Logic Times

Comments

Page Three

Darwinism vs.

Intelligent Design

6: LOGOS

April 12, 2005 7:33pm EST

{Aslan: We are honored with a visit from our a member of the Logic Times staff, Logos, curator of the Liberal Zoo.}

Logos is tired, very tired of the Darwinian psuedointellectual pinheads that seem to have an answer for everything on this shithole of a planet, and yes I know, that, by giving you good information it does indeed dramatically increase my opportunities to mate and spread my genetic material, for as we all know, knowledge is power, and chicks dig power. So without further ado, I will give you what all you hungry chicks want: power and knowledge that will really turn you on, forget the pleasure devices and the Chippendales ladies, this is the real deal.

Now, what fries Logos is all this Darwinian evolutionary blah blah blah about how scientists have it all figured out about how life formed in the primordial soup and coalesced into Elephants and Shrimp. I got that. But what we haven't talked about is not life itself, which is statistically impossible, let alone consciousness, or even group samethink, which is beyond calculation, but something a little simpler, that is, what conditions need to be in place just for life to exist on a planet. Until we understand that, then we cannot understand the magnitude of a living cell.

There are 153 parameters that I will partially list that need to be present on any planet for life to exist. Not advanced life, mind you, just life.

Scientific research has conclusively shown that these parameters must exist for life to exist on any planet in the Universe.

(Probability that feature will fall into required range for physical life)

local abundance & distribution of dark matter   .1

galaxy cluster size   .1

galaxy cluster location   .1

galaxy size   .1

galaxy type   .1

galaxy type   .1

galaxy mass distribution   .1

galaxy location   .1

variability of local dwarf galaxy absorption rate   .1

star location relative to galactic center   .2

star rotation from co-rotation circle of galaxy   .005

star distance from closest spiral arm   .1

z-axis extreme's of star's orbit   .02

You get the drift. There are another 140 parameters that need to be "perfect" for life to exist. For a great read and complete list get the book "Lights in the Sky & Little Green Men" by Ross, Samples, and Clark, published by NAVPRESS. You will be astounded, which is good, because as you all know, astounded chicks love to mate.

But I digress. Let me paraphrase their conclusion and you can decide for yourself the ultimate question using Occam's Razor. Is life more likely from a creative event or random processes?

Conclusion: The probability of a planet (any planet) anywhere in the Universe fitting within all 153 parameters is approximately 10 to the minus 194 power. The maximum number of planets in the Universe is estimated to be 10 to the 22 power. Thus, less than 1 chance in 10 to the 172 power (100 thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion) exists that even one such planet exists in the Universe.

Use the Razor, you decide!  

LOGOS

7: JW

April 13, 2005 9:23am EST

Aslan, I've read through all the comments you got and your replies, and I'm impressed by your evenhandedness.  I'm also impressed that you understand the difference between what Darwin originally said and what the neo-Darwinists said in the neo-Darwinian synthesis.  Few of the people who question evolution bother to learn that much about it.  However, I think you'd do everyone involved a service if you stopped calling the synthetic theory "Darwinism."  Part of the problem with the synthetic theory was that it wasn't pure Darwinism.  By the 1950s much of what Darwin actually said about his theory had been either forgotten or simply ignored, and it took Gould and Eldredge and their colleagues to reveal the holes in the synthesis and take the overall theory back to what Darwin had first had in mind.

{Aslan: Thanks, JW.  I think the distinction you make, while having some merit, is likely to paralyze the dialog with minutia.  The Darwinism – neo or otherwise – that I and other theists find intriguing is the untouchable Darwinism taught as fact and understood by the masses as the Truth about evolution.  Thus is the interesting aspect of this debate revealed: not that different ideas exist, but that a group supposedly dedicated to objective processes grounded in intellectual honesty has abandoned intellectual honesty out of fear of theism.}

It appears that you're working toward some variant of the position called "theistic evolution," which can be clumsily summarized as "God Created man, and evolution is how He did it."  The theistic-evolutionists I've encountered tend to picture a Universe where God created life, then left it more or less alone to see what would develop, only nudging it here and there when He thought it was necessary or desirable.  (Some theistic-evolutionists see God's hand in every change, down to the origin of each and every new species, but as Ken Miller observed in his book FINDING DARWIN'S GOD, that reduces God to no more than a tinkerer, and an incompetent one at that.)

{Aslan: Be not too hasty to classify my warped mind!  My theory would not be classified as either.}

Commenter Paul5388's point about the "hiding" of genes in some plants is a good one, but both he and you are wrong in thinking that it weakens Darwin's theory.  Darwin knew nothing about genes; he only concluded from his studies of selective breeding that there had to be some way of passing down traits from one generation to the next, and it had to work by certain rules.  Within those rules, anything is acceptable.  Bacteria transfer genes back and forth via plasmids; certain viruses can insert their own DNA into a host cell's genes; genes and chromosomes get shuffled during reproduction; certain genes can move from mitochondria to nuclear DNA.  A recently-discovered mechanism in fruit flies increases the rate of mutation when the fly's body is under severe environmental stress.  This discovery that genes can "hide" for a generation is simply another way of shuffling the gene set.  It doesn't bother evolutionary theory, because evolutionary theory doesn't care how genes move into or through the gene pool.  It's enough that they do move.

