Evolution, Science & Religion (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, June 15, 2012, 15:49 (4543 days ago)

The "Evolution in Schools" thread has become extremely messy, and so I'm starting a new one in order to keep this particular discussion focused.-Dhw (to Tony): The two articles you have linked us to come under "scienceagainstevolution", offering us a woeful distortion of the theory of evolution, which the author clearly thinks incorporates abiogenesis. It does not. Since you agree with him, let's forget about his website and concentrate on what you believe! If you reject the notion that all living organisms are descended from earlier living organisms (whether through chance processes or by means of a designed mechanism, perhaps with occasional interference from the designer), and you regard as silly the idea that God created every organ and species separately, what alternative hypothesis can you offer us?-TONY: The idea that God created everything in 6 days and that the world is only 6k years old IS silly, just as silly as claiming that with all our complexity we were able to go from a single cell (ignoring abiogenesis for the moment) to the complex organisms we are today by pure chance.
 
Agreed. So do you subscribe to the version of evolution I have presented above: all living organisms are descended from earlier living organisms by means of a designed mechanism, perhaps with occasional interference from the designer? This is precisely what David has described in his post of 15 June at 01.20: "...when you have old Earth Creationism and feel God designed and guided evolution." This is crucial to the debate on whether science and religion can overlap ... see later.-TONY: I have no issue with evolution as adaptation within a given family of creatures. I also have no issue with the creationist belief of 'God created them according to their kind'. One describes variation, which is a well known and well observed fact. The other describes the physiological differences that can not be explained by random chance, mutation, or epigenics.
 
I share your scepticism concerning the atheist explanations of innovation, but the differences are there! So do you believe that God created them one by one (the biblical quote is too ambiguous for me), or do you believe he created a mechanism that would enable them to take place via the process of evolution?-TONY: In other words, there was no reason for a UI to create a Jersey, a buffalo, and a ox. Creating a single breedable bovine species with the ability to adapt would have been sufficient. The question for me is, why does it have to be one way or the other?-I'm not sure which two ways you are referring to. Ultimately, the choice is between chance and design, but the theory of evolution can live with both, once you accept that there is a mechanism that allows for adaptation and innovation. So do you or don't you believe ... as David does ... that evolution actually happened, regardless of whether the process was governed by chance or divine planning?-On the subject of religion and science "overlapping", I regard morals (see Matt's post of 14 June at 22.59) as irrelevant. Religion and philosophy overlap in this field. The controversy is over whether science and religion can come to terms in their explanations of the universe we live in. The question always arises as to the extent to which we can/cannot trust science, and our discussion on epistemology has made it clear that we can never be 100% certain of "the truth". However, if there is a general consensus on scientific matters: e.g. that the Earth goes round the sun, that it is vastly more than 6000 years old, that living organisms have never been known to emerge from anything other than earlier living organisms, it seems to me that religious people are on very unsafe ground if they dispute these findings. Especially if their only evidence is ancient texts written by unknown authors with little of our scientific knowledge, and passed onto us in versions which themselves are subject to dispute (see your own Walrus post). But in my view, there is NO scientific explanation that excludes the possibility of what David calls a Universal Intelligence. Evolution certainly doesn't, nor does the Big Bang. The religious can ALWAYS argue that what we have is too complex to have arisen by chance, and that is the end of the discussion. Where religion falls apart under the scrutiny of science is in its adherence to the pronouncements of its all-too-human advocates, who insist on imposing their own dogmatic theories and interpretations on - or against - the known (as far as anything can be known) scientific facts. Precisely the same criticism applies to the anti-religious!