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Post by perplexedseeker on Jan 5, 2010 22:31:06 GMT
I guess it kind of depends if they have a prior commitment to metaphysical naturalism. The impression I get of the theistic arguments is that you kind of get out what you put in, if you see what I mean. If you start by assuming science is all there is, it's hardly surprising if you don't take arguments that invoke anything else seriously. It's a really hard mindset to get out of - it was actually philosophy of mind and the sheer weirdness of consciousness (from a scientific viewpoint) that made me consider that there might be more out there. Strangely that kind of attitude seems to be much, much more common among philosophers than among scientists (I'm a postgrad science student and most of the people I know have never even given the issue any thought, they just get on with their experiments and occasionally mock young earth creationists). I heard one amusing comment by a sociologist that many of today's generation of faculty leaders and famous scientists are now the grown-up student radicals from the 60s, which perhaps explains why they're so surprised fundamentalist religion is growing worldwide today (after all, lest we forget, God was officially declared dead by TIME magazine in the 70s). His thesis was that these figures will self-adjust over time due to more conservative later generations working their way up through the ranks. I'm not sure if this holds water, but it's an interesting idea. As to your second point, I know what you mean. I think I've encountered that one before and it's... well, yeah.... There's an interesting site called "experimental theology", written by a psychologist who's also a christian. It brings in a lot of odd perspectives from evolutionary psychology and other bits of science, and can get pretty challenging at times: experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/ Among other things, he tries to figure out if theological concepts like personhood and free will are compatible with physicalism (that the material body is all there is). His conclusions are... surprising and counterintuitive, to say the least. Personally I think he takes the exaggerated claims of cognitive science waaaay too seriously, but it's an interesting look at things all the same. For a more general (but more heavy going) look at all sorts of issues from a fairly neutral perspective (they have Catholic & Protestant, liberal and conservative Christians and sometimes Jews contributing), you could try this site: www.theosthinktank.co.uk/ It's a British site and focuses on British issues (not sure where you come from so it might not be of so much interest to you), but it has some interesting essays and survey results about creationism, the relationship between science and religion, and so on. As for philosophers, I don't really know about any specifically Christian philosophers, but in my opinion Mary Midgely is worth a look (especially as bits of several of her books are on googlebooks for free). She's agnostic but is quite sympathetic to theists even though she doesn't share their convictions, and has a lot to say about the different kinds of possible relationship between science and religion. She has something of a lifelong feud with Dawkins and it's quite fun following them sniping at each other over the decades. You could try Edward Feser, from the sounds of things he might be too conservative politically for your liking, but he has some very interesting criticisms of materialism if you stick to his philosophy posts. Oh, and you might like to look at stuff by Nagel. He's an atheist but has some very offbeat and controversial things to say about contemporary naturalism.
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Post by unkleE on Jan 5, 2010 23:10:52 GMT
I had some questions about philosophy if anyone has a moment... 1. I think the data can be interpreted anyhow one wishes. If you follow the links through from the link you posted, you find a blog comment by christian philosopher Edward Feser which argues that the philosophers who know most about religious belief (i.e. those studying philosophy of religion or Medieval Philosophy) are more likely to believe. But he also mentions the opposite view that the data illustrate that these philosophers had already established their belief, and the more neutral ones are more likely to be atheist. And the second link and its comments tends to argue that philosophy may all be a bit irrelevant anyway. Clearly we need more data (on people's pre-PhD faith) to resolve this, but I'm inclined to disagree with Feser - I think those studying philosophy of religion are more likely to have been believers at the start. My conclusion is that there are strong arguments either way, and people choose which to give greatest weight to for a variety of reasons. THus I think God has left the matter so that we can analyse the truth by reason, but it will not be reason alone which decides how we choose, but also our open-mindedness, willingness to submit to him, willingness to "become like a little child" and attitude to life, etc. 2. I don't know whether you caught this discussion on education and atheism, which James started off with a summary of a recent study: "The highlights are that while average atheists are better educated that average Christians, converts from atheism to Christianity are the best educated of all."3. Two studies a century apart have shown consistently that about 40% of scientists are theists and 60% are not. Slightly different numbers, but not all that different to the philosophers. I've seen data which suggests that the social sciences have less believers than the "hard sciences", and data which shows exactly the opposite! 4. If the numbers for science and philosophy are correct, then it perhaps puts paid to the idea floated by some atheists that christians get favoured in academic appointments in the US, which pushes some atheists "underground". 