Why must RM&NS be opposed to design and purpose? I would assert that from
any Christian perspective (whether or not you are young earth creationist
or ID in the present sense of that concept) that you must believe that God
designed his creation and created things puposefully. But this is not
necessarily contrary to RM&NS. (See my rough-draft web essays at
http://asa.calvin.edu/evolution/noontime.html and
http://asa.calvin.edu/evolution/veritas.html ) I have no problem taking
the design advocated by ID'ers to be design (even Dawkins does this, but
labels it apparent design). But I also have no problem attributing that
design to RM&NS, since they, as all natural processes, are divinely
governed.
The rub comes when ID'ers want to argue that some designs can't be
explained by RM&NS (or some other "natural" process) and that it only comes
about by some intelligent designer. The rub comes from the other side too
when folks like Dennett, Dawkins, et al. suggest that RM&NS as an
explanation imply no designer. They don't recognize that their commitment
to the autonomy of nature is a philosophical/theological commitment just as
much as my commitment to the radical dependence of nature upon a governing
God is a philosophical/theological commitment. It seems to me that even
ID'ers, at least in the rhetoric, share the naturalism of Dennett and
Dawkins by being unwilling to consider that divinely guided "natural"
processes can produce design by even their definition.
By my consideration everything is divinely designed. ID'ers don't like this
because it takes the apologetic sting out of their argument. In my opinion
that exposes the motive for the whole enterprise.
The teleological question is indeed the chief question, but I would suggest
that the teleological question has nothing to do with science and
everything to do with philosophy/theology. The question is what is the
governing force behind the regularities that we observe in nature--science
CANNOT answer that question. The Scientific Naturalist typically argues
that nature is autonomous, i.e. that the governing forces are intrinsic to
nature. The Theist argues that the governing force is external to nature,
i.e. God as sustainer and governor of the created order. But this is
obviously a meta-scientific idea--and the science underneath these two
meta-scientific starting points can look very similar even though from a
holistic, religio-philosophical perspective they are radically different
ways of looking at the world.
Theists have given away the store if they agree that scientific ("natural")
explanations imply autonomous behavior of nature and the absence of a
designer.
This is why I consider the work of Mike Behe, Phillip Johnson, and company
when they critique the science to be so useless, especially when they are
simply propagandizing the evangelical community with popular level books.
If there are genuine scientific merits to some of these issues then lets
debate/discuss them int he scientific literature. No doubt there will be an
uphill battle, but there's a reason for this, and it's not simply that the
Scientific Naturalists are in control as Phillip Johnson would have us
believe. It is because the evolutionary picture accepted by nearly all life
scientists is sufficiently successful as a scientific paradigm. Nothing
that I've seen from Behe, Nelson, Wells even comes close to upsetting the
paradigm. Even the most perplexing problems that they highlight are readily
seen as being merely interesting problems in the present paradigm
especially with the on-going "refinements" to the neo-Darwinian synthesis
spurred on by evo-devo research, paleontology, and complex systems analysis.
Thus my question for Mike is this, if we know the mechanisms for gene
duplication (i.e. we know that it can occur, some of the reasons it occurs,
what results--diverged sequences--when it does occur) and we see apparently
duplicated genes (based on sequence comparisons), why isn't the obvious
conclusion to draw that gene duplication has occurred? It seems to me that
the only reason not to do this is because of some precommitment to the
impossibility of evolution because of theological reasons, or because of
some view that sees design as anti-thetical to RM&NS. By the way, gene
duplication and it's necessary accompanying idea of exaptation
(pre-adaptation) aren't really Darwinian ideas, but are part of the complex
systems analysis side of the "new" synthesis. Indeed, in contrast to Behe's
mousetrap example, the incipient irreducibly complex molecular machine, is
formed sufficiently with existing parts (perhaps arising from other
functioning machines) to have a function, however mediocre that function
might be. But once, we're there NS and refinement can occur. Most of the
functioning molecular machines that we observe today are the end result of
much evolutionary refinement. Especially with gene duplication working,,
they can fine tune to virtually a specific function. No wonder they look
designed for that particular function.
TG
_________________
Terry M. Gray, Ph.D., Computer Support Scientist
Chemistry Department, Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado 80523
grayt@lamar.colostate.edu http://www.chm.colostate.edu/~grayt/
phone: 970-491-7003 fax: 970-491-1801
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