Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's been a long time and no progress on moving my blog to it's new home.
I've had a series of unpleasant encounters with GVHD since late last year, and I'm only now getting my strength, stamina and concentration together enough to take on that sort of project again...
So perhaps soon.
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Hey Malcolm, thanks for your comment on my post about seeing Behe, Berlinsky, and Meyer speak. I actually disagree with what you say they are saying. You said that they are making the assertion that a designer is intervening in an otherwise unguided process. I think they are saying something much bigger - that the entire process has been guided very intentionally from the beginning, and at no point is it random or unguided.
ReplyDeleteI don't know where each of them stands personally, but it's possible some of them would say that the cell and other things were formed exactly as they are the first time they came into existence. Thus there is only evolution and change within species, not species changing into other species.
You also say it's up to them to support the assertion that they are making, which I think is the point of their books and speeches - they say the fossil record, cosmology, microbiology - all of these point to ID, and at that point the debate begins. Besides this, this is also the responsibility of the other side - since they too are making an assertion. Berlinsky asked - you are saying all of life has evolved - where is your proof? Berlinsky's point is that the severe lack of an evolutionary fossil record alone should make evolution at least dubious.
I absolutely agree with your last point - that you can't prove that X hasn't evolved, because with our current knowledge we just don't see it and so we can't say that for sure. To be logically consistent, though, you also have to say that it's logically untenable to say that X HAS evolved, because we also have no examples of evolution from one species to another that we can use the scientific method on. Both sides are using theories rather than testable science.
That's where I have issues with Dawkin's point as well, because he sets up a situation where science is proven and God is a philosophically unprovable idea. I agree that God is unprovable, but I would say that every other idea about the origin of life is also unprovable. At that realm we are dealing with philosophical theory, ALL of it is philosophical theory, all of it requires faith to believe.
Hi Kacie, I don't know if you'll see this but here's a quick response.
ReplyDeleteI don't know your background either, but I'm assuming it's not in the biological sciences.
You state "there is only evolution and change within species, not species changing into other species". and again we... have no examples of evolution from one species to another. This is simply false. Look up "observed speciation events" or even "ring species salamander" in google for some very interesting examples.
The observed events are of populations splitting into two separate non interbreeding (but very similar) populations - so we know that happens and often. We haven't been observing long enough to see much physical
divergence between these populations (that's why 'ring species' are so rare and valuable as examples. But the fossil record fills that gap. It shows us species changing over long periods of time, some dying out, and some new ones appearing. Think of biodiversity too - why are there 12 related species of zebra in southern Africa and none anywhere else for example.
These are all observed real facts. Evolutionary theory is our best and simplest explanation that ties these facts together.
The reason you and I are having this conversation is that certain people (almost exclusively evangelical christians from the USA)want to interpret the facts in a way that does not conflict with their faith. For more on the christian origins of ID research the Discovery Institute, and it's 'Wedge Document'
Behe Dembski et al. introduced ID into the scientific marketplace of ideas. Their work was examined and found to lack evidence, and more important any way to provide that evidence. There is simply no evidence that a designer has ever been involved in the evolutionary process and no experiment can be devised to prove the existence of such a designer. Therefore ID does not fall within the field of science
That is the scientific consensus: ID is a failed hypothesis, and that is why instead of publishing data and research in the peer-reviewed literature the ID camp are appealing to the general public. They know that most religious people in the USA want to believe them and will happily accept their stories because they do not know enough science to understand the problems with ID.
Your last point - that all theories about the origin of life (that's abiogenesis, not evolution by the way) are unprovable is probably true. After all it happened over 2 billion years ago, and the products were tiny and soft - unlikely to leave much evidence for us to find.
So for me it comes down to two possibilities: 1) Somehow, through processes that we can guess at and imagine, and partially reproduce a tiny self replicating molecule/entity/cell came into existence
or 2)Somehow through processes we cannot begin to imagine a supremely complex being with the power to create life, maintain itself for billions of years, and modify billions of life forms over those billions of years, all without leaving any trace of it's existence.
they are both extremely unlikely events, but one is far more unlikely than the other.
Malcolm