Re: [asa] Romans 1:20 (disregard my last post)

 I see the argument revolving around what men think they know from both the Bible and science, when it should evolve around what men obviously don't know.  A clear presumption about science as forever expanding into an infinite universe (eternally dwarfed by the same) is fully compatible with a transcendent God who the faithful are forever gaining greater comprehension as our species evolves an ever greater capacity to do so. 

Neither side knows enough about Creation to begin to address it's origin beyond an essential investment of faith.  Science can only have faith that given and eternity to seek, it will continually gain greater understanding, but never know it all, never know the source, and never know the end.  That's the crystal clear Bayesian indication of the entire history of man's search for knowledge.  Any presumption by science to being anywhere close to a comprehensive knowledge of creation is purely hubris driven and doomed to laughable obsolescence by their own peers a thousand years hence. 

Conversely, the most devout among us have only our faiths to assume the providence of God over Creation and nowhere near the rational capacity to assess the magic behind all things seen and unseen as suggested in the Bible, much less the ability to dumb down Creation enough to definitively characterize in human terms how God might have created it other than in the most parabolic terms.  The Bible had to dumb it down for us or it would be gibberish to our primitive ears.  Both the universe and the Glory of God are absolutely and categorically beyond our comprehension, but not beyond our intuition, imagination and faith. 

Instinct, feelings, imagination, intuition and faith all range beyond our rational abilities.  Our faith in God is derivative of the instinctive fruits of 300 million years of evolution and neurological host to our fledgling capacity for reason.  Just like the conditioned response exists only through the original, hardwired instinct under which it is enabled to express, our rational minds are similarly extant only as a secondary survival support mechanism of our vast, original instinctive comprehension of reality.  The feeling of brotherhood we must hold for our scientifically blinded bretheren is not a rational conclusion.  It is a certainty that exists from birth in all humans unless corrupted by the treachery of short-term rational survival strategies (fruit of the tree of knowledge).  We should be diligent to hold in our hearts and minds the difference between our hearts and minds and realize that what we don't know is where the truth more comprehensively resides. 

-Mike (Friend of ASA)

-----Original Message-----
From: John Walley <john_walley@yahoo.com>
To: 'Rich Blinne' <rich.blinne@gmail.com>
Cc: 'asa' <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 10:00 am
Subject: RE: [asa] Romans 1:20 (disregard my last post)

>BTW, no one including Richard Dawkins believes that evolution is
fully random.

Ok, now it is getting interesting. Another
Eureka moment
for me.

If Dawkins doesn’t believe that
evolution is fully random then does that mean he concedes some kind of guiding
process or law embedded in life? Remember we discussed on this list Gould’s
analogy of a staggering drunk in a hallway making forward progress but by the
hardest? Would Dawkins accept this thought as well?

If so, then the question turns on the existence
of the analog of the hallway in nature that constrains life to make forward
progress. What would that be? Maybe if that is ever understood then it would
not be as easy for Dawkins to consider it as being self-existent.

To me this “hallway” is some divinely
embedded algorithm in the primordial epigenome that guided it ultimately to
where we are today. I guess that is subjective and the same philosophical
impasse we have with Dawkins on the source of evolution today. But if you tell
me he at least acknowledges its possible existence that is news to me but I am glad
to hear that.

I have long thought that the best way to
defend the faith was by falling back to line of defense of an embedded
algorithm because it seems most consistent with what we see in cosmological ID
and less likely to be disproven like the bacterial flagellum and junk DNA
arguments.

But now we are back full circle to the
thorny question that started this. If evolution was guided by a divine embedded
algorithm then you can almost understand ID’s assertion that it was not
random. Maybe we could bridge this gap between ID and TE if they instead argued
it was not self-existent instead of not random?  They like me have a hard
time distinguishing the difference in these terms. And this embedded algorithm
is what I mean by ID in biology.

If ID, TE and Dawkins all agree on Gould’s
hallway analogy then I don’t see what all the fuss is about other than
language and miscommunication. Dawkins will look at it and conclude
self-existence and we will look at it and conclude God but if the impasse is
purely philosophical then all the science gets factored out and this becomes
real simple.

