Reading Some Gould This Weekend…

Stephen Jay Gould is one of my heroes for many reasons. I love thinking about evolution (I’ve done some prior work looking at founder effects in humans), and Gould has some many interesting ideas in the field of evolutionary science. More importantly, I love his writing style. If I could emulate him in terms of clarity and his almost a poetic type style of story telling, I would be quite happy.

image from Clark University

I’ve read many of his books and tons of his essays through the years. Recently, I was thinking about his famous essay (co-written with Richard Lewontin) titled, “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme.” I read it again this weekend. There are many, many things to say about this piece. Let’s limit our discussion to this essay section:

We wish to question a deeply engrained habit of thinking among students of evolution. We call it the adaptationist programme, or the Panglossian paradigm. It is rooted in a notion popularized by A.R. Wallace and A. Weismann, (but not, as we shall see, by Darwin) toward the end of the nineteenth century: the near omnipotence of natural selection in forging organic design and fashioning the best among possible worlds. This programme regards natural selection as so powerful and the constraints upon it so few that direct production of adaptation through its operation becomes the primary cause of nearly all organic form, function, and behavior.

As a metaphorical example, they discuss the spandrels of the San Marco (Venice, Italy). The dome of the cathedral needs spandrels in order to not collapse. The spandrels have painted designs on them. Here is their point: The spandrels do not exist to have beautiful art on them. They exist to support the dome. The art is a secondary product only — not initially appeciated and perhaps a random byproduct. No art needs to exist on the spandrels. The art is simply a byproduct not related to original form.

image from Springer

This issue of phenotypic variability in large structures also may extend to the microscopic level of epigenetics. Although chemical changes to DNA, such as methylation, may be adaptive, I think non-adaptive / randomness change in-and-of-itself may be occurring.

Where am I taking this post? The scientific debates of adaptionism and non-adaptionism in evolution are extremely fascinating. Can we take this discussion outside of science and apply to how we live subjectively?

As an example, one could consider the Gould / Lewontin essay and its non-adaptive evolution emphasis as a master example of randomness associated with bleakness in nature (subjectively, of course). If all or much is random, then what is the point of anything? Camus would agree here as all would be absurd.

However, I think the regular person walking around and doing what they do as part of their daily life would not think life is constantly absurd. It there an overall purpose to all of THIS — life, relationships, culture, society, our planet, our universe? Such questions are philosophical and theological but no less important than the scientific discussions that appear here.

As Marjorie Suchocki has expressed in her books (God Christ Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology), we humans are always experiencing “perpetually perishing.” This idea is quite right. We are perdurants. We are indeed clumps of matter, but the most important aspect is the change in the matter. This change involves time which is a force in itself but which is still underneath the ultimate priority which is CHANGE. This change in-and-of-itself takes in consideration all of matter, space, and time.

In Process and Reality, Alfred North Whitehead has stated:

Every actual entity is what it is, and is with its definite status in the universe, determined by its internal relations to other actual entities. ‘Change’ is the description of the adventures of eternal objects in the evolving universe of actual things.

I love Whitehead so much, but it is important to consider his emphasis on Platonic objects (the ‘eternal objects’). One can consider changing (see what I did there) the idea of eternal objects to change itself as the ultimate eternal object / Platonic form. Thus, everything changes. There may be prehensive / panentheistic / panexperiential aspects to this change (Naturalismppp — see prior posts), but change is the base structure of nature.

From a religious perspective, God is in this change. God changes as God learns with us, experiences us, loses with us, loves with us, loves us. God’s love extends to all entities in nature. Change occurs, but God being an eternal entity experiencing all change also remembers us eternally as we change.

