Re: For Ray Martinez (and whomever else it may concern)

On Mar 14, 10:07 pm, "Steven J." <steve...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 14, 8:53 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On Mar 11, 9:45 pm, "Steven J." <steve...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I've just started to read Francisco Ayala's _Darwin's Gift: To Science
and Religion_, a book whose title, when mentioned in an earlier
thread, led Ray to demand to know what "Darwin's gift to religion" was
supposed to be.  No one was able to explain satisfactorily this to him
(perhaps because no one had yet read the book to find out).

I have been kinda absent lately due to efforts focussed entirely on my
paper.

But yes, no one wanted anything to do with my rhetorical question
because it and Ayala's book contradicts the subjective and corruptive
agenda of this news group: deny that Darwin's theory was attempting to
refute invisible Designer. This agenda is wholly concerned with
proselytizing and thus deceiving new readers who may be on the fence
in the Creation-Evolution debate.

Ray, you're part of this newsgroup.  So are the atheists who see no
realistic way of reconciling theism with evolution.  So are the
theistic evolutionists who do see a way to reconcile theism with
evolution.  This newsgroup doesn't have an agenda, beyond keeping
creationists away from the actual science newsgroups by providing them
somewhere else to go argue against "evolutionism."


When a person points out the corruptive agenda of this Group the same
person does not expect an admission to that effect - obviously - since
an admission would defeat the purpose of the agenda. When Atheists act
like TEism is a valid position the agenda is admitted nonetheless.

But it seems to me that very few people here would dispute that Darwin
was arguing against an "invisible designer" in the sense you mean.

Agreed.

Darwin was a "closet" Atheist attempting to refute Genesis and
invisible Designer via counterfeit deistic intent.

Rather, your opponents are claiming that disputing said "invisible
designer" was not Darwin's *primary* purpose (that is, he was
proposing a scientific theory -- a naturalistic explanation -- for
biological complexity and diversity rather than attempting to overturn
a religious view), and that theism is compatible with acceptance of
evolutionary theory.  

False.

Your commentary incorporates the Group agenda and substitutes that to
be accurate history. Darwin was rebutting Paley and attempting to
overturn the majority scientific view (not religious view) of the era.
If design was a religious view then why was Darwin addressing Paley?
Question is rhetorical. This is why the Group denies basic history
that Darwin was rebutting Paley. Ayala says it repeatedly. Like I have
pointed out: the Group agenda is in direct conflict with published
scholarship. Ayala is just one among many.

And Darwin ASSERTED Theism to be compatible with his theory. He wanted
converts. Theism is not compatible with Darwinism for the reason
pointed out in my comment just above these. Theists who support
Darwinism have completely misunderstood his intentions. Darwin is much
to blame for this.

Ayala redundantly says Darwin was re-explaining Paleyan design. I am
quite surprised how redundantly Ayala says this - over and over and
over.

Darwin WAS proposing a naturalistic theory to account for Paleyan
design - a phenomenon that he denied to exist in nature after 1839.

As I have pointed out, evolutionary theory
denies divine involvement in nature to exactly the same extent that
meteorology, or embryology, or, for that matter, history does.  In the
Bible, God opens the windows of heaven to let rain fall, or closes
them to impose droughts, He shapes babies directly in their mothers'
wombs, and He brings nations to the territories He has alloted them,
yet today scholars offer purely materialistic (or, in the case of
history, at least purely economic and political) explanations for
these phenomena.  If God is not thereby banished from His creation, He
cannot be banished by arguing (just as, as Ayala points out, several
early church fathers also argued) that He employed secondary
materialistic causes in producing life.


Phony deistic intent attempting to reassure Theists and hide the true
agenda of evolution: Atheism.

Ayala is lying like all evolutionists do.


Mind you: I too have read Ayala's book.

Before we get to Darwin's gift to religion, it may interest Ray that
Ayala agrees with him, against me, that Darwin wrote _Origin of
Species_ to address Paley's argument from design.  

All scholars and authors know this to be a fact.

Is that a single category (the intersection of the sets of "scholars"
and "authors"), or is it two categories ("all scholars" and "all
authors")?


Single set.

For example: Ken Miller is an author, he is not a scholar in "Finding
Darwin's God" because he has no credentials in Theology or History of
Science. I guess in parts where biology is discussed he could be
considered a scholar.

I suppose I could
salvage a scrap from this argument by pointing out that nowhere does
Ayala say that Darwin wrote specifically to refute Paley's _Natural
Theology_.  

Anyone who has a gestalt grasp on the massive Darwin literature knows
that scholars agree: the "Origin" was a rebuttal to Paley's "Argument
from Design" - Watchmaker thesis.

If you have a gestalt grasp on massive literature, all I can suggest
is a good laxative.





But Ayala specifically credits Paley with formulating both
the problem that Darwin's book addresses (the origins of apparent
design in nature) and the position that Darwin deals with as the main
alternative to his own theories.

Yes.

