cc  >> It's my pleasure to welcome  you to this evening's public  lecture.  I'm Bassam Shakhashiri.  I'm the director of the  Wisconsin Initiative for Science  Literacy.  Two quick and brief  announcements: all the tickets  for the 2008 Christmas lecture  are gone.  We have issued them.  We invite you to watch the  program on TV.  Check the listings from  Wisconsin Public Television as  to when they will be shown  during Christmas week in the  Madison area and elsewhere.  The second brief announcement is  that this lecture this evening  is being videotaped for later  telecast on Madison cable  stations, and we will put the  times and dates and the stations  on our Web site:  www.scifun.org.  The mission of the Wisconsin  Initiative for Science Literacy  is to promote literacy in  science, mathematics and  technology among the general  public and to attract future  generations to careers in  research, teaching and public  service.  Science literacy does not  require detailed knowledge of  any particular field, but rather  a broad understanding and  appreciation of what science is  capable of achieving and,  equally important, what science  cannot accomplish. 

 Science literacy is a measure of  our values as a society.  Science literacy is necessary  for the democratic process to  work.  Science literacy is for  everyone.  Chemists, artists, humanists,  all professionals, the general  public, youths and adults alike.  One of our programs is called  Science, Religion and Ethics.  In this program we explore and  promote civil and respectful  discourse on important issues  such as evolution.  Two of the strongest forces in  society worldwide are science  and religion.  Some view them as being at odds  with each other with  irreconcilable differences while  some others see them as dealing  with different domains of life.  Both can help nourish us.  Both can help us lead good  lives. 

 From both we learn about  ourselves and about who we are.  Science and religion can bring  us together to advance the human  condition and to sustain and  protect our planet.  To those who say that science  and religion are at odds with  each other, I say perhaps there  is misunderstanding.  Or perhaps ignorance.  Science, after all, is a human  endeavor.  Some political leaders and some  religious leaders entice their  followers to stifle human  creativity and to impede  scientific progress.  It's difficult to see how such  so-called leadership serves the  well-being of society.  It's noteworthy and even perhaps  striking that in the United  States, more than any other  country, we find evolution not  to be widely accepted.  Why is that?  Is it because that Americans  believe in the strict  interpretation of the bible more  so than do people in other  countries?  In our country we have a history  of public and even legal debate  and action on matters related to  the teaching of evolution in the  classroom.  For example, in 1925 the Scopes  Trial. 

 And more recently in 2005  Kitzmiller v.  the Dover School District in  Pennsylvania.  Our society is the most advanced  scientifically and  technologically society in the  history of humankind.  In order for us to benefit from  these advances, we must learn  how to deal with conflicts such  as we have between science and  the so-called creation science  or intelligent design.  Our speaker this evening is  Elliott Sober from the  University Wisconsin Madison  where he is the Hans Reichenbach  professor and William F.  Vilas professor in the  department of philosophy.  Professor Sober is a  distinguished scholar and  author.  He is widely recognized as a  philosopher of science and as an  authority on intelligent design  and naturalism versus  supernaturalism.  His latest scholarly book was  published earlier this year.  Evidence and Evolution: The  Logic Behind the Science. 

 Immediately after the lecture  Professor Sober will be outside  the lecture haul signing books  that are on sale by university  book store.  The title of his talk tonight is  Darwinism and Intelligent  Design.  But before I turn the program  over to Professor Sober, I would  like to present him with a  science is fun cap and a science  is fun button.  [LAUGHTER]  And most importantly,  I'd like to present him with a  replica of the sifting and  winnowing plaque.  Which is on the side of Bascom  Hall on campus.  Its message is one that he holds  dearly.  And I shall read it.  "Whatever may be the limitations  which trammel inquiry elsewhere,  we believe that the great state  University of Wisconsin should  ever encourage that continual  and fearless sifting and  winnowing by which alone the  truth can be found.  Ladies and gentlemen, please  welcome Professor Elliott sober.  [APPLAUSE]  >> Thank you, Bassam. 

 So I'm wired in 12 different  ways here.  Are all the mics working  properly and so on?  Well, thank you for those kind  words, Bassam.  It's a pleasure to be here.  The hat, the pin, and the plaque  are both delightful and moving.  It's great.  I'm going to be talking about a  subject that's familiar to all  of you because it's a  politically charged  controversial thing that we all  have been reading about and  caring about and worrying about.  What I want to do tonight is  give you a little bit of  philosophy to help organize and  clarify the issue, some of the  issues and also a historical  perspective, a little historical  perspective.  This is not the whole story  about the philosophy and history  of creationism versus  evolutionism it's a couple  little snap shots but I hope it  will be helpful.  So I'll begin by describing in a  simple way what evolutionary  theory actually is now as a  scientific theory.  And really that's the setting  for asking a very broad question  about the relationship between  belief in God, on the one hand,  and acceptance of the theory of  evolution on the other. 

 And I'll be describing first two  familiar perspectives on how  these two issues are related to  each other, and then I'll be  adding a third and less vivid  alternative picture of how these  questions are related to each  other.  Which I think is unfortunate,  has gotten lost somewhat in the  public debate.  So one of my main messages will  be to understand the question of  how belief in God and acceptance  in the theory of evolution are  related.  To recognize that there are  three options to condition, not  just two.  Then I'll shift to a bit of  history, that's sort of logical  clarification, this first part  of the talk.  I'll then shift to a bit of  history and I'll talk about  Darwin's own views about the  existence of God, about how his  theory is related to the  question of the existence of  God, and more specifically about  how he himself felt about  Christianity.  And then at the end I'll say a  little bit about the idea of  guided evolution, guided  mutations rather.  This is a standard part, as I'll  explain, a standard part of  modern evolutionary theory to  think that mutations are  unguided.  And if you're a theist however  you think that everything that  happens in the world is guided  by some in God.  So it seems that just from that  angle, just worrying about  mutations, not the whole of the  theory of evolution but just by  thinking about mutation as a  question, it looks like belief  in God is just in conflict with  evolutionary theory because of  this question about how you  ought to think about mutation. 

 So I'll try to say a little bit  at the end by a way of  clarifying what biologists mean  by guided and unguided mutation,  what that question is about for  biologists and again how it's  related to the broader question  of how the theory of evolution  is related to the question of  whether God exists.  What is evolutionary theory?  Sometimes people have the  impression that evolutionary  theory is this cosmic theory of  change.  It's the theory that everything  changes.  That stars developed from one  stage to another.  That planets and continents  change.  And that life changes, as well.  Well, it's actually a biological  theory now.  It did have that kind of global  philosophical status in the 19th  century, but now it's a  biological theory.  It's about life and one of its  main tenants is the idea that  life evolved from nonliving  materials by physical processes.  It also thinks of the  organizations alive today as  tracing back to common  ancestors. 

 So any two people in this room,  if you go back far enough in  time, you will find an organism  who is an ancestor of each.  And that's not just human beings  related to each other.  Take human beings and monkeys  you've got to go back even  further to find that common  ancestor.  And the bold, amazing claim of  contemporary evolutionary  biology is everything that's  alive today, plants and animals  and bacteria go back far enough  and you'll find what Darwin  called the original progenitor.  Darwin was a little uncertain,  as well he should have been,  because he didn't have the kind  of evidence that biologists have  now.  He was a little uncertain when  you trace back current organisms  to their common ancestors and  trace those common ancestors  back even further, you come to  one original progenitor or there  are a couple.  He speculated that maybe all the  animals that are alive can now  go back to a first original  animal ancestor.  And all the plants go back to a  first plant.  But maybe the plants and animals  are the results of separate  independent startups.  He thought about this and he  tentatively thought maybe he  wanted to go with this idea  there was a single common  ancestor uniting all living  things. 

