> A. Given your definitions, your answer makes sense.
>
> However, bear in mind that if it weren't for the 20th-century discovery of
> "quantum indeterminacy", your position would be dead in the water. It is
> quantum indeterminacy which allows you to employ a blurry distinction
> between "guided" and "natural" events, and it is the blurring of that
> distinction which makes your position possible. If the universe were wholly
> Laplacean, you would have to concede my definitions, i.e., that "guided" is
> completely distinct from "natural", and also would have to concede my
> general point that God's only two options for guiding evolution are to
> "intervene" or "front-load".
No. There have always been more deterministic and more
indeterministic interpretations of the world. Even in a world rigidly
governed by classical physics laws, it is not certain whether that
would fix all biological events or not. My blurry distinction between
guided and natural events is not due to quantum indeteminancy but to
Calvinistic theology, believing that God is directly in control of
whatever happens, regardless of whether it uses "natural" means or
not. Everything is front-loaded in the sense that the outcome is
already determined. In some cases it would in theory be possible to
predict the outcomes if you had a sufficient knowledge of the starting
state and the relevant natural laws; this corresponds more closely to
your front-loading category.
> 1. In Darwin's day, quantum indeterminacy was never heard of. By natural
> laws, Darwin had in mind Laplacean, mechanistic regularity.
At the root underlying things, and his final theological position was
probably more or less that if God existed, He wound thigns up and let
them go. However, he was aware of the probabilistic nature of
survival and inheritance that goes into evolution-not as much so as
with the synthesis with Mendelian genetics, but knowing that offspring
had a range of variation more or less blending parental traits, and
surely aware that the selective forces are not entirely efficient nor
entirely in agreement. I don't know if he speculated on the
inevitablility of a particular outcome of evolution or not.
> the vulgar conception of evolution is in many cases still mechanistic-materialistic as I've described.
True, especially in popular attempts to claim that particular social,
moral, etc. positions are evolutionarily justified. However, as this
clashes with a modern understanding of evolutionary biology, it's not
a good reason to reject evolution. (The fact that evolutionary
biology is generally recognized today as ateleological has not,
however, stopped evolutionists from personally holding moral, social,
etc. positions that conflict with that. TE is not in conflict with
that, because it claims that the direction is not within evolution.)
> 2. I am no physicist, but I am told that there is a "minority view" regarding quantum theory, which rejects indeterminism at the ultimate level, in favour of a deeper determinism. If that minority view is right, your "quantum rescue" would also be in question.<
It's not my quantum rescue. A) I have no objection to the idea of
everything being built in by fine tuning. B) There's a lot more than
just quantum mechanics that is, as far as we can tell scientifically,
indeterminate. For example, will the predator catch fish A or fish B
out of the school (assuming that there is no significant difference in
escape ability)? God could "intervene" in all sorts of things without
being scientifically detectable.
> 3. Even granting that God could remain within "natural laws" while quietly
> shifting things at the subatomic level, it is far from clear how this would
> pan out in evolutionary terms. I grant entirely that God's mysterious
> action could not be detected at that level by scientific means, but what
> happens to the sequence of efficient causes after he makes his little
> invisible tweaks? I haven't heard anyone here, or any TE anywhere, give any
> details. Let's take an example:
>
> Suppose God wants to alter the DNA in such-and such a way. Let's say he
> does this by smacking it with, oh, I don't know, an alpha particle. So for
> the quantum thing to work, God has to (a) make his scientifically
> indetectable move in the heart of some radioactive nucleus which can give
> off alpha particles -- I grant that God could do this without contest; but
> then some other things must also happen, i.e., (b) God's secret action has
> to determine not only *when* the nucleus will emit the alpha particle, but
> the precise path it will follow in three-dimensional space (it may be
> several hundred yards from the radioactive material to the piece of DNA he
> wants to alter, and if the alpha particle emerges from the nucleus even a
> trillionth of an micrometer to the left or right from where it is supposed
> to emerge, it will miss its target by the time 300 yards have been
> traversed); (c) the velocity of the alpha particle as it leaves the nucleus
> also has to be precisely determined, if it is going to strike the DNA with
> just enough energy to produce the mutation required. Too much energy and it
> may shoot through without effect, or damage other parts of the DNA that God
> doesn't want to mutate; too little and it may bounce off or be deflected
> without effect. So God in effect has to, under the cover of quantum
> indeterminacy, make the equivalent of a pool shot that would make Minnesota
> Fats envious.
And how is this is hard for omniscence and omnipotence? Moreover, I'm
not too sure what your overall point is, as ID intervention faces the
same types of questions. Nevertheless, I'm not sure that Minnesota
Fats is such a good comparison. The supply of alpha particles is
fairly large; the total supply of possible soruces of mutation is
enormous. The supply of possible starting organisms is reasonably
large. _Within the context of evolutionary biology_, there's no
particular reason to see the mutation that happened as unusual. Only
by holding that there is a particular goal in view do we see the
mutation as significant. In theologically-informed hindsight, we can
conclude that the exact set of mutations producing the current set of
organisms is what God planned, but we cannot see any particular reason
for those versus some other set within the framework of biology.
