tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759178030677978044.post6067966487115296161..comments2024-02-19T07:24:42.397-08:00Comments on Anglican Curmudgeon: Should a Christian Be a Darwinian?A. S. Haleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05108498446058643166noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759178030677978044.post-26278336651354406542010-07-23T07:19:50.483-07:002010-07-23T07:19:50.483-07:00Richard Crocker, thank you for that pointer to you...Richard Crocker, thank you for that pointer <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Free-Think-Caroline-I-Crocker/dp/0981873448/" rel="nofollow">to your wife's book</a>. I now have it, and am reading it with great interest. It is a firsthand account of what can happen when young, idealistic academics dare to try to bring some objectivity to the discussion of Darwinian evolution as applied to the question of life's origin.A. S. Haleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05108498446058643166noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759178030677978044.post-2547876421644947012010-07-08T19:38:09.303-07:002010-07-08T19:38:09.303-07:00Mr Haley,
Thank you for your helpful comments abou...Mr Haley,<br />Thank you for your helpful comments about Dr Meyer's book which I have read and enjoyed. You have summarized the point well.<br />May I add a coincidental note that my wife (Dr Caroline Crocker, featured in the movie "Expelled" with Ben Stein) has just published her book "Free to Think - Why Scientific Integrity Matters" which describes her story - the attempt to teach the controversy and how academia reacted to that, and why this should matter to us.<br /><br />Richard CrockerRichard Crockerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04819205069150597838noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759178030677978044.post-34479222880552831502010-07-07T23:29:06.869-07:002010-07-07T23:29:06.869-07:00the question ought to have been stated: "Shou...<i>the question ought to have been stated: "Should a Christian Be a Darwinian?" And the resounding answer which this book gives is: "<b>No, there is absolutely no reason for a Christian to take up Darwinian views of evolution</b> -- at least, in order to explain the origin of life."</i><br /><br />I agree.<br /><br />And I suppose that the Anglican Curmudgeon is aware that one of the founders of Intelligent Design is also a lawyer: Phillip E. Johnson, professor emeritus at UC Berkeley.Truth Unites... and Divideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08891402278361538353noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759178030677978044.post-50182835205413186182010-07-07T17:28:13.354-07:002010-07-07T17:28:13.354-07:00Fair enough. I must say, I think those of us most ...Fair enough. I must say, I think those of us most involved in the debate find it most efficient to first identify and eliminate previous PRATTs (points refuted a thousand times) dressed in new garb, so that will account for your comment about "<i>species fallaciosae #327</i>".<br /><br />For instance, your summary of Meyer's argument, that "naturalistic methods are incapable of ever explaining the origins of life on earth," is easily identifiable as a God-of-the-gaps pitfall. It's merely an assertion and, as a negative, cannot be proved; the worst part of God-of-the-gaps arguments are the fact that they stake out some ground and say, "Sorry, science, nothing to see here. Move along!" It's scanning the view from one room's windows and, upon failure to glimpse the thing sought, concluding that the thing sought after does not exist, followed by lowering the blinds, shutting the door, and proclaiming the futility of further inquiry.<br /><br />Whatever "design" is or what/Who is responsible, it did not begin only after life and DNA formed; it is also responsible for that first life. Non-ID scientists see no reason to think that gaps in our knowledge, even when great, are insurmountable. To say that design might be explained via science all the way back to the first life forms but "never", not <i>ever</i> before that point is arbitrary, if not willfully naive.Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10437182150289507067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759178030677978044.post-23049048073038232262010-07-06T23:01:49.842-07:002010-07-06T23:01:49.842-07:00There is an enormous -- and I mean literally, enor...There is an enormous -- and I mean literally, <i><b>enormous</b></i> -- amount of scientific investigation documenting the workings of evolution and natural selection in the natural history of the earth's creatures. I do not mean to disparage those results in the slightest, or to question their validity. <br /><br />What I question -- and what Prof. Meyers' book questions -- is the application of evolutionary reasoning and processes to the origin of life in the first place. I have yet to see a purported explanation of the origin of life using natural selection as the mechanism which does not end up in a minimizing, or trivialization, of the substantial chemical and physical obstacles to such an occurrence. <br /><br />Using Dawkins' explanation of complexity <i>once life exists</i> to explain the origins of life itself is just as objectionable and intellectually dishonest, in my poor opinion, as is the waving of a creationist wand to explain life's origins. And let me be clear: I fully agree with Prof. Matheson's dictum that "design is the question, not the answer." To posit "intelligent design" as the explanation for the origin of life is scientifically inadequate, since (in science's terms, at least) the designer is left unexplained.