Reflectorites
This my last post on this thread, as I am un - sub - scribing from the
Reflector tonight!
I thank Susan for her posts over the years, which I have enjoyed. I look
forward to continuing to debate with her on eGroups:
(creationevolutiondebate@egroups.com)
A happy new Century and Millennium to Susan!
On Tue, 05 Dec 2000 10:22:15 -0600, Susan Cogan wrote:
[...]
>>>>CC>I meant that you blindly quoted it without checking to see if the passage
>>>>>you quoted was in fact *true*.
>>>SJ>As I pointed out to Chris, it seems that what Kelly said *was* true, about:
>>>>"Despite a close watch, we have WITNESSED no new species emerge in the wild
>>>>in recorded history." (Kelly K., "Out of Control," 1995, p.475. My emphasis)
>>SC>it actually is *not* true. It was not true when Kelly wrote it. Kelly's
>>>book was published in 1995 and the study I cite below was done in 1990.
>>>This is quoted from "Finding Darwin's God" by Ken Miller which I strongly
>>>recommend to Stephen and everyone else on this list.
>>>
>>>--------------
>>>Rhizosolina is a genus of diatoms, single-celled photosynthetic organisms ...
>>>Beginning at 3.3 million years before the present, we can see the
>>>increasing range of diversity of the ancestral species, leading to a
>>>broadening at 2.9 million years that splits into two distinct lineages in
>>>less than 200,000 years. The continuous deposition of diatom shells has
>>>provided a complete record covering nearly 2 million years. ....
>>>T.M. Cronin and C. E. Schneider, "Climatic Influences on Species: Evidence
>>>from the Fossil Record," Trends in Evolutionary Biology and Ecology 5
>>>(1990): 275-279.
>>SJ>>Talk about "blindly quoted"! Susan needs to read Kelly's quote again, in
>>particular his words: 1) "witnessed"; and 2) "recorded history".
>>
>>No one is doubting that new species have emerged in the past. What Kelly
>>was claiming is that no one has actually *observed* new species emerging
>>in the wild.
>SC>there are new modern species that have been observed in the wild.
>However, I thought Kelly was talking about witnessing the actual
>event.
He was. But Susan's quote is about diatom speciation that happened *2.9
million years* ago!
SC>I think now I must ask why did you post his quote? What was your point?
It was originally an answer to a post by Wesley:
==================================================
On Fri, 06 Oct 2000 08:11:34 +0800, Stephen E. Jones wrote:
>WE>Certainly the further work of Holland and others in
>>evolutionary computation
>
>I am interested in how biologically realistic and therefore relevant these so-
>called genetic algorithms of "Holland and others" were.
[...]
>
>It is interesting that computer guru Kelly admits they may not be:
>
On Fri, 06 Oct 2000 08:11:34 +0800, Stephen E. Jones wrote:
>
>It is interesting that computer guru Kelly admits they may not be:
>
>"Despite a close watch, we have witnessed no new species emerge
>in the wild in recorded history. Also, most remarkably, we have s
>seen no new animal species emerge in domestic breeding. That
>includes no new species of fruitflies in hundreds of millions of
>generations in fruitfly studies, where both soft and harsh pressures
>have been deliberately applied to the fly populations to induce
>speciation. And in computer life, where the term "species" does not
>yet have meaning, we see no cascading emergence of entirely new
>kinds of variety beyond an initial burst. In the wild, in breeding, and
>in artificial life, we see the emergence of variation. But by the
>absence of greater change, we also clearly see that the limits of
>variation appear to be narrowly bounded, and often bounded within
>species. ... No one has yet witnessed, in the fossil record, in real
>life, or in computer life, the exact transitional moments when
>natural selection pumps its complexity up to the next level. There is
>a suspicious barrier in the vicinity of species that either holds back
>this critical change or removes it from our sight. (Kelly K., "Out of
>Control: The New Biology of Machines", 1995, p475)
==================================================
Then David Bradbury reposted it and Susan jumped in with her usual "out-
of-context quote" allegation when she can't think of anything wrong with
the quote (despite the fact that she had never read the book!):
==================================================
On Thu, 26 Oct 2000 06:40:14 +0800, Stephen E. Jones wrote:
[...]