5. The situation is obviously different in the US to elsewhere, because the US has a more overtly christian culture (in name anyway, if not in ethics!). In Australia, while the majority of people believe in some sort of God or higher power, the number who actually attend a church (or equivalent) is in the 10-20% range. Depending on how questions are phrased, surveys can obtain answers between 10% and 70% for believers. Thus, depending how you look at it, the ratio atheist:theist = 4:1 could be considered quite "good" or quite "bad". 6. These statistics are small cheese compared to the really important questions: How did the universe get here? Are we meant to be here? What is the purpose of life? What does it mean to be human? Are some things truly right and wrong? Did Jesus really tell the truth? Christianity, in my view, answers these questions way better than atheism, and if atheists choose to concentrate on relatively trivial matters like this (and some do, while others don't), we don't have major arguments to meet! We don't judge truth by numbers of adherents. 7. In the end, I think the question is of little importance. Jesus said we must be "like little children" (however we understand that) and Paul said (1 Cor ch 1-3) that God's wisdom is different to the world's wisdom. I put a lot of store in intellectual knowledge, but it isn't the only thing, or necessarily even the main thing! I only know the usual: Plantinga, Swinburne, Craig, Moreland, Habermas. Feser may be worth a look, but I find him a little abrasive. The book "God and the Philosophers" is worth a read because it is more personal and less technical, but includes well-known philosophers like van Inwagen and Alston (from memory). I recommend "Dangerous Idea" by Victor Reppert (a philosopher no less), which has given me a lot of good ideas from a reasonable perspective Hope that helps.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 6, 2010 19:10:49 GMT
I had some questions about philosophy if anyone has a moment... I'm a philosophy undergraduate, so I might be helpful. Even though God's existence is a philosophical question, and philosophers should know it the best, it's still an appeal to numbers. From that side, you're safe. You have to understand that contemporary philosophy (By that I mean the analytic tradition. I adhere to that tradition; I can't speak for the continental.) is a very heterogeneous field. No one can have a vast view of the entire philosophical enterprise. Eventually, you must train and specialize yourself into a field like philosophy of mind or philosophy of language. Don't expect that philosophers like Jerry Fodor or Scott Soames copiously read Plantinga and Rowe, and then made a rational decision after a careful consideration of their arguments. If a great thinker is a leading thinker in a field, it doesn't follow he's an expert in all others. He might have a superficial knowledge or ignore other fields entirely. Philosophy is a special case, as various branched overlap, so you're expected to know from everything a little bit, but it doesn't alter in any what I'm saying. For instance, Bertrand Russell was one of leading figures in early analytic philosophy. He was a remarkable logician and philosopher of language, but he was also a notorious atheist. Like Dawkins, but with more brains. But when it came to religion, he wasn't the most informed one or cogent. James Hannam, in his review of Russell's Why I am not a Christian, hosted on this site, said everything what had to be said. Admittedly, analytic philosophy is today still dominated by naturalistic and physicalistic paradigms, but the situation is much more positive than you think, which naturally leads to philosophy of religion. You ask yourself, "Why philosophy of religion as a branch exists in the first place? Especially in a tradition that ostensibly looks hostile to theistic thinking?" For this, you have to go back in history. In Russell's time, everybody thought Hume and Kant neutralized natural theology for good. This sentiment lasted for quite some time in contemporary philosophy, only changing in late sixties. In that period, started by Plantinga's God and other minds there was a reawakening of old problems and arguments. So today, philosophy of religion, as considered in the analytic anglo-american tradition, is a full developed branch. Where's the problem? It's also the most ignored sub-branch of philosophy today. Most philosopher atheists still hold the sentiment that Hume and Kant destroyed natural theology and traditional argument for God's existence, or, as they're all naturalists, they assume God's nonexistence a priori and don't bother with philosophy of religion (Theists dominate in philosophy of religion.) Coincidentally, this blog-post summarizes what I wrote: tinyurl.com/ye6njrw Simply put, philosophers, who are atheists in private, didn't catch up with developments in contemporary philosophy of religion. They disbelieve in God like every Joe Atheist, not on any profound arguments, or if they have arguments, they're obsolete by today's standards. In most cases, it's reiteration of Hume. It depends on which subject attracts your interest the most. Are you interested in the problem of evil, or is religious epistemology what you want to study? Daniel Howard-Snyder edited an anthology on the problem of evil in 1999. It engages the so called "evidential problem of evil" which became much of the focus in anglo-american philosophy of religion after Plantinga's work on logical compatibility between divine attributes and evil in the seventies: tinyurl.com/yj83up4 Paul Moser, another Christian philosopher, wrote and edited several book on religious epistemology, especially on the problem of divine hiddenness, and how we should come to knowledge of God. As philosophy of religion is a very diverse field, it's hard to suggest anything if you're not specific. There's a caveat, too: because these people don't write for general audience, you'll find many of the texts technical or abstruse if you're not a philosopher by profession. In Howard-Snyder's anthology, for instance, several articles have probability calculus in them. If you don't have some grasp of it, you'll have difficulties of understanding the article. Not to mention, you must have training in epistemology to read Moser. Regarding Swinburne. He wrote a book Is there a God? aimed for the general reader where he presents some of his ideas in simplified form. That could be a good intro into his thought: tinyurl.com/ye2d65h
