Bryan,
Clearly we will continue to disagree about these things. For
time-management purposes, it is important for me to remove myself from
further discussion, so this will be my last word (I tried to stop last
week, but I wasn't disciplined enough!).
At 03:56 PM 7/11/00 -0500, Bryan R. Cross wrote:
>Doug Hayworth wrote:
>
> > In response to Preston G's post, Bryan Cross wrote:
> >
> > >I don't know much about the HIV virus, so I cannot say whether it shows
> > >signs of intelligent design. The ID thesis has no problem with natural
> > >evil, because the ID thesis makes no claims about the moral character of
> > >the designer(s). The problem of natural evil falls upon those who identify
> > >the designer as a good, omniscient, omnipotent God who continually
> > >sustains and governs His creation, i.e. the problem falls upon theists. If
> > >the HIV virus contains SCI or IC systems, then those theists who maintain
> > >that these cannot arise by [providence-governed] chance alone might claim
> > >either that the HIV virus (1) was created de novo or (2) was formed by
> > >mutations caused by direct divine action or (3) resulted from a
> > >devolution, or loss of original proper function by loss of information or
> > >removal from the environment in which it was designed to function. Those
> > >theists who claim that the formation of natural evils such as HIV
> virus were
> > >either codified into the initial settings of the universe or effected by
> > >providence-governed mutations are no more immune to this problem than are
> > >the theists who maintain that SCI and IC cannot arise by
> > >[providence-governed] chance.
> >
> > In general, I would have to agree with Bryan that such cases of "natural
> > evil" (a term that I use lightly, since I am not exactly sure how it is
> > used in such discussions and have little sense of whether or not it is a
> > sound theological notion) are fundamentally no more of a problem for
> > Christian IDologists than for any other Christian. The problem of pain
> > (I'll back away here on whether it is evil) is a basic theological problem
> > for all of us who are theists.
> >
> > There are problems, however, with Bryan's three explanatory options for the
> > Christian IDologist with regard to HIV. The first option is simply false;
> > HIV is phylogenetically related to other natural viruses (I could get some
> > references if necessary).
>
>As you yourself know, relation of any sort does not exclude de novo creation.
>Therefore this first option is still an available option.
No, I do not know or acknowledge this, at least as you are applying it
here. This seems to be the old excuse that "Well, God might have just
created it to look like it was the product of common ancestry." I do not
accept this type of thinking as worth its breath to speak it. IDologist
want to make a lot out of recognizing the "signature" of a designer based
on a complex specified pattern. Well, the nested, hierarchical structure
of genetic and morphological homologies among species is exceedingly
complex in unequivocally specifying common ancestry as fact. It is the
best case of complex specified complexity there is. I think this is why
folks like Behe don't try to argue against this.
> > The second option does not support ID unless
> > those mutations (from a pre-existing ancestral viral "species") could not
> > have occurred by known forms of genetic mutation; ID would have to show not
> > simply that HIV was amazingly designed as a whole but that the mutational
> > steps between related viruses and HIV could not have taken place naturally
> > while maintaining a viable virus. I find the possibility of being able to
> > prove such a thing to be very nearly zero.
>
>Of course if you put the burden of proof on the one who has to prove that an
>organism couldn't evolve by known forms of genetic mutation then you've won by
>default. To avoid begging the question it is better (in my view) to withhold
>judgment until a continuous genetic trajectory without any viability gaps has
>been discovered or (what is harder) it is shown that there is no continuous
>genetic trajectory without any viability gaps for the feature/organism in
>question. So this second option also is still available to the ID
>proponent who
>denies that SCI and IC can arise by [providence-governed] mutations, and who
>claims that the HIV virus contains SCI and IC.
