Re: [asa] TE/EC Response

Terry:

You've written without any mean-spiritedness a good summary of the state of
our debate. I agree that we cannot get much further at the moment.

Regarding point 1, I certainly grant the majority of scientists to right to
follow the evidence wherever they think it leads. I acknowledge that the
current situation is what you say it is. I respect scientists who accept
Darwinian evolution as long as they do not bully or threaten the careers of
dissenters, or overstate the evidence for their conclusions, and as long as
they remain open to fundamental (not just trivial) criticisms of the
Darwinian model.

Regarding point 2, I think that you, and several other people here, are in
error about the views of Darwin and about the general character of
historical Darwinism. I think you are back-reading your TE wishes into what
Darwin and Darwinism historically have been. I have just re-read Darwin's
Autobiography (3rd time now), I've read (and by "read" I mean *studied*) The
Origin of Species in its entirety, parts of it twice, also large chunks of
The Descent of Man, and many of his Letters, and many discussions of his
work, and have debated the meaning of many of his passages with competent
students, and I'm convinced I understand Darwin's position. His position is
that evolution was unguided -- *really* unguided, not just "methodologically
speaking" unguided. And I'm certain that he would have angrily spurned any
TE attempt to "rescue" his theory from the "unguided" part for Christian
purposes. He would have said that the unguidedness is not a metaphysical
add-on to his view, but an essential component of the scientific theory
itself. And he would have dismissed TE protestation -- that "unguided" is
metaphysical rather than scientific language -- as mere pedantry which
misses the substantive point of what his theory was *about*. He knew full
well that he was opposing Paley and that the essence of Paley was design.
And he wanted to say that the appearance of design could be achieved without
guidance.

I'm also convinced that the mainstream of important 20th-century
evolutionary biologists -- Mayr, Simpson, etc. -- were Darwinian in my
sense. And it is their view, not the view of the people of this list, or of
TEs elsewhere, that properly defines "Darwinism". But I don't think it's
worth fighting any more about the label.

The point is that there is a theory around -- call it Darwinian or not, call
it metaphysical or scientific or whatever you want -- that says that
unguided chemical and biological processes produced life and all species.
*That* is the theory that has caused all the public furor from the time of
Darwin to the present. Never mind whether it is scientific or theological
or
whatever-- just recognize that *that* is what has caused all the furor. And
my point is that *there is no hard scientific evidence* that *truly
unguided* processes could have performed such a complex set of operations.
Thus, the theory is highly speculative, yes has been sold as a certain
result of science.

ID has challenged this theory. In my view, ID was entirely right to do so.
Whether ID itself is a scientific theory or some other kind of animal
(philosophy, whatever) is not a question I lose a lot of sleep over. What
is important to me is that ID is a rational approach to nature, whereas
Darwinism requires a colossal suspension of disbelief in highly improbable
events. It is not self-evident to me that a technically "scientific" theory
which is highly improbable is more likely to be the truth about nature than
a technically "non-scientific" theory which is empirically based and does
much more justice to the incredible degree of integrated complexity that we
witness in nature.

3. This paragraph is interesting:

> And the evidence keeps coming...a few weeks ago there was some discussion
> of the origin of the immune system in Science (including a picture from
> the Dover trial with a stack of books and papers confounding Behe's claim
> that there was no theory of the origin of this complex system). It
> appears that vertebrates got it via some lateral gene transfer in a viral
> infection.

You call this "evidence"? I call it "sheer speculation". "*It appears
that* vertebrates got it via some lateral gene transfer". It appears to
that way to whom? What you mean is that someone *has speculated that*
vertebrates may have got it via some lateral gene transfer. The purported
event happened hundreds of millions of years ago and we cannot recover it.
(And notice the vague qualifier: "some" lateral gene transfer -- its
advocates can't even precisely define it. Why don't they specify the
nucleotide sequence that in their opinion got transferred? I would guess
because they don't have the slightest clue.) Why would you pass off this
surmise about a unique, one-time event which can never be observed, or
demonstrated to have happened, as "science"? What Faraday and Newton and
Mendeleev and Pasteur did was science. This kind of speculation, without
genetic details, is story-telling, neither confirmable nor falsifiable; it
teaches nothing, and adds nothing to the stock of human knowledge.

