I just read this review last night in NR; I'm so glad you posted it here, Heartlander. Thank you!
Chance -- all is "chance." Samuel Butler -- who G. B. Shaw regarded as the greatest English writer of the second half of the 19th century, was a very early critic of Charles Darwin's -- but not of Darwin's father, Erasmus Darwin's -- evolutionary theory. There were other notable theories as well; e.g., Lamarck's. Evolution had been one of those "big ideas" hanging in the air during the 18th and 19th centuries; but Charles Darwin's take on it was, to Butler, beyond the pale for he considered it hopelessly irrational -- because it relies entirely on Luck; i.e., random chance. Regarding Butler's criticism of Darwinian evolution, Jacques Barzun (in From Dawn to Decadence, 2000) writes:
"...it 'banishes mind from the universe,' while experience shows mind acting for results that it foresees. Mind is seconded by habit, which starts conscious and becomes unconscious. This composite cunning was the agency that Erasmus Darwin had proposed in his work on evolution, and Butler espouses it.... Butler also pointed out that to account for the origin of new species one must account for the origin of variation from the old, which nobody so far knew or has said anything about." [Emphasis added]
To my knowledge, nobody has yet done this. Instead, evolutionists want to talk about incredible abstractions, such as Richard Dawkin's "selfish gene" as the driver of "natural selection."
Darwin wants to avoid engaging in teleology -- that is, he maintains that there is no purpose or goal in view as the terminus of the evolutionary process. But then he goes and contradicts himself by saying that evolution serves the "survival of the fittest" -- which implies a goal or purpose.
If this is true, then what does material nature or selfish genes (which seem to lack conciousness, or at least the higher consciousness of moral -- willing, choosing -- thinking agents) have to do with working toward a goal of "fitness" or any other kind of goal? How did material nature or the gene get sufficient "mind" and "will" to work toward that "fitness" of species that is the supposed purpose of the evolutionary process? "Random" and "fit" are quite antithetical ideas. So how can the achievement of "fitness" be squared with a random process, which supposedly produces it? More dumb Luck?
It doesn't wash: For in Darwin's theory, "Luck" explicitly stands in the place of "Mind" -- its explanation banishes mind, so nature or selfish genes cannot be said to "have" mind, or purpose -- for purpose presupposes mind.... And yet we have nature ineluctibly moving toward "fitness."
I'm still waiting for Darwinists to explain this paradox to me.
The universe, physical and otherwise, one dimension or multiple dimensions, was created and constantly changes. We can experience only a very small portion of it in any given lifetime and we use our free will to determine which portions by the decisions and choices we make in everyday life. Each decision moves us towards possibilities and probabilities and away from others.
This scenario can work the same if everything we can ever experience already exists or if we are creating it as we go along, IMO.
Darwin wants to avoid engaging in teleology -- that is, he maintains that there is no purpose or goal in view as the terminus of the evolutionary process. But then he goes and contradicts himself by saying that evolution serves the "survival of the fittest" -- which implies a goal or purpose.
Similarly, Aquinas stated that nature working toward a goal shows the existence of God. Darwinists say it shows the existence of Chance.
I'm still waiting for Darwinists to explain this paradox to me.
Evolution does not move "towards" anything, at least not anything knowable, because there is no static state that can be known as "fitness". Whatever works and whatever succeeds succeeds. Most of the living mass of the planet, by weight, is made up of bacteria. Evolution does not compel any "upward" trend towards "complexity".
Dispite what any given authority might say, evolution is compatible with any concrete definition of free will. The utility of the mind is in its attempt to know and adjust to the future -- a task that remains and will always remain incomplete and unfulfilled. It is this attempt to predict and manage the future that gives us the "feeling" of free will. It is the impossibility of predicting the future that makes the feeling of freedom consistent with reality.
Evolution, in fact, turns the usual cause and effect paradigm upside down. In the world of living things, cause operates from the future backwards, rather than from past to present. That's really, in a nutshell, what evolution means.
If this is true, then what does material nature or selfish genes (which seem to lack conciousness, or at least the higher consciousness of moral -- willing, choosing -- thinking agents) have to do with working toward a goal of "fitness" or any other kind of goal? How did material nature or the gene get sufficient "mind" and "will" to work toward that "fitness" of species that is the supposed purpose of the evolutionary process? "Random" and "fit" are quite antithetical ideas. So how can the achievement of "fitness" be squared with a random process, which supposedly produces it?
"survival of the fittest" is usually misinterpreted to mean that evolution is a ladder towards increasing complexity and progress; and that fittest means that only the superior should survive and prosper. Natural selection is really about differential reproductive success only and has absolutely nothing to do with progress or even individual survival.
