RE: [asa] TE/EC Response - ideology according to Terry

Well said Cameron.

Moorad
________________________________________
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Cameron Wybrow [wybrowc@sympatico.ca]
Sent: Friday, July 10, 2009 12:50 PM
To: ASA
Subject: Re: [asa] TE/EC Response - ideology according to Terry

Moorad:

I agree with you, and would be more than happy if biologists called a
moratorium on all speculations about the past, and concentrated on
uncovering the vast number of things that we do not know (about genetics,
development, physiology, ecology, malignancy, etc.). That's what most
biologists do, anyway. But the evolutionary biologists keep perpetuating
this fiction that all biology depends upon evolutionary theory. In fact,
the really important biological discoveries of the past 100 years or so have
little or nothing to do with evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory is
merely a gloss that has been laid on top of them.

So, for example, we see that Crick and Watson later laid an evolutionary
gloss upon their discovery, and that subsequent evolutionary theorists have
done the same. But when you read the actual account of how they worked out
the structure of DNA (an admirable summary of which is found in Stephen
Meyer's new book), evolution had nothing to do with it. It was hard-nosed
physics, chemistry and geometry which guided them to the answer. Dawkins
and Coyne and Gould and Ken Miller would have been absolutely useless to
Crick and Watson -- wouldn't have been able to help them in the slightest.

I knew a highly intelligent biologist whose specialty was freshwater
toxicology, a field in which he was internationally known. He measured such
things as the levels of mercury in the tissues of Great Lakes fish. That
was unambiguously scientific work. I never talked to him about evolution,
though I presume he believed in it. When he recounted his work to me, he
never mentioned evolution or interpreted it in evolutionary terms. He
talked about practical ecological matters. If the theory of evolution had
been disproved the next day, he would have gone out measured the mercury
levels in the fish tissues just the same, and drawn the appropriate
ecological and policy inferences in exactly the same way.

If we take the discoveries of Pasteur regarding disease and antibiotics, how
do they depend on evolution? We might say, if we were desperate to stretch
a point, that they are connected in a way with the adaptation of
micro-organisms and therefore with natural selection or even
micro-evolution. But his discoveries do not imply the truth of or require
belief in macro-evolution.

Dr. Michael Egnor, a paediatric neurosurgeon, has noted that no medical
school in North America requires the study of evolution in its program. Nor
has he ever consulted Darwinian theory in order to determine how to carry
out a surgical operation on the brain. More generally, the medical sciences
function quite well without requiring adherence to evolutionary theory from
their practitioners. Research forges ahead in all medical fields daily,
almost oblivious of evolutionary theorizing. True, one can put a Darwinian
"spin" on epidemiology, but that spin is an interpretive gloss; if a
Cambrian rabbit were found tomorrow, microbes would still acquire antibiotic
immunity and biochemists would still seek biochemical ways of tricking the
microbes.

Dr. Phillip Skell, an NAS member, has repeatedly written on this theme.
See:

http://www.discovery.org/a/2816

And for more articles by Skell:

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=submitSearchQuery

Historical reconstructions of the past, however interesting, are not at the
heart of what science is about. The heart of what science is about is
taking apart nature, as it lies before us, and finding out what makes it
tick. Even widely accepted cosmological theories, like the Big Bang, are
only valid to the extent that they are compatible with the results of
experimental physics. If the results of experimental physics ever showed
that the Big Bang was impossible, cosmologists would be required to abandon
their cherished theory, not to defend it with zeal by saying "In cosmology,
nothing makes sense without the Big Bang". Similarly, the absence of any
experimental evidence that random mutations plus natural selection can build
a camera eye or a cardiovascular system, and in general the inability of the
greatest living evolutionary biologists (Coyne, Orr, etc.) to provide even
hypothetical pathways to macroevolutionary change, suggests that Darwinian
evolution should be accepted only very cautiously, as a speculation about
the past which may or may not be true, and which is always subject to
criticism and possible rejection. But this is not the tone which comes
across in the writings of popular Darwinism, whether atheist or TE. I
highly recommend the articles of Dr. Skell as a corrective to evolutionary
triumphalism.

