On Mon, 22 May 1995 09:05:01 -0500 you wrote:
>Bill Hamilton writes:
>The chief one I've noticed is a trendency to insist that the theory of
>evolution demands _improvement_ generation after generation.
>
>Maybe I am mistaken, but I thought that both Darwinian and Neo-Darwinian
>theories made this claim. I read Dawkins **The Blind Watchmaker** and
>he says that ANY survival advantage will be retained favorably. Maybe
>you should tell him that this is not his position, Bill?
>
>I'm not denying that Dawkins said something of the kind. But I run into
>quite a few creationists who seem to think there's some abstract goal
>called improvement that evolutionary processes are alleged to be pursuing.
The point is that this is the mythology that Darwinists have been
pushing themselves. Even Gould admits this:
"In this wise and crucial sense, the Darwinian revolution remains
woefully incomplete because, even though thinking humanity accepts the
fact of evolution, most of us are still unwilling to abandon the
comforting view that evolution means (or at least embodies a central
principle of) progress defined to render the appearance of something
like human consciousness either virtually inevitable or at least
predictable. The pedestal is not smashed until we abandon progress or
complexification as a central principle and come to entertain the
strong possibility that H. sapiens is but a tiny, late-arising twig on
life's enormously arborescent bush-a small bud that would almost
surely not appear a second time if we could replant the bush from seed
and let it grow again." (Gould S.J., "The Evolution of Life on the
Earth", Scientific American, October 1994, p69).
>Maybe I made an unwarranted assumption about your views on teleology in
>evolution, and if I did I apologize. I would quibble about the likelihood
>that just any favorable variation will be retained. It will be retained if
>the individuals who carry that variation reproduce in sufficient number
>that it becomes established. In the case of our vitamin C discussion, you
>could make a case that if there is adequate vitamin C in the food supply,
>then it represents a waste of energy for individuals who have access to
>that food supply to be making their own. Individuals who don't waste that
>energy may gain some other advantage.
How about a theistic "just-so" story? <g> Could God have
designed/allowed the defective vitamin C gene in humans because it
would encourage certain social traits - cultivation of fruit, and
therefore help develop a human culture, etc? I have read somewhere
that paradoxically it is the weakness and dependence of the human baby
that has led to the development of human culture. Perhaps even in
Biology the Divine principle "my strength is made perfect in weakness"
(2Cor 12:9) applies?
Stephen