As described in Dawkins' "Selfish Gene", replicators like genes shouldn't be thought of as having purpose or intent or part of some design. Replicators aren't trying to replicate or do anything for that matter. The only difference between a replicator and a non-replicator is that a replicator happens to replicate and a non-replicator doesn't. What replicates and what traits lead to higher replication rates are determined by the environment. There's no inherent superior trait that will automatically have high replication rates. A trait that has high reproductive success in one environment could fail in a different environment. Stephen J. Gould is fond of describing bacteria as the most reproductively "fit" of all organisms. Natural selection doesn't select for increasing complexity, but complexity can certainly develop just as long as reproduction still continues. Good enough is the bottom line. The most undesirable traits imaginable would dominate the gene pool if they out-reproduced others. Traits in a gene pool with the highest reproductive rates are only the best of what's appeared so far. New traits can only appear randomly, not due to necessity. The mutations happen to happen.
betty boop: If this is true, then what does material nature or selfish genes (which seem to lack conciousness, or at least the higher consciousness of moral -- willing, choosing -- thinking agents) have to do with working toward a goal of "fitness" or any other kind of goal? How did material nature or the gene get sufficient "mind" and "will" to work toward that "fitness" of species that is the supposed purpose of the evolutionary process? "Random" and "fit" are quite antithetical ideas. So how can the achievement of "fitness" be squared with a random process, which supposedly produces it? More dumb Luck?
The relationship of aspects of the life form to its environment is critical to all life studies, to place it in an reasonably educated context and holistic perspective (and to any of the theories of evolution). Come! Study well! All should be very welcome to look at the aspets of a life and induce what relationships with that which is other exist, by which that life is definitively functional its various ecologies. In this study, especially in the study of overall human development to the present (and past the present into the future by the trajectory of our behavior patterns and relationships with all that is environment) one finds Jesus Christ, whose revelation of God explains why we have the full set of characteristics which we see in ourselves.
It's funny that this should need explaining to educated people.
Are you sure it really does?
js1138, PH, where are your Evolutionist friends here? Come, let's study life (especially man) by his full set of measurable functions.
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I'm still waiting for Darwinists to explain this paradox to me
No paradox. The only element of chance is the mutation. Selection by definition is not a random process. Those not possessing a trait needed for survival, don't.
Evolution only studies, describes and theorizes on the processes of biological change that occurs, by natural phenomenon. It's not technically correct to interject that it serves anything other than to knowledge and understanding of the process itself. The survival of the fittest is only an outcome of the natural process that is driven by fixed and inviolable natural laws.
""Luck" explicitly stands in the place of "Mind"
There is no mind involved in evolution. Mind can and has arisen from an evolutionary process, but does not partake in the process itself. At least not until recently. There are fixed materials and fixed laws, that can not be broken, that govern their interaction. The idea of randomness only refers to whether, or not some condition, or other material is present at the time an interaction would occur. The actual distribution that governs the the presence of those conditions, or materials, is not always random though, and can follow any pattern, period or distribution. There is also the fact that randomness is involved in any isolated interaction, but that is trivial and does not cause any net change.
It is a fact that some folks deliberately pervert scientific fields such as biology and it's specialty of evolution with irrelevant and false claims and reductions like Ridley has done here. It's become widespread and tolerated. I've even encountered opinions on income distributions, health care and government policy objectives in the middle of an advanced electrochem text! It doesn't belong there. There is no fundamental and universal purpose in either the field of electrochemistry, or the field of biology, other than to gain knowledge of a finite set of pertinent observables regarding electrochem, or life. All other purposes are external to that and involve choice.
All of biology is and should be restricted to the mechanical. That is, to the mechanics of what is. Not to the esthetics, or purpose of life. To so just corrupts it into something else, that will always contain falsehoods, contradictions that violate the fundamental and universal purpose of it, which is to gain knowlege regarding the mechanics of life.
The only statements that biology can make about mind regards it's mechanics and that it processes inputs and makes decisions. The content, color and form of those are not the proper study for biology. Biology can cover the mechanics of the mind, but can say nothing about the forces that drive it, except for autonomic drives. They are fixed like gravity. Ridely is claiming in his book, that the mind of man is autonomic. That's not so. The mind of man can scientifically be shown to be composed of consciousness with the capacity for reason, free will, and emotion. None of these are autonomic, because anyone can come up with an example that discloses to the casual observer that there is no fixed autonomic response to any paticular stimuli to these features of consciousness. The response depends on how the individual sets up the machine, not how the machine sets up the individual. That's what Ridley is trying to con folks into believing-That the machine sets up the individual.
What biology says is that the machine has the capacity for consciousness, emotion and free will. It can only, and must to be truthful, declare that free will is a natural law. Biology can address proper working order and provide info for repair, but only for the machine, not it's capacities. The capacities are to be covered by other fields of study.
In other light, or the foundation for his con, Ridley makes the mistake that the mind is an extention of the body. It's not, the body is an extension of the mind. The most prevalent reason that people make this invalid claim of fundamental extension is to eventually deny the sovereignty of will, from it's rightful owner.