From: Richard McGough (richard@biblewheel.com)
Date: Sun Jul 27 2003 - 00:00:31 EDT
Hi Glen, I had written:
>>I'm right with you on this point Glen. I am really not very
>>interested in ID and fine tuning as apologies for theism because
>>I'm not interested in merely proving theism. For me, it is a
>>colossal waste of time to argue for something 90% of the
>>population already believes while making little if any progress in
>>the proclamation of the Gospel. But I fell into this line of
>>argument because of what appeared to me to be a "huge
>>inconsistency" in your statement that the "evolution" of elements
>>should be treated as essentially identical to the evolution of
>>life. I still think my original argument is correct, viz darwinian
>>evolution is largely speculative whereas we have precise
>>*equations* to describe chemical evolution. Do you agree that this
>>is a significant difference?
To which you replied:
>
>No. Nonlinear equations are precise but they are not predictable. I think
>what you like about the evolution of elements is that the equations give
>prediction. But nonlinear equations are no less exact, they are however much
>less predictable. I suspect what you are looking for is predictability. We
>have exact equations for the weather system but they aren't predictable.
>
I don't think this really touches my intuition at all. The problem is not that the equations describing animal evolution are harder to solve than those describing chemical evolution - the problem is that the equations for life do not exist! But we do have intellectually satisfying equations that describe the "evolution" of the elements even if we can't solve them exactly.
The only way evolution of elements could be equivalent to the evolution of life is in a fully reductionist sense where we have fully described everything in terms of elementary particles. The fact that this would involve equations that would probably be unsolvable is not a problem at all. The problem is that I really do not believe that evolution, even if shown to be the origin of life and species, could ever be fully described by appealing to nothing but the natural laws governing the underlying physical elements.
Of course, then you would ask "What else would be needed?"
The answer is not easy. It may make an interesting thread ...
I had written:
>>
>>But concerning the little green men - my point was that if ID were
>>established, I think we could easily marshal a huge array of
>>aesthetic, philosophic, logical, historical and theological
>>arguments for a universal God and against the little green men who
>>themselves are creatures and could not have created themselves or
>>effected fine tuning of the universe.
>
To which you replied:
>Hey, one could always say that our universe was designed in the laboratory
>of an alien who lives in a parallel universe. The alien scientist was
>studying finely tuned universes and accidentally created ours. You simply
>can't rule that out or rule God in.
>
Granted - we can't rule out obviously crazy ideas using *only* the faculty of logic. That is why God gave us Faith as a Mode of Cognition .... "Through faith we *know* that the worlds were framed by the word of God." Hebrews 11.3
Good talking Glen,
Richard Amiel McGough
Discover the sevenfold symmetric perfection of the Holy Bible at http://www.BibleWheel.com
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