Re: My views on evolution



Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:
> I have been lurking a little bit on this newsgroup, and I thought that
> it was now time to engage in the conversation.
>
> Who am I:
> 1. Professionally I am a mathematician.
> 2. I am a "born again" Christian who was raised as a liberal atheist,
> becoming a Christian at the age of 23.
> 3. I have recently become very interested in genetics, and I am
> reading quite a few books on the subject. I intend to pursue this
> study irrespective of my views on I.D./Darwinianism, because the whole
> subject is utterly fascinating.
>
> I became interested in the I.D./Darwinianism debate only a few months
> ago, because I helped organize a debate on this subject that took place
> at the University of Missouri a few months ago. (I have some mp3's of
> the debate if anyone is interested. Many remarked that it was one of
> the most civil of such debates they had heard.)
>
> My impression of this debate is basically that both sides have it wrong
> in many aspects. My sense is that the I.D. movement has fairly poor
> science, but some good philosophical points, whereas the Darwinianists
> have good science but tend to overstate their case.
>
> Intelligent Design
>
> The main argument of I.D., as best as I can see, is that the basic
> elements of life are so complicated that it is impossible that random
> events could have created them. While I would not go so far as to say
> that "Information Science" is not science, it is certainly a very
> underdeveloped science that currently is in its infancy, and which
> might or might not become something that has something genuine to say
> in the future.

Do not confuse information theory with intelligent design. Information
theory is a legitimate field of inquiry. ID is a political scheme that
is scientifically null.

>
> These days our understanding of genetics is that it is something
> totally wonderful and complicated, and which we are only beginning to
> understand. The I.D. position is that the probability that this whole
> machinary could have come into place by chance is so close to zero that
> to all intents and purposes it simply could not have happened. But all
> they have really done is to say that there must have been some
> mechanism that created all this stuff, which we haven't yet discovered.
> In other words, if it happened by pure chance, there must be more to
> the story than we currently know. (As a mathematician I would say it
> this way: we don't know what the underlying probability space is.)
>
> The basic intuitive notion behind I.D. is that if we find a watch on
> the road, we become convinced that it must have been created by an
> intelligent agent. The universe works so well, that we deduce the
> same. Part of the problem with this argument is that much of what
> tells us that the watch was intelligently designed is not its brilliant
> workings, but its imperfections. So, for example, if we look closely
> at the cogs and wheels in the watch, although at first they appear
> perfect, in fact we see that their design is in spite of the material
> that makes it up. The edges go counter to the natural crystal structure
> of the metal. If we look very closely, we see scratches and
> colorations on the wheels and cogs that tell us that it was made with
> instruments like a file and a hot torch and hammer. We also find
> letters - brand names - on the watch.
>
> Conversely there is a certain perfection to the design of the universe.
> For example, the motor in the flagelum has no wasted parts, no chisel
> or hammer marks. Every atom and molecule is perfectly placed to do
> just its job. Short of finding the sequence "Copyright (C) 4004BC
> YHWH" in the genome sequence, this approach is unlikely to provide
> definitive proof of intelligent design.
>
> Darwinianism
>
> There is little doubt in my mind that many of the claims of evolution
> are scientific fact. This would include how bacteria become resistant
> to drugs, why maleria is recurrent in its victims, even mild examples
> of speciation (sticklebacks in glacier pools is the example I know
> about). But it also has some major gaps, questions like: how did
> humans evolve from a common ancestor with monkeys/apes; how did this
> elaborate machinary of DNA and proteins come into being in the first
> place? Now just because we don't have answers now doesn't mean that we
> won't find answers in the future. But I have to say that the certainty
> amongst the Darwinianists that they will naturalistic answers to these
> questions is, in my opinion, bordering on the kind of faith that
> Christians express in their God.
>
> As a Christian, I have to confess that I cannot disprove scientifically
> that humans come from monkey like creatures. But my faith rests in the
> word of God, and it is hard for me to reconcile the two views. If the
> evidence that humans did come from monkeys was as strong as, say, the
> assertion that the sun produces energy by nuclear fusion, then I would
> have to seriously reconsider my position. But right now, I just don't
> think that the evidence is that strong.

The fact that humans arose from less primitive primates and that we
share a recent common ancestor with chimpanzees is at least as well
supported as solar fusion.

>
> One thing that bothers me with Darwinianists is that they say that the
> job of science is by definition to look for naturalistic explanations.
> My sense is that scientists are stuck in a kind of Popperian view which
> insists that the only proper scientific theories are those that are
> falsifiable. How many scientists know anything about Michael Polanyi
> or Thomas Kuhn I don't know, but even if they do know about their
> ideas, many express no interest in them. It is fine for a scientist to
> not be very interested in the philosophical foundations of his subject,
> and indeed it is possible to do very good science without having any
> ideas of the philosophical issues, but in that case scientists should
> refrain from making broad and far-reaching statements about what
> science "is".

Philosophers are welcome to argue the "truth" of falsifiability but if a
theory can never be shown to be wrong then it has no predictive power,
since it predicts everything possible, and without predictions what good
is any science?

>
> Indeed many of the more ancient scientists (Galileo, Newton, even
> Einstein and Hawkins) used the intelligent design paradigm in their
> work. In the end, we are seeking the "truth" whatever that is, and
> whatever works to help us find it, is something that we should pursue.

