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

>"The primary cause of the lightning bolt is God's will to kill the wicked man, and the secondary cause of the lightning bolt is the laws of electrostatics. The laws of electrostatics were designed by God and their continued operation is empowered by God. The primary and secondary causes operate simultaneously and with reference to exactly the same event. **But in addition, God acts directly in a third, extra, special, mysterious way, which is not merely as the sustainer of the laws of nature (which laws are the secondary causes of the lightning bolt) and not merely as the guiding will behind the action (i.e., as the primary cause of the lightning bolt), but by doing something locally (above and beyond what the sum total of the laws of nature could ever do) in order to produce *this specific lightning bolt*, and if he did not do this mysterious extra thing, there would be no lightning bolt. Further, this mysterious extra action cannot be incorporated into any scientific !
 equation, and the result it produces in nature is indistinguishable from what the science of electrostatics would predict if its practitioners had never heard of this type of divine action.**"<

I would say, rather, that the primary cause is fundamental to anything
happening. The design and empowerment are necessary for whatever
events transpire. From my perspective, you seem to be downplaying the
importance of the primary cause.

> The reason we need to keep dragging the science into these debates is that
> Darwinian theory is weak science.  Not just weak metaphysics, but weak
> science.  There's almost no evidence for it.  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 simulteously replacing fins
> with feet, and conveniently and simulteously 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.

No, it's the criticism that is weak on the science. Gills were not
annhilated and replaced with lungs in vertebrates (they probably were
in snails, though there's not much relevant anatomy determinable by
the fossils). The actual sequence is gills then gills and lungs and
then loss of gills. Probably most standard fish lost lungs, given the
air-breathing capacities of many more basal taxa. Many larval
amphibians still have gills, as do a number of adult amphibians. Some
amphibians actually have neither gills nor lungs and just get oxygen
through the skin and the mouth.

Someone seriously looking at this (as far as I know, you're relying on
ID sources, but those ought to have done their work) ought to be aware
of lungfish. Conversely, the earliest amphibians seem to have been
entirely aquatic, using lungs just to supplement gills.

The development of different systems (at least the fossilizable ones)
can be traced. They're not all simultaneous. Lobe finnned fish have
leg bones in their fins; the closest fish relatives of amphibians have
development of fingers and a start on a neck.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama
"I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
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