Finally, I have talked about the “divine lure” in prior posts. God wants change. God desires change. This change is voluntary at all levels of nature. God desires change so much that God is change from a metaphysical sense. This change allows one to consider all sorts of adaptive or non-adaptive evolutionary arguments. However, if God calls all of nature in that “still, small voice”, then nature can proceed unfettered in all sorts of directions with some type of voluntary goal of God that nature (including every human) has every right to be neutral upon, to go against, or to go alongside such a call. God loves everyone of us. God loves every entity in nature. God perhaps has a goal here (I think God has a goal — I may be wrong), but God will never force that goal.

Evolutionary science is wonderful. A religious person should not ignore this field of science, but to appreciate it, perhaps interpret it from a theological perspective, and to look for God’s quiet call for change.

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Creativity in Nature

Recently, I have been reading “A Purpose for Everything” by Charles Birch. He is a geneticist, and importantly (to me), he is a proponent of process philosophy / process theology.

I have been reading his book very slowly. Hey, I’m a pediatric gastroenterologist with a busy schedule! Anyway, P. 38 (Twenty-Third Publishing version) made an impression on me a few weeks ago and again tonight:

Determinism: This idea is hard to prove. Yes, Laplace’s Demon is a wonderful thought experiment, but at the subatomic level there still appears to be some type of randomness. If there is randomness, then there is potential. There is always potential — for a better or neutral or worse outcome.

Antony Eagle has written an interesting article in this arena. His work is philosophical, not theological. Here is part of it:

“Unpredictability occurs for many reasons independent ofindeterminism and is compatible with determinism. Thus, we can still have random sequences in deterministic situations, and as part of theoriesthat supervene on deterministic theories. The key to explaining why randomness and indeterminism seem closely linked is that the theories themselves should not be deterministic, even if they are acceptable accounts of ontically deterministic situations.”

A science experiment (let’s say, boiling water) will show the same temperature for when water molecules change from liquid to gas (obviously, depending on altitude and other such effects). This result is pretty much deterministic. The individual water molecules, on the other hand, are random in many ways.

How does this relate to theology, especially process theology? If I hypothesize that God has a “divine lure” for every entity – quark to galaxy – for potential or for creativity, then the randomness of nature at the subatomic level has this inherent potential for creativity. The electron forms a cloud around the nucleus. This cloud is stability demonstrating potential for atomic formation and for the ability to form molecules. If evolution has the potential to improve fitness in the setting of environmental change, then the randomness of evolution has the potential for creativity to allow a specie to survive.

Iron atom (Ars Technica, https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/05/this-is-the-first-x-ray-taken-of-a-single-atom/)

God’s lure is the tiny call for potential…for creativity. This call is not forced. Nature can ignore or hear the call. It is the choice of every entity at every level of creation.

We, as humans, should consider this call very much in the setting of taking care of other humans, other species, and our planet.

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Listening to Francis Collins

I was able to attend an on-line meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation this weekend. The ASA is a wonderful organization for Christians who work in the sciences. I have been a member for many years. Francis Collins was the guest speaker, and I think about 30+ people attended. On a personal note, I sent Dr. Collins an email a couple of months ago about an unrelated subject, and he sent me a kind response.

Francis Collins is a well-known scientist who was involved in discovering the human genome, being the previous head of the NIH, and being an author of several books.

His talk on Saturday was about the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic which was devastating to my country (U.S.) and to so many other countries.

He also talked about the scourge of misinformation that occurred during the pandemic especially in the setting of social media. This misinformation included personal attacks, often very vicious, on people such as Dr. Collins.

Although Dr. Collins expressed frustration and sadness about misinformation, he was very positive about how our country tries to cooperate with other countries in trying to prevent pandemics. He discussed about how difficult it is to make decisions in real time in the setting of a pandemic. I agree. It doesn’t take a huge amount of insight to realize the difficulty of making quick decisions in a country of 300 million citizens with a polarized political environment and in the setting of an often slow-moving federal response. I would argue that public health is incredibly important in this regard. The political nonsense coming from both of our U.S. political parties often wrecks public trust in the science of public health.