>On Mon, 16 Oct 2000 14:20:26 -0500, Susan Cogan wrote:
>
>SB>David Bradbury (or Stephen Jones, I couldn't find the original post):
>
>SJ>It was me who posted it originally
>
>>DB>2) Your following citation also brings up another interesting, but unrelated
>>>thought.
>>>
>>>SJ>"Despite a close watch, we have witnessed no new species emerge in the wild in
>>recorded history. ... (Kelly K., "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines", 1995,
>>p475)
>
>[...]
>
>SB>I suspect the Kelly quote is out of context, [...]
==================================================
The real question is why did Susan post *her* Rhizosolina quote?
[...]
>>SC>It is just not a good idea to stake the veracity of your religion on
>>>continued human ignorance. It's not a good bet. Your God either created the
>>>universe and everything in it--including evolution--or he did not.
>>SJ>>The point is that if there is a God who created, then He could have done a
>>whole lot more than creating evolution. The necessary starting point of
>>naturalistic evolution is that either there is no God, or if there
>>is, He never intervened in the history of life to do any more creating.
>SC>That's not true. The starting point is the *observations* of what is
>going on in the world.
No. In the case of evolution, what we actually *observe* "going on in the
world" is hardly anything. We can't even observe speciation "going on in
the world". We certainly cannot observe macroevolutionary events "going
on in the world":
"On the other hand, it is manifestly impossible to reproduce in the
laboratory the evolution of man from the australopithecine, or of
the modern horse from an Eohippus, or of a land vertebrate from a
fishlike ancestor. These evolutionary happenings are unique,
unrepeatable, and irreversible. It is as impossible to turn a land
vertebrate into a fish as it is to effect the reverse transformation.
The applicability of the experimental method to the study of such
unique historical processes is severely restricted before all else by
the time intervals involved, which far exceed the lifetime of any
human experimenter. ... Experimental evolution deals of necessity
with only the simplest levels of the evolutionary process, sometimes
called microevolution. " (Dobzhansky T., "On Methods of
Evolutionary Biology and Anthropology," Part I, "Biology,"
American Scientist, Vol. 45, No. 5, December 1957, p.388)
SC>When Darwin stepped foot on the Beagle he was
>a believing Christian.
Darwin probably *thought* at the time that he was a Christian, but it was
probably just a nominal Christianity:
"On his voyage, Charles continued to profess Christianity. But once
again, his lack of enthusiasm is somewhat striking. In his letters
home, he scarcely ever mentioned God, and then only in almost
hackneyed expressions ("God bless you"). For a modern young
man, this would be in no way unusual, but we must remember that
in the early nineteenth century there was far less reticence than
there is to-day about religious matters. Not only in private letters,
but even in scientific papers, writers felt no hesitation in speaking of
God in a manner that was evidently natural and sincere. And
Darwin was no ordinary naval man but one whose avowed object
was to spend his life preaching the Gospel as a minister of religion.
When we bear this fact in mind his description of the work of the
missionaries at Tahiti is little short of astonishing. "The missionaries
have done much in improving their (the Tahitians') moral character,
and still more in teaching them the arts of civilization" he writes.
But he does not tell us whether the natives were being brought to
know and love God. (Clark R.E.D., "Darwin: Before and After,"
1966, p.82).
