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Post by humphreyclarke on Jan 11, 2010 10:49:05 GMT
Nonetheless, I think theistic evolution does not solve any problems: God still intended the virus and intended human beings I think I agree on this point. I wouldn't want to suggest, as Ayala seems to be doing, that the TE position completely solves the theodicy problem. It merely kicks it down a level by adding in an additional layer of causation. It's probably on the same level with ID in that respect. As regards how theodicy would work on a TE model, the evils we see in nature are a direct consequence of it's autonomy, the fact that the universe is governed by impersonal natural law and the workings of what we might call chance. But an omniscient being could presumably anticipate all the evils that would result from the creation of such an environment and could have created it differently. However an omniscient being could also have foreseen the totality of life's history with it's drama, success, failure, creativity and struggle and decided that it was a good thing to put in motion for two reasons, 1. it results in a world which is autonomous and is allowed to bring itself into being (it is not the static cosmos previously envisaged) 2. it brings about a kind of grand cosmic story in which genuine goods, character, virtue, altruism and freedom can emerge. Imperfections such as the ones raised by Ayala aren't problems in this view since the world is unfinished, it is still in the process of being created. (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") I don't see this as a problem at all; one can have an algorithmic process which is not target driven but nonetheless can be used to create complexity and diversity. Gravity, Dark Matter and Supermassive Black Holes don't appear to be goal or target driven either but we don't seem to have a problem with them being used to sculpt the cosmos. On a large scale the universe has always possessed a tendency toward emergent complexity and self organisation. In the evolutionary realm, chance and contingency are important but they are not totally dominant as Gould tried to argue. Convergence shows us that the possibilities are limited and that 'design space' is a meaningful concept. The ways in which life navigates design space are open and contingent but evolution is ultimately channelled down certain routes. In terms of the inevitability of humans, we are concious, purpose driven beings with a number of distinguishing features (all of which are convergent in nature - parental care, sociality, language, cultural transmission, music, tool making, cognitive sophistication). Some biologists would baulk at the idea of inevitable humans, but I think they would have to admit that adaptation by selection does have certain law like properties. Under the right conditions these will lead to more purposive behaviour and greater adaptive complexity. I would say the following. From the origin of life to the present day, organisms have become, larger, multicellularly complex, taxonomically diverse, and energetically intensive. One significant trend that has emerged in life’s history (and would probably emerge again if the tape were re-run) is what is known as selective interorganismal investment which is represented by high degrees of parental care and social reciprocity. This is effectively a directional trend that selects for reduced fertility, higher consumption, greater investments in juveniles, and longer life. Among some primates this has resulted in larger brains, and increased capacity for attachment, altruism and moral commitment (but also manipulation, spite etc). In our particular species our brain has evolved into an advanced higher order system and we have the hard to define properties of ‘awareness’ and ‘understanding’ which increases our capacity for freedom of choice.
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Post by zameel on Jan 11, 2010 13:05:59 GMT
I don't see this as a problem at all; one can have an algorithmic process which is not target driven but nonetheless can be used to create complexity and diversity. Gravity, Dark Matter and Supermassive Black Holes don't appear to be goal or target driven either but we don't seem to have a problem with them being used to sculpt the cosmos. On a large scale the universe has always possessed a tendency toward emergent complexity and self organisation. In the evolutionary realm, chance and contingency are important but they are not totally dominant as Gould tried to argue. Convergence shows us that the possibilities are limited and that 'design space' is a meaningful concept. The ways in which life navigates design space are open and contingent but evolution is ultimately channelled down certain routes. In terms of the inevitability of humans, we are concious, purpose driven beings with a number of distinguishing features (all of which are convergent in nature - parental care, sociality, language, cultural transmission, music, tool making, cognitive sophistication). Law-like processes are by definition repetitive and regular, and cannot produce the functional information present in cells often quite literally compared to CAD-CAM software and computers (which is abundant in life), but we can let that pass for now: The ways in which life navigates design space are open and contingent but evolution is ultimately channelled down certain routesWhat if that contingency cannot produce the convergent changes, necessary to be selectable, by chance? This may be a bad example, but if somebody argued: assuming Jesus was resurrected, what is to say God had a hand in it - the route may be one (i.e. that he comes back to life) but the ways in which he may come back to life are "open and contingent" and a random interplay of material forces may have brought him back to life; this is not impossible, but because it means God didn't do anything and it was part of the "emergent" properties of this universe, it is more theologically favourable. Would this be a valid argument? If not, how is this any different to arguing the extreme functional complexity we see in living creatures cannot be explained by known material forces? (I hope you see that it comes down to a scientific, not theological, question)
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Post by humphreyclarke on Jan 12, 2010 9:30:02 GMT
I hope you see that it comes down to a scientific, not theological, question I confess I am not fully up in the ins and outs of 'irreducible complexity' (although I am intrigued by Jerry Fodor's suggestion that natural selection cannot account for human cognitive architecture). Nevertheless it remains true that ID's claims have been dismantled in the scientific peer reviewed literature which is why I tend to avoid it as a theological position.