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Post by eastshore4 on Jan 8, 2010 18:54:41 GMT
Thank you folks, I can see where I went wrong here... I didn't consider just how deep philosophy runs with all it's various departments and the like, I always kind of figured philosophy was philosophy, and that while there were different topics/aspects of philosophy there weren't necessarily certain divisions or specialities amongst them.
I might have to check out that Swineburne book, but yeah I'd definitely need to start with the introductory stuff. I've come across those probability formulas before that you've mentioned and it's out of my league.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2010 21:34:56 GMT
I might have to check out that Swineburne book, but yeah I'd definitely need to start with the introductory stuff. I've come across those probability formulas before that you've mentioned and it's out of my league. If you're ever interested in tackling probability calculus, I recommend Ian Hacking's Introduction to probability and Inductive Logic: tinyurl.com/yevje8fIt's a textbook with philosophy students in mind, so you can always go that road and learn probability calculus; at least those parts relevant so you can be comfortable with philosophy articles. And if you'll ever decide to study Swinburne in depth, you'll see he's very fond of bayesian reasoning.
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Post by zameel on Jan 8, 2010 23:20:38 GMT
Good question. Any scientist, whether atheist or theist is committed to methodological naturalism; that is the natural explanation has to be pushed as far as it will possible go. The way this has worked theologically since the Middle Ages is that God is invoked as the primary cause and he works through secondary (natural) causation. One doesn't invoke ad-hoc supernatural explanations in matters of natural philosophy or make unnecessary recourse to the primary cause. Saying 'god did it' doesn't tell you very much. Hence any natural explanation of the universe has to be supported, even if it appears to look a tad contrived, as is the case with a lot of multiverse theories. But since they invoke natural explanations they fall within the domain of science and can be used to construct theories which can generate predictions. What the apologetics have to do is demonstrate that the natural explanations invoked fail as ultimate explanations, which they do. I'll be interested if you could shed more light on this. From what I understand, "natural philosophers" since the Middle Ages not only believed in divine creation but thought their work would reveal the effects of God's creation and signs of intelligence. As Stephen Meyer puts it: “many of these scientists did not just assume or assert by faith that the universe had been designed; they also argued for this hypothesis based on discoveries in their disciplines. Johannes Kepler perceived intelligent design in the mathematical precision of planetary motion and the three laws he discovered that describe that motion…Louis Agassiz, the leading American naturalist of the nineteenth century, for whom the Agassiz Chair is named at Harvard, believed that the patterns of appearance in the fossil record pointed unmistakably to design (Agassiz, Essay on Classification). Carl Linnaeus argued for design based upon the ease with which plants and animals fell into an orderly groups-within-groups system of classification… Newton…argued for the intelligent design of the eye in his classic work, Opticks. He also argued for the intelligent design of the planetary system in his masterpiece, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Writing in the General Scholium to the Principia, Newton suggested tha the stability of the planetary system depended not only upon the regular action of universal gravitation, but also upon the precise initial positioning of the planets and comets in relation to the sun. As he explained “Though these bodies may, indeed, persevere in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have, at first, derived the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws…[Thus] this most beautiful system of the sun, the planets and the comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.” (Signature in the Cell, pp. 145-6) He also quotes Newton in the Opticks: "How came the bodies of animals to be contrived with so much art, and for what ends were their several parts? Was the eye contrived without skill in opticks, and the ear without knowledge of sounds?...and these things being rightly dispatch’d, does it not appear from phenomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living intelligent…?" It appears "methodological naturalism" was not invented in the Middle Ages, or at least was not the preponderant view amongst scientists in the Middle Ages. And I don't think the distinction between primary/secondary causation necessarily conflicts with this view as the "secondary causes" do not preclude design (e.g. if I throw a pencil at a friend, the trajectory can be described by laws of physics - i.e. secondary causes, but that does not mean the action was not intelligently planned, and by retracing its steps the design may even be discernable). According to Newton's or Agassiz's definition of science, then, would searching for functionally integrated complex systems as evidence of intelligent design (which is what IDers do) be science?
