If so I’m happy to be corrected, but I asked him to quote what I had written, to justify what seems to me the very odd claim that I had “explicitly” rejected some certain notion of being held accountable…
I had understood his quote of his own words to be said justification that my position logically entailed not being accountable to the logical consequences and dilemma presented. If I misunderstood I register my regret and apology.
Nonetheless, I know quite certain that I did not ”explicitly” claim anything of the sort (I can barely understand what is being claimed that I “explicitly” rejected), and thus I fear I still find it utterly impossible to communicate with one who not only fails to understand my position, and then not only responds to a straw man caricature of my position, but further (falsely) puts words in my own mouth and claims that I was the one who explicitly stated the position he is falsely caricaturing. Discussion over such a chasm becomes impossible.
Not to mention, this entire post is discussing a formal article published by Biologos, the author thereof making multiple claims of what a human designer would or would not have done, with unambiguous implications as to how God would or would not have so designed.
I.e., a human designer would have used a birds wing rather than adapt a mammal’s forelimb… a human designer both would and would not have used different codons for the same proteins, a human designer would not have introduced vitC deficiency in different ways, etc., etc.
Now, I have not found our fellow participant to have registered any qualms when a Biologos author makes such claims… but when I registered my disagreement with the original author regarding one point he raised (I.e., I can indeed see reasons why the human designer that the original author postulated may well have designed a flying mammal in a different way), I have been accused of reading God’s mind, heaping ridicule on all alternate perspectives, etc.
I’m afraid I just don’t see any constructive way forward with fruitful dialogue when my words are so routinely misinterpreted and misconstrued.
Firstly adaptation, which has been claimed by evolutionary biologists to be evolution, is not evolution. The way the genome is set up changes can come about to counter some external environmental condition and when that condition changes then the organism can change back to what it was previously. We see this, in a striking example, in the peppered moths in the industrial revolution (the period 1760 to 1830 ) in Britain. When the trees were covered in soot, the moths turned a darker color and when the environment was cleaned up, the moths changed back to their original color. You reckon in 70 years, random mutation remember… chance, the moths turned dark and let’s also add here that while black peppered moths were rare BEFORE the industrial revolution, they did exist. Both white and black peppered moths existed and they argument is made that the black ones were selected for during the revolution as you can see being argued here: A Lesson in Natural Selection: Evolution of the Peppered Moth (monq.com)
This is not genetic changes that give rise to a new form, which is what evolutionary theory proclaims. It is an attempt to explain adaptation, for which God has made provision for in living organisms.
Why retained? Why not that the alleles were always there, put there by God when he made the template, i.e., the genome, which gives organisms the ability to change or adapt as is needed when there are environmental changes.
The argument that is made that birds evolved from dinosaurs but the reality is that no dinosaur DNA has been found. What was found that they thought was DNA fragments were bacteria living in the fossils. Possible Dinosaur DNA Has Been Found - Scientific American
And given that we share huge amounts of protein coding genes with other organisms, both plant and animal, it is not surprising if there were similarities between dinosaurs and birds. It doesn’t provide evidence for any evolution.
We don’t need vaccines to change quickly. That doesn’t mean we can’t take advantage of vaccines. But we have an immune system that is truly awesome, which can make the rapid changes as needed. This in part is evidence that God and God’s intelligence is part and parcel of life and life processes.
I doubt that any new alleles are generated by any random processes. The template that God made has provision for making what ever alleles are needed but it appears most are there anyway. In genetics we consider that gene duplication, mutation, or other processes can produce new genes and alleles and increase genetic variation. My question here is how does the mutations or changes occur? Are they random changes or are they brought about by some process that we yet don’t know about?
If we look at the big picture we find too much complexity and enormous sophistication, which cannot have come about by any random processes and natural selection. And we humans share an enormous amount with other creatures that to me, is evidence of a divine template and divine involvement at every step.
I really do not understand why you need to look beyond the Big Bang to see “God’s intelligent and purposeful agency?” Who but could produce a “singularity” out of nothing?
I have already addressed everything you wrote in the above paragraph in my two most recent posts. Since what I wrote did not seem to register with you, maybe you can re-read them?
THE KEY POINT
I have clarified that you have a logical choice:
EITHER
(1) You assert that we humans have the ability to identify a priori God’s design choices – with the logical consequence that you are able to assert that God’s design can be discerned by scientific methods;
OR
(2) You assert that we humans do NOT have the ability to identify a priori God’s design choices – with the logical consequence that it is impossible for any human to discern God’s design by scientific methods.
I once again state that I am not trying to make your choice for you about which option you choose.
I repeat, for the sake of utmost clarity, that the caution I expressed about claiming to know God’s mind may or may not pertain to you.
If you choose to confirm that we humans do not have the ability to identify a priori, via analogies to human design choices, what God’s biological design choices would have been in the past, I’m totally cool with that.
For the sake of your audience here on the forum, I would entreat you to speak clearly about which fork in the road you are committing to. If you are unwilling to make a commitment about the logical choice in front of you, indeed it will be hard for you to make progress with anyone on this forum.
And if you want to think about this choice some more, that’s totally cool, as well.
That is the essence of ID, maybe, that we have that ability, because we certainly have not been given any key to God’s ‘encryption code’ (and that code can be modified by mutations).
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
93
I’m being thick I’m sure, but I cannot see any observations that can be explained equally well by Design as by Descent. I don’t see any that have been cited. What have I missed? It’s all my cognitive bias I’m sure.