<br /><br />But the point is precisely <b>not</b> to "explain the designer", but to recognize <i>the fact of design</i>, as opposed to the result of undirected processes. To take another context, which is equally controversial: the mechanism by which the image came to be an inseparable part of the Shroud of Turin has never received an adequate scientific explanation -- although scientists remain confident that one day, such an explanation will be found. To me, it is a far more satisfactory solution (in light of <a href="http://accurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2009/04/playing-back-resurrection.html" rel="nofollow">all the other evidence pointing to its authenticity</a>) to accept that the Shroud is genuine, and to humble oneself to accept that if that is the case, then the explanation of how the image came to be there is likely beyond our means, and is in any event beside the point. To say that God produced a mystery for humans is to say nothing about either God or humans.<br /><br />And so I acknowledge Prof. Matheson's ultimate critique of Prof. Meyers: design is the question, not the answer. But I would dearly like to read a genuine refutation of the argument that intermediate byproducts in the chain of (assumed) protein/RNA/DNA "evolution" would always have been chemically and biologically stable long enough in order to function as the next necessary (and intermediate) platform for evolution/random mutation to work its magic. <i>That</i> is what I find missing on all the Darwinist websites. If anyone can point me to such a treatment of the evidence, I would be most grateful.A. S. Haleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05108498446058643166noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759178030677978044.post-13041019978055541022010-07-06T22:44:30.201-07:002010-07-06T22:44:30.201-07:00Steve Douglas, thank you very much for the link to...Steve Douglas, thank you very much for the link to Steve Matheson's blog. (What are the odds that all the people from whom I've derived useful information about the design-evolution debate in the last few weeks are named Steve?)<br /><br />What I find fascinating, as an attorney, in following the debates between evolution and design, is how the various camps seem willfully (or would it be genetically) inclined to (a) compartmentalize their opponents ("Oh, I've seen that argument before; it is <i>species fallaciosae</i> #327"); or (b) respond to something other than the specific argument being made. (As a trial attorney, I am well versed in the latter phenomenon.)<br /><br />I did not commend Stephen Meyers book as particularly well written (I found it somewhat didactic and verbose, but that is beside the point); nevertheless, his message came through loud and clear: <i>naturalistic methods are incapable of <b>ever</b> explaining the origins of life on earth.</i> As I noted in my post, they have a very limited time frame in which to explain the evolution, by the accumulations of molecular processes, of the DNA code which is at the heart of what we recognize as life.<br /><br />Steven Matheson makes some very telling critiques of Prof. Meyers' arguments, and points out a number of howlers in the text that should have been caught by a careful edit or peer review before publication. Such errors are unworthy of the messenger, and serve only to make his message the more easily discredited -- and thus contribute to the miscommunication which is occurring.<br /><br />Where I find the divergence in communication most telling is in Prof. Matheson's invocation of Richard Dawkins' <i>The Blind Watchmaker</i> (in particular, <a href="http://sfmatheson.blogspot.com/2009/09/weasels-clouds-and-biomorphs-part-i.html" rel="nofollow">ch. 3 and its associated computer program</a>) to refute Prof. Meyers. Someone as obviously knowledgeable as Prof. Matheson should have been able to explain that Dawkins was talking about evolution <i>after life already came into being</i>, while Meyers is addressing the explanations of how life came to be in the first instance.<br /><br />[To be continued in the next comment.]A. S. Haleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05108498446058643166noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759178030677978044.post-90469649632825668532010-07-06T18:01:11.819-07:002010-07-06T18:01:11.819-07:00Mr. Haley,