Himmelfarb rightly distinguishes "between the faith that embraces belief
and that which suspends disbelief" and states that Darwin was in fact
"indifferent to religion":
"THE final recourse of Victorian society for the maintenance of
misfits and dullards was the church. Young men with no other
discernible calling were graced with the highest calling of all. That
the church was, at the same time, the refuge of the talented and
brilliant did not in any way hinder it from performing the humble
but useful service of relieving despairing fathers of surplus sons. So
it is not as absurd as might at first appear that Dr. Darwin should
have conceived the plan of making Charles a clergyman Nor did he
feel any religious compunctions on this score. He respected neither
the clergy nor his son enough to credit them with any profound
religious convictions; and he was sufficiently aristocratic in his own
sentiments to feel that, while he personally was superior to the
irrational dogmas of religion, the masses of men required the
stabilizing influence of a church-and in any event that his son
required the stabilizing influence of a career. Nor did Charles think
the plan absurd, as was demonstrated by the equanimity with which
he received it. .... He set himself, therefore, to read "Pearson on the
Creeds" and a few other standard works in theology, from which he
emerged with the happy conviction that he did not ain the least
doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible" and that
he fully accepted the Anglican creed. Looking back upon this
episode after half a century, Darwin reflected how illogical it had
been of him to say "that I believed in what I could not understand
and what is in fact unintelligible."... This, however, was the
reflection of hindsight ... he was not sophisticated enough-or
skeptical enough-to distinguish between the act of subscribing to
dogmas and the refusal to challenge them, between the faith that
embraces belief and that which suspends disbelief. ... The only
ludicrous aspect of this proposal was not that one who was
indifferent to religion should decide to become a clergyman, but
rather that one who was indifferent almost to the point of
incompetence to conventional academic studies should engage to
enter the most conventional and academic of disciplines."
(Himmelfarb G., "Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution," 1996,
pp.30-33)
SC>He made his first observations as a believing Christian.
See above. All Darwin said was that he was "quite orthodox":
"Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember
being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though
themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable
authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the novelty of
the argument that amused them. But I had gradually come by this
time, i.e. 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament was no more
to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos." (Darwin C.R.,
in Darwin F., ed., "The Life of Charles Darwin," 1995, pp.58-59)
Since the officers were described by Darwin as "orthodox" too, yet they
laughed at the "novelty" of quoting the Bible to settle "some point of
morality" it sounds doubtful to me that they were true Christians either.
And I must say I find it hard to believe that Darwin could progress from "a
believing Christian" in 1831 at the start of his voyage to believing that "the
Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the
Hindoos" in 1836 at its end. More likely he deep down disbelieved all along
in Christianity, but the voyage enabled his real self to emerge away from
the pressures back home to conform to his Unitarian extended family's
religious wishes.
SC>There are simply too many believing Christians who also
>believe in evolution for your point above to hold any water. Kenneth
>Miller is one of them.
Susan obviously doesn't understand my "point". Once again, I am *not*
saying that a "believing Christians" cannot also "believe in evolution". I
myself once believed in evolution as just God's way of creating.
My point is that a Christian can believe that evolution was just God's way
of creating, and he can also believe that God could have done more than
just creating through evolution.
An atheist has no option but to believe in some form of evolution. But a
Christian can believe that God created either: 1) supernaturally; 2)
naturally; or 3) a combination of 1) and 2).
As Wilcox pointed out: "One can be a theistic "Darwinian," but no one can
be an atheistic "Creationist." (Wilcox D.L., in Buell J. & Hearn V., eds.,
"Darwinism: Science or Philosophy?" 1994, p.215.
http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/fte/darwinism/chapter13b.html)
SC>He believes that evolution is necessary to
>Christianity, that Christianity *requires* naturalistic evolution
>because of the doctrine of free will.
I haven't read Miller's book, but if that is what he really said, then IMHO
he is more confused than I thought!
There is nothing AFAIK in any *scientific* theory of evolution that has any
bearing on whether humans have free will. Human free will is a *fact*
whether any particular theory of evolution supports it or not.
Also, there is no specifically Christian "doctrine of free will" that I am
aware of. Human free will is simply *presupposed* in the Bible and by
Christianity. There are arguments among Christianity's
Calvinist/Augustinian and Arminian/Pelagian schools about how free the
human will is, but AFAIK they *all* accept that humans *are* free enough
to take moral responsibility for their actions, which is all that Christianity
requires. Christianity therefore simply requires that free will be a *fact*. It
does not require any particular theory of naturalistic evolution to support
that fact.
SC>We are a part of nature. If we
>are to be free to choose between good and evil, then nature has to be
>free also.