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Post by zameel on Jan 12, 2010 12:45:03 GMT
I hope you see that it comes down to a scientific, not theological, question I confess I am not fully up in the ins and outs of 'irreducible complexity' (although I am intrigued by Jerry Fodor's suggestion that natural selection cannot account for human cognitive architecture). Nevertheless it remains true that ID's claims have been dismantled in the scientific peer reviewed literature which is why I tend to avoid it as a theological position. "Irreducible complexity" is not all there is to ID. Behe has developed his ideas several years ago in a concept he calls "the two-binding site rule" (in The Edge of Evolution). "Irreducible complexity" is more a positive case for design while "the two-binding site rule" is a negative argument against the efficacy of ultimately random evolution. There are many other ID concepts like Dembski's "explanatory filter", "specified complexity/functional information" and Meyer's "law of conservation of information". But I believe the reason you say "ID's claims have been dismantled in the scientific peer reviewed literature" is not because you have gone through all the peer-reviewed literature and come to this conclusion but because you listen to Darwinian propaganda e.g. Eugene Scott, Barbara Forrest and their type. ID has many peer-reviewed publications. To take a few important examples: Douglas Axe's mutagenesis experiments on proteins which show the "extreme functional sensitivity" (in his words) of protein folds. He comes to the conclusion that to get a relatively small protein of length 150 amino acids that is "function ready" i.e. can fold into a stable tertiary structure is vanishing improbable (1 in 10^74) and his forthcoming papers will demonstrate that smaller proteins are incapable of randomly "becoming" larger proteins due to chemical constraints. See: www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WK7-45F517N-8W&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=079d1cd0d97c412f951fdfb3930792e5www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WK7-4CVV2GH-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=db953fac9eef182b969c83f102879a9aStephen Meyer cites Axe's work in his book as does Michael Behe. Axe peer-reviewed Meyer's book, and Axe has said repeatedly that his work "adds to the case for intelligent design". See his website: www.biologicinstitute.org/ . Some years ago another article was released on "protein engineering" arguing for the inadequacy of Darwinism and the need for a "combination" of design and randomness: www.springerlink.com/content/d514772515583767/Another peer-reviewed article is Meyer's The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 117 (2004): 213-239 in which the arguments in his book are outlined. William Dembski "The Design Inference" (Cambridge University Press) and Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" (The Free Press) are both peer-reviewed. For a list of other ID articles and books that are peer-reviewed, see: www.discovery.org/a/2640Furthermore, since much of ID work is in the form of "review articles", it incorporates the information that has been gained from the peer-reviewed work of many other scientists. Behe shows how many peer-reviewed articles support his important conclusions (that random evolution cannot proceed when it has to produce three specific mutations for a selectable function; that no new protein binding sites have formed in astronomical numbers of bacteria and parasites; that most evolutionary changes are degenerative, there is "trench warfare" not an "arm's race"), see his blog: behe.uncommondescent.com/How did you come to the conclusion "that ID's claims have been dismantled in the scientific peer reviewed literature"?
