(Chuckle) As an electrical engineer who has dealt in the past with
communications theory, matched filters, hypothesis testing, etc., I will
suppress the urge to ask that you provide a quantitative theory of
combining the various lines of evidence. Yes, I agree that each line of
evidence lends credence to common descent. But as long as evolutionists
are unable to provide a quantitative theory of combining evolutionary
evidence, they shouldn't expect creationists to buy their claims. Don't go
off and start working on it. I don't believe it would be easy. (The above
is intended to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek)
If so, why not? By competing explanations do
>you mean some other scientific hypothesis or do you mean that they all show
>evidence of design?
I tried to emphasize in my earlier post that the alternative explanations I
had in mind were not scientific explanations, and they probably shouldn't
be considered alternative either. As a Christian I believe that God is
sovereign. That means that anything that occurs in nature is either
directly under His governance, or it is a secondary cause operating
according to rules He has ordained. That includes commoon descent. If I
am correct, though, I don't expect to find physical evidence that God is in
some way programming common descent. Hebrews 11 teaches that we have to
have faith to know God, and clear physical evidence that He is active would
seem to me to violate that teaching -- as well as some others. I look at
science as the study of how God acts through secondary processes. If I
reach a point where I cannot explain how something occurred in terms of
natural causes and claim that "God did it," that may be a perfectly
legitimate claim, but it isn't science and can't compete with scientific
claims because it's a statement about God, not about How He acts through
secondary causes. As a purely metaphysical exercise, I would be willing to
acknowledge that many processes and objects in nature show design. But it
seems to me that design arguments tell us more about the identity of the
designer and his nature (or our assumptions about his nature) than about
the presence or absence of design. Mike Behe for example totally rejected
my claim a year or so ago that fractal geometry may be evidence of design.
But it's his claim against mine. I see no way of objectively proving one
of us is right and the other wrong. Design arguments always seem to have
hidden assumptions about the nature and/or identity of the designer. Yet
their proponents seem to be convinced that they are simply detecting
_design_ itself.
>
>: Getting back to the fossil record, what does it show? It shows that
>: different kinds of animals existed at different times, and that there is a
>: progression of development -- ammonites were here before birds, for
>: example. (This is what I mean by development in stages) Common descent is
>: a reasonable inference from the fossil record, but I would quibble with the
>: assertion that it's the _only_ reasonable inference.
>
>What are other reasonable inferences?
Ask the creationists.
>
>: So what does that leave? As a Christian who is not a biologist or a
>: paleontologist, the alternative is some form of progressive creation.
>
>Why do you see the need for an alternative?
_I_ personally don't see the need of an alternative.
Are you saying that the
>interpretation of the fossil evidence and all other cladistic and
>zoological evidence by a Christian cannot result in the acceptance of
>common descent?
No.
You seem to be saying that, yes, common descent is an
>entirely valid conclusion to make after examining the evidence, but that
>conclusion cannot be made by a Christian and therefore one needs to believe
>in an alternative that lies outside the bounds of science.
No. I see no reason why a Christian cannot accept common descent. I know
many (including myself -- most of the time anyway :-)) who do. I don't see
my view of God being sovereign over common descent as an alternative to
science, but rather as a deeper, metaphysical explanation. While I am
uncomfortable with efforts to separate science and theology so that they
have nothing to say to each other, there are kinds of interactions that are
not useful -- such as substituting a theological explanation a scientific
one for an event which may yield to a scientific explanation if studied
carefully, or such as claiming that we understand cause and effect in
nature so well that there is no room left for God. We need to remember
Isaiah 55:9. We learn what God allows us to learn. Just because we don't
know something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Let's back up a bit. This exchange started because I said as an aside in a
note to Steve Jones that I thought Christians should accept the allele
frequency definition of evolution. My reasons for suggesting this are 1)
Because that is an empirically defensible definition. We only look foolish
to reject it; 2) It defuses fights with people who study evolution (defined
as varying allele frequencies) and know little of paleontology and geology.
That makes it easier to witness to these people; 3) It focusses attention
on the other lines of evidence that support common descent. After all,
random (or apparently random) variation of allele frequencies is not
sufficient to explain the scenario that, say Richard Dawkins paints of
evolutionary development. I have no inclination to fight against common
descent myself because I believe it doesn't threaten Christianity. After
all, it's about material mechanisms. Christianity is about the
relationship of man to God, Who is Spirit. As long as it's applied in its
domain, common descent cannot threaten Christianity. Dawkins and others
are taking common descent out of its domain when they claim it supports
atheism.
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William E. Hamilton, Jr., Ph.D.
1346 W. Fairview Lane
Rochester, MI 48306
(810) 652 4148