sloppy speaking, since it blurs the whole point of Darwin's proposal. He sought to provide an explanation for the appearance of purpose, but without recourse to real purpose.
Darwinists have followed in this tradition. They claim that random mutations are sifted by natural selection, and this blind and purposeless process as a whole gives rise to things that look designed, but aren't. They don't mean that natural selection and random variation are just a small part of the story. They intend for the Darwinian mechanism to provide a more or less sufficient causal explanation of the feature in question, though they often include other secondary physical factors alongside natural selection. The total set of blind physical causes is intended to provide the complete explanation of the feature. And that intention is incompatible with God guiding the mutations.
Now that I think of it, even Sober's highly restrained definition of "random" needs to be filled out to make selection-and-mutation clearly compatible with purposeful guidance and to rule out the a-teleological intentions of Darwinian theorists. The process needs to be defined in something like the following way:
When we say that an adaptation is the result of natural selection and "random" genetic mutations, we mean: (1) There is no physical mechanism (either inside organisms or outside of them) that detects which mutations would be beneficial and causes those mutations to occur, and (2) there is no implication that natural selection and random mutation are complete or causally adequate explanations of adaptive complexity. (3) There is no implication that other, non-physical causes are not also required to explain adaptations and other, empirically manifest features of organisms.
Now we have a definition of Darwin's mechanism that is unambiguously compatible not just with intelligent design, but with Christian theism. We also have a definition that no one has ever used, until now.
A Denial of Real Teleology is the Essence of Darwinism
Plantinga says that "if we think of the Darwinian picture as including the idea that the process of evolution is unguided, then of course that picture is completely at odds with providentialist religion [which holds that everything that happens is intended or permitted by God]. As we've seen, however, current evolutionary science doesn't include the thought that evolution is unguided; it quite properly refrains from commenting on the metaphysical or theological issue" (p. 55). And then he defines "Darwinism" in such a way that it does not "seem to cut against providentialist religion" (p. 55).
This is a perplexing claim, especially since Plantinga cites in a footnote on the previous page Casey Luskin's article in God and Evolution. Luskin demonstrates that leading biology textbooks over and over and over and over again explain biological evolution in just the way Plantinga claims "current evolutionary science" does not. In fact, as the editor of God and Evolution, I asked Luskin to remove many of the examples he provided in the first draft of his chapter. He had provided far more examples than were necessary to prove the point. Do all these leading biology textbooks fail to teach "current evolutionary science"? Not likely. Thomas Kuhn rightly referred to textbooks as "pedagogical vehicles for the perpetuation of normal science." Normal science, for Kuhn, doesn't involve cutting edge discoveries that threaten to overturn the reigning scientific paradigm, but is rather the paradigm itself.
The denial of design and teleology in biology is an essential part of Darwinism and, unfortunately, it is how the modern theory of biological evolution is taught, explained, and understood by the vast majority of its champions and critics.
Of course, there were some who tried early on to reconcile Darwin's theory with teleology, but they mistook Darwin's intention in doing so. Asa Gray is the most prominent example. He sought to reconcile Darwin's theory with natural theology, and urged Darwin to allow that God oversaw which variations would occur and when. Darwin famously rebuked -- even mocked -- Gray for making this suggestion, which Darwin insisted was no part of his theory.4
Similarly, Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of natural selection who later broke with Darwin, wrote a book entitled Darwinism in 1889. He continued to consider himself a "Darwinist" even after he rejected Darwin's materialistic applications to man, sentience, and the origin of life. He had a personal relationship with Darwin and so was more inclined to criticize Darwin's surrogates, such as Haeckel and Huxley -- a tradition that continues to the present. When Herbert Spencer received his complimentary copy of Darwinism, however, he wrote to Wallace, "I regret that you have used the title 'Darwinism,' for notwithstanding your qualification of its meaning you will, by using it, tend greatly to confirm the erroneous conception almost universally current."5 The erroneous conception was that Darwinism and Wallace's teleological or intelligent evolution were compatible. Spencer understood that they were not.
In his famous article "Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought" in Scientific American (July 2000), Ernst Mayr dropped the modest pretense we saw above in his definition of "random," and explained that Darwinism offers "a secular view of life." Here are a couple of his salient points:
Darwinism rejects all supernatural phenomena and causations. The theory of evolution by natural selection explains the adaptedness and diversity of the world solely materialistically. It no longer requires God as creator or designer (although one is certainly still free to believe in God even if one accepts evolution).
Darwin's theory of natural selection made any invocation of teleology unnecessary.
Darwinism rejects all supernatural phenomena and causations. Since Mayr was one of the preeminent leaders of the Darwinian tribe in the twentieth century, I'm inclined to trust that he knows what Darwinism is. Notice his concession, characteristic of all but the most fanatical Darwinists, that one can believe in God and evolution. But he's not talking about evolution that is really and apparently guided by God. He's saying that you're free to believe in a God back there behind the scenes not acting in any tangible way or explaining anything we find in the world.