 But at the end of the book in  the beautiful last paragraph of  The Origin, he says that life  was first breathed into beings  on this planet in one or few  original progenitors.  So he sort of waffled on the  question about whether it traces  back to one or a smaller number.  Modern biology takes the stand  that there was one.  Evolutionary theory in its  standard form now regards  natural selection as a very  important part of the  explanation of why plants and  animals and other organisms are  different from each.  They live in different  environments and natural  selection has caused them to be  adapted to those different  environments.  That's not the only explanation  of variation that evolutionary  theory offers us but it's a very  important part of it.  And finally there's this idea I  mentioned before, the idea that  mutations are unguided.  So that's what I mean by  evolutionary theory.  That I'd say is the sort of  standard everyday picture that  biologists have.  That's what they mean by this  theory. 

 Well, let's think about the  question of how this theory is  related to the question of  whether God exists.  Well, one option that's out  there among several to consider  is the view that I'm going to  call atheistic evolutionism.  It's the idea that evolutionary  theory is true and there is no  God.  And highly visible now are some  critics of religion, Richard  Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, being  two prominent examples of  atheists who think that  evolutionary theory and atheism  go hand in hand.  And really if you believe the  theory of evolution you ought to  be an atheist.  The natural perhaps inevitable  view to take about whether God  exists.  If you believe evolutionary  theory you ought to be an  atheist.  Another familiar idea that's out  there highly visible in our  culture is creationism which  rejects the theory of evolution  and holds that God exists.  It might look like these two  views are miles apart from each  other and indeed they are.  The one accepts evolutionary  theory, the other rejects it. 

 The one accepts the existence of  God and the other rejects it.  But there's something  interesting that they have in  common.  They have in common the idea  that there's a conflict between  the theory of evolution on the  one hand and the thesis that God  exists on the other.  If there's a conflict you can't  have them both, right?  You can take the one but not the  other or the other but not the  one.  And those are the two options  you get out of thinking about  there being this fundamental  conflict.  Those are the two choices.  Well, are they really  inconsistent with each other?  The idea that there's a conflict  between evolutionary theory and  the existence of God, it's not  just a couple people have  thought this.  This is a powerful influential  idea that there's this  fundamental conflict but one of  the main take-home messages that  I want to develop tonight is  that there, in fact, is no  conflict.  That the idea that you've got to  choose the one but not the other  or the other but not the one is  based on a kind of limited view  of what the options are.  It's true that the conflict  thesis that they're at odds with  each other has been suggested to  many people by looking at what  evolutionary theory says but  here I want to quote the great  biologist Jacques Monod who says  in his book, which is not about  evolutionism and creationism but  about something else, but I love  this little phrase from his  book. 

 He says, that any confusion  between the ideas suggested by  science and science itself must  be carefully avoided.  So this is, I'm applying Monod's  dictum to this problem.  Atheism is suggested to many  people when they look at what  they think the theory of  evolution says, but I want to  draw a sharp distinction between  what the theory actually says  and ideas that occur to people  when they think they're thinking  about the theory.  And so there's a third option  that I want to present as a  logically consistent picture.  I call it theistic evolutionism.  And it holds both that  evolutionary theory is true and  that God exists.  And my point tonight is not to  tell you that theistic evolution  is true.  I just want you to see that it's  an option that has to be  considered and it is a blinkered  view of this problem to think  that the only options are the  first two.  So I'm trying to give a kind of  road map of the things one might  want to think about in sifting  through these questions oneself  without really saying anything  about which of these is the most  plausible or defensible view.  I want to talk about what you  need to think about to get to  some sort of answer so that  question. 

 Well, it's important to  understand the difference  between theistic evolutionism  and creationism.  They both have God in the  picture.  They're both views about how God  is related to the natural world.  Theistic evolutionism is  basically the idea that the  evolutionary process is God's  way of making organism.  God starts of evolutionary  process and allows that to  produce the daffodils and human  beings and bacteria that we  observe.  Including, most vividly, the  complex adaptive features that  organisms have.  Creationism also has God in the  picture, but the thing to notice  here is that slash through the  arrow.  That's the key difference here.  Because according to creationism  the evolutionary process is  fundamentally incapable of  producing the complex features  that we observe in nature.  And so what's got to happen for  those to exist is for God to  intervene directly in nature. 

 So you might think that as soon  as you bring God in the picture  you've got to be a creationist.  Well, that would be true if the  only theistic option were  creationism.  But here's a theistic option  too.  So the fact that God is part of  your picture of the world  doesn't force you to be a  creationist.  That's just one option.  So here are some similarities  and differences just to get  these three options before the  mind.  They're united by different  things, separated by different  things.  And notice, of course, that  there are two of these views  believe in God.  One of them is an atheistic  view.  And two of them accept  evolutionary theory and the  third one does not. 

 And there's a third point which  I made earlier which I don't  have the slide for now which is  the first two of them, atheistic  evolutionism and creationism,  hold that there is a conflict  between evolutionary theory on  the one hand and the existence  of God on the other.  And that's a difference, that's  a commonality that units them  and sets them apart from  theistic evolutionism.  So there are two kinds, and what  about this idea of theistic  evolution, that there's a way of  reconciling or rendering  compatible evolutionary theory  in the existence of God.  One way to make that picture  consistent is the view that in  the 18th century was called  deism.  It's basically the idea that God  starts off the universe creating  the laws of nature and then just  stands back and never  intervenes.  And if that's your picture, it's  easy to see how that kind of God  is consistent with the theory of  evolution.  God starts the laws, he creates  the laws of gravity, he creates  the laws of evolution and then  its hands off.  I want to argue that there's a  second kind of theism that's  consistent with evolutionary  theory in which the God you're  talking about is an  interventionist God, a God who  reaches into the natural world  into human history at times and  actually changes what's going on  there.  And you might think, wait a  minute, I can see how the  deistic picture can be  reconciled with evolution but  this idea of an interventionist  God.  And, of course, that's an  example of that view of God as  Christianity. 

 God is reaching into human  history according to  Christianity at certain key  points.  So I want to claim that not only  is deism is consistent view I  want to claim that evolutionism  is consistent even when the God  that's being considered is this  interventionist God.  And that might seem weird.  Maybe it seems like you can't  have science if you have that.  That's one of the things I want  to argue.  Okay, what are Darwin's views  about this?  That was the sort of what I just  talked about was the part that I  was going to give you a little  logical clarification of the  options and how they're related  to each other.  And I want to talk about  Darwin's views about theistic  evolution and the difference it  has with creationism.  I want to talk about why he  thought special creation was a  crummy scientific theory.  What his views were about  whether there is a God.  And finally what he thought  about Christianity. 

 So now for a little history.  Philosophers love it when people  outside of philosophy talk about  philosophy.  We all feel so ignored.  So it's great when you open up  The Origin of Species to see  Darwin talk first about two  philosophers.  The first thing that's in the  book are these quotations about  William Whewell, who was a  contemporary of Darwin's, a  great philosopher of science,  and philosopher Francis Bacon  who lived 200 years earlier.  And I want to talk about this  quotation.  This the first thing after the  title of The Origin of Species.  And he's quoting Whewell.  Whewell, by the way, never  accepted Darwin's theory of  evolution and Darwin, I think,  was pretty sure that Whewell was  not going to buy this theory but  he saw in Whewell's  philosophical work something  that he thought could help him.  So this is what he quotes  Whewell as saying. 

 And I want to try and figure out  what this thought is that he's  giving his approval to from  Whewell.  "But with regard to the material  world we can at least go so far  as this -- we can perceive that  events are brought about not by  insulated interpositions of  divine power, exerted in each  particular case, but by the  establishment of general laws.  " What does that mean?  I think Whewell is talking about  two different pictures about how  God is related to nature.  And Darwin is agreeing with  Whewell about which of these  pictures is better.  I call the pictures D and U  because D is a disunified  picture of how God is related to  what we observe, whereas U is a  unified picture.  So I want to try to communicate  what I mean by disunified and  unified.  So you've made a whole bunch of  observations.  Let's call them observation one,  observation two and down to some  large number of observations.  And one way it think about how  God is related to those things  that you observe in nature is  that in each case, that's the  way it is because God said it  should be that way.  And this observation is the way  it is because God made another  decision. 

