Posted on 02/03/2002 9:07:58 AM PST by Sabertooth
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Here's where I see the crux of the Creation vs. Evolution debate, and most appear to miss it: |
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Forget possible transitional forms, stratigraphy, and radiological clocks... at some level, both Creationists and Evolutionists wander back to singularities and have to cope with the issue of spontaneous cause. |
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Creationists say "God."
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Evolutionists say "random spontaneous mutagenic speciation."
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Right idea, wrong phenomena. A baby mammal starts out with roughly the same blank immune system as his forebears. All the local revisions of the immune system of a single creature are, thank God, not passed on.
There are, however, observed cases of DNA revision. AIDS, a retro-virus, is an example, but there are examples not imposed from the outside by viruses, particularly down in the one-celled realm, where positive orgys of voluntary, salubrious gene-swapping occurs outside the venue of direct procreation.
In view of this, naturally, one is tempted to speculate that something analogous to the immune system selects, rather than completely leaves to chance, at least the rate of mutation, if not the general direction. However, as far as I know, that's all it is at this point: speculation. This comes up frequently as a potential explanation for the observed mutation rate's apparent mismatch with expectations raised by assuming that radiation levels govern mutation rates. The correlation with mutation is not as good as the correlation with stress in the environment. This fact leads many people who think professionally about this subject to think that mutations (rates, at least) are under intentional control of the DNA-RNA complex.
The notion you are hovering over is remarkably like Lysenko-ism, which was considered thoroughly incorrect for some time, so it was a distinct shock to the systems' scientific to discover retro-viruses and their like.
On another thread, I said it reminded me of the tiny print on Dr Bronner's 18-in-one peppermint castille soap. Dr. Bronner
I agree. That's the gist of one of my posts.
Heh!
"Totally random" as distinct from "partially random?" Like pregnancy, randomity is categorically "total." It is all-or-nothing.
Randomity, by its very definition, indicates the absence of fixed aim or purpose. Synonyms include chance, stray, casual, fortuitous, accidental, aimless, haphazard. To suggest that randomity may be "partial," ie. that planning, intention, design, is involved, is to make it no longer randomity.
Where is your example that I made such a claim?
Read the thread, my posts are easy to spot.
I agree with this, and the rest of your post, except in the obeserved restraint of those who want to call Evolution a "fact." I'm OK with Theory... I'd even be OK with Postulate.
Nope. Not needed.
Just because cause and effect happens in our experience is no reason to suppose there has to be an ultimate cause outside of our experience.
No, as distinct from locally random. For example, a certain region in the genome is particularly vulnerable to insertional mutations. But within that region, the insertion point is random.
Even if I accept this, there's also no reason to suppose otherwise.
Do you agree?
It's not a straw man if there are people willing to make the claim, regardless of its existence... and plenty here have.
Indeed it is.
Opinions are fine, I suppose. All opinions, I'm sure you'll agree, are not of equal merit, however.
Opinions founded in observable fact are by every estimation, the best. As a biologist I have every reason to believe that life procedes from previous life. There is ample factual evidence to back that up.
Thermodynamically speaking things proceed from higher levels of order to lower, in the one-way direction from order to disorder. That too is observable fact, codified as a basic Law of Science.
Evidence of "speciation" proceding from an identified previous parental order is merely a derivative of that prior order, and cannot be equal to the parent as a matter of order. Implicit with this point then is that speciation is of a more random nature than is the parent, hence, by definition it is of a lower state of order than the parent.
In essence what you have proposed is a state of order in offspring which is potentially of a higher order than the parent. On the basis of order vs. disorder I happen to find your opinion to be ludicrous.
Got any facts to back up your ludicrous opinion?
O.K. This is purely pedantic quibbling, as I agree with your main point: that all scientific claims, whether "laws," "facts" or "theories," are provisional and subject to revision or abandonment, and that "laws" should not be considered to have some inherently higher rank of certitude than "theories," but at the same time I do think that "laws" and "theories" are different kinds of scientific claims.
The general difference is that laws are descriptive generalizations (claiming that some relevant category of facts will always conform to some particular pattern or formula) whereas theories are explanatory in nature (proposing some cause or mechanism to account for why some set of facts are as they are, rather than some other way they might have been.
To rephase that a bit, laws don't really explain anything, they just say "this is how things are," and, ideally, "here is a set of mathematical formulas that predict or model the behavior of systems like this." Theories, on the other hand, explain facts, and laws. (E.g. the kinetic theory of gases explains Boyles Law; the General Theory of Relativity explains, if somewhat incompletely, the Law of Gravity.)
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