More Denton: Reply to Tony (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, July 31, 2015, 20:10 (3403 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

DHW: So you reject David's hypothesis on the grounds that innovation has never been observed. Nor of course has separate creation. So that, apparently, gets rid of that. 
TONY: Ok, let's be straight and blunt here. We have never observed speciation. We have never observed innovation (in a morphological/genetic sense). What we HAVE observed are creatures being the way they are for the entire time that they have existed with only minor variation within vary tight constraints. Now, which is more sensible: 
A ) To assume that something we have never observed must have happened in order to explain something else that we have never observed for the sole purpose of getting rid of God? (i.e. one of the stated primary purposes of naturalism)-No, no, no, that is not the purpose of the theory of evolution! David, the Pope, and millions of other theists believe in God and evolution, though they may believe in different versions. Darwin himself even quotes the Rev. Charles Kingsley, who had “learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of self-development....” as to believe in separate creation.
 
TONY: B ) To assume that an intelligent design, one that defies all laws of probability, had an intelligent designer. 
The first requires that we keep inventing more and more wildly imaginative stories to cover the holes in the theories. The second only requires that we acknowledge the designer and then try to understand what he has done.-
As an agnostic, I find it a little sad to hear theistic pots and atheistic kettles using the same language about each other: nothing ever observed (evolution/God) to explain something never observed (speciation/separate creation), no evidence, wildly imaginative stories to cover the holes - usually called gaps. But please can we differentiate between two totally different issues: 1) The existence of God. 2) What method a God might have used to create all the forms of life we know of. I am not an atheist, nor was Darwin, and nor is David, and in our discussions on 2) I have deliberately worn my theist's hat. If we take the Cambrian as our biggest evolutionary problem, here are five hypothetical explanations, every one of which allows for the existence of God:
1) Darwin: the precursors did exist, but we haven't found them yet (common descent).
2) God created all the new species separately.
3) God preprogrammed all the new species in the first cells, and the relevant programmes were switched on during the Cambrian (common descent).
4) God individually transformed existing species into new species (common descent, a sort of evolutionary variation on 2)).
5) Organisms contain an autonomous, intelligent, inventive mechanism (designed by God?) which enables them to innovate in response to new environmental conditions (common descent).-All of these theistic or potentially theistic hypotheses involve factors that have never been observed and that may well remain unobservable. As such, they are all flawed, and so no matter which one you choose to believe, your belief will have to rest on faith in the (so far) unobserved. (The same applies of course to the atheistic interpretation of common descent, which relies on chance as the initiator and one of the driving forces.)
 
DHW: As regards lifestyle (and habitats), no one would question that it arises from what organisms need and what they are capable of achieving, but I would like to know if you think God pre-programmed the plover's migration and the weaverbird's nest, or they worked it out for themselves. 
TONY: I do not know. I speculate that it is actually a little bit of both. I.E. God programmed the abilities that make nest building possible, but did not directly dictate how each specific type of nest would be built.-Thank you. We are all speculating. The abilities that make nest building possible would be what I call the autonomous, intelligent, inventive mechanism which God may have given to all organisms. (I do not share David's belief that the weaverbird is incapable of designing its own nest.)
 
TONY: The prototype human was human. The prototype ape was an ape. The prototype cat was a cat. Given that speciation has never been observed and innovation has never been observed, and given that random chance is clearly out of the questions, I see no reason to speculate that common descent (in the Darwinian sense of speciation and gradual mutation/innovation generating new features) has occurred. -Given that palaeontologists themselves cannot agree on classifications, and you yourself regard classifications as no basis for rational judgement, and given that none of the hypothetical explanations, including your own, have ever been observed, I had hoped to establish some common ground. (I agree, though, about gradualism and random mutations.) Alas, however, it is the sad fate of the agnostic that he is always bound to fail in his peacemaking efforts because, let's face it, somebody is right and the rest are wrong. We just don't know which is which!