Einstein was either an atheist or an agnostic. He certainly did not
believe in the sort of intelligent designer that Dembski et al is pushing.

>
> The Beauty of Creation
>
> Indeed I would say that for me, the best apolegetics for intelligent
> design are not the writings of the I.D. or creationist movements, but
> the writings from the Darwinianists. Let me provide two examples from
> books I am currently reading.
>
> 1. "Molecular Biology of the Gene 5th Ed." by Watson, Baker, Bell,
> Gann, Levine, Losick. (This is the Watson as in the codiscoverer with
> Crick of the structure of DNA.) This college textbook is an absolutely
> fascinating introduction to the chemistry of genetics. It is very
> technical, so it is not for everybody. Its first page of narrative has
> strong defense of Darwinianism, stating that these days only a minority
> of fundamentalists do not accept it. Yet this page could be removed
> from the book, and it would not effect the rest of the book one bit.
> Instead, as a Christian, when I read this book, I am just totally
> overcome by how wonderful are the mechanisms, and it brings to my mind
> the verse in Psalm 139 that says I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
>
> 2. "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" by Sean Carroll. This book starts
> with detailing the disovery of homeotic "controlling" genes, that say
> "put an eye here" or "put a leg here." One of the fascinating things
> is that this gene toolset is almost universal across all life forms.
> So if you take a mouse gene for an eye, and splice it into the DNA of a
> fly, you get an extra eye - but it is a fly eye, not a mouse eye. Yet
> the mouse and fly eye are so different structurally that one would
> simply have assumed that they did not have any common ancestor, and
> hence they shouldn't have a common gene.

I think you misunderstand why the biologists were surprised. They were
aware that mice and fruit flies shared a common ancestor but they were
also aware that the LCA was extremely primitive and did not have an eye.
That a homeotic gene controlling the location of an eye is common enough
between mice and flies to still function indicates this gene developed
very early in the evolution of light sensitive organs and has been
strongly conserved which was surprising, in the 1960's. Of course as the
field of genetics has matured it is becoming irrefutable that all life
shares a common ancestor.

This commoness of genetic
> structures throughout all life on earth was a big surprize to
> scientists, and indeed in the 1960's it was simply assumed that there
> would be no point in searching for them. Thus page 70-72 of this book
> can be paraphrased like so - "the recent discoveries in genetics were a
> big shock to our Darwinian naturalistic paradigm, but we tried hard to
> make these new discoveries fit, and by golly we were successful."

Please don't put words in other peoples mouths. This is dishonest. You
will do a lot better around here if you present the exact quotation, in
context, and let everyone see for themselves.

For
> me these homeotic genes are not definitive proof of intelligent design,
> but they certainly are very suggestive. At the very least, it shows
> that evoltionary Darwinianism is a developing science, in many ways in
> its infancy, and definitely not "scientific fact" in the same way as
> is, for example, Dalton's theory of atoms.

For me homeotic genes are strong evidence for common descent and evolution.

Evolution is an observed fact. The theory of evolution is the best
supported scientific theory I'm aware of. Atomic theory is nowhere near
as well supported.

>
> Pro/Anti Religion
>
> There is no doubt in my mind that both sides have either a pro or anti
> religious agenda. Indeed, having been both an atheist and Christian in
> my life, I know that it is extremely hard to not be unconsciously
> greatly influenced by ones world view. And indeed a Christian should
> not be surprized at the deep, unconscious, visceral hostility between
> the two sides, e.g. 2 Cor 2:16. For example, on this newsgroup I have
> seen some extremely satirical postings about religion. While they are
> very funny, and in some cases even have some truth, they are certainly
> not going to win the hearts and minds of voters in Kansas.

The two sides in this debate are not pro and anti religion. It is pro
science and anti science. Creationism and ID are not about science. They
are about making money for the professional defrauders and in ID's case
part of an attempt to impose a theocracy on the US.

>
> It is true that within Christianity that there has grown a divide
> between the liberal and fundamentalist theologians. In many ways I see
> both sides as mirroring the divide that took place between the
> Sadduccees and Pharisees at the time of Jesus. In fact Jesus expressed
> great displeasure with both points of view. Liberalism waters down the
> gospel of life and truth, but fundamentalism is often hard and cold,
> and can really miss the whole point.
>
> Personally I have been greatly influenced by the book "Proper
> Confidence" by Lesslie Newbigin. I have found that the only real way
> to get any kind of understanding of what the Bible is about is to pray
> hard and seek guidence from the Holy Spirit. Any other approach will
> end up in great error, because these spiritual truths are so deep and
> hard that only divine intervention can bring it to a person. Indeed
> high intelligence has potential to be very unhelpful in this pursuit
> (see for example 1 Cor Chapters 1 & 2) because ones assumption is that
> one can simply think ones way through any difficulties. (Of course
> some highly intelligent people do make it, e.g. Augustine, Luther,
> Calvin, just to name a few.)
>
> Conclusion
>
> Anyway, these are my views on this subject. Most certainly they are
> not set in stone, and I would enjoy debate on these issues, and I may
> well change my mind on much of it. I know that I have presented many
> different points, so if you like you can form new threads if you wish
> to discuss a particular point.
>
> Best, Stephen
>


Here's hoping you actually are open minded and interested in learning.

Ken

.

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