>Brian
>
>On Thu, 29 Feb 1996 19:50:57 -0500 you wrote:
>
>SJ>If Yockey believes that "the origin of life...could not have
>>happened by chance" then he is not a "Darwinist" in my book. Once
>>it is admitted that the "origin of life" did not happen by "chance",
>>then there is no justification for believe that it was "evolution"
>>that "began after the origin of life".
>
>BH>Got to disagree here, the question of how the first life arose is
>>separate from the question of whether it evolved after that. There is
>>nothing inconsistent with saying that God created the first life, but
>>that it evolved subsequently (with or without further intervention).
>
>Well this is what I said! :-)
>
But that isn't what I said ;-). I think it was Jim Foley.
SJ:>---------------------------------------------------------
>Johnson (and I) agree that God could have used
>natural processes that could be called "evolution":
>
>"The concept of creation in itself does not imply opposition to
>evolution, if evolution means only a gradual process by which one kind
>of living creature changes into something different. A Creator might
>well have employed such a gradual process as a means of creation.
>"Evolution" contradicts "creation" only when it explicitly or tacitly
>defined as fully naturalistic evolution-meaning evolution that is not
>directed by any purposeful intelligence." (Johnson P.E., "Darwin on
>Trial", InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, Ill., Second Edition,
>1993, p3-4).
>---------------------------------------------------------
>
What PJ is saying here is that theistic evolutionists (most anyway)
are also creationists. My, that word creation is such a plastic
word, it can mean almost anything ;-). I wonder why some creationists
object to the label evolutionary creationist. This would seem to
have Phil's blessing.
>I also said that it is *Darwinists* like Dawkins that reject
>God-guided "evolution". The real problem is that plastic word
>"evolution", which can seemingly mean just about anything! :-)
>
It is common for words to take on different meanings in different
contexts. For example, the word plastic is itself very plastic.
In my own field it can mean a man-made polymer or a permanent
strain depending on context. Creation is another word that takes
on many different meanings.
>JF>Darwin did not say that life had to have arisen by chance; he seems
>>to have been deliberately vague on the question:...
>
>BH>I agree with Jim, biological evolution and chemical evolution
>>are separate issues.
>
SJ:===
>Then why is the same plastic word "evolution" used? Darwinists
>themselves claim that cosmic, chemical and biological evolution
>are fundamentally the same thing:
>
>`Although this article is concerned with biological evolution, it should
>be recognized that the concept of evolution is much broader.... There
>is also cosmic or inorganic, evolution, and evolution of human
>culture. One of the theories advanced by cosmologists sets the
>beginning of cosmic evolution between 5 and 10 billion years ago.
>The origin of life, which started biological evolution, took place 3 or
>4 billion years ago. (T. Dobzhansky, Evolution, in 10
>Encyclopedia Americana 734, 734, 1982).
>
It seems to me that this supports my position rather than yours.
Dobzhansky is pointing out that there are different types of
evolution. He is carefully pointing out that he is discussing
biological evolution. He seems to be giving a caution to the
reader "There are other types of evolution, don't get confused
by the terminology."
[...]
SJ:=================================================
>You seem to be agreeing with me. :-) My point was that
>"Yockey...is not a "Darwinist". You have stated that: a)
>"Yockey....As far as I know... is an agnostic"; and b) He doesn't
>believe in "chemical evolution".
>
Well, I don't know Stephen, Yockey says that he is a Darwinist. In
his book he writes:
Thermodynamics and the theory of evolution by natural selection
are among the great scientific theories of the nineteenth century.
(page 310)
>BH>Here again I think we have a problem with popularizations. I don't
>>think there is any question that Dawkins would like to tie the
>>origin of life with Darwinism.
>
SJ:=================
>Its not just "Dawkins" that "would like to tie the origin of life
>with Darwinism."
I don't doubt that at all :). The point is whether its proper
to do so.
SJ:===================================================
>My daughter's university Biology textbook, by its
>close association of "Darwin and Evolution" (Chapter 19),
>"Evidences for Evolution" (Chapter 20), "The Evolutionary Process"
>(Chapter 21), and "The Origin of Life" (Chapter 22), inextricably
>ties "the origin of life with Darwinism." In fact, the Contents page
>for Chapter 22 tells it all:
Its somewhat difficult for me to comment on a book I haven't seen.
But, it seems to me that the two issues are being kept distinct
through the terminolgy chemical evolution and biological evolution.
It also seems clear that one begins where the other ends. Let me
say further that it is proper to keep the distinction between chemical
evolution and biological evolution even if one accepts the fully
naturalistic origins of life. They are different thingies altogether.