I'll resist the temptation to offer similar quotes from Darwin's notebooks, which make it clear how deeply materialistic (and not just deistic) his views were, and from leading Darwinists and official scientific organizations, who confirm what we've already seen.6
Take the Flagellum, For Example
Darwinism is the attempt to substitute a blind, material process for real teleology. Take the debate over the famous bacterial flagellum. Darwinists assume that given the time available, unguided natural selection and mutations can produce it, perhaps by way of several functional precursors. They've spent the last fifteen years since Mike Behe wrote Darwin's Black Box trying to come up with such scenarios to explain it in this way. Now let's say that researchers spend years finding the pathway by which this would need to happen, and they determine that getting a working flagellum from some flagellum-free species of bacteria requires 153 independent mutations to happen simultaneously. None of them individually and no subset provides the bacterium a survival advantage, so an unguided Darwinian process, which lacks the foresight to select that functional flagellum and take the steps necessary to attain it, would almost certainly never accomplish the goal.
However, (assuming theism) God could act directly, rather than through an additional physical process, to make sure these mutations take place when they need to, namely, simultaneously. Let's say that is what happened. So the best, correct and complete causal explanation for the origin of the flagellum would be that God directly guided 153 mutations (without using another physical mechanism) so that the bacteria would enjoy functioning flagella. This wouldn't just be intelligent design, but divine design. And given the tightly specified complexity of a flagellum -- the function in this case is the specification -- it would be empirically detectible, even obvious, design: real design, real teleology, not an unguided Darwinian process.
The alternative to intelligent design would be an unimaginably improbable run of chance. Now, would any Darwinist think this is a perfectly acceptable outcome for his theory? Chance here is no explanation at all, yet surely no Darwinist would be happy to appeal to purposefully guided mutations in order to explain this (or any) biological system. No Darwinist would say, "No problem. The official Darwinian definition of 'random' allows for the possibility that God (or someone) is guiding outcomes without using any physical mechanism." On the contrary, this is exactly the dilemma the Darwinist hopes to avoid.
A cautionary note: This discussion, like so many discussions involving God and evolution, risks giving the impression that there is good evidence that genetic mutations can build new biological systems, and we're just considering whether God could have guided them. There is no such evidence. We must avoid the temptation to move straight to reconciling Darwinian claims to theology without first evaluating the evidence for Darwinian claims.
In fact, based on the empirical evidence, I'm deeply skeptical that any series of genetic mutations alone, even if they are guided, can produce anything profoundly new (such as a new animal form or body plan), because there's far more going on in biology upstream from the DNA molecule. Just as you can't change the floor plan of a building by changing the color of the paint on the outside wall, you probably can't produce fundamentally new organisms with point mutations in DNA. Neo-Darwinism assumes that genetic mutations have all sorts of wonder-working powers since the theory needs a source of innovation of natural selection to preserve; but this is an assumption, not a dispassionate inference from empirical evidence.
For God to produce new biological forms, I suspect he would need to do much more than just coordinate genetic mutations. He would need to change things upstream, in the realm of epigenetic programming (to settle for a vague term). He would, to use a traditional term, need to provide a different form. If that's what has happened in the history of life, and organisms are, to some extent at least, the outcome of such divine activity operating outside of and in concert with material causes (of which he is also the source, given theism), then clearly the currently reigning theory of biological evolution would be incorrect.
Let's assume for a moment, however, that "random" in Darwinian evolution means only that an event is uncorrelated with any physical mechanism operating for the benefit of an organism. Given this definition, "Darwinism" and "current evolutionary science" would be compatible not just with intelligent design but with special creation, say, with God turning a small lizard into a flying bird in one generation by changing things upstream from the DNA and leaving evidence of his activity behind, as long as he didn't use a physical mechanism. If so, then even the most ardent special creationist can accept Darwinism and "current evolutionary science," and the most ardent Darwinist can also be a special creationist. This is implausible in the extreme, since special creationism was the explicit target of Darwin's critique in both the Origin and subsequent writings. No Darwin scholar would dispute this. So clearly we've taken a wrong turn somewhere.
Two Competing Visions of Science
Plantinga wants to show that not just "evolution" in the sense of common ancestry is logically compatible with Christian theism, and not just that selection and variation play some role in the process. He wants to show that Christian theism and Darwinism are compatible as well. This is understandable, since his goal is to show that "science" and theistic religion are compatible, and the standard understanding of biological evolution among scientists is Darwinian.7 Unfortunately, the reality is more complicated than that.
In historical biology at least, we're not just dealing with a metaphysically neutral "current science" and a pesky little metaphysical parasite that some folks mistake for the theory. We are dealing with two competing visions of the scientific enterprise, which are sown closely together. Christian theism is compatible with, and helped give rise to, the older, proper understanding of science. Natural science in its proper sense is the search for the truth about the natural world -- including true causal explanations -- based on hypothesis testing, systematic observation, and the like, no holds barred. Science, from scientia, means knowledge, so this is as it should be. As a result, any properly scientific theory of biological evolution will not decide ahead of time what types of evidence will be found, and what kinds of causal explanations will be permitted to explain that evidence. It will be open to all the evidence for the purpose of discovering the truth. Plantinga only needs to show that Christian theism is compatible with this proper understanding of science, and he does so successfully.
