RDehaan237@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 7/21/2000 4:38:15 PM, gmurphy@raex.com writes:
>
> <<
> 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. >>
>
> Granted. Delete "creative roles" and substitute, "above the species level."
> Or if you will, at the higher taxonomic level of Orders, Classes and Phyla.
There may be some confusion about what is being argued here. "Creative" could
have at least 3 senses.
1) It may mean "plays a positive role in a physical process." As I said
before, I do not think that NS in its basic sense does this. NS itself does not give
rise to the genetic drifts, novelties, or whatever which enable new phenotypes to come
into being. NS plays the negative (or _destructive_, if you want a contrast with
"creative") role of making room for new forms & filtering out some of the old forms.
2) In a strict theological sense only God is "creative." I understood Howard's
concern to be that NS should not be considered as "creative" independently of God &/or
on the same ontological level as God. I would say that natural processes can be
"creative" in a secondary sense when they are instruments which God uses in his creative
activity. I think that some of the differences we find here, and in connection with the
whole subject of divine action, may be traceable to old Reformed-Lutheran-Roman
differences on the doctrine of providence, differences which often don't get aired these
days in the science-theology dialogue. It would be helpful if they were.
3) created intelligent agents are "creative", either as bringing forth new
things or by analogy with divine creativity. But this isn't of immediate concern here.
IMO the theologically interesting question has to do with the sense in which God
can be said to use NS, which is destructive, in creation. Destruction is, in Luther's
terms, God's "alien work" which is done in order to make possible God's "proper work" of
giving life. It is the relationship between cross and resurrection.
"The LORD kills and brings to life;
he brings down to Sheol and raises up."
(I Sam.2:6)
> <<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." >>
>
> George:
>
> But almost 140 years have elapsed since Darwin's *Origin* was published. The
> scientific resources available to research the role of natural selection at
> the higher taxonomic levels are enormous. How much more time is needed?
>
> <<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.>>
>
> Let me quote from an "Open Letter to Paul Gross" by Jay W. Richards:
>
> "Doubts about the efficacy of the mechanisms of microevolution for
> macroevolutionary change are widespread within evolutionary biology--so
> widespread, indeed, that researchers often refer to the issue by a kind of
> shorthand, i.e., as the “micro-macro” controversy. The University of
> Wisconsin developmental biologist Sean Carroll, for instance, writing last
> month in Cell (9 June 2000, volume 101:577-580), noted “the long-standing
> question of the sufficiency of evolutionary mechanisms observed at or below
> the species level (‘microevolution’) to account for the larger-scale patterns
> of morphological evolution (‘macroevolution’)” (p. 577) and “One of the
>
> longest running debates in evolutionary biology concerns the sufficiency
>
> of processes observed within populations and species for explaining
> macroevolution” (p. 579).
>
> (snip)
>
> "The paleontologist Robert Carroll of the Department of Biology at McGill
> University, for instance, argued recently in thejournal Trends in Ecology and
> Evolution that “the most striking features of large-scale evolution are the
> extremely rapid divergence of lineages near the time of their origin,
> followed by long periods in which basic body plans and ways of life are
> retained. What is missing are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by
> Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace
> between distinct adaptive types . . . . The extreme speed of anatomical
> change and adaptive radiation during this brief time requires explanations
> that go beyond those proposed for evolution of species within the current
> biota” (“Towards a new evolutionary synthesis,” TREE, volume
>
> 15:27-32; p. 27).
>
> Arguments such as Carroll’s fill the current biological literature. They
>
> are even more widespread outside the English-speaking world."
>
> I simply maintain that Darwinian natural selection is not competent to
> account for what is called macroevolution, what I prefer to call the
> formation of morphologies at the higher taxonomic levels.
I still think you're getting it backwards. There has been a change over time
in species, genera, &c. It may well be that radically new ideas are needed to account
for some aspects of that development. ID is not a radically new idea but a newly
clothed old one which either
a) doesn't solve the problem at all if it allows the intelligent designer to be
some agent within the world (such a species using as directed panspermia),
b) still doesn't solve the problem if it lets God introduce CSI via some
unspecified natural process because it then just sets science on the track
of that process which can be studied without reference to God, or
c) gives up by having God introduce the information directly.
& in any case the negative aspect of NS which I noted before will continue to play a
role.
...........................................
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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