Showing papers in "Zygon in 2017"

Should a christian adopt methodological naturalism

Abstract: It has become standard practice for scientists to avoid the possibility of references to God by adopting methodological naturalism (MN), a method that assumes that the reality of the universe, as it can be accessed by empirical enquiry, is to be explained solely with recourse to natural phenomena. In this essay, I critique the Christian practice of this method, arguing that a Christian's practices should always reflect her belief that the universe is created and sustained by the triune God. This leads me to contend that the Christian should adopt a theologically humble approach to the sciences (instead of MN), with which she humbly acknowledges that special divine action is not discernible by empirical science. To further my critique, I consider three ways in which the practice of MN can be particularly problematic for Christianity.

Developmental biology, natural selection, and the conceptual boundaries of the modern evolutionary synthesis

Abstract: Using the evolution of the stickleback family of subarctic fish as a touchstone, we explore the effect of new discoveries about regulatory genetics, developmental plasticity, and epigenetic inheritance on the conceptual foundations of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. Identifying the creativity of natural selection as the hallmark of the Modern Synthesis, we show that since its inception its adherents have pursued a variety of research projects that at first seemed to conflict with its principles, but were accommodated. We situate challenges coming from developmental biology in a dialectic between innovation and tradition, suggesting on the basis of past episodes that even if developmental plasticity and epigenetic inheritance are aligned with its principles the Modern Synthesis (and its image in the public reception of evolution) will be significantly affected.

Empathy and the evolution of compassion: From deep history to infused virtue

Abstract: This article poses a challenge to contemporary theories in psychology that portray empathy as a negative force in the moral life. Instead, drawing on alternative psychological and philosophical literature, especially Martha Nussbaum, I argue that empathy is related to the virtue of compassion and therefore crucial for moral action. Evidence for evolutionary anthropological accounts of compassion in early hominins provides additional arguments for its positive value in deep human history. I discuss this work alongside Thomistic notions of practical wisdom, compassion, misericordia, and the importance of reason in the moral life. The tension between “bottom up” accounts of empathy and that according to a theological interpretation of “infused” virtues also needs to be addressed. From a secular perspective, infused virtue is a projection of the ideal moral life, but from a theological perspective, it is a way of understanding how human capacities through the action of grace can reach beyond what seem to be the limits of psychological moral identity.

Religion and religious beliefs as evolutionary adaptations

Abstract: Scholars employing an evolutionary approach to the study of religion and religious beliefs search for ultimate explanations of the origin, propagation, and persistence of religious beliefs. This quest often pairs in debate two opposing perspectives: the adaptationist and “by-product” explanations of religion and religious beliefs. The majority of scholars prefer the by-product approach, which is agnostic and even doubtful of the usefulness of religious beliefs. Despite this pervasive negativity, it seems unwarranted to deny the great usefulness of religious beliefs—particularly concerning their past utility. Instead, adaptationist explanations of religion and religious beliefs must be re-established as interesting and useful approaches to the study of religious beliefs.

Dancing around the causal joint: challenging the theological turn in divine action theories

Abstract: Recent years have seen a shift in divine action debates. Turning from noninterventionist, incompatibilist causal joint models, representatives of a “theological turn” in divine action have questioned the metaphysical assumptions of approaches seeking indeterministic aspects of nature wherein God might act. Various versions of theistic naturalism (such as Thomism, panentheistic naturalism, and pneumatological naturalism) offer specific theological frameworks that reimagine the basic God–world relationship. But do these explicitly theological approaches to divine action take scientific knowledge and methodology seriously enough? And do such approaches adequately address the problem of how uncreated, immaterial realities could affect physical, material processes? This article examines various features of the theological turn in divine action—recognizing it as a welcome step in science and religion, while challenging its current adequacy.

