My comments relate primarily to the biological sciences.
There has been a long tradition of perceiving matter as passive,
subject to natural law, analogous to building blocks which are
assembled according to the intelligent design, purposeful plan and
external power of the architect/builder. This is, I think, the
perspective which characterises the ID group.
The naturalists have no architect and no builder - so the assembly
process has to be without initial design, without mindful purpose and
entirely unsupervised. The universe self-assembles; it creates
itself. The research programme is one which seeks plausible
mechanisms to bring ordered complexity from simple building blocks.
Those Christians who advocate functional integrity have the
expectation that God has designed the building blocks in such a way
that assembly into complex structures is inevitable. Design is to be
found in the building blocks; the complex structures that emerge are
the visible expression of the innate design. So the interest is not
only in the mechanisms, but also in the characteristics of the
building blocks and how these are exploited by the mechanisms. The
research agenda here is to work out the anthropic principle in the
context of biological science.
This does seem to me to suggest a distinctive research agenda. The
naturalist is surprised by the anthropic principle - it does not fit
his mind set. The Christian who holds to functional integrity appears
to predict it (witness the three quotes in my earlier post) and does
not expect emergent properties or self-organisation without it.
> I agree with your assessment that Goodwin, Kauffman, and company think that
> much of neo-Darwinian theory is irrelevant to some of the key questions in
> evolution. I tend to agree with their criticisms and proposed solutions.
> I find it curious that the very problems often cited by YEC and ID folks
> are exactly those cited by the complexity crowd--given the promise of this
> research program, I see no reason to declare the process impossible by
> "natural" means and thus the domain of a direct act of God.
One of the concerns expressed in my post is that this same assessment
of neo-Darwinian theory (which has no need of designed building
blocks) ought to characterise advocates of functional integrity. Your
perspective needs design to make emergent properties possible - so
any model of emergence which does not have design in it must be
deficient!
For years, we have had Theistic Evolutionists saying that evolution
is complementary to design and purpose, and this has led to endless
controversy between TEs and those who cannot see how they can possibly
be complementary. We are now moving on (I think!). It is defensible
to argue that process and purpose are complementary - but this does
not apply to design. The functional integrity school recognise
design in the building blocks - so I am suggesting that this should
radically change the substance of debate. Theistic evolution should
be discarded - as it does not have a defensible position on design.
There are only two positions that have a viable position on design:
the ID school and the FI school. Both have research agendas (and in
both cases it needs to be articulated much more clearly than it is
at present) and both have a distinctively Christian world view.
My conviction is that clarification of these positions will
greatly assist the creation/evolution debate and will provide a
framework for meaningful communication in the days ahead.
Best wishes,
*** From David J. Tyler, CDT Department, Hollings Faculty,
Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.
Telephone: 0161-247-2636 ***