Jay W. Richards

In my previous installment, I discussed St. Thomas’s views of creation and his understanding of how God interacts with the world. The subject could easily fill a long book, of course, but I hope to have provided enough to serve adequately as background for evaluating the criticisms of ID from a few Thomists.

One such Thomist is Gonzaga University philosopher Michael Tkacz, who wrote an article criticizing ID in This Rock magazine, published by Catholic Answers, back in 2008. I read both This Rock and the Catholic Answers website frequently. Both are generally very reliable, orthodox sources of information. So the piece would never have seen the light of day if it had been called: “Why God Is Only Allowed to Act in One Way.” Instead, it’s called “Aquinas Vs. Intelligent Design.”
What I’d like to focus on here, primarily, is his presentation of the views of St. Thomas. First, a couple of caveats: I am only focusing on this single article by Tkacz, on what Tkacz says, and on what I think are its implications. I do not intend to imply anything about Tkacz’s personal views, which his short article may not represent accurately. Moreover, while Tkacz’s criticisms are similar to the critiques of ID from some other Thomists, I do not mean to imply that these others agree with Tkacz’s specific argument. (In fact, I suspect there would be disagreement on the details.)

Tkacz presents his argument as if it were a straightforward, uncontroversial rendering of “Thomism” and the “Catholic intellectual tradition.” He argues that God’s creative activity never involves a change from one thing to another. So he objects to ID arguments that he thinks (incorrectly) imply that God “intervenes” in nature:

This is the view that nature, as God originally created it, contains gaps or omissions that require God to later fill or repair. Given the Thomistic understanding of divine agency, such a “god of the gaps” view is clearly inconsistent with a proper conception of the nature of creation and, therefore, is cosmogonically fallacious.¹

This is a familiar caricature of ID, which ID proponents have corrected many, many times. In truth, ID per se is neutral with respect to how and when intelligent design is implemented (though God can do what he wants to do). Logically, detecting design within a framework in some particular locus within nature (the subject of ID arguments) is a different issue from determining how that design came about.
Tkacz attributes this “god of the gaps” view to Michael Behe (who is a conservative Catholic):

Now, a Thomist might agree with Behe’s knowledge claim that no current or foreseeable future attempt at explanation for certain biological complexities is satisfactory. Yet, a Thomist will reject Behe’s ontological claim that no such explanation can ever be given in terms of the operations of nature.

But Behe has never made any such claim and Tkacz provides no reference to substantiate his characterization of Behe’s argument. On the contrary, in The Edge of Evolution, Behe suggests just the opposite–that everything might trace back to the fine-tuning of physical constants and cosmic initial conditions.²This creates a problem for Tkacz’s conclusion: “Insofar as ID theory represents a ‘god of the gaps’ view, then it is inconsistent with the Catholic intellectual tradition.” Since the “insofar” clause isn’t satisfied, I think, the central thesis for the article dissolves.

Rather than belabor his inaccurate portrayal of intelligent design, however, let’s focus instead on Tkacz’s representation of St. Thomas and the Catholic tradition. I think (perhaps because of the limitations that a short article imposes), that that attempt falls short of the mark.

The Influence of St. Thomas

St. Thomas Aquinas holds a special place of honor in Roman Catholicism. To be sure, one can be an orthodox Catholic without following Thomas’ philosophy–indeed, his influence is minimal in Eastern Rite Catholic Churches. And in the Western Church, not everyone follows Thomas. Franciscans, for instance, generally prefer Bonaventure. Moreover, even those who consider themselves Thomists have all manner of disagreements with each other and even with Thomas himself.

Still, Thomas’ influence in the Western Church is hard to overestimate. Catholics refer to him as the Angelic Doctor. In many ways, Thomas is the high water mark of what has come to be called “scholasticism” and “classical theism.” In fact, if you survey the writings on the doctrine of God even by Protestant scholastic theologians after the Reformation, you’ll find that many depend almost entirely on the method Thomas laid out over three centuries earlier.

His influence has continued into the present, following the publication of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879), which called for a renewal of scholastic and Thomistic thought, at a time when its influence had begun to wane. Today, many traditional Catholics, tired of the unfaithful innovations that resulted in the wake of (though not necessarily as a result of) Vatican II, look to Thomas to provide a way forward. Several Thomists have recently criticized ID for having a faulty (if implicit) theology and philosophy of nature, and they have claimed their critique depends on St. Thomas’ philosophy of nature. So it might help the discussion to consider his views briefly.

The current travails of David Coppedge at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory hit close to home. He’s being unjustly, perversely punished simply for lending copies of two ID documentaries, Unlocking the Mystery of Life and The Privileged Planet, the latter based on the book by Guillermo Gonzalez and yours truly. Guillermo, of course, suffered similar bigotry at Iowa State a few years ago, and endured (among other things) a barely disguised campaign to deny him tenure led by, among other people, an atheist professor of religion at Iowa State. It’s hard even to figure out what David Coppedge is supposed to have done wrong. There were no complaints against him by people to whom he had lent these documentaries. He wasn’t Read More ›

Preliminary Matters

I’m currently editing a volume called God and Evolution that deals with the general subject of theistic evolution (to be released by Discovery Institute this fall), and I am contributing a couple of chapters to the volume on Catholicism and ID. I’m also working on a book-length treatment of the same subject. As a result, over the last six months, I’ve been studying the relationship between Catholic theology and contemporary arguments for intelligent design.