Cameron.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alexanian, Moorad" <alexanian@uncw.edu>
To: "Terry M. Gray" <grayt@lamar.colostate.edu>; "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Friday, July 10, 2009 11:00 AM
Subject: RE: [asa] TE/EC Response - ideology according to Terry

> This long-winded discussion of what Darwinism, Darwin’s mechanism, etc. is
> has proven that nobody really knows! Since the same is not true when one
> discusses mechanisms, or better dynamics, in physics, then it is clear
> that if physics is science, then Darwinism, Darwin’s mechanism, or what
> have you, is not. If one supposes the Big Bang creation of the universe
> and the present state of all that surrounds us, then one has to make all
> sorts of metaphysical presuppositions in order to answer historical
> questions. Note that experimental science, viz. chemistry, physics,
> biology, rely on present-day data and not, necessarily, with the past. We
> should concentrate on the physical description of biology and forget about
> historical biology by not making all these over-generalizations of the
> past as if we were truly there.
>
> Moorad
> ________________________________________
> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of
> Terry M. Gray [grayt@lamar.colostate.edu]
> Sent: Friday, July 10, 2009 2:00 AM
> To: ASA
> Subject: Re: [asa] TE/EC Response - ideology according to Terry
>
> Gregory,
>
> I'm afraid it's you with the stopped up ears. Almost everyone here
> knows and understands what I'm saying with respect to Darwin and
> Darwinism except, it appears, you and Cameron. You've been beating
> this horse for a long time and you draw all sorts of bizarre
> conclusions about us.
>
> 1. Darwinian mechanisms are only part of the story--almost all
> evolutionists admit that today. If that makes Darwinian evolution bad
> science, then okay. But I don't think it does. The fundamental
> insights are still sound. They should be in the textbook as a key part
> of our current understanding. New insights: drift, evo-devo, genome
> acquisition, chromosome rearrangements, etc., all non-Darwinian, are
> important parts of the picture.
>
> 2. How many times must I say it? I don't really care what Darwin said.
> What Darwin said does not equal Darwinian science! If Darwin
> mistakenly extrapolated his scientific insights into some bit of
> unfortunate theology, I don't have to go with him there. Most of the
> biological community calls the scientific insights (WITHOUT THE
> THEOLOGICAL CLAIMS!!!!) Darwinian. Anybody who does extrapolate into
> claims about how God acts has gone beyond science. And this is exactly
> what Dawkins and company do. Interestingly, the same thing can be said
> of atomic theory or of planetary motion and was said of it in the 17th
> and 18th centuries. God must not be involved if we understand how
> something works in terms of natural causes. Science just can't answer
> that question--the ultimate reason things are the way they are is
> simply not a question that is addressed by science.
>
> 3. You're very mistaken in accusing me of not being a whole/integrated
> person with respect to my science and faith in this matter. I can
> accept the legitimate insights of Darwin (which I do) and call it
> Darwinian as most biologist do. We are not required to accept his
> version of integration as being the only way to bring the scientific
> insights into a coherent perspective, thus Darwin's forgotten defenders.
>
> 4. How do I distinguish Darwinism as ideology from Darwinism as
> science? It's actually very easy. Darwinism is an ideology when it
> makes metaphysical claims about God's role or lack thereof. When it
> doesn't make those metaphysical claims, it is not an ideology--it's
> merely a scientific theory whose merits should be judged by how well
> it performs when compared to the real world. This is the part that you
> guys don't seem to get. Darwin's scientific claims make no NECESSARY
> metaphysical claims (even if he thought they did). Variation and
> natural selection (together all of our scientific descriptions of the
> natural world) are almost always compatible with either metaphysical
> perspective, the atheistic naturalist (who believes that the universe
> is autonomous needs nothing beside itself) or the theist (who believes
> that the universe is dependent on God for its being, continued
> existence, its properties, etc.).
>
> It's really not hard to see the difference and this is where the
> debate should be. I don't really care where the science goes. I will
> follow it if that's the world that God made. But if you claim that
> your science--your claims about the natural world--tells me about
> God's involvement in the process (or not), you've overstated your
> case. Science just can't tell us that. Back to the original Asa Gray
> response to Darwin--just because you can explain something
> scientifically doesn't mean that God's not involved.
>
> This isn't rocket science after all.
>
> TG
>
>
> On Jul 9, 2009, at 7:32 PM, Gregory Arago wrote:
>
>> Hi again Terry,
>>