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Post by zameel on Jan 12, 2010 14:29:19 GMT
I just came across James' "Where I stand on Evolution": bedejournal.blogspot.com/2010/01/where-i-stand-on-evolution.html . There's a lot of misunderstanding in the essay, which I think is quite common. You will often hear it said that evolution is random. This is false and not a single biologist believes it. The process of natural selection is anything but random, but it is still undetermined in its outcome.Darwinian evolution is ultimately random. Unfortunately, the very same thing said by an evolutionary biologist is construed as mallicious dishonesty when said by IDers. Darwinian evolution is ultimately random because the changes that are required in order for them to be selectable is believed to come about through random mutations; and the neutral theory of Kimura is almost completely random. It's like saying the route taken in a maze is not "random" because there is only one place where you can end up and particular paths you can take; but the particular directions chosen are random so the path is ultimately random. Dawkins says in The Selfish Gene, "even [DNA replication] occasionally make mistakes, and it is ultimately these mistakes that make evolution possible" p.17; also Paul Erbrich wrote " the origin of proteins is held to be a random process, at least ultimately, since selection can work only on what the random process delivers as having a minimum adaptive value" (1985). Evolution supplies science with a theory that explains, given some form of primordial life form, how there came to be all the wide diversity of life we see around us today. Although many questions remain unanswered, experimental evidence has accumulated to the extent that very few scientists question this conclusion.The conclusion that is not questioned is never explained. "Evolution" has multiple meanings. It could mean observing a culture of bacteria and seeing some changes, or it could mean observing the change in proportion of black and white moths, or it could mean the changes that have appeared in the history of life. Unfortunately, since these various meanings are conflated, when one definition is confirmed (that nobody denies) like bacterial resistance or nylonase function or the like, this is immediately extrapolated to the larger definition, and to all of life. But such rhetorical tricks are not proof of reality. Philip Johnson teases apart these various meanings of evolution in his book "Darwin on Trial" - which is why it is best to use "Darwinian evolution" because to a large degree IDers accept even some of the broadest definitions of "evolution". The only alternative is the controversial theory “Intelligent Design,” first suggested by the biochemist Michael Behe in his book Darwin's Black Box.Intelligent design was not first suggested by Michael Behe. The first suggestion of intelligent design in biology was in Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, Roger L. Olsen and Dean H. Kenyon's (all important origin-of-life researchers) 1984 book "The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories". Behe's book is the one that has gained most press coverage, but is certainly not the only book or aticle on ID, nor the first one. He said that the internal structure of a living cell is so complicated that it could not possibly have evolved on its own. In fact, he goes further and says that many cellular structures are ‘irreducibly complex’. This means that there is no way that they could have evolved in the small steps required by Darwin’s theory. “Intelligent Design” theory claims that the irreducible complexity of cells points firmly to them having been designed. And since Behe is a Christian, it is clear that the designer that he has in mind is God.Irreducible complexity does not mean "living cells are so complicated" that "they could have evolved in the small steps required by Darwin’s theory". By IC, Behe meant a cellular system which is composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. Behe said in his book that this sytem could arise by indirect routes (e.g. co-option) but he said this is extremely unlikely. Behe does not have a theological commitment that explains his scientific views (as he had no problems with Darwinian evolution for several decades in his career until he came across Denton's book). Behe also develops his ideas in a book he wrote in 2007. As bacteria can reproduce in as little as ten minutes and given the number of single-celled creatures that the Earth could have supported, I'm convinced that the evolution of these structures happened by naturalistic meansMuch of the research on evolution has been on bacteria, but still no progress has been made. You make the same mistake many handwaving Darwinians do: you factor in time and reproduction rates but not the probability of specific mutations arriving by chance. Behe writes extensively on this topic in his recent book. A recent peer-reviewed article by an ID proponent has taken to task the view that there are vast eons of time for evolution to work so it could have happened randomly. This is the abstract to his article: "Mere possibility is not an adequate basis for asserting scientific plausibility. A precisely