Re: Jones and his "Gimme-that-old-level-playing-field-so-I-won't- have-to-prove

From: Chris Cogan (ccogan@telepath.com)
Date: Sun Jul 09 2000 - 17:47:20 EDT

  • Next message: Stephen E. Jones: "Re: On Questions About the Origins, if any, of the Universe .... #1"

    >Chris:
    > >Neither am *I* trying to impose my belief in naturalism on anyone, so this
    > >alleged "difference" is nonexistent. And, as far as I can tell, he
    > (Stephen)
    >does
    > >*not* acknowledge that his beliefs are unproven, except perhaps his belief
    > >in ID theory. Why do you claim I am, when I have specifically and
    > >explicitly condemned such practices *several* times on this list?
    >
    >Bertvan:
    >Hi Chris. I am delighted. If naturalism hasn't been proved, then you must
    >agree that any other concept, including ID, is legitimate for consideration.

    Chris
    I did not say that naturalism (in the weak sense) had not been proved. I
    said that I'm not trying to impose it on anyone.

    >Chris
    > >As I said, I'm not trying to impose my views on anyone. Second,
    > >creationists (a subcategory of intelligent design advocates) *are* trying
    > >to impose their views on others. Finally, materialists may be taking to the
    > >courts to enforce the view that only evolution be taught as *science*, but
    > >that's partly because ID theory is *not* science (despite the mislabeled
    > >claims of Behe and others. (snip about abolishing state sponsored
    > education.)
    >
    >Bertvan:
    >If naturalism hasn't been proved there is no reason science can not consider
    >other concepts such as design.

    Chris
    Yes there is, and yes there isn't. Scientists, of course, are free to
    consider whatever they damn well please. But there *is* reason to think
    that design, if it is found, will be of *naturalistic* origins, and that,
    in any case, it will not be possible to prove that it is of
    *non-*naturalistic origin (bizarrely, because of inherent limitations in
    the nature of logic (which does not let us prove what is not logically
    implied by the premises and facts)), this is true even if it happens to be
    the case that something non-naturalistic *does* exist). I challenge you
    (and everyone interested) to find a rationally justifiable rule of
    inference or other rationally justifiable epistemological methodology that
    would allow non-naturalist conclusions from empirical data).

    Bertvan
    >Design was a part of science for thousands of
    >years.

    Chris
    If you mean *non-naturalistic* design, then no, it wasn't. It was a part of
    discussion among scientists, but not part of *scientific* discussion --
    though scientists may have thought that what they were doing was science.
    However much design pure and simple may have been part of science, the
    non-naturalistic aspects of such discussions were *outside* of science
    (where they will remain until someone can give us an empirical test that
    can distinguish between naturalistic design and *non-*naturalistic design
    claims).

    >Only during the last couple of centuries have some scientists
    >declared that science can no longer entertain the possibility of teleology.

    There is a good reason for this: Science grew up and cast off the childish
    superstitions woozy ideas of earlier times about scientific topics.

    Bertvan
    >Maybe materialists are entitled to define 19th century "materialist
    >science". In which case, the public is entitled to know that not all
    >scientists confine their speculations to materialism.

    Chris
    That's true, they don't. It's also irrelevant to the *facts* of reality. If
    *you* want to live on the basis of what *other* people think, with
    virtually no mind of your own, I can't stop you. But, as far as reality is
    concerned, it simply does not matter whether some scientists speculate that
    a personal God exists or that what sign you were born under determines
    important aspects of your life or that swarms of gnomes cause the planets
    to move in their orbits. You *really* need to learn to distinguish between
    reality and what people *think* about reality, if you think that the fact
    that some scientists have non-materialist, non-naturalist *speculations*
    means anything at all about whether such speculations are *true*.

    Bertvan
    >Stephen, Mike Gene and most of the IDs I've read repeatedly acknowledge
    >belief in common descent. Personally, I'm a little less convinced of common
    >descent from one ancestor. There appear to be from 30 to 40 organisms
    >appearing in the Cambrian for which no apparent ancestor has been found.