>> You’ve become a pivotal figure for the moment in the defence of
>> ‘theistic evolution,’ while continuing your opposition to ID. As
>> such, I side with Cameron in challenging your views, which I also
>> find to be fuzzy in terms of ‘science and religion’ accommodation.
>> But in this thread it is now ‘Darwinism’ that you are defending,
>> rather than TE, the former being a much easier target for both
>> Cameron and myself, whereas you seem not to perceive a significant
>> difference between them. Indeed, you seem to want to call yourself a
>> Christian Darwinist, which both Cameron and I find to be absurd.
>>
>> Terry wrote: “I am delighted to hear you say that Darwinian
>> evolution and Darwinian mechanisms are scientific (contra
>> Darwinism). I'm not sure that Cameron would agree.”
>>
>> Yeah, but Darwinian mechanisms and Darwinian evolution could be ‘bad
>> science,’ Terry. Wouldn’t you agree to this possibility? It seems to
>> me that Cameron is arguing on the question of ‘how scientific are
>> they?’ and he is concluding that they are ‘not all that
>> scientifically rigorous or accurate’ of the reality that we are all
>> wishing to better understand.
>>
>> You hear Cameron saying: “anytime you invoke Darwinian [evolution]
>> or Darwinism that you are invoking something that removes God from
>> the picture.”
>>
>> But have you listened to Darwin himself, Terry or are you invoking
>> hearsay? You admit that Cameron has read more of Darwin’s works than
>> you have and you applaud him for it. But you seem to continually
>> doubt Cameron’s ability to analyse what Darwin wrote, instead
>> attributing to Darwin a position that he did not hold. Darwinian
>> evolution (which you equate with Darwinism) does not allow for
>> ‘guidance’! In other words, you are doing exactly what Cameron is
>> saying by twisting Darwin into a friend of faith, a supporter of TE,
>> rather than speaking about him as he was as a dissenter from
>> religious truth and as a threat to theology. You are siding with
>> Darwin’s science, by accepting Darwinism, rather than rejecting
>> Darwin’s metaphysics and theology, and thus rejecting Darwinism.
>>
>> Darwin excluded God in his science and in his person. Scientists
>> don’t agree on the science *in spite of* their religious
>> differences, but because their science shares common ground, in
>> addition to their religious views. There is a tendency at ASA to
>> focus on the ‘warfare model’ far too much. TE is a philosophical
>> assumption that tries to accommodate science with theology. But it
>> does so from an astonishingly weak philosophical framework that
>> simply divides ‘metaphysical’ from ‘methodological.’ I don’t expect
>> you to hear what I’m saying, Terry, if your ears are blocked from
>> listening. And it probably won’t make much sense to you that I think
>> your supposedly ‘newly coined’ term ‘metaphysical Darwinism’ is an
>> unhelpful one. It is like those who speak regularly of Jesus and of
>> God, but forget to speak of the Holy Spirit, which is the Counsellor
>> for all human beings, including natural scientists.
>>
>> Terry wrote: “This distinction [metaphysical vs. scientific] is and
>> has been my fundamental point all along, i.e. it is possible to
>> agree as a Christian with Darwin's theory inasmuch as it does not
>> specify God's involvement or lack thereof.”
>>
>> I’m glad we’ve established your fundamental point: one can agree
>> with Darwin’s science, but reject his metaphysics (read:
>> philosophy). So, then according to this view a scientist is *not* a
>> whole person when they ‘do science’ but rather a shadow of a whole
>> person, who is merely a rationalist or an empiricist or a
>> positivist, i.e. who blocks out their philosophical self in the
>> process? (For those interested in pedantry, the divide between
>> positive science and reflexive science is contemporary here.)
>>
>> What is wrong with sharply dividing ‘science’ from ‘metaphysics’
>> have been demonstrated so amply and repeatedly over the years that
>> it seems useless to repeat them unless one is ideologically so
>> inclined to hear. I thought you were a more integralistic thinker,
>> Terry, with links to Dooyeweerd and other broad-minded persons who
>> would not reduce biology to ‘Darwinism’ or to ‘neo-Darwinism’ on the
>> basis of a so-called ‘standard definition’ of neo-Darwinism given by
>> none other than E.O. Wilson. Doesn’t this merely demonstrate the
>> fact that TEs are more than happy to run into the arms of E.O.
>> Wilson and D.S. Wilson, Trivers, Pinker, Dawkins, Dennett and other
>> anti-religious persons if and when it suits their personal defence
>> of ‘science’ as a superior or even just legitimate-autonomous type
>> of knowledge?
>>
>> Terry continues: “among professional biologists, the term Darwinism
>> is in fact synonymous with Darwinian evolution.”
>>
>> And do you trust the language of professional biologists on the
>> topic of ‘ideology vs. science’ too, Terry? *Their* language is
>> esoteric on the one hand and simply ridiculous on the other hand.