Have you read any of the many criticis...Mr. Haley,<br /><br />Have you read any of the many criticisms of Meyer's book? For instance, <a href="http://sfmatheson.blogspot.com/search/label/Signature%20in%20the%20Cell" rel="nofollow">this site</a> from a Christian biology professor at Calvin College (Grand Rapids) regularly points out the flawed premises and seeming misinformation of Stephen Meyer's work in the book you found so compelling. And of course there's also the critiques on the BioLogos website.<br /><br />At the risk of sounding snobbish, I think it's important to note that an essential prerequisite for a non-professional wishing to campaign for a view contrary to the consensus of most professionals is not only to find an articulate voice of the minority view (Meyer is that) but to also objectively analyze critiques of the minority view and find them wanting. It is not enough to dislike a view and then latch on to whatever first appears to be a compelling and popular response to that view; when you begin to digest the <i>Christian</i> responses to Meyer, I think you'll see that your endorsement may have been premature.<br /><br />I'm no expert myself, and I can't talk numbers, but it is a truism that being someone who affirms the need for a miraculous divine agent to spark life and being a "Darwinian" are not mutually exclusive. Also, without granting the validity of all of Meyer's data (I simply don't know), it's hopelessly premature to conclude based upon outlandish statistics that something "shouldn't have happened", given that science is but in its infancy and will almost certainly continue to close gaps in our knowledge about factors in the primordial world that will bring the statistics back down into believable odds.Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10437182150289507067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759178030677978044.post-67289157770797265112010-07-06T09:36:25.652-07:002010-07-06T09:36:25.652-07:00David Trautman, I agree about the Plantinga articl...David Trautman, I agree about the Plantinga article -- it is very well done. There is a similar article, "Methodological Naturalism?" -- which may be downloaded <a href="http://philosophy.nd.edu/people/all/profiles/plantinga-alvin/" rel="nofollow">from this page</a>.<br /><br />rick allen, the mistake to which you refer is a common one, but Darwin himself contributed to its being made, with his well-known hypothesis that life may have originated in <a href="http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2009/11/06/the_story_behind_darwin_s_warm_little_po" rel="nofollow">"some warm little pond."</a> No one understood genetics at that time, and so no one could appreciate the multiple problems one encounters in trying to solve the RNA-protein-chicken-and-egg conundrum. But that did not stop scientists such as Harold Urey from speculating that some sort of "natural selection" process led to the accumulation of complexity that is life.<br /><br />The key belief of modern Darwinian evolutionists, as I indicated with the quote from Professor Ruse at the start of the post, is that life evolved "naturally" -- that is, deterministically, as a result of multiple random collisions -- from non-life. And what Professor Meyer has shown in that there has not been time enough since the Big Bang for all the conceivable collisions in the universe to have produced one protein of 150+ amino acids, let alone ones of 400 or more. The assumption that intermediate steps along the way will remain stable long enough for further complexity to accrue is simply not borne out by the chemical evidence. (And don't even get me started on left-handed versus right-handed sugars on the DNA and RNA chains!)A. S. Haleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05108498446058643166noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759178030677978044.post-54635482048129146612010-07-06T06:59:13.242-07:002010-07-06T06:59:13.242-07:00It seems to me that your entry makes a common but ...It seems to me that your entry makes a common but fundamental error about Darwin. "The Origin of Species" is not a book about the origin of life; it is a book about the origin of species, of how existing life forms generate diferent life forms that eventually become separate species. "The Descent of Man" simply applied that process to the origin of homo sapiens.<br /><br />I think there's no question that a Christian can be a Darwinian. But "evolution" has come to mean so many things, and has been used to justify so many ideologies, including laissez faire capitalism, Nazism, and <br />Marxism, it's almost useless as a descriptive term.rick allenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07612435616018593956noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759178030677978044.post-40539010604562244372010-07-06T06:30:14.914-07:002010-07-06T06:30:14.914-07:00I was a philosophy student at FSU during Ruse'...I was a philosophy student at FSU during Ruse's tenure there. Any interested parties should also check out a fascinating article by Alvin Plantinga titled "Naturalism Defeated". I think it is the best logical challenge to a strictly naturalistic worldview.David Trautmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00986419875708288045noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759178030677978044.post-80559188138477920302010-07-05T16:50:09.669-07:002010-07-05T16:50:09.669-07:00Mr. Haley. Thanks for posting about this unusual ...Mr. Haley. Thanks for posting about this unusual book and author. I was a bit surprised to find out that he is a philosopher not a Molecular Biologist/Geneticist. There are many Molecular Biologists and/or Geneticists who are Christians. That might be surprising to some but not to me as one who studied Molecular Biology and Genetics as a grad student and is also a Christian. <br /><br />His book should be very interesting reading. Hmm. put on list of books to buy. Thanks for this wonderful info.Alexihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09222877183938209659noreply@blogger.com