[asa] Random and design

In the following I respond to a claim by Loran Gage on the Discovery
Institute's blog:

Logan Gage reviews Francis Collins' position on evolution and argues:

Gage (http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/11/
francis_collins_on_square_circ.html#more) objects to Collins’
position on evolution and Christianity, ‘arguing’ that an unguided
and random process could not possibly involve a deity. Let’s count
the many confusions:

Gage wrote: If, however, you are talking about God using Darwinian
evolution, as Collins did, you are ultimately forced to either
believe in a God who doesn’t interact with his creation, the God of
Deism, or an illogical God who can guide an unguided process.

In other words, just because a process can be unguided, it must be
unguided. In other words, even God himself cannot use and manipulate
the process? That’s a weird position as this means that God needs to
violate natural law according to Gage. Even worse, it denies any
possible role in a process which can be explained by appeal to
natural processes.

Gage then quotes from a letter written by 38 Nobel Laureates which
clearly contradicts Gage’s position

Gage:According to an open letter sent last year to the Kansas State
Board of Education by 38 Nobel laureates, evolution is “the result of
an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural
selection” (emphasis added).

First of all the process of variation and natural selection as
proposed by science is indeed unguided. Whether or not there is an
additional entity or entities that interact, and guide the process or
have set the process in motion, is not a scientific concept.
Furthermore, calling variation random does not make Darwinism random,
in fact, most anyone familiar with the theory would know that
Darwinian theory is NOT random. It’s this non-randomness which formed
the basis of Darwin’s magnificent idea. And finally, the term
‘random’ basically refers to the concept that beneficial mutations do
no arise preferentially, which does not mean that mutations cannot be
biased based on past performance. In fact, the idea of evolvability,
the capacity to evolve, is based on exactly this idea. Not
surprisingly, evolvability can arise under selective processes. A
good example is neutrality which is an important concept when it
comes to evolvability and although somewhat counterintuitive,
neutrality is a selectable feature.

A commenter provided the following reference:

The document of the Catholic Church “Communion and Stewardship” from
2004, written under the supervision of Benedict XVI, then Cardinal
Ratzinger, clarifies while discussing evolution:

“But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic
understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created
order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine
causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only
in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural
process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for
creation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas: “The effect of divine
providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that
they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore,
whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of
necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from
contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from
contingency” (Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1).”

In other words, the argument that Darwinian theory denies the
existence of a deity is both flawed scientifically and theologically.

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Received on Tue Nov 14 23:24:54 2006