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It also brings to mind the point you often raise in these debates, namely the enormous difference between saying what a thing looks like versus what it "is."

LOL dearest sister in Christ! I was on the verge of mentioning that difference, but then realized I had already gone on at such length that it was time to give the reader a break.

But since you mention the issue, these are my thoughts about it.

Kant drew the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon. A phenomenon is something susceptible of sense perception. For instance, sight — what the eye registers, and the optic nerve and relevant brain functions process, is simply the pattern of light reflected by an object of perception. That's it. And of course, that reflection can only be of the surface properties of the object, which we call its appearance, or "what it looks like." But the underlying reality of which the phenomenon is the outward appearance is simply not something that can be discovered on the basis of sense perception, of direct observation. What Kant called the noumenon is the thing as it is in and for itself that remains forever concealed from sense perception.

Phenomenon v. noumenon is the basic distinction between what a thing appears to be, and what it actually is. The latter is not available to us via simple sense perception.

It is clear to me that Darwin's theory is more interested in what things "look like" than it is in what things actually are. If it was interested in the latter, it would have to take questions of origin — of the origin of Life — much more seriously than it does.

FWIW.

And yes, it is striking that C. S. Lewis and Robert Rosen "align very nicely" — one a professor of Mediaeval and Renaissance literature, a world-class literary artist, and a great Christian evangelist; and the other a mathematical genius and biological theorist whose religious attitude, if any, is unknown.

I guess that just goes to show the unity of Truth, even though the One Truth is mediated through different perspectives....

Thank you so much for your birthday wishes for my Mom! She is truly an amazing woman, spirited and strong!

And thank you for your kind words of encouragement and support, dearest sister in Christ!

It is clear to me that Darwin's theory is more interested in what things "look like" than it is in what things actually are......

If it was interested in the latter, it would have to take questions of origin — of the origin of Life — much more seriously than it does. ---------------------------------------------------------------

Boopy you've done it again.. you've "Booped" me..

That was BRILLIANT!.. you've got "know stuff" to make complicated matters Simple..

Which is why the physical sciences produce theories that are capable of mathematical expression. Mathematics is the universal language. All the great scientific theories can be expressed in terms of mathematical notation.
Except Darwin's theory. It seems irreducible to mathematical formulae.

Perhaps we just don't have the mathematics for it yet, or we do but nobody's successfully derived the formulae yet. It seems to me that if, as we were discussing before, evolution is a probabilistic phenomenon, we'd need the mathematical equivalent of fuzzy logic to reduce the theory to mathematical notation. I see in brief research that evolutionary algorithms are, in fact, used to create fuzzy logic system controllers, I guess by exploring what seems to be called the "truth value."

It is clear to me that Darwin's theory is more interested in what things "look like" than it is in what things actually are.

I realize you're talking about something deeper than simply something's outward appearance. But I still don't think that's really fair to say a theory that asserts that this

and these

share a common ancestor is only concerned with how things look.

betty boop: "It is clear to me that Darwin's theory is more interested in what things "look like" than it is in what things actually are.
If it was interested in the latter, it would have to take questions of origin — of the origin of Life — much more seriously than it does."

Once again, the definition of the word "science" is: natural explanations for natural processes.
So science itself is uninterested in the philosophical question of: "what is, is" except as that question bears on the scientifically valid question of "what works".