 God decided that chameleons  should change color, that human  beings should not.  That vertebrates should have a  certain kind of eye.  That bats should have a certain  kind of wing.  And in each case it's just a  separate, independent decision.  That's the idea of insulated  interpositions of divine power  exerting each particular case.  But what Whewell is saying is a  better picture of how God is  related to nature is this  unified idea where God creates  general laws and this small set  of simple laws like the law of  gravity, Newton's law of motion  and the laws of evolution that  Darwin is trying to establish,  this unified body of laws  provides a unified explanation  of why these observations are  out there.  So instead of explaining them  it's just sort of one damn thing  after another.  He did this and he did that and  he wanted this and he wanted  that.  There's this other picture in  which God creates this general  framework and everything we  observe is a consequence of that  single body of unified laws.  The establishment of general  laws is the model that Whewell  likes, it's the model that  Darwin wants. 

 And Darwin thinks of himself as  trying to describe these general  laws, the laws that govern  change in living materials and  he's thinking of himself as  doing for biology what Newton  did 200 years earlier in physics  of providing a unified body of  theory that explains both the  orbits of planets around the sun  and also the way canon balls  move on earth.  Both movement up there and  motion on the surface of the  earth are covered by the same  equations in Newtonian physics.  So a unified theory.  Darwin wanted to do that in  biology, give a unified theory  of why we see the diverse forms  of life that we do.  And he liked this.  He didn't like that.  Why?  I mean, we're talking theology  here, right?  We're talking about, sure God is  going to be part of the picture  but which is the better model of  how God is related to nature.  This is what Darwin is talking  about what Whewell is talking  about at the very beginning of  The Origin.  Why do Whewell and Darwin both  like this and not think much of  that picture of how God is  related to nature.  He says in The Origin to my mind  it is better what we know of the  laws impressed on matter by the  creator that the production and  extinction in the past and  present inhabits in the world  should have been due to  secondary causes like those  determining the birth and death  of the individual. 

 Secondary causes from here to  here, not direct primary causes  from God to nature.  Something is in between, namely  the laws.  Why did Darwin like that  picture?  Well, he says elsewhere in the  origin that on the ordinary view  of the independent creation of  each being, by which he means  each organism, we can only say  that so it is.  That it is pleased the creator  to construct each animal and  plant.  So he's regarding this  disunified model as a kind of  empty explanation.  The only thing you can say about  what you observe is that, well,  I guess God must have wanted it  that way.  Why to chameleons change color?  Well, I guess God must have  wanted them to.  Why don't we?  Well, God didn't want us to Why  do we have the eyes we have and  octopus have slightly different  kinds of eyes?  Well, again, it's God's will.  And Darwin thought that was a  kind of empty explanation.  It doesn't make any predictions  about anything. 

 It's just a kind of phrase that  you can apply ex post facto to  whatever you observe.  That's not much of a theory, I  think that was Darwin's view.  Now let me change to another  part of this historical little  survey.  Was Darwin a theist?  Did he believe in God?  Well, he wrote this wonderful  brief autobiography at the end  of his life which he intended to  be a personal document for his  family.  He didn't expect this would get  published and read by lots of  other people.  And he's really speaking from  the heart here trying to get his  children and his children's  children to understand the kind  of man he is and was.  And he refers in the book to his  religious views in a couple of  occasions.  And here's one passage that's  kind of striking.  He says the extreme difficulty  or rather impossibility of  conceiving this immense and  wonderful universe including man  as the result of blind chance or  necessity, I feel compelled to  look to a first cause having an  intelligent mind in some degree  analogous to that of man.  And I deserve to be a theist. 

 So when I was describing  theistic evolutionism as an  option, you look at this passage  and you might think well, Darwin  was the first theistic  evolutionist at least evolution  in the sense of Darwinian  evolution.  That seems kind of a  straightforward passage.  But it gets complicated because  a page later he describes  himself as an agnostic.  This is so confusing.  I mean, when we talk about, when  we use words like theistic,  theism, atheism and agnosticism,  I think what that means in our  culture is that these three  options are inconsistent with  each other.  So if you're a theist, you're  not an agnostic, and if you're a  theist you're not an atheist.  I think the conventional  definition is theists believe  that there is a God.  Atheists believe there is no  God.  And agnostics think that we  don't know that.  So if you think you know that  there is a God, you're not an  agnostic. 

 So how could Darwin have said  that and then a page later say  I'm an agnostic.  But notice maybe this is not a  contradiction.  He's a smart guy, maybe he  didn't contradict him in the  space of a page.  Because look at what he means by  agnostic here.  He means someone who has no  assured and ever present belief  in the existence of a personal  God or of a future existence  with retribution and reward.  So what he's talking about here  is not just believing that there  is a God, but to be a theist,  defining it this way, you'd have  to not only believe that there  is a God, you have to believe  that there is a personal God and  that means a God who hears our  pray prayers and answers them  sometimes.  And you'd also have to believe  in an afterlife with retribution  and reward.  So maybe there is a consistency  here.  Maybe Darwin was describing  himself exactly right when he  says he's a theist but he's a  theist who doesn't believe in a  personal God and retribution and  reward, but that's a kind of  theism too.  But then Darwin says, and he  says it more than once, that he  actually feels that he's in a  muddle about whether he should  be a theist or an agnostic. 

 He finds the subject  bewildering.  Well, one of Darwin's sons  Francis Darwin, after Charles  Darwin died ,collected the life  and letters and refers to his  father several times as  describing himself as an  agnostic.  Here are two striking statements  from Darwin.  The mystery of the beginning of  things is insoluble by us, and I  for one must be content to  remain an agnostic.  And so whether the world began  because God made it or not is  something that he's saying this  is just too hard a problem for  human beings actually hope to  answer.  And the same thought of it's  just being too hard a problem as  present in this other quotation.  I think an agnostic would be a  more correct description of my  state of mind.  The whole subject is beyond the  scope of man's intellect.  This is not atheism, right?  It's not claiming to know that  there is no God.  It's saying it's a hard problem,  insoluble perhaps. 

 What about Christianity?  Here is a thing when you read it  in The Origin, you never forget.  This is written before Darwin  died in around 1880.  He says that Christianity is a  damnable doctrine because, why  did he say that?  Because he understood  Christianity to involve the view  that nonbelievers are eternally  damned to hell.  And his father, his brother, and  his grandfather were all not  Christians.  And he regarded, this is  damnable, this is a very strong  word and imagine how strong  those words were back in the  19th century.  And it's true, I think, although  there's a question about whether  Darwin was a theist or an  agnostic.  And he describes himself as  confused about this.  And so it's really kind of hard  to tell what he thinks about  this.  It's perfectly clear what he  thinks about Christianity.  He rejected it. 

 And he walked away from it.  It was of course, the religion  which he grew up.  And the thing that's pushing him  over the edge here is the  doctrine for eternal punishment  for unbelievers.  It's interesting to think about  his wife Emma Darwin and why he  and Emma took such different,  they had such different  reactions to the doctrine of  eternal punishment.  Emma was Emma Wedgwood before  she became Emma Wedgwood Darwin.  You know Wedgwood plates.  Her father was Josiah Wedgwood.  The potter who created all those  beautiful pieces of China.  And it was a family of serious  Christianity and Emma, when she  thought and her family thought  about the doctrine of eternal  damnation they just thought it  was an unchristian doctrine.  And they're perfectly happy to  be Christians. 

 They just didn't buy that part  of it.  But what's so curious is that  Darwin didn't see that as a live  option for him.  For him that was so central that  if eternal damnation for  unbelievers is a damnable  doctrine, then he was done with  it.  But there was another thing.  It wasn't just thinking about  what the religion said about  what happened after death to  people he loved and to him  himself perhaps, Darwin's  favorite daughter died an  excruciating death at age 10 and  biographers of Darwin think that  that was one of the critical  personal events in his life that  pushed him over the edge and  just seeing her suffer and die,  he just lost his faith.  And it wasn't reasoning of  philosophically, it was this  emotional reaction.  So if you had to ask why did  Darwin cease to be a Christian?  There's this thing but I think  the death of his daughter Annie  was really very powerful in that  respect.  And that's because the thing  that really got Darwin going  which really made him angry and  think hard about how there could  possibly be a God is the problem  with evil.  He looked around the world, this  is an experience we all have.  You don't have to be a biologist  or an evolutionist to think this  thought. 

