Fairly new Evolutionary Creationist; could use encouragement

[Caligo]

@Vinnie

The “Mona Lisa” only has meaning as “The Mona Lisa”
because an external, immaterial mind imposes it on this artifact. Without that you would have random lines, shapes and colors devoid of meaning.

Vinnie

Meaning is important. As for my analogy, the Mona Lisa is the result and it doesn’t require a painter. Just the wind doing its thing.

[Mervin_Bitikofer]

@St.Roymond

Except it is rare to find “Christian school” curricula that has a biblical world view. I haven’t encountered more than four versions, and every one of them rested on a MSWV. As with YECers we’ve had here, they use the word but haven’t actually examined what it means.

Indeed - this is where their unwillingness to seriously consider any criticism from outside their “approved sources” really comes back to bite them. They are blind to their own modern science enculturation and indulge in the conceit that their own worldview (“God’s” after all) is the only objective one, and their unique, inerrant access into that allows them to critically evaluate all other worldviews. It ends up leaving them blindest of all.

[knor (Kai)]

@Caligo

Evolution isn’t teleological. You seem to be saying that the Mona Lisa is our end goal. Over millions of years evolution could take is in any direction whatsoever.

Evolution isn’t fundamentally teleological, unless someone is guiding the direction from outside the system. The ‘someone’ could be the Creator but it could also be another intelligent organism, like humans in the selective breeding of domestic species.

The other side of the coin is that evolution is not either random, it does not go to ‘any direction whatsoever’.
Natural selection act as a filter that increases the proportion of phenotypes/genotypes that leave more reproducing offspring (grandchildren) than an average individual in the population. The quality of the filter (natural selection) reflects the quality of the environment. If we know the quality of the environment and the starting point, we can predict the probable direction of the evolution.

The starting point is influential because it limits the scope of potential evolutionary changes. A fish does not suddenly produce offspring that are birds or mammals. Usually, there needs to be many stepwise changes (mutations) before the offspring look very different than their ancestors. Mutations in the key regulatory genes can cause larger changes in the morphology but such mutations seldom increase the production of grandchildren relative to the other individuals (fitness) much.

Another caveat in predicting the evolutionary path is that environments change. When the environment changes, also the filter of natural selection changes, changing the direction of evolution. Such fundamental differences as ocean vs. dry land are likely to stay the same through millions of years but the finer details change.
Sometimes radical changes can happen rapidly. For example, the space rock that hit Earth some 66 million years ago ended the evolutionary path that could have lead to increasingly intelligent non-avian dinosaurs and directed the future towards the evolutionary road that lead to the rise of increasingly intelligent mammals.

[Caligo]

An unguided, natural process like evolution is marked by mutations. that interact with the environment to produce different species. The 65 million year ago asteroid was an evemt that wiped out the dinosaurs but not small critters, our ancestors.

I don’t think these events had a painter. To evolutionary creationists this is problematic.

[Roy (Roy (Listener twice correct))]

[pedant mode]

@Caligo

The 65 million year ago asteroid was an evemt that wiped out the dinosaurs but not small critters, our ancestors.

The large, featherless dinosaurs.

The small, feathered dinosaurs didn’t go extinct.
[/pedant mode]

[knor (Kai)]

@Roy

The large, featherless dinosaurs.

The small, feathered dinosaurs didn’t go extinct.
[/pedant mode]

Well, if you want to use the pedant mode, what you wrote seems to include a misleading expression. Citing the Wikipedia:
”In recent decades, evidence has accumulated that many non-avian dinosaur species also possessed feathers or feather-like structures in some shape or form. The extent to which feathers or feather-like structures were present in dinosaurs as a whole is a subject of ongoing debate and research.”

[Roy (Roy (Listener twice correct))]

I was careful not to mention large, feathered dinosaurs (or small featherless ones) for exactly that reason.

[DesperateEC]

Its really not. We dont contend that God meticulously guides everything.

[Caligo]

@Roy

The large, featherless dinosaurs.

The small, feathered dinosaurs didn’t go extinct.
[/pedant mode]

Yes theropods - feathered, 3-toed, hollow bones - didn’t go extinct, but if you asked a paleontologist to show you a dinosaur they’d show you a diplodocus or a stegosaurus.

[Caligo]

That was a thing 400 or so years ago. Angels pushing the heavenly bodies, turtles holding the earth up, Helios on his chariot across the sky. That’s an outmoded tradition, dropped for good reasons.

[DesperateEC]

Id agree. Its not a biblical concept at all.

[Caligo]

The bible was meant for x and x =/= us.

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

@Caligo

You seem to be saying that the Mona Lisa is our end goal.

I never said that.

I basically said that more complex systems can only occur later on once the basics have been established. Evolution is a developing direction not a goal.

