RDehaan237@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 7/17/2000 George Murphy wrote:
>
> << I will say that with we know today (at least if we've awakened from our
> dogmatic slumbers) about both scripture and natural science makes it very
> doubtful that one can construct a coherent Christian theology which takes the
> real world seriously if it doesn't include some form of macroevolution in
> which natural selection plays a significant role. >>
>
> I'm coming into this thread rather late. I would be happy to take
> macroevolution seriously if there were empirical evidence that natural
> selection played a significant *creative* role in it. Precambrian metazoa
> have been found, but that they arose by natural selection (NS) has not been
> demonstrated, only assumed. While descent with modification from a common
> ancestor might be considered such evidence, it lacks a demonstration that
> natural selection constitutes the mechanism by which it came about. In
> short, I am not persuaded by the data to accept macroevolution or common
> ancestry.
>
> The only empirically demonstrated role played by NS that I know of is that of
> enhancing adaptation and survival, as suggested by studies of "short-term
> evolution," to use Gould's term, also called "evolution-made-visible." These
> include studies of camouflage coloration in guppies; the shape of Darwin's
> beaks; Kettlewell's industrial melanism studies; change of leg size in
> Bahamian lizards, and other such studies, in which the organism adapts to
> changing immediate environments. Evolutionists, such as Jonathan Weiner,
> extrapolate these studies into macroevolution, that is, that macroevolution
> is microevolution writ large. But it is an unwarranted conclusion that
> demonstrated survival and adaptation roles that NS plays in the present time
> can be extrapolated as a creative role in geologic time, i.e., in forming
> major morphological features such as the phyletic body plans of metazoa.
> Again, I am not persuaded by contemporary studies of NS that it played a
> creative role in the formation of major innovative morphological structures.
>
> J. Z. Young in his classic *The Life of Vertebrates* made a telling comment.
> "An organism must adapt to its surroundings as best it can with its given
> Bauplan." (p. 4). The body plans of organisms are generally not adaptive.
> They need NS. The "significant role of natural selection" in the formation
> of the body plans of phyletic lineages in the Cambrian, is to enhance the
> adaptations of organisms to their surroundings with their respective
> Bauplans, using contemporary "short-term-evolution" studies as the best
> evidence we have of the role of NS.
>
> To go beyond that, IMHO is to ascribe creative roles to NS that is not
> supported by empirical evidence.
1) I note the Howard's caveat about the term "creative roles" but the same
warning could be made about _any_ natural processes with which God works.
2) Second, It seems to me that you're confusing a couple of issues & in fact
get things backward when you say "I would be happy to take macroevolution seriously if
there were empirical evidence that natural selection played a significant *creative*
role in it." That's like saying somebody in 1700 saying "I'd be happy to believe that
the planets move around the sun on elliptical orbits if there were empirical evidence
for Newton's law of gravitation." Surely a person may be convinced by fossil evidence,
biochemical and anatomical similarities &c that macroevolution has taken place without
making any commitment at all as to its mechanism.
3) "I am not a paleontologist or the son of a paleontologist", to paraphrase
last Sunday's OT lesson. But it seems to me that the sentence you quote from Young is
not nearly so "telling" if your commentary is removed.
4) Natural selection in an important sense is simply negative: there aren't
enough resources &c for all organisms to survive so a lot will die (Malthus' influence
on both Darwin & Wallace), & the ones with variations which best enable them to survive
in the environment of the moment will be most likely to survive & have offspring.
Natural selection itself says nothing about the mechanisms which may bring about the
necessary genetic variations, & it may well be that we need some new theories to explain
them. It is this negative aspect of natural selection - the fact that privation, death,
& extinction make room for development of new species (however that happens) - on which
I've concentrated theologically, & to which I was trying to call attention earlier in
this discussion. The point is certainly not that natural selection is the survival of
"the strong" or that it's a kind of genetic Lamarckianism, as was being argued here
previously.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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