Various “Catholic” assessments of ID have been appearing on for years, and no doubt will continue to do so. (See this 2007 article from the New Oxford Review, for instance.) But recently, a certain “meme” has begun to emerge that ID is somehow un-Catholic, contrary to the Catholic intellectual tradition, or some such. This seems to me to be a serious mistake that needs to be challenged directly. So one (though only one) of the purposes of the publications I’ve been working on is to respond to a cluster of criticisms of ID by some recent Catholic critics, including those by Ed Feser, Frank Beckwith, Michael Tkacz, and Stephen Barr. Some of these criticisms have taken place online, others in printed publications.

Unfortunately, the issues at stake are subtle and complicated, and often involve translations into somewhat different “conceptual schemes”; so it’s hard to deal with them adequately in the drive-by fashion appropriate to the blogosphere. Moreover, I don’t think that these gentlemen are all making exactly the same arguments, though their criticisms are related.

So there’s a danger of over-generalizing.

Since print publications have such a long gestation period, however, and the debate seems to be creating far more heat than light, I’ve decided to weigh in more promptly. My first response, to Stephen Barr, appeared several weeks ago. I’ll offer a few more responses here at Evolution News & Views, one at a time, over the next couple of months. (See also Vincent Torley’s response to Ed Feser over at Uncommon Descent, including the discussion in the comments section. Torley has promised more along these lines in coming weeks.)

I’ve followed the back and forth between Francisco Ayala and Steve Meyer with interest. I happened to have just read Meyer’s book Signature in the Cell when I first saw Ayala’s commentary/review on it at the Biologos Foundation website. My initial response was that Ayala obviously hadn’t read the book, and, as a result, made some embarrassing mistakes that any reader of the book would recognize.

Darrell Falk at the Biologos Foundation was apparently responsible for inviting Ayala to comment on Meyer’s book, and has been drawn into the debate.

He published the first part of Meyer’s response to Ayala, but not without first offering his “background comments” about the debate. (I think David Klinghoffer has said what needs to be said about that.) The Biologos Foundation is committed to the “science-and-religion dialogue.” In my opinion, however, they have a peculiar way of fostering dialogue.

A popular Darwinian meme is that humans and chimp genomes are ninety-something percent identical. It varies a bit, but usually hovers close to 99%. The meme hides all sorts of assumptions, of course, but the take home lesson for the headline reader is plain enough: we’re almost exactly the same as chimps.

Though the 99% number has received some qualifiers, and has even been referred to as a “myth” in Science, the basic idea remains firmly entrenched in the media collective consciousness.

But evidence seems to be piling up that the similarities are not nearly what has been advertised. Geneticist Richard Buggs has reflected on this, and has even predicted “that when we have a reliable, complete chimpanzee genome, the overall similarity of the human genome will prove to be close to 70% (and very far from 99%).”

It will be interesting to see how Buggs’ prediction holds up over time. If he’s right, this will be one more switch from “meme” to “myth” in the Darwinian ledger.

The second, third, and fourth installments of the review of Steve Meyer’s book Signature in the Cell are up over at Beliefnet. (I responded to the first installment here.)

Although this series appears on Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog, they’re written by anonymous blogger “RJS.” I’m guessing that RJS is a scientist, or is in a sensitive academic position, and doesn’t want to risk banishment for saying reasonable things about an ID argument. If so, that tells us something of the social pressures against writing publicly about this issue.

Over at Scott McKnight’s blog at Beliefnet, an anonymous blogger has started a review thread on Steve Meyer’s book. Signature in the Cell. While the blogger (“RJS”) says he ultimately disagrees with Meyer’s argument, it’s clear that he takes Meyer’s argument seriously and is trying to do his best to present the argument accurately. This is much more than can be said for the many hysterical and misinformed “critiques” of Meyer’s argument that are now floating around the Internet. Anyone who’s actually read the book will know that most of these critiques are cliches that Meyer addresses in detail in the book, suggesting that the critics don’t even know the argument they are criticizing.

A civil review like this is welcomed, and I look forward to reading the installments.

In his first installment, RJS suggests that there’s a promising “third way” that Meyer doesn’t address in the book:

In elevating the economic value of Charles Darwin over Adam Smith in the New York Times, Robert Franks misrepresents Smith. Franks claims that Darwin, better than Smith, accounted for conflicts between individual and collective interest. But Smith knew of such conflict. His invisible hand reliably guides private self-interest to socially beneficial outcomes only under a stable rule of law. For markets to work, rule of law must fetter private actors–prevent them from killing, defrauding, and stealing from each other. So Smith’s market “competition” is neither anarchy nor Darwinian nature, red in tooth and claw. Franks offers examples that he claims favor Darwin’s account. From illegal steroid use to mortgages that misrepresent the underlying risk of a loan, however, we have Read More ›