Schönborn weighs in again


Comment on "The Designs of Science" by Christoph Schönborn, First Things Jan. 2006
(Regards to Andrew Brown for the link)

Christoph Schönborn here appears to be trying to distance himself from the Intelligent Design movement (a good thing, but then it's always a good idea to leap off of a burning, sinking rowboat if you find yourself in one), while at the same time showing that theologians really cannot make contentful statements about the world that do not tread on the 'magisterium' of science:

"If [the Darwinian biologist] takes a very narrow view of the supposedly random variation that meets his gaze, it may well be impossible to correlate it to anything interesting, and thus variation remains simply unintelligible. He then summarizes his ignorance of any pattern in variation by means of the rather respectable term “random.” But if he steps back and looks at the sweep of life, he sees an obvious, indeed an overwhelming pattern. The variation that actually occurred in the history of life was exactly the sort needed to bring about the complete set of plants and animals that exist today. In particular, it was exactly the variation needed to give rise to an upward sweep of evolution resulting in human beings. If that is not a powerful and relevant correlation, then I don’t know what could count as evidence against actual randomness in the mind of an observer."

We will ignore for a moment the fact that a man with no science training is claiming to be pointing out a real, observable pattern in biology that has eluded the myriads of hard-working biologists thus far, and just consider his argument. It was refuted long ago by Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker, with his example of a genetic algorithm that generates a sentence of Hamlet ("METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL"). Would Schönborn remark with holy awe that the variation generated by Dawkins's program was exactly the sort needed to create that sentence? Of course, the variation created by the program could have created any other sentence, but that's precisely the point: the variation is random, but the outcome is subject to selection. If you flipped a fair coin 20 times, and got the result "HTTTHHTTHHTTHTHHTTHH", would you think a divine hand had guided the result? After all, the coin flipped in exactly the right way to give you HTTTHHTTHHTTHTHHTTHH! There's no τελος in this sequence - but what makes him think there is a purpose for, say, moss? (Other than to make more moss).

Only his religion. It is unfortunate but unavoidable that Schönborn, one of the strongest intellects in the Catholic church (as his writing shows, I admit), can produce nothing but a question-begging argument here. Paraphrasing, it is this: "my religion says that humans are here as part of a purpose; therefore whatever steps led to human existence must have had purpose behind them." He fails to provide anything but handwaving arguments for his thesis that this purpose is observable by science reason and not faith alone - falling back on some lamentable rhetoric:

"[the modern biologist] is free to define his special science on terms as narrow as he finds useful for gaining a certain kind of knowledge. But he may not then turn around and demand that the rest of us, unrestricted by his methodological self-limitation, ignore obvious truths about reality, such as the clearly teleological nature of evolution."

Note to future cardinals: when you have to use "obvious" and "clearly" in the same sentence, and then cannot spell out anywhere in the rest of the essay what it is that is supposed to be clear and obvious, you may want to re-examine your thesis.

Posted: Wed - December 28, 2005 at 12:20 AM | | | |

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