Some questions re evolution

[unkleE]

I would be interested to hear some open-minded scientists (I'm particularly thinking of you please Al) give me some information and answers regarding evolution please.

Let me begin by saying that I am a christian who has no problems accepting the truth of evolution, but I also have no problems being sceptical about some scientific claims. I am just trying to get an honest understanding of what are true claims and what are unjustified claims.

It seems clear to me that there are some things that science has demonstrated about evolution that must be true unless our whole scientific method is faulty - e.g. the age of the earth, the gradual appearance of life in increasingly complex forms, and the mechanism of natural selection to bring about beneficial change. I note that Alvin Plantinga accepts these things as "established" also.

From this base, evolutionary scientists claim that all of life's complexity can be explained in principle, even if not in actuality just yet. So they believe they will one day discover a natural mechanism for abiogenesis, although many theories have been tried and rejected so far. Likewise they claim that the development of all manner of complex life forms and biological mechanisms (e.g. the human eye, the bacterial flagellum) can be explained in a series of steps, each of which confers an evolutionary advantage and so survives.

And I agree with those who say that Intelligent Design has not yet been able to demonstrate its claims scientifically - though whether that is because they are not true, or because they involve the alleged intervention of God in a way which cannot be tested scientifically or they will in fact be able to demonstrate their claims one day, I do not know. But I feel that saying something is irreducibly complex may be impossible to prove - opponents can always say there just might be an explanation round the corner.

My questions relate to how much of the details evolutionary science actually knows, as opposed to assumes.

It seems to me that science assumes there will be a natural explanation, and therefore many scientists state confidently that the process is "proven", even though they don't yet have the explanation. And in many cases, when they do have the explanation, it is well short of what we normally regard as "scientific" proof, but is based on feasibility studies or computer models, etc, which show what might possibly have occurred - and is thus closer to the sort of "proof" we might expect from history. (Not that that's bad, just different to what most people think of scientific proof.)

If this is so, then if there did happen to be a process that is not explicable by current evolutionary theory, science would probably keep claiming that the current understandings are correct, we just haven't found the process yet.

I am not hereby trying to smuggle ID back in, but I can't help feeling that the rock solid confidence some scientists express that evolution is "proven" isn't a little over-stated. And when they use this "certainty" to browbeat christians, but complain when christians don't accept the science, it seems like hypocrisy to me.

And yet I don't really see how science can do anything else, which is a real dilemma to me. In the end, we really want to know the truth (don't we?). But it seems to me that science, and the naturalistic assumptions that are part of its definition, while helping the human race make all sorts of discoveries, ends up being bound by these naturalistic assumptions and may lead to wrong conclusions and disguise the truth is some cases also.

I would think this is a particular dilemma for christians working within the field, because they might be quite willing to accept the naturalistic assumptions for the purposes of scientific research, but unable to be committed to their reality overall.

So my questions are:

1. How much of the detailed processes of evolution are proven, how much likely to be provable, and how much assumption?
2. How does a christian work within naturalistic science while not being a thoroughgoing naturalist?

Have I expressed that clearly enough? How do any of you scientific christians see it?

Thanks.

P.S. The same problem for me occurs in neuroscience, where as Alwyn Scott says: "Although dualism cannot be disproved, the role of science is to proceed on the assumption that it is wrong and see how much progress can be made." And so the naturalistic assumption cannot ever be challenged, even if dualism is in fact true.

[James Hannam]

Unklee,

Thank you for your interesting questions. I'm looking forward to seeing if Al can shed some light.

I just wanted to say that even if dualism is false, that does not need to have any implications for Christian doctrine. Dualism is a Platonic idea, not a Judeo-Christian one and I think several passages of the Bible are actually opposed to it.

I'm not a through-going materialist, but I do think that our non-material selves are not something that has an independent existence (like a soul would do). There is, I think, no such thing as a disembodied person. That's why, I have always assumed, the NT is so strong on bodily resurrection being what we hope for.

It may be our 'souls' are more like an energy that can activate sentience in matter (because I don't believe matter can be sentient by itself) and which encodes the connections in our brains that form our minds. But after death, the soul can't do anything until it is re-embodied.

OK, pure speculation, but I just wanted to say that we don;t need to defend dualism.

Best wishes

James

[Al Moritz]

Good questions indeed, Unklee. It may take me a few days to prepare a detailed reply.

In the meantime, here is my "in a nutshell" answer:

Evolution is a fact. Descent of all life from a common bacteria-like ancestor is established beyond any reasonable doubt. Any alternative explanations of the data can only be posed under great risk to one's personal intellectual integrity. Strong words, but justified.

On the other hand, the mechanisms by which biochemical complexity and complexity of organs evolved are mostly plausible, but not always certain. It is here where biologists, in their combative assertiveness, gained from the spectacular successes in establishing common descent, may at times claim more than is warranted by the data.

I assume that so far my answer is in line with your suspicions.