 You look around and see how much  suffering there is in our world,  the suffering that human beings  inflict on each other, the  suffering that we experience  because of natural disasters,  and you wonder how could a God  allow this much suffering to  exist.  The puzzle is not why is there  some suffering versus none?  The question is why is there so  much rather than than one ounce  less.  That that's the problem of evil.  It's a problem you can think  about and grapple with without  being an biologist.  Of course, without thinking  about evolution.  And I think what was really  driving Darwin's thinking about  religion had zero really to do  with his biological theory.  I think he was thinking about  what we all think about when we  think about the problem of evil.  There's a nice example, this is  just one example of Darwin's  thinking about this.  Asa Gray was a botanist at  Harvard who was the number one  promoter of Darwin's theory of  evolution in America.  He helped prepare the first  American edition of The Origin  of Species for publication. 

 He was Darwin's guy in North  America.  And they corresponded  extensively both before The  origin of Species was published,  by the way next year is the  150th anniversary of its  publication, 1859.  They corresponded about it  although Gray liked the theory a  lot, Gray wanted to put God into  the theory in ways that Darwin  resisted.  And it's connected to what I'm  going to talk about in a minute  in connection with guided  mutation.  But one of the things they  talked about is this parasitic  wasp that's called -- . What  this wasp does is it paralyzes a  caterpillar and drags it into a  little burrow, and then lays its  eggs inside of the caterpillar,  the caterpillar can't move.  The eggs then hatch and eat the  caterpillar while it's still  alive though paralyzed and the  last thing these baby wasps do  is eat the brain of the  caterpillar.  And Darwin regarded this as  disgusting and just a kind of  obvious demonstration of how  much pain and suffering is just  part of life.  In The Origin he says it's easy  to think, if you don't look too  carefully, it's easy to think  that nature is a place filled  with joy and happiness.  But when he start to look more  carefully you see that it's a  war.  It's a war, it's a struggle for  existence in which great  suffering, great death is an  everyday thing. 

 And so when Gray and Darwin  corresponded about how God fits  into the picture of Darwin's  theory of evolution, Gray wanted  to talk about how God is pushing  the process of evolution to  produce certain outcomes.  It's guided evolution, that was  Gray's idea.  The theory of evolution is fine  but you want to introduce God as  a guiding factor, that was  Gray's idea.  And Darwin just wanted to leave  God out of theory.  It's not that he was denying the  existence of God he just didn't  want to have it part of his own  theory.  And why not?  And I think why not was nothing  biological but rather being  moved by the problem of evil and  just being unable to understand  how a beneficent and omnipotent  God would have designed and  created that parasitic wasp.  And that's just one example  among tens of thousands.  So what I think Darwin was being  driven by, the death of Annie  was just one example of this  bigger thing, which is the  problem of evil.  That's really what just stopped  him in his tracks and made him  have doubts about the existence  of God.  In spite of the fact that he  thought that it's impossible to  imagine our world just coming  into existence by chance. 

 So on the one hand he's  attracted to the idea that  there's got to be a God because  there had to be a first cause.  And on the other hand he looks  around at the evil in our world  and he has doubts and that's the  conflict.  That's why he thinks of himself  as being in a muddle.  He was.  So how do we want to think about  this problem.  Never mind Darwin, we want to  think through the question about  whether God exists and also the  prior question of how you go  about thinking about that.  Well, here's a sort of menu of  things to consider when you're  trying to think your way through  this hard question.  First of all, in philosophy  there are a number of sort of  standard arguments for the  existence of God.  There's not just one argument so  that if you knock that over  there's nothing left, there are  four our five main arguments.  So one of them is the design  argument. 

 It's the idea that when you see  complicated adaptive features in  organisms like the vertebrate  eye, you say to yourself that's  got to be explained by an  intelligent designer.  So that's called a design  argument.  The separate argument, and  Darwin didn't have much patience  for that.  He regarded that as I mentioned  as an empty explanation.  That's not an serious  explanation he thought of why  the vertebrate eye as the  structure it does.  But there are other arguments  for the existence of God.  The first cause argument is not  about the adaptive features of  organisms, it's about the  beginning of the whole universe.  And the argument is the universe  had to have the first cause,  that's what God is.  It's not about biology.  It's about the whole cosmos. 

 And Darwin found that argument  intriguing and he couldn't just  walk away from it.  So the design argument he  thought that's not much of a  theory I could do better.  But the first cause argument he  was serious about.  And that's some others.  As I said there's several  arguments of the existence of  God.  So if you wanted to think  through the question of whether  God exists, you would want to  consider these different  arguments and think about  whether any of them really work,  whether any of them should  convince us, if we're not  already convinced already, that  there is a God.  Then there is the thing on the  other side that also got Darwin  a lot.  The problem of evil.  That seems to be an argument  against the existence of God.  And you want to sort of weigh  these against each other. 

 You have, on the one hand, the  arguments that God does exist  and then you have, on the other  side, the argument of evil which  could be thought of as an  argument against the hypothesis  that God exists.  So how do you weigh these all  against each other.  You might think that design, if  you believe the argument of  design, You might think that  design in nature is evidence for  the existence of God, evil is  evidence against, how do you put  the pros and cons together to  get some considered view.  But then there's a prior  question you need to think about  which is why are we thinking  about the question of whether  there is a God as a question  about evidence and reason.  Why is it appropriate to judge  whether God exists as if it were  the kind of claim like electrons  exists or dinosaurs used to  exist.  Those questions seem clear.  You want to look at the  evidence.  But maybe the idea that God  exist is not that kind of  question at all.  It's a question that you  shouldn't address by asking for  the evidence.  It's a matter of faith. 

 So even before you look at these  two things you want to sort of  know what the ground rules are.  What kinds of considerations  would be relevant, evidential  considerations or is it really a  matter of faith.  So that's a sort of outline if  you wanted to sort of work  through this problem, these are  the kinds of things you'd want  to consider.  And I think that evolutionary  theory has zero to tell you  about any of them.  It's just not in this line of  work.  These are philosophical  questions.  Evolutionary theory is not a  philosophy.  It's a bunch of testable claims  about what happened in the  history of life.  So I don't think evolutionary  theory tells you anything about  whether Gods exists.  It's just not on that subject. 

 It's silent on the question of  whether God exists.  Just like theories in physics  don't bring that in.  That's not the same thing as  denying that there is a God.  And here the important contrast  is the contrast between Darwin  the man and Darwinian theory  which is a bunch of statements  about what happened in the  history of life.  And it's perfectly true, as I  tried to explain, that Darwin  did have religious doubts.  I think they were mainly driven  by thinking about something that  has nothing to do with  evolution.  It's something that we all know  about.  It's the problem of evil.  But don't think that because  Darwin had religious doubts that  it's intrinsic to his theory  that it's in conflict with  religion or Christianity.  That's a different matter. 

 I don't really think there is a  conflict down here.  Though it's true that Darwin  himself walked away from  Christianity.  That's a different point.  Now I wanted, the last part of  this talk I want to talk about  this idea of guided mutations.  And as I explained it earlier,  standard evolutionary theory  includes the idea that mutations  are unguided.  That seems to be a problem if  you want to reconcile the  existence of God with the theory  of evolution because theistic  evolutionism seems committed to  two ideas that are in conflict  with each other.  On the one hand, that God guides  the evolutionary process.  That's the theistic part.  But it also seems to be  committed to the idea that  mutations are unguided.  So how can this be consistent to  think that God is guiding the  evolutionary process and also  that mutations are unguided. 

