Note: The beginning of this present post makes some interesting points.
The second half rebuts the many times Steve mis-represented me. If you're
busy, skip the second half.
I wrote:
>>In the last century many evolutionists embraced
>>vitalism, the notion that life has some innate tendency to originate and
>>evolve. That notion still has vestiges in Gould, Kaufmann, and the
>>self-organizationalists. Vitalism is a powerful evolutionary explanation.
>>But life's designer, I say, acted to defeat all evolutionary
>>interpretations, so the designer left out all the vitalistic forces that
>>evolutionists were seeking.
Steve responds by noting that Augustine and St. Basil embraced vitalistic
ideas. He makes two mistakes here. To the extent that theists embraced
evolutionary notions of vitalism, they were wrong. And I need not apologize
for that, as it fits precisely with my theory.
Second, Steve overlooked my last sentence. The designer didn't have to
leave out all vitalistic forces, but rather those "that evolutionists were
seeking." Not all vitalistic concepts are helpful to evolutionists, the
ones helpful to evolutionists were left out -- intentionally.
******
>Why can't models be based on simple observations? Certainly, once made, the
>model needs to be tested, but that is in fact what is going on.
When you falsify one evolutionary model, then that becomes THE EVIDENCE for
yet another evolutionary model. There is no test of evolution.
* What was the key evidence for natural selection? The
fact that Lamarkism and vitalism failed. (My book
cites Mayr saying essentially that.)
* What is the key evidence for their emphasis on species
descent with modification? The fact that species don't
widely cross-breed.
* What is the evidence for common descent? The fact that
transposition patterns and atavistic patterns are missing.
(Those are two of evolution's most powerful mechanisms).
* What is the evidence for punk eq? The fact that gradual
change is missing, and ancestors and lineage are missing.
* What is the evidence for extraterrestrial life (as in Francis
Crick's theory of directed panspermia). The fact that, in his
words, the naturalistic earthly origin of life is amounts to
a "miracle."
Now turn it around and you have the usual phony "tests" of evolution:
* How could you "refute" Darwinism? By demonstrating the sufficiency
of Lamarck's mechanism (my book quotes leading evolutionists saying exactly
that), or by demonstrating vitalism.
* How could you "refute" common descent? By finding a wide-spread
pattern of transposition (one of evolution's most potent mechanisms).
* How could you "refute" punc eq? By showing convincing evidence that
evolution happened some other way.
* Etcetera... There is no test of evolution.
******
Steve (like other evolutionists) refuses the challenge of my thought
experiment. A central feature of that challenge is: Can you think up
systems of life that you cannot explain by evolution? If you cannot do
that, then evolution is not testable.
>>I say Life's designer did it ingeniously.
>
>Now THIS will be hard to test!
My theory is not hard to test. For example, just think up a system of life
that accomplishes the challenge clearly better than the one before us.
There are other tests.
******
>The fact that a natural selection mechanism is not possible to test (for
>macroevolution at least) says nothing about whether it is true or not. This
>is a problem with Popper's criterion for falsification.
The testability (falsification) criterion is about whether a theory is
scientific or not. Not whether it is true or not. It's the same criterion
that evolutionists endorsed in anti-creation court cases around the country,
including the U.S. Supreme Court. Evolutionists just don't want it applied
to their theory.
>There are many reasons why something cannot be falsified
>but this doesn't automatically mean that the something is
>not valid.
Steve is sounding like creationists of twenty years ago. Steve's point is
correct, but it's just another dodge of the testability issue.
*****************************************************************
Steve's post frequently mis-represents me. The remainder of this post
covers that.
>In an earlier debate with Walter I pointed out that natural selection takes
>away the idea of complete randomness in evolution, and he, as usual,
>criticised the point as being a tired argument,
Here Steve claims to represent my point of view, but it is unrecognizable to
me. Something got lost in his translation.
******
>This Phil Johnson-type critique, that it is dishonest to change
>your hypothesis if the data do not fit, is NOT good science.
Again Steve mis-represents me. I did NOT claim it is dishonest or
unscientific to change your hypothesis to fit the data. My thrust is on the
testability issue, that evolutionary theory is not testable, that it is a
structureless smorgasbord.
******
>No set of data can be explained by only one theory. You wish to have data
>that do not follow this rule ...
Rule? What rule? Where did Steve's "rule" come from, out of the blue? And
Steve once again mis-represents me. I neither wish, nor require, that the
data follow his rule.
******
>... you too must be held to the same standard and be able
>to falsify that "Life's designer did it ingeniously."
Steve again misrepresents me. My theory is NOT "Life's designer did it
ingeniously."
******
>The problem with much of the anti-evolution rhetoric is that the critics do
>not require a similar rigor of justification to their beliefs as they would
>have the evolutionists do.
On the contrary, I demand that the evolutionists' theory, and my theory, be
subjected to the same rigorous standards, the same standards that
evolutionists endorsed in anti-creation court trials -- including testability.
******
>In fact, much of this discussion has been from a
>positivistic philosophy--"if you can't see it happen then it is not true".
>This is the basis for the claim that natural selection is not falsifiable.
Steve again mis-represents me. I would accept natural selection as science
if you could sufficiently demonstrate it, OR if it were testable. It is
neither.
******
>Back to the Walter's positivism, the requirement for natural selection to be
>immediately observable is similar to the positivism of Comte and his ilk who
>disbelieve atomic theory because no one has ever seen an atom. Regardless
>of the indirect observations that are predicted based on the atomic model,
>they say that the justification for belief is insufficient. So too does
>Walter say that since we cannot observe natural selection, the indirect
>observations that we may be able to percieve based on the model are invalid.
Steve totally mis-represents me there. I said no such thing.
Walter ReMine
P.O. Box 28006
Saint Paul, MN 55128