This is a fallacy even in terms of evolutionary biology. When I studied
sociobology as a topic last semester, I was pleasantly surprised at the
comparative modesty in the actual *scientific* evidence for animal and
human behaviour. One of my textbooks questioned whether consciousness
is even within the realm of science:
"The study of consciousness poses a unique challenge for scientists.
A simple but profound question is whether nonhuman animals are
consciously aware of themselves and of the world around them. An
equally profound question is whether the study of consciousness
(awareness) is within the purview of science." (Campbell N.A.,
Reece J.B. & Mitchell L.G., "Biology," , 1999, p.1066).
And I found out that it is a legitimate scientific question whether human
consciousness and behaviour, as a part of "nature" is *unique*:
Neuroscientists and behaviorists are beginning to unify the "mind"
and the "brain," but consciousness-exactly what it is and how to
study it-remains elusive. Some scientists maintain that
consciousness is strictly a human attribute. Others posit that other
animals have at least some forms of consciousness and that a
continuum of consciousness has evolved in the animal kingdom."
(Campbell, 1999, p.988)
Furthermore, though we are locked into our genotypes, our
nervous systems are not "hardwired." Environment intervenes in the
pathway from genotype to phenotype for physical traits, and even
more, in general, for behavioral traits. And because of our capacity
for learning and versatility, human behavior is probably more plastic
than that of any other animal. Over our recent evolutionary history
we have built up structured societies with governments, laws,
cultural values, and religions that define what is acceptable behavior
and what is not, even when unacceptable behavior might enhance
an individual's Darwinian fitness. Perhaps it is our social and
cultural institutions that make us truly unique and that provide the
only feature in which there is no continuum between humans and
other animals (Campbell, 1999, p.1079)
Therefore, if Miller is claiming that our unique human freedom to choose
between good and evil, is grounded in a necessity for the rest of nature to
be free also (whatever that means), then he is not necessarily even speaking
*scientifically*, let alone as a Christian.
In addition, from a Christian perspective, there is another dimension, that a
good Roman Catholic like Miller presumably accepts. And that is that
humans uniquely have an immaterial soul or spirit that is not part of
"nature", at least in the ordinary material sense of the word. Jesus said:
Mt 10:28 "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot
kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul
and body in hell."
If Miller denies this, then apart from playing fast and loose with the words
of Jesus, he would be offside with his own because the Pope recently
issued a statement that I presume is binding on Catholics. which ruled out
those theories of evolution which ruled out "theories of evolution which, in
accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the spirit as
emerging from the forces of living matter or as a mere epiphenomenon of
this matter":
================================================
http://www.sni.net/advent/docs/jp02tc.htm
His Holiness Pope John Paul II
TRUTH CANNOT CONTRADICT TRUTH
Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
October 22, 1996
5. The Church's magisterium is directly concerned with the question
of evolution, for it involves the conception of man: Revelation
teaches us that he was created in the image and likeness of God (cf.
Gn 1:27-29). The conciliar constitution Gaudium et Spes has
magnificently explained this doctrine, which is pivotal to Christian
thought. It recalled that man is "the only creature on earth that God
has wanted for its own sake" (No. 24). In other terms, the human
individual cannot be subordinated as a pure means or a pure
instrument, either to the species or to society; he has value per se.
He is a person. With his intellect and his will, he is capable of
forming a relationship of communion, solidarity and self-giving with
his peers. St. Thomas observes that man's likeness to God resides
especially in his speculative intellect, for his relationship with the
object of his knowledge resembles God's relationship with what he
has created (Summa Theologica I-II:3:5, ad 1). But even more,
man is called to enter into a relationship of knowledge and love
with God himself, a relationship which will find its complete
fulfillment beyond time, in eternity. All the depth and grandeur of
this vocation are revealed to us in the mystery of the risen Christ
(cf. Gaudium et Spes, 22). It is by virtue of his spiritual soul that
the whole person possesses such a dignity even in his body. Pius
XII stressed this essential point: If the human body take its origin
from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is immediately
created by God ("animas enim a Deo immediate creari catholica
fides nos retinere iubei"; "Humani Generis," 36). Consequently,
theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies
inspiring them, consider the spirit as emerging from the forces of
living matter or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are
incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground
the dignity of the person.