defined universal bound is needed beyond which the assertion of plausibility, particularly in life-origin models, can be considered operationally falsified. But can something so seemingly relative and subjective as plausibility ever be quantified? Amazingly, the answer is, "Yes." A method of objectively measuring the plausibility of any chance hypothesis (The Universal Plausibility Metric [UPM]) is presented. A numerical inequality is also provided whereby any chance hypothesis can be definitively falsified when its UPM metric of ξ is < 1 (The Universal Plausibility Principle [UPP]). Both UPM and UPP pre-exist and are independent of any experimental design and data set." For the rest, see: www.tbiomed.com/content/6/1/27 (David L. Abel, “The Universal Plausibility Metric (UPM) & Principle (UPP),” Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, Vol. 6:27 (Dec. 3, 2009)) I disagree that the origin of life or the complex internal structure of cells are evidence for direct divine intervention. Effectively, such an argument would claim God must have stepped in to fit together the right molecules to create cells or life itself. This is both a tactical and a theological mistake.ID does not necessarily imply direct "divine intervention". See Dembski here on "Conflating ID with Interventionism": www.designinference.com/documents/2003.02.Miller_Response.htmTactically, such 'God of the Gaps' arguments are a bad idea. They give atheists a chance to parade a victory for all-conquering science if a naturalistic explanation is later forthcoming They are not a "God of the Gaps" argument. They are postive arguments for intelligence, just like crytography, forensice science, archaeology - if we find ancient markings or a coherent radio signal we infer intelligence; it is the same reasoning here. There is a negative element to it (in showing other naturalistic explanations are inadequate) but this is only a part of it; all cases of functionally integrated complexity are known only to have come about by intelligent agency - Dembski's and Meyer's works best illustrate this. Many scientists think that the chances of life naturally arising are very small. But I expect that under the right conditions the naturalistic appearance of life is going to be a certainty. Why? Because we know God created this universe precisely so that it should have sentient life in it.That is not scientific reasoning, but theological. Just because the universe and earth is "just right" for life it does not mean life will necessarily arise (this is a confusion of "necessity" and "sufficiency"). In fact the conditions of the earth when life arose were prohibitive to biomolecules (the absence of a reducing atmosphere, oxygen in the atmosphere). Stephen Meyer has just authored a book on the problem of origin of life and biological information, and ID as the "best explanation" - Signature in the Cell.
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Post by zameel on Jan 29, 2010 15:11:56 GMT
James: What they must not do, however, is look for direct evidence of the supernatural in the laboratory. That is why Intelligent Design is not really science. It is predicated on the miraculous rather than assuming its absence. bedejournal.blogspot.com/2010/01/francis-collins-and-medieval-science.htmlJames wrote this even after I showed this to be a mischaracterisation of ID. ID is not "predicated on the miraculous rather than assuming its absence" nor is it "looking for direct evidence of the supernatural in the lab". ID is predicated on the idea that we can empirically detect intelligent agency. In other words, its predicated on the idea that there is a scientifically rigorous method for detecting features the only known cause for which is intelligent design. This feature, they argue, is "specified information" or "specified complexity" or "irreducible complexity", that is a heterogenous multipart system that is well-matched and integrated to its overall function; language and digital code in computers are examples of this: they are extremely complex/improbable AND they exhibit specificity or an integrated functionality/pattern (meaning the parts of the "system" directly correspond to the independent meaning/specificity/function it conveys). In other words, ID is predicated on the same thing that cryptography or archaeology or forensic science are predicated on: the idea that certain improbable features that come together in a specific (purposeful/meaningful/functional/patterned) way to give the impression that there was intelligent agency behind it. That is precisely what science does: seeking causal explanations in nature that have empirical evidence. It is also important to distinguish between "lab" based science (experimental science) and the "historical sciences" (a distinction made by William Whewell and then Jay Gould a century or so later); the latter seek adequate causes to singular events of the past (e.g. the big bang, life, origin of phyla etc.) and the former seek law-like repetitive processes occuring in nature; these law-like processes may inform our conclusions about the causal explanations of the past, but they do not tell us about them directly (this confusion is often made when speaking about "evolution", as "evolution" has