I am sort of appalled at the apparent lack of comprehension of this
alternative sense of front loading. I would guess that many (most)
people of faith who are in biology disciplines would either be thinking
of how God might nudge the unfolding of Creation (as suggested in the
subject post), or (like Howard van Till - and myself), don't think that
even that is clearly necessary (though possible) given the unimaginable
fruitfulness of the physical world ...even to the limited degree that
we are presently able to understand it.
In my view, no new label is required, only the awareness that there
are, and have been for quite some time, these two variant sensibilities
about front loading.
The major root hangup, I think, remains the notion that whatever WE are
- at this point of the evolutionary development - represents in every
detailed respect that which God had in mind from the outset. That's
sort of like launching a paper airplane. That's NOT this latter sense
of evolutionary development at all (unless the particular paper
airplane has the capacity to be affected and selectively morphed by
influences while in flight!).
As anthropomorphs, understanding most everything in anthropo-terms, we
want that evolutionary course, however convoluted, to somehow be
defined or constrained to lead to the process ultimately to
anthropo-forms. But in the big picture, is it really reasonable to
impose that rather severe limitation on this immense and
wildly-creative universe, the author of which is apparently NOT
physical as we know it? What on earth [pun-ishness noted] does
two-leggedness, for example, really mean to non-corporeal God?
But we continue to want to permit the trajectory of evolution (and the
workings of its components) to be free to perhaps dipsy-doodle around a
bit, but ultimately somehow arrive at the very specifically divinely
preordained configuration we call human. That just isn't how evolution
apparently works, and yet evolution must virtually by definition work
as intended by God, including its innumerable and compounding numbers
of variations. Granted, it is apparently how evolution worked once,
with us as its interim(?) product, but it would be absolutely
impossible for us to get our minds around the number and kinds of other
trajectories and interim outcomes concluded, underway, or anticipated
in this immense Creation. We have only interesting hints in Earth's
history. [And we are still not in the center of the universe, as we
"should" be! :-) ]
Flipping rapidly to the closing paragraphs of this comment, I think
this picture elevates the specialness of us, rather than detracting
from it. What a privilege to be an aware sentient "flower" in in this
enormous evolving cosmic garden, with its ever unfolding forms and
colors and other properties we know not of.
JimA [Friend of ASA].
wjp wrote:
Mike:
As I understand your suggestion, we must consider conditional probabilities. So that P(E|C1) may be much greater than P(E|C2). Establishing a condition C1 would be considered a nudge, in that it moves one closer to a given outcome relative to another, or perhaps to all other possible conditions at the time.
Since we are speaking here, not, as I understand it, of continual or frequent interventions by God, but of a front loading, where it seems that God only gets one chance, then what nudging appears to entail is that God established initial conditions such that certain events are more likely, if not much more likely, than others. In this way, e.g., we can say that God nudged the universe toward life, and even man.
I don't really think this is much different from what we all thought of front loading without "nudging." Can you be more specific?
Thanks,
bill
On Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:21:06 -0400, "Nucacids" <nucacids@wowway.com> wrote:
As I have been arguing for the hypothesis of front-loading evolution over
the years, not too long ago, it has occurred to me that the term
"front-load" has the ability to mislead people into thinking I have argued
that evolution is a deterministic process, such that everything we
currently see around us was programmed to be as it is as a consequence of
the originally front-loaded state. This misperception then causes people
to think front-loading is an old, discredited view of evolution. But that
is not the case.
To demonstrate this, I have just run across a design approach that is
very, very similar to the approach I talk about and have labeled as
"front-loading." It's a social engineering approach that is becoming
increasingly popular known as "nudging."
I outline some of the similarities between nudging human behavior and
front-loading evolution here:
http://designmatrix.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/nudge/
Mike
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Received on Mon Sep 14 14:25:01 2009