 It seems like we got a  contradictory, impossible kind  of combination here.  Well, I want to claim that there  is no conflict here but we've  got to be careful about what the  idea of guided mutation actually  means.  We've got to be careful about  what biologists are actually  saying.  What do they mean when they say  that mutations are unguided.  So to clarify first what  biologists mean when they claim  that.  Talk about the kind of evidence  they have for that a little bit.  And then come back to relating  the biological idea of unguided  mutation with this theological  question.  Okay, so let's think about  mutations as in the same way I  think we all think about  roulette wheels.  So one thing, I don't know if  you're a gambler or not, but one  thing I belief about roulette  wheels is that roulette wheels  don't land even or odd because  this would help me when I make a  bet on even or odd.  It has nothing to do with that. 

 Where the roulette ball lands,  of course, has its causes but  sort of what would help or hurt  me is just not part of what  makes of wheel behave as it  does.  And that's my model.  I want to explain and elaborate  that analogy that's my model  when mutations are unguided.  It means they have their causes,  of course, just like the  behavior of roulette wheels have  their causes, but they don't  land where they do because this  would be good for organisms.  And that's what biologists mean  by unguided mutation.  Well, let's look at the analogy  a little bit further and think  about roulette.  So that's your standard American  roulette wheel.  I had to look this up in  Wikipedia because there are  different kinds of roulette  wheels.  In America, this is unfortunate,  don't you think, in America we  have zero and double zero.  In Europe they only have one of  these. 

 So actually it's harder to win  at roulette in America than it  is in Europe.  It seems so unfair, don't you  think?  [LAUGHTER]  And so that's a  roulette wheel and we want to  understand, suppose you walked  into a casino and you wanted to  do an experiment to find out  whether or not roulette wheels  land odd or even because of  whether that outcome would help  or hurt gamblers.  You might have an opinion on  this already, but if you didn't  know what would you do when you  walked into a casino?  What kind of experiment would  give you information about that?  Well, here's I think a nice  simple experiment.  So you're going to play roulette  a whole bunch of times,  thousands and thousands of  rounds.  And sometimes the ball is going  to land odd and sometimes it  will land even and you're going  to make different bets at  different times during this  sequence of trials.  Sometimes you're going to bet on  odd so it would be good for you  if the ball landed odd, and  sometimes you'll bet on even.  So you're going to make  different bets in the course of  this 2000 trial experiment and  we're going to write down what  percentage of the time the ball  landed odd when you bet on odd,  how often did the ball land even  when you bet on odd, how often  did the ball land odd when you  bet on even and so on.  So these are the percentages.  27% of the time it was here, 32%  there and so on.  And the sad fact of the matter  is that what you'll find when  you do the experiment is that  the percentage of time that the  ball lands odd is the same  regardless of whether you bet on  odd or even. 

 This is pretty much the same as  that.  And the ball, the frequency in  which it lands even is the same  regardless of whether you bet on  odd or even.  So it's this, I mean, it might  not be exactly the same  frequency.  This might be 51% and this might  be 52%, but it's so close, this  is what you'll have if you do  the experiment.  It's so close that you just  think that these are the same  probabilities and the roulette  wheel is just not sensitive to  what you're betting on and what  would be good for you.    So that's I think what the  outcome of the experiment would  be and it's the evidence that we  could develop if we needed  evidence for thinking that  roulette wheels do not land odd  or even because this or that  outcome would be good for  gamblers.  It's data like this that make us  think this.  Okay, so that's the conclusion I  think that we would draw from  the experiment.  And notice that this is a, what  this is based on is looking at  the average behavior of the  roulette ball across thousands  and thousands of spins of the  roulette wheel.  It's based on this kind of  percentage data. 

 It's not based on what happened  on throw 37 in your experiment.  It's based on the percentage of  different outcomes in thousands  of trials.  So when we say that roulette  wheels land where they do  without regard to what would be  good for gamblers, we're talking  about the average behavior of  roulette balls, but I don't  think that proves or even shows  or has anything to say about the  question about whether, in the  course of your 2000 run  experiment, God reached in once  and had the roulette ball do  what it did.  Or may be God was behind each  outcome and that's why it  happened.  So what we say that roulette  wheels are unguided in their  behavior, we're making a claim  about the average behavior and I  think that's just silent on  whether this kind of process is  going on.  Now again my point here is not  to say that you should believe  that God is at work every time  the roulette wheel is spun, I'm  not claiming that that's true.  I'm just saying that this  question is not answered by the  experiment we did.  Because all this experiment is  telling us about is the average  behavior, not what happens on  each trial.  Okay, now let's do this similar  experiment for mutations.  The model is the roulette wheel  here. 

 And so we have a fly that's  blue, and we're going to  consider two possible mutations  it might experience.  It might mutate from blue to red  or it might mutate from blue to  green.  And of course, it might not  mutate at all.  So think about these two  possible changes that this fly  might experience, and we're  going to imagine that the fly  could be in two different kinds  of environments.  It might be placed in a red  environment, and it's better to  be red if you're in a red  environment.  I'll tell you why in a second.  And you also might put this fly  into a green environment and  there it's better to be green  than red.  And the reason you're better off  being red in a red environment  and better off being green in a  green environment is that I'm  going to assume that these flies  benefit from protective  coloration.  When they blend into air  environment, they're better able  to survive and reproduce than  when they stand in color  contrast with their environment.  So we've got two kinds of  mutations that might happen from  blue to red, from blue to green. 

 And two kind of environments  that we're going to put these  flies in.  And then we're going to do an  experiment with thousands and  thousands of trials.  We're going to take a large  number of blue flies and we're  going to distribute them into  these two environments, the red  environment and the blue  environment, green environment,  excuse me.  And then we're going to see how  often the fly mutates to red in  each of those environments and  how often the fly mutates to  green in each of those  environments.  So here's the experiment we're  going to do.  We're going to, if the fly is in  a red environment, it's better  off being red.  If the fly is in a green  environment, it's better off  being green.  And they're going to watch in  each of these environments how  often does it happen that the  fly mutates to red, the fly  mutates to green.  And here we record the  percentages of each of those  kinds of events.  And when biologists run  experiments like this on  mutation, what they find is what  we find when we do that  experiment on roulette wheels. 

 The frequency with which the fly  mutates to red doesn't depend on  whether it's better to be red or  green.  It's about the same.  Just like the frequency with  which the roulette wheels drops  even is the same regardless of  whether you bet on even or you  bet on odd.  It's not sensitive to what's  good for you.  Mutation is like this too.  It's just like a roulette wheel.  So here's what I want to say  about mutations and I think I'm  describing the kinds of  experiments biologists do that's  behind their claim that  mutations are unguided.  They don't occur because they  benefit or hurt organisms and  again this is a conclusion  that's based on the average  behavior of flies undergoing  mutation or whatever the  organism is and it really  doesn't say anything about what  happens each time a fly mutates.  That's a separate question.  And it just doesn't address this  question about whether God is  involved in the mutation  process. 

 So here's my, so to speak,  unified picture of roulette  wheels and mutations.  There's a sense in which they're  both unguided.  And if you want to add to that  the idea that God causes  everything that happens to  happen, that's a consistent  view.  Because that's not something  that the biologists or the  experimenter on roulette wheels  is getting at when they look at  average behavior.  So here's my, now I step back,  here's the big conclusion in the  kind of picture I've been trying  to draw tonight.  I think that theism is  compatible with directed  mutations and with undirected  mutations.  I think if you believe in God  you should say so the  biologists, you tell me whether  organisms have the ability to  control how they mutate.  I mean, I don't know.  You do the experiments, you tell  me what the evidence says.  It would be great if each of us  had the ability to regenerate  lost limbs. 

 Some organisms have that.  Wouldn't it be great if we had  it?  Well it would be I guess, but  that's not a reason to think  that we have this adaptive  ability.  We don't.  And you want science to tell you  what adaptive abilities  organisms have.  It would be great to be able to  guide your mutations in  beneficial ways.  That doesn't mean that any  organisms have this.  You want to ask a biologist.  And if it turns out that biology  are right in claiming that  mutations are undirected in the  biological sense of that term, I  think theists could live with  that.  Just like theists could live  with the fact that we don't have  the ability to regenerate lost  limbs.  So when evolutionary biologists  say the mutation is unguided,  again, they're talking about the  average rates of mutations. 

