Higher math and Darwin (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, April 10, 2010, 00:58 (5341 days ago) @ dhw

MATT: It [natural selection] doesn't create anything new--but it is what decides (ultimately) what genes get conserved. [...] And if these genes accumulate enough--at what point do you say that whatever creature it describes isn't something "new?"
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> The problem I was discussing here was that creationists and atheists alike misrepresent the theory of evolution to suit their own arguments. Evolution appears to be a mixture of random events (mutations, changes of environment), and non-random natural selection whereby advantageous changes survive. You can't have the one without the other. However, the real point at issue between you and me is the next one:
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> DHW to MATT: the dilemma of chance v. design, as far as I am concerned, relates principally to (a) above. [(a) = the origin of the mechanisms that made life and evolution possible]. I don't have a problem with the role played by chance once those mechanisms are in place, but we do not have one scrap of evidence that chance is capable of assembling them. 
> -Neither do we have a scrap of evidence that allows us to conclusively say that it wasn't chance. (Wow, normally you do this to me! David's brought us all sorts of numbers from scientists and educated laymen alike, all purporting to give us the odds of this and odds of that... but the odds are meaningless themselves when we're in the dark about how the processes came to be. It's like Adler's premature conclusions about "The difference of Man." -Again, I'd say we're closer than you think. -> MATT: I think we have spoken of this before: I still hold that because chance is an intrinsic part of the process, you can't simply create an artificial dividing line delineating the two. You have to be able to separate chance into chance, and design into design--and this simply isn't possible, because what if chance was part of the design in the first place? Why people like Pigliucci stay away from these conversations it is at THIS point that we are really discussing the nature of God without having demonstrated what, exactly--is God?
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> As I tried to make clear above, I have no problem believing that chance is part of the evolutionary pattern. The dividing line comes right at the beginning: Chapter One, in which you seem to take the mechanism for life, reproduction, adaptability and innovation for granted, and I don't. Once we proceed to Chapter Two, i.e. once the mechanism is in place and evolution gets underway, I agree that we can't draw borderlines. But in Chapter One either you believe in the theory of abiogenesis, or you believe in the theory of design, or you sit on the fence. The nature of God comes later. You only speculate on that if you're prepared to consider the design theory. 
> -How much of what you know about the current complexity of life are you ascribing to whatever conditions may have existed back whenever the whole thing arose? My largest criticism of David (and ID as a whole) is that they are looking at life as it is now and positing that earliest life had to be at minimum, as complex as what we see now. Ignored, are arguments that suggest that life at the beginning barely resembled the general processes we see now. I've said it before but not this explicitly: I don't think you'll figure out the origin of life by studying life. -> *** I shall be away for three days, but will catch up next week.
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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"