Re: [asa] Origins: Francis Collins and ID

Bernie,

As for me, who claims the moniker theistic evolutionist and
evolutionary creationist, God is always involved. There is nothing
that happens that doesn't involve his providence, governance,
sustenance, concurrence, etc. Scientific descriptions, including
evolution, are "merely" our recognition of God's governing and
sustaining patterns (that's not necessarily to say that created things
don't actually have properties and behaviors--but they don't have them
autonomously and independent of God's governing and sustaining power).
There is no such thing as evolution without God's guiding hand. Just
as there's no such thing as chemistry without God's guiding hand. Or
human thought. Or economics. Or social intercourse. Or politics. (pace
Arago!)

A couple of consequences of this is that 1) everything is designed and
2) God's role in it all may not be detectable or describable science
(doesn't mean it's not there however!) Because of our creatureliness
and limitations, I don't think we have any idea what God's involvement
looks like. We know what our "tweaking" might look like, but because
we're not omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and lack divine
attributes such as aseity, we can't just assume that God's
"tweaking" (I hate to even call it that) looks anything like ours.
It's a form of idolatry (there's that nasty word again!) to fashion
God's operation in the universe after our own. I guess a third
consequence is that I know that God is involved in "nature" for other
reasons than because I see it (e.g. revelation, internal testimony of
the Holy Spirit, self-evidence, etc.) In other words, the way things
are (whether it's physics, biology, psychology, sociology, etc.) are
what they are because God orders (originates, governs, sustains,
concurs, etc) them to be that way. In science we study the way things
are, and so, we ARE studying God's involvement. However (again, pace
Arago), our study is a fully human (and thus limited) enterprise and
so a proper view of natural science and human/social science always
recognizes this human element especially in the philosophical
underpinnings, the history, the social/political/economic aspects of
our discipline. Personally, I think that this is where a significant
part of the religion dimension of thinking about science belongs. I'm
not so sure we see God in nature as much as we see how faith informs
scientists and communities who study nature.

Back to some biology--biological evolution is not random! Variation
may be random (although not necessarily...and there are now examples
where the organism "directs" variation). However, variation is merely
the fodder for evolution. Natural selection (and perhaps other non-
Darwinian processes--e.g. Kaufman-like self-organization principles)
give the "fine-tuned" products.

For the eye, if you have a nerve cell, you already have most of what
you need for a light sensitive spot. If you have a light sensitive
spot, you have most of what you need for various kinds of eyes; if you
have a pin-hole eye, you have most of what you need for a lens based
eye... you "see" the point. Time is required, but just to give time as
the answer is a bit of a cop-out answer to me. There was a Nature
paper in the mid-90's that simulated intermediates in the eye
evolution--Dawkins commented with an opinion piece entitled "The Eye
in a Twinkling" (cute, eh?) Not everyone liked the original piece
(Behe responded in an unsurprising negative way, for example), but I
thought it presented a plausible path--I guess the difference between
"just-so" stories and plausible scenarios is a matter of opinion.

Selection always takes what came before and then with variations makes
it better (more fit) in the immediate environmental context.

TG (ASA Fellow)

On Dec 3, 2007, at 11:24 AM, Dehler, Bernie wrote:

> Hi all, a question I have; maybe you can help me.
>
> Given that evolution actually happened because of evidence in
> biology (genome evidence), how can evolution explain the complexity
> of things like the eye?
>
> Francis Collins says the answer is to appreciate the vast amounts
> of time.
>
> This still bothers me.
>
> I’m perplexed because I see both sides. The genome shows proof
> that evolution happened. Yet, using reason, it seems impossible
> that an undirected evolution can create something as complex as the
> human eye (no matter how much time is involved). (I work at Intel
> in CPU design, and even though out CPU’s are super complex, it is
> nothing near as complex as our body, DNA, etc.).
>
> I wonder if the solution is to see evolution as God-directed. DNA
> is like a programming code, God is the programmer, directly
> manipulating the code. It is like intelligently solving the
> rubic’s cube (toy) by one turn at a time. Randomly, you could solve
> a rubic’s cube given enough time, but intelligence would do it
> rather quickly. Is this solution contrary to science? Is this the
> point where naturalistic science and God meet? Or am I just putting
> God in there because I can’t appreciate the time element of
> evolution? (Some think that nature alone can evolve, and that by
> God’s design upfront with the anthropic principle... designing
> everything upfront so it would unravel correctly from a big bang.)
>
> I would like to know what the other theistic evolutionists have to
> say on this topic.

________________
Terry M. Gray, Ph.D.
Computer Support Scientist
Chemistry Department
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523
(o) 970-491-7003 (f) 970-491-1801

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Received on Tue Dec 4 13:59:43 2007