Hi Marsha, >I have heard the theory of evolution has "evolved" a lot from the > theory that Darwin presented. Yes?
Scientists know a lot more about how evolution functions than they did in Darwin's day. For example, Darwin did not know how traits are passed on to future gererations, i.e., genes through replication and copying errors of DNA. The so-called "modern evolutionary synthesis" combines genetics with Darwin's natural selection. > And are you saying that there are no other theories challenging Evolution > but Intelligent Design? None? As far as I know, no one since Darwin has ever suggested another explanation for evolution. Design is not even a competing theory since it is not a scientific theory. It can never be a scientific theory unless someone comes up with a way to make verifiable predictions based on design, but the problem is that whatever we observe, we could always say that the universe was designed to be exactly that way. This is a problem since if we observed a universe completely different from what we actually do, we could still say that it was designed to be exactly that way, so design as theory can tell us nothing about the universe we experience and what we can expect to find in this particular universe, since design would be consistent with any observations whatsoever in any universe of our imagining. In other words, design is not a theory because it is not falsifiable. There is no way to imagine evidence that would be inconsistent with the theory, so it is meaningless to claim that the theory is true. What could it mean to say that a theory is true, if we can't imagine the sorts of experiences that would convince us that the theory is false? It is interesting to me that the debates that are relevant today about Creationism and Intelligent Design were being had since the publication of Darwin's work. In James's Pragmatism lecture series, he addresses the "QUESTION of DESIGN IN NATURE." This passage is worth reading today, as his pragmatic analysis of the issue is still relevant: "God’s existence has from time immemorial been held to be proved by certain natural facts. Many facts appear as if expressly designed in view of one another. Thus the woodpecker’s bill, tongue, feet, tail, etc., fit him wondrously for a world of trees with grubs hid in their bark to feed upon. The parts of our eye fit the laws of light to perfection, leading its rays to a sharp picture on our retina. Such mutual fitting of things diverse in origin argued design, it was held; and the designer was always treated as a man-loving deity. The first step in these arguments was to prove that the design existed. Nature was ransacked for results obtained through separate things being co-adapted. Our eyes, for instance, originate in intra-uterine darkness, and the light originates in the sun, yet see how they fit each other. They are evidently made FOR each other. Vision is the end designed, light and eyes the separate means devised for its attainment. It is strange, considering how unanimously our ancestors felt the force of this argument, to see how little it counts for since the triumph of the darwinian theory. Darwin opened our minds to the power of chance-happenings to bring forth ’fit’ results if only they have time to add themselves together. He showed the enormous waste of nature in producing results that get destroyed because of their unfitness. He also emphasized the number of adaptations which, if designed, would argue an evil rather than a good designer. Here all depends upon the point of view. To the grub under the bark the exquisite fitness of the woodpecker’s organism to extract him would certainly argue a diabolical designer." As a side note, I just want to jump in and point out that I think it is important in discussing Intelligent Design or evolution to acknowledge that it is exaclty this appearance of design in nature that evolutionary theory was created to explain. It isn't that design is an obviously bad idea from the start. It's just that the appearance of design is what needs explaining. Evolutionary science shows how what appears to be designed can come about through natural processes, and it also shows how these natural processes have often produced what would amount to very poor design. James continues... "Theologians have by this time stretched their minds so as to embrace the darwinian facts, and yet to interpret them as still showing divine purpose. It used to be a question of purpose AGAINST mechanism, of one OR the other. It was as if one should say “My shoes are evidently designed to fit my feet, hence it is impossible that they should have been produced by machinery.” We know that they are both: they are made by a machinery itself designed to fit the feet with shoes. Theology need only stretch similarly the designs of God. As the aim of a football-team is not merely to get the ball to a certain goal (if that were so, they would simply get up on some dark night and place it there), but to get it there by a fixed MACHINERY OF CONDITIONS–the game’s rules and the opposing players; so the aim of God is not merely, let us say, to make men and to save them, but rather to get this done through the sole agency of nature’s vast machinery. Without nature’s stupendous laws and counterforces, man’s creation and perfection, we might suppose, would be too insipid achievements for God to have designed them. This saves the form of the design-argument at the expense of its old easy human content. The designer is no longer the old man-like deity. His designs have grown so vast as to be incomprehensible to us humans. The WHAT of them so overwhelms us that to establish the mere THAT of a designer for them becomes of very little consequence in comparison. We can with difficulty comprehend the character of a cosmic mind whose purposes are fully revealed by the strange mixture of goods and evils that we find in this actual world’s particulars. Or rather we cannot by any possibility comprehend it. The mere word ’design’ by itself has, we see, no consequences and explains nothing. It is the barrenest of principles. The old question of WHETHER there is design is idle. The real question is WHAT is the world, whether or not it have a designer–and that can be revealed only by the study of all nature’s particulars. Remember that no matter what nature may have produced or may be producing, the means must necessarily have been adequate, must have been FITTED TO THAT PRODUCTION. The argument from fitness to design would consequently always apply, whatever were the product’s character. The recent Mont-Pelee eruption, for example, required all previous history to produce that exact combination of ruined houses, human and animal corpses, sunken ships, volcanic ashes, etc., in just that one hideous configuration of positions. France had to be a nation and colonize Martinique. Our country had to exist and send our ships there. IF God aimed at just that result, the means by which the centuries bent their influences towards it, showed exquisite intelligence. And so of any state of things whatever, either in nature or in history, which we find actually realized. For the parts of things must always make SOME definite resultant, be it chaotic or harmonious. When we look at what has actually come, the conditions must always appear perfectly designed to ensure it. We can always say, therefore, in any conceivable world, of any conceivable character, that the whole cosmic machinery MAY have been designed to produce it. Pragmatically, then, the abstract word ’design’ is a blank cartridge. It carries no consequences, it does no execution. What sort of design? and what sort of a designer? are the only serious questions, and the study of facts is the only way of getting even approximate answers." And the only scientific answer to what sort of "design" or "designer" is natural selection. Best, Steve Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