Further, even if true, this would just pass the problem back to a different
species. If the vertebrates got the whole system from the invertebrates,
how did the system arise in the invertebrates? From another viral gene
transfer? Sooner or later the buck stops, and evolutionary biologists will
have to do the hard work and tell us how the immune system was built up from
scratch. Where in the biological literature can I find such an explanation?

4. I continue to maintain that you are wrong about probability theory. If
you are arguing what you appear to be arguing, here is what you are saying:

1. You come across a nearly-complete version of Mt. Rushmore in the desert.
One of Lincoln's eyebrows is slightly wrong, but would become right if one
small piece of rock was blasted away by lightning or weathered away. You
calculate the probability of this happening before something else is
weathered away, and you come up, with, say, one in a million.

2. You come across an empty rock face capable of being carved into Mt.
Rushmore. You calculate the probability that weathering will produce a
duplicate of Mt. Rushmore. According to your reasoning in the biological
case, the probability is no lower than in the case of fixing the eyebrow--
still relatively high, one in a million. But this is clearly, obviously
wrong. The probability is more like one in a zillion.

So, either you are simply in error about the biological case, or your
argument is not clear.

In probability theory, the relevant calculation depends on where you sit.
If you are sitting at the beginning of an evolutionary process, where all
you have is a shrew, and your task is to determine whether chance mutations
can turn the shrew into a bat in X million years, you must first determine
"What set of changes would it take to turn this shrew into a bat?", and then
calculate the probability, which will be a compound probability, since the
mutations are theoretically independent. Obviously, if you are sitting near
the end of process, where all you need is to add one piece of webbing
between two fingers of the bat,
then you need to know only "What mutation will give me that webbing?" and to
calculate the probability of that single mutation, and the probability will
be vastly higher than in the other case.

Now, if you ask the question: "Could homo sapiens have arisen from a
bacterium, purely out of unguided mutations and natural selection", in
calculating the probability, you surely cannot simply calculate this on the
basis of the mutations that would be necessary to turn a Neanderthal into a
Cro-Magnon. You have to calculate on the basis of all the mutations running
from the bacterium through to the Cro-Magnon. I do not see how this is
anything other than obvious.

Incidentally, I passed on your argument to a couple of major ID proponents
that I happen to "know" (not personally, but electronically), and who have
more math and science than I do, and they have confirmed that the compound
probability of the whole sequence of changes is the relevant one.

5. See my other reply to your next note.

Cameron.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terry M. Gray" <grayt@lamar.colostate.edu>
To: "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2009 11:48 PM
Subject: [asa] TE/EC Response

