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Alan Wolfe Turns Evangelical

Judith ShulevitzPosted Thursday, Oct. 5, 2000, at 4:24 PM ET

After a century or so of spiritual fervor seemingly unchecked by theological self-doubt or other intellectual inhibitions, American evangelical Christianity is trying to overcome its reputation as a religion for energetic simpletons. In a cover story in the current Atlantic Monthly, sociologist Alan Wolfe lists the elements of a renaissance in conservative Protestant thought. In the beginning, of course, is money. Over the past decade, the Pew Charitable Trusts have made it their mission to invigorate evangelical intellectual life, pumping $14 million into the cause. Now there's a new Christian book review, Books & Culture, to which serious people contribute. (Literary scholar Gerald Early, for instance, has an essay in the current issue.) Hundreds of books with scholarly ambitions and titles such as Encyclopedia of Christianity are issued annually by the Christian publisher Eerdmans. Evangelical colleges such as Wheaton in Illinois are now able to attract students whose average SAT scores are as high as those at the University of Virginia and Oberlin and who are willing to debate controversial topics with unmade-up minds. Wolfe himself was just named the director of a new center for religion and public life at Boston College where, presumably, part of his brief involves publishing articles like the one in the Atlantic.

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If Wolfe's is an accurate account of what's going on, this is an important development in American cultural life. Nearly one-third--29 percent--of all Americans describe themselves as conservative Protestants, with about half of these identifying themselves as fundamentalist and the other half as evangelical. But there's something curious about Wolfe's piece. Though he tells us a lot about the institutions expanding as a result of this Christian awakening, he tells us little about its ideas. Wolfe approaches intellectual life like the sociologist he is. He measures it quantitatively, by the amount of money spent on it and the test scores of students seeking admission to the relevant universities and the number of departments obtaining outside accreditation, rather than qualitatively, by asking whether the thoughts in question are fresh or true or suggestive or even particularly interesting. In fact, he never really explains what they are.

Wolfe's enchantment with evangelical colleges seems to stem more from a disenchantment with the secular academy than from anything actually being taught in them. He sprinkles his piece with bitter comments such as the following on the subject of some professors he met at Wheaton, "They are the kind of people one hopes to find more of in the humanities departments of elite universities: they read actual texts, from many different fields; they believe such texts mean something; and they dedicate their lives to conveying what those meanings might be in both scholarly venues and venues designed for the serious scholarly reader." This is an overstatement, possibly a cynical one: Wolfe must know that humanities departments are filled with people who read, believe that what they read means something, and write for as many publications as possible. Wolfe's allusion is to the stereotype of the trendy postmodern academic, but this particular kind of professor has fallen from favor in the past decade.

Oddly, Wolfe overlooks the boldest and best-known flowering of the new Christian thought. It can't have escaped his notice, though he never mentions it. Unlike the other tendencies that have sprung up, this one has a name and a well-funded, well-publicized institution dedicated to spreading its ideas (the Discovery Institute in Seattle). This movement has been extensively discussed in Books & Culture and just about every other conservative Christian venue you can name and debated on television networks and in the print media--particularly, at enormous length, in Commentary magazine. The precepts of the movement are taught at Wheaton and Fuller Theological Seminary in California and Baylor University in Texas, the top evangelical schools. In fact, after surfing around on the Wheaton Web site for about 10 minutes, I came across a test of these principles offered under the auspices of a sophomore biology course.

I'm talking about Intelligent Design, which, as you've probably guessed from the name, is a theory about the origins of life. A scholar Wolfe identifies as one of the most respected of the new evangelical intellectuals, theologian Mark Noll, deems Intelligent Design the most noteworthy of all the "substantial intellectual endeavors" that have taken place since the conservative Protestant revival began. (It came about largely as a result of Noll's own excoriation of evangelicals in a 1994 book called The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.)

What is Intelligent Design? It is, as Noll puts it, a "challenge to evolutionary naturalism." Naturalism is the notion that only natural causes are required to explain the workings of nature. Naturalism lies at the heart of the scientific method. (To the Christian mind, naturalism is the opposite of supernaturalism. Supernaturalism is the gospel of God's ability to intervene on earth, which Noll calls the "shared commitment" of all evangelical thought.) In short, Intelligent Design is a new and vastly more sophisticated iteration of creationism.

It's important to differentiate ID-ers, as they call themselves, from old-school creationists, particularly of the young-earth variety. The latter are people who believe that the earth was created less than 10,000 years ago and that the fossil record, which appears to indicate otherwise, is actually an artifact of how the earth resettled itself after being churned up by the great flood. ID-ers don't fly so baldly in the face of scientific reason. Their target is more limited: the theory of evolution as currently taught in most biology departments.

