Re: Distal vs. proximate: Timing of design events and Pax-6

From: RDehaan237@aol.com
Date: Fri Apr 27 2001 - 07:21:31 EDT

  • Next message: Howard J. Van Till: "Re: Distal vs. proximate: Timing of design events and Pax-6"

    Tim,

    Thanks for your response. I have printed out the article by Ma'ayan Semo
    9th. I take it that's the author's name?

    As I looked at the pages being spit out by my printer, several questions came
    to mind:
     
    Can anyone seriously doubt that the eye in its many manifestations was
    designed?

    Were they designed by the Blind (really Extremely Myopic) Watchmaker of
    natural processes or a super-human intelligence working through natural
    processes?

    Perhaps the question is, should we elevate natural forces to the level of
    intelligent agents, or should we reduce intelligent agency to natural forces.

    You wrote previously, "Nonetheless these thoughts give no reason to suppose
    that a designer's work is finished on Earth. Why would one expect that no
    additional species, families or phyla are slated for future creation? How do
    we know there are no further designs waiting to be applied?"

    I will respond to that again. My model of the history of organic life, in
    brief, is that it is a developmental, progressing and bounded history, much
    as an individual's life history is developmental and bounded. It has a
    beginning and an ending. For example, events and processes in the early
    stages of an individual's life are not repeated at age 80. Likewise design
    events in the early stages of organic life are not repeated now or in the
    future. In my view the developmental bounded view of life is repeated at all
    levels, in individual life spans, in species and phyletic groups, and I
    believe in the history of the total biota. An implication of my view is that
    the present biota is in its near-final stage of development, of its bounded
    life span.

    This view of life is not derived purely from scientific observation. But I
    believe that the data on the history of organic life support it.

    I also think that Christian theology favors a view of a developmental,
    bounded history of life that it has a goal and will have an ending.

    Your view, if I may venture to say, is that the history of life is open
    ended, and probably uniformitarian, that almost anything can happen as it has
    in the past. I don't think that your view has more factual support than mine
    does, in fact, I think it has less.

    Our respective models are both shaped by and shape our interpretation of
    data.

    By the way, how would I access Medline?

    Regards,

    Bob
     



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