From: John W Burgeson (jwburgeson@juno.com)
Date: Mon Oct 13 2003 - 10:53:33 EDT
Loren wrote: " Johnson claims that he has taken a mostly unbiased look at
the evidence,
and concluded that natural evolutionary processes simply cannot account
for the history, variety, and complexity of biological life (and that
miraculous activity is a more plausible explanation of the evidence). "
I like your suggestion of getting an "unbiased" person (or persons) to
make that evaluation. But, alas, I think that none do exist. All of us
THINK we are such, me included, but in our heart of hearts we really know
better.
Johnson's view of the evidence," since he is untrained in biology, is, of
course, no more persuasive than anyone else untrained in the requisite
sciences. Again, that includes me. And all but a few here.
Viewed from my myopic perspective, as one trained in physics, and who
spent most of a career in computer sciences and market research, I accept
the GTOE (Grand Theory of Evolution; all life on earth as coming from
primeval chemicals > 3.5 BY ago) as simply the best (scientific) model we
have in the early 21st century for answering the gut question, "Why do I
exist at all?" In that sense, I have no problem with identifying the GTOE
as "fact," in the scientific sense, although not in the sense of "truth."
Still in the scientific sense, however, I have two fundamental problems
with the GTOE. The first is the puzzle of why the arrow of time seems to
point in the direction of ever increasing complexity. That it DOES SO,
seems to be without question, it is a "brute fact." The YECers cite the
2nd law of thermodynamics to argue against it, and that seems sort of
silly because its existence seems to be without question. If the 2nd law
denies it (I don't think it does, BTW), then it is "so long" to the 2nd
law. But the question remains, what mechanism is in place to drive ever
increasing complexity?
The other problem I have with the GTOE is the relative lack (to this
admittedly untrained reader) of quantification which drives change of any
kind. Even with 3.5 BY, the amount of change seems to be overwhelming.
Perhaps in some future year we will revise the 4.5BY earth age estimate
to something 10 or 100 times that -- although such a sea change seems
very unlikely.
My recollection is that John Polkinghorne raised the two points above a
decade or so ago -- I know they have been addressed from time to time --
the stuff I've read seems to have been a combination of arm waving and
just so" stories. As a physicist, I want to see numbers. I'm sure they
are there in the professional literature.
Burgy
www.burgy.50megs.com
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