The Failure of the Argument from Design
by jeff g on January 25th, 2006As has been noted by some, the obstacles confronting intelligent design are not merely limited to scientific verifiability. In addition to the typical scientific objections to ID, which are myriad and persuasive, there are a number of philosophical issues which ID, as it is typically accepted, is simply unable to deal with. It has often been said that ID is not only terrible science (not science at all in fact) but it is ghastly theology as well. In this post I would like to make some of the less well known reasons for this explicit.
One of the main differences between intelligent design and Darwinian evolution is that while the latter is fully composed of what Aristotle would called ‘efficient causes,’ the former is principally composed of ‘teleological causes.’ In other words, ID’s central point is that the causes responsible for the biological world we now observe are goal or purpose driven while Darwinism maintains that entirely purposeless causes are fully sufficient to cover the appearances.
It is for this reason that ID is called ‘intellectualized creationism.’ The entire enterprise is centered on the ‘argument from design’ or the ‘teleological argument.’ It is my intention to provide an account of the principles involved in the argument from design, drawing upon William Paley’s “Natural Theology: Evidence of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearances of Nature,” and expose its serious short comings.
Paley’s points are as follows:
- We have the ability to recognize design when we see it. If on the beach we found a watch (he calls it a clock) next to a rock on the beach, we would easily be able to identify which of the two had been designed.
- Natural phenomena such as our eyes, thumbs and noses are more like clocks than rocks.
- Just as we are able to accurately infer the existence of a clock maker from the existence of a clock, we should also be able to infer the existence of an ‘eye-maker’ from the existence of eyes. While the maker of a clock need only be finite in nature, the designer of all these designed phenomena in nature must be infinitely wise and powerful.
- Thus the only adequate source of such designed features as our noses being pointed down so that we wouldn’t drown from rain is God.
And now for the problems with such reasoning. Before continuing I would like to acknowledge that the ID movement does not insist that the ‘designer’ be infinite in anything, only that he be ‘intelligent’ in some form. However, this has not prevented most who adopt ID from accepting the infinite nature of the designer regardless. While most of these criticisms will apply to a finite designer as well, many will only apply to an infinite one. Like I said, it is the theological use of ID which I am principally concerned with.
- The argument from designer violates Ockham’s razor, the principle of parsimony. It engages in serious explanatory overkill. While it may seem more natural to posit a designer, thanks to modern evolutionary theory, we really don’t need to. Without the principle of parsimony, no explanation which covers the appearances is any better than any other which also does. Jesse Prinz’s “theory” that birds are robots, which melt when they burn, were created by mad scientists from another planet and fly because they hang from ultra thin threads connected to spaceships that orbit the earth is just as good as the theory that they are animals which descended from dinosaurs that do not gestate their young. Without parsimony, these two theories are equally good. This argues strongly against (3).
- Design need not come from above. In fact, it should not. If design can only be bestowed by an more-designed-Designer then we will have to explain how that more-designed-Designer got to be so designed in terms of an even-more-designed-Designer and so on ad infinitum. Thus, our explanation is heading in the wrong direction. This also argues against (3).
- The entire argument depends upon the ability to infer certain characteristics about a cause from its effects. Such reasoning is incredibly unreliable. Are we supposed to be able to infer the properties of salt by the taste which is gives French fries? Such reasoning would never in a million years allow us to conclude that salt is composed of the metal sodium and the poisonous gas, chlorine. Again, this goes against (3).
- Closely related, how in the world can anybody reasonably infer from finite effects that the cause must have been infinite? This is not just a case of going beyond what is necessary, but is in fact a case of going against reason to establish a desired conclusion. Hume put it best in his “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion” where he asks if the designer could not have been stupid, or wicked, or a committee or simply vastly-but-not-infinitely powerful. All of these possibilities are actually MORE reasonable given the appearances which must be accounted for than is the all-wise, all-loving conclusion. This is a brutal blow against (4).
- The argument from design engages is HIGHLY biased data selection. Sure, when flowers are blooming and suns are setting its easy to be caught up in the awe of it all. But what about when tsunamis and hurricanes hit? What about famine and disease? What about birth defects? What about the obvious injustice of the wicked prospering while the righteous dwindle in utter poverty? What about all the horrible our simply stupid cases of design we observe in the biological world? If these imply a Designer then it must be a relatively stupid or malevolent one. This works strongly against (3). (It should be also kept in mind that we simply can’t say “well, we simply don’t know about these cases” because if such is the case, then we really don’t know about any of the cases and we shouldn’t be using the argument from design at all.)
- The problem is that most IDers believe that EVERYTHING, not just some things, shows design. God, sorry, the Designer designed everything including the rocks. This undermines (1).
- Issue is not simply one of design vs. non-design. Instead, follow Michael Ruse, the issue would be better phrased as an issue of chaos vs. complexity vs. design. It is not so easy to distinguish chaos from complexity or complexity from design as it is chaos from design and Paley does us a great disservice by ignoring this point. This also works against (1).
- Consequently, thumbs, while they may resemble clocks more than rocks, do not really resemble either very well. Nobody has ever seen a rock come into existence, loosely speaking. Lots of people have seen how clocks come into existence, namely by a clock-maker. Lots of people have also seen how thumbs, eyes and noses come into existence, namely by the birth of an organism. This final example shows how biological entities cannot be considered to be rocks or clocks, not by a long shot. This seriously undermines (2).
- The argument from design attempts to show that since biological phenomena are not chaos then they must be design, but such is not the case. Biological phenomena, as we have seen, do not suitably fall into the same categories as rocks or designed artifacts. Instead they are something different from both categories and Darwin proposed what is so far the only suitable mechanism for this third category “complexity.” Inheritance of information by birth simply cannot be equated with design, nor does it imply it at all. This too speaks against (2).
- Darwinian evolution (which is uncontroversially true to at least some extent) suggests that the equivalent of upside-down happens all the time. The appearances are equally compatible with the proposition that some individuals, in the beginning, were created with upside-down noses, but those people all drown some time in the past, leaves us “right-side-upers” to marvel at the benevolence of the creator. This, however, tells us more about us than the creator. It cannot be emphasized enough that this is uncontroversially true to some extent. (3) is again under attack.
- Finally, and a little off topic, the argument from design to the existence of God, rather than a mere designer, simply does not work. Just because some entity designed this world and even us is no reason whatsoever to suppose that this Designer is deserving or desiring of worship. Of course this argument against (4) only goes to show the underlying motives which trump the inadequate reason involved in ID reasoning.
For all of these reasons, which are in addition to the typical scientific objections, perhaps it is time we all got off the ID train.
The problem I have with the above is that there is that assumption I sense that efficient causality is all there is. It seems to me that one can object to ID without necessarily rejecting final causality.
Posted by clark
Your last line is a nice retort to Aaron Cox’s “Get of the Speculation Train”!
Did you really go back and read the original Paley? If so, that’s pretty cool.
Some combination of points 7, 8, and 9 are quite compelling. We can definitely tell the difference between three major kinds of things, both in their instrinsic properties and how they come into being: inorganic natural things, organic natural things, and man-made artificial things.
I think it’s interesting that traditional Mormonism took seriously the “organic natural things” category that Paley left out, in its insistence on an eternal regression of procreation of various kinds of plants and animals. When it comes to organisms, the argument from design doesn’t really have a natural place in Mormonism.
Posted by Christian Y. Cardall
Did that “speculation train” story happen at all? Was it someone else you knew who did it?
No, no “expansion theory” at work in the Speculation Train story. It was 100% unadulterated “inspired fiction” all the way.
Posted by Christian Y. Cardall
Jeffrey, I’m totally enjoying your input on GeoffB’s M* DNA thread. I’m adding you to my blogroll and look forward to reading your site.
Just so you know Watt, my actual site is “Issues in Mormon Doctrine ”. This site is the group blog which I contribute to every now and then.
Posted by Jeffrey Giliam
Jerry from M*,
You seem like a very nice guy and I’m quite impressed with your humility in you last comment. Here are some of the problems which I see in your understanding of evolution:
For starters, let me recommend some books which will probably help you out a bit. “Evolution in Four Dimensions” is great book which is a great counter to Dawkins’ exaggerated gene-centrism. “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” is a good one as well in terms of explaining the non-purposive nature of evolution, especially in the first five chapters.
Now as for the problems:
Evolution says absolutely nothing about the creation of the earth or the beginning of life. Nothing at all.
Natural selection is not conscious or goal-directed in any way whatsoever. What survives and has offspring is simply what happens to survive and have offspring. This is why evolution produced things other than cells, simply because it could and did; there is no other reason.
Best is defined as that which survives and reproduces more than others. That’s it. Something doesn’t reproduce more because its better, but rather it is better because it reproduces more.
