Thanks for your careful, generous response. I would like to make a few more comments:
my theory explains, and your theory explains, but my theory doesn't require a higher outside intelligence to guide it, so it's simpler, therefore more likely.
This is really where the crux of the debate exists between intelligent design and theistic (or purely materialist) evolution. It all comes down to what philosphical presuppositions we have and how we go about evaluating the data, putting together the most plausible explanation that is coherent, elegant and comprehensive. Some would say that design is simpler, while others (like you) would say that "driven by environment, with chance involved" -- dare I say "primarily out of necessity and secondarily out of chance" (??)-- is simpler.
My main point is that it is far from a "done deal" in any scheme that rules out intelligent design. Some Darwinists may have considered that they put the nail into the coffin of "design." But it just will not go away. And it isn't because of any obscurantism or "God of the gaps," it is because that there are good, empirical and rational descriptions that suggest that what Darwin had in mind does not tell the whole story.
Just like in physics, surely the followers of Newton would have held to the universal application of the law of gravity. So it became embarassing when the data was unable to adequately support the law of gravity for objects that are really close together or far apart. That is why it is so marvelous that it was through James Clerk Maxwell's meditations on the triune nature of God that gave him the needed insight into the dynamic nature of the electromagnetic field. This gave the insight that Einstein needed to revolutionize classical physics.
This is why "intelligent design" has so much promise in the field of biological (and other) origins. It might just turn up something that Darwin missed.
The part I came down on you for originally is oversimplifying the Darwinian materialist argument down to "it all just fell together by chance" and then using that to disprove it...... in the future, I do ask that you present your debate against more than just the "all by chance" approach. That part is easy to take down. The "driven by environment, with chance involved" is quite a bit more difficult to damage, and it really is the basis of evolutionary theory.
Your point is well taken that it is an oversimplification to say that natural selection is "all by chance." My apologies for lumping it all under chance in my earlier posts. Nevertheless, I thought I had made myself clear in my last post, but I guess I did not. The "all by chance" or "predominantly chance" view is pretty common, and THAT was what I was originally addressing. Let's face it, there are many evolutionists who think that this is how it works, and they present the argument that way! I don't think Jacques Monod would have framed the argument like you have.
Granted, your view is a lot more sophisticated, and yes, it is more difficult to deal with from an intelligent design viewpoint. At the same time, adequately describing evolution primarily out of the environment (or necessity) still has its own problems, though not as apparent as in the "primarily chance" approach. You are still stuck with trying to assert some sort of internalized "intelligence" or "self-designing" in natural selection without calling it "intelligent" and/or "design." This is more a problem of philosphical description than just "purely science," whatever that is:-)
So the debate continues. And that's a good thing. I am assuming that you would agree?
Holes in the progression from some ancestor species to some decendant species, yes - many. But all the processes of both "macro" and "micro" evolution have been proven and documented.
There are NO holes and yet there are holes(???) The holes mentioned pose a pretty serious problem for macro-evolution, don't you think? Intelligent design doesn't explicitly rule out some mechanical process of evolution to some degree. The chief concern is whether or not a purely materialistic, chance-driven "natural selection" approach adequately accounts for the available data on the macro level. Extrapolating data on the micro-level does not necessarily require that it be the ONLY solution on macro-level.
"Faith" is unecessary when the entire process can be observed in action.
Mmmm. And have you seen the entire process of macro-evolution in action? You must be oldest reader on SlashDot:-) On the flip side, no one has really "seen" an electron. Faith is an active component in contemporary physics. It doesn't mean that electrons don't exist, but it also doesn't mean that there could be a better explanation for what we know of concerning electron behavior.
There are a couple more problems here with "faith", but I'll just leave it at that.
The big difference between cruelty in the name of science and cruelty in the name of religon is that religon supposedly has a supernatural guardian who is dictating the words - if a certain passage in the Bible promotes cruelty, that's not a *human* failing (as is cruelty in science) but rather the explicit Will of God.
There's a lot here: just a couple things to mention:
(1) You could easily argue that on the basis of the "survival of the fittest" that we should go ahead and eliminate all of the weak and crippled members of the human race. Why not? It is only being true to the principle of "natural selection", is it not? --- Isn't science a "naturalistic" guardian that dictates what observations be made and that humans are obliged to follow? Why not be "cruel" as you suggest is wrong regarding the treatment of witches? What if it were determined somehow that Wiccans should be eliminated due to "natural selection"? What ethical basis to protect Wiccans can be found in a purely materialistic evolutionary scheme? If you think any of this is far fetched, then you haven't come across the ideas of Princeton's Peter Singer.