Such thoughts bring me to the newest editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine. The title is “Deja Vu All Over Again — Refusing to Learn the Lessons of COVID-19.” It is an open access article and free to read. I would recommend looking at it.

Our country’s inability to reconcile federal and state health coordination as well as some states passing laws preventing public health measures in emergency situations is quite dire. I wonder what will happen when the next pandemic occurs.

I will never understand why many of our federal and state political leaders ignore simple science, embrace conspiracy theories, and put their re-election ahead of the concerns of humanity. Theologically, one could argue that such national themes of on-line conspiracy theories and ignoring common sense public health runs into issues of “original sin”. Such sin is basically a genetic / epigenetic phenomenon involving millions of years of evolution leading to the importance of tribalism; to take away from others to supplement oneself; to hurt others even if it means potentially hurting oneself; to gain power at the expense of others.

I am a religious person. I find it so strange that many other people who claim to be religious are involved with conspiracy theories online, don’t understand simple science, and would rather be hateful as opposed to passing peace when pandemics occur. What to do? I have become a big believer in the individual acts of doing better. I fail here often but I try. In many ways, this falls into the idea of prehension from Naturalismppp (see prior posts). If I can make a change for the better in a small way during a short moment of time, perhaps this act moves forward in a way that influences the world positively. Some would say God is involved in such moments, defined as a divine lure to some degree.

Lots and lots of thoughts here but to summarize:

  1. It was interesting to hear Dr. Collins talk in a small group setting even if the talk was on-line.
  2. It was interesting to hear him talk about how misinformation really made the COVID-19 pandemic so much worse. Much of the misinformation came from social media.
  3. I personally think that public health is one of the most important parts of modern medicine. This field of medicine is often misunderstood and underfunded.
  4. When one observes how so many people (especially political leaders) responded poorly to the COVID-19 pandemic, it makes me wonder about the human condition. I think, from a theological and evolutionary viewpoint, that many in our species acted dangerously during this time to conserve some degree of power. This idea is tragic.
  5. What can we do? We can do what we can to improve the life of others in singular moments of time. I honestly believe that such actions are a baseline way to improve the lives of others while co-creating with God for the good and for continuing creation.

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Panexperientialism

Ahh, now to the most difficult of the three “p“s of Naturalismppp — panexperientialism. It is actually not that difficult, but it kind of runs into the realm of woo spirituality / New Age thinking if taken into silly realms.

Panexperientialism basically means that every entity has “experience”. Lots of thoughts here, but let us agree that every entity indeed experience nature. An electron experiences the formation of an electron cloud around an atom’s nucleus. DNA experiences cell division during mitosis. A bacterium experiences an interaction with a small intestinal enterocyte. Humans experience our world and our interactions with nature / culture.

Consider the famous quote by Bertrand Russell:

Thus we find that, although the relations of physical objects have all sorts of knowable properties, derived from their correspondence with the relations of sense-data, the physical objects themselves remain unknown in their intrinsic nature….

Here is the difficulty. Can this experience or this intrinsic nature of experience lead to a proto-conscious or lead up to formation of consciousness from a bottom-up structure. Similarly difficult is the question as to if there is consciousness everywhere. A great book to read on this subject is by Philip Goff. In other words, does panexperientialism lead to panpsychism (or consciousness abounding throughout the universe as very real property). Heated arguments go back and forth in the philosophy and theology literature

Here is my take:

  1. I do think entities have experience; however, I also think we need to define what simple, baseline “experience” consists of. This is the concern of Russell. What is this “intrinsic nature” of matter?
  2. I would hypothesize (philosophically) that very simple entities (quarks, electrons, atoms, molecules) have ever increasing experience. From a bottom up aspect, this experience leads to consciousness perhaps in a manner of Integrated Information Theory (or ITT).