Natural selection is an algorithmic process. According to Darwin, if there is 1) replication, 2) heritable variation and 3) a struggle for survival, evolution will happen. That’s it. Thus random mutations create vast amounts of variety within a population, and when the struggle for survival is on, which it almost always is due to geometric rate of increase in a population, which ever blind variations happen to survive and reproduce better simply will.
Parsimony plays absolutely no part at all in what evolution does. Whatever can happen, usually will happen and there is no purposive reason behind it. Thus there is no “strategy” behind choosing one feeding pattern rather than many because there is no strategy involved at all. If something is not impeded from happening by something or another, it simply will happen.
Now as to your problems with science:
You have amounted absolutely zero evidence in favor of your model. Evidence against evolution, if it can even be considered such, does not count as affirmative evidence for another theory.
Furthermore, you theories posititng the existence of undetected and unnecessary agents violates Ockhams’ razon just as much as anything ever has. There is simply no independent reason, as opposed to justification, for believing that there were any agents which helped the creative process along.
While science may be a worldview, I think you have been reading too much Dawkins if you think it is actually a religion of any kind. Science is simply a way of approaching the world, and while some people (such as Dawkins possibly does) can be religious in their devotion to it, there is simply no reason to actually call it a religion. There are no supernatural agents. No worship. No ritual. None of the defining characteristics of religion.
Jeff,
I do not see anything in what you have said that contradicts my basic understanding of evolution, namely that there is replication with variation (Darwin called it ‘descent with modification’ ) and subsequent survival of the fittest. These are what Darwin called ‘natural laws’ which result in the vast diversity we see in nature. My problem, having a degree in science and 40 years of experience in engineering, is that I know too much about the details of a creative process. I agree with you that if something can happen, it eventually will, but if something is against the physical laws that govern our universe, they cannot and will not ever happen.
And one of those natural laws is that survivability requires intelligent effort. If we disregard for a moment the element of ’spirit’, a DNA molecule is simply a very complex chemical software. One of the things you learn in science is that coded instructions having to do with functionality (or survivability) never happen randomly. It always takes hard mental labor to get something to function and survive. It is just a law of the universe. Yet, evolutionists want us to believe that complex software can randomly be rendered more survivable. Eighty years of laboratory work with the genes of the fruit fly by intelligent beings have yet to produce a more survivable fruit fly. In fact, the opposite has happened. All of their mutant Drosophila have less survivability than the originals. What evolution propagates is something that simply cannot happen. What for example, would be your response to my CD-ROM example? Even with an intelligent being firing random burns at the millions and millions of lands and pits on a music CD, one could never, never make more complex, harmonious and enduring music. You simply quickly degrade the music that is already on the CD. This process is confirmed by the failure of scientists ever to have seen a beneficial random mutation of an organic substance. The mutations we observe cause cancer and all kinds of other reductions in survivability. How familiar are you with the details of the DNA coding mechanism and its inordinate complexity? If you were really conversant with the details of this chemical code, you would know that no randomness could ever increase its survivability. As for evidences of intelligent design, have you gone to Google Images and viewed the flagellum, an obviously human designed electric motor, exactly like the ones we design today, with a rotor and a stator, bushings and universal joints, etc., driving a propeller as the motive force of a bacterium? There thousands and thousands of these kinds of evidences that can be observed in nature. In fact, as you know, the scriptures say that all of natures cries that there is a creator. How one could observe the complexity of our world and ever conceive that all of our high technology and appurtenances could have ever happened by some random process is far beyond me. Yet, this is the kind of irrationality that leads to one believing that descent with modification could ever increase survivability. The ability to believe in that kind of philosophy is self-evidently metaphysical. It has no rationality to it. It is a spiritual phenomenon, to be able to believe in something happening such as evolution which is out of harmony with every creative process that we have ever observed in our world, including the millions of failed evolutionary experiments in the laboratory by molecular biologists and the thousands of years of selective breeding which have produced great varieties of dogs for instance, but never a cat or something other species. You are living in a fantasy world, Jeff, a world with a belief in a purposeless creative process - no purpose other than survivability and the ability to reproduce. What kind of dark, depressing, hopeless philosophy is that? This universe has a purpose and that is our happiness and progress. And there is no happiness and progress with out purposeful, intelligent effort.
Jerry,
I every point I mentioned contradicted something which you said in your comments.
Additionally, instead of addressing the points which I raise, you simply resolve to merely reasserting what you have already said by appealing to laws which you are simply making up (and turn out to be wrong).
I have said absolutely nothing about scripture, but have stuck to evolution, therefore most everything you have said is utterly beside the point.
Furthermore, you fear of “purposelessness” is not an argument but simply an expression of preference. Such carries no weight in debate. You statement that there is no happiness or progress with purposive intelligent effort is, of course, flat out wrong.
Seriously, read Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.
Jeff,
Let’s stick with the mechanism of evolution for a while. Am I right in attributing that evolutionists believe that displacing, eliminating, or replacing one or more of the nucleic acids that comprise the two base pairs of a coded instruction in a DNA molecule by some kind of mutation or replication error can improve the survivability of an organism or that when enhanced by millions of subsequent, complementary variations could do so? If my understanding of this evolutionary concept is flawed, please provide me with the detailed process that actually results in an increase in survivability of an organism.
Thanks
Jeff,
Incidentally, you are no doubt aware that Francis Crick, one the two biologists that discovered the nature of the DNA molecule rejects the evolutionary concept of the enhancement survivability by mutations. He said that in view of the incomprehensible complexity of the DNA coding process, there is no probability of evolution occurring. Fred Hoyle, Copley Gold Medal award winner of the Royal Society of London agrees and provides the probability calculations that demonstrate the impossibility of evolution. So, please in a precisely scientific, detailed way indicate to me how you perceive survivability being enhanced by some kind of random action on the DNA software. Apparently you understand DNA better than Crick did.
See, here is where you are going wrong, in your use of the word “better.” You also seem overly commited to gene-centrism which is understandable since your reading has been focused on Dawkins. I would also suggest that you do not fully grasp the population thinking which is necessary.
First of all, design cannot be totally reduced to the DNA sequence. Fitness is a function of genetic, epigenetic, behavioral and in our case symbolic inheritance. While I do find this to be fascinating, I don’t think that it is really where you are going wrong so I won’t focus on it too much. I only mention it to suggest that your over-emphasis on DNA sequences is a little misplaced.
As to population thinking, this field derives most of its content from game theory. Populations evolve, not individuals. It is important that we do not focus too much on an individual’s lineage, for it is the population which really concerns us.
Within a population, there is, due exclusively to random mutations and the like, a vast amount of actual or potential variation. It is from this variation which is already in the population that selection operates, not on an individual mutation which might “make it better.”
Those variations which promote more suvival and reproduction by its hosts will spread in the population while those variations which are not so good will over stretches of time be weeded out. There is no objective “better”, only better than the others in the population or niche.
BTW, Fred Hoyle’s views on evolution were shallow to say the least. It’s quite clear that he had very little clue what he was talking about, especially when he thought “survival of the fittest” was a mere tautology. Strictly speaking it is, but that is only because natural selection is not survival of the fittest. The “fittest” are simply defined as those who survive, and just as in any definition it is tautological in nature.
You will admit, however, that the comparison of biology to watches, cd-roms and the like is misplaced right? I think that the reasoning in the post for this thread thoroughly demolishes any such comparison.
Jeff,
I only used the word survivability in the last two posts, not better. Now, it should become evident to any objective reviewer of our conversation that you are resorting to mystereious, fuzzy explanations that no one can understand. Let’s not get too detailed, because the absurdity of increased survivability through random mutations becomes obvious when you get into the details. Now, I am asked not to get too involved in the details of the genes because it is ‘populations’, etc., gene drift, geographical separation, et. al that evolutionists use to avoid the a really detailed scientific explanation of evolution.
But let’s for a moment move to pre-programmed instructions within genes that possess variations that can be elicited by changing environmental conditions or selective breeding, and talk about genetic evidences of for evolution. Please give me some examples of speciation from selective breeding or even from manipulation of genes by humans such as those millions of manipulations of the genes of the Drosophila over the last 80 years.
Or give me some examples of how legs growing out the head of fruit fly or miniature wings have been demonstrated to increase the survivability of the mutated flies. These were human induced mutations, not even random, and no increase in survivability or even minimal survivability has been achieved. Left alone the mutated fruit flies return to their original form.
Also, please give me a direct answer to my highly scientific question about the process of evolution. You say I should not be too concerned with the genes. I thought the genes were the instructions for the survival of organisms. Is there some other set of instructions that I need to be concerned with? You want to avoid the harsh reality that random action or even human manipulations have no chance of increasing the survival ability of an organism. And yes, there is validity in comparing random actions upon a coded CD-ROM and their deleterious effects with those upon DNA codes. Both are coded carriers of intelligent instructions. There is no way to get any increased functionality out of them with randomness. It is indeed so unrealistic and irrational that evolution needs billions of years of mysterious action within the coded instructions for life. The deception is that given enough time even things that are impossible can and will happen. If you wait a million years, you are not ever going to see a rock fall upwards. And if you wait a billion years you are not ever going to see randomness enhance the survivability of an organism. Mutations always destroy complexity and order. This truth is so evident that there has to been a spiritual influence involved for one to believe it.