(2) Sadly, I think you've been terribly misinformed regarding the Christian understanding of biblical inspiration. The Bible is the Word of God, but it is also the word of humans. God has accomodated Himself in the Bible to reveal is truth within the context that the original listeners could readily understand -- with all of their limitations.
Capital punishment of witches would not have necessarily been thought of as being "cruel" by the original human listeners/writer. It would be presumptuous to think that (just as presumptuous to think that the ancients would have been in "error" because they did not fully appreciate the insights of modern Darwinian evolution:-). In the ancient Hebrew mind, witchcraft was considered a threat to the community and capital punishment was considered the only real deterence to the practice. We can judge in hindsight, particularly in view of the teachings of the New Testament that are used today to categorize such actions now as "cruelty." The fact that a few Christians have continued to misunderstand this is surely regretable, but it is still a serious misinterpretation of the Bible.
(3) Granted, Christianity does bear some blame for the treatment of people accused with witchcraft, but the whole thing has become so seriously overblown that this really is more like an urban legend now:
Neither macro- and micro-evolution rely on chance as the driving mechanism. Sure, chance plays a role, but only insofar as natural selection allows for adaptation
Here are a few comments:
(1) I am not sure whether or not you are actually arguing for my position or against it!
My earlier post was partly in response to the idea that macro-evolution is grounded in chance (which would therefore preclude intelligent design). I wasn't the one who insisted that chance is the primary characteristic of evolutionary theory!
Much of the confusion regarding "intelligent design" AND evolution is that there are some like DG who explain evolution in terms of chance, while there are others like you who make a distinction between natural selection and chance. The Darwinistic evolutionary camp is not monolithic. That makes a BIG DIFFERENCE in the discussion.
So can we agree that chance is not the primary mechanism behind any theory of origins? Or at least that the plausibility of chance-alone or chance-primary is suspect?
(2) The proposal offered by "intelligent design" is that complex natural systems, such as biological life, display the characteristics of intelligent design in a plausible and reasonable manner. It can not be proven, but the probabilities are very high that intelligent design is involved when compared to other mechanisms.
Unfortunately, your first example of the 1000 pennies only reinforces this argument. The act of separating the heads from the tails requires some intelligent design. By your example, you have designed the outcome; e.g. placing the tails in a pile. The act of choosing the tails requires intelligence, does it not?
Your second example is better than your first. It is not immediately clear that a genetic predisposition towards having good memory skills is a product of intelligent design. But then if intelligent design is not involved, and chance is not primarily involved, then what really is "natural selection" anyway?
Does it arise out of necessity? Can you help me out here? This is what I find perplexing about arguments for natural selection that seek to downplay chance. These arguments suggest that there is some mechanism within biological systems that is somehow self-directing or unintelligently-designing actions that would influence the likelihood of certain outcomes.
But why is it required to insist on some self-directing or unintelligently-designing process, whatever that is? If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, the probabilities are high that it is a duck. Sure, you can fake a duck but why bother with that explanation? If it looks like it was intelligently designed, then it probably was intelligently designed. Yes, we can consider other alternatives, but let's not rule out "intelligent design" because it does not fit our idea of "natural selection."
Let's consider your genetic memorization issue a little closer. Would this not all eventually lead back to the genetic code in DNA? But what is DNA anyway? Isn't it a complex storage of information? It isn't simply an incoherent collection of unrelated patterns. Because DNA has the characteristics of possessing information it would seem plausible that intelligent design is behind it.
Why is it that the archaeologists who discovered the Rosetta Stone think that it was the product of human writing as opposed to simply worm trails across the stone? The Rosetta Stone carries what appears to be information, not incoherent patterns -- and that implies intelligent design. Sure, it could be just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, but why bother with that explanation?
To reiterate, advocates of "intelligent design" are more interested in criticizing the improbable philo
Except that every precept of evolution in operation - including both "micro" and "macro" - has been observed happening. There is no portion of the evolutionary process that has not been tested and proven out.
I am with you here on the "micro" part, but I don't see the empirical evidence that you speak of regarding the "macro" part. Part of the argument of "intelligent design" is that there are some real problems with some of the proposed demonstrations of macro-evolution. For example, we see adaptations with Darwin's finches, but it is far from conclusive to argue that new species have developed. It is far from a "done deal" to assert that macroevolution has been proven out. At best, such assertions are premature.
Your "hot dog" analogy reveals the flaw. I can make the argument that hot dogs came from cows, but it is difficult to imagine that an undirected process gives us hot dogs! It takes some form of "intelligent design" to produce hot dogs (though I wonder about that sometimes when I eat fast food;-). There are certain characteristics that distiguish an intelligently designed hot dog from, say, accidentally driving over an animal on the way to work to make "road pizza." Maybe you can come up with a better analogy?
