On Tue, 27 Feb 1996 12:56:40 GMT you wrote:
>TG: "Do similarities and the nested
>patterns found in biological world support common design and
>common ancestry equivalently?"
>SJ: I am still wondering why it must be either-or. Why can it not
>be both-and? It is not difficult imagining an Intelligent Designer
>creating new designs based at least partly on pre-existing genetic
>code.
>The real issue is not whether there is a tree of life (creationists
>could for the sake of argument concede there was), but what made it
>grow?
DT>I suspect the difference here concerns the neaning of "common
>ancestry". If creation involves any introduction of new information,
>can we reasonably argue that there is no break in ancestry?
There could be (say) 99% common and 1% new "information", and both
"common design and common ancestry" would be true.
DT>My
>personal preference is to speak of a monophyletic theory of origins
>when referring to the evolutionary tree concept, and a polyphyletic
>theory of origins where ancestral relationships convey the impression
>of a forest (rather than a tree).
I suspect that the main reason for evolutionists' comittment to a
"polyphyletic" " evolutionary tree concept" is their apriori rejection
of even the possibility of the ultimate unity of life being outside
the cause-and-effect cosmos, ie. in the mind of an Intelligent
Designer.
DT>The point you make about the use
>of pre-existing genetic code is valid - although I would point out
>that the argument still applies if the code concerned exists only in
>the Creator's mind prior to creation.
Agreed. My PC model's basic hypothesis is that the Designer injected
new information at strategic points, as the six-"day" pattern of
creative commands over time in Genesis 1 depicts. Otherwise, on the
DE or TE model there would have been one big command at the beginning.
DT>Thanks for other points - here deleted. We are on common ground -
>and you yourself draw attention to the Tree/Forest/Bush models.
I am glad to see that someone finds some merit in my ravings! :-)
>DT>Kurt contrasts the lack of evolutionary explanations for the
>observations with that supplied by ID. By analogy with human
>creativity, a nested hierarchy is expected.....
>SJ: I am not sure that Kurt's argument is sound here. Humans almost
>never create in a nested hierarchy of form. They classify things
>after the event in a nested hierarchy (eg. a library) but books are
>not written in in such a pattern. Books transpose topics, eg.
>Theology - Philosophy - Science, and they have to be cross-
>referenced in any library index.
DT>Thanks for this comment. I thought when trying to summarise Kurt -
>that this argument is not developed at all! I think you have
>clarified things in my mind - ID advocates still need to develop a
>coherent model to understand nested patterns.
I owe this insight to Walter ReMine. See TBM p339ff, and in particular
p357 "Transposition is Ordinary Design Practice".
>SJ: An evolutionary tree is not the only way to depict life's nested
>hierarchy of form. Cladists find an evolutionary tree is less
>helpful than a cladogram. Michael Pitman ("Adam and Evolution",
>Rider & Co: London, 1984), prefers the metaphor of chinese boxes.
DT>A cladogram is surely a legitimate way of presnting and discussing
>data. When stripped of its evolutionary overtones, cladistics could
>provide a meaningful channel of communication between biologists
>working within different paradigms.
Yes. It does not assume evolution or even common ancestors. It merely
addressed the nested hierarchy of form, by linking shared characters.
Interestingly, some cladists have found some differences between what
evolution predicted and what actually appears to exist. Naturally this
causes Dawkins to go into orbit! :-)
"I have left till last the oddest aspect of the transformed cladism
school of taxonomy. Not content with a perfectly sensible belief that
there is something to be said for leaving evolutionary and ancestral
assumptions out of the practice of taxonomy, a belief that they share
with pheneticist 'distance measurers', some transformed cladists have
gone right over the top and concluded that there must be something
wrong with evolution itself! The fact is almost too bizarre to
credit, but some of the leading 'transformed cladists' profess an
actual hostility to the idea of evolution itself, especially the
Darwinian theory of evolution. Two of them, G. Nelson and N. Platnick
from the American Museum of Natural History in New York, have gone so
far as to write that 'Darwinism . . . is, in short, a theory that has
been put to the test and found false'. I should love to know what
this 'test' is and, even more, I should love to know by what
alternative theory Nelson and Platnick would explain the phenomena
that Darwinism explains, especially adaptive complexity." (Dawkins
R., "The Blind Watchmaker", Penguin: London, 1991, p283-284)
I love Dawkins' final remark at the end of the chapter:
"Now I'd better go out and dig the garden, or something."
(Dawkins, p284).
I can just imagine him angrily thrusting his spade or fork into the
ground with transformed cladist or two symbolically represented by
same! :-)
God bless.
Stephen
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