Doug Hayworth wrote:
> In response to Preston G's post, Bryan Cross wrote:
>
> >I don't know much about the HIV virus, so I cannot say whether it shows
> >signs of intelligent design. The ID thesis has no problem with natural
> >evil, because the ID thesis makes no claims about the moral character of
> >the designer(s). The problem of natural evil falls upon those who identify
> >the designer as a good, omniscient, omnipotent God who continually
> >sustains and governs His creation, i.e. the problem falls upon theists. If
> >the HIV virus contains SCI or IC systems, then those theists who maintain
> >that these cannot arise by [providence-governed] chance alone might claim
> >either that the HIV virus (1) was created de novo or (2) was formed by
> >mutations caused by direct divine action or (3) resulted from a
> >devolution, or loss of original proper function by loss of information or
> >removal from the environment in which it was designed to function. Those
> >theists who claim that the formation of natural evils such as HIV virus were
> >either codified into the initial settings of the universe or effected by
> >providence-governed mutations are no more immune to this problem than are
> >the theists who maintain that SCI and IC cannot arise by
> >[providence-governed] chance.
>
> In general, I would have to agree with Bryan that such cases of "natural
> evil" (a term that I use lightly, since I am not exactly sure how it is
> used in such discussions and have little sense of whether or not it is a
> sound theological notion) are fundamentally no more of a problem for
> Christian IDologists than for any other Christian. The problem of pain
> (I'll back away here on whether it is evil) is a basic theological problem
> for all of us who are theists.
>
> There are problems, however, with Bryan's three explanatory options for the
> Christian IDologist with regard to HIV. The first option is simply false;
> HIV is phylogenetically related to other natural viruses (I could get some
> references if necessary).
As you yourself know, relation of any sort does not exclude de novo creation.
Therefore this first option is still an available option.
> The second option does not support ID unless
> those mutations (from a pre-existing ancestral viral "species") could not
> have occurred by known forms of genetic mutation; ID would have to show not
> simply that HIV was amazingly designed as a whole but that the mutational
> steps between related viruses and HIV could not have taken place naturally
> while maintaining a viable virus. I find the possibility of being able to
> prove such a thing to be very nearly zero.
Of course if you put the burden of proof on the one who has to prove that an
organism couldn't evolve by known forms of genetic mutation then you've won by
default. To avoid begging the question it is better (in my view) to withhold
judgment until a continuous genetic trajectory without any viability gaps has
been discovered or (what is harder) it is shown that there is no continuous
genetic trajectory without any viability gaps for the feature/organism in
question. So this second option also is still available to the ID proponent who
denies that SCI and IC can arise by [providence-governed] mutations, and who
claims that the HIV virus contains SCI and IC.
> Finally, the third explanatory
> option is invalid for the IDologist since it argues that the feature which
> makes HIV pathogenic is the result of a natural mutational loss of
> "intended" function. This is nonsense.
It is not nonsense at all, and calling it such obviously does not make it so.
Let's examine these claims one at a time.
> The key innovation or "design"
> feature which makes HIV what it is is its pathogenicity. This is the
> feature which must be explained if one is going to conclude that HIV was
> intelligently designed.
No ID proponent need accept this restriction. I hope you agree that it is clearly
false that anything that is not performing its original function is not
intelligently designed. One look at a junkyard makes this evident. Moreover, if a
device with a proper function F1 loses F1 due to a mutation and thereby acquires
a new function F2, ID does not and need not claim that the direct action of an
intelligent agent must be involved. Therefore, not only the first two, but this
third explanatory option as well is freely available to any ID proponent.
> If indeed some ancestral virus lost or rearranged
> some genetic material that caused it to become HIV, this is evidence for
> UNintelligent design (by mutation).
Agreed. And this would be a problem for ID only if ID claimed that every
feature/property of every organism was intelligently designed. Since ID does not
make such a claim, this is not a problem for ID. When an intelligently designed
organism acquires a mutation, clearly the organism itself does not thereby become
UNintelligently designed. Therefore, the presence of mutations within an organism
is compatible with it being intelligently designed and having derived functions
that were not intelligently designed.
> I know that Bryan was (probably off the top of his head) voicing what a
> theist IDologist might say. Nevertheless, let me clarify that in natural
> science, there is no such thing as "devolution" or "proper"
> function. There is only evolution (change) and function. Function is by
> definition whatever something DOES, not what it OUGHT to do.
But there is 'proper function', and it differs from what a thing does. See
_Nature's Purposes: Analyses of Function and Design in Biology_ Collin Allen and
Marc Bekoff, eds. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998). See also _Function,
Selection, and Design_ David Buller, ed. (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1999). It is
generally accepted that biological features have proper functions. For example, a
human eye has a proper function (i.e. vision) which it retains even when it loses
the ability to perform that function. On one standard description, the proper
function of a device token is *roughly* that function of the device type which
contributed historically to the increased reproductive success of members of its
reproductive family and thus the preservation of the device type. For this
reason, a device can have a proper function even if it cannot presently perform
that proper function.
best,
- Bryan
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