{Aslan: The article does not refer to recessive information, which of course is present but not manifested.  The authors state: "But how could the child acquire genetic information from its grandparent, if the parent had lost it?"  It appears their studies confirmed that the genetic information was missing in the parent, otherwise their finding would be no more spectacular than pointing out that two parents with black hair had a blond-haired child.  They go on to say: "Lolle and Pruitt postulate that the 'lost' genetic information securely resides outside the standard genome."  That is extra-genetic, which is significant when considering ANY evolutionary model.}

7: JW

April 13, 2005 9:23am EST

(continued)

In one of your counterpoints to my first note, you said that "Darwinism is speculative, but taught as fact.  That is all.  Yet, despite a failure to meet traditional standards of evidence, defenders of the Darwin faith cannot retreat and/or will not allow this theory to be called into question. "  I disagree with your word choice.  Darwinism is not "speculative."  Even the gradualist version that we both disagree with is not speculative.  "Speculation" describes an idea that is reached mainly by abstract thought, with little existing evidence either for or against it.  It falls below a hypothesis in the hierarchy of scientific ideas.  That doesn't describe Darwinism.  Darwinism is more than speculation, even more than a hypothesis.  It's a large and complex theory.  There's a lot of evidence for it, enough that it would take several books to even list it all.  You may think it's right or you may think it's wrong, but to call it "speculative" is to do a disservice to a great many biologists who have spent a great many years working on it.

{Aslan: You are probably correct in my word choice, but you miss the forest for the trees.  Whatever the terms used to describe the strength of this theory, it possesses insufficient strength to be presented as "the way things are."  You know and I know that the neo-Darwinian concept of evolution is not presented as theorectical.  Evolution, to much of the world of today is fact.  Why?}

I'd also add that most "Darwinians" are hypersensitive about "questioning" of the theory because for more than a hundred years, most "questions" about the theory have come from creationists who know little about the theory of evolution and think that Darwinists are either stupid or evil for believing the theory.  Genuine, science-based criticism of the theory, from someone who has studied it and knows what it says and the evidence for it, has been rare.

{Aslan: If scientists react to non-science by adopting non-scientific techniques, they cease to be scientists, no matter how annoyed they might be.  Galileo should be our example – when you are confronted with irrationality, maintain your standards.}

One last point: You found my example of speciation in the fossil record unconvincing because I said such examples were rare, and you think they should be more common.  A reasonable point.  My answer is that we don't need to see speciation in the fossil record, because we can watch speciation occurring in today's world.  So we know speciation occurs, and we know it happens pretty much the way Darwin's theory said it should: genetic variation filtered by natural selection, leading to descent with modification.  What we need from the fossil record is evidence that the same process which drives speciation can lead to long ancestor-descendant lines of species, each species different from the last in subtle ways, so that the overall chain accomplishes a major transformation -- for example, Hyracotherium to Equus, or Psittacosaurus to Triceratops, or fish to amphibians, or straight nautiloid cephalopods to coiled ammonoid cephalopods.  The fossil record supplies such lines of descent in abundance.   I could list dozens of examples from my own library alone; professional palaeontologists know of thousands.

{Aslan: No question.  Look at the classic –

It is a tough sell to argue that extinct species with precursor characteristics of current, more advanced species are unlinked and unrelated. Such precursors fit an evolutionary theory – they existed at the right time, with the right precursor traits.  But this suggests evolution, not gradualism.}

Thanks for a pleasant exchange; that's all too rare on this topic these days.

{Aslan: Indeed!  Thank you.}

8: Philip Gray

April 13, 2005 3:59am EST

When these debates arise I always look for Hollywood inspiration - this time Tommy Lee Jones' character, Agent K in "Men In Black."

"A thousand years ago

[science] knew as a fact, that the earth

was the center of the universe. Five

hundred years ago, [science] knew it was flat.

Fifteen minutes ago, you knew we humans

were alone on it. Imagine what you'll know

tomorrow."

(emphasis and addition of "science" mine).

Granted humorous, but it does illustrate the arrogance of the scientific community -the treatment of Darwinism as fact or the complete disregard of divine involvement. Graduating with a B.S. in Zoology and being a Christian, it was - lemme say - tough to swallow everything that was being fed to you regarding evolution.  Microevolution is fine and there are many examples to that end.  However, macroevolution is more troublesome to be taken as whole.

I am beginning to answer questions posed by my children regarding creation, life, etc.  I tell them in a very simplistic way that it takes more "faith" to accept without question the evolutionary explanation that is completely devoid of God.  Looking at the complexities of various organ systems (i.e. the eye, vascular system, etc.) and the coupled with the complexities in the natural world (the balance of our atmosphere, water, land, etc. etc) screams to me at least divine involvement.  If not, then I better be stocking up on the Mega-Ultra-Incredible Powerball Lotto because the statistical chance of all of these systems coming together in such harmony to support this fragile life to me is astronomical.

However, I also believe God gave us the ability to search out through science and scientific techniques to probe and being to answer (or better yet, postulate better questions) and we cannot completely discount those findings.  As critical as I can be of the scientific community, I believe that my Christian brethren (myself lumped in as well) also share responsibility for closing our minds or at least demonizing those who may have a unique perspective on issues such as this.

Bottom line:  Non-Christian or non-religious view of science needs to humble themselves and admit to the shortcomings of their theories.  The Christians need to be reminded that the true bottom line is that "God created."  My God is powerful enough that He could have created this whole universe in seven 24-hour periods, or seven billion year segments or for that matter seven nanoseconds.  The point for Christians is that He created.  How He created - that has value and merits discussion, but not to the point where we lose sight and make this discussion the most important focus/part of our relationship.  Meaning, I don't think the criteria of getting to Heaven will be depending on my answer to the question, "Phil, do you believe in punctuated equilibrium, gradualism, seven 24 hour periods, intelligent design, etc. etc."

Thanks again for an interesting post.

{Aslan: You’re welcome and thanks for a very interesting comment.  While I have criticized the unscientific behavior of scientists in packaging this theory, you are correct to point out the beam in the eyes of believers that is the rejection of the evidence that is clear.  As St. Paul says in Romans: “19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”  Science should be the delight of believers!}

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