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

Randy:

Thanks for your kind words here, and also for those you posted on Monday.
I've appreciated the politeness of your responses, and of the responses of
others, to my arguments. And I've learned a lot from these exchanges -- one
always learns more from people one disagrees with, because one has to think
harder. So I'm grateful that I've been allowed on board, even though I'm
not a card-carrying scientist.

1. I think that there is no one "official" view of what makes a good
scientific theory. I'm no expert in the philosophy of science, but from the
bits I've read of Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend, and from what I've heard
about
the views of others (Lakatos, etc.) there is quite a wide range of opinion
about what makes a scientific theory a good one. I also suspect that the
standards are to some extent discipline-specific.

I suspect that that the biologists generally allow themselves much more
leeway when it comes to providing mathematically precise models than
physicists, chemists and engineers do. I also suspect that the evolutionary
biologists' abandonment of the criterion of "repeatability", which is quite
often preached in other quarters as the essence of good science, is a
surrender to sheer necessity (we can't repeat past unique events).
Generally speaking, I think evolutionary biology has amounted to Monday
morning quarterbacking, i.e., after-the-fact explanations of past events,
largely of a qualitative rather than a quantitative nature, and largely
making of use of very broad mechanisms ("drift", "selection", etc.) rather
than very precise ones ("this sector of DNA dropped out and was replaced by
the following base sequence...") because it has had very little power to do
anything else. Evolutionary biologists are in a position somewhat like that
of economists, explaining after the fact, with great theoretical confidence,
the causes of a recession which they did not predict beforehand. I imagine
that they must feel the same "physics envy" that economists do.

2. I don't see why the burden of proof is on anyone to show that anything
is missing from evolutionary theory. It seems to me that the burden of
proof is on the Darwinian side. The theory postulates that mechanisms X and
Y can deliver phenomenon A. It is up to the scientists who hold to the
theory to show how mechanisms X and Y can deliver phenomenon A, not up to
those who doubt it to show that X and Y can't possibly deliver phenomenon A.
It's unreasonable for a scientific theory to put its opponents in the
position of having to prove a negative, which is almost impossible; the
proponents of the theory should have to provide strong evidence for the
positive side. Can you imagine the proponents of the Big Bang theory
saying, prior to the discovery of Penzias and Wilson: "You haven't proved
that there *isn't* any cosmic background radiation; therefore our theory is
correct"? It wasn't up to the Steady State people to prove that there
*wasn't* any background radiation; it was up to the Big Bang people to show
that there *was*. Similarly, it's up to the Darwinian side to show that
Darwinian mechanisms can produce more complicated effects than longer finch
beaks or antibiotic resistance. It hasn't done so.

3. I will continue to disagree with you and several others here on the
question of unguided mechanisms. I continue to maintain that the view of
"Darwinism" held by many here is not the original Darwinism or the later
neo-Darwinism, but a late-20th century Darwinism tamed and modified by TEs
to make it Christian-friendly. And more important than that: if Darwinism
*doesn't* insist that unguided mechanisms are responsible, it's of little
interest as a scientific theory. Its whole earth-shattering effect on the
scientific world, for which it was praised by its followers and condemned by
its religious opponents, was due to the fact that it showed that design was
not necessary, that non-teleological processes could accomplish everything
without it. Darwin and all his followers believed that he had overthrown
Paley once and for all. You can see this simply by reading the reaction at
the time, and in a zillion academic and popular presentations of Darwinism
since. I think many people here are simply writing revisionist history of
science, in order to harmonize Darwin with religious belief.

Indeed, I think the entire methodological/metaphysical materialism
discussion was largely cooked up for this purpose. No one ever raises
"methodological vs. metaphysical materialism" in connection with the
explanation for the orbit of the planets around the sun, or the evaporation
of water, or the drift of continents. TEs, along with IDers, YECs,
atheists, and everybody else, are quite happy to say that gravity is the
real cause, that the increased average kinetic energy of the water molecules
is the real cause, and that convection currents in the semi-liquid mantle
are the real cause. But when it comes to evolution, suddenly the language
changes, and for some reason unguided mutations and natural selection aren't
the real causes, but only the methodologically ascertained causes, and the
real cause could still be guidance (though of course it has to be guidance
which makes no empirical difference, because the methodologically
ascertained causes would be quite sufficient even if God did not exist).
The selective application of the methodological/metaphysical distinction, to
deal only with religious "problem areas" in science (exclusively in the
historical sciences), makes the distinction highly suspect.

4. I hope you all have a profitable conference. As I can't be there --
having no source of funding for such events -- I would be interested in
hearing about some of the papers that are read and debated on the topics we
have been considering here. In particular I'd be glad to hear about any
encouraging dialogue that takes place between ID and TE people.

Cameron.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Randy Isaac" <randyisaac@comcast.net>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 8:49 AM
Subject: Re: [asa] TE/EC Response - ideology according to Terry

> Cameron,
> Your eloquence and prolific writings are a great addition to this list,
> even if the storage space climbs as a result!! I really do appreciate your
> sticking with us.
> Three comments, if I can do so quickly before getting back to preparing
> for the meeting next week.
>
> First of all, as I've stated before, a scientific theory is not judged
> strong or weak on the basis of its mathematical precision or the level of
> detail of the mechanisms. These are helpful in assessing the elegance or
> completeness of a theory but not its validity. Scientists use a different
> but very consistent set of criteria for all theories. How, compared to any
> other theory, does it explain observed data? To what extent does it
> successfully predict new observations (i.e. useful for future research)?
> Has it been falsified in any way? On this set of criteria, the theory of
> evolution is overwhelmingly successful and no other theory shows up on the
> radar screen.
>
> Secondly, your request for detail does address an important issue, namely
> whether the theory of evolution is complete or not. The question is valid
> but the burden of proof is on you to show that something is missing,
> rather than on everyone else to show that it isn't. The strength of the
> theory as judged by the criteria above doesn't depend on knowing all the
> details. Those details would be great to have, but alas DNA doesn't
> fossilize very well so we're not likely to find pre-Cambrian DNA. Much of
> the detail is lost forever.
>
> Thirdly, let's do the gedanken experiment and see what would happen if
> David were to respond with a detailed list of genomic sequences and
> mutations from a pre-Cambrian ancestor through all extant species. Of
> course you'd have to buy a larger hard disc drive to hold all the data.
> But a detailed sequence of events, each of which is shown to be a natural
> or even probable event, would still not answer your very important
> question of "guided" vs "unguided." The ID argument is not that there are
> processes which aren't "natural" but that the particular sequence of
> "natural" events must have been guided. The oft-used example of
> coin-tossing is still a useful analogy. Toss the coin ten billion times
> and the probability of heads is still 0.5 and each toss is purely natural
> and purely random. But getting all heads is unusual. Similarly, each
> mutation step may be natural and even probable but it is the fact that so
> many happened in the way they did that is unusual. Knowing each detailed
> step will not resolve the problem that you pose. I suspect that such a
> sequence could, in principle, be told but the puzzle would still be before
> us.
>
> I think Terry did a great job in articulating a useful path, even though
> I'm from an Arminian background. We'll worship together as brothers in
> Christ next weekend (I hope I can sit close to him in the worship service
> so I can hear him sing--he has a great voice!) as I will with the ID
> leaders and advocates and TE/EC leaders and advocates. None of us has a
> complete picture. All of us have some aspect of insight. And we all share
> a common belief in the doctrine of Creation. We all believe our existence
> is designed, from a theological perspective. Praise be to God.
>
> Randy
>
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Received on Thu Jul 23 10:50:38 2009