ID-ers dispute evolution in three ways: first, by chipping away at small, seemingly weak spots in Darwinism (see this "Dialogue" with Phillip Johnson in Slate, for instance); second, by invoking what ID-er Michael J. Behe calls the "irreducible complexity" of things (particularly for Behe, who is a biochemist, the cell); and third, by returning to 19^th century theology. That is, the theory of irreducible complexity is largely a restatement of the ideas of William Paley, the author of the 1802 Natural Theology, who argued that if we find a watch in a field, we have to assume that any device so well suited to its ends must have had an intelligent designer, rather than being the product of chance. Behe argues that no mechanism as complicated as the cell, in which no part will work unless all other parts work, could have evolved over time. How could a complex machine ever start to work before all of its gears are in place? It couldn't, says Behe, which proves that some intelligent agent must have somehow engineered that machine.

Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller, the author of a book called Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution (1999) that offers a remarkably clear exegesis of creationism and Intelligent Design as well as a definitive refutation of them, gives a more compelling answer. He says that if you can show that any complex mechanism can evolve over time, then you can show that more complex mechanisms can, too. There is plenty of evidence that some primitive gizmo, such as the eyespots on bacteria that vaguely sense light, became a more advanced one, such as an actual eye.

It would be hard to overstate the value of Miller's book to anyone attempting a serious consideration of new Christian thought. The debate between science and religion has become one of the tensest of our era, and it has immediate implications, such as the attempt by a Kansas school board to play down the teaching of evolution. As a practicing Christian, Miller brings a deep sympathy to his analysis of Intelligent Design--he has his own critique of evolutionary theory, particularly when it strays out of the natural sciences--but as a dedicated biologist, he won't let the ID-ers get away with bad science. So, like Wolfe, Miller is willing to listen to evangelical Christians. Unlike Wolfe, he does them the favor of evaluating their ideas on their merits. Wolfe's decision to avoid even naming them seems, by comparison, disturbingly political, as well as eminently wishful. Evangelical thought surely is getting interesting; indeed, in some ways, it always was. It doesn't need to be made to seem better than it is.

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Judith Shulevitz is a former culture editor of Slate. Her book, The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time, will be published in March.

COMMENTS

Reader Comments from The Fray:

[Note from the Fray Editor: Many many people came to talk about this article, mostly from entrenched positions, and mostly to express their horror at or incomprehension of the opposing camp's views. This thread, "Who is right and why is it important?" covered a lot of the arguments and was good-humored and polite. Mark explained: "For those of you who complain of Christians trying to ram their religion down your throat, this is why..." and "Common sense does not tell me that theories are correct because they are believed by a lot of people." Elsewhere, Fray favorites A.G.Android and Jack Baltimore made good points--below--though to read Mr Android's very interesting theory of the whole world ("any evidence against my theory is just part of the software") you will have to click here.

The first comment below is a reply from a Fellow of the Discovery Institute:]

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a creationist. I may have been a good Judeo-Christian once; the fossil record is unclear. I am, however, affiliated with Seattle's Discovery Institute, home of the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, bastion of the Intelligent Design Movement, and more grievously misunderstood than Al Gore trying to explain what he really meant when he said he invented the Internet while under fire in Nam.

Point First. Discovery's a conservative place with a strong religious perspective. Many of its members are ardent Christians. Some aren't. This has no impact on the scientific validity (or lack thereof) of Intelligent Design. After all, something can be true even if Al Gore says it.

Point Second. The essence of Intelligent Design is the attempt to investigate and study evidence of intelligent design in the physical and biological worlds, without positing or inquiring into the nature and intent of the designer. I occasionally ask these guys what they'd do if the skies opened and a decidedly female voice called down, "I did it. I goofed. Now leave me alone." They smile graciously, conceding that those who expect to get the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jerry Falwell out of this may have a long wait.

Point Third. Darwinian materialism is a mid-19th century construct that, virtually alone among scientific theories, remains immune to criticism. Indeed, the Neo-Darwinians notwithstanding, the paradigm has been almost stagnant for a century and a half. An awful lot of evidence that should have been found hasn't popped up. A lot of quibbles with the theory have. To dismiss these as "minor" is to ignore the fact that, historically, paradigms crack when enough minor quibbles add up to a big major quibble.

Point Fourth. Intelligent Design is usually presented as half of the God versus Darwin debate. More is involved. Of the three great 19th century thinkers who gave us so much of our modern world . . . well, Karl Marx's risky scheme has been composted, while Freud's been sliced, diced, chopped, and pureed. These three men had one thing in common: mono-causal reductionism, explaining the world in terms of a single Super-Cause, whether class conflict, sexuality, or blind chance. Both postmodernism and common sense has shown us how much more is involved. No limits, dude.