I am not sure if I can unpack your "witch" example. It is fairly loaded, but I'll try: It should not come as a surprise that people have killed people in the name of God -- witness stuff in Iraq? Nevertheless, one could say the same thing about "science." Were all those people needlessly horribly tortured and murdered in the name of science in the Nazi concentration camp medical experiments? Abuses of both science and religion are dreadful. So what's your point?
The "evolution" of Scripture should not surprise us, but that does not necessarily require that people of faith have completely misread the substance of the Biblical message, nor does it require that God's character "evolves".
In the relationship between the Bible and science, it all depends on what presuppositions you have in interpreting the data and whether or not an analysis of the data justifies those presuppositions. The presuppositions we have arise from our faith commitments, whether they be in the God of the Bible, some other "god", some extraterrestial intelligence greater than ours, or in the complete totality of a materialistic universe without a supernatural presence. You can take your pick, but there are consequences.
Sadly, your all or nothing view of biblical infallibility is deeply flawed. That is pretty much like saying: "If, however, he has to tweak science in order to fit its observations (or "words") into established reality, via the mechanism of 'mistranslation', then science becomes fallible, and EVERY word in it is suspect."
The issue isn't whether or not "the Bible" is infallible. Nor is it about whether or not "science" is infallible. The issue is are we interpreting the biblical and the scientific data accurately and faithfully.
Literal 6-day creationists argue for a particular "literal" interpretation of the Genesis text, but this is highly suspect from both a biblical and scientific approach. The Genesis material is not eyewitness testimony as we would find in the New Testament Gospels. The Mosaic author is clearing drawing on ancient oral tradition. But this does not necessarily preclude divine inspiration.
Likewise, to argue that the process of evolution was able to produce the advanced, intricate life forms we have now from elementary particles simply on the basis of chance is highly problematic at best. The probabilities required to make macroevolution successful as a completely undirected process simply do not work within the time period allowed for how long we currently understand the age of the universe. You need to posit some sort of extraterrestial involvement (as suggested in the recent PBS Nova Origins program) or a theory of multiple universes to make it all work.
What then requires the most faith?: believing in the God of the Bible --- or in unproven, materialistic, and speculative scientific theories?
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for your careful, generous response. I would like to make a few more comments:
my theory explains, and your theory explains, but my theory doesn't require a higher outside intelligence to guide it, so it's simpler, therefore more likely.
This is really where the crux of the debate exists between intelligent design and theistic (or purely materialist) evolution. It all comes down to what philosphical presuppositions we have and how we go about evaluating the data, putting together the most plausible explanation that is coherent, elegant and comprehensive. Some would say that design is simpler, while others (like you) would say that "driven by environment, with chance involved" -- dare I say "primarily out of necessity and secondarily out of chance" (??)-- is simpler.
My main point is that it is far from a "done deal" in any scheme that rules out intelligent design. Some Darwinists may have considered that they put the nail into the coffin of "design." But it just will not go away. And it isn't because of any obscurantism or "God of the gaps," it is because that there are good, empirical and rational descriptions that suggest that what Darwin had in mind does not tell the whole story.
Just like in physics, surely the followers of Newton would have held to the universal application of the law of gravity. So it became embarassing when the data was unable to adequately support the law of gravity for objects that are really close together or far apart. That is why it is so marvelous that it was through James Clerk Maxwell's meditations on the triune nature of God that gave him the needed insight into the dynamic nature of the electromagnetic field. This gave the insight that Einstein needed to revolutionize classical physics.
This is why "intelligent design" has so much promise in the field of biological (and other) origins. It might just turn up something that Darwin missed.
The part I came down on you for originally is oversimplifying the Darwinian materialist argument down to "it all just fell together by chance" and then using that to disprove it...... in the future, I do ask that you present your debate against more than just the "all by chance" approach. That part is easy to take down. The "driven by environment, with chance involved" is quite a bit more difficult to damage, and it really is the basis of evolutionary theory.
Your point is well taken that it is an oversimplification to say that natural selection is "all by chance." My apologies for lumping it all under chance in my earlier posts. Nevertheless, I thought I had made myself clear in my last post, but I guess I did not. The "all by chance" or "predominantly chance" view is pretty common, and THAT was what I was originally addressing. Let's face it, there are many evolutionists who think that this is how it works, and they present the argument that way! I don't think Jacques Monod would have framed the argument like you have.