As for the methodological (not philosophical) naturalism of science, it poses for me no dilemma whatsoever. I'll explain later in more detail.

Al

[unkleE]

James, thanks for comments. They are not the main point I was making, but interesting, and I think the one topic can cope with two different matters. I wanted to comment on one aspect ....

I just wanted to say that even if dualism is false, that does not need to have any implications for Christian doctrine. Dualism is a Platonic idea, not a Judeo-Christian one and I think several passages of the Bible are actually opposed to it.
I'm not a through-going materialist, but I do think that our non-material selves are not something that has an independent existence (like a soul would do). There is, I think, no such thing as a disembodied person. That's why, I have always assumed, the NT is so strong on bodily resurrection being what we hope for.

I agree that the NT teaches bodily resurrection and not immortal souls, so I used to think I was not a dualist. But (and I think I've said this before here) if we are monists, it seems that our brains are us and they are also composed of electro-chemical processes which are controlled by physical laws. And this implies (it seems to me) that our "choices" are in fact determined by physical processes, and we have no opportunity to change them because we choose to. And I regard that as untrue.

So, I don't really care whether we call it dualism or "dual aspect monism" as John Polkinghorne says, I think there must be something outside the material aspects of brain that allows us to make choices. I don't care what you call it - soul, spirit, mind, whatever - and I don't think it can exist separately from our physical bodies, but I think it is still there.

Thus I can't help feeling I believe in both the resurrection of the body as the only way we can live on, and in some form of mind/brain dualism. Do you see it differently to that?

[krkey1]

I would recommend you study near death experiences and death bed visions if you want to study observable evidence for a soul and more importantly that somehow the soul survives with personality intact without a body.

[rfmoo]

Dear James,

No such thing as a disembodied person? What about God?

Best,

Richard

[Al Moritz]

I am a dualist too. I don't see why the soul couldn't do anything without the body. As I see it, our brains are the instruments of our mind (if this is identical to 'soul' is another matter), and are needed also for the connections with the bodily functions, obviously. But when the body ceases to exist, I don't see why there aren't any possibilities.

Al

[James Hannam]

Richard,

Whoops. I should have said "no such thing as a disembodied human being." I don't think Platonic dualism is metaphysically impossible, just that it is inconsisant with the scientific and biblical evidence.

Best wishes

James

[James Hannam]

Unklee,

No, I think we see things in the same way. I certainly don't want to engage in "nothing buttery" about the soul. So I think that we are more than the material and that freewill is not a purely material process. But I think the material is an essential part of what we are and we can't do without it.

Our personalities are preserved after death but I don't think we will be 'alive' or 'conscious' between death and resurrection.

These are deep waters but part of the reason I think about them is that the Christian hope is such a central part of our faith but rarely really talked about.

My main point is that we should not be painted into the corner of Platonic dualism and then get worried about neuroscience. Sam Harris is doing his PhD for this very reason - he thinks neuroscience will be a weapon to use against Christians.

Best wishes

James

[unkleE]

Jan 8, 2009 23:50:01 GMT krkey1 said:

I would recommend you study near death experiences and death bed visions if you want to study observable evidence for a soul and more importantly that somehow the soul survives with personality intact without a body.

I must admit I haven't taken these very seriously as evidence of supernaturalism. Are you able (on another thread perhaps) to summarise briefly what you think these experiences demonstrate, and a few references, please?

Jan 9, 2009 7:36:26 GMT James Hannam said:

Sam Harris is doing his PhD for this very reason - he thinks neuroscience will be a weapon to use against Christians.

Having more or less agreed on the important things, it only remains for me to say that I think neuroscience is more likely to lead in the other direction. The logical end point of naturalistic neuroscience (IMO) is the philosophy of Michel Onfray (see Atheist Christianity), which I think most people, atheist, theist and uncommitted, would find repulsive.

[Al Moritz]

Jan 8, 2009 16:29:11 GMT Al Moritz said:

Good questions indeed, Unklee. It may take me a few days to prepare a detailed reply.

In the meantime, here is my "in a nutshell" answer:

Evolution is a fact. Descent of all life from a common bacteria-like ancestor is established beyond any reasonable doubt. Any alternative explanations of the data can only be posed under great risk to one's personal intellectual integrity. Strong words, but justified.

On the other hand, the mechanisms by which biochemical complexity and complexity of organs evolved are mostly plausible, but not always certain. It is here where biologists, in their combative assertiveness, gained from the spectacular successes in establishing common descent, may at times claim more than is warranted by the data.

I assume that so far my answer is in line with your suspicions.

As for the methodological (not philosophical) naturalism of science, it poses for me no dilemma whatsoever. I'll explain later in more detail.

Al

Here is the first part of my answer. It addresses the strong points of evolution where the scientific data are the most extensive and comprehensive.