Transhumanism, theological anthropology, and modern biological taxonomy

Abstract: I examine the ways in which the theological and philosophical debate surrounding transhumanism might profit by a detailed engagement with contemporary biology, in particular with the mainline accounts of species and speciation. After a short introduction, I provide a very brief primer on species concepts and speciation in contemporary biological taxonomy. Then in a third section (titled “Implications for Technological Alteration of Species”) I draw out some implications for the prospects of our being able intentionally to intervene in human evolution for the production of new species out of Homo sapiens. In a fourth section (titled “How Does the Biological Conception of Homo sapiens Relate to a Philosophical (or Theological) Account of Human Nature? And Where Does This Leave Transhumanism?”) I bring in the debate over the proper relationship between biological and theological conceptions of human nature, laying out the major options available (in light of Ian Barbour's fourfold categorization schema) and considering their possible implications for our understanding of transhumanism. In a fifth section (titled “Potential Applications to Specific Subdisciplines of Theology”) several concrete examples are drawn out pertaining to particular subdisciplines within theology (hamartiology, soteriology, and eschatology). I conclude by briefly laying out some suggestions for future work, focusing on tasks that theologians specifically ought to pursue.

The Many Faces of Panentheism

Abstract: In this article, I draw on historical and conceptual arguments to show, first, that disenchantment and the influential view of the relationship between science and religion to which disenchantment gives rise are rooted in the metaphysics of theism. I then introduce the alternative metaphysical position of panentheism and identify Jungian psychology as an important, if implicit, mid-twentieth-century instance of panentheistic thought. Using the example of Jungian psychology, I demonstrate how the viewpoint of panentheism undoes the implications of disenchantment for the relationship between science and religion, promoting greater opportunities for dialogue and reconciliation between science and religion. I note, however, that these closer relations may depend on understanding science and religion differently from how they are understood under disenchantment. While the original tension between science and religion is eased, another tension—between panentheistic and disenchanted understandings of science and religion—is exposed. I conclude by reflecting on some implications of this discussion for sociology.

The “scientific miracle of the qur’ān,” pseudoscience, and conspiracism

Abstract: This article, after tracing a precise classification of the exegetical trend known as iʿjāz ʿilmī, summarizes and discusses the criticism leveled at it and examines how the “scientific interpretation” of the Qur’ān is liable to blend with pseudoscience and conspiracy theories to the detriment of a solid harmonization of science and religion and of a genuine appreciation of natural science. Furthermore, the article offers some practical ideas that can be implemented in order to effectively and fairly address iʿjāz ʿilmī in the Muslim world.

Food ethics: A critique of some islamic perspectives on genetically modified food

Abstract: This article critiques some Islamic approaches to food ethics and the debate over genetically modified (GM) food. Food ethics is a branch of bioethics, and is an emerging field in Islamic bioethics. The article critically analyzes the arguments of the authors who wrote in favor of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from an Islamic perspective, and those who wrote against GMOs, also from an Islamic perspective. It reveals the theological and the epistemological foundations of the two main approaches. Moreover, it provides an attempt to critique what is perceived as an exclusivist and legalistic trend adopted by some authors. It argues that an alternative approach that acknowledges the priority of reason in ethics and is at the same time rooted in Islamic tradition would be more inclusive and constructive.

Knowing ourselves as embodied, embedded, and relationally extended

Abstract: What does it mean to know oneself, and what is the self that one hopes to know? This article outlines the implications of an embodied understanding of persons and some aspects of the “self” that are generally ignored when thinking about our selves. The Cartesian model of body–soul (or body–mind) dualism reinforces the idea that there is within us a soul, or self, or mind that is our hidden, inner, and real self. Thus, the path to self-knowledge is introspection. The alternative view is that persons are embodied (entirely physical creatures), embedded (formed by our physical and social environment), and at times extended (cognitively soft-coupled to artifacts or other persons). This article emphasizes the bodily, active, contextual, relational, often simulated, and sometimes extended nature of the selves that we are, and that we hope to know.

Panentheism and the undoing of disenchantment

Abstract: In this article I draw on historical and conceptual arguments to show, first, that disenchantment and the influential view of the relationship between science and religion to which disenchantment gives rise are rooted in the metaphysics of theism. I then introduce the alternative metaphysical position of panentheism and identify Jungian psychology as an important, if implicit, mid-twentieth-century instance of panentheistic thought. Using the example of Jungian psychology, I demonstrate how the viewpoint of panentheism undoes the implications of disenchantment for the relationship between science and religion, promoting greater opportunities for dialogue and reconciliation between science and religion. I note, however, that these closer relations may depend on understanding science and religion differently from how they are understood under disenchantment. While the original tension between science and religion is eased, another tension – between panentheistic and disenchanted understandings of science and religion – is exposed. I conclude by reflecting on some implications of this discussion for sociology.

