Posted on 07/08/2002 12:26:11 PM PDT by Khepera
Could it be the evolutionists who are being irrational?
About a year and a half ago, I gave a response to an article in the L. A. Times about a book called The Moral Animal--Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology by Robert Wright. This response resulted in my commentary called " Did Morals Evolve? " There are some interesting things in this book I want to comment on. Wright's argument is that it is possible to explain all of man's mental and moral development in terms of evolution, "survival of the fittest," and natural selection. One thing he acknowledges is essentially the same point of view held by one of the world's most famous evolutionists, Richard Dawkins. Dawkins makes the point in his watershed book, The Blind Watchmaker , that the world looks designed. He asserts it looks designed--but isn't. He believes natural selection can be invoked to account for all of the things that appear to be consciously design.
Robert Wright unabashedly makes the same point. He uses design language in his descriptions all of the time. He talks about nature wanting certain things and natural selection designing particular things, but then is careful at different points to add the disclaimer that this design is just a manner of speaking because Mother Nature doesn't actually design anything. Natural selection doesn't design anything. There is no mind behind this, no consciousness. It just looks that way. However, since it looks designed, he feels comfortable using design language to describe natural selection as a designer, which is no conscious designer at all.
I think his work might be more honest if he didn't use design language, but it's interesting that he is at least willing to acknowledge that nature does look designed.
Incidentally, I am one who believes that natural selection is a legitimate explanation for many things. I think we can see natural selection at work in the natural realm that does influence the morphological distinctives of populations. The shape of the body is ultimately going to be determined by the genetic makeup of the creature, but whether that phenotype gets passed from generation to generation will be determined by environmental factors--natural selection. And that will then begin to characterize larger groups of the organism.
Basically I believe in what is known technically as the Special Theory of Evolution, or micro -evolution, because it has been demonstrated without question to have occurred. We can observe it happening. This doesn't go against my Christianity or my conviction that God created the world. Darwinian evolution requires macro -evolution, or trans-species evolution.
Any design creationist of any ilk, whether old-earther or young-earther, can hold to this. For example, a population of mosquitoes can be almost entirely wiped out by DDT, except for those few who may be naturally and genetically resistant to that strain of DDT. Then they reproduce a whole strain of mosquitoes that are resistant to that strain of DDT. But this is unremarkable. When I hear these kinds of descriptions of minute changes and small variations within a species attributed to natural selection, I have no problem with that in itself.
The so-called scientific argument is sustained simply by a bald assertion that nature did it, and not by evidence that God could not have done it.
I do have another question regarding the assessment, or acknowledgment, that the world looks designed. If it looks designed, it could be equally explained by either the unconscious "design" of natural selection, as the author argues, or the conscious design of a Creator. If someone looks at the natural realm and observes that it looks designed but thinks that it can be accounted for by natural selection, then they are identifying empirical equivalency between two different explanations. Empirical equivalency means the observable data can be explained by two alternatives equally. In this case, the observation of design can be attributed to natural selection or conscious design. The evidence is equal for both. That's what it means to say that the world looks designed but natural selection can account for it. My question is, why opt for the evolutionary explanation if there are two different explanations that will equally do the job? When you have a question that needs resolution and two empirically equivalent solutions, you must look for some other information to adjudicate between the two. Is there something that can be said for one system over the other that would cause us to choose it as the paradigm which better reflects how the world came to be? What is the compelling evidence that would cause us to opt for a naturalistic explanation over some kind of theistic explanation? Frankly, I know of none. There is only a predisposition to look for a naturalistic explanation that leaves God out. If that is the case, then it needs to be acknowledged.
Why go for natural selection rather than for God? Because God is religion and natural selection is science. Science is seen as fact--and religion as fantasy. If we have a set of physical facts that can be accounted for by a theistic explanation, then you have to have some other information that may cause you to want to dismiss the theistic option. I'm asking "where is the evidence that makes the God option an intellectually untenable one, without bringing in a mere philosophic assumption (namely naturalism)?"