been confirmed in the lab when we mutate drosophilia or grow bacterial cultures, but this doesn't tell us much about "evolution" as is commonly understood in the historical sense). IDers argue there are some features of life (which exhibit specified complexity) the only causally adequate explanation for which is intelligent agency. In Lipton's inference to the best explanation for historical science, there must be both causal adequacy and causal uniqueness for a theory to be confirmed scientifically; after all, this was Darwin's method - he didn't do much experimentation or lab work or empirical findings (he did some work on worms and barnacles), but he used the idea that "present causes" can explain "past events" - which is exactly the method or the premise of ID. ID therefore certainly does not look for "direct evidence of the supernatural in the laboratory" but it does favour intelligent agency as the best explanation for some features of life (just like Darwin favoured a combination of time/gradualism/incrementalism, variation and selection in his "best explanation"). Furthermore, just like cryptographers they claim to be able to detect intelligent agency, but merely by that method of detection they cannot determine who that designer was (supernatural or otherwise). In fact, Behe said if Francis Crick had used something similar to his directed panspermia model of life (that advocated alient intelligence seeding life) for the features of life that are intelligently designed, then he would have no scientific arguments with him. ID says nothing about the supernatural; it says more about detecting adeqaute causes for certain past events. Is ID then "predicated on the miraculous" or does it assume the laws of nature must be suspended now and then? Not at all. When technicians put new code into a computer or I write this "intelligently designed" post, the laws of nature are not suspended, rather the intelligent design occurs with the laws still present. James probably means ID requires "interventionism" that an intelligence intervened in earth's history. But intelligence has intervened in earth's history! We have intervened in earth's history, and so has our ancestors, and we have done so using intelligence. The question is: can we detect intelligence, and if we can (say, for archaeology, forensic science, even alien intelligence in SETI), then why cannot we do the same for features of life? If there is evidence of intelligent design in some of life's features, that would yet not necessitate "direct intervention", as Dembski explains in the article I linked (but which appears to have been ignored). Was Newton doing science when he said the eye could not have appeared without an intelligent knowledge of optics and the ear could not have developed without an intelligent knowledge of sound (i.e. they, apart from being complex, are functionally integrated)? Why cannot ID be science?
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Post by James Hannam on Jan 29, 2010 16:49:19 GMT
No.
With archaeology and forensic science, the agencies whose action we are looking at are known. They are human beings who are part of nature and are quite numerous in this particular corner of the universe.
What is the agency whose design ID researchers are looking for?
It's not human agency. The only possiblilities are genetically tinkering aliens or the supernatural. I'd bet my bottom dollar that ID researchers have the latter in mind. If so, they are looking for evidence of the supernatural in the lab so aren't doing science.
And aliens? Here the comparison with SETI is interesting because we are looking for intelligence without having any idea what the relevant agents are supposedly like. In fact, I do find that ID and SETI have something in common in that they both strike me as a massive waste of time. But that's just me.
But there are differences too. The SETI-ite is claiming to look for signals confident that they are natural in origin - that is the aliens in question arose from their own primodial soup and evolved in ways we would understand until they became their true blue eight foot selves and bear an uncanny resemblence to Sam Worthington.
The ID researcher claiming alien design has a problem. His whole research is based on the idea that evolution can't do the job and the soup won't bring forth life. So either he must think the same thing about the aliens too (so they were made by more aliens or God), or his argument is that we couldn't have evolved but anything else could have. At some point, the ID researcher has to look outside nature or he makes a mockery of his own programme.
Final point: Evolution takes time. So does stellar. It is extremely doubtful the timetable would work if you want the cell to be designed. We need time for the universe to cool, galaxies to form, stars to form, grow old, die, blow themselves to pieces and spread heavy atoms around their galaxies, for a new star to form, form planets and evolve highly intelligent life. Which then crosses the vastness of space to earth and seeds our cells over three billion years ago.
So I don't think there's time for intelligent life to evolve elsewhere before life had even started here. Which leaves time machines and I'm not even going there...