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Post by humphreyclarke on Jan 9, 2010 8:13:02 GMT
I'll be interested if you could shed more light on this. From what I understand, "natural philosophers" since the Middle Ages not only believed in divine creation but thought their work would reveal the effects of God's creation and signs of intelligence. Absolutely true. But that did not preclude the distinction between primary and secondary causation. You can read my essay on this here: bedejournal.blogspot.com/2009/10/creationists.htmlIn the medieval period Hexameral literature was heavily influenced by naturalism. What ‘naturalism’ means in a Medieval context is that arbitrarily miraculous actions of God are not acceptable explanations for natural philosophy. Medievals were very clear on this. Yes God could do anything, but just because he could do something did not mean that using his omnipotence was legitimate as an answer to questions. This notion was explained by referring to primary and secondary causes. In the Medieval view, God is the ultimate primary cause of everything. That fact has very little explanatory power, and Medieval theologians viewed an unnecessary recourse to the primary cause as ‘a cop out’. Secondary causation, the action of natural forces which were created by God, were adequate and proper explanations and this is where the focus of inquiry would be located. Hence God creates nature and then forces within nature would have their subsequent effects. Theologians held that God almost always works through secondary causes and within the framework of the world he created. His direct intervention causes miracles, and these are very rare. An example of this would be an eclipse. These happen when the moon passes between the earth and the sun, so we don’t need a recourse to God. However the eclipse at the crucifixion happened during a full moon, so it could not have happened naturally; hence it was a miraculous disputation in the usual running of nature.A good example of this principle as applied to the creation is when William of Conches claims that life itself arose from the natural action of heat on mud and even that man arose from the primordial mud. Another example would be St Augustine's rational seeds (rationes seminales) which had been implanted in the world would develop into different shapes and forms under the influence of local conditions, or to fit with local conditions.
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Post by humphreyclarke on Jan 9, 2010 8:25:33 GMT
And I don't think the distinction between primary/secondary causation necessarily conflicts with this view as the "secondary causes" do not preclude design (e.g. if I throw a pencil at a friend, the trajectory can be described by laws of physics - i.e. secondary causes, but that does not mean the action was not intelligently planned, and by retracing its steps the design may even be discernable). Yes true. But my preference would be to trace this back to the point of creation and the laws of nature. See: biologos.org/blog/on-reading-the-cells-signature
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Post by zameel on Jan 9, 2010 16:04:00 GMT
A good example of this principle as applied to the creation is when William of Conches claims that life itself arose from the natural action of heat on mud and even that man arose from the primordial mud Premodern natural philosophers did not think "life" itself was complex, although our knowledge of the cell increased dramatically towards the end of the 19th century and even more dramatically upon Watson and Crick's discovery of the double helix in 1953. But just because chance and necessity were adequate as explanations for some events, that does not mean these natural philosophers thought chance and necessity were adequate as explanations for all historical events. Which is why Carl Linnaeus and Louis Agassiz saw intelligence in the morphological changes involved in creating new phyla or classes, and why Newton saw intelligence in the eye and the ear (as he explained, how could these come about without a knowledge of optics or without knowledge of sounds - i.e. their functionally integrated complexity signifies intelligent design) and in the origin of the solar system (although, their current motion can be explained by laws of physics) - in this regard William Whewell in the 19th century, SJ Gould and others distinguished between "historical sciences" and "experimental sciences"; the latter describe repetitive, law-like processes, while the former deals with singular events for which the best explanations should be accepted. Ayala's review like most reviews of ID literature does not take the arguments seriously. He mischaracterises the book by stating: The keystone argument of Signature of the Cell is that chance, by itself, cannot account for the genetic information found in the genomes of organisms. I agree. And so does every evolutionary scientist, I presume.That is not the "keystone argument". There were some scientists like Albert L Lehninger, George Wald and Francis Crick (all quoted in Meyer's book) who believed chance is a sufficient explanation, and for this reason Meyer shows chance is not an adequate explanation given the "probabalistic resources" of the universe and the extreme functional complexity of even the simplest self-replicating cell. Meyer also goes on to discount self-organisational models (like Dean Kenyon's), a combination of chance and necessity (like hypercycles and the RNA world), which he shows, in principle (not only in practice), cannot explain biological