M.J.Thomas Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> To all,
>
> First off, I must make a correction to my second
> post to this thread.
>
> Looking at it from my strictly layman’s point of
> view, for decades the term Darwinism was
> synonymous with the term Evolution, and,
> obviously, vice versa, and Creationism was an
> anti-Darwinism/Evolution religious belief you
> learned about in Church, at Sunday school, or
> during Religious Education classes at school
> But now there is a new kid on the block:
> Intelligent Design (I.D.), but I am so used to
> regarding Darwinism and Evolution as one and the
> same, in my second post to this thread I
> mistakenly wrote, “Evolution or I.D.? For me, both
> are currently unproven.”
> Of course, to allow for the fact that unlike
> Creationism, I.D. does not deny the existence of
> Evolution I should have written, “Darwinism or
> I.D.? For me, both are currently unproven.”
>
> I have read the article Bernard posted above (and
> for which I thank him) but I have to be honest and
> say that because my knowledge of the science of
> Evolution has never risen above the glossy
> coffee-table-book level (I include The Blind
> Watchmaker in that category), I am not able to
> fully understand all that it says. However, a
> couple of lines have really captured my
> attention.
> I quote, “Evolution is not the outcome of purely
> random processes; rather, there is a “selecting”
> process, which picks up adaptive combinations
> because they reproduce more effectively and thus
> become established populations. These adaptive
> combinations constitute, in turn, new levels of
> organization upon which the mutation (random) plus
> selection (non-random or directional) process
> again operates.” Unquote.
> Now, to my unspecialised way of thinking this
> implies that Evolution has ‘a sense of purpose’,
> i.e. it knows what it is doing…

MJT,
Thanks for responding and for reading the article I posted. No, I very important component of the theory (we really need to be saying the "modern synthesis" which is the modifications to Darwin's theory that people like Mayr, Dobszhanski (sp?), and Stebbins made between 1930-1950 and which is what scientists mean today-- but for shorthand call it Darwin's theory) is that it is NOT teleological- it does not have an ultimate end in mind. Some adaptations and natural selection lead to eventual extinction, some devolution takes place( the currrent issue of Natural History has a very interesting article on cave dwelling animals which have lost their eyes, etc. One of the telling arguments against "Intelligent Design" is that a multitude of traits (the bones in mammalian ears, the panda's thumb, et., etc. are just ad hoc modifications of preexisting characteristics put to. new uses). If a real designer were planning life he(she,it?) woould never have done it in such an inefficient way. For example, humans are bipedal (i.e. walk upright) to enable to do so our spinal column is bent in a curious shape and BTW has condemned us to be very susceptible to lower back pain. Any designer should have done better. If you want to follow this idea-- or any other-- I would suggest going to talkorigins.org which has a lot of material.

> Then, further down the article appears, “Mutation
> and selection have jointly driven the marvellous
> process that, starting from microscopic organisms,
> has produced orchids, birds, and humans.”
> You can see the question coming, can’t you? When,
> where, and, most important of all, how did those
> microscopic organisms come into being? How did
> something inanimate become animate?

You notice that, strictly speaking, your question has nothing to do with the author's sentence "starting from microscopic organisms". The point is that the whole of "Darwinian Evolution" can be discussed without reaching the question of the precise origin of life and not knowing does not invalidate "Darwinian Evolution." As a matter of fact, ID does not explain exactly how this was done either. As usual with anti-evolution materials, it makes the claim that Darwinian evolution cannot explain something BUT it does not propose how in fact it came to be (other than a "designer" did it). You state below that you are familiar with the nature of scientific theories. You then know that any scientific theory seeking to replace or falsify another has to 1) explain everything the previous theory did and just as well and 2) explain things that the previous theory cannot. Thus everything that Newton's theory explains can be explained by Einstein' theory and Einstein can explain what happens at the atomic level. Intelligent Design may claim to fulfill (2) but it absolutely fails and does not even attempt (1).

Of course, there are Darwinian theories regarding the emergence of the first organisms-- Look at Richard Dawkins The ancestor's Tale pp. 540-581 or Daniel Dennett Darwin's Dangerous Idea pp. 145-185. Here we have to introduce another pair of concepts: "textbook science" and "frontier science" Texbook science are those areas that are considered to be well established, supported by the overwhelming majority of the scientific community, and unlikely to be overturned-- things like the laws of thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, and (regardless of WG's bleatings) the modern synthesis thery of evolution. Frontier science are those concepts that are being actively investigated, where there is no consensus by the scientific community about the whole or parts, those for which there is a possibility that they will be in error, or for which it may not be possible to get an answer with presently available instruments, mathematics, or theories- things like string theory, dark matter and dark energy, what happened a billionth of a second after the Big Bang. some aspects of evolution including your question of how organic chemistry became the first form of life. Let me quote the ardent evolutionist Richard Dawkins (The Ancestor's Talep. 581) speaking of these theories about the ultimate origin of life:

"There are many other theories that I have not gone into. Maybe one day we shall reach some sort of definite consensus on the origin of life. If so, I doubt if it will be supported by direct evidence because I suspect that it has all been obliterated. Rather, it will be accepted because somebody produces a theory so elegant that, as the great American physicist John Archibald Wheeler said in another context: '... we will grasp the central idea of it all as so simple, so beautiful, so compelling that we will say to each other,'Oh, how could it have been otherwise!. How could we all be so blind for so long?'
If that isn't how we finally realize we know the answer to the riddle of life's origin, I don't think we ever shall know it."

> Much as I’ve mentioned before, to prove that Life
> originated by Darwinian Evolution or Non-I.D. we
> are faced with the problem of spontaneously
> creating Life in a laboratory, which I think I’m
> right in saying is an impossibility because it is
> a contradiction in logic.
>
> Moving on, from the contents of the variously
> authored posts to this thread and others that have
> touched on the subject of I.D. it appears to me
> that we would all get a better understanding of
> things if we could establish what is meant by I.D.
> I get the impression that some posters hold the
> view that it is nothing more than Creationism
> under a more, how shall I say, modern guise.
> Whereas to others it is a valid theory (with no
> connection with Religion) explaining many of the
> aspects of Evolution that Darwinism cannot explain

This is not so. ID has a coouple of ideas which they beat to the ground. Their main "scientific evidence" are claims of irreducible complexity for the molecucar flagellum and for the blod clotting cascade. Since these were published 10 years ago, they keep getting repeated over and over again-- all their work has not produced other examples and further both of these have been disproved-- please use the search function for my previous long post on ID.


> (when I read that there are flaws in Darwinism I
> like to assume I am reading the truth).
> I now find myself writing this under the
> impression that some people attack I.D. because
> they are failing to distinguish from Creationism.
> So, may I make the suggestion that those here who
> are opposed to I.D. inform those here who are not
> what they understand I.D. to be or mean.
>
> One last point, I am acquainted with the
> Scientific Method and can see and happily accept
> the argument that I.D. is not strictly speaking a
> scientific theory. However, I do not see that this
> entirely negates it – unless, of course, one is
> confusing or paralleling I.D. with Creationism.

But that is the point! A key definitional compenent of what is a "scientific" theory is that it only refers to natural law as a mode of explanation. That is the point that both the US District Court in the Arkansas case and the Supreme Court in the Louisiana case made in declaring "scientific creationism" non-scientific and religious. ID is trying an end run around these rulings by avoiding the word "God", but in their other writings people like Behe, Dembski, and Phillip Johnson make clear that the only acceptable "designer" is God (and the Christian God to boot)-- no superior aliens need apply for the post.

Bernard

>
> MJT
>