In closing, I am once again asking you to address my question directly in comment 10. I am sure you can visualize the genetic coding structure in the DNA helix. It is well defined both graphically, as well as quantitatively. Do evolutionists indeed believe that either displacing, eliminating, or replacing discreet nucleic acids by some kind of mutation or replication error can improve the survivability of an organism? And given the possibility that some kind of potentially beneficial variation might occur, once in a million mutations, what are the odds that that initial potentially beneficial variation could be foll wed by the other ten million sequentially beneficial variations that would be required to convert the fin of a fish, for example, into a leg for walking (re, the newest evolutionary hoax that is being perpetrated with the so-called missing link between fish and mammals).
Jeff,
Here is the new name for evolution: Unintelligent Design - its UD vs. ID
Jerry,
For a taste of the answer to your question about changes in DNA, see here. You might want to read the book referenced therein, too.
You’ve persuaded me to post some additional information–watch for the post soon.
Jerry,
Every generation of most viruses and bacteria undergo genetic mutations that increase their ability to survive. The reason it has been so difficult to generate an effective vaccine against the HIV virus is its incredible mutation rate. This is just a simple example of the population-based genetic changes that accomplish evolution every second.
Jerry,
before taking on your comment which actually had substance, I should note that the evolutionists have already labeled ID as Unintelligent design a long time ago. This is for the reason that the “design” which is in nature, if it was if fact done by a purposive agent must have been an idiot, because these systems just aren’t designed very well. The designer simply missed some REALLY obvious strategies which would have made for better designs. Saying that God let people do it rather than Himself misses the point, for any idiot could have seen to do somethings better, especially if these designers were actually qualified to create organisms at all.
DANG IT!!
I just had a pretty long response to Jerry and accidently deleted it. Oh well, here is the short version:
Check this out:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/102/suppl_1/6522
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
Also check out this thread:
http://www.bloggernacle.org/?p=342
I should also add “speciation events” to the list of things you seem to misunderstand about evolution. Speciation in nature can only be identitified in hind sight, sometimes distant hind sight and in a somewhat arbitrary nature. This is due to the non-essential nature of species.
If you really read the post then you would note that I do acknowledge that both cd-roms and life both demonstrate organized complexity. HOWEVER, despite these similarities, which are actually a little strained, the differences which exist between these two things are more than enough to demonstrate the bankruptcy of the analogy.
I also already mentioned three other forms of inheritence in addition to genetic: epigenetic, behavioral and in our case symbolic. All this comes from the somwhat new development of evo-devo (evolution-development).
That book which I recommended to you also attempts to show how mutation and change, as seen from a non-gene-centrists view, is actually quite non-random in nature. This is not to say that there are designers at work here, as you will see if you ever read the book. Instead the blind forces of evolution have evolved a manner in which to control certain aspects of the mutation process. It’s actually quite fascinating, though I’m not sure how wide a scope these phenomena actually apply to.
Now as to your final question, my answer should be quite obvious by now. Not all mutation is bad. Not all variation is bad. That is all that is needed, being not bad, to into a population. Once it is in a population , the odds of finding a variation which is actually beneficial is quite favorable, indeed, it is actually probable. So to answer you question: Yes, of course it can. Of course I should still point out that your question still demonstrates a mis-understanding of being beneficial (which is your way of smuggling in “better” under a different guise). Benefiical simply means that they are better at surviving and reproducing than other within the population which do not have the varaition and thus over time those who do not have the variation will gradually be weeded out altogether.
I know that you think I am avoiding your questions, but I am instead pointing out that your questions are simply the wrong ones, and it is this mistake on your part which is leading to your misunderstanding of evolution altogether.
I can’t recommend those two books I suggested for you enough.
Darwinism is a Religion, and Nature is Its God
According to the theory of organic evolution, variation in an organism is caused by a random mutations or replication errors of the DNA code that are heritable and passed on to the organism’s posterity. In subsequent generations of that organism, those that develop potentially favorable variations are, while in the early stages of evolution of the new feature are not more likely to survive to reproduce again, there is fortunately ‘natural selection’ to lean upon until the favorable variation begins to pull its weight and improve the survivability of the evolved organism. This is where the God of nature, commonly called Mother Nature intervenes.
Since variations are extremely rare and usually damaging to the organism’s survivability, an eventual survivability enhancement takes an extremely long period of time to develop. Such a variation might end up being a new digit or an eye. Since it is entirely unrealistic to believe that something such as inordinately complex as a digit or an eye could leap into existence suddenly, and that millions of sequentially beneficial variations would have to occur to create a digit or an eye, there needs be a recognition and selection of those organisms with a potential survivability enhancement to survive until the variation has accumulated enough maturity to begin to begin to contribute to the organism’s struggle for survival. Such a variation in the case of a new digit (such as a thumb) might be just a tiny bump and the wrist bone. Since the tiny bump cannot yet contribute to survivability there has to be recognition by the ‘selector’ in natural selection that something potentially useful to the organism’s survivability has begun, even if ever so minutely, to develop.
Here is where evolution’s God takes over. She is Mother Nature. Mother Nature has the omniscience and can recognize potential survivability variations in organisms. She wisely selects those that have those variations that after millions of fortuitously sequential mutations will finally render the emerging new feature fully functional in helping the organism survive. Once the new, advantageous feature is fully developed Mother Nature does not have to intervene in preserving those organisms that have what initially was only the potential for greater survivability. But she does have to be on the lookout for other potential variations that might someday become useful in surviving, so that she can select those for survival above those that have remained the same.
Mother Nature also must play the role of recognizing that a new feature such as an eye must have highly advanced new technology built into the brain for processing images that the fully developed eye can now detect. Working to together, it and the new circuitry and computers needed for the image processing, the new feature will be result in a much greater survivability of the organism than it originally had. So, Mother Nature exercises her omniscience and ‘coevolves’ the needed new circuitry, which also has no use in the beginning. Fortunately Mother Nature, in her wisdom, induces the needed variations in the organism at about the same time as the initial parts of the eye began to emerge that will complement the other needed components’ development. Mother Nature coordinates these activities so that they arrive at maturity about the same time. Once everything is in place, the organism, with these great new features is on its own for awhile until Mother Nature recognizes that it has experienced a mutation that might lead again to another new feature for survival, upon which she again intervenes to preserve the organism over the ones with simply a new digit or eye in its survival until the helpfulness of the emerging new feature kicks in. After the new feature is functioning and the organism is now watching its former peers die out due to their lack of the new feature while it survives and deliberately overpopulates so that it can have a better chance of seeing variations in its posterity that might lead to development of an entirely new species, Mother Nature can back off for a while.
What makes Mother Nature so wonderful and desirable is that she has only one goal, and that is that things continue on forever, evolving, dieing, evolving, and dieing. She wants every thing and every one to have a period, even if brief, to experience the joy of life. She wants them to be free, and that is what they love most. She has no plan of salvation for them because there is nothing after life. She has no moral code for them, because they do not have souls or spirits and do not need an atonement. There are no universal truths or laws that they can violate or break. Survival of the favored races is all that matters. They are free to engage in any kind of behavior that will improve their and their posterity’s survivability. She is a wonderful God. She requires no one to pray to her or to bow down before her. She does not generate any revealed information about the creation or about the purpose of life, because there is no purpose. So there is not the bother of studying her commandments, attending church or anything like unto that. She is a god of freedom, and that is what those that worship her love most.
Special Relativity is a Religion and the speed of light is its God.
Does this make any sense at all? Of course one actually could argue that Einstein, following Spinoza, actually did believe in a God very close to it, but does that somehow count against Special Relativity? Of course not.
Here are some of the points where I am either quite uncomfortable with your speculations, or flat out disagree (I should mention that it is difficult to see what you meant in many of the passages due to typos and the like. I’m the last person who gets to cast stones for typos, so if I misunderstand you, I apologize.):
1. “those that develop potentially favorable variations are, while in the early stages of evolution of the new feature are not more likely to survive to reproduce again”
2. “there is fortunately ‘natural selection’ to lean upon until the favorable variation begins to pull its weight and improve the survivability of the evolved organism”
3. “Since variations are extremely rare and usually damaging to the organism’s survivability”
4. “it is entirely unrealistic to believe … that millions of sequentially beneficial variations would have to occur to create a digit or an eye”
5. “there needs be a recognition and selection of those organisms with a potential survivability enhancement to survive until the variation has accumulated enough maturity to begin to begin to contribute to the organism’s struggle for survival”
6. “Such a variation in the case of a new digit (such as a thumb) might be just a tiny bump and the wrist bone.”
