Denton's destiny

In a sense, Michael Denton was the "grey eminence" of the Intelligent Design movement. Its founder, Philip Johnson, became interested in the creation-evolution controversy after reading Denton's first book, "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis", which was (at least by implication) old earth creationist. Denton's second book, "Nature's Destiny", is not creationist in the strictest sense, but Darwinian evolutionists will probably see it as creationist-inspired. The author's version of theistic evolutionism is very "hard", and seems to fall somewhere in between Simon Conway Morris (a hard theistic evolutionist who nevertheless doesn't support the ID movement) and Michael Behe (an even harder ditto who *do* support it, indeed Behe is one of its foremost public spokespersons). In the final analysis, of course, this shouldn't matter - what should is whether Denton's speculations make sense of the facts.

Denton's main argument against old earth creationism (he never seems to discuss the young earth version) is that all living organism seem to be "natural" rather than "artificial". Yet, on the OEC scenario, God created the living organisms fully formed out of nowhere by a long string of separate miraculous acts, one for each species (or at least "kind"). This somehow implies that life is "artificial" and doesn't really belong here - the flip side of the materialist position, which is forced to say something similar, but from the opposite side of the fence (life is the result of blind chance, and might not have been at all, hence it's in a sense really "unnatural"). Denton rather believes that life is an integral part of the cosmos, indeed a predetermined part, and hence has to be explained "naturalistically", by appeals to forces we can observe or at least infer from observations of the natural world. The cosmic processes, at least seemingly, work without external miraculous input. The mechanisms involved can be analyzed scientifically. There is therefore no need to appeal to supernatural interventions in the direct, creationist sense. In this sense, then, Denton believes in evolution. All living organisms on Earth do have a common ancestor, and humans are presumably descended from ape-like creatures.

However, Denton nevertheless believes that God is the creator. All development in the universe has one predetermined, almost predestined, goal: the emergence of intelligent carbon-based life. God has "rigged" (my term) the cosmic process so that Homo sapiens will eventually emerge. The author also believes that this can be positively demonstrated. The bulk of "Nature's Destiny" (which I frankly only skimmed) contains appeals to the "anthropic principle". The universe is said to be uniquely fine-tuned for life, our planet is uniquely fit even for such things as scientific discovery by intelligent beings, etc. The arguments are, I suppose, similar to those found in the creationist book "The Privileged Planet", but also to some extent in secular works such as "Rare Earth" by Ward and Brownlee or "The Goldilocks Enigma" by Paul Davies. Simon Conway Morris takes a strikingly similar position in the astronomical chapters of "Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe". While I find the arguments interesting, a nasty little materialist can always counter by saying that *of course* the universe is "uniquely fit" for life, otherwise we wouldn't be here, but so what, it's still chance and/or blind determinism. I feel that the anthropic principle (in the theological sense of the term) doesn't stand on its own. It's the peculiar emergence of intelligence, creativity, love and meaning (which virtually all humans feel intuitively) which disproves a strictly materialist worldview. The "fitness of carbon" and other such intriguing facts become meaningful only with this as background. (A curious aspect of the universe touched upon by Denton only in passing is its mathematical properties. I suppose the author isn't into sacred geometry.)

The most interesting chapters contain Denton's ideas about evolution. Perhaps inevitably, he is interested in Stephen Jay Gould's punctuated equilibrium (or perhaps the popularized, "erroneous" version of it). While Gould saw the developmental constraints as results of a fluke in the Cambrian, Denton sees them as part of a predetermined, archetypal pattern. Evolution is constrained because the "Tree of Life" has been designed to evolve that way by the creator at the dawn of time. He positively references Lovejoy's classic "The Great Chain of Being" in this context. Thus, the film of evolution, if rerun, would turn out in pretty much the same manner again. However, Denton does vacillate at this point, sometimes suggesting that Homo sapiens (or something very much like it) is the predestined end-point of cosmic evolution, at other times conceding that perhaps mammals wouldn't have evolved beyond small forms had the dinosaurs not been exterminated by our planet's chance (?) encounter with an asteroid... Denton admits that living organisms are imperfect (usually an argument for blind, materialist evolution), but believes that they don't have to be perfect for theistic evolution to be true. He suggests that some kind of fall has taken place, but says very little about this, since "Nature's Destiny" is supposed to build a scientific case. In the end, he calls it a mystery.

Denton's view of evolution is saltationist, or at least nearly so. He believes that small changes in the DNA can cause large changes in the actual organisms. Unless I'm mistaken, Gould took a similar position. To Denton, just as an embryo inevitably develops into a grown adult according to a prior "program", the entire vastness of living organisms has evolved from common ancestors due to a similar "program". Here, many of his concrete arguments will strike Darwinists as crypto-creationist: "there are no transitional forms", "no functional intermediaries are possible", and so on. Since politicking is almost impossible to avoid in these parts of the (academic) universe, Denton's book comes with blurbs from Michael Behe (a fellow of the creationist-dominated Discovery Institute), David Berlinski (a maverick skeptic who opposes Darwinism) and John Polkinghorne (who is, I think, a pan-en-theist, evolutionist and friendly Anglican vicar next door). It seems brother Denton covered all his bases!

I happen to disagree with Michael Denton on a number of points, such as his claim that "life" can only be carbon-based and has only emerged on our little planet. Since Denton is a Christian (Eastern Orthodox, according to some rumors), what about "astral" and "etheric" creatures? What about "angels", who supposedly can take physical form? That's not "carbon based". Also, since Denton wrote "Nature's Destiny", evidence seems to be mounting that life really did emerge on Mars, but was snuffed out by one of those unforeseen flukes which seem to abound in our imperfect universe. (Except the Oyarsa, perchance!) Naturally, I also disagree with the idea that somehow everything (or nearly everything) in evolution is predetermined. However, a strong case could be made for "soft" teleology, whereby the universe has a tendency towards complexity, life, consciousness and intelligence. A final ironic touch is that Denton says very little about the eventual destiny of nature and man, despite the title of his book. (I suppose he is in good company. Charles Darwin's "On the origins of species" said very little about their ultimate origin!) Of course, our destiny probably lies outside the competence of science anyway...

Large chunks of "Nature's Destiny" are frankly tedious and encyclopedia-like, while other chapters are more interesting. Eventually, I decided to give it four stars.