Unfortunately, in the nineteenth century, another, competing definition of science emerged. This is natural science as applied naturalism. According to this view, the proper scientific explanation is the best naturalistic explanation. (In a sense, this was the ratification of Bacon and Descartes' earlier call to purge "formal" and "final" causes from what we now call natural science, a call that had been imperfectly implemented prior to Darwin.) This view became especially prominent in biology with the emergence of Darwinism, which explicitly (and uncharacteristically for theories in natural science) sought to replace and exclude teleological explanations. Darwin's argument in the Origin, unlike most scientific theories, employed the premise "God wouldn't do things this way" throughout. This is why we are told that science must employ, not methodological neutralism, but methodological naturalism. In biology, that supposed methodological rule is cover for an intrinsically naturalistic theory. Christian theism is incompatible with science understood as applied naturalism, and a fortiori, it is incompatible with Darwinism, which is the most explicit form of this view of science.8
Equivocation between these two views of science serves the purposes of naturalists. When criticized by a smart philosopher or testy school board member for larding their theory with more metaphysical weight than is appropriate in a scientific theory, they can appeal to subtle definitions of words such as the definition of "random" offered by Elliott Sober. They can say that science is metaphysically neutral and not committed to naturalism. It is then accorded the respect enjoyed by science understood as a systematic search for the truth about the natural world. As soon as the philosophers and school boards go back to doing whatever they do, however, Darwinists drop the pretense and return to treating science as applied naturalism and denounce any suggestions of purpose or design in biology as anti-science, creationism, and all the rest.
Because of this rampant equivocation in the literature, it's very important to speak clearly on these matters and to avoid using non-representative definitions of words. We court trouble unless we use words such as "Darwinism" and "random" in their widely understood meanings. Moreover, the definitions should match the actual views of Darwin and those who follow him. The highly specialized definition of "random," for instance, which is compatible with God's guidance, just is not the Darwinian meaning of the word -- despite the fact that some Darwinian philosophers and biologists, in moments of caution or strategic cleverness -- have offered such a definition.
"Science"
The purpose of Plantinga's book is to show the compatibility between "science" and theistic religion. But there's a bit of an ambiguity running through Plantinga's references to "science," in part because the word itself is ambiguous. In most cases, context resolves the ambiguity. Still, at times, "science" seems to refer to the institution of natural science. Other times it seems to refer to a scientific theory, such as Neo-Darwinism. And at other times, it seems to refer to the relevant empirical evidence within a subdiscipline of science. I think what Plantinga wants to say (and certainly can say) is that theistic religion is consistent with the founding spirit of science, with the institution of science properly understood, with well-established scientific theories, and with the empirical evidence of science, including the evidence of biology. He can certainly say that no one is justified in claiming that the evidence shows that the origin and history of life is the result of a blind, unguided process. He can say all that without showing that Christian theism and "Darwinism" are compatible.
What to say about Darwinism? Maybe we should say that the naturalistic definition of evolutionary theory is not really science or that it is counterfeit science. Perhaps we should say the same thing about Darwinism. Perhaps Darwinism is similar to Marxism and Freudianism. It offers some interesting but minor insights into a domain of reality, but Darwinists have profoundly oversold their idea and have ended up distorting the empirical evidence in order to make it fit the theory. If so, perhaps we should say Darwinism is a scientific theory -- a theory within the natural sciences -- but not a good or well-established one.
Still, none of this changes the fact that Darwinism is the reigning view in modern biology. We can speak of guided and unguided evolution, but to speak of unguided Darwinism is a redundancy. We severely understate the problem if we treat the naturalistic part as just a superficial metaphysical parasite on an otherwise respectable and metaphysically neutral theory of evolution. It never was a parasite; it has been the beating heart of Darwinism since its inception.
Notes:
(1) In Mayr, Towards a new Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 98. I am not persuaded that Mayr's definition avoids the implication of a-teleology as Sober's does. Mayr's definition of "random" is inconsistent with God (for instance) directly causing genotypic changes to correlate with the adaptive needs of an organism apart from a physical mechanism. Although it doesn't strictly prevent God from acting, it circumscribes what he can do. If he acts for the adaptive needs of an organism, he must hide the fact that he is doing so. Sober's definition avoids this implication, so I go with his definition in the discussion.
(2) Sober, "Evolution Without Metaphysics?" in J. Kvanvig (ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, vol. 3.
(3) For example, James Lennox, "Darwin was a Teleologist," Biology and Philosophy 8 (1993): pp. 409-421.
(4) In Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 6th ed. Revised (London: John Murray,1872), p. 234; and Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, 2 vols., 2nd ed., revised (New York: Appleton, 1883,) vol. 2, pp. 427-428. (1st ed. 1868). John Beatty treats the incident in detail in "Chance Variation: Darwin on Orchids," Philosophy of Science 73, no. 5 (2006): pp. 629-641.
(5) Herbert Spencer to A. R. Wallace, May 18, 1889, in James Marchant, Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1916), p. 301. Thanks to Michael Flannery for providing me with this reference and insight.
(6) For years, the National Association of Biology Teachers offered this definition of biological evolution: "[E]volution is understood to be the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection." Under criticism from Alvin Plantinga and Huston Smith (a prominent religion scholar), the NABT dropped the words "unguided, unplanned," but the subsequent debate and discussion made it clear that that is still what they meant when talking about random variation and natural selection. See E.C. Scott (2008) "Science and Religion, Methodology and Humanism," at: http://ncse.com/ religion/science-religion-methodology-humanism.
