RE: [asa] Re: macroevolution

Cameron said:
" But if the theologian has prior commitments (as Collins and Miller and many other TEs do) about "how it happened" (i.e., primarily via Darwinian or other unintelligent mechanisms), then the theologian's speculative options are narrowed. "

Why do you call Darwinian mechanisms "unintelligent?" Can I give an example? When a bear or lion kills another of it's kind in order to stake out it's own territory, is that "unintelligent?" Seems to me they were thinking something, and this intelligence drove their behavior which impacts evolution big time. Same with mate selection. (There are many other examples of intelligence, as with team-hunting animals as wolves, in which the most fit would survive to pass on their genes.) So it seems to me that if you say there is no intelligence what-so-ever behind Darwinian evolution, you are wrong. And then if you admit there is intelligence, then you have to start thinking as to what level it is at and to what extent it has impacted evolution. The climax of this intelligence-driven component of evolution is with humans who are directly modifying DNA of their own and other genomes.

(FYI: If you want me to read your reply, please keep it pithy. I don't generally read the essays on this list.)

...Bernie

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Cameron Wybrow
Sent: Monday, July 20, 2009 11:23 AM
To: asa
Subject: [asa] Re: macroevolution

Ted:

Thanks for your question.

I expressed myself too elliptically.

First, there is a distinction between saying that "macroevolution happened"
and saying that "Darwinian mechanisms (or other primarily stochastic
mechanisms) have been shown capable of bringing macroevolution about".

My response to Terry Gray -- who had asked me why ID people keep dragging
science into the discussion, instead of just challenging Dawkins and Coyne
on their philosophy and theology -- was meant in terms of the latter of the
above two statements. I was saying that there is no reason why the world
should just roll over and play dead when Darwinians assert that variation
plus natural selection can account for macroevolutionary change. I was
saying that, all metaphysics aside, on the purely *scientific* plane, even
using the narrowest possible definition of science (the one many TEs use, to
exclude ID from science), Darwinian mechanisms have not been shown adequate
to account for macroevolutionary change. And what applies to Darwinian
mechanisms applies, mutatis mutandis, to the other non-teleological
mechanisms which evolutionary biologists generally propose. It doesn't
matter whether you stress natural selection more, or drift more; until
detailed genetic pathways to the eye or the lung are on the table for
criticism, macroevolutionary theory (by theory, I mean the explanation of
the "how") is stuck in the realm of broad speculation.

Regarding the second paragraph below, my point was the same, but again, I
was too elliptical. When I wrote:

>It is not necessary, but only *optional*, to speculate about the
>theological implications of Darwinian theory, because
we have not confirmed that nature has the power to create radically new body
plans, as Darwin said it did.<

I should have said "nature alone" or "unaided nature". I thought this would
have been clear by implication, because of our long discussion about
"Darwinian", in which I indicated that by "Darwinian" processes I always
mean processes unaided by intelligent guidance (quantum-concealed or
otherwise), but it would have been better for me to nail it down.

Another way of putting it is this: If a theologian believes that
"macroevolution happened", but has *no* prior commitments about "how it
happened", the theologian has a wide range of speculative options. But if
the theologian has prior commitments (as Collins and Miller and many other
TEs do) about "how it happened" (i.e., primarily via Darwinian or other
unintelligent mechanisms), then the theologian's speculative options are
narrowed. Thus, ID people (and obviously I am speaking of ID people who
accept or are at least open to the view that macroevolution happened, not of
those ID people who deny that it happened) are not going to speculate
theologically about macroevolution in the same way that Collins and Miller
do, because they are not convinced that Darwinian mechanisms have the power
that Collins and Miller believe that they have. They are thus going to be
more inclined to allow teleological notions that Collins and Miller would
consider "unscientific", and they are going to allow those teleological
notions not just into their thinking about the religious meaning of
evolution (as Collins and Miller do), but into their thinking about the
"how" of evolution (which Collins and Miller refuse to do).

So, for example, the French philosopher of biology Henri Bergson accepted
macroevolution as a fact, but gave a non-Darwinian account of the "how". A
Christian theologian might take off from Bergson's account (as Teilhard de
Chardin did, though in a way that I cannot endorse). But of course, Collins
and Miller would dismiss Bergson's account of evolution as metaphysical,
philosophical, untestable, of no use to science, etc. Yet, if
non-teleological evolutionary theory has not got very far at all at showing
how major body plans etc. have evolved, I would say that it is irresponsible
to rule out teleological evolutionary theories, and I think it's just fine
for Christian theologians to speculate about teleological (as opposed to
Darwinian) evolutionary notions. If all that "science" has proved is the
*fact* of macroevolution, but not the *means*, then scientists have no
business barring theologians from such speculations, and least of all should
*Christian* scientists be ruling such speculations out of court. But sadly,
many Christian scientists do.