Granted, your view is a lot more sophisticated, and yes, it is more difficult to deal with from an intelligent design viewpoint. At the same time, adequately describing evolution primarily out of the environment (or necessity) still has its own problems, though not as apparent as in the "primarily chance" approach. You are still stuck with trying to assert some sort of internalized "intelligence" or "self-designing" in natural selection without calling it "intelligent" and/or "design." This is more a problem of philosphical description than just "purely science," whatever that is :-)
So the debate continues. And that's a good thing. I am assuming that you would agree?
chmorl
Holes in the progression from some ancestor species to some decendant species, yes - many. But all the processes of both "macro" and "micro" evolution have been proven and documented.
There are NO holes and yet there are holes(???) The holes mentioned pose a pretty serious problem for macro-evolution, don't you think? Intelligent design doesn't explicitly rule out some mechanical process of evolution to some degree. The chief concern is whether or not a purely materialistic, chance-driven "natural selection" approach adequately accounts for the available data on the macro level. Extrapolating data on the micro-level does not necessarily require that it be the ONLY solution on macro-level.
"Faith" is unecessary when the entire process can be observed in action.
Mmmm. And have you seen the entire process of macro-evolution in action? You must be oldest reader on SlashDot :-) On the flip side, no one has really "seen" an electron. Faith is an active component in contemporary physics. It doesn't mean that electrons don't exist, but it also doesn't mean that there could be a better explanation for what we know of concerning electron behavior.
There are a couple more problems here with "faith", but I'll just leave it at that.
The big difference between cruelty in the name of science and cruelty in the name of religon is that religon supposedly has a supernatural guardian who is dictating the words - if a certain passage in the Bible promotes cruelty, that's not a *human* failing (as is cruelty in science) but rather the explicit Will of God.
There's a lot here: just a couple things to mention:
(1) You could easily argue that on the basis of the "survival of the fittest" that we should go ahead and eliminate all of the weak and crippled members of the human race. Why not? It is only being true to the principle of "natural selection", is it not? --- Isn't science a "naturalistic" guardian that dictates what observations be made and that humans are obliged to follow? Why not be "cruel" as you suggest is wrong regarding the treatment of witches? What if it were determined somehow that Wiccans should be eliminated due to "natural selection"? What ethical basis to protect Wiccans can be found in a purely materialistic evolutionary scheme? If you think any of this is far fetched, then you haven't come across the ideas of Princeton's Peter Singer.
(2) Sadly, I think you've been terribly misinformed regarding the Christian understanding of biblical inspiration. The Bible is the Word of God, but it is also the word of humans. God has accomodated Himself in the Bible to reveal is truth within the context that the original listeners could readily understand -- with all of their limitations.
Capital punishment of witches would not have necessarily been thought of as being "cruel" by the original human listeners/writer. It would be presumptuous to think that (just as presumptuous to think that the ancients would have been in "error" because they did not fully appreciate the insights of modern Darwinian evolution :-). In the ancient Hebrew mind, witchcraft was considered a threat to the community and capital punishment was considered the only real deterence to the practice. We can judge in hindsight, particularly in view of the teachings of the New Testament that are used today to categorize such actions now as "cruelty." The fact that a few Christians have continued to misunderstand this is surely regretable, but it is still a serious misinterpretation of the Bible.
(3) Granted, Christianity does bear some blame for the treatment of people accused with witchcraft, but the whole thing has become so seriously overblown that this really is more like an urban legend now:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2004/001/20.35 .html
I'm thankful your God doesn't exist. If he did, he'd be a right...
Unfortunately, it sounds like a lot of your complaint is based on anger. I doubt if anything more I'd say would be that productive.
chmorl
Okay! Okay! OK, Virg! You've got my attention! :-)
Neither macro- and micro-evolution rely on chance as the driving mechanism. Sure, chance plays a role, but only insofar as natural selection allows for adaptation
Here are a few comments:
(1) I am not sure whether or not you are actually arguing for my position or against it!
My earlier post was partly in response to the idea that macro-evolution is grounded in chance (which would therefore preclude intelligent design). I wasn't the one who insisted that chance is the primary characteristic of evolutionary theory!
Much of the confusion regarding "intelligent design" AND evolution is that there are some like DG who explain evolution in terms of chance, while there are others like you who make a distinction between natural selection and chance. The Darwinistic evolutionary camp is not monolithic. That makes a BIG DIFFERENCE in the discussion.
So can we agree that chance is not the primary mechanism behind any theory of origins? Or at least that the plausibility of chance-alone or chance-primary is suspect?
(2) The proposal offered by "intelligent design" is that complex natural systems, such as biological life, display the characteristics of intelligent design in a plausible and reasonable manner. It can not be proven, but the probabilities are very high that intelligent design is involved when compared to other mechanisms.