information. Ayala writes Signature of the Cell offers Intelligent Design (ID) as the alternative explanation to chance in order to account for genetic informationHe offers ID as the "best" explanation, better than both chance and necessity - which is why Meyer writes at length about Monod's dichotomy, but it seems Ayala cannot write honestly about the argument. The human and chimpanzee genomes differ from each other in just a few percent of the DNA letters, less than two percent in the genes that code for proteinsMeyer's book is mostly about the origin of biological information, and his intelligent design "worldview" is described towards the end of the book, but Ayala focuses most of his review on this aspect. Recent research has shown for "coding regions" of the genome chimps and humans are 95% similar and not 98% as Ayala suggests here (Britten, R.J. 2002. ‘Divergence between samples of chimpanzee and human DNA sequences is 5% counting indels.’ Proceedings National Academy Science; see www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2833 "human chimp DNA difference trebled"). But what is more significant is that this does not take into consideration non-coding regions, which as James Shapiro and others have shown, is probably far more functionally significant than the coding regions; and indeed it has been found these non-coding regions are remarkably different to chimp non-coding regions - www.geneticarchaeology.com/Research/Rapid_Evolution_Of_Non-Coding_DNA_Since_The_Split_Between_Human_And_Chimp_Genome.asp . Did the Designer tweak the chimpanzee genome to make the human genome? Or, perhaps more likely, did the Designer use a preexisting genome and tweak it a bit to make the human genome and tweak it a different way to make the chimpanzee genome? Did the Designer go on tweaking genomes a bit at a time to design the genome of the gorilla and other primates, and more and more tweaking for other animals, all the way down to mice, and even to fruitflies, with which we share a good fraction of the genome?How the intelligent designer designed is irrelevant to the question "is intelligent design empirically detectable?". Perhaps one could attribute the obnoxious presence of the Alu sequences to degenerative biological processes that are not the result of ID. But was the Designer incompetent or malevolent in not avoiding the eventuality of this degeneration? Come to think of it: why is it that most species become extinct? More than two million species of organisms now live on Earth. But the fossil record shows that more than ninety-nine percent of all species that ever lived became extinct. That is more than one billion extinct species. How come? Is this dreadful waste an outcome intended by the Designer? Or is extinction an outcome of degeneration of genetic information and biological processes? If so, was the Designer not intelligent enough or benevolent enough to avoid the enormity of this waste?Again this is irrelevant to the question of the detectability of design. It seems when it comes to ID, the "other side" do more theology than science. Besides, the above is a silly argument - it would mean a benevolent designer would not allow even death (as that is wasteful), which all theists for good reason reject; life is significant, even if it will come to an eventual end, collectively or individually. And yes, IDers do think most evolutionary changes are degenerative. But humans are chock-full of design defects. We have a jaw that is not sufficiently large to accommodate all of our teeth, so that wisdom teeth have to be removed and other teeth straightened by an orthodontist. Our backbone is less than well designed for our bipedal gait, resulting in back pain and other problems in late life. The birth canal is too narrow for the head of the newborn to pass easily through it, so that millions of innocent babies—and their mothers—have died in childbirth throughout human history.Meyer addresses this in his book, but Ayala doesn't seem to have noticed. His examples of "poor design" does not take into account the need for "constrained optimisation" in which, Meyer explains, "several competing design objectives are elegantly balanced to achieve an optimal overall design". "Poor design" in this view (that biology shows a top-down hierarchical design not a down-up one) is either explained in this way or as "degenerative evolution" as Ayala mentions. For example it's always proclaimed the retina is inverted and has "poor design" but this does not take into account other "design objectives" - see www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od171/retina171.htm . But my preference would be to trace this back to the point of creation and the laws of nature. See: So you choose to reject this argument because there are some scientists who mischaracterise the book and refuse to engage with the important arguments made in the book? As the first commenter wrote "Dr. Ayala appears to be one of the many reviewers who have not read Dr. Meyer’s book. If he has read it, he has not explained why he chose not to address any of the main arguments Meyer’s makes in the book. Dr. Ayala, you also do not seem to understand Intelligent Design. You go on and on about “bad design” in nature, without showing any awareness of the responses to such arguments that design proponents have made for many years. This does not further the debate." Why when Ayala, Myers, Dawkins, Miller and the rest of them have to resort dishonesty, misrepresentations and philosophical (as opposed to scientific) arguments, does their opinion count as stronger than those of the ID movement?