(7) Some claim that "Darwinism" is a pejorative term made up by creationists. On the contrary, the term is frequently used to refer to the currently reigning theory of biological evolution. It is often called the "modern synthesis" of Darwin's original theory with genetics. Hence the term "Neo-Darwinism." For a recent example, see David J. Depew and Bruce H. Weber, "The Fate of Darwinism: Evolution After the Modern Synthesis," Biological Theory 6 (2011): pp. 89-102.
(8) Perhaps it's possible that natural science could be pursued along metaphysically neutral lines, conforming to what Plantinga has elsewhere called "Duhemian science." This "methodological neutralism," however, would restrict all sorts of questions from the domain of science that scientists constantly ask. Most historical and origins science would probably disqualify as science if we insisted on this approach. The more realistic approach, I think, is simply to accept that natural science is a complicated and diverse enterprise and that it sometimes bears on larger metaphysical questions. That's okay, as long as debatable metaphysical assumptions don't trump the empirical evidence, or become a justification for excluding evidence and arguments that have different metaphysical implications. In any case, it is methodological naturalism that often hides metaphysical naturalism, not methodological neutralism, with which we have to deal.
Jay W. Richards
This is the third in a series of reviews of Alvin Plantinga's important new book, Where the Conflict Really Lies. For parts one and two, see here and here. For Plantinga's reply, see here.
One of the more difficult parts of Plantinga's book is his discussion of "randomness" in Darwinian evolution, and the related questions of "Darwinism" and the "scientific theory of evolution." In fact, the discussion is easily misinterpreted and potentially confusing, so let's consider it at length.
Plantinga offers several important clarifications on these subjects. Unlike so many who occupy the overlapping space of science and religion, he recognizes that the word "evolution" can refer to many things, and he's careful not to hide his own views in the ambiguity. "Evolution" can refer simply to change over time, or to the idea that the universe and earth are billions of years old. It can refer to the common ancestry of life. It can even refer, confusingly, to the chemical origin of life, which wasn't part of Darwin's theory. It can also refer to common descent, the idea that all living things are descended from one or a few common ancestors. And it can refer to that idea plus a mechanism for change. In the case of Darwinism, the mechanism is natural selection sifting the random variations in reproducing populations -- or what Darwin often called "chance" variations. In the modern form of the theory -- Neo-Darwinism -- new variations are identified with mutations in DNA.
Plantinga argues, plausibly, that most of these senses of "evolution" present no logical challenge to Christian theism. In Darwinism, however, many perceive a conflict. Isn't the whole point of the theory to provide a process or mechanism that can overcome the prohibitive barriers of mere chance and can mimic the work of an intelligent agent? When most biologists claim that adaptive complexity is largely the result of natural selection and random genetic mutations, don't they intend to provide an alternative to design? Don't they claim that selection and mutation, considered together as a single process, are unguided?
Despite appearances to the contrary, Plantinga thinks these questions are based on misunderstanding. He sees denial of purpose not as a part of Darwinism or the scientific theory of evolution, but as merely a metaphysical or philosophical add-on. There's "Darwinism," and then there's "unguided Darwinism." In his view, the scientific theory, which we can call Darwinism, affirms natural selection and random genetic mutations as the engine of adaptation, but makes no claims about purpose or the lack thereof in the history of life.
Getting the Main Issue Right
The word "random" (and its near synonym "chance") is a notorious source of mischief in science and religion discussions, so it's important to follow Plantinga's argument closely. Leaving terminological difficulties to the side for a moment, Plantinga must be commended for getting to the heart of the question over the compatibility of theism and evolutionary theory and for coming down on the right side: namely, purpose or guidance. Christian theism is committed to the idea that God intends certain things to come out a certain way in history. He intended human beings, for instance. He knew you before he knit you together in your mother's womb. So theism will be incompatible with any view, including any evolutionary theory, that denies that life and its history were purposively guided to accomplish God's ends.
On this, the central question, Plantinga gets it exactly right. Contrary to some contemporary theistic evolutionists, he understands that an event can't be both guided and unguided, both purposeful and purposeless. Far too many discussions of "God and evolution" appeal to God's mystery or his transcendence or his majesty or the fact that he's "not a Cosmic Tinkerer," to disguise a contradiction. Plantinga doesn't talk about "horizontal" versus "vertical" causality (as physicist Stephen Barr does). He doesn't cite St. Thomas' references to "contingency" and "chance," which had different meanings for Thomas than they have in the modern Darwinian context. And he doesn't make reconciliation easy by just stipulating a teleological definition of "random." He does discuss the possibility that an event might appear unguided to us but still be guided by God. There's no contradiction in that case because the event isn't really unguided. Looking unguided and being unguided are two different properties.
At the same time, he wants to show that there's nothing in theistic religion that conflicts with "science." This goal is nowhere more difficult than when he deals with the reigning theory of biological evolution, depending as it does on the Darwinian process of natural selection and "random" mutations. As a result, Plantinga must find a "scientifically reputable" definition (my phrase) of the word "random." This will be a definition that doesn't assume that the history of life either has or has not been guided. Natural science, we're told, is supposed to be empirical and not beg big metaphysical questions. If that's true, then we need a sense of the word that is metaphysically neutral. Plantinga finds just such definitions offered by Ernst Mayr and philosopher of biology Elliott Sober.