(This is not because supernatural explanations are a priori excluded
but because biology is limited in what it can do.) In other words,
within biology, identifying the observed path of evolution as
"designed" is painting the target around the arrow after it's landed.
Theologically, we know that God is working out His plans in what
happens; how much room there is for various possibilities within those
plans is a matter of debate along the Calvinist-Arminian spectrum.
> And that's not all. God has to intervene with the free will, or at least
> the desires or bodily reactions, of the creature that the alpha particle
> strikes. If the man rolls over in his sleep, or the lion suddenly stands up
> to urinate, or any other action happens while the alpha particle is
> travelling, it will miss its target. So now, since you want to use only
> naturalistic causes, you have to dream up a whole new chain of
> quantum-indeterminacy-concealed events which God employs to make the man or
> lion sit still until the alpha particle strikes. You must commit yourself
> to all of this if you really want to seriously maintain the quantum
> indeterminacy explanation. And this sort of complex dance of God has to
> take place *for every crucial mutation throughout the entire history of the
> macroevolutionary process*. Are you willing to bite the bullet and commit
> to all that?
Bullet? What bullet? I would suggest that that sort of complex dance
has to take place for every unimportant mutation as well, or for that
matter, any other event. However, "intervening with the free will" is
not entirely accurate. It's not as if God were sitting around with a
loaded atom waiting to fire it at a passing organism; He knows when it
will get up and when it will lie down.
> And even supposing that you are willing to commit to all that, look at what
> follows. What you are basically saying is, in plain language, that God
> steers evolution.
Steers is an understatement. Determines every detail is closer to my
view, though of course one can hold a more Arminian position involving
nudges as needed.
> You're adding the caveat that it's scientifically
> indetectable from the "chance" explanation, and thus you succeed in fending
> off atheist Darwinists on one hand and ID people on the other, but basically
> you are conceding that God steers evolution. You are therefore conceding
> that, on the ultimate level, call it metaphysical rather than scientific if
> you will, macroevolution is not driven by chance but is guided or steered.
Not sure how this is a concession, but certainly all of evolution (not
just macroevolution) is directed by God.
> Further, you still haven't dealt with the problem of design.
Defining it is a major problem that needs dealt with.
> Let's say, for example, that a series of very tiny meteoroids to descend upon your roof,
> where they make a pattern of holes...
Irrelevant nitpicking-this would require absence of an atmosphere for
tiny meteoroids to make it to the roof. (Probably comes from having
"Stars fell on Alabama" license plates.)
> Now, let's say that these meteoroids spell out, as they make little holes in your roof, this set of characters: "Darwin was wrong. Long live ID! Donate to the Discovery Institute today and receive your free copy of Stephen Meyer's new book!" Now, I would argue that, even granting that there is no possible way of detecting the action by which God "altered" the course of each or all of the meteoroids, we could still *know* that the whole sequence of events was designed by an intelligent mind.<
Designed, yes. By an intelligent mind might be subject to argument
based on one's assessment of the merits of the advice. On the other
hand, producing holes that look more or less like "ID" would not be
hard. There is an open star cluster that looks like "HI", not to
mention things like the butterfly alphabet.
However, the example doesn't match up with macroevolution. There are
perfectly good natural mechanisms to produce macroevolution-mutation
plus selection, drift, etc. Conversely, we know that a) intelligent
entities produce written sentences and b) no known natural source
does. Recognizing design involves assumptions about a) the likelihood
of a designer existing and b) how the designer ought to behave.
> Whether this knowledge is classed as scientific or metaphysical, I don't at the moment care.
For what it's worth, I would suggest that the conclusion that the
pattern was statistically anomalous would be science. The match with
an English sentence could probably be analyzed scientifically,
although I'm not sure how good the algorithms are. It's been shown,
for example, that an imaginable constellation becomes likely the more
stars you have. However, a solid continuous sky of stars would just
be seen as light, not as every possible constellation superimposed.
> The quantum indeterminacy argument is relevant to another point entirely,
> i.e., to the point that one cannot say that event A is "miraculous" rather
> than "natural". I grant this; William Dembski has even granted it. But the
> *pattern* of a series of quantum-concealed events might *still*, for all
> that, demonstrably reveal design. I have raised this point to George and
> Ted before, and they have yet to answer.
It could, if there were an adequate definition of design and
appropriate tests. For example, a series of quantum events have
produced a distinct pattern of high levels of radiation and energy,
associated with mushroom-shaped clouds, at various sites around the
earth. The distribution of these sites, at least at present, is
highly non-random with respect to human activities.