Best wishes
James
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Post by zameel on Jan 29, 2010 23:41:50 GMT
What is the agency whose design ID researchers are looking for? That's a leading question: it assumes ID researchers are "looking for" a designer. They are not (although they may believe the intelligent designer is God, that has nothing to do with the science). They are looking for evidence of intelligent design, and argue the only adequate explanation of this evidence is intelligent agency. Remember the reason the "Big Bang" was so "repugnant" to some scientists (like Arthur Eddington) was because it had supposed "supernatural" implications. But if the evidence points to the big bang or intelligent design, why reject it? Regarding the definition of science: Either you're saying to look for something "supernatural" as the motivation for lab work ceases to make it science - with which, although I disagree (as I think motivation has little or nothing to do with the process of science and the method of science itself), IDers do not say they are looking for the supernatural at all by the mere detection of signs of intelligence (you may eliminate other possibilities, but those possibilities remain) - or you're saying to postulate an intelligent cause is itself not science, but this as I said is done in many other fields of study and was in fact something Francis Crick did with the origin of life (so was that not science? - or is it you that defines science and not Newton or Crick?). So, on precisely which point do you dismiss ID as non-science? His whole research is based on the idea that evolution can't do the job and the soup won't bring forth life What precisely do you mean by "evolution" when you say "evolution can't do the job"? www.arn.org/docs/meyer/sm_meaningsofevolution.pdf
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Post by James Hannam on Jan 30, 2010 8:48:23 GMT
What is the agency whose design ID researchers are looking for? That's a leading question: it assumes ID researchers are "looking for" a designer. Well of course. And they are. But they haven't found such evidence and so arguing where it comes from is moot. Again, this is moot as there is no evidence that requires intelligent design. And please, please don't waste our time trying to convince me otherwise. I spent a lot of time on this a few years ago and left disappointed. As I've said, I don't believe them. Crick's idea wasn't science either. Something doesn't become science because the guy who says it has a day job as a scientist. And evolution means the Neo-Darwinian synthesis with some room for ideas like Lynn Margolis and others. I am also open to ideas about complexity and emergence since these depend on the laws of nature and not divine tinkering (which ID must depend on however much it denies the point). If you want to claim the laws of nature appear intellgiently designed, I agree with you . But when I do, I'm not doing science. Best wishes James
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Post by zameel on Jan 30, 2010 11:04:21 GMT
And evolution means the Neo-Darwinian synthesis with some room for ideas like Lynn Margolis and others. Can you offer the best direct example you are aware of of such mechanisms acting in nature producing one or two steps, as it were, towards complex machinery like those described in Darwin's Black Box, or such mechanisms producing new families, classes or phyla, that convinces you of the efficacy of this process? [With regards to Lyn Margulis I suppose you are referring to her view of how organelles are formed or multicellular organisms are formed from unicellular ones; this remains hypothetical and, although there are examples of endosymbiosis in nature, none that we have seen directly have become authentic organelles; Behe discusses how this has nothing to do with his ideas in p 189 of DWB (2006 edition)]
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Post by James Hannam on Feb 1, 2010 19:06:42 GMT
Can you offer the best direct example you are aware of of such mechanisms acting in nature producing one or two steps, as it were, towards complex machinery like those described in Darwin's Black Box, or such mechanisms producing new families, classes or phyla, that convinces you of the efficacy of this process? As I said, I'm afraid I'm not prepared to debate about ID. Al is the poster who can probably help most if you are struggling with cellular evolution. Best wishes James
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Post by zameel on Feb 1, 2010 20:30:14 GMT
Can you offer the best direct example you are aware of of such mechanisms acting in nature producing one or two steps, as it were, towards complex machinery like those described in Darwin's Black Box, or such mechanisms producing new families, classes or phyla, that convinces you of the efficacy of this process? As I said, I'm afraid I'm not prepared to debate about ID. Al is the poster who can probably help most if you are struggling with cellular evolution. Best wishes James I'm not defending ID or asking you to debate about it. I'm asking you to defend your opinion that the neo-Darwinian mechanism is sufficient (or almost sufficient) as an explanation for the diversification of life. Although I understand your patronising comment above, I am not struggling with cellular evolution, but somehow to question the official understanding is evidence enough of ignorance (Dawkins would include stupid, insane and wicked as other possibilities).
