"Howard J. Van Till" wrote:
>
> >From: Peter Ruest <pruest@pop.mysunrise.ch>
>
> >> It may not be a "classic" variant, but I'm
> >> inclined to agree that it is a variant of
> >> progressive creationism. The replacement of
> >> capability gaps with improbability hurdles seems
> >> too small a modification to get out of the PC
> >> territory.
> >
> > No, they are fundamentally different.
> > Capability gaps: unforeseen, design imperfections, even goofing, ...
>
> Not at all. If they are there by the design of an omnipotent Creator,
> wouldn't they be foreseen & planned?
>
> > Improbability hurdles: foreseen, inherent in the optimal design of the
> > system-as-a-whole, necessary for showing God's loving involvement in
> > providence, necessary part of the planned natural mechanism of
> > development of the creation.
>
> Peter, I think you are here making excessive claims in your use of the terms
> "optimal" and "necessary."
>
> Howard
You are right, I wrote these qualifications of "Capability gaps" and
"Improbability hurdles" too quickly. But I maintain the opinion that
they are fundamentally different. Let me try once more:
Capability gaps, as I understood the discussions up to now, refer to
transitions in the history of the universe or life which are physically
impossible and therefore required divine interventions, the occurrence
of which potentially could be demonstrated by science. This implies that
_if_ science would ever be able to show that these transitions were
physically possible, it would be a blow at least for apologetics: the
"god-of-the-gap" case.
Improbability hurdles: I didn't coin this term, it was tacked onto my
concept of "macroevolution-T", i.e. an evolutionary transition requiring
a series of specific mutations, in the _same_ DNA molecule, which _in
combination_ and _without intermediate selection_ have a
transastronomical improbability, although each one of them is not at all
improbable. As this is a stochastic argument, impossibility of such a
transition can never be _proved_, and neither can the occurrence by
_mere chance_. God's action, in such a transition, is just the
combination of a series of selections of physically _possible_ and
plausible events. This is one possible type of his "hidden options".
There is no possibility of a "god-of-the-gaps" effect. Of course, any
selection introduces information. Such an introduction of information
happens in natural selection, as well, but this process is much too slow
to account for the "emergence" of all biological information required
within 4 billion years, and the random emergence of any single novel
functionality requiring a mutational path of more than two specific
amino acid replacements _without_ the possibility of intermediate
selection is too improbable to be considered plausible.
Peter
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