> Now if you drop the meteoroid example of think of biological examples -- a
> series of mutations which just nicely turns a shrew into a bat, maybe -- you
> should be able to make the parallel. How would the quantum explanation,
> *even if true* (which for all I know, it may be), rule out the possibility
> that design might be detectable, in the case of certain evolutionary
> changes? The quantum explanation pertains to unique events, whereas design
> theory relates to patterns of large numbers of events.
Ruling out design is impossible-the range of possible designers and
designs is too wide. Ruling out the detectability of design is
doubtful, too. However, that is a far cry from proving detection of
design. How would we recognize the changing from a generic early
eutherian mammal (roughly shrew-like) to bat as design? We would need
either a) a large supply of suitable starting mammals, several
habitats with and without designers involved, and several million
years to run the experiment or b) specific knowledge about the
capabilities and intentions of the designer(s) in question, as well as
clear knowledge of what "nondesign" can achieve.
> But whenever people have imagined life to be a very complex set of mechanisms, the instinct of mankind, i.e., the instinct of all intelligent thinkers who grasp the nature of complex mechanisms, has been that such things don't arise by chance.<
Not too confident that we have solid statistical data on who has
thought what, but also intution is far from infallible. "Chance" can
be very problematic in these contexts, too.
> (2) "There is no definite scientific fault with scenario 1", except for the
> "minor detail" that there is no evidence that stochastic processes can
> produce anything more sophisticated than antibiotic resistance or finch
> beaks. Remember, no one here as yet has pointed me to that 500-page tome
> which takes me through the evolution of the foot from the fin in genetic
> detail, the evolution of the cardiovascular system in genetic detail, etc.
Yes, there is. The fossil and molecular data point that way. Many
novel features are found in organisms in both the lab and in the wild.
There's no good reason to assume that the net effect over a few
billion years would not ba a good deal larger than what has been
observed over a few decades or so.
> And if you respond that the processes aren't *really* stochastic because
> they are guided secretly by God, then you are in trouble, because according
> to you, God can't be involved in a truly *scientific* explanation.
No, because if I am talking about God's role, I am stepping outside of
what science can do.
As far as we can tell from the fossil record, molecular biology, etc.,
stochastic processes provide an adequate description at the level of
natural laws. Theologically, they are far from adequate as a full
picture of what's going on.
> So you either are saying that Darwinian processes *can* produce macroevolution, but
> only if the apparently random events aren't random but are secretly guided
> by God -- in which case Darwinian explanation is completely bogus as a
> *scientific* explanation; -- or, if you are willing to exclude God from
> doing anything special, then you have to say that the stochastic processes
> are *really* stochastic, and if they are, then there is no hard evidence (as
> yet) that Darwinian processes can produce major structural changes.
What's Darwinian? I hold personally that gravity can't keep the moon
orbiting the earth without God, but the standard physics model of
gravity is not thereby bogus. It is a description on the physical
level of how things work, and a good description. The basic things
that Darwin postulated-heritable variation providing the material for
selective pressures to produce differential reproductive success-are a
good physical description of what is needed to produce evolution,
micro or macro. It is thus a perfectly valid scientific explanation.
I don't think that "special" guidance is likely to be necessary for
macroevolution (remembering prior objections that God's doing
something using natural laws should not be regarded as less special
than doing them otherwise).
A simple mutation can make major structural changes; there are plenty
of examples from model organisms.
> (3) Most important of all: "Science", according to the definition of most
> of the science Ph.D.s here, is *not* "always in a process of trying to
> better describe reality". In fact, according to you, according to Randy,
> and according to just about everyone else here, "science" cannot describe
> "reality", but can only describe events in terms of "methodological
> naturalism" which you *admit* is not an ultimate reality, because you
> separate it from "metaphysical naturalism". The "answers" given in the
> Kantian conception of science to which most of the people here hold are not
> about "reality" at all; they are about the construct of "nature" that is
> allowed in the practice of science, a construct which willfully and
> deliberately excludes final causes. But what if to know the "reality" of
> nature, we have to know final causes? Then science cannot describe a vital
> aspect of reality, can it?
My statement was ambiguous, and you took it differently from what I
was thinking.
Science is always in a process of trying to better describe that
portion of reality that it amenable to its methods. Methodological
naturalism is a part of reality. If you hold a pencil and let go of
it, it will very probably behave exactly as expected from calculations
that only consider natural laws. Likewise for the vast majority of
events we encounter.
Although plenty of scientists willfuly and deliberately exclude final
causes (and others claim to include them and debunk them; Dawkins
claiming to scientifically disprove God is just as much a claim of
detecting design as anything out of DI), science as I would define it
does not willfully and deliberately exclude final causes, rather it is
inadequate and unsuitable for dealing with final causes.
-- Dr. David Campbell 425 Scientific Collections University of Alabama "I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams" To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.Received on Mon Jul 6 16:48:37 2009
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