Common descent

The great triumph of the theory of evolution lies in the stunning convergence of data from paleontology, comparative physiology and genetics. The tree of life, i.e. the pattern of descent of living beings from one another (from bacteria to humans), that can be drafted from the former two exactly correlates with the tree of life from genetic data alone, where descent is analyzed from mutations, gene patterns, gene recombinations, chromosome patterns etc. (exactly = with discrepancies that are so vanishingly minor that they can safely be assumed to fall within the error of scientific investigation). This convergence cannot be explained in any other way than by actual common descent. The only alternative explanation would be that God faked the evidence and made it look like common descent. This is portraying Him as a liar and a charlatan, which is repugnant and blasphemous.

Paleontology alone has had spectacular successes. All fossils that have been found have been dated exactly as evolutionary theory had predicted. Never has an intermediary fossil had an age that was not in line with expectations (this would have brought down evolution like a house of cards). Old contentious areas are being resolved. For example, in the last 10-15 years finally fossils of transitional forms have been found between land mammals and whales – just like evolutionary theory had predicted (and again, genetic data are fully in synch with predictions and the findings of paleontology).

In his book The Language of God Francis Collins shows how not only genes for different enzymes are aligned in the same sequence within mouse and human chromosomes, but also that there are truncated genes in the same spots that have lost their functions and thus are “junk” remnants that are simply carried along upon gene replication. The only reasonable explanation can be that they came from a common ancestor. If the genes in mice and humans were both designed from scratch by God, why would He insert such functionless (yes, they can be shown to have lost function) “junk” remnants at the same positions? This explanation simply makes no sense.

Apes have 48 chromosomes, humans have 46 (24 and 23 chromosome pairs, respectively). How can humans then originate from apes? Well, it can be shown that the chromosome reduction in humans is found in chromosome 2: this chromosome is in fact a fusion of two chromosomes, as can be precisely shown by the fusion spot, and by the centromere and telomere arrangement (this fact is shown by the theist Ken Miller, a hero for evolution education, in each one of his recent talks). A telomere is only found at the end of chromosomes, not in the middle. The fact that human chromosome 2 has telomeres in the middle can only be explained as fusion of two chromosomes. And, there is gene homology in human chromosome 2 with two of the ape chromosomes, as expected if chromosome 2 is a descendant from these two ape chromosomes. Also, the size of human chromosome 2 is exactly the sum of the two ape chromosomes.

The only alternative explanation is, again, to claim that the Creator faked the evidence: He perfectly made it look like chromosome 2 in humans is such a fusion of chromosomes. As said before, this is portraying Him as a liar and a charlatan, which is repugnant and blasphemous.

(I need to put it scientifically more accurately: we don't originate from apes, but from a common ancestor of modern apes and humans.)

Many other examples can be given, but it can be said with confidence:
Common descent is proven without a shadow of a doubt. There is no other reasonable explanation of the overwhelming mountain of correlating data.

The principle of natural selection

This is a no-brainer. Everyone knows that it works. Try to get off your antibiotic too quickly, and you develop a resistance that can only be fought with another type of antibiotic. Your flu short didn’t work? Blame it on mutations in the popular strain of the day that allow it to attack your immune system and make you stay in bed.

Natural selection is even used in biotechnology. Instead of trying to design an enzyme that performs a certain function, like digesting or cutting a certain substrate, researchers feed bacteria the substrate and within a few days or weeks they have a mutant strain that can use the substrate ion the desired ways. Find the gene, amplify it, and voila, you can purify the new enzyme large-scale and use it for the desired purposes.

But what about macroevolution? What about new species arising? As Francis Collins writes in The Language of God:

“This distinction [between micro- and macroevolution] is increasingly seen to be artificial. For example, a group at Stanford University is engaged in an intense effort to understand the wide diversity of body armor in stickleback fish. Sticklebacks that live in salt water typically have a continuous row of three dozen armor plates extending from head to tail, but freshwater populations from many different parts of the world, where predators are fewer, have lost most of these plates.

“The freshwater sticklebacks apparently arrived in their current locations ten to twenty thousand years ago after wide-spread melting of glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age. A careful comparison of the genomes of the freshwater fish has identified a specific gene, EDA, whose variants have repeatedly and independently appeared in a freshwater situation, resulting in loss of the plates. Interestingly, humans also have an EDA gene, and spontaneous mutations in that gene result in defects in hair, teeth, sweat glands, and bone. It is not hard to see how the difference between freshwater and salthingyer sticklebacks could be extended, to generate all kinds of fish. The distinction between macroevolution and microevolution is therefore seen to be rather arbitrary; larger changes that result in new species are a result of a succession of smaller incremental steps.”

[Al Moritz]

How the hell did the censoring program make "salthingyer" from "salt w a t e r"? It's not "saltcock" or something (hey, I got that one through -- Al runs his victory round).

[bvgdez]

sal-T-W-A-T-er. At first I thought it was an example of random mutation....

[unkleE]

Al,

Thanks for going to so much trouble to explain that. I really didn't intend to put you to so much effort, but thanks. I look forward to the second installment on some of the more "philosophical" questions.