Different in degree or kind: more Denton: (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, February 17, 2016, 18:14 (2981 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I can see why the ID folk love Denton,....so let's wait and see what else he comes up with. Thank you for keeping us posted.
DAVID: Please note the following quote from a Christian ID'er: -http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/god-and-darwin-why-they-simply-cannot...-The article begins: 
"As UD readers know, Charles Darwin changed history when he argued that naturalistic processes, acting alone, can drive the macro-evolutionary process from beginning to end. His earth-shattering message was that nature's pseudo-creative mechanism can mimic the work of a designing Creator. That he could not support his claim with empirical evidence did not seem to bother him very much."-And it doesn't seem to bother the author very much that Darwin was an agnostic who in later editions of his Origin frequently referred to the Creator as the maker of this so-called “pseudo-creative mechanism”, and repeatedly pointed out that his theory did not conflict with religious belief.
 
QUOTE: "In the case of Teleological Theism, the design precedes and shapes the process. In the case of Darwinian Evolution-the process precedes and shapes the design (appearance of). Notice that there can be no reconciliation. To affirm one perspective is to negate the other. Either God's real design precedes and shapes the process (Teleological Theism) or, the evolutionary process precedes and shapes the appearance of design (Neo-Darwinism). It must be one or the other. It cannot be both." -Of course it can be both. Once again we are confronted with someone who insists that he knows God's purpose. All the criteria for teleological theism would be satisfied by a God who designed a process that would shape its own course in order to satisfy his purpose of seeing what his invention might produce. Even in terms of Christianity, you can find an analogy by arguing that God gave humans free will to shape their own course: the design of humans thus precedes and shapes the process of exercising free will, and free will precedes and shapes the individual's evolution.-David's comment: A view of God running evolution, to which I agree. Both Denton and Nagel are looking for a third way, as are you. Good luck in finding it among all the natural law fudges.-I'm glad you agree with my scepticism concerning natural law, which matches my scepticism concerning a sourceless mind creating and controlling billions of solar systems in order to create humans.-xxx-DAVID: A summary of chapter 2 from the ID site:-http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/denton-still-a-theory-in-crisis-part-2/-Conclusion of chapter 2:
"It is ironic that the very evidence for believing that microevolution has indeed occurred in cases like the finches—an empirically known or readily envisaged continuum of forms leading from an ancestral form A to descendant form B—is precisely the evidence that is lacking when attempting to account for macroevolution and the origin of the defining features (feathers, hands, mammary glands, hair, the placenta, flowers, body plan, etc.) of the major taxa."
David's comment: It is a nice article which quotes biologists, like Gould, who point out the gaps.-Of course we accept microevolution, and of course we all know that macroevolution or innovation is the problem, and Darwin raised it himself, and no one has solved it. How often does this point have to be made?-DAVID: In chapter 3 of his book Denton's describes the accepted fact that once multicellularity appears there are primordial 'types' of structures that simply appear with no precursors, equivalent to what I call patterns, the one type of limbs an example. Darwin does not explain this. He only explains the modifications that occur afterward. Denton offers a cladogram which I cannot reproduce here, but it offers: jaws appear with fish; limbs appear with amphibians; amniotic eggs appear with reptiles; hair appears with marsupials; placenta appears primates. In each case there are no precursors. It is all saltation! He believes in natural processes with the result "that the entire pattern of evolution was prefigured into the order of things from the beginning."-It all started by chance and carried on via random mutations (Dawkinism), God prefigured it (Turellism), and now nature prefigured it (Dentonism). We simply haven't a clue. Admirably, we keep searching...but so far, I fear, this search has only provided us with more fudge.