Re: funny creationsist

On 3 Feb 2006 05:34:58 -0800, TomS <TomS_member@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[...]

I think TomS' point is that developmental biology is both more personal and
direct. If developmental biology is right, *you*, the entity known as "Jim
Spaza", are just the product of blind chance of the meeting of egg and
sperm. If the sperm one over, out of tens of thousands crowding around the
egg, had managed to be a little faster, a little stronger, a little more
chemically attractive to the egg, *you* would not exist.

In short, developmental biology is a much more direct challenge to the
thought that *you* were created by purpose by a Supreme Being than
evolutionary theory is. Why is the thought of life in general being the
result of two amino acids sticking together 2 billion years ago in a purely
random act of nature worse than the thought of you *personally* being the
result of two gametes sticking together a few decades ago in a purely
random act of nature? (And if there are reasons why the science of
developmental biology does not offend your religious beliefs, why don't
they apply, with equal force, to abiogenesis or evolutionary theory?)
[...snip...]

To be somewhat technical about it, what I am doing is pointing
out the fallacies of composition and division. (Check, for example,
Wikipedia under "fallacy" for a brief discussion.)

Whenever someone speaks of "man" - as in "the creation of man" -
it is a good idea to make it clear whether they are speaking of an
individual human being, John Doe or Jane Roe; or about the whole
collection of all people, say the species _Homo_sapiens_.

The fallacy of composition is the mistake of going from a
statement about an individual, or each individual, to a statement
about the collection. What is true of each individual is not
automatically true about the collection.

The fallacy of division is the reverse, going from saying
something about a group to saying it about the individuals that
make up that group.

If we say that such-and-such a team is the oldest team, that
can mean one of two things: either the team has the oldest players,
or that the association as a team has been around for the longest
time. I believe that the Cincinnati Reds are the oldtest team in
major league American baseball, but I don't know which team has
the oldest players. The fallacies of composition and division would
confuse these two ideas.

If we say that "man is a creature of God", than can mean that
each individual human being is a creature of God; or it can mean
that the abstraction, the collection "human kind", as a collection,
is a creature of God.

The first - about each individual - is often taken to
include such concepts as "my personal relationship with my
Creator".

The second - about the species, or genus, or family, or
whatever a "kind" is - could be denied by someone who would say
that the "kind" is merely a human construct, not something which
is a creature of God. Someone could say that "human kind" is more
like the Cincinnati Reds baseball team, something which has meaning
only from a human point of view.

What I am trying to point out is the fallacies of composition
and division when speaking of the "origin of man".

Well, of course. That was too obvious to bother commenting on.

;-)


Evolutionary biology deals with the origins of species.

Reproductive biology deals with the origins of individuals.

Someone who is concerned about sciences intruding on the
special relationship that individuals have with their Creator
would be mostly concerned with something like reproductive biology.

Someone who is concerned about the role of chance in the
origins of individuals might be worried about the role of chance
in genetics. Genetics deals with probabilities. It says that the
genetic makeup of an individual is a random mix of its parents,
and some random mutations.

I was knowingly simplifying the whole of genetics to the chanciness of the
egg/sperm union for clarity's sake and because it echoes back to "all my
ancestor's scored" (which I thought I might be able to spring on Jim later
on . . . opps).


Someone who is concerned with materialism might point to
biochemistry, which says that our bodies are made up just ordinary
chemicals.

But evolutionary biology is about "populations".

The same - excuse me for going on too long

Nonsense. You are being both interesting and informative.

- is true about
"the eye". When we point to "the eye" as being complex, are we
talking about each individual eye in each vertebrate? If so, then
we have a scientific explanation for the origins of each of these
eyes, and that is found in developmental biology. If we are speaking
of something like "the pattern of structure that eyes have that is
characteristic of vertebrates", then we are speaking of something
more abstract. Individual vertebrates might, in fact, be lacking
in that regard. I would argue that the "subphylum Vertebrata" is
an abstraction, a totally human-made construct, and that is
something entirely different from saying that each individual
vertebrate animal is a creature of God.

It is simply a fallacy of composition or division to mistake
a statement about an individual, or many individuals taken
individually, with a statement about a (perhaps arbitrary)
collection of individuals.

And I will continue to point this out as a mistake when it
is used to say that evolutionary biology denies the creaturehood
of each individual human.

OTOH, I don't think it hurts to take the logical fallacies, which may seem
overly intellectual and sterile to somone whose main support for his
beliefs is the emotional fullfillment the Bible gives him, display them in
the concrete setting of his own life and invite him to reason his way out.

--
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------

[T]o shut our eyes against facts, and to take from nature no response
but such as suits our fanatical belief of what nature ought to be . . .
must do deadly mischief to the causes of inductive truth.

- Adam Sedgwick -

.

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