At 01:30 PM 11/09/1999 -0600, Wesley wrote:
AC>That's good Wesley! Now, tell me something you know for sure
AC>about the process of evolution that differentiates it from
AC>special creation.
WRE>Well, I don't know of any version of special creation that
WRE>has these properties:
WRE>- Evolutionary interrelationships have been used to advantage
WRE>in medical research.
WRE>- The principles of natural selection have been used to
WRE>advantage in computational optimization and search.
AC>And I don't know any version of special creation that does
AC>not. We must travel in vastly different circles.
WRE>Yes, indeed. I used to work in a medical research lab. I
WRE>later obtained a degree in computer science in the artificial
WRE>intelligence track and then worked in software development.
WRE>The circles I have traveled in have direct relevance to the
WRE>two statements given above.
AC>That brings me back to my original question: (which was not
AC>directed to you, particularly, but since you responded...)
AC>Tell me something you know for sure about the process of
AC>evolution that differentiates it from special creation.
Was that Art's "original question"? I tend to consider a
question "original" if it predates other questions or other
forms of the question, but that does not appear to be how
Art is using it here. Art's "original" by my understanding
of "original" was his invocation of "the Patterson challenge",
which concerns finding true things about evolution. It was
only after I provided several such statements that Art became
concerned over differentiating evolution and special creation.
Differentiation of the two may well be impossible, but only
because some forms of "special creation" adopt evolution as
the method of creation. A Deistic stance does this most
completely. Various forms of theistic evolution provide for
an interventionist stance that is nonetheless
indistinguishable on the evidence from the case where no
intervention occurs. As I have discussed before, even YEC
usage of "special creation" has changed meaning such that
it has more and more come to resemble evolution, as in the
reduction over time of the number of claimed creation events
and in the definitions, where given, of "kinds". The single
common feature is that "special creation", where active,
leaves no empirical residue for examination that would
distinguish it from ordinary evolutionary biology.
Evolutionary processes are amenable to scientific research.
"Special creation" processes could be amenable to scientific
research to the extent that they are specified in theoretical
format. Unfortunately, AFAICT there is no scientific theory
of "special creation". Uniformly, what I have seen offered
either are creeds (any of the various statements from the ICR
and CRS purporting to be "theories") or, at best, are part of
a pre-theoretical framework (some of the statements of various
Intelligent Design Creationists).
Wesley