DT> Bill Hamilton contributed a personal testimony on 17th Jan which
> I much appreciated. In it he wrote:
> "To say that designed objects can emerge naturally without some
> intelligent entity providing for dealing with disturbances, seems
> naive to this engineer's mind."
>
> In the context of God's designs, Bill writes:
> "I hasten to add that I believe God's designs are intended to be
> so elegant that there will be no indications of "tinkering"
> anywhere. So my view does not imply that there are any points
> in nature that we could study to "catch God in the act" unless
> He chooses to be "caught". As Howard Van Till does, I tend to
> believe that the design is in the properties of entities in
> nature."
>
> This seems to me to advocate a model of "design-for-self-
> assembly" whereby complex structures emerge as a natural
> consequence of the constituents having the properties they were
> created with. The observation I make in passing is that we have
> no empirical data to support this view. On the contrary, what
> we know of these properties suggests that self-assembly does not
> happen. eg: the coding of DNA cannot be explained in terms of
> certain amino acid sequences being "natural".
>
> Bill continues:
> "In addition (perhaps Howard would agree, perhaps not) I suspect
> that complex systems theory says some things about how God may
> be continuously involved in nature, guiding its course, without
> His oversight being visible to the normal five senses. Complex
> systems exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions and
> disturbances. By knowing exactly where and when to perturb
> nature, an intelligent designer/overseer could maintain control
> over the direction of nature by means of infinitesimal
> perturbations."
>
> This is the real point of my response to Bill's post: is this
> point an addition, or should it be a "Conversely, ..."??
> It seems to me that these sentences are giving us a version of
> intervention which is effectively contradicts the "design-for-
> self-assembly" argument.
I see no contradiction between Bill's version of intervention and
design-for-self-assembly.
Consider two extreme versions of design-for-self-assembly. 1) An engineer
designs component pieces to self-assemble into the same final (complex)
form or forms every time. Each time the process starts, the pathway taken
might be considerably different, but it always finishes with identical
products. 2) An artist designs component pieces to self-assemble into
beautiful, complex forms which are radically different from each other
each time, depending sensitively on which "pathway" is taken.
You wouldn't expect the engineer in version #1 to "intervene" very much.
However, it would be quite natural for the artist in version #2 to
subtly intervene and influence the pathway, especially if she was skilled
enough to predict the long-term consequences.
I see Bill's stated version of intervention to correspond to the artist.
Assuming that biological life really is designed-for-self-assembly, is it
version #1 or #2? It seems to me that there's some data pointing in each
direction, so my guess is that it's somewhere inbetween.
----------------------------------------
DT> But I want to put to Bill the thought that his view of God
> guiding the process of evolution would be anathema to
> evolutionary biologists. They would want to say to you: Without
> God's special oversight of guidance (as distinct from his general
> upholding of his creation), would the emergence of complex
> animals and plants be possible. That is, is there a genuinely
> natural explanation of origins or not? With the views Bill
> expresses, I think he would be disowned by the evolutionary
> biology community.
On the contrary, I strongly suspect that most of the evolutionary biology
community would have no problem with the artist's version (or Bill's
version) of design-for-self-assembly. The emergence of complex animals
and plants would be "possible" without God's subtle intervention; but
God's subtle intervention influenced or chose the particular pathway.
If anyone objected that this view was _vacuous_, I would reply that, while
it is scientifically transparent, it is a very solid
theological/philosophical question; and besides, I don't look to science
as my primary source for evidence of God's existence and loving character;
I look to scripture, special revelation, and their influence on human
history. It is in scripture, not science, that we learn that God is in
control of everything.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"There's nothing more exciting than science. You get |
all the fun of sitting still, being quiet, writing | Loren Haarsma
down numbers, paying attention. Science has it all!" | lhaarsma@opal.tufts.edu
--Principal Skinner (_The_Simpsons_) |