 And it just doesn't say anything  about whether God is involved in  each or every or any individual  mutation event.  So here's the summary of the  whole talk.  So I don't think evolutionary  theory rules the existence of  God.  In fact, I think the theory is  consistent with a God who  intervenes in nature and not  just with a God who creates  nature and then sits back,  that's the deistic version of  theism.  But I think Darwin was exactly  right when he thought that God  did it as not a scientific  explanation.  It's empty.  And so believing in a God who  creates nature and sometimes  intervenes in it is just not a  substitute for doing science.  Thank you.  [APPLAUSE]  >> Thank you, very  much, Elliott.  The floor is open to discussion. 

 Speak up so we can hear you, and  I remind you to repeat the  question for the benefit of the  TV audience.  >> Okay.  Yes, all the way in the back.  >> It seems to me that it's  almost unimportant whether or  not those mutations themselves  are guided or unguided for  people who think about  randomness and the first law of  physics thermodynamics of  entropy.  Some of us who think it's  amazing that life could even  possibly exist and create the  order that it has on this planet  for the mutation that occurs and  whether or not it's beneficial  or not, well the result is in  the result of whether that  mutation actually allowed or  helped that organism to survive  in that environment.  So the idea of the organism  itself, the mutations and the  environment all put together is  the picture of evolution and  whether things can go forward or  not.  And what do we mean maybe by  forward is an interesting  question when you talk about the  hand of God.  Well, the hand of God which has  created the instant in time  where there is that evolution or  that space or that genetic  mutation or that whole  environmental system that that  thing mutates into.  Could we say that is the hand of  God?  Or could we say that's just kind  of the result of all the laws  and all of the actions that  happen over millions of millions  of years.  And during which there is  extreme suffering. 

 99. 9%  of the species are gone.  They're not even here.  We might not be here soon.  So I guess my concern is really  about perhaps an intrinsic  direction of evolution.  An intrinsic purpose of  evolution to continue to create  order and preserve that order in  this place on this planet.  And that the drive doesn't, may  or may not even necessarily  require a hand of God if you put  all those natural laws together  and say all of these things can  happen along with millions of  years of individual random  actions of mutations and say we  can end up with a planet with an  amazing human being on it that  is aware of what's going on and  can do things to help the  preservation of life on that  planet as the ultimate goal of  the life on that planet is  self-preservation.  So maybe if you could talk a  little about randomness and  entropy and self-direction and  self-intervention in the  direction of flow of evolution  and how that might relate to  theories of God.  >> That's a big, big question.  It's several.  I want to focus on what you  asked initially which is, or  claimed initially, that it's  really not that important  whether mutations are guided or  unguided in terms of God's being  involved. 

 We have this natural process  unfolding in front of us and we  can just study that process as a  natural process and just not  worry about whether God is  behind it making sure it goes  this way or that.  I think from the point of view  of science, that's right.  That's what science is about,  it's about natural processes.  Things that happen in nature.  But if you're a theist, you  might want to know how that  story about nature that science  is constructing is related to  the belief you have in whether  there is a supernatural being, a  God, and whether these two can  be harmonized with each other.  And what I was claiming is you  might not, if you're not  interested in the question of  whether or not God exists, my  point was not to convince you to  get interested but to convince  you that if you are interested  then you shouldn't dismiss the  possibility that the existence  of God is actually consistent  with what science is telling us  about the evolutionary process.  What is inconsistent is the a  certain kind of biblical  literalism.  A very special kind of biblical  literalism.  That's inconsistent with the  theory of evolution and lots of  other scientific theories too.  But biblical literalism is not  the same thing as believing in  God. 

 And that's really what I was  talking about.  >> And we can't believe in God  in many ways.  To think of God as a image in  the image of man, some  individual thing out there  making decisions would be one  image.  Another image would be the  combined existence of all  matter, all energy, all physical  laws and the direction that it  provides to the universe.  And some people, like myself,  believe that God is everything.  And that may seem to some people  like a copout but I don't think  so.  >> [INAUDIBLE]  When we talk  about God and whether God  exists, what does that mean,  what does that three letter word  actually mean.  And I was, tonight, thinking  about God as if there is a God,  God as a person, an agent who  does things, has a mind,  performs actions and that's what  Darwin was grappling with when  he thought about the first cause  argument he was thinking of God  as an agent who made the  universe and found that  incredibly appealing as sort of  indispensable as a way of  thinking about nature.  With the idea that God is not a  person that he's identical with  the whole of nature is a --  idea.  >> That's a very different  conception. 

 Yes?  >> [INAUDIBLE]  How do you  balance all that in the public  education?  >> The Constitutional principle,  the separation of church and  state, has been interpreted by  courts in terms of the effect  that a policy would have in  terms of promoting religion.  So when the Dover trial unfolded  what was at issue was a version  of intelligent design theory  which is something that came on  the scenes in the early 1990s in  which the word GOD was not  mentioned.  So it was simply the idea that  the complicated adaptations that  we see in nature were made by an  intelligent designer and we're  not going to say whether that  intelligent designer was a  supernatural God or  extraterrestrials or scientists  from the future beaming back to  the present living things.  It's silent on those questions.  And this was formulated by the  creationist camp as a way of  trying to pass that  Constitutional test.  If you don't use the G-word,  what's the problem here?  It's just a theory like other  theories.  It might be a good or a bad  theory but it's not, on its  face, religious.  And the reason they lost the  trial is that the legal question  was not is the G-word used, it  wasn't.  The question was, would having  the policy of this sort promote  religion?  And Judge Jones did not have  difficulty deciding that because  there were the transcripts of  the meetings of the school board  in which they said that was  their goal.  So it was kind of easy. 

 And it's part of the reason why  the intelligent design moment  whose center is the Discovery  Institute in Seattle,  Washington.  Before the trial even happened  the discovery institute had  withdrawn from this trial  because I think they just saw  this was not a winnable fight.  Because of this question about  whether policies would have the  effect or they're intended to  promote religion, that's the  criterion.  So that's, I think that's a good  criterion.  So I don't think it really  matters for the legal policy  questions whether the G-word is  part of this theory or not.  It's what would happen if we  had, for example, a rule that  said intelligent design was  taught as an alternative theory  in high school biology with the  effect of that be to promote  religion.  So that's I take it where the  legal situation is now and I'm  sure it's not over.  You can never think that this  trial is the last trial.  So we'll see another sort of  mutation in this conflict and  we'll see whether it's  different.  Yeah?  >> At one point in your talk you  said that scientific theories  were simply a testable series of  claims. 

 But early on you said that  evolutionary theory holds that  life evolved from the nonlife.  This is not really a testable  claim.  So is it just not as scientific  claim or is the problem that  you're arising simply a -- of  what scientific theory is?  >> [INAUDIBLE]  >> We can pick  you up on this side with this  microphone.  >> Here we go.  I do think that scientific  theories to be scientific have  to be testable.  I think that the idea that life  evolved from nonlife is  testable.  The idea, I mean, what is so  striking when you look at the  organisms alive today is they  have these similarities that  can't be explained except by  postulating that they derived  from a common ancestor.  And enough is known about the  processes by which this life  might evolve from nonlife I  think to say with some  confidence that that gives us  some evidence that there is a  natural process involved here.  So the thing that's true, and I  think what's behind your  question is, there's tons that's  not understood about how this  process of life evolving from  nonlife actually worked.  This is an area in which there  are lots of big questions,  there's lots that's not  understood about it. 

