At 03:00 PM 8/22/00 -0400, Bertvan wrote:
>Hi Chris,
>>I hate to see you sounding like a typical Darwinist, accusing anyone
>>skeptical of "random variation and natural selection" of believing in a
>>literal translation of Genesis. Especially when I gather your aren't even
a
>> real Darwinist, which you've sometimes characterized as passe. You
>>apparently believe nature possesses a "natural order" and variations might
>>not necessarily be without meaning or purpose. If the variations are
already
>>rational and meaningful, Natural Selection wouldn't have to do any
designing,
>>would it? On the other hand, if the variations were actually random,
>>without meaning purpose, plan, or design, surely they would outnumber any
>>occasional advantageous variation so as to completely drown it out.
Brian:
>As has been noted many times, random in this context does not mean
>"without meaning purpose, plan, or design". Any "meaning purpose, plan, or
>design" is not detectable with scientific instruments. For example, in
>information
>theory one measures the quantity of information in a message irrespective of
>what it means. One would not conclude from this that messages have no
meaning.
>Also, consider the engineer that designs complicated mechanisms by mimicking
>Darwinism, i.e. by random variations coupled with a selection criteria.
>Would the
>random variations be "without meaning purpose, plan, or design" in this case?
Bertvan:
Hi Brian,
To you, "random" does not mean "without purpose, plan or design". I fear
that is not what "random" means to the general public, and it is not what
most people arguing for "Darwinism" mean by the term. Surely you don't think
these people involved in these juvenile crusades against religion mean
something which includes plan, purpose or design when they define Darwinism!
I'm not familiar with information theory, but can information exist without
meaning? Can meaning ever not be the result of intelligence? It does seems
a stretch of the definition to say an engineer devising complicated
mechanisms is involved in a "random" activity. If so, why would being an
engineer be of any advantage?
I've read your posts about evolution and I think there was one point about
which I disagreed with you. (I've forgotten what it was, now) Yet we do
seem to be arguing on different sides of this controversy. You choose to
call yourself a Darwinist, and I choose to support ID. Obviously, I have
little criticism of your brand of "Darwinism", but on the whole, I am more
often impressed by the thinking of those arguing for ID. Free-will/mind
have been detected by scientific instruments (biofeedback and the placebo
effect), but science can neither measure nor predict them. Perhaps the same
will turn out to be true of "design". Actually, for many people both free
will and design in nature are obvious, and no scientific "proof" is
necessary. However, IMHO, differences of opinion are a healthy and necessary
condition for any intellectual progress. I do not consider those who
disagree with me as necessarily either stupid or insincere.
Bertvan
http://members.aol.com/bertvan
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