"When it is said that mutation or variation is random," Mayr explains, "the statement simply means that there is no correlation between the production of new genotypes and the adaptational need of an organism in a given environment."1 Sober defines "random" even more carefully: "There is no physical mechanism (either inside organisms or outside of them) that detects which mutations would be beneficial and causes those mutations to occur."2 Mutations' "being random in that sense," Plantinga notes, "is clearly compatible with their being caused by God" (p. 13).
Certainly, given theism, it's logically possible that an event such as a genetic mutation could be guided directly by God and independently of any physical mechanism. As a result, Plantinga can say that the Christian view "that God intended to create creatures of a certain kind" is "consistent with Darwinism, the view that the diversity of life has come to be by way of natural selection winnowing random genetic mutations" (p. 11). Note that he's defined Darwinism using Sober's, um, sober definition of "random."
Plantinga's logical point stands. Unfortunately, practically no one restricts the meaning of the word "random" in this way, and, a fortiori, few if any see Darwinism as limited to such a narrow definition. There are really three related terms at issue here: "random," "Darwinism," and the "scientific theory of evolution." In fact, even if all Darwinists adhered to Sober's precise definition, most would assume that Sober is offering a distinction without a difference, since physical mechanisms are the only mechanisms that exist.
Plantinga recognizes that it's "not entirely easy to say" what "contemporary evolutionary science claims" (p. 15). And yet in describing Darwinism he says: "If these mutations are random, aren't they just a matter of chance? But randomness, as construed by contemporary biologists, doesn't have that implication." This implies that contemporary biologists do have some unanimous sense of "random" to which they adhere, and that there is an official definition of the theory. But Plantinga has merely given two very narrow definitions of the word "random" in evolutionary theory by one scientist and one philosopher; he hasn't shown that these definitions are representative.
For Darwin and most Darwinists, in fact, random doesn't just mean uncorrelated to a physical mechanism that works in favor of organisms. Random mutations have some or another cause, to be sure, but the cause, in the Darwinian view, is blind, unguided, and purposeless. Unlike the meter, for example, which is officially defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum in 1?299,792,458 of a second, there is no standard definition of Darwinian Theory. So we are left with the intentions of Darwin and those who follow him, and, to some extent, the ordinary meanings of the words they use.
What the Dictionary Says
And given ordinary English usage, Darwinists are quite right to use the word in that sense. Here's how Merriam Webster defines the adjectival form of the word:
1 a : lacking a definite plan, purpose, or pattern
Even the statistical meaning of the word in Merriam Webster has to do, not just with a lack of correlation, but with having an equal probability of success:
2 a : relating to, having, or being elements or events with definite probability of occurrence ‹random processes›
b : being or relating to a set or to an element of a set each of whose elements has equal probability of occurrence ‹a random sample›; also : characterized by procedures designed to obtain such sets or elements ‹random sampling›
When used as a noun, Webster's gives fewer options:
: a haphazard course
-- at random
: without definite aim, direction, rule, or method ‹subjects chosen at random›
I checked five other English dictionaries. They say more or less the same thing. It's no wonder, then, that when Darwinists use the word "random," they mean, and are rightly understood to mean, purposeless and unguided, even when they don't use those additional adjectives. This is not the result of confusion. It's the result of Darwinists using the standard meaning of the word. Besides, it's their theory, so they have the privilege of defining it however they see fit. Our task is to evaluate it based on reason and evidence.
You don't evaluate an argument of philosophical significance by citing the dictionary, of course. My point is to make it clear that using the word "random" in a highly circumscribed, metaphysically neutral way and then importing that to "Darwinism" is largely a private game. Clearly neither Darwin nor his followers have chosen to play the game by the same rules.
Darwinists Normally Intend to Offer an Alternative to Real Teleology
Even when they do not explicitly deny the possibility of purpose and design, Darwinists intend to make teleological explanations in biology superfluous. Darwin, unlike some earlier materialists who were content to appeal to blind chance, wanted to accommodate the appearance of purpose and teleology in the biological world. "Chance" determines which variations arise (to speak commonly though somewhat paradoxically), but not which variations are selected and perpetuated. This has led some scholars to describe Darwin's theory as itself teleological.3 But this is sloppy speaking, since it blurs the whole point of Darwin's proposal. He sought to provide an explanation for the appearance of purpose, but without recourse to real purpose.
Darwinists have followed in this tradition. They claim that random mutations are sifted by natural selection, and this blind and purposeless process as a whole gives rise to things that look designed, but aren't. They don't mean that natural selection and random variation are just a small part of the story. They intend for the Darwinian mechanism to provide a more or less sufficient causal explanation of the feature in question, though they often include other secondary physical factors alongside natural selection. The total set of blind physical causes is intended to provide the complete explanation of the feature. And that intention is incompatible with God guiding the mutations.
Now that I think of it, even Sober's highly restrained definition of "random" needs to be filled out to make selection-and-mutation clearly compatible with purposeful guidance and to rule out the a-teleological intentions of Darwinian theorists. The process needs to be defined in something like the following way:
When we say that an adaptation is the result of natural selection and "random" genetic mutations, we mean: (1) There is no physical mechanism (either inside organisms or outside of them) that detects which mutations would be beneficial and causes those mutations to occur, and (2) there is no implication that natural selection and random mutation are complete or causally adequate explanations of adaptive complexity. (3) There is no implication that other, non-physical causes are not also required to explain adaptations and other, empirically manifest features of organisms.