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Post by eastshore4 on Jan 9, 2010 18:37:55 GMT
Although I'm not a supporter of ID, I gotta agree that Ayala engages in alot of hand waving here and focuses more on the philosophical implications than the science. To be honest, I'm rather surprised that biologos posted this in the first place... either Ayala is being hypocritical or biologos doesn't realize that his POE objections pour an equal amount of doubt on theistic evolution, instead of a bad designer it infers a bad creator(I couldn't figure out if Ayala is a Christian or not, a link to his supposed "criticisms" of the NAs takes me to a link about a conference he participated in on the "evil" of religion, it seemed to exclusively star NA ranters so I couldn't tell if he was there to agree or present an objection).
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Post by humphreyclarke on Jan 10, 2010 11:10:18 GMT
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Post by perplexedseeker on Jan 10, 2010 18:59:43 GMT
either Ayala is being hypocritical or biologos doesn't realize that his POE objections pour an equal amount of doubt on theistic evolution, instead of a bad designer it infers a bad creator. I disagree. There's a heck of a lot of difference between God apparently not intervening to prevent suboptimal design and claiming that God deliberately created the influenza virus to kill humans. It turns the whole theodicy problem away from debates about human freedom and autonomy (and that of other organisms) towards effectively accusing God of committing atrocities. As for Ayala's views, it seems he's a very liberal Christian (former Catholic priest who now supports stem cell research). As for the conference, it was apparently supposed to be a serious debate about the extent to which science can replace religion (or if it should try), and it was only once it got started that it degenerated into an NA freakshow. They had some more nuanced and interesting people like Haidt and Sloane Wilson there, but they apparently got shouted down. Edit: and yes, humphrey, that really does suck. Nowhere near as bad as the infamous rape study, but it's certainly funnier. On the other hand though: www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6947497/Heroic-animals-more-common-than-thought-say-scientists.htmlI'd be interested to see their eventual results on this one...
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Post by zameel on Jan 10, 2010 20:12:46 GMT
There's a heck of a lot of difference between God apparently not intervening to prevent suboptimal design and claiming that God deliberately created the influenza virus to kill humansDespite the confusion between "suboptimal design" and "evil" in this statement (as the influenza virus may be perfectly designed for its function yet evil), I don't think you can escape the problem that easily. The argument that Stephen Meyer makes is that any functional information that exceeds 500 bits must have required an intelligent agent (for development of this argument see his book) and Behe doesn't use information language but shows in his book that any biochemical system involving more than two protein binding sites is beyond the reach of chance and is better explained by intelligent agency. In this case, then, the influenza virus would probably have been designed initially. That, however, does not mean the atrocities caused by the virus are necessarily because of the initial design; the pandemics like the Spanish Flu and Bird Flu and Swine Flu are the result of random reassortment of the influenza virus - so there is a randomness at play here too. Nonetheless, I think theistic evolution does not solve any problems: God still intended the virus and intended human beings (btw, most evolutionary biologists would disagree with this as Darwinian evolution has no goal or target, it is undirected; e.g. George Gaylord Simpson wrote "man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned") - you can't have it both ways: either God intended the products of evolution or He did not; if the latter, there is a real theological conundrum (as all religious scriptures say God intended - created - man), and if the former, then you have the same problem that ID has. So when it comes down to it, you solve no theological problems by rejecting ID. Besides, why isn't ID judged on its scientific as opposed to its theological merits?
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Post by perplexedseeker on Jan 10, 2010 20:44:50 GMT
Well, I think that it has both scientific and theological aspects to it (much like Darwinian evolution). But maybe we should start a new thread for this conversation?
