ORIGINS: testing design
David Campbell (bivalve@isis.unc.edu)
Mon, 25 Nov 1996 12:35:23 -0500>Russ Maatman has issued the appropriate critical test:
>
>"The test will be the response to the challenge I and others make: Get a
>proposed gradualistic mechanism for one of Behe's systems past the referees
>and editors of the Journal of Molecular Evolution, or some other journal, and
>then let all of us take a look."
>
>I add a further requirement, that a selective mechanism also be specified.
>
>Who's willing to take up the challenge?
>
This tests whether anyone thinks up a mechanism, but does not test whether
one exists. Perhaps we're just not clever enough to figure out how God
caused the system to evolve. If no explantion is forthcoming, the gap is
merely filled by philosophical preconceptions, e.g., "It was designed", "It
evolved somehow", or "I don't know how God did it". I think the third
option is the safest assertion.
Department of Geology
CB 3315 Mitchell Hall
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill NC 27599-3315
"He had discovered an unknown bivalve, forming a new genus"-E. A. Poe, The
Gold Bug