> With Cameron and Gregory so eloquently summarizing the state of our
> recent discussions from their perspective, let me try to provide a
> similar summary from my perspective.
>
> 1. In light of the recent exchange between Cameron and David, it seems to
> me that perhaps the bottom line difference has to doing with how
> convincing we regard the evidence for a secondary cause based
> evolutionary account. I fully agree with David's assessment of the state
> of the art. I would probably go even one step further and say that due to
> the historical nature of biological evolution and due to contingent
> nature of some of critical events (chance mutations, cross- overs, genome
> acquisitions, extinctions, etc.) and due to the antiquity of these
> events, that it may not be possible to construct the kind of detailed
> scenario that Cameron insists upon. To him, it seems, these sorts of
> provisos casts a dark cloud over our confidence. Others of us (and most
> professional practicing life scientists) find the current state of
> affairs to be good enough to assert with confidence appropriate for any
> scientific theory that the key pieces of the story are in place and
> convincing enough. I, for one, have had that bent since the late 70's and
> have only seen gaps filled, questions answered, and more and more success
> of the general evolutionary biological story. The evo-devo developments
> of the past two decades have addressed in principle in my mind many of
> the difficult questions that Cameron keeps raising.
>
> Perhaps it's a different psychological bent between TE's and ID's. Maybe
> TE's do have a lower bar. But, Cameron or Denton or Behe is not giving me
> any new information when they tell me how much we don't know. I know full
> well. Yet, I am convinced of the general story by the evidence that is
> there. Perhaps there is a difference between the way biologists think and
> the way chemists think. I am trained primarily as a biologist but have
> straddled the fence with a strong chemistry and biophysics history as
> well. It is probably the case the most non-life scientists take the word
> of their biologists colleagues, but, as I said before, most professional
> life scientists are convinced.
>
> If this is the case, then we are at an impasse of sorts. I don't really
> see a problem with that. I'm convinced; the community of practicing
> scientists is convinced. That's the way it is. There may come a day when
> that's not the case and the voices of ID advocates, Denton, et al. will
> turn the tables. I may someday be convinced otherwise. But today is not
> that day and I think through the theological implications of my science
> in light of how the world looks to me today. Since Gregory has been so
> fond of reminding us of the sociology of science, he should not be overly
> shocked to hear that science is what scientists think (today). May or may
> not be right. In fact, in light of history, it's likely not to be right.
> However, today, in our science education we teach what we (the scientific
> community) think is the best explanation for things.
>
> What to do? Well, let's keep working: those trying to fill in the gaps of
> the current theoretical framework (science as usual) and the critics (the
> revolutionaries). The critics have a tougher go at it and may find it
> difficult to get funding, to publish, etc. But that's the way it works.
> Time will tell who is right (if we are realists of any sort, which I am).
>
> 2. As for the term "Darwinism". Most of us on the TE/EC side of things
> reject the arguments that Cameron and Gregory and perhaps others have put
> forth that "Darwinism" is intrinsically anti-theistic. To think so is a
> conflation of secondary causes (nature, creation, etc.) with primary
> causation (God's role) (as David Siemens eloquently put it). Darwin
> committed that error--Asa Gray answered it in his day. Dawkins commits
> the error today. As does Cameron and most ID folks. To state it boldly:
> my option #4 is identical to Cameron's option #1 from the secondary
> causation point of view. Macroevolution does not require miracles--it can
> all happen "without God lifting a finger"--is that clear enough?
> (although I unequivocally reject Cameron's way of putting
> that--concurrence is not merely sustaining the laws of nature--
> it is active governance--micromanaging, if you will). However, from the
> primary causation point of view evolution is guided (as are all secondary
> causes, even the actions of free agents). So, I, as most life scientists,
> think that Darwinism is a scientific idea (and not a ideology) embodying
> the Darwinian mechanisms of "random" mutation that does not anticipate
> the need of the organism, natural selection, gradualism, etc. All of
> these say nothing about God's role in the process. It seems that in
> principle Cameron agrees that it's possible for divine governance to be
> "hidden" in stochastic processes, but the fact that he can't distinguish
> between his option #3 and my option #4 and his belief that improbable
> sequences of mutations are not possible without divine guidance suggest
> otherwise.
>
> 3. This is not to say that God cannot perform a miracle during
> evolutionary history. I strongly affirm that he is fully able to work
> outside of normal secondary causes and believe that we have several
> reported events of such in scripture. I don't see any reason to appeal to
> such in the course of cosmic history. In scripture miracles seem to be
