At 04:54 AM 08/21/2000, you wrote:
>Reflectorites
>
>On Mon, 14 Aug 2000 17:24:25 -0500, Susan Brassfield wrote:
>
>SB>Below is an article that I found on another list by a biologist at Baylor
> >University. For Bertvan's edification, the author not only defines the word
> >"propaganda" but also "theory." Stephen should note that the author is a
> >Christian.
Stephen
>I am not sure what the fact that "the author is a Christian" has to do
>with it.
>It is well known that among the most vociferous critics of both ID and
>creationism are Christian theistic evolutionists. In this case Hamrick is in
>fact a Christian *Darwinist*, claiming that "Darwin's Theory of Natural
>Selection is our best explanation for how things evolve..." (see below).
>
>Since Darwinism depends *absolutely* on the assumption that *all*
>mutations in the entire 3.9 billion-year history of life have been random
>with respect to adaptive improvement, it is absolutely *essential* that
>Darwinists (including Christian ones), attack all Christian creationist
>notions of a Creator guiding or intervening in natural history.
Chris
What follows is somewhat off the main point that Stephen is making here,
part of which I agree with. Though most ID theorists seem to be Christians
(usually of a somewhat literalist bent -- though not as bent as the plain
creationists :-) ), there is no necessity that Christians be ID theorists,
unless we are referring to Christians in a very narrow way.
Now: Unless you define "random" in a quite specific way, your claim
regarding the nature of Darwinism is false. All that Darwinism (and more
modern naturalistic evolutionary extensions of it) needs is that there not
be any *intelligent* direction of the variation process. It does not have
to be random in any deep sense. Perhaps that is what you mean when you say
"random *with respect to* adaptive improvement" [my emphasis]? Furthermore,
Darwinism does not *require* that *all* mutations in the entire 3.9 billion
years of life have been random, even in this limited sense. *However*, that
is by far the most parsimonious presumption. If no intelligence is needed,
why postulate it?
Evolution, as the changing presence of some variations and not others, is
definitely *directed* in the sense that sequences of genetic variations are
only allowed to go along what might be called "paths of fitness." Perhaps
"channeled, in somewhat the same way that barriers on a plain will channel
the flow of water across the plain, would be a better word.
But, though evolution is directed in this sense, this is not *intelligent*
direction. It is direction according to the standards set by chemistry,
physics, and the relationship of the genome and organism to its
environment. Because many of these factors are constant (there is no
evidence that the laws of physics as now understood have changed in any
significant way during the past 4 billion years, for example), and since
even many of the environmental factors on Earth have not changed a great
deal (we still have lots of water around, for example, and the temperature,
while lower, is not so much lower that early forms of life could not evolve
into ones that are adapted to the lower temperatures. If we catalogued all
selectively relevant factors over the past 4 billion years, we'd find a
hierarchy going from the constants of physics and chemistry to the factors
that vary from second to second in significant ways (at least sometimes).
These factors have set intransigent standards that must be met by life in
order to keep living, and have thus *necessarily* ensured that any
organisms that survived would have the features that you and your
colleagues regard, over-imaginatively, as intelligent design. Oddly,
Dembski, though he'd undoubtedly rather it not work out the way it does,
actually *defines* design in such a way that it is compatible with the
"designing" process that selection does in "pruning" the ever-burgeoning
processes of variation.
The only problem is that this kind of "design," because it lacks an
intelligent agent, does not help the ID cause. In fact, it renders it
superfluous (again), by showing that "design" (of a sort) can be achieved
by a process of "pruning" variations *after* they occur as well as by a
process of carefully (i.e., intelligently) choosing variations so they
don't have to be "pruned" away later. Perhaps a metaphor will help:
One can create the shape of a cube by adding bits of clay a little at a
time until one has the desired cube shape, *or* one can take a large blob
of clay and trim away the parts that don't fall within the boundaries of
the desired cube shape. Extremely high intelligence/knowledge would design
life by *pre-*selective additions to fit the environment, whereas Nature
"designs" life by spewing out variations in all directions (more or less)
and constantly killing off the ones that don't work well in their
environments. Whether the variations are pre-selected by an intelligence or
post-selected by natural selective factors does not matter much in
straightforward cases.