Based upon my own experiences, I wouldn't be too surprised if your
daughter's textbook botches up its presentation of abiogenesis.
I would be curious to know to what extent they discuss the various
difficulties encountered by abiogenesis researchers and the speculative
nature of the various scenarios for the origin of life. I would also
be curious whether they get the atmosphere right in the section
entitled "Primitive Atmosphere" (p. 329).
[...]
>
>BH>Nor do I think that there is any
>>question that Daniel Dennett considers this as part of "Darwin's
>>Dangerous Idea". The intents of one of the Yockey posts that I
>>submitted to the reflector was to uncouple Darwin from the prebiotic
>>soup paradigm. Yockey's main point here is that people try to tie
>>Darwin to this in view of his famous "warm little pond" quote.
>
>There is no doubt that Darwin wrote it and can justly claim to be the
>father of "the prebiotic soup paradigm":
>
Then why didn't he?
[...]
>SJ:==
>One could with more justice argue that what Darwin wrote privately
>better represented what he really thought, than what he published
>publicly, especially in the milieu of 19th century Victorian England.
>
IMHO, this would be an injustice. Yockey expressed his position more
eloquently in his _Journal of Theoretical Biology_ paper:
my favorite line:
"Everyone has the right to float tentative ideas and even nonsense
to his friends in his personal correspondence without responsibility
being assumed by snoopers"
Yockey has a way with words ;-)
===begin Yockey===============================================
The purpose of this comment is to point out the more egregious
errors of omission and commission in Elitzur(1994). He began his
paper with the following remarks on the chirality of biomolecules
and the origin of life:
... The evolutionary explanation for this handedness is simple:
It was a common ancestor that, _by sheer coincidence_, happened
to have these molecules rather than their mirror-images
(Shapiro. 1986: this issue wtll be returned to later). This
_coincidental_ yet universal handedness [My emphasis] of life
highlights the question of common ancestry, vividly raised by
Darwin:
"It is often said that all the conditions for the first
production of a living organism are now present, which
could ever have been present. But if (and oh! what a big if!)
we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts
of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, &c.,
present, that a proteine (sic) compound was chemically formed
ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present
day such matter would be instantly absorbed, which would not
have been the case before living creatures were found."
This passage (obviously not having been subjected to an editor's
blue pencil) is from a private letter Darwin wrote to his friend
Joseph Hooker (1817-1911) in 1871 and appears in a footnote of
F. Darwin (1898). This fragment was not indexed and remained
unnoticed until 1950 (Hardin, 1950).
Everyone has the right to float tentative ideas and even nonsense
to his friends in his personal correspondence without responsibility
being assumed by snoopers. In selecting the _personal_ letter to
Hooker rather than what Darwin _published_ a year later in _The
Origin of Species_, dialectical materialists are quoting selected
writings to support their convictions, to seduce the unwary reader,
even though they must reach rather deep for it.
If Darwin had regarded the "warm little pond" at all seriously in
1871 he had changed his mind by 1872. What Darwin "vividly raised"
and published as his considered opinion, and what he was prepared
to take responsibility for on the question of origin of life is
in Chapter XV of the 1872 edition of _Origin of Species_:
It can hardly be supposed that a false theory would explain, in
so satisfactory a manner as does the theory of natural selection,
the several classes of facts above specified. It has recently
been objected that this is an unsafe method of urguing: but it is
a method used in judging of the common events of life, and has
often been used by the greatest natural philosophers. The undulatory
theory of light has been thus been arrived at; and the befief in
the revolution of the earth on its own axis was until lately
supported by hardly any direct evidence. It is no valid objection
(to the theory of natural selection) that science as yet throws
no light on the far higher problem of the essence or the origin
of life. Who can explain the essence of the attraction of gravity?
No one now objects to following out the results consequent on
this unknown element of attraction; notwithstanding that Leihnitz
formerly accused Newton of introducing "occult qualities and
miracles" into philosophy.
This passage makes it clear that Darwin's published opinion on the
nature and origin of life actually anticipated the position of
Niels Bohr (1933) in his famous _Light and Life_ lecture that,
like the quantum of action that appears as an irrational element
from the point of view of classical mechanical physics, life
must be accepted as an axiom, rather than the dialectical
materialist scenario, usually attributed to Oparin and Haldane
that life is a property of matter.
-- Hubert Yockey, J. Theor. Biol. (1995) 176:349-355.
==== end Yockey ====================================================
========================
Brian Harper |
Associate Professor | "It is not certain that all is uncertain,
Applied Mechanics | to the glory of skepticism" -- Pascal
Ohio State University |
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