>> Fine, call a pig a hen if your bounded academic community decides to
>> do it. But please don’t expect everyone else to bow to your terms as
>> if you have some claim to linguistic priority! Let’s not forget
>> Terry that biology borrowed even the term ‘evolution’ from somewhere
>> ‘outside.’
>>
>> Why don’t you instead manage a better grasp of language by calling a
>> spade a spade: Darwinism *is* an ideology, while ‘Darwinian
>> evolution’ is a ‘scientific theory’? At first you indicated your
>> delight in hearing me distinguish the two different things in the
>> way that I did. But then you reverted to using the same old language
>> that is simply unsuitable in the common tongue. Your language
>> regarding (neo-)Darwinism, along with that of the evolutionary
>> biologists, is in the minority. Do you accept this?
>>
>> Again, I ask you openly: Would you not feel comfortable in changing
>> your language to more common, i.e. majority usage?
>>
>> Further, Terry writes: “Darwinism as an ideology in these textbooks
>> usually has a modifier "social" as in "social Darwinism" and nearly
>> every textbook distinguishes between Darwinism and social Darwinism.
>> To coin a new term along the same lines I might add "metaphysical
>> Darwinism" which includes claims about God's role or lack thereof. /
>> So when I define Darwinism to be Darwinian evolution, there should
>> be no confusion in your mind. You may not like my choice of words or
>> the range of semantic meaning that I give the term "Darwinism", but
>> there is no reason for you to be confused.”
>>
>> That ‘Darwinism’ and ‘Darwinian evolution’ mean the same thing in
>> your view is astonishing (though not entirely unusual). Blaming it
>> on the social scientists is unbecoming of inclusive dialogue (should
>> we assume you’ve read more H. Spencer than Darwin, as is the case
>> with most people?). Darwinism, according to your position, thus *is*
>> an ideology that TE does or should support. Is this correct? But I
>> shouldn’t wait for people at ASA to reject Darwinism or neo-
>> Darwinism since ASA doesn’t take a position on them, only individual
>> persons do. Of course, you don’t accept that Darwinism *is* an
>> ideology, which is precisely the main problem. But then again you
>> say that Darwinism is sometimes an ideology, which is again
>> confusing. Cameron seems more willing to be flexible on this issue
>> than I am because he is focussing on the mechanisms of change, which
>> TEs likewise do not always clarify sufficiently.
>>
>> Cameron wrote:
>>
>> “Terry, the terminology of "guidance" that you and David Campbell
>> are using is *just not clear*… The way that you and David Campbell
>> are using "guidance" confuses more than it helps. ”
>>
>> With him, I agree. What could you do to make your position clearer?
>>
>> Terry, your admission in answer to Cameron is rather telling, isn’t
>> it? You write: “I guess that means I'll turn into Dawkins and
>> Coyne.” That is a BIG admission!
>>
>> You continue: “But I reject your inference that that means I don't
>> believe that God is guiding the process.”
>>
>> I know that you do think this, but it is not consistent with
>> Darwin’s views. That is entirely the point, Terry! Dawkins and Coyne
>> do not think that ‘God is guiding the process.’ Darwin, however,
>> *did not* think that ‘God is guiding the process.’ Can you please
>> simply submit to this truth? It is consistent with many studies of
>> Darwin’s work that have been done and is surely not a controversial
>> claim. You seem to submit to it, but then you return to the status
>> quo of defending Darwinism, under the guise of Darwinian evolution,
>> which is what makes your position confusing. Why the messy logic here?
>>
>> Cameron and I both defend a limited meaning of ‘evolution’ too!
>>
>> Terry wrote: “In general Darwin's theology is atrocious and
>> unorthodox”
>>
>> With this we are certainly in agreement. What I don’t understand is
>> how you can so conveniently fragment Darwin into pieces, when a
>> holistic view that co-operates science with philosophy and theology
>> is already possible. Perhaps the main issue is really ideology
>> after all?
>>
>> The real issue here, in this branch from Randy’s OP, is the topic of
>> ideology. You seem to avoid this topic like the plague, Terry. Why
>> is that? You claim Darwinism is not an ‘ideology’. Again, let me ask
>> you, why is that? Or, if you accept that Darwinism is ‘sometimes an
>> ideology’ can you please clarify when it is and when it isn’t? This
>> is the main issue that I would like you to focus on if you make a
>> reply to this message. I have made clear what I believe and accept:
>> Darwinian evolution is a scientific theory, but Darwinism is an
>> ideology. Would you be willing to adjust your grammar to say the
>> same thing, and if not, then why not?
>>
>>
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Gregory
>>
>>
>> Get the name you've always wanted ! @ymail.com or @rocketmail.com.
>
> ________________
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Received on Fri Jul 10 22:30:08 2009