Bacteria travel in response to environmental changes. Thus, perhaps the entirety of the microbiome in humans (and other animals) has some type of panexperiential / panpsychism response with the human in response to all sorts of environment cues to form a holobiont that has greater influence on emotions, culture, society, etc. The holobiont of would have some type of panexperiential or perhaps panpsychism response to the world. If God is in the world (see prior post on panentheism) and all of nature is in God, then God experiences all (which is comforting to me).

I don’t know if we can ever get good research in this area, but there is quite a bit of literature on diet changes and microbiome changes perhaps affecting mental health. We probably need to keep this area of inquiry in the realm of philosophy and theology for now while watching where the science leads.

I went kayaking on Deer Creek Reservoir yesterday. It was a quiet day. The lake really was similar to glass (it is usually very windy there with lots of waves). The sound of my oar, the singing birds, the lapping of water on my kayak, and the beautiful sky did not make we “one” with nature. However, it did make me appreciate how nature interacts with its various components and how the various components experience each other. This setting was my panexperiential metaphor or perhaps reality. If, as metaphor, it leads us to consider how we should treat our fellow human and our planet better, than this aspect of Naturalismppp needs more study and reflection.

Thank you for reading my blog.

Panentheism

In my continuation of explaining the 3 “p“s of natural theology, the second p of Naturalismppp is panentheism.

This term is often mistaken for “pantheism.” There is nothing wrong with a word like pantheism. It simply means God or gods are in every natural thing.

“Panentheism”, on the other hand, simply means all are in God. By “all”, I mean ALL….the universe(s), every living creature, every particle. Thus, via panentheism, all is contained in God and God experiences what everything experiences. This “everything experiences” is the concept of panexperientialism (the third “p“) which will be discussed later.

The God of panentheism is different from the Aristotelian God. Per Aristotle:

“For the most divine science is also most honourable; and this science alone
must be, in two ways, most divine. For the science which it would be most meet for God to have is a divine science, and so is any science that deals with divine objects; and this science alone has both these qualities; for (1) God is thought to be
among the causes of all things and to be a first principle, and (2) such a science either God alone can have, or God above all others.”

By the way, a great 1907 open access article about Aristotle’s God has been written that I highly recommend.

Let’s think about what Aristotle is saying here. God is the “Prime Mover” or the first cause / first principle. God is separate from the world (“God alone can have…”). Is God separate from creation? I would argue that creation IS IN GOD, i.e. panentheism. God is not some lofty ideal that is separate from us, looking down at us, judging us, or perhaps not understanding us as God would be the prime meaning of God and of existence. Perhaps, just perhaps, God is a mighty God that contains all of us. When we say, “I feel God beside me” or “I feel the Spirit within me”, then these are statements that parallel the idea of panentheism. Many religions express or contain such statements. I am Christian, and Christians often say such words not realizing that they are expressing panentheism.

Personally, I find having God in every moment with me, in me, and surrounding me somewhat peaceful. Perhaps, I am simply a mystic here, but God surrounding me and experiencing what I go through is much more reasonable (to me) compared to a separate “God above.”

One more thing……..

In my upcoming book, A Theology of the Microbiome (SacraSage Press), I talk about panentheism in the setting of the microbiome in much detail. It will be much more expansive than an earlier article about this idea that I wrote in God and Nature in 2020. The editors of God and Nature have kindly let me re-use a figure that I initially made to describe panexperientialism, but to be honest, it also conveys the idea of panentheism:

Nature, bacteria, the Earth, and humanity are all in God. It’s quite a lovely idea, IMO.

By the way, I’m heading off to do some kayaking with my spouse tomorrow. It is hot in the grand state of Utah, so we shall see how it goes. I will continue the Naturalismppp route to finish off the trifecta of “p“s. However, there is a small NEJM editorial that I may comment on this weekend.

Thank you for reading.

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Prehension

In order to understand the concept of God in the world without the need of the supernatural, the term Naturalismppp has been developed by Griffin. Three philosophical ideas (the three “p“s) with theological overlap can describe God in such a setting — prehension, panentheism, and panexperientialism.