> associated with special redemptive and revelatory events. I don't expect
> to see them normally. In fact, the "normal" (God's regular governance) is
> a necessary milieu for the miraculous (God's irregular governance). Given
> the historical nature of evolution, I'm not sure how you can tell the
> difference between a miracle and a God-governed chance event.
>
> 4. As for storing up genotypic changes...this is exactly what exaptation
> does. All the pieces are present already and when they are combined
> something novel emerges which can now be selected upon. Irreducible
> complexity is no mystery. Gene duplication, sexual recombination,
> horizontal gene transfer, genome acquistions are all mechanisms that
> accomplish this. It is true that I am not able to come up with the
> detailed account of how this has happened, but I can give credible
> scenarios that combined with the record in the genomes, gives striking
> confirmation of the theory. And the evidence keeps coming...a few weeks
> ago there was some discussion of the origin of the immune system in
> Science (including a picture from the Dover trial with a stack of books
> and papers confounding Behe's claim that there was no theory of the
> origin of this complex system). It appears that vertebrates got it via
> some lateral gene transfer in a viral infection. Once the incipient
> function is there (and it didn't arise gradualistically), Darwinian
> mechanisms have their fodder. So the modern account involves both
> Darwinian mechanism and newly discovered non-Darwinian mechanism. All the
> pieces of the eye, even at the biochemical level, are homologs of pieces
> of other functioning systems. Perhaps an eye evolves in the twinkling of
> an eye (as Dawkins cleverly put it--I guess he knows his Bible even if he
> doesn't believe it).
>
> 5. Cameron speaks of the Laplacian universe where God must be the most
> skilled Fats Domino that one can imagine. While I have no trouble
> imagining that God can do this, I'm not sure I believe it's necessary to
> think this way. While I have a reductionist and mechanist bent, I don't
> think they work at every level or through every level. All the usually
> things can be said here--quantum indeterminacy, chaos, etc. But, I don't
> find it necessary to do that. This is a critique of some of my TE/EC
> colleagues. As under point #2 I don't want to conflate God's role with
> any particular creational dimension. God can do what he want how he
> wants. And I don't really think we can explain how and where it happens
> in creaturely terms. If a key mutation occurs whether it's via a
> radiation event that God tweaked to pop out at a certain time (or even
> specially created) or a spontaneous low probability isomeric transition
> of a nucleotide at the point of replication. It doesn't bother me that
> God tweaks. What seems to be the case is that God tweaks in a way that we
> usually can't tell.
>
> 6. Cameron's view that the sequence of evolutionary events seems
> improbable is an argument for design just is wrong in my opinion. I've
> commented on this before. The probability of the next mutation is the
> same no matter what mutation occurred before it. Relevant to this is
> Gould's essay about batting average records. There's only one way for the
> distribution to go--similar, he argues, to biological complexity.
>
> 7. The pattern of evolution or the "fact" of evolution (trees of
> relatedness from classification or sequence comparisons or Bernie's
> appeals recently to chromosome fusions, etc) are convincing especially in
> light of known mechanisms of reproduction and inheritance and the kinds
> of changes that we not only infer but actually do see as we compare
> sequences from generation to generation. No I don't have the detailed
> mechanism for how all evolutionary change occurred. Neither have I a
> detailed mechanism for development from fertilized egg to adult organism.
> But the pattern is there and there is nothing inconsistent (with my level
> of credulity) with thinking that it happens without special intervention.
> Figuring out the mechanism in more detail is part of our task.
>
> 8. As for Bill's question about the connection between "apparent age" and
> "apparent randomness". If I believed that the Bible taught that the earth
> is young, I'd probably adopt some kind of apparent age view. I don't
> believe the Bible requires that viewpoint. I do believe that the Bible
> teaches that God governs all events even those that appear to be random.
> Thus, even with the most hideous of events, I believe that God is in
> control and has his reasons, although I don't always fathom them. I don't
> believe that I'm at the mercy of chance and necessity (or even my own
> brilliant and not-so-brilliant choices) and I trust God in his wisdom and
> plan to do what he will in my life that will accomplish his purposes for
> me. My kids' genetic and biological makeup are the result of multitude of
> chance events, yet I believe that they have been fearfully and
> wonderfully made and knitted together by their sovereign Lord. Their
> psychological and social histories are similarly contingent, and
> influenced by their own free choices. Yet even those are directed by
> their sovereign Lord. Do I have empirical evidence of this divine
> governance? Probably not anything that is convincing even to a moderately
> skeptical person. Yet, the Bible tells me so.
>
> TG
>
> ________________
> 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 Wed Jul 8 18:24:06 2009