Human phenotypic morality and the biological basis for knowing good

Abstract: Co-creating knowledge takes a new approach to human phenotypic morality as a biologically based, human lineage specific (HLS) trait. Authors from very different backgrounds (anthropology and biology, on the one hand, and astronomy, philosophy, and theology, on the other) first review research on the nature and origins of morality using the social brain network, and studies of individuals who cannot “know good” or think morally because of brain dysfunction. They find these models helpful but insufficient, and turn to paleoanthropology, cognitive science, and neuroscience to understand human moral capacity and its origins long ago, in the genus Homo. An unusual narrative capturing “morality in action” takes the reader back 900,000 years, and then the authors analyze the essential features of moral thinking and behavior as expressed by early and later species on our lineage. In what has primarily been the province of philosophers to date, the authors’ morality model is presented for further scientific testing.

Can we still talk about “truth” and “progress” in interdisciplinary thinking today?

Abstract: On a cultural level, and for Christian theology as part of a long tradition in the evolution of religion, evolutionary epistemology “sets the stage,” as it were, for understanding the deep evolutionary impact of our ancestral history on the evolution of culture, and eventually on the evolution of disciplinary and interdisciplinary reflection. In the process of the evolution of human knowledge, our interpreted experiences and expectations of the world (and of the ultimate questions we humans typically pose to the world) have a central role to play. What evolutionary epistemology also shows us is that we humans can indeed take on cognitive goals and ideals that cannot be explained or justified in terms of survival-promotion or reproductive advantage only. Therefore, once the capacities for rational knowledge, moral sensibility, aesthetic appreciation of beauty, and the propensity for religious belief have emerged in our biological history, they cannot be explained only in biological/evolutionary terms. Finally, in this way a door is opened for seeing problem solving as a central activity of our research traditions. As philosophers of science have argued, one of the most important shared rational resources between even widely divergent disciplines is problem solving as the most central and defining activity of all research traditions. As will become clear, the very diverse reasoning strategies of theology and the sciences clearly overlap in their shared quests for intelligible problem solving, including problem solving on an empirical, experiential, and conceptual level.

Epigenetics, representation, and society

Abstract: In recent decades, advances in the life sciences have created an unprecedentedly detailed picture of heredity and the formation of the phenotype where clusters of simplistic reductionist and deterministic views and interpretations have begun to lose ground to more complex and holistic notions. The developments in gene regulation and epigenetics have become a vivid emblem of the ongoing ‘softening’ of heredity. Despite this headway, the outlook and rhetoric widely popular in the twentieth century favoring the ‘gene’ in the ‘gene↔genetic plasticity↔phenotype↔environment’ tetrad have not been successfully tackled but continue to exist in parallel with a new, equally monochromatic, viewpoint championing genetic plasticity. An examination of epigenetics and its presentation in the public sphere, open to a conversation with the social disciplines and philosophy, could address this dichotomy and contribute to the discourse. This article outlines key biological aspects of epigenetics and discusses the language, presentation and wider resonance of this field of life science research.

Science, spirituality, and ayahuasca: the problem of consciousness and spiritual ontologies in the academy

Abstract: Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew from Amazonas, popularized in the last decades in part through transnational religious networks, but also due to interest in exploring spirituality through altered states of consciousness among academic schools and scientific researchers. In this article, the author analyzes the relation between science and religion proposing that the “demarcation problem” between the two arises from the relations among consciousness, intentionality, and spirituality. The analysis starts at the beginning of modern science, continues through the nineteenth century, and then examines the appearance of new schools in psychology and anthropology in the countercultural milieu of the 1960s. The author analyzes the case of ayahuasca against this historical background, first, in the general context of ayahuasca studies in the academic field. Second, he briefly describes three cases from Spain. Finally, he discusses the permeability of science to “spiritual ontologies” from an interdisciplinary perspective, using insights from social and cognitive sciences.

