Me:
> I am not asking for direct evidence as I do not expect such a
> thing. Indirect evidence is just fine. What indirect evidence
> indicates that a major evolutionary innovation was indeed the
> product of RM&NS?
Tedd:
>How about evidence of gene duplication? Unless the process of
>gene duplication can be shown to require intelligent help, I
>think RM & NS wins again.
Evidence of gene duplication is simply sequence similarity.
How is this evidence against ID and for RM&NS? Where in
ID is the requirement for the intelligent designer to employ
nothing more than completely different sequences? Where is
the evidence that those sequence similarities were indeed
generated by random gene duplications?
I don't approach this topic with such a bias that I would
consider ID a good explanation only if *required*. After
all, through some intelligently designed procedures, it would
be easy to inject another copy of any gene into a mouse and
thus provide it with a gene duplication. But such intelligent
design would not be required to generate a duplicate of that
gene; it could have happened without it.
As I mentioned, this is an inquiry into history and attempts to
impose and employ standards of "what is possible/impossible"
are (IMO) seriously misguided. That type of inquiry belongs in
philosophy and it is becoming increasingly clear to me that this debate,
for most, is indeed all about philosophy and not history. Thus I
fully understand why one's metaphysics or adherence to some
game rule would demand that ID be *required.* But when one
approaches the issue in a fair and open manner, willing to follow
the evidence wherever it leads (even if it violates a game rule or
someone's metaphysics), it clearly comes into focus that the belief
that evolution was indeed driven by RM&NS is itself mostly driven
by nothing more than game rules and metaphysics. And that's just a
darn shame.
I am becoming increasingly convinced that many darwinian
academics are like the True Believers in a fundamentalist
church. Both groups essentially move through and share
with those who agree on their basic fundamentals and likewise
insulate themselves from hard-nosed skeptics. Both share a
rigid intolerance against anyone who would dare question
the fundamentals of their faith (and both justify this by
thinking the fundamentals of their faith are "true/fact").
And finally, both are easily stumped by skeptics who don't
begin with the same set of assumptions they work with.
Thus when someone believes that RM&NS were indeed
the mechanisms behind the major historical events of
evolution, yet this belief is due to a type of faith, when
asked for evidence, they have a very hard time processing
this question. It's kind of like many religious fundamentalists,
who are used to arguing with each other by using Bible verses
only to find someone who questions the authority of those
verses in the first place.
So how can you tell if you are a darwinian fundamentalist?
If you are unable to seriously consider the distinct possibility
that I may have a real point here, chances are, you are
a True Believer. Instead of embracing an opportunity to
launch into some real free-thinking, you'll be looking
for anyway to defend that which you hold dear. Look for
the holes. Attack the messenger. Do anything but pause and
consider I might be on to something.
So I don't ask my question merely to score some debate point.
I am not someone who insists that ID is true and only those
who are mentally, psychologically, or intellectually defective
can't see this (this line of wondrous thinking I won't steal from
the ID critics). I am not a creationist or fundamentalist;
I can very easily adopt the views of someone like Howard (or take
them even further as I did in a reply to John). I am not the
product of some church; I was milked on secularism through
and through. I simply view an ambiguous and mysterious and
fascinating world and am surrounded by many who think they
have it all basically figured out. And in some ways, I guess I
envy them.
Mike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Mar 28 2000 - 14:56:01 EST