Why is that a good analogy?
I don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg, the bacterial flagellum or the injectisome, but exaptation is cool. (The chicken or the egg is a bad analogy with respect to exaptation. 
)
Maybe your analogy is actually right on. It still doesn’t mean design can be proven scientifically.
I have no issue with Hid leading through unseen “providence.” But there are various biological functions, that, even however assisted by natural selection, genetic drift, etc. seem to be the equivalent of such multiple royal flushes. At some point of complexity and specificity, “providence”’working through natural course of nature simply is not a good explanation, any more than you would think it a good explanation for my poker hands. At some point you would recognize detectable intelligent intervention.
As my reply just above should indicate, we agree. I believe evolution was/is being ‘guided’, just not that we can prove it scientifically. Yet again, I will appeal to Maggie’s account and groupings of events. The resolute unbeliever has no choice but to deny God’s providence and write off all such occurrences as just highly improbable.
[Oops, moderators may not like that because I am linking to my own comment. Please forbear, however, because actually the intent is to link to Maggie’s and Terrell Clemmons’ posts, and my post is effectively just a shortcut to both.]
Pursuant to that, of course, the unbeliever will deny any teleology or design.
Or profess ignorance about whether there is any teleology.
Right. But believers believe (at least some of us do) that we have trustworthy testimony as to that teleology. We don’t write off Maggie’s sequence as just, “Huh. That sure was bizarre” and infer nothing else from it. I’m thinking that those who react that way are not really unbiased observers, that they really have already decided and that they are, as I have already characterized it, resolute unbelievers.
Of course, that would be nothing new.
Shavand, Thank you for your response.
The word you want instead of ecology is evolution. As far as I can see no one is saying the evolution is not a natural phenomenon. However, we do see that in the Bible, esp. in Gen 2 YHWH directly created Adam and Eve so there is the feeling among Christian that God made humans a special creation.
Evolutionary Creation does say the God used evolution to create humans and all of the flora and fauna in the world. Some people religious and not who are used to a two tier view of Reality see the natural and supernatural as completely separate, which precludes God from having any role in evolution.
The problem with this is that science has demonstrated that God’s Creation process is not a short term 6 day process. I don’t mean this in a negative way, but as a fact. Therefore God must be involved in this process in the long term. The question is how?
We see that God created matter, energy, ti, and space through the Big Bang, a singularity and expanding universe based on natural laws. God also created life and evolution to cover and populate the earth with flora and fauna. We still cannot say how God created life, but we see that god used “natural” means to shaped life dorms including humans, and WHO can say that God cannot or should not use natural means to do God’s Will?
What you have described is Darwin’s understanding of Natural Selection generally called Survival of the Fittest. It has the serious flaw in that it cannot be scientifically tested. Most people would say that there is such thing as an evolutionary advantage, but since that is not a part of Survival of the Fittest it cannot be verified.
When we look at the extinction of the dinosaurs we see that it happened because of climate change, which is not explained by Survival of the Fittest. Thus the Darwinian understanding of Natural Selection fails a crucial test. We need a better understanding of Natural Selection and thus evolution. .
And again in John 12 …
27 “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name!”
Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.
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Some didn’t have ears to hear.
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No I meant ecology. The phenomenon that encompasses a byproduct of evolution including things such as has a specific plant or insect plays a role within a habitat.
As entire ecosystems evolve together ecology is developed. Ecology is a byproduct of multiple organisms development through natural selection.
Such as what’s the ecological value of a monarch? It’s the fact that it can keep milkweeds in check by disgusting them, that it’s caterpillars are food for birds, and that it’s a pollinator.
How did the milkweeds become the host plant for monarchs. It became that way because at some point it’s species developed the ability to consume cardenolides. It also helps protect it from being eaten by most species of birds. All of these things, these ecological laws, developed when a species evolved the ability to do it. But it did not will it into purpose, it just happened to naturally develop and one of them ate milkweeds and was able to continue doing so and ect… evolution is the process of which species gradually change. Even so far as a individual species overtime having subspecies until it changes to the point it becomes its own genus, then sometimes even its own family.
Ecology develops within that. I can’t see it happening the other way around.
Also I understand that since you undoubtedly know more about ecology that you may very well understand something I’m missing. I’ve looked for your book a few times and could not find it. In the future if I can’t locate it I’ll PM you and eventually read it and see if it takes the scales off of my eyes. But I also feel I hear my understanding of the data often by people who are also experts in ecology.
I generally don’t use the term survival of the fittest though. I feel it does not do justice personally to the beauty of evolution.
No one4 is saying that caterpillars, or milkweed, or butterflies can will anything into purpose, but then the complicated process of symbiosis does not take place by chance either It is not caterpillars which have purpose, but God who created the caterpillars through evolution and ecology Who has purpose.
To be “natural” does not mean “magic” with no cause, no purpose, no explanation. ecological change maintains the harmony and balance of nature. This is in contract to Darwinian natural selection w3hich is based on the struggle or war of nature.
God created Nature. God gives Nature its meaning and purpose. God designed Nature so it can fulfill than meaning and purpose. God is not the opposite of Nature. God is the Source of Nature. God created ecological processes like symbiosis to guide e3volution so humans are created in God’s Image and this world might be a home for humanity.
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The designer becomes a part of nature by interacting with it.
"He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead. '"Luke 16:31
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink, but you are not responding to Noah’s question by arguing over teleology…
@Mervin_Bitikofer, @glipsnort, @SkovandOfMitaze, @Daniel_Fisher, @Dale, @Jay313
The question is, Whether evolution is random or not? The scientific evidence indicates that it is not random, but is guided by natural selection, so the teleology question is moot. Coyne is wrong, so according to his thinking evolution is compatible with Christianity, which we know to be true, so thank you, Jerry. .
You conflate the causation of mutations with the selection of mutations, but I think we agree otherwise.
Evolution is random, in that we are unable to predict much of the process and trajectory of evolution precisely; the best we can do is describe evolution by probability distributions. That tells us nothing about whether it is truly non-deterministic (lots of classical physics and chemistry is random in this sense even though they’re deterministic) or whether it has purpose.
Mutations are random in the same sense, but also in the sense that there is no mechanism (with some exceptions) for an organism to pick mutations that will be beneficial. Instead, both beneficial and deleterious mutations occur. I don’t think this is a particularly good use of the word ‘random’, but it’s commonly used.
Natural selection is a bias in the random process of evolution toward those variants surviving that confer greater ability to survive and reproduce.
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Of course, since I know who is in charge, I have to say that evolution is providential and providentially directed, lowercase ‘id’.
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