 But I don't think it's true that  the whole proposition is  intrinsically, scientifically  intractable.  It can be broken down to pieces  and you can test different  theories about how life may or  may not have evolved.  So I think it's part of science  but this part of the story of  evolutionary theory is not, by  any means, over and fully  developed.  A lot of things, like the idea  of common ancestry, I think is  sort of abundantly well  documented.  And it's true that not every  detail is understood but we know  tons about common ancestry.  The first thing here is the  least understood but I don't  think it's an inherently  scientific question to try to  test theories about the way life  might have evolved from  nonliving things.  All the way in the back.  >> There was a puzzle on slide  51, you said so is atheism  indicating it would be  compatible with direct  mutations.  I'm just trying to imagine what  that would be like.  >> Now talking here about the  biologist sense of directed and  undirected mutation here. 

 So suppose we discovered that  some organisms, maybe not all of  them, but some organisms had the  remarkable ability to control  what mutations occur and they  can control it so that the  beneficial mutations are the  ones that have the higher  probability and the deleterious  ones have lower probability.  So it would turn out that the  mutation process has this  adapted feature.  If you're a biologist you would  immediately want to understand  how that might evolve.  How natural selection might have  produced this machinery that  allows this to happen.  And if you were an atheistic  biologist you would just regard  this as yet another surprising  adaptation.  Just like when we look around at  big mammals like us we don't  have the ability to regenerate  lost limbs but when we look at  other organisms, they do.  And it's not like an atheist  should say, oh, I guess I can't  be an atheist anymore.  It's just a surprising  adaptation that maybe you don't  expect organisms to have, then  you discover that they do.  And that's what directed  mutation would be like if we  actually found it.  It would be the sort of thing  that biologists would take on as  a problem to understand how this  kind of machinery could have  evolved. 

 I think atheists could have it  either way it just doesn't touch  what they think.  And it doesn't touch what  theists think either.  It's a biological question.  Yeah?  >> Getting back to the roulette  example that you gave.  What I was thinking is if  causality can be analyzed in  aggregate average level but not  so much on the individual level,  are you saying that the  evolutionary explanation only  can handle causality at  aggregate levels but that  individual events can't be  explained by evolutionary  theory?  >> I won't say can't but what we  know now about mutation is this  kind of aggregate phenomenon.  We know more than that but  there's room if you want to add  divine intervention here or  there I don't see that biology  is ruling that out.  It's not saying that can't be so  it's also not saying it must be  so.  It's just open to the idea.  The kind of broad, bigger  picture that I have in mind here  is that evolutionary biology is  understanding the causes of  events but there's no reason to  think that the causes that are  on the list are complete.  We document these and we don't  have any further evidence for  other ones or else they'd be on  the list too but do we have a  proof that this list is  complete?  Well, maybe there are some  causes that we're not measuring,  hidden variables is what they're  called in physics. 

 And evolutionary biology just  doesn't say anything about  whether such hidden variables  exists, therefore it doesn't say  anything about whether  supernatural variables exist  here.  That's why it's just open to add  or not add that thing as you  please.  Science is open about that.  Yes?  >> I'm sorry but I have to be  really critical about a good  five-six about everything you  said.  It seems to me that the only  logical thing that a  philosopher, a scientist and  anybody applying intelligent  thinking to any such problems  who come to the conclusion that  the questions that science  answers are all about how.  Whereas, the questions that  religion answers are all about  why.  There's no overlap there.  And you keep confusing the two  issues.  Can you comment about that.  >> I can comment. 

 So I will try to repeat the  question which I should have  been doing consistently.  So the suggestion is that  science is not in the business  of understanding why things  happen.  The why question is something  that religion is addressing.  Science on the hand is really  about understanding how things  happen.  And so the two subjects don't  even intersect with each other.  They're approaches to different  questions.  I don't agree.  With 100%, not just 5-6%.  Let me just try to say why.  Let me just start with the word  why. 

 The word why did this happen is  a kind of ambiguous question.  Sometimes when we ask why did it  happen we ask what's the meaning  or the importance or the  significance for us of the  event.  And I agree that if that's what  why questions always mean that I  don't science is really about  that.  But the reason I don't want to  agree with your division of why  and how here is that why  questions are often just ways of  asking for the causes of things.  Why is there a full moon  tonight?  Is answered by astronomy.  Why mutations occur is answered  by the fact that you have  radiation acting on these  organisms.  So I think of why questions as  very often, probably most the  time, just requests for a causal  explanation.  I think that's really what  science is doing is a ton,  understanding the causes of  evolution that's what  evolutionary theory is about.  So maybe that's not central to  the point you're making but that  is what I think about why, so I  don't see why and how as sort  of, science does both of those  things.  Let me rephrase now the things  behind your, I think the kind of  view you're describing is very  similar to the view that the  biologist Stephen Jay Gould put  forward when he talked about  there being two magisteria, two  worlds, that science is about  one of them and religion is  about the other. 

 Science is about why nature, and  I'm using why in my sense, not  in the sense you're describing,  what causes nature to change in  the way it does, whereas  religion is about the world of  values, why things are good or  bad, important, wrong, things  like that.  Meaningful or meaningless.  And his view, I think which is  your view, is that these are  just on different subjects.  Well, some of us do think about  religion in just that way but  many people who are religious  emphatically disagree.  Of course they believe that  religion does address questions  of value and ethics but they  also believe that religion is in  the business of advancing true  historical descriptions of how  God was related to human beings.  I mean Christianity is taken  sort of literally to the story  of the fall in the garden of  Eden, original sin, Christ's  death being a way to redeeming  mankind.  These are intended by many  Christians, I'll say most  Christians historically, as  factual claims of what happened  in human history.  And I think the Gould picture  that religion is only about  right and wrong is sort of  ignoring this part of religion.  And it's there.  It might not be part of your  religion but I don't think we  can define religion as only  about whether things are good  and bad and right and wrong and  meaning they're also about human  history. 

 Religions often are about that.  So that's why the conflict is  there that has to be looked at,  whether it's actually a conflict  is another matter.  Yes?  >> I'm interested in the idea of  first cause.  You said that Darwin was  intrigued by the idea of first  cause and that God created the  universe, all of creation coming  from God.  I'm curious why he may find that  intriguing but not the question  of, on an individual level, why  does one first exist over  another.  So why does a chameleon change  its color.  So to me they're very similar  questions just on a different  scope.  So I'm curious why he may have  seen that distinction and from a  philosophical standpoint is  there really a distinction  between those two questions?  >> I agree with what you're  saying.  So the question is, Darwin did  not think you needed to bring  God into biology to explain why  organisms have adaptations but  he did not dismiss the first  cause argument which says the  whole universe exists because  God created it.  So the question is, was Darwin  being consistent when he sort of  dismisses intelligent design as  a nonstarter. 

 It doesn't explain anything,  it's just an empty phrase, that  was his view.  But when it comes to first cause  he found it impossible to deny  that.  He just found it compelling.  I'm inclined to agree with you.  That these are really on a par.  If you think that intelligent  design is not a substantive  explanation of why organisms  have their futures, why is the  existence of God a substantive  explanation of why the universe  exists.  So I think your question is a  very good one about maybe Darwin  is being inconsistent here.  Yes?  >> You point is interesting  because it points out how  uncomfortable many people are  with the concept of randomness  -- . So you mentioned hidden  variables which goes along with  the history of physics trying to  understand the uncertainty of  quantum mechanics and a lot of  people -- have spent a lot of  effort trying to look for  explanations of randomness in  quantum events.  And nobody has ever been able to  found anything other than just  really intrinsic randomness.  So my question is really whether  when you talk of this logical  third way perhaps there is a  different hand of controlling  events whether you can conceive  that it's possible --  experiments. 

 And also come to the conclusion  that really there's nothing else  that going on in the evolution  sense or whether it's the  quantum sense.  >> So the question is, how  should I rephrase it?  We have the concept of  randomness in quantum physics,  the idea of the hidden variable,  which I mentioned briefly, is  part of that discourse and since  the quantum theory was developed  in the 1920s, there were  brilliant scientists who thought  there had to be hidden  variables.  That it can't be pure  randomness, let's just use that  phrase.  Einstein was in the camp and  more recently there have been  physicists who have tried to  develop theories that basically  show that quantum mechanics as a  theory is incomplete.  It describes some of what's  going on causally but there are  these other things that the  theory is not taken into  account.  And these attempts to go beyond  quantum mechanics have failed so  far.  The question is, now I get to  the question part.  I think the question is, will we  ever be in a position of being  able to prove that there's  nothing beyond the randomness.  That there are no hidden  variables.  I mean, we have the attempt to  develop hidden variable theories  or to show that there are hidden  variables and these are failed  to develop. 