7. “Mother Nature has the omniscience and can recognize potential survivability variations in organisms. She wisely selects those that have those variations that after millions of fortuitously sequential mutations will finally render the emerging new feature fully functional in helping the organism survive.”
8. “a new feature such as an eye must have highly advanced new technology built into the brain for processing images that the fully developed eye can now detect.”
9. “Mother Nature … has only one goal, and that is that things continue on forever, evolving, dieing, evolving, and dieing. She wants every thing and every one to have a period, even if brief, to experience the joy of life.”
Having labeled the points which I wish to briefly address, I should confess that I have no clue what the purpose of the post is. Are you trying to make fun of Darwinists or are you trying to equate Mother Nature with the God which you believe in? Sometimes I think its one, while other times I think it is the other.
1. There is no such thing as something being recognized as “potential” until a conscious being walks on the scene to interpret an event as such. Of course some God could see things as being potentially one way or another, but brute nature simple follows course without any foresight whatsoever. A variation doesn’t have to be better to survive, but mere not-worse.
2. Natural selection IS the organism’s survivability and reproduction. The two are one and the same. It is logically impossible for natural selection to help out an organism while it genetic fitness isn’t all that high. It’s logically impossible, that is, unless one either completely misunderstands what natural selection is or is working with a definition which is totally unrecognized by anybody else.
3. Variation happens ALL THE TIME and is the rule rather than the exception. This is because there are two forms of variation: recombination by way of sexual reproduction and mutation. The former happens A LOT and is what is largely responsible for maintaining a large amount of variation in a population (be it phenotypically actual, or recessively potential). Mutation, it should be noted, while not being all that common, is not terrible rare either. Furthermore, mutation isn’t necessarily completely random both as to occasion as well as genotypic location.
4. First, who says that millions of changes must happen for a new digit to appear? Second, it is entirely realistic to believe that such a thing happens. The evolution of eyes has been modeled in some detail, and the “sequential steps” flow quite naturally one after the other. This is why the eye has independently evolved in literally dozens of independent genetic lines, all with more or less the same “design.”
5. This again manifests confusion as to what natural selection is. Nature doesn’t “recognize” anything, let alone view something as being “potentially beneficial” in any way. Whatever survives IS what is selected by very definition.
6. No, it doesn’t. The changes which evolution works with are RELATIVELY small and gradual, but not necessarily on the phenotypic level. Variation works at the genotypic level, and small changes at that level can create rather large or sudden changes at the phenotypic level. A very small change can cause a digit to be lost and just as small a change can cause an extra digit to be added. There don’t have to be any nubs or bumps which must be selected for over lots of generations.
7. Mother nature is not omniscient, but is rather completely ignorant on every level. Any talk to the contrary is almost certainly metaphorical in nature. To say that nature wisely selects certain species is exactly the same as saying that she wisely makes all objects fall toward the earth. There is nothing wise about it, only brute process, which we as conscious beings may interpret as being good, bad, wise, intelligent, stupid, etc.
8. No, it doesn’t. There is really nothing else to say in response to this, but I will go further anyways. You see to be thinking of all eyes in terms of our eyes plus or minus something. This is completely backwards. Yes, over the course of billions of years of utter contingency, our visual system has developed into a system of great complexity, but this says nothing at all about visual systems in general. Furthermore, you are smuggling in the word “technology” in an attempt to bring in the watch maker analogy. The truth is that the eye is perhaps the best example of a disanalogy between biological design and technological design, for only the most blundering idiot would foresightfully design a visual system as ours is. Paley’s use of the eye was about as good as his use of the fact that our noses point down rather than up.
9. Nature has no goals or beliefs, but this is not to say that it has not been able to create beings with goals and beliefs.
People say that cleanliness is next to godliness. I don’t know what god they are refering to, but it certainly can’t be Mother Nature. Although Mother Nature preserves desirable features that help to make life easier for her varied creatures, she isn’t particularly thorough about cleaning up after herself when the features are no longer needed. Thus we have assorted anatomical and genetic pieces of yesterday hanging around. She’s got a fiesty side to her too–she likes to see things duke it out. That’s why she’s made infectious diseases to infect other life forms, given the hosts defenses against the diseases, and then given the diseases defenses against the host defenses. It isn’t tidy, but it’s interesting.
Mother Nature offers no excuses for the clutter–it’s just the way she works. On the other hand, self-appointed spokespersons for her competitor, Father Designer, well–most of what they offer are excuses.
Jeff,
In any ’selection’ process a decision has to be made by some kind of intelligence. There has to be more than one option for a selection to be made. The process of selection is the evaluation of options and the conscious selection of one or more of those options by somekind of intelligence. By definition there must be intelligence involved in any kind of decision making or selection process. So, ‘natural selection’ is a misnomer, I presume because no one is doing any selecting. Whatever happens just happens. Nature has nothing to do with it. There is no ‘natural selection’. Is that right?
As you know, a ‘gene’ is a string of protiens containing instructions for an organism to function. These protiens are ordered by base pairs of nucleitides in the DNA molecule. A mutation does not create a gene. A mutation by definition either deletes or replaces one of the four nucleitides in the quarternary code of the chromosome DNA chain. Human gene splicers in a laboratory can and do insert and delete genes. These are not mutations. They are gene manipulation by intelligent beings. A mutation is caused by a particle from a radioactive substance, a cosmic source, or some other source of particles. These particles are not genes. They can only modify genes by acting upon the nucleic acids. I am aware of Stephen Gould’s puctuated equilibrium theory where pure magic causes a completely new species to leap into existence. Gould developed this theory because fossil evidence does not reveal gradual evolution but rather, as in the ‘Cambrian Explosion’ sudden introduction of species, fully developed. His theory is also called the ‘Hopeful Monster Theory’. Apparently you believe in a form of his theory in that you believe that new features can leap into existence rather suddenly, like the time worn example of an airplane leaping into existence as a result of a windstorm sweeping through a junkyard.
The bottom line is that the concept of ‘natural selection’ is a tautology that you can never pin down. When I hold evolutionists to the details they run like a scared jack rabbit and want to retreat to gene pools, genetic drift, etc. Evolution does not hold up under scrutiny of the details. You have to depend upon fuzzy ideas and indefinable phenomena such as ‘natural selection’ in which apparently no selecting is being done since no intelligence is involved.
In your perception, if a variation occurred in an organism that is nuetral as to the enhancement of the organism’s survivability, the only reason the organism with this variation ends up outsurviving one without it, is simply an accident, since, the variation did not contribute to its enhanced survivability. Now the variation is added upon, accidently outsurvives those without it, and subsequently is added upon again and again, always accidently surviving (since there is not selecting going on yet), until at some point the cumulative variations result in a new feature that enhances the survivability of that organism. Even though there are still lots of the same kind of organisms still surviving in the same environment without the new feature, one has to wonder why nature selected the one with the new feature. You say there is no intelligence involved in the process and no selection occurred, only what happened happened. Wouldn’t the process better be called mutations and accidently survival? There is no selection process, no ‘natural selection’, things just happen to happen. And still, there are all kinds of similar organisms surviving just fine without the new features. Take quails for example, some have top notches, some don’t. They both survive equally well. Take whales for example, some have teeth, some don’t. They both survive just fine. Take the millions of life forms in the ocean. They all survive with an almost infinite variety of feeding, hunting, and defence mechanisms. They are all just mutational accidents. Remove ‘natural selection’ from the equation because no ’selecting’ ever occurred. Things just happen. Why even try to explain it. Natural selection does not exist because there is no consciosness in nature and no decision making, selecting one organism over another. Any time I get evolutionists down to the details, they always retreat to the ‘you just don’t understand evolution or natural selection’. I had the advantage of being trained in the hard disciplines of science, thermdynamics, physics, metallergy, stress and strain, etc. We couldn’t build an get things to work with fuzzy concepts. Evolutionists drift away into a fantacy land where even things that are impossible happen. How do we know they happen - they exist, so they must have sprung into existence inspite of the impossibility of it. This is Dawkins fuzzy logic. He says the immprobability of life and evolution is infinite, but still it happened. How do we know? Because we are here. That proves the impossible happened. Never in a lifetime could Dawkins or those of his ilk ever concieve a Creator. That is not an option with them. Irrationality is central to their thinking. The impossible happens. We know because we see the evidence all around us. There was no reason or purpose, they just happened. This is not science, but religion, athiestic religion. It is a monumental hoax.
Jeff,
According to you evolution is variation and accidental selection. But the word selection doesn’t fit anymore because nothing was selected, it just happened to survive. So, to be perfectly accurate, we should call it evolutoin by ‘variation and accidental survival ehancement’ We need to get the concept of selection completely out of it, since ’selection’ implies a conscious decision.
With sixty years now, of a highly exclusionary forum, namely the shcools from K-12, all college life and earth sciences, the total dedication of the media, why do you think that evolution is still so misunderstood? With only the two fundamental premises ‘variation’ and ‘natural selection’, shouldn’t everyone be able to understand it rather easily, especial after a lifetime of brainwashing?