One might rightly ask, where is your evidence that God did it? I can give lots of it. I could give independent evidence that is unrelated to religious authority claims. I can give other evidence why it is reasonable to believe and would be intellectually and rationally compelling to believe that there is a conscious mind behind the universe. I could give cosmological and moral arguments that God is the best explanation for the existence and nature of the universe. Many of these rely on scientific evidence.
Given two options to explain the apparent design features of the universe, one seems to be a bald-faced authority claim -- the non-religious, so-called scientific one.
We have two options--one scientific and one religious--that equally explain the observation of a designed universe. The so-called scientific argument is sustained simply by a bald assertion that nature did it and not by evidence that God could not have done it. However, the design claim that I am making can be further substantiated by other evidence for the existence of God. When push comes to shove, if you are rational, it is more reasonable for you to adopt the conscious design explanation--the God claim. Most people are not going to do that because it is not scientific.
Why does that matter? Because science knows the answer. How do they know the answer? Because God doesn't exist. How do they know that? Because nature did everything. But how do you know that?
That is the question we are trying to ask and there are no rationally sustainable answers forthcoming.
You just believe in one of them (God) at once. That makes you so much better.
The CCCP broke up mainly because the gebeshniki who ran the place were able to get over to Marienplatze and that shopping mall in the center of Koeln and see ordinary Germans buying things which they, the masters of the commie system, could not own and the idea freaked them. Had that basis of comparison not been there, i.e. had the whole world gone communist in the 1930's which it easily could have, then Russia would be a barren waste today. The KGB types would have had no way of knowing that they were doing something wrong. If everybody was starving, they'd have simply figured "Such is man's lot in this life' and all gone over the cliff together.
Likewise, had one-world government been instituted directly aafter WW-II, we'd all still be driving 5000-lb. cars with tailfins. Did you ever drive one of those monstrosities?
. . . given that every one of those functions was useless at best and much more likely antifunctional every day of those 10,000 generations until the whole thing worked.
There is no "SHAZAM" Day. Any day you go back in your time machine, any day at all, you find integrated and fully functional creatures adapted to their environment. Any day at all. The population isn't growing toward some future goal. They're staying adapted in the here and now. Conditions change and the population changes with them, but they aren't planning ahead. They're just keeping up.
And that little 65% creature is going to be perfectly well adjusted and aapted in his world, right?
What you been smokin there, Reep?
This poor little creature is supposed to have somehow survived a thousand generation process during which it had neither functional arms, nor functional wings, during which it had enough flight feathers to look weird and be laughed at, but not enough to fly, a light enough bone structure to be kicked around on beaches, but not light enough to fly, and was generally an outcast, pariah, ugly duckling, and effortlessly free meal for every predator which ever saw it for 1000+ generations before it ever succeeded and flew.
An idea of how hard it would truly be for "proto-bird" (TM) to make it to flying-bird status can be gotten from the case of the escaped chicken.
Consider that man raises chickens in gigantic abundance, and that on many farms, these are not even caged. Consider the numbers of such chickens which must have escaped in all of recorded history; look in the sky overhead: where are all of their wild-living descendants??
Why are there no wild chickens in the skies above us???
A flying bird requires a baker's dozen highly specialized systems, including flight feathers, wings, a special light bone structure, specialized flow-through design hearts and lungs vastly more efficient than ours, specialized tails and balance parameters, and a number of other things. Now, you can imagine the difficulty involved for something like a dinosaur which did not have any of these things to evolve them all, but the feral chicken
In other words, if there's any chance whatsoever of a non-flying creature evolving into a flying bird, then surely, surely the feral chicken, close as it is, could RE-EVOLVE back into being a flying bird. They're only missing the tiniest fraction of whatever is involved.
They've got wings, tails, and flight feathers, and the whold nine yards. In their domestic state, they can fly albeit badly; they are entirely similar to what you might expect of an evolutionist's proto-bird, in the final stage of evolving into a flight-worthy condition.