 Could we ever find ourselves in  a stronger position where we  could somehow prove that hidden  variables are impossible.  And there's tradition in quantum  mechanics of trying to develop  arguments of that kind which  always have assumptions in them  so you can always question  whether the assumptions that are  behind these arguments are  compelling.  I don't know, having stated the  question, I don't know.  Maybe we will be able it take it  to this further point where in  physics show that the  explanations we have here  exhaust all that's going on  causally.  I don't want to try to predict  the future of physics here.  This is a question that  physicists pursue worrying about  whether their theory is causally  complete, wondering whether it's  possible to show that it  actually is.  That quantum mechanics is the  end of the road.  And so physicists investigate  this as a kind of problem in  their science.  There is no comparable question  in biology, I think.  Biologists can list a bunch of  causes, mutation, genetic  system, natural selection of  evolution and for all they know  there's a deeper micro story  going on there that's just not  part of the biology. 

 So I think that biology and  physics are actually in very  different situations with  respect to this.  >> It seems to me that in both  demands practicing physicists  and biologists can get --  without -- about causes.  Even though which seems to  indicate that they're probably  not.  The attitude of many practicing  physicists.  So again I'm just asking if  there's an analogy with  practicing biologists.  >> Okay, I quite get that  dimension of the question so let  me restate that.  Biologists and physicists can  develop their theories, test  their hypotheses without  bringing in, let me just say,  supernatural hidden causes.  And for many of them that's a  good reason for thinking that  there are no such things.  And there you have a way of  thinking that is appealing to  many scientists which does lead  to atheism.  But I want to claim that there's  another way of thinking about  science where you don't have to  have such strong commitments and  you just stop with the first  part of your comment, which I am  inclined to agree with, that you  don't need to bring in  supernatural agents to do  science. 

 But if you stop there, you're  not in the position of being an  atheist, you're in the position  of just saying that's not a  scientific question.  And should you go further?  Well, you have to ask yourself  whether scientists need to  assume something, whether or not  they do is a guide to what  actually is out there and that's  a hard philosophical question.  But the more modest thing that  you said, I certainly agree  with.  I don't think you need to bring  the supernatural agents into the  practice of biology or physics,  but that's just to say that the  science is neutral on that  question, it's not committed.  Yes?  >> Some things that you said  that I don't agree with.  First of all, Darwin is a hero  -- evolution was -- before  Darwin was born.  [INAUDIBLE] The truth of that  has absolutely nothing to do  with Darwinism in the 19th  century.  [INAUDIBLE]  >> [INAUDIBLE]  So  the observation is what Darwin  was like personally, whether he  was an atheist or a Christian or  whatever, is just not relevant  to the theory he put forward.  That's what interesting.  Who cares about this guy. 

 If he hadn't discovered it,  someone else would have.  In fact, someone else did  discover it.  Alfred Russell Wallace  discovered the theory when  Darwin did.  It was this amazing event of  simultaneous independent  discovery of the same theory.  So there was more than one  discoverer not just Darwin.  There are some, so I completely  agree with that and remember  there was this slide, I don't  know if I can find it, where I  talk about separating questions  about the man from the theory.  Let me try to find that.  Yeah.  So, yeah, I completely agree.  And I think the reason I, I  think what Darwin was like  personally is interesting and I  think partly because what he was  grappling with is what many of  us grapple with when we think  about the existence of God, the  problem of evil. 

 The first cause.  These are things he was worrying  about.  But then I was trying to show  that that concern is really  nothing about the theory of  evolution.  So I agree with that point that  you're making.  go ahead.  >> The second point, you always  mentioned that philosophical  question does not exist but  religion stands up Sunday after  Sunday -- does exist and they  say all kinds of very specific  things that exist when it does  what he did and so on.  Even though the question isn't  does God exist or not may not be  in conflict.  [INAUDIBLE]  Individual findings  of God has done or is doing -- .  You might get too easy for  division to be on par with  science.  You just put it in context, does  God exist?  That's the philosophical  question. 

 Get to the specifics.  Is God in the image of man or  man in the image of God.  [INAUDIBLE]  >> Okay, so the  comment is, it's one thing to  show that the theory of  evolution is consistent with the  brief statement God exists, but  what about more detailed  statements about God.  For example, that God made the  universe in six 24 hour periods.  And remember I mentioned very  briefly in the talk biblical  literalism.  There is a conflict between  certain kinds of biblical  literalism and tons of science,  not just the theory of evolution  so I don't dispute that.  But I wanted to separate that  from this more modest question,  you're right about, which is not  claims like that but claims  about the existence of God,  certain key claims of  Christianity, which is a bit  more that just God exists.  And talk about how that's  related to biology.  So I certainly agree that there  are kinds of religious  statements or specific religious  statements, highly specific  religious statements that are in  conflict.  So the idea that life began  10,000 years ago because of  divine intervention, that's  inconsistent with evolutionary  biology. 

 Evolutionary biology tells us  that life began more than 3  billion years ago.  So just for starters.  But you see that particular view  of about young earth  creationism, I don't equate that  with religion.  That's just one example of a  religion.  And yeah, that's inconsistent  with the theory of evolution.  >> I guess the last point I'll  make is your story of guided  versus unguided mutation.  [INAUDIBLE]  It's true that  mutations are not guided and so  on.  But the results of mutations in  biology are that you're open to  some changes and also that the  very change is promulgated to  the next generation.  So when one mutation leads to  something that survives better  and another one leads to  something which is not so  successful and they pass those  traits on to their -- then they  seem to be unguided or random at  first -- what leads to success  in the way that we understand  evolution, not that it's just  some random process that might  exist.  >> Okay, the idea is that there  a disanalogy between the way in  which roulette wheels are  unguided in the way they behave  and the way in which mutations  are unguided. 

 What I was saying about the  similarity was that in both  cases it's not true that  roulette wheels behave as they  do or that mutations occur  because they would be good for  somebody, good for the gambler,  good for the organism.  So that's the point that I was  trying to establish.  I agree with what you said about  the process of evolution by  natural selection.  That it begins with random  unguided, in that sense,  mutations but then there's this  nonrandom process which is the  process of natural selection.  It's not random but a  directional process in which  traits that help organisms that  survive and reproduce are going  to become more common in a  population or a species, and  traits that hurt an organism and  make it less able to survive and  reproduce are going to become  less frequent.  So there's this biasing part of  the process of natural  selection.  It's not a coin toss which of  these two traits is going to  increase and which is going to  disappear.  The one that helps the organism  survive and reproduce is the one  that evolves under natural  selection.  But that's separate from the  question of how mutations occur.  So the thing that's kind of hard  to people who come about this  theory for the first to  understand is so you have  mutations being where novel  characteristics first appear and  then those new characteristics  become common or not because of  a selection process. 

 And the thing that's happening  over here and random and the  thing that's happening over here  is not random.  The theory has this combination  of a random part and a nonrandom  part.  And often people think the whole  theory is just monkeys and  typewriters.  Well, it isn't.  The mutation part is like that.  But then there's this other  stuff that has this biasing in  it.  So I agree with your  observation.  >> I'd like to make an  observation before we all thank  Professor Sober and adjourn to  the book signing just outside  the room.  This has been a very engaging  conversation.  Engaging because of you and  engaging because of you. 

 And I can't tell you how pleased  I am that this engaging  conversation has been taking  place in the chemistry building  rather than in some other  location.  And I hope that my colleagues in  chemistry, in physics, in  biology and in the arts will  continue to think about what  Professor Sober has, for me,  succeeded in making me think  some more about.  So please join me in thanking  Elliott for this excellent  presentation.  Thank you, Elliott.  [APPLAUSE]  >> Very enjoyable.