Maybe if we could explain the process clearly and name it accurately people could begin to understand. I think ‘variation and accidental survival enhancement’ is a big leap, don’t you? We simply must get the consciousness concept of ’selection’ out of it.
Jerry,
Natural selection is a metaphor that Darwin used to compare what happens in nature with what humans do when breeding animals, ie. artificial selection. If you find it a stumblingblock to understanding, then all that brainwashing apprarently isn’t working because “intention” is usually one of the first misconceptions addressed when introducing evolution.
Jerry, your comments again make me wonder what all those books on evolution were that you read. Dawkins has answered most all of your questions, so if you did indeed read him you did not understand him. I will use the same approach:
1a “In any ’selection’ process a decision has to be made by some kind of intelligence.”
2a “As you know, a ‘gene’ is a string of protiens containing instructions for an organism to function.”
3a “Human gene splicers in a laboratory can and do insert and delete genes. These are not mutations. They are gene manipulation by intelligent beings.”
4a “A mutation is caused by a particle from a radioactive substance, a cosmic source, or some other source of particles.”
5a “pure magic causes a completely new species to leap into existence.”
6a “Gould developed this theory because fossil evidence does not reveal gradual evolution but rather, as in the ‘Cambrian Explosion’ sudden introduction of species, fully developed.”
7a “The bottom line is that the concept of ‘natural selection’ is a tautology that you can never pin down.”
8a “When I hold evolutionists to the details they run like a scared jack rabbit and want to retreat to gene pools, genetic drift, etc.”
9a “In your perception, if a variation occurred in an organism that is nuetral as to the enhancement of the organism’s survivability, the only reason the organism with this variation ends up outsurviving one without it, is simply an accident, since, the variation did not contribute to its enhanced survivability.”
10a “Even though there are still lots of the same kind of organisms still surviving in the same environment without the new feature, one has to wonder why nature selected the one with the new feature.”
11a “Wouldn’t the process better be called mutations and accidently survival?”
12a “Never in a lifetime could Dawkins or those of his ilk ever concieve a Creator. That is not an option with them.”
13a “There was no reason or purpose, they just happened. This is not science, but religion, athiestic religion.”
14a “why do you think that evolution is still so misunderstood?”
Okay, here are my responses:
1a – C’mon, anybody who has read anything on evolution should be able to answer this one. Darwin began with artificial selection, what you are basically defending, and saw that selective breeding can modify and alter a species. What Darwin did was suggest that selecting happens in nature without any selector. This is due to the geometric increase in biological reproduction – more offspring are produced than could ever possibly survive. This selection process is not totally random, for some animals will be better endowed for one reason or another to better survive and pass on offspring. This is all pretty elementary stuff.
2a – It is certain that genes are made up of proteins and the like and come in the form of strings which we interpret as being “coded instructions”. Nevertheless, genes are messy things and it is difficult, if not impossible to say where a gene starts, ends and continues. A single “gene” can be spread out all over the genome.
3a – Why is it again that human splicing doesn’t count as mutation? I think you’re going a little too far on this one. True, human splicing isn’t random, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a mutation.
4a – Yes, SOME mutations are caused by radiation and the like, but not all of them. It is not merely conjecture that organisms have evolved the ability to direct mutations to one degree or another. The only questions are how wide spread this ability is, how powerful it is, how much of an influence is has actually exercised, and how directed it really is.
5a – For starters, Gould actually did propose a mechanism for why at certain times certain populations would evolve relatively quickly. Second, “relatively quickly” still means over the course of MANY, MANY generations. And third, even if he had refused to put forth a mechanism, this isn’t the same as saying “magic did it”. Here you are just being uncharitable at best.
6a – To suggest that the punctuated equilibrium that Gould suggests the fossil record shows is on all fours with the Cambrian explosion is just ridiculous on every level. On this note, it should be recognized that the appeal to the Cambrian explosion is simply an appeal to ignorance and nothing more. “You can’t explain X with theory A, therefore theory B must be right.” C’mon.
7a – “Survival of the fittest” is a tautology for sure, but this is because the statement is a definition and definitions are supposed to be tautological; the fittest are defined as those who survive. Natural selection is a mathematical relation, and therefore is tautological in a certain sense as well, but no more so than the Pythagorean theorem, and F=ma. (What is force? It is what causes a mass to accelerate. What is mass? It is that which resists acceleration by a force.) But while Natural selection may be tautological, it is a fully empirical matter whether a particular situation satisfies the conditions necessary for natural selection to take place. Thus, natural selection is VERY meaningful, as should be obvious to all you aren’t clutching at straws.
8a – Do you honestly think that you have been “winning” these debates in any way? The evolutionists are not running anywhere but are simply sitting in their evolutionary camp, waiting for you to actually say something about the things which they actually assert. You aren’t attacking the evolutionist’s theory at all, that why they seems to be “running”.
9a – Judging by your total inability to understand what I am saying, perhaps it would be better if I decided what my perception is. My appeal to neutrality was simply an attempt to say that things are not near as cut and dry as you would like them. Some variation is REALLY beneficial, some is kind of beneficial and some if neutral. Some is REALLY detrimental and some in only kind of detrimental. The point is that lot’s of variation will survive in a population without being all that beneficial. Additionally, how beneficial a variation is can only be judged in comparison to the variation of others in the same population. “Beneficial” simply means for likely to survive, and that’s it. It is also the case that the selective pressures on a population are not always, 100% of the time in full effect, and during the times when the pressures are relatively lax, a lot of variation can survive which otherwise would not have.
10a – If there are animals in a population both with and without a particular variation for an extended amount of time then it would seem that nature selected both variations. This one should have been really easy for you as well.
11a – NO! Evolution, while being highly contingent, is not random or accidental. Certain variations survive better than others for some reason or another. While variation may be largely, but again not completely random, selection is largely, but again not completely, non-random.
12a – Just because Dawkins is that way doesn’t mean that all evolutionists are that way. Seriously, you need to read some books by people other than Dawkins. I highly recommend Kenneth Miller’s “Finding Darwin’s God” which makes for a clear account of how God and evolution can be harmonized.
13a – Before Galileo and Newton, things fell because they “wanted” to be closer to earth, or because it was their purpose. Does this make Newtonian mechanics an “atheistic religion”? Again, you are going off the deep end again.
14a – Because people keep promoting so much garbage about evolution in order to be able to fight its conclusions. People hear about evolution primarily at social groups, not in school, and guess what these social groups are? That’s right, churches! The most popular and readable books are against evolution, because it is always a simpler task to criticize a complex field than it is to defend or even engage it. Due to these terrible books, which are the only one’s which people are inclined to read on the subject, as well as all the stupid sound-bite misrepresentations and “arguments” evolution is deeply misunderstood. Is it the Mormons fault that all that anti-Mormon literature is so misleading and so popular? Is it the Mormons’ fault that people think them to be non-Christians?
Jerry, while you may not agree with the professional evolutionists, they are not stupid. They have considered all these things and have addressed them in pretty much every book ever written on evolution.
Jeff,
Any time you crack the door open for a little bit of ‘non-randomness’ you have opened the door for intelligence. Randomness is the abscence of intelligence. If something is a little bit ‘non-random’, a little bit of intelligence was involved. If so, what is the source of that intelligence?
And your explanation of why there are similar life forms with such diverse survival features all living in the same environment, your explanation is “nature selected both variations”. This blows away everything else you said, because now you are imputing to nature, intelligence, the ability to ’select’. Your reasoning goes in circles, and noone will ever be able to pin you down.
If evolutionists were rational they would view the ultimate agenda of nature as that of maximizing diversity and not merely survival. Natural selection (whatever that is) over enough time would select the very most effective survival features, eventually culling out all but the ’single’ most effective.
What is observed instead is the existence of millions of features that have nothing whatsoever to do with survival, but rather beauty, harmony, cooperation, symbiosis, mutual aid, pleasure, joy, fulfillment, etc. Many of the survival features of life forms are diametrically opposed to those in other.
The correct explanation for the designs in nature and the astounding diversity is the we the billions of inhabitors of this planet designed these life forms in six thousand years of premortal existence under the direction of Jesus Christ. He gave our designs life. Our finger prints are all over the creation. All of our intelligence was involved.
I am apparently peripheral to the conversation, but I can’t help contributing.
The correct explanation
I think this is the key to this whole conversation.
Any time you crack the door open for a little bit of ‘non-randomness’ you have opened the door for intelligence.
There is a difference between random and unpredicable. Hurricanes do not hit the east coast randomly, but I see no reason to conclude that they are therefore guided by intelligence.
If evolutionists were rational they would view the ultimate agenda of nature as that of maximizing diversity and not merely survival.
I thought we covered this–nature does not have an agenda. Furthermore, why can’t diversity be a by-product of maximizing survival? And at this point I can’t help noting the Salem hypothesis.
