rmwilliamsjr
October 8th 2003, 07:50 PM
i've been working on this essay and would appreciate some help. websites and books to read are especially desirable.
Wrom: KVFVWRKJVZCMHVIBGDADRZFSQHYUCDDJBLVLMHAALPTCXLYRWTQTIPWIGYOKSTTZRCL
sufficiency revisited
a continuation of:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/rmwilliamsjr/59594.html
although the initial impetus is:
"We can no more accept the principle of arbitrary and casual variations of natural selection as a sufficient condition, per se, of the past and present organic world ..."Herschel 1861 quoted in _Darwinism Evolving_ pg 160+-
The sufficiency of random mutation-natural selection (RM-NS) is in fact one of the big areas of discussion in the neo-darwinian synthesis. But this is not the point i want to make of this quote. I want to narrow the focus of my concentration on the sufficiency of naturalistic causes to explain evolution in particular, but with one eye on the larger issue of scientific explanations in general.
There are at least two ways to dispute the sufficiency of RM-NS within the general framework of evolutionary theory. The first is the general way the discussion heads, whether there are other not-RM inputs to the system. These would be topics like: not random mutations but something like lamarkian directed mutation, neutral mutations and genetic drift, gene hopping and vectors like viruses carrying genetic material between species etc. These things are fully incorporatible within the general naturalistic framework of scientific evolutionary theory. but providential evolution(PE) proposes another far more extension complaint against the sufficiency of RM-NS that is God's underlying activity to cause mutation and to fix its presence in a population. Now immediately a secular reader would say that this is out-of-bounds as a scientific explanation. Why? His response would be that we don't do God in science. Why? Because 1-God is a science stopper 2-God theories are divisive and break the unity of science 3-God explanations depend on private knowledge not the public knowledge that science uses.
Look at each one of these, good complaints about introducing God-theories into science. In RM-NS the explanatory chain stops in chance, for two big reasons. One it is historical, we don't know, nor do we have access to say how or when the various mutations that we see in genomes happened. Chance here is covering up unability to be precise. Besides this, even if a RM-NS event, say the nylon bug, is occurring in front of our eyes, we do not know the forces that are operating on the molecular level to the individuals that are responsible for a statistical event that we see, ie nylon metabolism. This is akin to quantum indeterminism, chance is posited because of the ultimate mystery at the heart of the phenomena. We are dealing with populations, but our explanatory level is that some individual, somehow, underwent a very specific mutation, the result when it rises to the level of our observation is again a population, now using nylon as an energy source due to this one particular mutation. Putting the explanation up to chance ends the discussion in mystery, how would positing God's hand in the mutation via completely secondary (common providence) effects be a science stopper, if science is already stopped up in mystery?
Likewise the third complaint can be dismissed in that we all lack public knowledge, when why we ascribed it to chance? I don't claim access to the reasons God did it, nor do i mount specifics as to how, i only align God as underneath the chaos, the chance that we posit as at the heart of RM-NS. A well bred secular person ought to immediately jump on this with Occam's razor and state that there is no need to posit God's hand here. Simplicity would as Laplace so elegantly stated "God, i have no need of that hypothesis." (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22i+have+no+need+of+that+hypothesis%22&btnG=Google+Search). This is the sufficiency case presented at the most basic level. I have no need. My response is "how do you prove no-need, sufficiency, completeness, "i am done explaining, here i stand, i need dig no deeper".
It is here that the question of what does it take to persuade pops up. It is here that we are addressing a whole person, not just a scientist, not a small part of a person who strives for objectivity, for scientific principles. To be persuaded is a whole-person job. We believe arguments because they fit. We are satisfied with stopping at randomness underneath RM-NS because we believe that there is nothing else but randomness and chance, all the rest of the way down.
(http://www.blossomingrose.org/editorials/turtlesalltheway.htm) But if, in fact, the universe is as traditional Christianity teaches, fundamentally deterministic, then it is not by chance that that nylon bug mutated, God did it, using common providence.
If common providence has been used to justify the hand of God in human history, why can't i consistently apply the same high level explanation to low level science where it is proposed that chance be operative? Chance is shorthand for we dont know, for me, it is short for i may not know, but God does. Now i don't have to introduce this into a scientific practice, i can stop with others for methodological reasons and allow the last statement to be, we don't know, we propose from the results seen that this chance event happened and leave it at that. But knowing that if someone wishes to build a metaphysics on chance that this game, metaphysics, is a valid place for God's hand and poof, chance is not ultimate, the lack of knowledge on the part of human beings is not ultimate, God's wisdom is.
We essentially end up at the beginning of apologetics, why the statement of "God i have no need of that explanation" is false.
The Cosmogony 201 area is reserved for creationists only. From this post and another you've written I'm convinced that you are a theistic evolutionist. While guided theistic evolution or progressive creationism (if that is made explicit) is allowed, your post does not seem to adovcating such a thing. Therefore, if you'd like to post the above in another section of the "Science Building" feel free to do so. In the meantime this thread is closed. Feel free to provide futher clarification.
