>My point in all this is that you seem to want evolutionary theory to remain
>static and unchanging from what either Darwin believed, or what Dawkins
>believes. This will never be the case. While I will agree that probably the
>majority of biologists are neodarwinians, that does not mean that the
>neodarwinians are correct. IMO (and the opinion of others to whom I am
>grateful for some of this) the next great school of thought in evolutionary
>theory will combine nonlinear dynamics with punc-eq. and developmental
>biology. Those three views are made for each other and can explain a whole
>lot of unexplained phenomena such as the Cambrian Explosion, transitions
>between taxa and the nature of the fossil record. Of course, we Christians,
>will still be fighting (and quoting) the views held by Darwin (as if Darwin
>wrote some sort of biological sacred text that all biologists must sign an
>oath to support).
[snip]
> So, your criticisms of who accepts what view are not really relevant.
> What is important is the question "Does a given view explain the data" The
>coming synthesis of these three items listed above is the science of the
>early next century which Christians are going to have to deal with and it
>explains a lot.
>
Well said. My fear is that too many Christians _will not_ deal with the
science that is developing now. They will still be criticizing Darwin.
Whether we agree or not with their conclusions, _some_ of us _must_ read
and understand the current publications in nonlinear dynamics and biology
and be prepared to criticize these works intelligently. I am currently
reading Kauffman's book, "Origins of order." Progress is slow, because I'm
stoping to derive the math he presents -- some of it anyway. Kauffman has
some ideas I disagree with emphatically in the arena of metaphysics, I'm
sure, but it does no good to just roundly dismiss everything he does. BTW
he has a fairly nice explanation of how events like the Cambrian explosion
and the Permian extinction can be explained by the behavior of the search
processes on fitness landscapes he discusses.
Bill Hamilton | Vehicle Systems Research
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