Richard

[St.Roymond]

@Caligo

To evolutionary creationists this is problematic.

Why? According to whom?

[DesperateEC]

Im guessing its probably because they think the Bible teaches some mind of meticulous providence, like a puppet master.

[St.Roymond]

@DesperateEC

Its really not. We dont contend that God meticulously guides everything.

I wish I had a copy of the notes an acquaintance at university made when he concluded that it only took seven significant mutations to get from single cell to humanoids – a way of arguing that divine intervention can be so minimal as to be undetectable.

[Vinnie]

@Caligo

I don’t think these events had a painter. To evolutionary creationists this is problematic.

@knor

Evolution isn’t fundamentally teleological, unless someone is guiding the direction from outside the system. The ‘someone’ could be the Creator but it could also be another intelligent organism, like humans in the selective breeding of domestic species.

You appear to be talking about extrinsic teleology and I can agree to an extent since I am not an ID proponent. But what I often see missing from these discussions is the much more important intrinsic teleology. I clearly see goal-directness in biological systems and mutations being random simply means they did not occur with the purpose of helping the organism adapt to the environment. They certainly are not truly random since they follow physical laws. But some examples of goal-directedness:

• an acorn is inherently directed toward becoming an oak tree
• the heart is directed toward pumping blood
• the eye is directed toward seeing.

@knor

The other side of the coin is that evolution is not either random, it does not go to ‘any direction whatsoever’.
Natural selection act as a filter that increases the proportion of phenotypes/genotypes that leave more reproducing offspring (grandchildren) than an average individual in the population. The quality of the filter (natural selection) reflects the quality of the environment. If we know the quality of the environment and the starting point, we can predict the probable direction of the evolution.

Natural selection doesn’t work without intrinsic teleology.

• Organisms strive for self-preservation.
• Biological systems are directed toward repairing themselves.
  *the inherent drive to reproduce and pass on traits.

How does one even talk about evolution without inherent goal directness? Rocks certainly don’t try to survive. They erode.

When I posted my overly longwinded views on objective morality I wrote this about cause and effect:

David Hume is famous not only for the is/ought divide, but also for the problem of induction. Hume’s argument basically says that just because the sun may have risen the last ten-million days, there is nothing logically necessitating or even stating that it will do so tomorrow. We must assume a uniformity of nature that cannot be proven by logic or experience alone. Any attempt to justify induction becomes circular. For example, saying “it has always worked before” assumes it will continue to work, which is the very premise being questioned. Induction is then demoted to habit and the logical basis for assuming unobserved instances of something (e.g. gravity) resemble observed ones is lost.

This stems from Hume’s mechanistic view of nature. In an A-T framework, things have inherent natures (formal causes) that are directed toward specific ends (final causes). The end of an acorn is directed at becoming an oak tree and so too is a struck match directed toward the generation of fire. The basic idea is that A produces B because barring outside interference, it is in A’s nature to produce B. We don’t have to be skeptical that fire might not burn cotton tomorrow even though we only know it does so today. This is because in the A-T framework, things have real, objective ends.

That A generates or is followed by B in a consistent and regular fashion should tell us this is not a chance occurrence. Feser wrote:

“Unless we suppose that an efficient cause A inherently “points” beyond itself to its typical effect (or range of effects) B as toward an end or goal, we have no way of making sense of why it is that A reliably does in fact generate B rather than C, D, or no effect at all.”

Physical things do consistently produce specific effects which means they have inherent directness. It is not simply a happy accident that pushing a ball does not turn it into a frog some of the time. As Aquinas wrote:

“We see that there are things that have no knowledge, like physical bodies, but which act for the sake of an end. This is clear in that they always, or for the most part, act in the same way, and achieve what is best. This shows that they reach their end not by chance but in virtue of some tendency. (Summa Theologiae, Part I, Question 2, Article 3).”

Unless we suppose that an efficient cause A inherently “points” beyond itself to its typical effect (or range of effects) B as toward an end or goal, we have no way of making sense of why it is that A reliably does in fact generate B rather than C, D, or no effect at all.

Evolution doesn’t lack teleology. Teleology is simply baked into the fabric of all reality. All agents (including fundamental particles) act for an end. I think the problem is most people only ever think about extrinsic teleology and that is why evolution seems at odds with theism and why so many Christians feel compelled to resort to ID arguments.

But the ID theology resembles occasional deism that treats everything as dead, mindless, meaningless matter that God has to tinker with. That is embracing materialism as opposed to a more grounded view of the world based on intrinsic teleology where God sustains and gives biological organisms their intrinsic and underlying drive to adapt, survive, and reproduce. Without such teleology, we can’t even get around the problem of induction.

Vinnie