================================================
SC>Obviously an omnipotent God *could* intervene in the
>history of life,
Indeed!
SC>just as an omnipotent God could have intervened in
>the Holocaust,
What makes Susan think He didn't? Many (including me) think it is a
miracle that Germany lost the war. The Allies were *hopelessly*
unprepared in 1939 and time after time, at the crucial moment "luck" fell
their way and Hitler made unaccountably stupid decisions.
While 6 million plus Jews and Gipsies were murdered in the Holocaust, it
could have been even worse. That autobiography of Hitler I quoted from a
few weeks ago quoted him as saying that when he had finished with the
Jews, he was going to do the same thing to the Christians.
SC>but does not because we must be free to find our own
>way.
Who says God does not intervene? He intervenes in my life and the lives of
my Christian friends all the time in answer to prayer. And that does not
infringe on my being "free to find my own way" because I freely pray for
God to intervene in my life. If Miller says that God does not intervene in
his life, then personally I think Miller has even more of a problem than I
thought.
>>SC>Saying
>>>that "science doesn't know X therefore my religion is true!" hurts science
>>>not at all and is devastating to your religion when ignorance becomes
>>>knowledge.
>>SC>>I don't say "science doesn't know X therefore my religion is true!" I have
>>stated many times that I would have no problem with my religion if
>>evolution was true. In fact for about 15 years as a Christian I believed that
>>evolution was probably true and just God's means of creating.
>>
>>To me the question is: *is* evolution (i.e. 100% naturalistic evolution)
>>true?
>SC>evolution is supported by the evidence as well as any other
>scientific theory and better than some.
It depends on what definition Susan means by "evolution". Susan has
repeatedly defined evolution as something like: "a change in gene
frequencies in a population." On that basis, evolution is not only
"supported by the evidence" but it is accepted as fact by the ICR!
But if by "evolution" Susan means "the theory that all the living forms in
the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an
inorganic form", then Kerkut considers "the evidence that supports it is not
sufficiently strong to allow us to consider it as anything more than a
working hypothesis":
"On the other hand there is the theory that all the living forms in the
world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an
inorganic form. This theory can be called the "General Theory of
Evolution" and the evidence that supports it is not sufficiently
strong to allow us to consider it as anything more than a working
hypothesis" (Kerkut G.A., "Implications of Evolution," 1960,
p.157)
Indeed, Susan herself has always drawn a distinction between the origin of
life and subsequent evolution, so maybe Susan agrees with Kerkut?
[continued]
Steve
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The problem of tautology in Darwinism is a subtle one. It hinges on the
definitions of a few crucial words: 'the survival of the fittest.' This is the
central claim that Darwin make that only the 'fittest' succeed in a struggle
for 'survival'. If this basic statement does not tell us anything new about the
outside world then the whole of Darwinism is in deep trouble.
Unfortunately the senses in which these words are often used by biologists
do turn the statement into a nonsense. If you turn to a textbook of genetics
in search of a definition of 'fitness' you will find something like this: `The
genotype with the largest survival rate is defined as the fittest ... '
Goodenough and Levine, 1975 So the central statement of Darwinism, 'the
survival of the fittest', becomes: 'the survival of those creatures having the
largest survival rate'! Immediately the problem is clear if you define fitness
as 'the ability to survive' then the 'survival of the fittest' becomes a
tautology, a self-evident bit of trivia. In this form the statement doesn't tell
us anything about the outside world that we didn't know already. It doesn't,
for example, enable us to predict which members of a population will
survive and reproduce, since we cannot measure survival until
*afterwards*. In this sense the neoDarwinists must avoid a sloppy attitude
to their theory or it will turn out to say nothing." (Leith B., "The Descent
of Darwin: A Handbook of Doubts about Darwinism," Collins: London,
1982, p.30. Emphasis in original)
Stephen E. Jones | Ph. +61 8 9448 7439 | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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