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

David,

I am so sorry I cannot pay more attention to these threads. And I am truly
not being critical or cranky when I raise issues here on your posting. I
find your views quite interesting in fact.
But the below statement just boggles my mind:

> Gravity is no
more or less the real cause of planetary orbits than mutations and
natural selection are of evolution.

My belief is, yes, the physical laws were contrived when they were made. So
the gravitational constant, for example, was tinkered with, yes. But after
the laws were created they have gone along on their own and go along on
their own. No guidance is necessary. So yes, I'd indeed say gravity is
indeed the cause of planetary orbits. And this isn't going to change unless
brane theory shows us that, yes, their is another world just a tiny distance
away from our world at every point, and there are "ghosts in the
machinery" modifying the fields moment by moment, making them vary to
produce various results. So I guess we just disagree.

As far as NS, maybe I am naive, but I view it as needing something to
select. And thus it is the creation of new information, well the question is
whether this creative process is all natural, or not - that alone seems to
be the point of contention as I understand it. The issue is not what NS does
after the information is created. I have a very poor understanding of
theories of how new information is created. But NS is (to me) besides the
point. You may perhaps assert that NS creates the information. But thats
not what was taught to me in our labs on NS. So I am not really following
what you are saying.

So I don't see the need for guidance in those phenomena which are purely
natural. Only tinkering for those phenomena which are not natural and would
not occur without tinkering. I thus suspect we might have two fundamentally
incompatible viewpoints. Which would be interesting. But it must produce a
lot of gaps in communication.

Best Regards,
Dave Clounch

On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 9:25 PM, David Campbell <pleuronaia@gmail.com>wrote:

> > 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).
>
> This depends a lot on what aspect you are considering. There are
> quite precise mathematical models in evolution and other aspects of
> biology; there are aspects of physics, chemistry, etc. that are more
> empirically descriptive and not so mathematical. In particular,
> evolution has to do with both characterizing the general working of
> the mechanisms (mutation, selection, etc.) and looking at exactly what
> happened in earth history. The latter is unamenable to repeatability
> and to fully mathematical characterization. Likewise, general physics
> covered a lot of equations relating to the general behavior of
> objects, but the math alone isn't enough to tell us what happened in a
> particular historical event (e.g., what happened in an auto
> accident)-we also need a lot of empirical details, and we certainly
> couldn't predict that a particular car accident will happen tomorrow
> based on the laws of physics.
>
> Even in deriving explanations for past events in evolution, we are not
> totally devoid of repeatability or math. Numerous different lineages
> and locations can be examined for patterns to see if they hold up
> across multiple examples.
>
> > 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.
>
> Proof of what? The burden of proof is on the side of someone making a
> claim. Anyone claiming that evolution is inadequate as an explanation
> needs to come up with proofs. (I.e., claiming it is proven to be
> inadequate, not "is inadequately proven")
>
> > 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.
>
> But that has been shown. If the right mutations happen at the right
> time and get the right selection, evolution works. You think it is
> unlikely for that to happen in certain instances, but it is possible.
> Many ID claims assert that X and Y can't possibly deliver A, and the
> burden of proof is on them to actually demonstrate that (with the
> caveat that X and Y need to accurately represent current evolutionary
> biology).
>
> > 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.<
>
> There are numerous larger changes than those observed in fruit flies,
> etc. But the more fundamental problem is that the anti-Darwinian side
> needs to prove that there's any significant difference between the
> purportedly more complex and the experimentally observed changes.
>
> > 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.
>
> Darwin liked British weather. I don't endorse that any more than I
> endorse his theology. However, his science was basically on the mark.
> I do not endorse "Darwinism" because I am doubtful about what the
> word is supposed to mean.
>
> > And more important than that: if Darwinism *doesn't* insist that
> unguided mechanisms are responsible, it's of little interest as a scientific
> theory.<
>
> No. If "Darwinism" is defined as being a scientific theory, at least
> in part, it is of interest as a scientific theory to the extent that
> it seems to work in actually describing the physical world. I'd be
> quite happy if evolution were left to the biologists and
> paleontologists and no one thoguht it had any major significance for
> religion and philosophy. (That wouldn't make Michael Ruse happy,
> though.)
>
> > 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.<
>
> Not all of those who accepted Darwin's scientific claims were wanting
> to see all guidance removed. Also, much of the early (up through
> about the mid-1900's) anti-traditional religion use of Darwin invoked
> teleological views of evolution, equating evolution with progress; it
> persists today in many circles but has been repudiated by evolutionary
> biology (whether or not the biologists are consistent with that).
> Nevertheless, much of the fuss from both sides was, and continues to
> be, along those lines. But the fact remains that his model works
> quite well when you look at paleontology and biology.
>
> > I think many people here are simply writing revisionist history of
> science, in order to harmonize Darwin with religious belief.<
>
> Not hardly. Numerous religious beliefs are quite compatible with
> Darwin, and many more are compatible with his scientific claims.
>
> > 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.<
>
> YECs often reject the ideas on the plate tectonics.
>
> > 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).<
>
> No. Evolution is no different from the other examples. Gravity is no
> more or less the real cause of planetary orbits than mutations and
> natural selection are of evolution. It's YEC and ID that try to make
> a distinction by claiming that accepting evolution entails no
> guidance, yet they accept gravity. "Scientific" atheism does not make
> a distinction, but it misinterprets everything by claiming that the
> physical explanation is the exhaustive, complete, and only
> explanation.
>
>
> On the origin of lungs, two points must be remembered:
> Gas exchange can take place across any moist, thin biological
> membrane, including skin and mouth lining of amphibians and most fish.
> A basic ability to absorb air provides an important starting place on
> the way to lungs, as well as compensating for limited functionality of
> early stages of lungs.
>
> In fish, lungs are useful for buoyancy as well as for gas exchange.
> (This is also true in hygrophilid snails).
>
>
> --
> 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 Sat Jul 25 01:21:04 2009