Furthermore, from the original article:
‘At BioLogos, we’re happy to acknowledge God as the designer, creator, and sustainer of all that exists. We do not believe God to be an absentee or deistic God who merely created matter and let it go on its own.’
From eternity, what has God designed at all? When? As there is, can be, no beginning of creation. That’s an open question. Design, creation and sustaining look like a sequential process, I can’t see how they can be simultaneous, concurrent. Take the process of design away and they can be. God does not have to think things through. In fact by definition He does not. He doesn’t think like us at all. Design is an anthropomorphism. Something we have to do, not God. He knows. He’s always known. The same knowledge. The same prevenient perichoretic principles that need to be instantiated for there to be nature, which He has always instantiated. And God cannot be absent or have let creation go on its own. Creation is an aspect of God. Therefore always has been. Autonomous nature that transcends. Autonomous physical nature that works without intervention above ‘ground’, that feels alone and transcendent supernatural creation, Heaven, in which He is fully immanent, omnipresent ground.
He is thinking it all. As He always has. He’s that big and that clever.
If you took a slice of God at any time in eternity, you would see creation occurring and being sustained at two layers, the physical and the transcendent. Where would you see design?
You are correct on this, and for the reasons you mention. But while there is considerable mainstream discussion over the extent of junk DNA, no reputable scientist has ever simply equated Junk DNA with non-coding. Regulatory DNA such as promoters and end stops have never been dismissed as non-essential. And much more has been uncovered the past couple of decades.
This accessible Khan Academy article discusses the role of homeotic genes in development.
Here are a couple of papers from Sean B. Carroll concerning the morphological aspect of genetic expression and evolution:
“As there is, can be, no beginning of creation.” That is not a question.
Human visualization of some things can occur almost instantaneously, so it is not the conceptual disparity that you are making it, “…by any human understanding.”
I believe @jstump was doing what they call “giving the benefit of the doubt” and trying to be gracious here.
He states:
For example, humans and chimpanzees have a lot of DNA in common. But that’s not surprising, according to Design, since they have such similar body types and do lots of the same things. So their similar DNA could count as corroborating evidence for Design just well as it does for Descent.
I personally don’t think we have even begin to scratch the surface… Even the concept of regulatory networks and somehow turning on and off certain expression of genes for constructing certain proteins at certain times and conditions don’t even to me begin to explain how the layers of complexity are made… the intricate instructions and design of the chambers of my heart, the alveoli of my lungs, the neurons, red blood cells, and every other cell… every other part of me, every other single complex cell, organ, and system, was somehow encoded in that zygote somehow and somewhere in ways that seem (from my very limited knowledge) beyond anything we’ve begun to understand in that DNA.
Even as that one article pointed out, the regulatory homeotic genes may malfunction (or be messed with) and cause fully developed structures to grow at the wrong time and the wrong place… i recall back in my undergrad the experiments with the fruit flies with legs growing out of their eyes or some such oddities…
But even these gene malfunctions cause legs to grow out of eyes, not simply piles of proteins. The design of the very legs… how all the proteins in the coded regions come together to construct a leg must also be encoded in there somewhere, in order for that regulatory malfunction to cause a leg to grow, and not just a pile of random proteins.
very fascinating indeed.
one quick observation, though… the video stated that “if the DNA just made all these proteins randomly, it would be a complete jumble and mess of cells and proteins…”
Unless I am seriously missing something, I find it baffling how someone teaching science could make such an erroneous generalization… if the DNA just made all these proteins randomly, it would just be a jumble of proteins… you’d still be a far, far cry from making functioning cells… am I missing something?
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
100
I don’t do gracious as we know : ) The pareidolia of design in and of nature is a natural tendency, one of our cognitive biases, seeing teleology in creation, meaning in order, as not only Hesiod did pre-Socratically 750 BCE but King David did 1000 BCE. It has been the dominant Western view until the Enlightenment and Hume, Kant, Voltaire and of course, still pre-Darwinian, Kierkegaard. And then Darwin nailed it with natural science. All of the cultures we’ve gone through are still very much present and most, including Western sub-cultures, are design oriented. Including BioLogos. But none of their arguments is as parsimonious as descent. So none of them explain as equally well as descent. Projecting design on isolated observations of the similarities between humans and chimps and finding that their coding (a word ripe for bias) overlaps is fine as long as one ignores nearly three thousand years of natural philosophy and one hundred and sixty of natural science. But I understand the Bible belt battleground that you are in.
No, if I may, the essence of ID is that we are able to recognize that some things (space shuttles, computer code, fingernail clippers, the words of the ten commandments, certain electromagnetic signals from outer space, etc.) are better explained by purposeful intelligent agency than by blind and unguided natural processes… and all this by empiric or scientific methods. That far of course is entirely uncontroversial… except that they also claim to see such evidence of design in certain biological phenomena.
But who that intelligent agent is, in ID remains entirely undefined, not even specifying, nor ruling out, natural vs supernatural agency. ID itself, as a scientific endeavor, makes absolutely no claims about the nature or identity of the purported designer, as that would indeed be beyond the realm of science.
So, no, the essence of ID by definition cannot be any particular belief or presumption about God. there are proponents of ID that are agnostic, after all.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
102
Then quote the context correctly.
The leap of visualization in humans comes, like overnight success, after years of education and experience. Each slice of God is qualitatively the same from eternity.