Please review this particular forum's rules at...
http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6071 where a clarification was given
Wrom: KVFVWRKJVZCMHVIBGDADRZFSQHYUCDDJBLVLMHAALPTCXLYRWTQTIPWIGYOKSTTZRCL
sufficiency revisited
a continuation of:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/rmwilliamsjr/59594.html
although the initial impetus is:
"We can no more accept the principle of arbitrary and casual variations of natural selection as a sufficient condition, per se, of the past and present organic world ..."Herschel 1861 quoted in _Darwinism Evolving_ pg 160+-
The sufficiency of random mutation-natural selection (RM-NS) is in fact one of the big areas of discussion in the neo-darwinian synthesis. But this is not the point i want to make of this quote. I want to narrow the focus of my concentration on the sufficiency of naturalistic causes to explain evolution in particular, but with one eye on the larger issue of scientific explanations in general.
There are at least two ways to dispute the sufficiency of RM-NS within the general framework of evolutionary theory. The first is the general way the discussion heads, whether there are other not-RM inputs to the system. These would be topics like: not random mutations but something like lamarkian directed mutation, neutral mutations and genetic drift, gene hopping and vectors like viruses carrying genetic material between species etc. These things are fully incorporatible within the general naturalistic framework of scientific evolutionary theory. but providential evolution(PE) proposes another far more extension complaint against the sufficiency of RM-NS that is God's underlying activity to cause mutation and to fix its presence in a population. Now immediately a secular reader would say that this is out-of-bounds as a scientific explanation. Why? His response would be that we don't do God in science. Why? Because 1-God is a science stopper 2-God theories are divisive and break the unity of science 3-God explanations depend on private knowledge not the public knowledge that science uses.
Look at each one of these, good complaints about introducing God-theories into science. In RM-NS the explanatory chain stops in chance, for two big reasons. One it is historical, we don't know, nor do we have access to say how or when the various mutations that we see in genomes happened. Chance here is covering up unability to be precise. Besides this, even if a RM-NS event, say the nylon bug, is occurring in front of our eyes, we do not know the forces that are operating on the molecular level to the individuals that are responsible for a statistical event that we see, ie nylon metabolism. This is akin to quantum indeterminism, chance is posited because of the ultimate mystery at the heart of the phenomena. We are dealing with populations, but our explanatory level is that some individual, somehow, underwent a very specific mutation, the result when it rises to the level of our observation is again a population, now using nylon as an energy source due to this one particular mutation. Putting the explanation up to chance ends the discussion in mystery, how would positing God's hand in the mutation via completely secondary (common providence) effects be a science stopper, if science is already stopped up in mystery?
Likewise the third complaint can be dismissed in that we all lack public knowledge, when why we ascribed it to chance? I don't claim access to the reasons God did it, nor do i mount specifics as to how, i only align God as underneath the chaos, the chance that we posit as at the heart of RM-NS. A well bred secular person ought to immediately jump on this with Occam's razor and state that there is no need to posit God's hand here. Simplicity would as Laplace so elegantly stated "God, i have no need of that hypothesis." (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22i+have+no+need+of+that+hypothesis%22&btnG=Google+Search). This is the sufficiency case presented at the most basic level. I have no need. My response is "how do you prove no-need, sufficiency, completeness, "i am done explaining, here i stand, i need dig no deeper".
It is here that the question of what does it take to persuade pops up. It is here that we are addressing a whole person, not just a scientist, not a small part of a person who strives for objectivity, for scientific principles. To be persuaded is a whole-person job. We believe arguments because they fit. We are satisfied with stopping at randomness underneath RM-NS because we believe that there is nothing else but randomness and chance, all the rest of the way down.
(http://www.blossomingrose.org/editorials/turtlesalltheway.htm) But if, in fact, the universe is as traditional Christianity teaches, fundamentally deterministic, then it is not by chance that that nylon bug mutated, God did it, using common providence.
If common providence has been used to justify the hand of God in human history, why can't i consistently apply the same high level explanation to low level science where it is proposed that chance be operative? Chance is shorthand for we dont know, for me, it is short for i may not know, but God does. Now i don't have to introduce this into a scientific practice, i can stop with others for methodological reasons and allow the last statement to be, we don't know, we propose from the results seen that this chance event happened and leave it at that. But knowing that if someone wishes to build a metaphysics on chance that this game, metaphysics, is a valid place for God's hand and poof, chance is not ultimate, the lack of knowledge on the part of human beings is not ultimate, God's wisdom is.
We essentially end up at the beginning of apologetics, why the statement of "God i have no need of that explanation" is false.
The Cosmogony 201 area is reserved for creationists only. From this post and another you've written I'm convinced that you are a theistic evolutionist. While guided theistic evolution or progressive creationism (if that is made explicit) is allowed, your post does not seem to adovcating such a thing. Therefore, if you'd like to post the above in another section of the "Science Building" feel free to do so. In the meantime this thread is closed. Feel free to provide futher clarification.
Please review this particular forum's rules at...
http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6071 where a clarification was given