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Post by James Hannam on Feb 1, 2010 21:36:49 GMT
Zameel, I don't think you are ignorant (creationists are often extremely well-informed about evolution). I do think you are wrong.
But I don't really mind because unlike Dawkins I don't think creationism is terribly important. And no, I'm really, really not going to get into this argument.
Best wishes
James
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Post by eastshore4 on Feb 2, 2010 2:26:04 GMT
Hope you guys don't mind, but I wanted to throw in my two cents on this...
I think it would certainly be amazing if ID turned out to be true, my problem is that I feel that ID is still a bit of a stubborn reaction to evolution. Obviously people like you Zameel know the ins and outs but I also see alot of creationists embracing it on a surface level because it allows them to keep their YEC beliefs. I had a question related to this... if we postulate God as designer of the laws of nature are we potentially running into the same GOTG issue as ID? Also is there any scientific theistic argument that CAN'T be accused of the God of the Gaps fallacy? You read about someone like Kenneth Miller who seems completely open to all scientific advancements(I don't even think he appeals to convergence) and is completely fine with a materialist world since God is ultimately the creator lying outside of the scientific realm... but while this seems to avoid GOTG fallacies (and makes Coyne red in the face, much to my amusement), it doesn't seem to really support theism to just say "isn't it strange that the world is comprehensible?"
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Post by perplexedseeker on Feb 2, 2010 14:59:35 GMT
Some people do apply GOTG reasoning to all theistic arguments, but I think that the analogy between arguments based on, say, YEC, ID, "fine-tuning" and consciousness is deeply flawed, for several reasons. They are very different classes of arguments and it's like comparing apples and oranges.
To illustrate my point, YEC flatly contradicts large amounts of scientific evidence, appealing to mystery as an alternative. This is classic GOTG, since it provides no credible explanation for why God would have made the earth to look exactly like it was billions of years older than its true age.
In comparison, ID essentially posits that certain features of the natural world are too complex to be accounted for by anything other than intelligent agency. This is fine as a philosophical concept, but the trouble in applying it to science is that any single instance of applying ID (to a given protein, say) becomes a GOTG because you're basically saying that this particular protein is designed but, say, 256,000 other proteins are not.
In contrast, when people try to pin GOTG onto fine-tuning, it's a lot less clear-cut. This is because we're dealing with things outside the universe, and therefore we can't help but get into metaphysics, where it's hard to justify naturalism having any kind of special advantage based on the presige that rubs off from its relationship with physical science. Science can only realistically deal with what's inside the universe (it is, after all, based on the idea that the universe works the same way tomorrow as it did millions of years ago). This was fine when people were still able to claim that the universe was in an eternal steady state with no beginning and no end (hence science applied everywhere) but the Big Bang pretty much destroyed that argument.
Now let's compare these three examples to, say, the mystery of consciousness - why is it that some arrangements of atoms (if that is what human and presumably animal minds are) have subjective aspects and others don't? And it is a mystery - there is even a group of hard materialists who believe that solving it is impossible (the "mysterians") because of limitations of how our brains work. Anti-materialist (or even anti-naturalist) arguments from the existence of conscious experience are not a GOTG because they need not invoke God at all (some of the most rigorous ones are completely atheistic). However, if materialism can be refuted then many of the common objections to theism are removed as well.
In the context of consciousness it's worth noting that there is also such a thing as "science of the gaps", in which hypothetical future science is used to paper over inconsistencies in philosophical concepts. This is often used in conjunction with the "argument from the Scientific Steamroller" to make it seem more impressive than it really is. The most egregious example is that of Eliminative Materialism (EM), which basically says that human thoughts are nonexistent, and that some "future complete science" will prove this. Every time someone raises an objection to this (including even Reductive Materialists), they merely say, "ah, but that's only because science is not yet advanced enough to prove us right". They could carry on this forever, now matter how much evidence piled up against them, and I don't see how this is any different from GOTG.
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