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

Schwarzwald:

Denton's disagreement with classical neo-Darwinism is set forth in his first book, *Evolution: A Theory in Crisis*.

Denton's proposal for an alternative to neo-Darwinism is set forth in his second book, *Nature's Destiny*.

That there is some room for aspects of neo-Darwinian theory within Denton's larger framework, I don't deny. He grants it himself. Natural selection plays a role, and there are still mutations. But the way the mutations are "managed", so to speak, is conceived of entirely differently in *Nature's Destiny* than in neo-Darwinism, and it is for this reason that Denton continues, in his second book, to speak against the exaggerated emphasis on chance and contingency in Darwinian theory.

I can't comment on Conway Morris because I haven't read him yet.

Cameron.

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Schwarzwald
  To: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 11:01 AM
  Subject: Re: [asa] TE/EC Response - ideology according to Terry

  Cameron,

  I have one question about Denton's view versus the Darwinian view. I may have to reread his writings (I saw a fairly recent, I believe ~April 2009, interview with him a few days ago as well), but it seems to me that what Denton suggests isn't a viewpoint that's neatly distinct from the Darwinian one, at least in terms of giving physical descriptions of processes and mechanisms. Most of the difference seems to be on emphasis.

  I'll try to flesh out what I mean. I take Denton to be saying that sure, life unfolded "naturalistically" - and that there were mutations, natural selection, etc. But the results of the evolutionary process were in large part fixed by a host of fundamental factors - the particular properties of hydrogen and oxygen, for example. So in a way his view is similar to Conway Morris' convergent evolution (life keeps finding the same/very similar solutions), except that where Conway Morris focuses mostly on the fact of convergence in nature, Denton places emphasis on why we'd be able to reliably expect certain developments and outcomes in the evolutionary process.

  So I ask, does it sound like I'm grasping the fundamental perspective of Denton here?

  On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 8:56 PM, Cameron Wybrow <wybrowc@sympatico.ca> wrote:

    David:

    1. I'm not downplaying the importance of the primary cause. I am saying that it is not a "local" cause in the sense that static electricity is. At least, not an *additional* local cause. I can accept God as the "local" cause of the lightning bolt in the sense that he wills static electricity in general, hence lightning in general, hence all particular lightning bolts. Therefore, I can accept that God is the ultimate cause of any particular lightning bolt. If that is what you mean by God acting "locally", I could go for that. Alternately, if are thinking of God as "powering" the laws of nature at every moment, a sort of continuous creation, so that God "powers" the lightning bolt locally, I could go for that, too. God is, as it were, within the lightning bolt, within the laws of nature, manifesting his power at all times through particular natural events. This is no problem for me. But it sounds very much to me as if you and Terry are saying that in addition to all such ways that God can be construed as acting "locally", he performs some *extra* action of some kind to make *that particular lightning bolt* fall, an action that he does not perform in the case of any other lightning bolt. And I don't see how you can say that without stepping outside of the rigorous naturalism that you and Terry seem to be endorsing. Further, if God must do that in the case of lightning bolts, then he must do it in the case of evolutionary changes, and then neo-Darwinism is false. Neo-Darwinism says that God doesn't have to do anything extra, because nature already has the capacity for macroevolutionary change.

    2. I've known about lungfish since I was five years old, when I read my first book on dinosaurs (my favourite subject as a child). The difficulty with lungfish, and all your other examples, is that they use the same method that Darwin and Dawkins use. You line up a bunch of existing features of animals -- animals with different levels of complexity in their eyes, or animals with gills, gills plus lungs, then just lungs, etc. -- and then you infer from this functional sequence an actual historical process of development. You ask me to imagine a historical process by which the forms shade into each other.

    Of course, I can *imagine* such a process. I can imagine such a process by which a centaur and horse, or centaur and man, are related as well. I could even dream up a "natural selection" explanation of how centaurs could, in certain environments, have a survival advantage over horses (or men, take your pick). But I have absolutely no evidence that the genome of any horselike or anthropoid creature is capable of such a transformation. Admittedly, the centaur example is extreme, and I admit that a fish-amphibian transition is inherently more plausible than a man-centaur or horse-centaur transition. Nonetheless, what evidence do I have that the genome is capable of such transformations? Transitional forms such as Tiktaalik give me no clue about the mechanism. Am I to imagine that chance mutations, without any co-ordination, happened to produce viable intermediate forms? Then I need a proposed genetic pathway, or I can't test the assertion. Or am I to imagine that evolution was subtly front-loaded, so that viable intermediate forms weren't a matter of freak luck, but were in effect planned? Then I still need a proposed genetic pathway, or I can't test the assertion. Or am I to imagine that naturalistic causes only did part of the job, and that God did some tweaking along the way? If so, I still need to know which parts of the process nature did by itself, and where God made the big jumps over the chasms nature couldn't cross. So again, I need proposed genetic pathways, or I can't test the assertion.

    The difficulty with macroevolutionary theory at this point is that it is still premature. Until we know the workings of the genome and of developmental processes the way a mechanic knows the workings of a car, all proposed genetic pathways are largely guesswork. If evolutionary biologists want to play a guessing game -- may have, coulda, mighta (note that the conclusion of the article Preston Garrison cited is filled with subjunctives) -- that's their own in-house academic business, but they shouldn't leave the public with the impression that they know how evolution works, when they are almost completely in the dark about how it works when it comes to the hard-nosed details.

    By the way, since you've said the mutations aren't simultaneous, what is the current Darwinian narrative explaining how being able to walk on crude foot-fins would give a selective advantage, if the fish couldn't breathe out of water yet? (Let me guess: tidal pools on the ocean shore, where fish with gills and legs could perhaps survive for a few seconds out of the water, snatch some snails and worms from the mud, and quickly waddle back to a deeper stretch of water to plunge under for some air?) Or perhaps you are insisting that the fish already had lungs, in addition to their gills, before they developed the feet? In that case, remind me how, in the absence of surviving soft tissues, palaeontologists can be certain that fish with both lungs and gills existed, before feet (or lobe-fins) were developed?

    And even if fish did have both lungs and gills before developing lobe-fins, what *Darwinian* reason can be given for the simultaneous existence of lungs and gills -- two different and redundant oxygenation systems? That uses a lot of bodily resources for a something that isn't needed -- fish don't need lungs. The simultaneous existence of lungs and gills makes much more sense on Dentonian than Darwinian lines. If Denton is right, the lungs may have evolved before they were put to use because the genome, as it were, "thinks ahead". So once again, design comes out on top and neo-Darwinism comes out on the bottom.

    Cameron.

    ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Campbell" <pleuronaia@gmail.com>

    To: "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>

    Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 5:26 PM

    Subject: 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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Received on Thu Jul 23 03:47:31 2009