    Chris
    All of them based or not based on DNA genetics? We don't know. But, if they
    were, then the common descent idea would have to be retained. It is
    presumptively to be favored anyway, since there is no evidence that such
    life forms were any different in their heritage from any other organisms in
    this respect. Common descent is thus not *proved*, but the evidence we have
    supports it while the evidence we *don't* have does not argue against it.

    Besides, arguments from ignorance are a little weak. This would only be
    important if there were objective reason to believe that all such ancestors
    *would* be found if they had been present. Do you know of any such reason?

    Bertvan
    >What is being disputed by ID, is that the change which occurred in such
    >organisms over the centuries occurred without plan, purpose or design. I
    >have no idea of any mechanism which might be involved, but Darwinism (RM&NS
    >plus drift) appears as unlikely to me as theism does to you. I recognize
    >design in nature without any opinions about the origin of that design.
    >Similarly, I can refrain from speculating about what caused the "big bang",
    >or devising theories about what existed before the "big bang".

    Chris
    No: What is being disputed by ID is *naturalism*, in almost all cases.
    Perhaps one ID person in a hundred or a thousand (certainly not Jones)
    would be satisfied with a naturalistic design theory if the evidence
    supported design at all. The main thrust of nearly all ID theorizing is to
    make HUGE leaps from the evidence (some of which is obviously
    misrepresented, as in the case of Behe's "irreducible complexity") to
    non-naturalistic conclusions.

    >Chris:
    > >if you think that naturalistic evolutionary theory only includes "random
    > >mutation," "natural selection," and genetic drift, you are at least twenty
    > >or thirty years behind the times.
    >
    >Bertvan:
    >Please, Chris, bring me up to date.

    Chris
    Bring *yourself* up to date: Read a book, learn to think, study the *evidence*.

    Two influenza A virus strains "trade" parts when they both infect the same
    cell. The result is a *new* influenza virus. Bacteria either do or may well
    do something similar with genetic material. Neither of these methods of
    producing variations is properly called a "random mutation," but it sure as
    hell is a way of producing *new* genetic material and new organisms.
    Retroviruses leave genetic material in the DNA of their hosts. That genetic
    material, if it is in either the ova or the sperm, will normally be found
    in the *offspring* of the hosts. This is also not a method that was or even
    *could* have been proposed by Darwin, because he died before genetics was
    rediscovered in 1900. *Several* other methods have been proposed whereby
    both bacteria and "higher" animals might produce new variations. They do
    not involve intelligence, but neither are they random.

    Bertvan
    >What mechanisms are postulated by
    >Darwinism to account for the change in organisms, if not RM&NS plus drift? I
    >don't want to anticipate your answer, but I confess claiming "the Hox genes
    >did it" is no different to me than saying "god did it". Also, saying a
    >duplicated gene decided to perform a "new function" leaves unanswered the
    >question of who or what did the "deciding". Whatever it was, did it "decide"
    >to perform some random function, of which the number must be infinite,

    Chris
    No, it's not; what function it would perform would depend on what functions
    it *could* perform in the context. Don't expect a screwdriver to make a
    good pile-driver. There would be a degree of "randomness," but randomness
    severely limited by what functions could be reached by small changes each
    of which would either help the organism or at least not hinder it
    noticeably until a new and useful configuration arose (out of many, perhaps).

    But, it doesn't matter anyway. If there were an infinite number of such
    functions, the first significantly *useful* one to arise would be the one
    to be saved (and that would likely end up being built upon by other changes
    later). Ones that were not chemically possible, or that were so rare that
    even in a population of trillions followed over millions of generations
    they would not be likely would be ones that we would not expect to find.
    Don't let the term "random" get translated in your mind into something like
    "*metaphysically* random." They are only random because we have no way of
    determining the subatomic variables to a sufficient degree to specify in
    particular cases which exact result will be produced.

    If a mechanism once arises that promotes its *own* perpetuation by subtly
    manipulating other parts of the genome to produce certain kinds of
    variation, those variations are not random, but they are not intelligent,
    either. For example, if, under certain physical conditions that normally
    correspond to food-deprivation, this mechanism kicks in and causes
    variations to occur that might improve food-gathering (based on a genetic
    "library" of genetic material that is not normally used), we could hardly
    claim that this was truly random, but we could not claim that it was
    intelligent, either.