Unfortunately, your first example of the 1000 pennies only reinforces this argument. The act of separating the heads from the tails requires some intelligent design. By your example, you have designed the outcome; e.g. placing the tails in a pile. The act of choosing the tails requires intelligence, does it not?
Your second example is better than your first. It is not immediately clear that a genetic predisposition towards having good memory skills is a product of intelligent design. But then if intelligent design is not involved, and chance is not primarily involved, then what really is "natural selection" anyway?
Does it arise out of necessity? Can you help me out here? This is what I find perplexing about arguments for natural selection that seek to downplay chance. These arguments suggest that there is some mechanism within biological systems that is somehow self-directing or unintelligently-designing actions that would influence the likelihood of certain outcomes.
But why is it required to insist on some self-directing or unintelligently-designing process, whatever that is? If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, the probabilities are high that it is a duck. Sure, you can fake a duck but why bother with that explanation? If it looks like it was intelligently designed, then it probably was intelligently designed. Yes, we can consider other alternatives, but let's not rule out "intelligent design" because it does not fit our idea of "natural selection."
Let's consider your genetic memorization issue a little closer. Would this not all eventually lead back to the genetic code in DNA? But what is DNA anyway? Isn't it a complex storage of information? It isn't simply an incoherent collection of unrelated patterns. Because DNA has the characteristics of possessing information it would seem plausible that intelligent design is behind it.
Why is it that the archaeologists who discovered the Rosetta Stone think that it was the product of human writing as opposed to simply worm trails across the stone? The Rosetta Stone carries what appears to be information, not incoherent patterns -- and that implies intelligent design. Sure, it could be just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, but why bother with that explanation?
To reiterate, advocates of "intelligent design" are more interested in criticizing the improbable philo
I am with you here on the "micro" part, but I don't see the empirical evidence that you speak of regarding the "macro" part. Part of the argument of "intelligent design" is that there are some real problems with some of the proposed demonstrations of macro-evolution. For example, we see adaptations with Darwin's finches, but it is far from conclusive to argue that new species have developed. It is far from a "done deal" to assert that macroevolution has been proven out. At best, such assertions are premature.
Your "hot dog" analogy reveals the flaw. I can make the argument that hot dogs came from cows, but it is difficult to imagine that an undirected process gives us hot dogs! It takes some form of "intelligent design" to produce hot dogs (though I wonder about that sometimes when I eat fast food ;-). There are certain characteristics that distiguish an intelligently designed hot dog from, say, accidentally driving over an animal on the way to work to make "road pizza." Maybe you can come up with a better analogy?
I am not sure if I can unpack your "witch" example. It is fairly loaded, but I'll try: It should not come as a surprise that people have killed people in the name of God -- witness stuff in Iraq? Nevertheless, one could say the same thing about "science." Were all those people needlessly horribly tortured and murdered in the name of science in the Nazi concentration camp medical experiments? Abuses of both science and religion are dreadful. So what's your point?
The "evolution" of Scripture should not surprise us, but that does not necessarily require that people of faith have completely misread the substance of the Biblical message, nor does it require that God's character "evolves".
In the relationship between the Bible and science, it all depends on what presuppositions you have in interpreting the data and whether or not an analysis of the data justifies those presuppositions. The presuppositions we have arise from our faith commitments, whether they be in the God of the Bible, some other "god", some extraterrestial intelligence greater than ours, or in the complete totality of a materialistic universe without a supernatural presence. You can take your pick, but there are consequences.
chmorl
The issue isn't whether or not "the Bible" is infallible. Nor is it about whether or not "science" is infallible. The issue is are we interpreting the biblical and the scientific data accurately and faithfully.
Literal 6-day creationists argue for a particular "literal" interpretation of the Genesis text, but this is highly suspect from both a biblical and scientific approach. The Genesis material is not eyewitness testimony as we would find in the New Testament Gospels. The Mosaic author is clearing drawing on ancient oral tradition. But this does not necessarily preclude divine inspiration.
Likewise, to argue that the process of evolution was able to produce the advanced, intricate life forms we have now from elementary particles simply on the basis of chance is highly problematic at best. The probabilities required to make macroevolution successful as a completely undirected process simply do not work within the time period allowed for how long we currently understand the age of the universe. You need to posit some sort of extraterrestial involvement (as suggested in the recent PBS Nova Origins program) or a theory of multiple universes to make it all work.
What then requires the most faith?: believing in the God of the Bible --- or in unproven, materialistic, and speculative scientific theories?
chmorl