It is completely reasonable to believe in supernatural events as seen in miracles described in the word’s religions. However, as science has progressed and more of nature is understood and explained, it is important to consider a concept of God being present IN NATURE as a theological explanation of the world and our existence.

Prehension: This term means the totality the possible. I like to consider it the pre-cognitive possibilities of outcomes over time. Thus, in the world of process philosophy and process theology (as well as the theological cousin, open and relational theology), time is the essential unit of reality and not matter. On a grander scale, change itself is the ultimate reality.

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Prehensions (or possibilities) come together / solidify over time in a process known as “concrescence” to form an actual occasion. The occasion is present and then passes. The universe moves on with prehension –> concrescence –> occasion –> repeating eternally.

I like to think of each occasion from the quark to the galaxy to have an eternal presence in God’s memory. In many ways, I find such a idea comforting.

One religious idea to add to the eminence of time is to consider a “divine lure“. Namely, God never forces an outcome but quietly suggests or lures for the good of all creation. Good could be characterized as creativity (not necessarily involving destruction), and creativity could be described as love. Bruce Epperly has described this type of divine love as majestic, overpowering in its love of creativity, and intertwining throughout all of nature. He states clearly:

“Love neither rules, nor is it unmoved; also it is a little oblivious as to morals. It does not look to the future; for it finds its own reward in the immediate presence.”

This is God expressed as eternal creativity in all of nature — all of it. This is pure love — beyond morals, beyond evil, beyond ethics, beyond absolutes. It may sound terrifying at first, but upon thinking that God wants the best of all entities in nature, this idea provides a theological foundation of God who wants (but does not force) the good.

In future posts, I will describe panentheism and panexperientialism.

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Morality

Morality — I put the idea right up there with consciousness in terms of items we don’t understand.

Many religious people are immoral as seen in world history. Some of the most moral people I have ever met are atheists.

War, murder, eating animals, tax evasion, not helping the poor, etc.: I would think that all of us think that such ideas are morally wrong yet we often do these things. It appears to be in our nature as a part of some genetic / epigenetic / societal “original sin”. Also, other creatures do these things — eating other animals is a huge part of animal life. Animals may even do very human-like things such as war.

Hence, I come to this 2015 on-line article by Leslie Allan in 2015. He states:

By the way, his essay is a great read. I highly recommend it.

Perhaps morality has BOTH an subjective and objective quality. In my new upcoming book, A Theology of the Microbiome, (SacraSage Press), I ask the reader to consider reality as a subjective-objective monad (or, a SO-Monad).

From the upcoming book:

One type of thought may be more important than the other at one point of time although both aspects of the SO-Monad continue to exist in and through time. Subjective and objective knowledge may change in importance, and at other times, subjectivity and objectivity knowledge may be of equal importance. Both are always present eternally, moving through time. God is present through all aspects of this SO-Monad via the divine lure through time.

Theology should emphasize God’s love in the appreciation of science. The SO-Monad can be seen as an attribution of this divine love. Thomas Jay Oord states “Thinking of ourselves as being composed of episodes or as a connected series of event-experiences is important for understanding central religious claims about love.”131 As an example, humans and many other animals demonstrate altruistic behavior. It does not matter whether such behavior is considered genetic, epigenetic, spiritual, or a combination of these factors. In fact, it is not at all clear if increased religiosity makes one more altruistic, suggesting that humans often misinterpret the divine lure.132 God’s love should be emphasized over religious fervor when caring for others and for the planet.

The existence of the SO-Monad is a theological argument, and perhaps, a philosophical argument. Needless to say, in our post-modern world, a better understanding of subjectivity is of immense importance. This need for understanding is especially important in the world of theology where religious people (such as me) can get very confused.