Now we have a definition of Darwin's mechanism that is unambiguously compatible not just with intelligent design, but with Christian theism. We also have a definition that no one has ever used, until now.
A Denial of Real Teleology is the Essence of Darwinism
Plantinga says that "if we think of the Darwinian picture as including the idea that the process of evolution is unguided, then of course that picture is completely at odds with providentialist religion [which holds that everything that happens is intended or permitted by God]. As we've seen, however, current evolutionary science doesn't include the thought that evolution is unguided; it quite properly refrains from commenting on the metaphysical or theological issue" (p. 55). And then he defines "Darwinism" in such a way that it does not "seem to cut against providentialist religion" (p. 55).
This is a perplexing claim, especially since Plantinga cites in a footnote on the previous page Casey Luskin's article in God and Evolution. Luskin demonstrates that leading biology textbooks over and over and over and over again explain biological evolution in just the way Plantinga claims "current evolutionary science" does not. In fact, as the editor of God and Evolution, I asked Luskin to remove many of the examples he provided in the first draft of his chapter. He had provided far more examples than were necessary to prove the point. Do all these leading biology textbooks fail to teach "current evolutionary science"? Not likely. Thomas Kuhn rightly referred to textbooks as "pedagogical vehicles for the perpetuation of normal science." Normal science, for Kuhn, doesn't involve cutting edge discoveries that threaten to overturn the reigning scientific paradigm, but is rather the paradigm itself.
The denial of design and teleology in biology is an essential part of Darwinism and, unfortunately, it is how the modern theory of biological evolution is taught, explained, and understood by the vast majority of its champions and critics.
Of course, there were some who tried early on to reconcile Darwin's theory with teleology, but they mistook Darwin's intention in doing so. Asa Gray is the most prominent example. He sought to reconcile Darwin's theory with natural theology, and urged Darwin to allow that God oversaw which variations would occur and when. Darwin famously rebuked -- even mocked -- Gray for making this suggestion, which Darwin insisted was no part of his theory.4
Similarly, Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of natural selection who later broke with Darwin, wrote a book entitled Darwinism in 1889. He continued to consider himself a "Darwinist" even after he rejected Darwin's materialistic applications to man, sentience, and the origin of life. He had a personal relationship with Darwin and so was more inclined to criticize Darwin's surrogates, such as Haeckel and Huxley -- a tradition that continues to the present. When Herbert Spencer received his complimentary copy of Darwinism, however, he wrote to Wallace, "I regret that you have used the title 'Darwinism,' for notwithstanding your qualification of its meaning you will, by using it, tend greatly to confirm the erroneous conception almost universally current."5 The erroneous conception was that Darwinism and Wallace's teleological or intelligent evolution were compatible. Spencer understood that they were not.
In his famous article "Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought" in Scientific American (July 2000), Ernst Mayr dropped the modest pretense we saw above in his definition of "random," and explained that Darwinism offers "a secular view of life." Here are a couple of his salient points:
Darwinism rejects all supernatural phenomena and causations. The theory of evolution by natural selection explains the adaptedness and diversity of the world solely materialistically. It no longer requires God as creator or designer (although one is certainly still free to believe in God even if one accepts evolution).
Darwin's theory of natural selection made any invocation of teleology unnecessary.
Darwinism rejects all supernatural phenomena and causations. Since Mayr was one of the preeminent leaders of the Darwinian tribe in the twentieth century, I'm inclined to trust that he knows what Darwinism is. Notice his concession, characteristic of all but the most fanatical Darwinists, that one can believe in God and evolution. But he's not talking about evolution that is really and apparently guided by God. He's saying that you're free to believe in a God back there behind the scenes not acting in any tangible way or explaining anything we find in the world.
I'll resist the temptation to offer similar quotes from Darwin's notebooks, which make it clear how deeply materialistic (and not just deistic) his views were, and from leading Darwinists and official scientific organizations, who confirm what we've already seen.6
Take the Flagellum, For Example
Darwinism is the attempt to substitute a blind, material process for real teleology. Take the debate over the famous bacterial flagellum. Darwinists assume that given the time available, unguided natural selection and mutations can produce it, perhaps by way of several functional precursors. They've spent the last fifteen years since Mike Behe wrote Darwin's Black Box trying to come up with such scenarios to explain it in this way. Now let's say that researchers spend years finding the pathway by which this would need to happen, and they determine that getting a working flagellum from some flagellum-free species of bacteria requires 153 independent mutations to happen simultaneously. None of them individually and no subset provides the bacterium a survival advantage, so an unguided Darwinian process, which lacks the foresight to select that functional flagellum and take the steps necessary to attain it, would almost certainly never accomplish the goal.
However, (assuming theism) God could act directly, rather than through an additional physical process, to make sure these mutations take place when they need to, namely, simultaneously. Let's say that is what happened. So the best, correct and complete causal explanation for the origin of the flagellum would be that God directly guided 153 mutations (without using another physical mechanism) so that the bacteria would enjoy functioning flagella. This wouldn't just be intelligent design, but divine design. And given the tightly specified complexity of a flagellum -- the function in this case is the specification -- it would be empirically detectible, even obvious, design: real design, real teleology, not an unguided Darwinian process.
