0001 Is the current scientific consensus on human origins at odds with core theological doctrines at the heart of the evangelical faith?

You bet it is.

0002 Well, is this a blessing in disguise?

It may well be.

How so?

0003 When science clashes with key theological doctrines, such as Augustine’s doctrine of original sin, Christians may need to strive for better theological essentials.

0004 Does the same apply to science?

Can I say, “When the theological doctrine of original sin pushes back against our current consensus on the evolutionary sciences, researchers may need to search for better scientific essentials.”?

0005 On December 11, 2019, Jeff Hardin, member of the Department of Integrative Biology at UW-Madison, publishes his essay, Biology and Theological Anthropology: Friend or Foe?, on the Biologos website.

In the introduction, he joins British neuroscientist, Donald McKay, in asking (more or less), “Does God give us Darwin, Mendel and Rawlinson in order to achieve a less improper interpretation of His Word?”

0006 At the same time, one cannot ignore a reflection.

Does God give us the Bible in order to achieve a less improper interpretation of human natural history, genetics and Near Eastern Literature?

0007 Jeff Hardin, unlike most writers on this confounding topic, does not hide the question in the mirror.

Weirdly, he invites it.

0008 In order to appreciate how science and metaphysics mirror one another, I turn to Comments on Jacques Maritain’s Book (1935) Natural Philosophy (available at the smashwords website under the Empirio-schematic series).

Science is successfully born at the start of the modern age, with the formulation of the Positivist’s judgment.

What is a judgment?

A judgment is a relation between ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’.  When the elements are assigned to Peirce’s categories, the judgment becomes actionable.  Actionable judgments unfold into category-based nested forms.

0009 Here is a diagram of the Positivist’s judgment.

0010 The positivist intellect, the relation, insists on a rule: No metaphysics.  Surely, this is one reason why scientific inquiry into human evolution grates against theological anthropology.  

What ought to be is an empirio-schematic judgment.

Disciplinary language (relation) brings observations and measurements (what is) into relation with mathematical and mechanical models (what ought to be).

0011 What is what is?

What is has the structure of Peirce’s secondness.  The category of secondness is the realm of actuality.  Secondness consists of two contiguous real elements.

Here, the two real elements, a noumenon and its phenomena, belong to firstness, the realm of potential.  The noumenon, the thing itself, has the potential of capturing the attention of the positivist intellect.  Its phenomena, observable and measurable facets of the thing, have the potential of activating an empirio-schematic judgment.

The contiguity is most curious.  I place the contiguity in brackets.  A noumenon [cannot be objectified as] its phenomena.

0017 The distinction between a noumenon and its phenomena is valuable because it allows scientists to study phenomena, while ignoring the metaphysics associated with their noumenon.

So, while many inquirers ask noumenal questions, “Where did we humans come from?  What went wrong? What is the cure?”, the scientific answers are based on clues concerning what would be the observable and measurable facets of hominin evolution as witnessed by a disinterested observer. 

0018 Here is an association between modern versions of theological & biological anthropology and what is for the Positivist’s judgment.

0019 What do scientists look for?

Evolutionary scientists look for clues.  Then, they analyze those clues with specific models built by empirical scientists and geneticists.  The clues turn into observable and measurable features of the evolutionary record that may be then analyzed according to models proposed by biologists and natural historians.  The result is a narrative of hominin evolution.

The evolutionary record is a product of scientific inquiry.  It is expressed as a narrative.

0020 This conclusion is implicit in Hardin’s treatment of human natural history.  He presents a narrative.

What does this imply?

Human evolutionary sciences are forensic sciences.  They rely on theories by the empirical and natural sciences.  They are devoted to producing a narrative describing what happened, in accordance with the positivist rule.

0021 The empirical sciences have it easy.  They assume that the subject of inquiry is real, because they encounter the things themselves.

Empiricists know that the thing itself cannot be reduced to its observable and measurable facets.

0022 The forensic scientists have a more difficult time.  They assume that the subject of inquiry ought to be real, but the thing itself is no longer present.  They must construct a narrative about what the subject of inquiry must have been, as if it could be observed by a disinterested observer.  Clues are studied in order to ascertain the phenomena that would have been observed.  Then, these forensic-built phenomena are subject to an empirio-schematic judgment.

Hardin addresses this construction in a section on science and human origins.

0023 The rational mind must wonder, “Is human evolution nothing more than a narrative that scientists build from phenomena rigorously constructed from various clues?”

If that is true, then the noumenon of human evolution can be objectified by its phenomena, violating the structure of the Positivist’s what is.

0024 Is this rather disorienting?

Obviously, we cannot appreciate human evolution as a noumenon, because the thing itself is no longer present for direct examination.

So, the evolutionary sciences formulate what the phenomena of human evolution must be.

They end up providing a narrative.

Yet, this scientific narrative cannot give us an appreciation of what it is to be an evolved human, even though our sense of what is it to be human evolved.

0025 Even worse, what if humans evolved to pay attention to noumena?

Such a proposal explains why classicists and believers come up with hylomorphic descriptions of things and people in the first place.

Such a proposal accounts for why a narrative is relevant.

Narratives are stories about thing themselves.

0026 The unsettling end to the prior blog shows where Jeff Hardin’s discussion can go.

Hardin poses one question.  A second question mirrors the first.  The transit from one question to the other turns everything backwards.  One question reflects phenomena onto their noumenon.  The other reflects a noumenon onto its phenomena.

Scientists study phenomena.  Their data makes sleepiness great.

Humans pay attention to noumena.  Our attentiveness is likely innate.

0027 We want to hear a narrative about the thing itself.  Forget about the empirio-schematic judgments about its phenomena.

Evolution, as a forensic science, offers a data-driven narrative.  But, it’s really a projection of models onto the thing itself.  So, the story from phenomena inherently violates the dyad of what is in the Positivist’s judgment.

So, it will never satisfy.  It will never offer me a way to appreciate who I am.

0028 I am a tarnished image of God.

The Bible offers a narrative, which many call “special revelation”.  Special revelation captures our attention.  Reading the words bring us into awareness of the thing itself.

0029 Hardin offers the following picture.

Hardin argues that the narratives of the evolutionary sciences provide constraints on interpretations of what it is to be human from Genesis.

0030 The following is a particularly important application.

0031 In the next blog, I will look at the same argument in the mirror within the heart of Hardin’s essay.