According to evolutionist dogma, at least a few of these should very quickly finish evolving back into something like a normal flying bird, once having escaped, and then the progeny of those few should very quickly fill the skies.
But the sky holds no wild chickens. In real life, against real settings, real predators, real conditions, the imperfect flight features do not suffice to save them.
In real life, if you ever lose the tiniest part of some complex trait or capability, you will never get it back. In the real world, if you lack the tiniest part of some complex trait or capability, then, other than possibly via some genetic engineering process, you will never get it.
Thus we see that "proto-bird" (TM) not only couldn't make it the entire journey which he is supposed to have, he couldn't even make it the last yard if we spotted him the thousand miles minus the yard.
The basic question is: How in hell is some velociraptor supposed to make it the thousand miles, if history proves that a creature which amounts to the final stage of such a development cannot make it the final yard of such a process?
We've already got fossil animals all over the spectrum between bird and dinosaur already. What's your problem? Against the evidence it happened, what good does it do you to invent preposterous hurdles and send creatures of your imagination crashing into them?
This kind of thing. We have little velociraptor-like critters with feathers all over, including long maneuvering-vane feathers on their foreclaws. That's what I mean about easing into flight. Archaeopteryx has a skeleton not much removed from that same little critter--still with teeth, foreclaws, and a long, bony tail but with much better feathers. You don't have to be a stinking detective to put it together.
As for chickens not radiating into every conceivable ecological niche, it's a poorly adapted latecomer unless a particular niche is empty for some reason. That's why the fossil record shows long periods of stasis, punctuated by lots of adaptive radiation following every big die-off. That's when a lot of niches are empty
... which nobody reads. Millions have read Behe's work and to say that it has not been examined by people in the scientific community is absolute nonsense. Are you claiming that the articles against him are by morons whose words should not be accepted as scientifically sound??????
I'm saying it's not the same thing as a formal pre-publication review process.
Honest people.
Why is it a 'usual charge'? Because there are repeat offenders.
The guy does not even give the quote by Behe for comparions, that's how lame the charge is.
Huh? It's in the linked-to article:
Jerry Coyne, of the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, arrives at an unanticipated verdict: "We conclude--unexpectedly--that there is little evidence for the neo-Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the experimental evidence supporting it are weak." (p 29 darwin's black box)
Apparently I am one of those faint-hearted biologists who see the errors of Darwinism but cannot admit it. This was news to me... (Coyne speaking)
This is what Behe started with:
Although a few biologists have suggested an evolutionary role for mutations or large effect (Gould 1980; Maynard Smith 1983: Gottlieb, 1984; Turner, 1985), the neo-Darwinian view has largely triumphed, and the genetic basis of adaptation now receives little attention. Indeed, the question is considered so dead that few may know the evidence responsible for its demise. Here we review this evidence. We conclude--unexpectedly--that there is little evidence for the neo-Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the experimental evidence supporting it are weak, and there is no doubt that mutations of large effect are sometimes important in adaptation.
We hasten to add, however, that we are not "macromutationists" who believe that adaptations are nearly always based on major genes. The neo-Darwinian view could well be correct. It is almost certainly true, however, that some adaptations involve many genes of small effect and others involve major genes. The question we address is, How often does adaptation involve a major gene? We hope to encourage evolutionists to reexamine this neglected question and to provide the evidence to settle it.
Notice how Behe inserted a period. This is one of the reasons for the peer-review process.
Has Behe apologized and promised to clean this up in future printings?
Frankly, you seem to think that "Occam's Razor" is the brand name of the weapons used by the 9-11 terrorists.
Actually, it isn't any such thing -- it simply happens not to be true of the particular character created by Charles Schultz. There was no internal contradiction in, for example, Buzz Lightyear of Toy Story discovering that he was, in fact, a toy.
I have, typically over the sigline:
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Really, I could have sworn I'd read a claim of a dishonest quotation.. Where does Behe apologize for his unethical behavior? Or are you claiming that Coyne misquoted himeslf to make Behe look bad?
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