--Philip Gold
Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute

(To reply, click here.)

Complexity is proof of evolution, not of intelligent design. Processes that evolve on their own typically attain far higher levels of complexity than processes that are created by design. Compare a rainforest ecosystem with, say, an orchard or a garden. Of course, an omniscient God can use evolution to attain any degree of complexity. But then, an omniscient God could use evolution to create any degree of simplicity, too. Or could do apparently stupid things, like put nipples on men, or keep the appendix, or make marsupials that can't compete with mammals, just to be confusing and difficult, or to stimulate our intellectual growth, or simply to please Himself because, for His own reasons, He loves nipples on men.

And that, of course, is the reason why "Intelligent Design" isn't really a theory, except in the sense that conspiracy theory is a theory. Both can explain anything and everything, and can't be proven false. But, heck, they make their practitioners feel important, and make the world seem less complex and more understandable to people who take comfort from seeing things that way.

--A.G.Android

(To reply, click here.)

It's nice to hear that some who label themselves as Fundamentalist Christians are now actually willing to enter into dialog with the modern world and science. Now maybe someone will notice and write a book about the rest of us Christians, the majority, generally known as the "mainline" churches (or excoriated by the Fundamentalists as "liberals"!) who have been in a creative dialog with science and the modern world for... oh, I don't know, maybe two hundred years or so--those of us who have had no problem with evolutionary theory and scientific discovery as long as it allows for a divine intelligence behind it all (what? now that the fundamentalists talk about "intelligent design" it's finally noteworthy??) If you want to find some "intellectual Christians," maybe you need look no farther than the local Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, church in your neighborhood. We were "in dialog with the modern world" before it was even fashionable! Guess no one noticed--maybe we should have been spending all our money on TV and radio programs all these years instead of such things as feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, building schools and hospitals etc. To my fundamentalist friends, I say, "Welcome to the real world. Now let's get about the business of making it a better place for all people," instead of worrying about trying to defend a four thousand year old mythological view of geology and astrophysics.

--David Hamilton

(To reply, click here.)

Having studied both sides of the Creation/Evolution controversy, I have noted that both sides have amassed a wealth of scientific support of their ideas. Very simply put, the evidences used to support one theory and negate the other depend on your presuppositions. If you begin with a creator God, the evidence can be used to point to God and the Genesis account of God's creation. On the other hand, if you look at the evidence from a purely "naturalist" viewpoint, it is not hard to understand the development of Evolution as a theory of origins. The conclusions drawn on both sides greatly depend not only on evidence, but the assumptions used in interpreting the evidence. My point is that since there are great arguments on both sides of the table, even educated people often believe the first sensible argument they hear. Approach this extremely important subject with an open mind weighing the evidence in an attempt to disprove your personal position. Creationists should seek ways to disprove their theories or even prove evolution. The same is true for evolutionists. Without a willingness to hear challenges and test weaknesses in the respective theories, we are dangerously susceptible of being led down a destructive path of inaccuracy that never leads to science's ultimate goal: truth.

--Robert Arwood

(To reply, click here.)

Whenever I encounter creationism in its various formats, I am tempted to wonder if there may not be a socially-imposed failure of executive level reasoning in its proponents: specifically, a blind spot with respect to pattern recognition. The very idea that complexity would in some way require intelligent intervention flies in the face of so much of both scientific and common experience: only man would have the hubris requisite to a mistaken judgement so cosmically funny.

Wherever we see the hand of man, of directed intelligence, at work, we see a collapsing of complexity, the smooth monoculture of suburban lawns, the reduction of diversity in service to efficiency: invariably, the selection of the one right or optimal path to the solution of an object, as opposed to the multiform, multipath fuzzy logic of unceasing attempts over generations to approximately solve life's puzzles, in necessarily many different ways, all at once. Look at our DNA! Vast spaces of our genetic inheritance include left over droplets of abandoned code, both self-generated and acquired from viral infections in the dim days on the Savannah as we grew into our dubious humanity. A life-stew in which the animal, the bacterial, and the viral are mashed together, cooked and stirred: and not crafted.

Intelligent Design is necessarily directed to the accomplishment of an objective. If you'd like to see a wonderful sample of it, I would recommend a perusal of the latest artificial heart. If you would like to see a wonder of chaotic order and complexity, I would direct you to a look at its natural counterpart

--Jack Baltimore

(To reply, click here.)

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