The alternative to intelligent design would be an unimaginably improbable run of chance. Now, would any Darwinist think this is a perfectly acceptable outcome for his theory? Chance here is no explanation at all, yet surely no Darwinist would be happy to appeal to purposefully guided mutations in order to explain this (or any) biological system. No Darwinist would say, "No problem. The official Darwinian definition of 'random' allows for the possibility that God (or someone) is guiding outcomes without using any physical mechanism." On the contrary, this is exactly the dilemma the Darwinist hopes to avoid.
A cautionary note: This discussion, like so many discussions involving God and evolution, risks giving the impression that there is good evidence that genetic mutations can build new biological systems, and we're just considering whether God could have guided them. There is no such evidence. We must avoid the temptation to move straight to reconciling Darwinian claims to theology without first evaluating the evidence for Darwinian claims.
In fact, based on the empirical evidence, I'm deeply skeptical that any series of genetic mutations alone, even if they are guided, can produce anything profoundly new (such as a new animal form or body plan), because there's far more going on in biology upstream from the DNA molecule. Just as you can't change the floor plan of a building by changing the color of the paint on the outside wall, you probably can't produce fundamentally new organisms with point mutations in DNA. Neo-Darwinism assumes that genetic mutations have all sorts of wonder-working powers since the theory needs a source of innovation of natural selection to preserve; but this is an assumption, not a dispassionate inference from empirical evidence.
For God to produce new biological forms, I suspect he would need to do much more than just coordinate genetic mutations. He would need to change things upstream, in the realm of epigenetic programming (to settle for a vague term). He would, to use a traditional term, need to provide a different form. If that's what has happened in the history of life, and organisms are, to some extent at least, the outcome of such divine activity operating outside of and in concert with material causes (of which he is also the source, given theism), then clearly the currently reigning theory of biological evolution would be incorrect.
Let's assume for a moment, however, that "random" in Darwinian evolution means only that an event is uncorrelated with any physical mechanism operating for the benefit of an organism. Given this definition, "Darwinism" and "current evolutionary science" would be compatible not just with intelligent design but with special creation, say, with God turning a small lizard into a flying bird in one generation by changing things upstream from the DNA and leaving evidence of his activity behind, as long as he didn't use a physical mechanism. If so, then even the most ardent special creationist can accept Darwinism and "current evolutionary science," and the most ardent Darwinist can also be a special creationist. This is implausible in the extreme, since special creationism was the explicit target of Darwin's critique in both the Origin and subsequent writings. No Darwin scholar would dispute this. So clearly we've taken a wrong turn somewhere.
Two Competing Visions of Science
Plantinga wants to show that not just "evolution" in the sense of common ancestry is logically compatible with Christian theism, and not just that selection and variation play some role in the process. He wants to show that Christian theism and Darwinism are compatible as well. This is understandable, since his goal is to show that "science" and theistic religion are compatible, and the standard understanding of biological evolution among scientists is Darwinian.7 Unfortunately, the reality is more complicated than that.
In historical biology at least, we're not just dealing with a metaphysically neutral "current science" and a pesky little metaphysical parasite that some folks mistake for the theory. We are dealing with two competing visions of the scientific enterprise, which are sown closely together. Christian theism is compatible with, and helped give rise to, the older, proper understanding of science. Natural science in its proper sense is the search for the truth about the natural world -- including true causal explanations -- based on hypothesis testing, systematic observation, and the like, no holds barred. Science, from scientia, means knowledge, so this is as it should be. As a result, any properly scientific theory of biological evolution will not decide ahead of time what types of evidence will be found, and what kinds of causal explanations will be permitted to explain that evidence. It will be open to all the evidence for the purpose of discovering the truth. Plantinga only needs to show that Christian theism is compatible with this proper understanding of science, and he does so successfully.
Unfortunately, in the nineteenth century, another, competing definition of science emerged. This is natural science as applied naturalism. According to this view, the proper scientific explanation is the best naturalistic explanation. (In a sense, this was the ratification of Bacon and Descartes' earlier call to purge "formal" and "final" causes from what we now call natural science, a call that had been imperfectly implemented prior to Darwin.) This view became especially prominent in biology with the emergence of Darwinism, which explicitly (and uncharacteristically for theories in natural science) sought to replace and exclude teleological explanations. Darwin's argument in the Origin, unlike most scientific theories, employed the premise "God wouldn't do things this way" throughout. This is why we are told that science must employ, not methodological neutralism, but methodological naturalism. In biology, that supposed methodological rule is cover for an intrinsically naturalistic theory. Christian theism is incompatible with science understood as applied naturalism, and a fortiori, it is incompatible with Darwinism, which is the most explicit form of this view of science.8
Equivocation between these two views of science serves the purposes of naturalists. When criticized by a smart philosopher or testy school board member for larding their theory with more metaphysical weight than is appropriate in a scientific theory, they can appeal to subtle definitions of words such as the definition of "random" offered by Elliott Sober. They can say that science is metaphysically neutral and not committed to naturalism. It is then accorded the respect enjoyed by science understood as a systematic search for the truth about the natural world. As soon as the philosophers and school boards go back to doing whatever they do, however, Darwinists drop the pretense and return to treating science as applied naturalism and denounce any suggestions of purpose or design in biology as anti-science, creationism, and all the rest.