    Further, DNA recombination via sexual reproduction also produces variations
    that are *not* random, because they consist of variations produced by
    combining *existing* components (rather than randomly generating new ones
    completely from scratch, base-pair by base-pair). This produces variations
    that are demonstrably *more likely* to work than pure random generation
    would. This is also a mechanism that Darwin did not understand, and yet it
    is demonstrable *fact*.

    Thus, the genes that yield sexual reproduction, once they develop in even a
    *primitive* way (bacteria trading a few bits of genetic material, for
    example), have a means of promoting their *own* survival at the occasional
    expense of other genes (although no-longer-useful genes do not have to be
    excluded except *functionally* -- they can be merely disabled and thus
    effectively placed in the "library" along with other genes that do not
    *currently* have use but which one day may).

    Bertvan
    > or did
    >it "decide" to perform some function necessary to the design? If the new
    >function was necessary to the design, there would be no need for Natural
    >Selection to do any designing, would there?

    Chris
    No *decisions* are made. Available variations are produced, perhaps by the
    billions, and a few provide a benefit and are kept. And, the idea that
    natural selection does any designing is metaphorical, and, in my opinion, a
    *poor* metaphor. Natural selection is not a *thing*. It is simply that the
    environment (and the internal workings of organisms) results in different
    rates of survival based on the traits that organisms have. Organisms *must*
    evolve to fit their environments or they go out of existence altogether.

    That's why we don't see many *random* variations in existence; nearly all
    variations that don't help a genome or that aren't at least neutral to it
    *are* extinct. If they could *all* be saved for statistical purposes, life
    would look a *lot* more random than it does, because the world would be
    chock-full of all the trillions of trillions of trillions of variations
    that, in the *real* world, cannot survive.

    Reality imposes *standards*. Genomes that don't *meet* those standards have
    an exceedingly short span of existence (relative to the ones that *do* meet
    those standards, at least). Thus, no matter *how* random the variation
    process is, the results *can't* look random, because only *some* of all the
    random variations can survive. The in-between, and beyond-the-fringe
    variations that we *would* see if all variations were saved are *not*
    saved. The "tree" of life is *severely* "pruned" to whatever we see at any
    given time, leaving out virtually *all* of the variations that would exist
    if they had been all saved since the beginning.

    This is simple math and simple genetics. The known universe is not large
    enough to hold all the various organisms that would have been produced
    since 3.8 billion years ago if every individual organism/genome were saved.
    Natural selection has *restricted* life to forms that are suited to the
    conditions on Earth. No others being viable, they are no longer with us. In
    fact, many forms that *were* once viable are no longer with us. The result
    is that whatever organisms are alive *must* look like organisms would look
    if they were *design* for the world of today (or of the fairly recent
    past). No others can exist.

    Thus, insofar as natural selection can be said to "design" at all, it does
    so purely by *exclusion* of "designs" that don't work, thus leaving results
    that "fit" (i.e., appear to the naive to be designed) their environments.
    What alternative could even be *possible*, given such conditions except
    that the genomes that were able to survive under current conditions would
    be the ones that *did* survive? And how else *could* they look, if not
    fitted to their environments (at least crudely)?

    Put another way, given the laws of physics, and the physical conditions of
    the world, and the chemistry of genetic reproduction, how could the results
    *possibly* have a "random" look when most of the "randomness" is excluded
    by the environment from making more than an evolutionary instantaneous
    appearance and disappearance?

    Put yet another way, please specify real world conditions that could
    possibly obtain and that could make the overall result of evolution
    actually *look* random to a casual observer in the way you seem to mean
    "random." The randomness, insofar as it is appropriately called randomness
    at all, is in the process of variation, *NOT* in the process of culling.
    Culling is fairly stringent, rigid. It *only* allows the persistence of
    variations that are sufficiently functional and which therefore do not have
    the completely haphazard appearance of randomness.

    >Bertvan
    >http://members.aol.com/bertvan
    >
    >P.S.
    >The Chinese appear skeptical of Darwinism, and leaning toward something
    >called "harmonies". Do you consider them "creationists"?

    Chris
    I have no idea what this is about, or how it is relevant.



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