Ayala and a host of scholars and authors before him have addressed the
dual concern of both Paley and Darwin: the observation of design.

On the other hand, Ayala agrees with me, against Ray, on a couple of
issues.

First, Ayala states that "[t]he evolution of organisms was commonly
accepted by naturalists in the middle decades of the 19th century ....
[t]he intellectual challenge was to explain the origin of distinct
species of organisms, how new ones adapted to their
environments ...."  

I will have to look this up myself: where is the page number? When you
quote it is proper to include this information.

Ayala, Francisco J., _Darwin's Gift to Science and Religion_,
Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2007, page 43 (middle paragraph).
A precis of pre-Darwinian evolutionary ideas occupies pages 32-35.


Yeah I looked it up.

It's an ambiguous throwaway line containing no reference. The epitome
of an unsupported assertion at best. Very shoddy authorship that
sticks out.


Note that "naturalists" here almost certainly
means, not people who deny divine causation in nature," but people who
study wild nature -- what we would today call "field biologists" and
"ecologists."  

....and geologists.

Naturalists study natural history.  According to at least one
dictionary, "natural history" includes not only plants and animals,
but also minerals.  Still, I would not think that a claim that
"naturalists" widely accepted evolution implies that geologists (as
opposed to zoologists and botanists) generally accepted evolution.


Before Darwin almost none accepted transmutation.

This is undisputed common knowledge. But it is an excellent point that
needs to be made since persons today might think it is referring to
persons who believe in Naturalism. A naturalist in the 19th century
was a person who studied nature.

I would assume that "the middle decades of the 19th
century" includes a couple of decades prior to 1858, so Ayala holds
that there were scientists who accepted evolution prior to the
publication of _Origin of Species_.

I think you are misreading. There were literally a handful and
transmutation WAS NOT a viable scientific hypothesis competing with
Creationism until 1859.

Since creationism was not a viable scientific hypothesis in its own
right ("at this stage, a miracle occurs" is not a scientific
explanation and, scientifically, does not differ from having no
explanation at all), why should it be a problem that transmutation was
not a viable scientific explanation?


Creationism was science before 1859.

Your allegiance to the agenda is showing.

No scholar denies. Not even one.






Second, Ayala notes that traditionally, even creationism did not
insist on special creation for all species.  He notes that 4th century
Church fathers like Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine of Hippo had
proposed that God had created in two stages: an initial instantaneous
creation of some species, and a second, potential creation that would
emerge naturally in stages at different times in history (Augustine,
Ayala states, hoped by this means to explain how  there could be so
many different kinds of living things when Noah's Ark could not hold
so many: some species did not emerge until after the Flood).  So the
idea that God could build into nature the power to produce new species
antedates evolutionary theory by a long time.

I have not read far enough to be sure what Ayala holds to be "Darwin's
gift to religion."  

I have.

Ayala presupposes that Darwinism is advocating Deism - that's all,
which he pretends to be the same as Theism.

Well, we shall see whether I agree with you on that.





However, at the beginning of the book, he notes
his surprise when first encountering American creationism, because in
the seminaries of his native Spain, evolution was incorporated into
Christian theodicy.  Theodicy is the branch of theology that seeks "to
justify God's ways to man" (Milton's phrase, IIRC, not Ayala's), to
resolve the ancient paradox of how God can be both omnipotent,
benevolent, and yet rule over a world where evil exists.


What is the point?

Traditionally, part of the solution has been sought in free will: much
evil results from free human choices allowed by God for some higher
good.  

The existence of evil is explained in the Bible.

Evolutionary theory can be incorporated into this apologetic:
rather than dictate directly the final state of every aspect of His
creation, God allows freedom to all aspects of his creation and lets
it develop in ways that are not predetermined.  

Evidence....cite....reference....?

Before I knew better, that is, before 2005 when my knowledge of
evolution accepted microevolution, and before this going back to 2002
or maybe 2003, I used to argue that chance was a God guided
phenomenon. I can show it to you right from Genesis. But it is
woefully out of context. The control of chance seen in Genesis is NOT
the same as chance proposed by ToE. The latter is saying that God is
not involved. Ayala is attempting to gain and retain converts.

Ayala quotes a passage
from the last paragraph of _Origin of Species_ that has been cited by
some creationists as Darwin's praise of violence and struggle as good
in themselves: "Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death,
the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely,
the production of the higher animals, directly follows."  Ayala (or at
least Ayala's theology teachers) sees this not as praise of war,
famine, and death, but as a defense of God for allowing war, famine
and death: a greater good is accomplished by not abolishing these
evils, since through them God has brought about the very contrivance
and relations in nature that so awed Paley.


I'll get back to this point. I need to think about it.


No comment on these paragraphs, Ray?

I hope to finish the book and give a more complete account of Ayala's
thoughts on this issue, if anyone is interested.

-- Steven J.

Please finish.

I have spent less time reading lately than I had intended, but I shall
endeavor to do so quickly.



Ray

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Ray

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