David Campbell wrote:
> >What does "involved" mean? Caused? If so, in what way did God cause each
> >mutation? Did He cause entities to behave within the limits of their
> >natural properties and thus strictly follow the physical and stochastic
> >laws or not?
>
> From a Calvinist viewpoint, it seems reasonable to suppose that the exact
> events were determined by the initial design of the universe, similar to
> the moon verse example.
That does not seem reasonable at all. Every mutation was determined by, and
falls out of, the initial conditions of the universe?
Calvinism does not imply or entail such a claim, for with respect to
determinism Calvinism entails only that the course of future events be known
and ordained in the mind of God. Nor does it seem even remotely plausible that
mutation events are determined by the initial settings of the universe. Is
there any evidence at all that initial settings of the universe provide
anything but *necessary* (as opposed to sufficient) conditions for the
formation of life? In your view, we are to believe that if scientists were able
to determine precisely the initial conditions of the universe, and then plugged
those factors into a very fast supercomputer, and then simulated the 12 billion
years or so that has elapsed since then, the exact time and place of every
mutation would pop onto the screen. In fact, apparently this computer
simulation would perfectly match our history until the first direct divine
action occurred around the time of Adam or Noah or Abraham or later. This claim
is so far-fetched that (in my view) it serves as its own reductio ad absurdum.
> The exact means could involve undiscovered natural
> laws or else divine fiat for the apparently random events (e.g., which
> radioactive nucleotide will decay at what instant to cause the radiation to
> cause a particular mutation). A more Arminian view could have certain
> events indeterminate. The events are also sustained and concurred by God.
Undiscovered natural laws would, I take it, fall out of the initial conditions
of the universe, thus leading to the problem discussed above. Divine fiat is, I
take it, a form of direct divine action. If you are willing to allow direct
divine action into the story of the origin of mutations, well, then it isn't
all written in the initial conditions of the universe. If you admit the
possibility of direct divine action, then why assume that it is not detectable?
> >If *so*, then unless one simply (and unjustifiably) assumes a continuous,
> >uninterrupted and very steep positive selection slope (i.e. which, being
> >continuous, requires that one assume that there is no irreducible
> >complexity), there very well may not have been enough time between the
> >formation of life and the appearance of such features as the trilobite eye
> >to produce such staggering complexity.
>
> Without suitable criteria to detect irreducible complexity, assuming that
> there is none is not totally unjustifiable. With our present knowledge of
> biochemical evolution, it is very hard to rule out anything.
That is precisely a very good reason not to rule out the possibility of gaps,
even chasms, in the slope of Mt. Improbable. I'm not ruling out the possibility
that there are *no* gaps. But the fact that we shouldn't rule out the
possibility of no gaps does *not* justify the assumption of no gaps anymore
than the fact that we shouldn't rule out the possibility of ETs justifies us in
assuming that they exist, or building their existence into our scientific
theories. If IC is not a helpful concept, then just set it aside. It is quite
easy to imagine cases where a biological device of type Y has a selective
advantage over type X, but there is a significant genetic distance between the
respective genotypes, and all the intermediary phenotypes have either the same
or lower fitness as type X. If the fitness of the intermediates is much lower
than that of type X, and if the genetic distance between type X and type Y is
significant, this is a chasm in the slope of Mt. Improbable. I would be
extremely surprised if there were no such chasms in the evolutionary history of
any organism. There is no reason to suppose that the fitness level of
phenotypes tracks directly with every change at the genotypic level. If such
chasms exist, [mutation + natural selection + finite time] seem quite
inadequate to surmount them.
- Bryan
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