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Journal Fees

Publishing in journals is a major way for those of us in academics to advance at our universities. This advancement includes potential salary raises. Is this method a fair way to advance? I’m not sure especially for those in the liberal arts or fine arts or for those in “career line” academic pathways (including many academic physicians like myself).

I have noticed recently that more and more average to top tier journals are now requiring authors to pay a fee for the “privilege” of having a journal publish their work. So…..The author writes the manuscript, submits the manuscript to the journal, makes revisions based on peer review, and then the journal publishes the manuscript without having done any of the work. University libraries, cities, countries, etc. pay for access to these journals. These fees are often excessive. And now the publisher of these journals want the authors to pay for the ability to have their work published? Insane.

Just recently, I have been considering submitted a case report (i.e., a report of a single patient case with unique findings) to a top tier journal in my specific field. This case report is supposed to be around 1500 words with only around 10 references allowed. The personal cost for me to publish this article is $500. Wow.

It is well known that journals, especially medical journals, make huge profit margins. I mean, absolutely insane profit margins! A journal having a manuscript author now pay for publication is adding insult to injury.

Here is where I think sites like arXiv or medrXiv are the potential solutions to this financial craziness.

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The Demarcation Problem

I’ve been reading through Sean Carroll’s well written article on ArXiv about his concerns surrounding Karl Popper’s “falsifiability” argument to separate science from non-science. Awesome. However, I wonder how much he is leaning on the problems of “falsifiability” in the setting of Everettian interpretation? Carroll is a proponent of this “many worlds” interpretation. I am in no way a physicist, but his academic work seems to fall more into philosophy rather than physics.

Clinical medicine, engineering, bench chemistry need falsifiability. Otherwise, the world is full of chaos — anti-vax theories, essential oils for all sorts of problems, alchemy, airplanes that cannot fly, buildings that collapse, etc.

I wonder if science itself needs a demarcation. This separation would involve two categories:

A. Demarcation “Yes”: Medicine, bench chemistry, engineering, dentistry, architecture, perhaps mathophysics.

B. Demarcation “No”: theoretical physics, theoretical biology, theoretical evolutionary science (some ideas surrounding convergence or kin selection), perhaps mathology.

So, in the “Yes” category, falsifiability would be crucially important. Clinical trials, stress loading in engineering, the importance of chemical reactions could be potentially falsified which would eliminate pseudo-science. Pseudo-science is incredibly common (unfortunately) in clinical medicine where I work.

In the “No” category, theoretical physics, theoretical biology, the philosophy of math, etc. could progress forward with no need to necessarily “prove” what is occurring. Does this run into categories of philosopy? Theology? Perhaps and probably “yes”. However, it seems Popper is much more helpful in the “Demarcation ‘Yes'” category.

I think some aspect of “ethics” should be involved in the demarcation problem as well although I am just starting to work on this idea. Everettian mechanics (MWI) probably doesn’t make the world worse for existing as an idea. Theoretical evolution involving social Darwinism definitely is ethically wrong. Anti-vax ideology, some ideas surrounding “vascular decompression”, and over diagnosis of genetic syndromes without genetic testing are definitely wrong.

Useless Procedures

One of my pet peeves in the field of medicine is useless procedures in which 1) there is minimal to no clinical research backing it up and 2) there is no need for insurance to pay for said procedure so the family eventually gets stuck paying 100% of the bill for a useless intervention. I never understand the dynamics between the physician who who may / may not realize they are grifting (financial benefits can cloud thinking), a patient / family frantically searching for a cure for symptoms (for which there may be no cure while unnecessary procedures come with risks), and the possible contribution of a super placebo.

This American Academy of Pediatrics just released these guidelines regarding tongue tie surgery. They are excellent and point to a the issue for a very problematic procedure that is typically not covered insurance and which can be a temptation for a revenue stream for a medical provider.

Of note the New York Times had a recent article discussing the financial incentives of doing such a procedure. Overall, this is yucky issue with medical ethics at risk.