The problem of “god” in psychology of religion: lonergan's “common sense” (religion) versus “theory” (theology)

Abstract: The emphasis on God in American psychology of religion generates the problem of explaining divine-versus-natural causality in “spiritual experiences.” Especially “theistic psychology” champions divine involvement. However, its argument exposes a methodological error: to pit popular religious opinions against technical scientific conclusions. Countering such homogenizing “postmodern agnosticism,” Bernard Lonergan explained these two as different modes of thinking: “common sense” and “theory”—which resolves the problem: When theoretical science is matched with theoretical theology, “the God-hypothesis” explains the existence of things whereas science explains their natures; and, barring miracles, God is irrelevant to natural science. A review of the field shows that the problem is pervasive; attention to “miracles”—popularly so-named versus technically—focuses the claims of divine-versus-natural causality; and specifications of the meaning of spiritual, spirituality, science, worldview, and meaning itself (suffering that same ambiguity: personal import versus cognitive content) offer further clarity. The problem is not naturalism versus theism, but commonsensical versus theoretical thinking. This solution demands “hard” social science.

Knowing ourselves by telling stories to ourselves

Abstract: Part of the epistemological crisis of the twentieth century was caused by empirically establishing that introspection provides little reliable self-knowledge. While we all have full actual selves to which our self-representations do not do full justice, we focus on the formation and existence of a narrative self, and on problematic reliability. We will explore the cognitive neuroscience behind its limitations, including pathological forms of confabulation, the generation of plausible but insufficiently grounded accounts of our actions, and the normal patterns of narrative creation and checking. The evolutionary logic of self-deception may produce adaptive results, particularly in service of the “commitment strategies” that give our species results otherwise unobtainable. It is largely in our close relationships with other human beings, the relationships so well served by these very strategies, that we may find the powerful counterbalancing feedback which may provide positive change and self-transcendence. Nevertheless, we will also warn about a shadow side for which religion can provide both acknowledgment and hope.

Laws in ecology: diverse modes of explanation for a holistic science?

Abstract: Ecology’s reputation as a holistic and soft science is partly due to widespread misconceptions of its nature as well as shortcomings in its methodology. We show how the pursuit of empirical laws of ecology can foster the emergence of a more unified and predictive ecology based on complementary modes of explanation. Numerical analyses of population dynamics have a distinguished pedigree, spatial analyses successfully generate predictive laws for macroecology and physical analyses are tyically pursued by the ecosystem approach. The most characteristically ecological laws, however, are found in biotic analyses within the ‘functional trait’ paradigm. Holistic credentials for ecology may thus be restored on two bases: its accommodating complementary modes of analysis and explanation, and its having some laws within the least reductionistic mode consistent with its subject matter. These claims, grounded in the aspectual theory of Herman Dooyeweerd, lead to some suggestions for enhancing the versatility and usefulness of ecology – and other sciences – by balancing different research paradigms under a holistic vision.

The christian's dilemma: organicism or mechanism?

Abstract: Is organicism inherently Christian-friendly, and for that matter, is mechanism inherently religion nonfriendly? They have tended to be, but the story is much more complicated. The long history of the intertwined metaphors of nature taken as an organism, versus that of nature as a machine, reveals that both metaphors have flourished in the endeavors of philosophers, scientists, and persons of faith alike. Different kinds of Christians have been receptive to both organicist and mechanistic models, just as various kinds of nonreligious scientists have been receptive to both holistic and machine metaphors. Although, it is true, organicism has been generally more attractive to persons of faith than mechanism (and vice versa), an overview of the rich and varied history of allegiances to these metaphors—religious and nonreligious alike—shows that debate is much more interesting and complex. A brief inspection of conversation surrounding recent scientific discoveries shows that this debate between metaphors is still very much alive today.

Holistic biology: what it is and why it matters

Abstract: Recent developments toward a more holistic biology do not eliminate reductionism and determinism, but they do suggest more complex forms of them, in which there are multiple, interacting influences, as there are in complex or chaotic systems. Though there is a place in biology for both systemic and atomistic modes of explanation, for those with a theological perspective the shift to complex explanations in biology is often welcome. It suggests a more subtle view of divine action in which God's purposes are affected through engagement with the complex systems of creation rather than by discrete interventions. It also invites us to connect the biological interdependence with the interdependence in the nature and purposes of God, and it is consonant with a mystical vision of the unity of all things.

Poetic naturalism: sean carroll, science, and moral objectivity

Abstract: Physicist Sean Carroll has developed a new theory of the fundamental nature of reality, which he calls “Poetic Naturalism,” with the stated goal of developing a theory of what is real that is consistent with the findings of natural science. Carroll claims to prove that morality cannot be seen as objectively true. This essay argues that Carroll's conclusion is not convincing; there is no good reason to reject moral objectivity within a purely naturalistic worldview.