Jared,
What is the Salem hypothesis?
Jared,
Also what do you mean when you say that hurricanes do not hit the East coast randomly, but they are not guided by intelligence? This sounds contradictory to me. Explain how that non-randomness does not imply some guidance from something or some one. No wonder no one understands evolution. The arguments are flakey. If something is non-random there has to be some rationale for it. You guys will resist intelligence with every fibre of your being. What’s wrong with a little intelligence in the creation somewhere along the way? I’ll tell what’s wrong with it. It means there might be a God or a higher intelligence involved, and you will have none of that. You are the center of the universe. There simply cannot be a intelligence higher than yours that might have been involved in the creation.
Jeff/Jared,
Are you LDS?
Are you LDS?
Yes, and active.
What’s wrong with a little intelligence in the creation somewhere along the way?
I don’t have a problem with it in principle, but I don’t think it can be identified by scientific means, I think it turns God into a capricious person when applied indiscriminately, and it’s not a useful concept in research yet.
I’ll tell what’s wrong with it. It means there might be a God or a higher intelligence involved, and you will have none of that. You are the center of the universe. There simply cannot be a intelligence higher than yours that might have been involved in the creation.
No, I don’t think so. But I do think that we must honestly come to terms with the evidences for evolution. Many have drawn lines in the sand where, they say, evolution cannot pass–only to have those lines crossed. Others resort to distortion and other such tactics that I don’t think are respectable.
Also what do you mean when you say that hurricanes do not hit the East coast randomly, but they are not guided by intelligence?
I mean that the path a hurricane takes is dependent on many factors, which when understood, allow forecasters to better predict where the hurricane will go. And statistically speaking, not all places on the east coast are at equal risk of a direct hit–for certain geographical and meteorological reasons.
My point was that non-randomness does not necessarily imply intelligence. Sometimes it just means that there are underlying principles that are not understoood yet.
If something is non-random there has to be some rationale for it.
I think I can agree with that.
Having said above, there are random components to evolution. Natural selection is one mechanism, but there are others. Have you seen the Evolution 101 site? It might help you out a little.
It is evident that this conversation got going somewhere else and landed over here. You seem to have been in full attack mode when you got here, so I jumped in in defense mode, and I’ve been a little snarkier than I should have been. I provided a link for the Salem hypothesis above–it is simply that someone once noted that there seemed to be a correlation between people who criticize evolution while claiming scientific experience/degrees, and those people being engineers.
Perhaps it would be helpful if you took a step back and outlined your fundamental concerns with evolution. Is it just that it seems to leave God without a place, or is it that it appears to contradict scripture so you are searching for ways to discount it. Or maybe there are some concepts you just don’t get, but you might accept them if you could understand them. Do you accept the principle of radiometric and other forms of dating, or are you one who ceases to believe any physical evidence older than 4,000 yrs B.C.?
Many people believe in God while also accepting evolution–even within the LDS community.
[…] Jared invokes the Salem Hypothesis. […]
Jared,
Inasmuch as evolution is counter to every creative process that one can observe in our world, all of which requires intelligent effort (every complex structure, technology, etc., in our highly advanced civilation), to me there must be some intellectual conditions that would enable a ratioinal mind to believe the the complexity of nature evolving from the simple to the complex (although, even a cell is stupendously complex and not really simple at all). Here are the conditions I believe enable an intelligent being to believe in what, in view of the reality of the above, to beleive in evolution:
• Hidden agendas: All earth and life scientists are under tremendous pressure to accept the irrational lie of evolution. Their careers are at stake, and their struggle for subsistence clouds their perception of rationality.
• Pride: Intellectual pride results in the inability of people to accept a personal, God who has a purpose and a plan for man and to reject his revelations about the revealed creative processes
• Lack of knowledge of natural laws: Biologists, zoologists, paleontologists, anthropologists, and the like, typically are not trained in the hard scientific disciplines that have been reduced to scientific principles and well codified laws such as the laws of thermodynamics, stress and strain of structures, physics, etc. Their softer disciplines are a great deal fuzzier and less well defined, leaving room for the fantasies, unrealistic speculations, and even the magic that they end up buying into. Their ability to observe living miracles that occur daily such as the metamorphosis of a butterfly or the birth of a baby and credit these incomprehensively complex events to random, gradual and accidental variations, ‘selected for by natural selection’ over millions of years attests to their propensity to believe in magic.
• A lack of love for truth: The light of Christ within every person testifies of a creation by a mighty God. But men love the world more than they love God and truth. They dampen and often completely extinguish the still small voice of the Spirit that testifies of the falseness of the theory of organic evolution and of an intelligently designed creation.
• Unwillingness to ask God about the creation: The so-called ‘scientific method’ precludes the scientist from asking God for enlightenment in the interpretation of evidence, causing scientists to rely exclusively upon the evidence and the intellectual interpretation of the evidences. By definition, the interpretation of, for example, of fossil evidence, for example, will be wrong barring enlightenment of the Holy Spirit through prayer.
Charles Darwin derived the concept of ‘natural selection’ from Thomas Malthus’ theory of population. Malthus’ theory has been thoroughly discredited. Both natural selection and mutations have been discredited by hard core evolutionists. These theories are just not rational. • The concept of survival of the fittest (Darwin’s original book was entitled, The Origin of the Species and Survival of the Favored Races) is not a reality that can be observed in nature. Life in nature is not a constant, highly competitive struggle between species for food or territory.
Petr Kropotkin, a Russian evolutionist of the late 1800 and early 1900’s set out to observe this fierce struggle for survival that is supposed to constitute ‘natural selection’, and he found just the opposite. He wrote a book entitled, Mutual Aid, documenting his observations that life forms in actuality, often aided each other in achieving survival, rather than being in fierce competition. He also observed that many obviously dominant species had gone extinct, while less powerful ones had survived. He eventually concluded that ‘natural selection’ could not be a basis for the theory of evolution. Dobzhansky, the famous biologist and fruit fly experimenter, concluded the same thing about random mutations. Both premises upon which evolution is based were discredited by hard core evolutionists following years of trying to validate these false premises.
• Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule, completely disavowed the possibility of evolution by random mutations because of his intimate knowledge of the stupendous complexity of DNA software and its inability to be enhanced by randomness
As to radiometric and other forms of dating, we have more circular reasoning. To believe in these clocks you must start out with accepting uniformatarian geology. Now the clocks are derived and low and behold, they prove uniformitarian geology is valid. You must believe that no catastorphic disturbance has occured to change the amount of entrapped elements whose half lives are used as a basis for the age calcualtions. You must believe that they were origianlly captured in purity. Are you aware of the fact that only volcanic rocks can be dated by radiometirc clocks? When fossils are found, the fossil cannot be dated. So, the paleantologists look around in the are for some volcanic rock to date. The age of the fossil is then derived by association. Rocks that have resulted from relatively recent volcanic activity and been shown by radiometric dating to be millions of year old. There are many problems with these dating methods.
You have accussed me of focusing on Dawkins’ stuff. I have studied evolution for fifty years and didn’t even hear of Dawkins until a few years ago. What I have done with evolution is the same thing I did with religion. When I was thirty years old, I was preparing for the ministry in the church I had grown up in. I wanted to be a full time minister. But I was searching for truth with no agenda other than finding religious truth. When I encountered the Book of Mormon, I recognized it as the Word of God immediately and joined the Church four days later. That is the way I search for truth, with no preconceptions and no hidden agendas and a willingness to accept the truth whatever the consequences might be. My study of evolution has been the same. I read everything I can find both pro and con, I ask God specific questions about what I observe and what I read. This totally unbiased search for truth has led me to my conviction that we had a premortal life, that we were with Christ when he created the world (see Abraham 3:24, unless you are one of those who have now rejected the book of Abraham), and that we participated with him, were were the intelligence that is stamped all over the creation, and that he gave our designs life. He is a great delegator, and he delegated earth’s design work to us for our growth and development.
In any case, without any hidden agendas, and with fifty years of research and prayer, I believe I have an excellent chance of having an understanding of the creation. It is filled with intelligence and purpose. The design work took place over a period of six thousand of our years. On the seven thousand, the designs were actualized and the earth populated. It will be catostrophically renovated soon by fire, even as it was at one time renovated catastrophically by a flood.
What are your hidden agendas that enable you to believe in something that is counter to everything creatively that you can observe in this world?
Oh c’mon Jerry, this last comment is beneath you. Your comment reveals far more about your own mind-set than anything about Jared or myself. Let me show you how two can play that game:
“The evidence for evolution is simply overwhelming. Any person who disputes this fact can only do so because of two reasons:
1) they are ignorant of what the theory is or the evidence for it
2) they are stupid
Which one are you Jerry?”
