Re: Phillip Johnson (and Methodological Naturalism)

From: Brian Harper (harper.10@osu.edu)
Date: Wed Oct 15 2003 - 17:06:30 EDT

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    At 09:46 PM 10/14/2003 -0400, Walter Hicks wrote:
     

    Brian Harper wrote:
    At 08:34 AM 10/14/2003 -0400, Walter Hicks wrote:
     

    Don Winterstein wrote:
      
    The fact of evolution is easy to falsify in principle:  Just
find a bunch of fossils
  grossly out of sequence in undisturbed formations.  For
example, find homo
  sapiens skeletons in undisturbed Carboniferous limestone. 
Evolution emphatically
  predicts such things do not exist, so to falsify it, just find
them.  YECs in fact
  have claimed to have made finds of this sort (e.g., human
footprints alongside
  dinosaur tracks), but none have stood up under
scrutiny.
    Actually, the "fact" of evolution was not my question. That is a lot of the difficulty of working with evolution. The same term is used for the theory and fact (or data). But you raise a good point. The flood catastrophe folks have to go through a lot of convoluted reasoning to get around the sequence.
     
      
       
  Proposed mechanisms of evolution are a different story. 
Support for these comes
  from plausibility arguments, and such arguments aren't
falsifiable.  You either
  believe them or you don't.  Nevertheless, they are widely
accepted because they
  are the best natural mechanisms we know
of.
    That is the basic issue raised by Johnson ===>  namely, that he doesn't think that "natural mechanisms" are at work. One does not address his concerns or arguments by saying that this is "the best natural mechanisms we know of". It can only be addressed by making predictions and demonstrating that they work and that those alone are sufficient to demonstrate that evolution of species can happen.

    I believe from all of the avoidance I see, that one cannot do the above and, therefore, there is no valid theory for the evolution of species. When (or if) there ever is, people will stop dancing around the  question IMO.
    Walt,

    I hope you can understand that it is really difficult to find any sympathy for this. You previously mentioned that you don't have a textbook on evolutionary biology, relying instead on lecture notes on the web.
             (Also the talkorigins as was suggested.)

    This is a really great turn around , Brian. Because Philip Johnson hasn't seen any proof of your theories, I am supposed to read a book? What then? Do I call up good old Phil and tell him I think he is wrong? Why don't you do it if all that one has to do is read a book that you obviously have already read?
     

    Hi Walt,

    I really have no idea what your point is here. I have a bad habit of jumping into the middle of things. Perhaps I did so here and missed something important in an earlier part of this thread. If that is the case then I apologize profusely :). In the mean time, humor me a little. I can only understand your statement above if your only intent was to say that Phil Johnson is not persuaded by the evidence. Well, I already knew that, thank you very much :). But I had thought that the conclusion "...there is no valid theory for the evolution of species" was yours.

     
     
    Despite that you want to come to the sweeping conclusion that "...there is no valid theory for the evolution of species". Based on what, avoidance? This is simply ad-hominem.


     I am reminded of the story of the man in a balloon:

    Balloon: "Hello down there"
    Ground: "Hello up there"
    Balloon: "Can you tell me where I am"
    Ground: "Sure, you are in a balloon"
    Balloon: "You must be a physicist"
    Ground: "Yes, how did you know?"
    Balloon: "Because you give me facts but don't give me any help"
    Ground: "And you must be an evolutionist"
    Balloon: "Yes, how did know?"
    Ground: "Because this started out as your problem and now it is mine."

    It seems to me that you willingly entered the debate. Am I wrong?

     
     
     

    A few more comments. Newton's universal law was accepted despite the fact that Newton did not feign to even so much as suggest a mechanism. It is not possible to show, to the same degree of rigor you suggest above, that the behavior of a real double pendulum is caused by gravity. There are many examples I could give along these lines. Here is another. There is no theory of plasticity that can correctly predict large scale plastic deformation in metals under complex loading conditions.


    Correct and nobody pretends that there is one.

    How do you know?


    So would you have me believe that there is one for evolution, or you trying to say that there is not a  theory that that works for evolution? Which is your claim? I can settle for either answer.
     

    There is no theory of evolution that I know of that can do what you are demanding of it. This was part of my point. Evolution is much more complicated than plasticity. Should you expect more from evolutionary theorists?

    Will I get an answer?

    Probably not :)
     

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