It *does* matter in at least some cases, however, which is evolution's
explanation of why so much of what we see does *not* fit any reasonable
intelligent design standards we can think of. ID theory has an explanation
of why life has similarities with what we know to be designed things, but
it does not have an explanation of why life is apparently so *unlike*
things we know to be designed in other ways. That is, it has an explanation
for "intelligent design" in Nature, but not for "really stupid design" in
Nature. Naturalistic evolutionary theory, however, predicts that in
straightforward cases, the series of adaptations to an environment that is
slowly changing will appear intelligent, whereas adaptations to more or
less sudden or radical changes will appear *less* intelligent, even
downright kludgey. Thus the Panda's "thumb" and the human wrist, and many
other such oddities (including plenty at the biochemical and molecular level).
Thus, if we went to a new planet and found lots of life there, and we
wanted to know whether that life had been designed or evolved naturally, we
could apply this test: Search for physiological and morphological and
genetic kludges, things that don't make good design sense given what we
know of the requirements of fitting life to an environment. If there are
lots of such kludges, it's a good sign that the life on the planet evolved
*naturally*. If the life that's present appears to be really
well-engineered for its environment, even though there is strong reason to
believe that the environment has changed over the eons (as much as Earth's
has, say), then it would be a good sign that that collection of life was in
fact designed.
Of course, apparent bad design could always be excused by saying that the
designers had mysterious design goals (such as fooling humans into
believing in naturalistic evolution). But this is not an explanation, it is
the *evasion* of the responsibility of explanation, or explaining *away*.
Even supposing we accept that the theory that the designers *did* want to
fool humans into believing that life on the planet evolved naturalistically
by including plenty of "design errors" in said life as a viable theory,
it's *still* a much less parsimonious explanation than that such life
simply evolved naturalistically by "blooming" variations all over the place
in an environment that constantly trimmed the "excess" away.
Thus, unless at least some of the alleged fundamental flaws in naturalistic
evolutionary theory were to stick, we should not conclude that life is
designed unless we can specify a *sensible* design principle that the
designers might have followed in creating the apparent kludges in Earthly
life (and unless we can show that such a design principle is a *better*
alternative than unintelligent variation and "pruning"). This, of course,
given current evidence, would still just be science fiction, but it would
be better than the current vacuousness of ID theory.
Finally, I will urge the consideration of the idea that evolution itself
becomes progressively "smarter" (at least in some cases), because, given
suitable conditions, it will chance upon mechanisms (such as sexual
reproduction) that both narrow the range of variations while at the same
time ensuring that there are *more* of them and that they have a *better
than random* chance of being viable. Recombination, for example, recombines
components that have already been "tried" (by at least the two
participating organisms) for one life-cycle. Since both organisms are
present at the necessary times for reproduction, they have both "proved"
that their genes are "good enough" (so far). This means that, when their
genes are recombined, the components that are recombined have already shown
signs of being usable and thus that they have a better chance of being
usable in new combinations.
Purely *random* variations, on the other hand, would show a very different
statistical profile; a much higher percentage of them would be harmful.
In this and other ways, evolution may become progressively "smarter," more
adapted to the more global characteristics of the environment.
In fact, at some point, it may become so "smart" that some organisms *do*
exhibit intelligence and even apply this intelligence to furthering their
own evolution, by taking advantage of the already-existing patterns of
variation and selection, and, eventually, by technological manipulation of
genetic sequences.
Eventually, this intelligence will probably result in new forms of life
that will then continue evolving on their own (*significant* steps in this
direction have already been taken, in both physical research and in
artificial life research in computer software).
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