Because of this rampant equivocation in the literature, it's very important to speak clearly on these matters and to avoid using non-representative definitions of words. We court trouble unless we use words such as "Darwinism" and "random" in their widely understood meanings. Moreover, the definitions should match the actual views of Darwin and those who follow him. The highly specialized definition of "random," for instance, which is compatible with God's guidance, just is not the Darwinian meaning of the word -- despite the fact that some Darwinian philosophers and biologists, in moments of caution or strategic cleverness -- have offered such a definition.
"Science"
The purpose of Plantinga's book is to show the compatibility between "science" and theistic religion. But there's a bit of an ambiguity running through Plantinga's references to "science," in part because the word itself is ambiguous. In most cases, context resolves the ambiguity. Still, at times, "science" seems to refer to the institution of natural science. Other times it seems to refer to a scientific theory, such as Neo-Darwinism. And at other times, it seems to refer to the relevant empirical evidence within a subdiscipline of science. I think what Plantinga wants to say (and certainly can say) is that theistic religion is consistent with the founding spirit of science, with the institution of science properly understood, with well-established scientific theories, and with the empirical evidence of science, including the evidence of biology. He can certainly say that no one is justified in claiming that the evidence shows that the origin and history of life is the result of a blind, unguided process. He can say all that without showing that Christian theism and "Darwinism" are compatible.
What to say about Darwinism? Maybe we should say that the naturalistic definition of evolutionary theory is not really science or that it is counterfeit science. Perhaps we should say the same thing about Darwinism. Perhaps Darwinism is similar to Marxism and Freudianism. It offers some interesting but minor insights into a domain of reality, but Darwinists have profoundly oversold their idea and have ended up distorting the empirical evidence in order to make it fit the theory. If so, perhaps we should say Darwinism is a scientific theory -- a theory within the natural sciences -- but not a good or well-established one.
Still, none of this changes the fact that Darwinism is the reigning view in modern biology. We can speak of guided and unguided evolution, but to speak of unguided Darwinism is a redundancy. We severely understate the problem if we treat the naturalistic part as just a superficial metaphysical parasite on an otherwise respectable and metaphysically neutral theory of evolution. It never was a parasite; it has been the beating heart of Darwinism since its inception.
Notes:
(1) In Mayr, Towards a new Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 98. I am not persuaded that Mayr's definition avoids the implication of a-teleology as Sober's does. Mayr's definition of "random" is inconsistent with God (for instance) directly causing genotypic changes to correlate with the adaptive needs of an organism apart from a physical mechanism. Although it doesn't strictly prevent God from acting, it circumscribes what he can do. If he acts for the adaptive needs of an organism, he must hide the fact that he is doing so. Sober's definition avoids this implication, so I go with his definition in the discussion.
(2) Sober, "Evolution Without Metaphysics?" in J. Kvanvig (ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, vol. 3.
(3) For example, James Lennox, "Darwin was a Teleologist," Biology and Philosophy 8 (1993): pp. 409-421.
(4) In Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 6th ed. Revised (London: John Murray,1872), p. 234; and Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, 2 vols., 2nd ed., revised (New York: Appleton, 1883,) vol. 2, pp. 427-428. (1st ed. 1868). John Beatty treats the incident in detail in "Chance Variation: Darwin on Orchids," Philosophy of Science 73, no. 5 (2006): pp. 629-641.
(5) Herbert Spencer to A. R. Wallace, May 18, 1889, in James Marchant, Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1916), p. 301. Thanks to Michael Flannery for providing me with this reference and insight.
(6) For years, the National Association of Biology Teachers offered this definition of biological evolution: "[E]volution is understood to be the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection." Under criticism from Alvin Plantinga and Huston Smith (a prominent religion scholar), the NABT dropped the words "unguided, unplanned," but the subsequent debate and discussion made it clear that that is still what they meant when talking about random variation and natural selection. See E.C. Scott (2008) "Science and Religion, Methodology and Humanism," at: http://ncse.com/ religion/science-religion-methodology-humanism.
(7) Some claim that "Darwinism" is a pejorative term made up by creationists. On the contrary, the term is frequently used to refer to the currently reigning theory of biological evolution. It is often called the "modern synthesis" of Darwin's original theory with genetics. Hence the term "Neo-Darwinism." For a recent example, see David J. Depew and Bruce H. Weber, "The Fate of Darwinism: Evolution After the Modern Synthesis," Biological Theory 6 (2011): pp. 89-102.
(8) Perhaps it's possible that natural science could be pursued along metaphysically neutral lines, conforming to what Plantinga has elsewhere called "Duhemian science." This "methodological neutralism," however, would restrict all sorts of questions from the domain of science that scientists constantly ask. Most historical and origins science would probably disqualify as science if we insisted on this approach. The more realistic approach, I think, is simply to accept that natural science is a complicated and diverse enterprise and that it sometimes bears on larger metaphysical questions. That's okay, as long as debatable metaphysical assumptions don't trump the empirical evidence, or become a justification for excluding evidence and arguments that have different metaphysical implications. In any case, it is methodological naturalism that often hides metaphysical naturalism, not methodological neutralism, with which we have to deal.
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