On Sun, 23 Jul 2000 07:32:15 EDT RDehaan237@aol.com writes:
>
> In a message dated 7/22/2000 3:13:02 PM, dfsiemensjr@juno.com
> writes:
>
> << We are just beginning to get a handle on some of the "controls."
> If the
> speed of
> discovery that I have observed over some 50 years continues for the
> next
> 50 or so, I expect that we will understand that these duplications
> and
> those mutations produced the major developmental changes from one
> type of
> creature to another, with specifically beneficial states at each
> step. >>
>
> Dave:
>
> You seem to be assuming that the progress of science is a straight
> line
> upward until final answers are reached. That's not a safe
> assumption, IMHO.
> As I recall studies of innovations in various fields show an
> S-shaped
> curve--starting slowly, rising rapidly, and leveling off, never
> quite
> reaching 100 percent. That is a safer assumption for the progress
> in
> science. We are now in the rising part of the curve in molecular
> biology and
> genetics, the time of great breakthroughs. I assume that someday it
> will
> level off before the final answers are reached. At that point it
> takes more
> and more energy (both mental and physical) to produce fewer and
> fewer
> results. I am of the personal opinion, that answers to the basic
> questions
> addressed by science will never be completely resolved within the
> naturalistic framework.
>
I make no assumptions about a straight line rise. I know too much history
to assume that. There will be interpretations which work but which are
mistaken, and some mistakes that won't work. I sometimes feel that "got
on his horse and rode off madly in all directions" fits the situation all
to closely. I am also aware that we cannot anticipate breakthroughs. When
I took course in biology, nobody anticipated DNA, RNA, the genetic code,
the internal structure of the cell, or the techniques which allow
visualization of a lot of this. I am simply noting that we now have a
basis for understanding the "mechanisms" of cellular life and organism
development. We didn't have them before.
> This thread started out with my assertion that the mechanism of
> Darwinian
> natural selection are insufficient mechanism to account for observed
> changes
> at the higher taxonomic levels found in the fossil record (which I
> mistakenly
> called "creativity"). The insufficiency of the mechanism of
> Darwinian
> natural selection is the issue--random genetic mutations and
> selection by the
> environment of the most adaptive phenotypes. Do you maintain that
> NS in that
> sense is sufficient to account for all the examples you listed?
>
Mutation and selection? No. There has at least to be duplication,
recombination and other factors. Are they sufficient? I don't know. I
suspect that the specialists in the area don't yet know. New discoveries
may produce totally unexpected insights. However, I will say dogmatically
that all scientific explanation will be in terms of natural events, just
as the scientific explanation of the Big Bang can only work back as far
as 10^-43 sec after the event. Calling the Big Bang "creation" is outside
of the scientific explanation. In the biological area, if the final
result is that there is no natural explanation, interjecting "miracle" is
not a part of the scientific discipline.
> You have confidence in the "divinely installed natural patterns from
> the
> earliest beginning to the present." If these natural patterns can
> be
> inferred, you appear to taking the side of intelligent design. Are
> you
> referring to the bacterial flagellum, the intricate cell-division
> mechanisms,
> the molecular structure of the simplest cell, the trilobite biconvex
> lens as
> natural patterns? Were these installed by God at the time of the
> Big Bang?
> In my opinion it takes as much faith to believe that as it does to
> believe
> that God added a new program for life when the earth was prepared
> for it.
>
> We may be closer together than it seems, the difference being
> whether God
> installed the observed patterns in the very beginning of the
> universe, or
> later in the history of the universe.
>
> Peace,
>
> Bob
>
As a strict theist, I am committed to the notion that the universe is
designed intelligently. When I recognize God as omnipotent and
omniscient, I assert that he does not have to either tinker with creation
to get it to come out right or to tip his hand so that we must
acknowledge his activity. Were the latter the case, as Bill Williams
remarked the last time I saw him, we "would have God in a test tube." Any
attempt to prove the existence of God is futile. Augustine had ir right
in his _credo ut intellegam_, which echoes the thought of Hebrews 11:6.
Dave
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