Indeed, I have put the burden of proof there, but with very good
reason. As I stated above, common ancestry (here, I'll only require it
going back to major phyla, though I think the evidence is great for all of
life) is a compelling specified complex pattern as to dispel any doubt
about it. Likewise, the mechanisms which inherently cause descent with
modification and the multiplication of species (i.e., the mechanisms which
specify the complex pattern of hierarchical relationships of species) are
known. The mechanism of inheritance is well-characterized, as are the
various mechanisms of mutation.
Your demand for a "continuous genetic trajectory without viability gaps" is
completely unreasonable and fruitless. No human epistemology works that
way. Only God sees all evidence and all of history completely without
epistemological gaps. Consider as an example a single set of human
footprints in the sand. As a pattern, they are discrete, without a
continuous trajectory. By your epistemological criterion, you would not
accept that they were made by a single individual walking along the beach
unless you saw the individual make them (i.e., unless you saw the
continuous human trajectory lay them down). On the other hand, an
ordinary, rational person would understand from what he/she knows about
mechanisms that cause such patterns (namely, humans that walk) that the
pattern is sufficiently complex and specified in relation to that known
mechanism that a human being must have produced it.
The plain and unequivocal evidence based on known mechanisms of descent and
modification (inheritance and mutation) is that it actually occurred by
these ordinary natural processes. Given this present knowledge about
mechanisms and complex patterns in the real world, the burden of proof is
on ID to show that natural mechanisms could not have produced the
change. Again, let me go back to the footprint example and consider a
crime detective who wishes to prove that the footprints were actually
placed there by a trained animal wearing foot-like booties whose footprints
in the sand acted as an alibi for a murderer. Everyone accepts that the
burden of proof would be on the detective to show that the footprints were
not made by the ordinary means understood from the known mechanisms about
humans walking on the beach. He would have to find compelling, positive
evidence that the footprints could not possibly have been made by a human.
> > If indeed some ancestral virus lost or rearranged
> > some genetic material that caused it to become HIV, this is evidence for
> > UNintelligent design (by mutation).
>
>Agreed. And this would be a problem for ID only if ID claimed that every
>feature/property of every organism was intelligently designed. Since ID
>does not
>make such a claim, this is not a problem for ID. When an intelligently
>designed
>organism acquires a mutation, clearly the organism itself does not thereby
>become
>UNintelligently designed. Therefore, the presence of mutations within an
>organism
>is compatible with it being intelligently designed and having derived
>functions
>that were not intelligently designed.
I know that ID does not claim that every feature is intelligently
designed. But I understood Preston's original question to be aimed at how
ID would deal with the problem of a "natural evil" if the "evil" aspect of
the organism was found to be intelligently designed. Hence, his comment
about the devil getting to design things too. I was critiquing your
response in light of that specific form of his question.
> > I know that Bryan was (probably off the top of his head) voicing what a
> > theist IDologist might say. Nevertheless, let me clarify that in natural
> > science, there is no such thing as "devolution" or "proper"
> > function. There is only evolution (change) and function. Function is by
> > definition whatever something DOES, not what it OUGHT to do.
>
>But there is 'proper function', and it differs from what a thing does. See
>_Nature's Purposes: Analyses of Function and Design in Biology_ Collin
>Allen and
>Marc Bekoff, eds. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998). See also _Function,
>Selection, and Design_ David Buller, ed. (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1999). It is
>generally accepted that biological features have proper functions. For
>example, a
>human eye has a proper function (i.e. vision) which it retains even when
>it loses
>the ability to perform that function. On one standard description, the proper
>function of a device token is *roughly* that function of the device type which
>contributed historically to the increased reproductive success of members
>of its
>reproductive family and thus the preservation of the device type. For this
>reason, a device can have a proper function even if it cannot presently
>perform
>that proper function.
Okay, in some contexts, I suppose it is meaningful to talk about "proper"
function. But we were talking about HIV. The properties of HIV that make
it a successful pathogen in humans are its genuine current function, and
they should not be interpreted as "devolutions" (whatever that means) of
some "proper" function. It is a hugely successful "species" precisely
because of those changes in function which make it pathogenic.
Doug
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