My point is that such “arguments” really only describe how I view the world and manifest what prejudices I have. Just for the record let me lay down what I see as your problems:
a) you are ignorant of what the theory actually is
b) you are ignorant of the immense evidence in favor of the theory
c) you made up your mind on the subject long before you had actually considered the arguments, and this bias colored your understanding of both the theory and its evidence. Because of this bias, you are not really considering the theory, but are instead only considering why it must be wrong when all is said and done.
If you disagree with my analysis, you are probably right over myself, since you know far more about yourself than I do about you. I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.
I should also mention that I am still waiting for you to address the actually content of the post above, rather than simply asserting that it is wrong.
“Inasmuch as evolution is counter to every creative process that one can observe in our world, all of which requires intelligent effort (every complex structure, technology, etc., in our highly advanced civilation),”
This is demonstrably false. Look at evolution as an AI technique in computers at a minimum. But there are plenty of other phenomena that are not directed (apparently) that lead to complex structures. Indeed mathematics is full of them.
Clark,
I will address Jeff and Jared’s issues later. But I am astounded that you can attribute AI as an example of evolution. It is like Dawkins’ monumental self-deception with his commercial software programs demonstrating the evolution of insects, etc. He said in one of his books that once he got the program to generate graphics that looked almost exactly to real insects, he could not sleep for days. Yet, he spend hundreds of hours of programming time and supervised the whole thing once he got it working. No AI is going to do anything without an intelligently designed computer and millions of hours of programming time that have generated the AI programs. As I said, there is nothing in our advanced civilization, structures, and technology that have not had a lot of hard, intelligent effort involved. Please give me an example of some inorganic technology that has developed itself.
Jerry,
Thanks for your comment. It’s clear that you have strong feelings on this issue. I can’t give a detailed response, but I’ll try to hit some high points.
It’s interesting to me that you cannot even grant that people in the life sciences have some good evidence for evolution, even if you view that evidence in a different light. Instead you chalk it all up to a mixture of peer pressure, ignorance, or even wickedness. If you were to take a devil’s advocate position and argue for evolution, what evidences would top your list? Would your list include any of the things outlined here?
You also accuse biologists, etc as not having enough grounding in the hard sciences. Yet you are willing to turn around and apparently deny uniformitarianism in regard to radioactive decay. But radioactive decay is not the only way of measuring time–other measures include dendrochronology, seasonal deposition of snow in ice cores, sediments in marine sediment cores, and so forth. These can be used to cross-check one another for at least tens of thousands of years, which I am guessing is well beyond the range acceptable to you. The very fact that scientists do such cross-checking cuts against your implication that they have no concern for accuracy. I’ll bet geochronologists know more about the limits and caveats of radiometric dating than you do.
Charles Darwin derived the concept of ‘natural selection’ from Thomas Malthus’ theory of population. Malthus’ theory has been thoroughly discredited. Both natural selection and mutations have been discredited by hard core evolutionists.
What Darwin got from Malthus was the concept that under ideal conditions more progeny are produced than can possibly go on to reproduce. Natural selection is about who the winners are and why. As for natural selection and muations being discredited, I don’t know who you are refering to. There are arguments as to what mechanisms of evolution are most important, but I highly doubt that the scientists you refer to deny any role for natural selection and I’m virtually positive that they do not deny that mutations happen–if that’s what you mean.
Francis Crick…completely disavowed the possibility of evolution by random mutations…
You’ve made that claim twice now. I’d like to see you back it up. I have not read Crick’s books, but I have sources that suggest that you are trying to get much more mileage out of him than accuracy allows.
Now, regardless of whatever conclusions you have come to, the scriptues do not specify God’s method of creation–certainly not in any detail that would be helpful in research. I don’t deny that he (or even we) played a role, but exactly what role that is we just don’t know. Meanwhile, the natural sciences have discovered things that have no business existing under the traditional creation view. Until God gives more verifiable details, I’ll look to science for my understanding of how the natural world works while I look to him for forgiveness of my sins.
Inasmuch as evolution is counter to every creative process that one can observe in our world…
BTW, that’s begging the question–you are assuming what you seek to prove.
I also found Jerry’s appeal to Crick to be amusing, for Crick is about as Godless as they come. Here is what he had to say in his 1994 book “The Astonishing Hypothesis”:
“If the scientific facts are sufficiently striking and well established, and if they support the Astonishing Hypothesis [that all “we” are is due to the physical processes of our brains], then it will be possible to argue that the idea that man has a disembodied soul is an unnecessary as the old idea tha tthere was a Life Force. This is in head-on contradiction to the religious beliefs of billions of human beings alive today. How will such a radical challenge be received?
“It would be comforting to believe that most people would be so convincedc by the experiemental evidence that they would immediately change their views. Unfortunately, history suggests otherwise. The age of the earth is now established beyond any reasonable doubt as very great, yet in the United States millions of Fundamentalists still stoutly defend the naive view that it is relatively short, an opinion deduced from reading the Christian Bible too literally. They also usually deny that animals and plants have evolved and changed radically over such long periods, although this is equally well established. This gives one little confidence that what they have to say about the process of natural selection is likely to be unbiased, since their views are predetermined by a slavish adherence to religious dogmas.”
I know Francis Crick was highly disposed to directed panspermia, or exogenesis, and thought abiogenesis was problematic.
The whole mathematical equation can produce complex structure thing is getting old. The Kolmogorov complexity of any deterministic system either stays constant or goes down, not up. Maximal Kolmogorov complexity for a system consisting of state vector X and temporal operator O is sum of the Kolmorogov complexity for each.
Unless the underlying laws of physics change, O is a constant, and the complexity of O is a constant. And the state vector at time t is a strict function of the vector at time tzero, so no additional bits are required to represent the changes - just store the initial state plus the laws and ta da - any future state.
Most physical systems preserve absolute information, many artificial systems destroy it (cellular automata are a good example), but no deterministic system can be shown to create it, at least as measured with Kolmogorov complexity - it is not a matter of experiment - it is a hard mathematical fact that follows from the definition of a deterministic system.
Of course a system that is metaphysically random can increase Kolmogorov complexity, but the probabilty of such a system producing macroscopically available information not in the natural laws themselves is rather small given random initial conditions, also as relatively straightforward matter of statistical mechanics.
So the only real option left for one unwilling to allow the possibility of LFW or some other form of discretionary teleology is to assume that rather than abiogenesis being a statistical inevitability that it was a statistical coincidence of the highest magnitude - or alternatively that the universe did not start out in a random configuration at all, but was full of the type of information needed, either in the laws (quasi-Platonism) or, more conventionally, in the initial conditions - which we might call the “Were lucky to be here” theory.
Tycho-deterministic systems cannot reliably create higher order complexity, only transform and/or destroy existing higher order complexity, where by “higher order complexity” I mean macroscopic complexity, not something that has the statistical characteristics of broadband thermal noise. All those pretty fractals and cellular automata fall on the complexity preserving/destroying side of the line, even with a weak notion of complexity like Kolmorgov complexity.
Jeff,
I could give pages and pages of quotes of committed evolutions and atheists who have discounted mutations and natural selection. They still believe in evolution, but have recognized the total absurdity of using a concept as specious as neo-Darwinism as the mechanism of it.
Crick is famous for his statement that mutations as a basis of evolution is a ’statistical fantasy’. Like Fred Hoyle he was a proponent of a theory called ‘drected panspermia’, as was Hoyle. Francis Crick (1981) Life Itself. Its Origin and Nature. They did the math and rejected Darwinism.
“An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.” Francis Crick: Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature p.88 (1981)
“I suppose that nobody will deny that it is a great misfortune if an entire branch of science becomes addicted to a false theory. But this is what has happened in biology … I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science.” Søren Løvtrup - Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth p.422 (1987)
Søren Løvtrup a Swedish biologist and committed evolutionist rejects the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution. He maintains that mutations and natural selection have had little, if anything, to do with evolution.
If you are determined to be an evolutionist, at least get yourself a more viable theory than Darwinism.
As for the age of the earth, how could you use the methods you mention to even hint of the hundreds of millions of years that evolutionists constantly talk about? To me probably the greatest evidence for the falseness of radiometric dating and evolutionary theory is the existence of fossils of many species purported by evolutionists to be hundreds of millions of years appearing precisely as they are found living today. Evolutionists provide the alligator, the dragon fly, the cock roach, the horseshoe crab, and scores of insects preserved in minute detail in amber that have their exact counter parts living now. They call this anomaly ’stasis’. Yet, in three hundred million years, the gradually changing environment for other life forms caused them to go from land to water, mammal to bird, etc. Either evolution is a natural law or it is not. That is how scientific laws are established–no exceptions have been observed. Yet, there are many exceptions to the theory of evolution observed in nature–organisms that haven’t evolved at all in three hundred million years. Did the environment change or not? Did these life forms leap into existence in such a highly developed state that they have never needed a stitch of evolution. This phenomenon proves either the falseness of radiometric dating or the falseness of the theory of evolution as a natural law or both.
