From: Terry M. Gray (grayt@lamar.colostate.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 11 2003 - 15:24:28 EDT
Debbie,
In case you are unfamiliar with him, I'd point you to some books by
Stuart Kauffman:
Origins of Order (very technical and nearly impossible to read)
At Home in the Universe (better)
Investigations
Kauffman's no believer as far as I can tell, but does criticize
current Darwinian and origin of life models. He develops some new
ideas that overcome many of the difficulties of the traditional
formulations, especially in biological areas. There's a nice chapter
on Kauffman in the book Arificial Life by Steven Levy. It's a great
introduction to Kauffman and to the field in general.
Kauffman develops a very different view of the origin of life:
"...this new view, which is based on the discovery of an expected
phase transition from a collection of polymers which do not reproduce
themselves to a slightly more complex collection of polymers which do
jointly catalyze their own reproduction. In this theory of the
origin of life, it is not necessary that any molecule reproduce
itself. Rather, a collection of molecules has the property that the
last step in the formation of each molecule is catalyzed by some
molecule in the system. The phase transition occurs when some
critical complexity level of molecular diversity is surpassed. At
that critical level, the ratio of reactions among the polymers to the
number of polymers in the system passes a critical value, and a
connected web of catalyzed reactions linking the polymers arises and
spans the molecular species in the system. This web constitutes the
crystallization of catalytic closure such that the system of polymers
becomes collectively self reproducing ... [this new body of theory]
is also robust in leading to a fundamental new conclusion: Molecular
systems, in principle, can both reproduce and evolve without having a
genome in the familiar sense of a template-replicating molecular
species." (p. 285, Origins of Order)
Loren Haarsma and I have a chapter length discussion of this in a
book called Perspectives on an Evolving Creation (ed. Keith Miller)
due out from Eerdmans later this year.
Also, just to say again what I've said a lot in these discussions, in
my view there's a sense in which God is continually tuning in his
providential care and that there is no such thing as "untuned or
random" (from God's perspective). But from our point of view as
scientists, it looks untuned and random. A believer will detect
tuning and design by faith knowing of God's providence and care. In
other words knowledge of design (and the designer) precedes the
detection of design! The unbeliever won't detect it or will attribute
it ultimately to other things compatible with his/her worldview
(Dawkins' "apparent design" produced only and *ultimately* by natural
selection. There's much in Dawkins I can agree with, i.e. natural
selection does produce things that are fine tuned. Of course, I
disagree with the "only and ultimately" part. The providential hand
of God works through natural selection.
TG
>Someone fill me in on the rules to replying on this system. Or the
>rules in general.
>
>To: Howard
>
>I disagree with your interpretation on biology. The contention is
>that leaving the development of life to an untuned or random system
>means that the conditions just don't add up. In other words God
>WOULD have to tune the conditions in order for life to have
>developed as it did within the calculated age of the universe. I
>believe this is a successful argument on the part of ID, just using
>indirect methods instead of direct. "Proving by contradiction."
> By the way, Robert Shapiro declares himself to be a Skeptic. He
>does not profess Christianity, or even belief in God in his books.
>He simply finds fault with everybody else's work. I guess that,
>according to him, none of us can exist.
>
>
>Debbie Mann, PE
>Debbie Mann Consulting
>(765)477-1776
>
>
-- _________________ Terry M. Gray, Ph.D., Computer Support Scientist Chemistry Department, Colorado State University Fort Collins, Colorado 80523 grayt@lamar.colostate.edu http://www.chm.colostate.edu/~grayt/ phone: 970-491-7003 fax: 970-491-1801
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