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Post by zameel on Jan 11, 2010 0:44:43 GMT
I want to point out one of Ayala's major blunders in this review and an example of how neo-Darwinism can be a science-stopper. He writes: There are also lots and lots of DNA sequences that are nonsensical. For example, there are about one million virtually identical Alu sequences that are each three-hundred letters (nucleotides) long and are spread throughout the human genome. Think about it: there are in the human genome about twenty-five thousand genes, but one million interspersed Alu sequences; forty times more Alu sequences than genes. It is as if the editor of Signature of the Cell would have inserted between every two pages of Meyer’s book, forty additional pages, each containing the same three hundred letters. Likely, Meyer would not think of his editor as being “intelligent.” Would a function ever be found for these one million nearly identical Alu sequences? It seems most unlikely. In fact, we know how these sequences come about: one new Alu sequence appears in the genome for every ten newborns, generation after generation.It's been known for several years now that Alu sequences and other SINES do have important functions in regulating genes. As one paper says: Recently, a growing body of evidence has suggested that Alu elements are involved in different biological processes. They are implicated in human genome evolution, by modifying genes through insertions, gene conversion and recombination (Hasler and Strub, 2006). The Alu elements can also disrupt promoter regions, change methylation status, insert new regulatory features and possibly influence the efficiency of initiation of translation (Deininger and Batzer, 1999; reviewed in Brosius, 1999). Alu elements can also interfere with alternative splicing, or be incorporated into exons and directly influence the open reading frame in a mature mRNA (Lev-Manor et al, 2003; reviewed in Eisenberg et al, 2005). More recently, bioinformatic analyses showed that Alu elements within 3′-UTRs can serve as potential targets of certain microRNAs (Smalheiser and Torvik, 2006)Ling-Ling Chen, Joshua N DeCerbo, and Gordon G Carmichael, Alu element-mediated gene silencing, EMBO J. 2008 June 18; 27(12): 1694–1705 www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2435129/?tool=pubmedAlso see: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1088953/?tool=pubmed and web.uam.es/personal_pdi/ciencias/genhum/bibliogenoma/Aluyevolgenoma.pdf What is important is, firstly, that these papers are mentioned in Stephen Meyer's book which Ayala supposedly read. Meyer lists the important new functions of "junk" DNA found in the last decade or so (since the late 90s), mostly to do with gene regulation and spati-temporal control of the chromosome. In fact IDers including Dembski predicted before these discoveries were made (in 1998) that functions will be found for "junk" DNA. More important, however, is the logic in Ayala's argument, which reveals neo-Darwinism has been a science stopper in this regard. One researcher in this field Richard Sternberg in fact repudiated Darwinism for this reason. He wrote "neo-Darwinian narratives have been the primary obstacle to elucidating the effects of these enigmatic components of chromosomes" and concludes "the selfish DNA narrative and allied frameworks must join the other icons of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory that, despite their variance with empirical evidence, nevertheless persist in the literature" (Richard Sternberg, “On the Roles of Repetitive DNA Elements in the Context of a Unified Genomic–Epigenetic System,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 981: 154–188 (2002)) - his analysis has proven true: why do the likes of Ayala still insist on these arguments despite the fact they have been falsified? [see the rebuttal of a similar argument by Francis Collins here: www.ideacenter.org/stuff/contentmgr/files/640ee5bfb01620f5eacd6675a51bc119/miscdocs/id101_franciscollinsrebuttal.pdf - with this perspective in mind, the more pronounced divergences between chimps and man in noncoding regions become more significant; also see "How repeated retroelements format genome function", Sternberg and James Shapiro: www.zi.ku.dk/evolbiology/courses/me05_projekter/transposable%20elements/von%20sternberg%20copy.pdf ] Ayala goes on to say But was the Designer incompetent or malevolent in not avoiding the eventuality of this degeneration? Come to think of it: why is it that most species become extinct? More than two million species of organisms now live on Earth. But the fossil record shows that more than ninety-nine percent of all species that ever lived became extinct. That is more than one billion extinct species. How come? Is this dreadful waste an outcome intended by the Designer? Or is extinction an outcome of degeneration of genetic information and biological processes? If so, was the Designer not intelligent enough or benevolent enough to avoid the enormity of this waste?Is not the eventual destruction of the universe which God created an "enormous waste"? So, should we stop believing God created the universe because it will come to an end? Or should we make a non-scientific prediction and say the universe will not end?
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