I agree with you that theological differences between ID and TE people are
often as important or more important than scientific ones. This comes back
to my point in the first paragraph you quote, about Darwinian evolution
being a doctrine in search of a mechanism. Darwinian evolution is favoured
by many Christians because they want to believe that (except in the case of
certain revelatory miracles) God works only through secondary causes, not
only now, but at all times in the past; creation itself has to have occurred
through naturalistic means, and Darwin seems to have provided an explanation
involving such means. This assertion of a thoroughgoing naturalism is
*partly* grounded in scientific reasoning and our experience of the
continuity of nature, but only *partly*. It is partly a metaphysical or
religious prejudice which we have inherited from the Enlightenment and the
19th century. As you have pointed out, Boyle was not bothered by the fact
that science could not explain the creation. Modern people, on the other
hand, *are* bothered by the notion that there might be any physical events,
present or past, that cannot be explained (in principle, anyway) in terms of
regular natural causes. The writer of Genesis did not share this prejudice,
nor did most of the Church Fathers and theologians until very modern times.

And here I think George Hunter has a point. He overdoes his attack on the
evidence for the occurrence of macroevolution, I think. I believe that the
circumstantial evidence for the mere occurrence of macroevolution is
stronger than he does, so I'm more on Behe's side of ID. But nonetheless, I
think Hunter is right to say that in the last few hundred years scientists,
philosophers and theologians have all increasingly embraced "naturalism",
and that this is due not simply to the increased success of naturalistic
explanations (though that is certainly a major factor), but also to a desire
to dwell in a world where God's action is kept at a distance. The
motivations for this may be many and complex, and seem to vary from TE to
TE. Sometimes the motivation appears to be a fear that "God of the gaps"
arguments will backfire when a natural cause is found, and expose religion
to ridicule; other times it appears that the motivation is "the problem of
evil", i.e., that if God can be kept at arm's length from evil, that problem
is solved. But in general TE naturalism has strong theological motivations.
So again, I agree with your observation.

Cameron.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Davis" <TDavis@messiah.edu>
To: "Bill Powers" <wjp@swcp.com>; "Cameron Wybrow" <wybrowc@sympatico.ca>
Cc: "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Monday, July 20, 2009 10:51 AM
Subject: macroevolution

Cameron,

You're as careful as anyone I know about how you use your terms, so I was a
bit concerned to see this particular point in your latest post:

<There's evidence for
microevolution, but microevolution is merely the preamble to Darwinian
theory, not the real thing. The real thing is the claim that the mutational
and selective factors that lengthen finch beaks can annihilate gills and
replace them with lungs, while conveniently and simultaneously replacing
fins
with feet, and conveniently and simultaneously altering almost every bodily
system in just the right way to be compatible with these changes. No one
has ever established this claim. Macroevolution *presumes* that is true,
and then, having assumed the conclusion that it prefers, goes out after the
fact, trying to find out how it all happened. Darwinian evolution is a
doctrine in search of a detailed mechanism.> (I corrected your misspelling
of simultaneously)

My concern is not with the precise statement you have made; I'll let the
biologists here worry about whether you have fairly stated an objection. My
concern is that the overall impression you seem to want to convey is that
macroevolution itself is not true. You seem implicitly to be defining
macroevolution as natural selection writ large, vis-a-vis the idea of common
descent itself, whether or not natural selection is the main means by which
that was accomplished. Perhaps I'm reading this into what you wrote, or
perhaps that's part of what you are driving at. Please clarify this, at
least for me if not also for the list.

You later say this:

<Does this mean that TE is wrong to speculate about the theological
implications of evolutionary theory? Not at all, as long as TE people
understand why ID people hang back from such speculations. It is
*necessary* to speculate about the theological implications of Newtonian or
Einsteinian theory, because we have confirmed that nature works the way that
Newton and Einstein said it did. It is not necessary, but only *optional*,
to speculate about the theological implications of Darwinian theory, because
we have not confirmed that nature has the power to create radically new body
plans, as Darwin said it did. When that confirmation is in, ID people will
join TE speculations with much more enthusiasm.>

I have two comments on this paragraph.

(1) Your point here seems to reinforce my impression that you want to deny
macroevolution, in the sense of common descent; for it is common descent
more than anything else that leads to a theological division beteen TE and
OEC -- and, I would say, between TE and ID, since most ID advocates would
probably have fit neatly into the OEC camp if there were no ID camp with
which to identify. Reading folks such as Johnson, Dembski, Wells, and
Meyer, one senses that opposition to human evolution (here I mean simply the
claim that humans and other modern primates have common ancestors) is just
below the surface of their opposition to "Darwinism."

(2) Let's put the issue of mechanisms to one side, at least for a moment. I
am not a geneticist, obviously, and I hope that a geneticist will correct me
if my next point is mistaken. It is my understanding, however, that when
Francis Collins says that the human genome is all the evidence Darwin would
ever have needed for his theory -- that the fossils, biogeographical
distributions, homologies, and other things are nice but not really needed.
I'm in no position to tell Francis that he's wrong about this, and I doubt
that you are either. Assuming that he's right, then "macroevolution" looks
like it's true, whether or not natural selection is the chief mechanism that
did it. Here I'm using "macroevolution" as a term to mean common descent,
obviously, but the word has been used that way for generations by
antievolutionists and I think that it is commonly understood to have that
meaning.

So, if macroevolution looks like it's true, regardless of the details about
mechanisms and pathways, then perhaps some ID proponents will now consider
"joining TE speculations," with or without enthusiasm. (If things got to
that point, incidentally, I don't foresee much enthusiasm; I'm convinced
that theological differences are at least as large a factor in the ID/TE
conversation as differences over what constitutes enough evidence to accept
"Darwinian" evolution.)

Ted

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Received on Mon Jul 20 14:50:15 2009