Logic and evolution: natural selection doesn't exist (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 31, 2018, 14:18 (2487 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "Lewontin was, of course, referring to Jerry Fodor’s compelling philosophical argument:
“Sometimes when I’m in a mildly bitter mood I think, look the trouble with Darwin is he believes in Intelligent Design. He never really got it clear to himself that there really isn’t a designer. So it’s questionable whether you can take artificial selection as a model for natural selection the way he did. When you try to do that you can’t work it out.”—Jerry Fodor talking to me in 2008.

DAVID’s comment: Natural selection is a tautology.

Wonderful! At long last, someone else has realized that Darwin incorporated the possibility of a designer into his theory. One day perhaps theists and atheists alike will actually read what Darwin wrote instead of twisting his ideas to suit their own agendas. But Fodor does his own twisting by espousing the atheist cause. Personally I see nothing wrong with the actual concept of natural selection, but what IS wrong is the attribution of creative powers to a process which creates absolutely nothing. I agree with David’s comment: it simply means that those organisms which were able to survive survived. The great problem is speciation. We know that this entails messing about with different combinations of cells (proven by “artificial selection”), but we do not know how nature comes up with these different, functioning combinations. Darwin offers random mutations, but explicitly allows for a “Creator” who set up the original mechanism; David believes in divine programming and dabbling; I offer the hypothesis of cellular intelligence, again allowing for the possibility of a “Creator” as the inventor. We’ve all “worked it out”, but none of our explanations have the backing of science.