Thanks again,

John

-----Original Message-----

From: Rich Blinne
[mailto:rich.blinne@gmail.com]

Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2007
9:55 AM

To: John Walley

Cc: asa

Subject: Re: [asa] Romans 1:20
(disregard my last post)

On Nov 21, 2007, at 6:06 AM, John Walley wrote:

Rich,

Thanks for this
clarification. This was a Eureka!
moment for me.

I see now that as far as
the mechanism of evolution goes you don’t take any issues with Dawkins
and “random” is the wrong term to try to describe any difference.
This wasn’t entirely clear to me before.

But it raises two more
interesting questions for me:

1)       If TE is
in general agreement with Dawkins on the fully “random” component
of evolution as a mechanism, then where is the departure with him?

For one, his "meme" hypothesis. Evolution
also does a poor job of describing altruism for non-relatives and music (in the
latter case how is something that is nowhere conserved in any other species is
completely conserved in ours?). Check out Sack's latest book, Musicophilia, on
how pervasive music is in the human brain.  The obvious point of departure
is his atheism. Just because the Universe is regular and follows
"laws" does not imply that it is self-existent.

Would it be accurate to say that this difference is purely
philosophical and can not be quantified by science at all?

Yes, I would believe it would and by stating that we
separate his strongest case from his "evangelical atheism". 

        As I mentioned above and
also evidenced by the author of the review article below, it is not altogether
intuitive to IDers and novice TE’s like myself to equate fully
“random” processes with God although I will concede your scriptural
reference does a great job of highlighting this. “Randomness” seems
like a convenient and logical demarcation between God and naturalism and in fact
that is the distinction Behe uses as a way to challenge the creative powers of
evolution in “Edge”. How certain are we from the science that this
fully “random” process of Darwinian evolution is sufficient to
explain all the complexity of life?

We are quite certain. The evidence is pretty
overwhelming. BTW, no one including Richard Dawkins believes that evolution is
fully random. It is inaccurate to use the singular term process because
evolution incorporates a number of processes: natural selection, genetic drift,
sexual selection, horizontal gene transfer, etc. It is also inaccurate to use
the term Darwinian. Darwin didn't have a clue about modern genetics. It is the
modern evolutionary synthesis that pretty much closed the case on evolution.
The case for common descent is so strong Michael Behe concedes it by page 5 of
Darwin's Black Box. Behe concedes even more in Edge, specifically natural
selection. Where he draws the line now is whether genetic variation is
sufficient. At this rate, in another ten years there will be no difference
between Michael Behe and standard evolutionary theory.

In other words, is the objection to Behe’s premise of an edge
to the explanatory powers of evolution rejected on scientific grounds, or
merely philosophical grounds because TE’s don’t like ID?

It's both. Behe's science is pretty poor. We have had
over a decade for him and other IDM proponents to demonstrate their hypothesis
and so far they have come up empty. I have yet to see a positive theory. All I
have seen is evolution doesn't work therefore design. You might cite Dembski's
work as a positive theory but here Randy Isaac and myself are involved with the
computer industry and we both agree that Dembski has made a hash of information
theory. When Randy ran IBM's Watson Laboratory he interacted with some of the
pre-eminent experts in this field. Even if you say that this qualifies as a
positive theory, I don't see any tests. In the Dover trial, Behe came up with
hypothetical tests of his hypothesis but was forced to admit on the stand that
no one -- including IDM proponents -- has done them.

 Is it conceivable that Behe may be right and one day the
“random” component of evolution may no longer explain it?

Yes. In fact, I hope he is right. Being a working
engineer I don't believe that the approach currently chosen by the IDM is the
most fruitful approach on proving design, however. In order to infer design,
many times you need the designer to tell you. So, you need to argue from the
Bible to design and not the other way around.

Is it possible that one day some finely tuned epigenetic laws are
discovered that govern the genomes of life that will disprove randomness?

That's already being argued by standard evolutionary
theory -- except for the fine tuning. As I said above, no one except the IDM
argues for completely random evolution. Random single nucleotide polymorphisms
is only one of many mechanisms -- not all of which are random -- for variation
that is non-randomly chosen from. One test for positive selection is gene
frequencies that cannot be explained by random genetic drift.  Speaking of
fine tuning I believe that so-called cosmological ID is their strongest
argument. If the IDM focused on that rather than trying to disprove evolution
they would be more successful in my opinion.

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Received on Wed Nov 21 13:30:54 2007