Jerry,
Part of your fury is directed to abiogenesis–that was what Crick didn’t buy, on this planet anyway. (Although wikipedia suggests he backed off his position when he learned about ribozymes.) He apparently postulated that the earth was seeded with bacteria, and the rest occured from there. Abiogenesis is a more difficult issue–one that I think most scientists acknowledge is a puzzle, although there have been some interesting leads that would never have been discovered with an attitude that it was pointless to look! (By the way, don’t James Watson’s views count?)
Other aspects of evolution are also important, like genetic drift and symbiosis. Natural selection gets the most press, but it is not the only force at work.
mammal to bird
Bzzt. Reptile to bird. (Was that just a mistake or did you really think mammals gave rise to birds? Just asking because the answer speaks to how carefully you’ve evaluated evolutionary claims.)
Either evolution is a natural law or it is not. That is how scientific laws are established–no exceptions have been observed. Yet, there are many exceptions to the theory of evolution observed in nature–organisms that haven’t evolved at all in three hundred million years.
So if everything doesn’t change (morphologically anyway, because I guarantee their DNA didn’t remain frozen in place) at the same rate the whole thing is invalid? (This is really close to the old “how come there are still monkeys” argument.) There is no reason to suppose that such must be true.
The cross-checking of radiometric dating (with methods other than using different isotopes) do not go back millions of years (although Antarctic ice cores go back almost 1 million years), I was just trying to make the point that, depending on what assumptions you hold, your criticism refering to the hard sciences is probably gas because I doubt that you believe its implications yourself. Radioactive decay and its use in dating rocks is in the realm of physics and chemistry, after all.
Jeff,
If you are going to hang on to neo-Darwinism you need some new radiometric clocks. We need trillions and trillions, and not billions of years for the impossible to happen. Those clocks are apparently way underestimating the age of the earth.
Each of the 60 trillion cells in the human body contains a 1-metre-long string of DNA coiled into a tiny ball about 5 thousandths of a millimetre in diameter in the cell nucleus. DNA can store information so efficiently that all the information needed to specify an organism as complex as a human weighs less than a few trillionths of a gram. Geneticist Michael Denton remarks:
…., the proposition that the genetic programmes of higher organisms, consisting of something close to a thousand million bits of information, equivalent to the sequence of letters in a small library of one thousand volumes, … were composed by a purely random process is an affront to reason.2
Physicist Paul Davies has said that ‘the spontaneous generation of life by random molecular shuffling is a ludicrously improbable event’.3 Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe estimated that the probability of obtaining the simplest self-reproducing system by random combination of molecules is only 1 in 1040,000.4 Hoyle concluded that the probability of even the simplest known life form arising by accident was ‘evidently nonsense of a high order’, and ‘comparable to the probability that a tornado sweeping through an airplane junkyard would happen to assemble a flyable Boeing 747’.5
Jeff,
I thought dinosaurs were supposed to have evolved from reptiles and birds from dinosaurs. I guess I was under the misconception that dinosaurs were mammals. I was wrong. I just checked and evolutionists say that reptiles and mammals just have a common ancestor.
In any case, the whole scenario of the transition of species comes apart when you realize that living on the earth today are flying reptiles, flying mammals, flying frogs, flying fish, birds with claws on their wings, and about any other feature evolutionists say were transitional. I just watched an Animal Planet program showing all these flying snakes, frogs, and stuff.
You wave off the 300 million year old alligators and stuff, but that phenomenon must be explained. There has to be an explanation as to how the DNA can change with no morphological change. Does this mean that there was internal evolution but no external evolution? Perhaps the digestive track changed or the size of the liver, etc. There really was evolution, but the fossils just don’t reveal it? Is that what you are saying?
And how are going to overcome those odds against evolution? Lot’s of both pro and anti-evolutionists have calculated the odds, and there just isn’t enough time in a 4.6 billion year earth.
Jerry,
Given the names of the participants, it’s easy to get turned around. I’m Jared, not Jeff.
I’m not sure what you are saying about transitional fossils. What makes a fossil transitional is when it displays a mix or trend of characteristics similar to both older and later fossils or living organisms of the same grouping. For example you have dinosaurs and birds, then in between are dinosaurs that start growing feathers and looking more like birds. It doesn’t matter that there were already flying dinosaurs–flight itself is not the point. The point is that birds don’t show up until after dinosaurs that started looking like birds.
I’m not a paleontologist, so I can’t comment on how static alligators were, but from a little poking around on the web it looks like the idea that present-day crocodylians were exactly the same back 300 million years is incorrect.
You’ve hit on something though–that usually soft parts are not preserved so changes in organs go unnoticed in the fossil record. It’s too late for me to take on the DNA issue–I wouldn’t have definitive answers anyway, that’s really more the domain of evolutionary developmental biology. I’m doubting you read the link I provided in #16.
Again, you are beating up abiogenesis with your odds argument. It’s not an issue I care about very much. Either abiogenesis happened or it didn’t–it doesn’t concern me either way (which is not to say it isn’t interesting).
Jared/Jeff,
Did you catch Michael Whiting’s (of the BYU Evolutionary Biology Focal Group) forum presentation last year? Here is the link:http://bioagnews.byu.edu/newsrelease.aspx?id=119 for the press release that resulted. He is comparing the coming forth of Darwin and Darwinism as complementary to the restoration of the Gospel and the work of Joseph Smith. Of course I was enraged by it, but read it and see if you agree with him.
Jerry,
If you ever want to relive your rage, check this link:
http://byub.org/findatalk/details.asp?ID=5343
I thought that his presentation was pretty good for beginners, but that is not to say that I agreed with most of it. I thought that he gave a fair presentation of evolution, but I think that both of us would agree that he simply side-stepped all the issues which really trip members up. Of course it is BYU, so what should we expect?
The problem I see, however, is that this tendency to side-step many of the really difficult issues is not at all an isolated strategy. I don’t think that any but the most fanatical of scriptural literalists are terribly concerned about timelines. I don’t think that suggesting that God played a part in the process is all that big of a deal. I don’t think that people really care whether every single animal in the world with the sole exception of humans are indeed nothing more than by-products of a mindless process.
What really concerns them is man. Was there an Adam? Did he really fall? What about the pre-existence? Are we made in God’s image, or that of a hominid? And so on. I think that both you and I would agree that these questions are VERY difficult, in not impossible to answer in a correlated way. In order to address these issues in a manner which is harmonious with evolution a lot of reinterpretation, and perhaps some flat out rejection, would have to happen. Most members simply aren’t willing to do this.
It is in this context that they search high and low searching for some kind of evidence or argument to support the conclusion which they have already reached in their own minds. I know this process all too well, for I was once engaged in it myself. The problem is that all these arguments combined are either:
1) flat out incorrect or flawed in some way
2) entirely beside the point
3) severly limited in scope
An objective look at the issue, by my lights, will reveal that the modern theory of darwinian evolution is, for the most part, true. Sure, there are parts which could certainly use some tidying up, and some parts may actually turn out to be false. But the overall structure is with almost near certainty true. Similarly, the evolution of human beings is as well documented as that of any species, and the picture which is painted in that area is without doubt, for the most part, true.
This is why I think it is more important to debate and sort out the issues surrounding those difficult questions which I said everybody is avoiding rather than simply talking about “God could have done it such and such a way.” The fact is that we know more or less what happened in creation. The faithful “know” who was at least largely responsible for the creation. There is still a lot of room to figure out how God actually influenced what happened, or to what extent He did. Of course, even with these questions largely addressed, we still haven’t yet gotten to those difficult questions surrounding man and his place in both the earth as well as the Plan of Salvation.
Wow! Your last sentence in Post 48 addresses the issues I thought we could definitely agree on. I thought that that was the message in the 1910 official pronouncement and the evolution entry in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism that was also approved by the BYU Board of Trustees. I thought that it was the other issues that the First Presidency refuse to take a position on, but that man’s origin and destiny were well understood in light of the latter-day scriptures and experiences of modern day prophets. If these things are still in doubt, and if our latter-day revelations do not clear these issue up, we are back to square one. We have a highly developed organization and a world wide missionary program teaching what we consider ‘certainties’, revealed truths about man’s origin and destiny. Are you really saying we don’t even have the answers about man’s place on the earth and in the plan of salvation?
It sounds like to me that you have fully bought in to the materialstic, mindless, purposeless philosophy of Darwinism. What basis is that for active membership in the LDS religion? Why would you want to practice a religion that has no answers about man, his origin and destiny?
When I was thirty years old, as I have mentioned, I conducted an exhaustive search for God and his plan and purpose for man. I was led to this church and gained a testimony of the principles of salvation. These things can be know by a witness of the Spirit of God. Have you not made that kind of a search and gained certainty about the Atonement and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? If you have not received this witness you have not accepted God’s process for finding truth, and you will forever wonder in uncertainty about these things.