I can agree that Darwinism (Darwin’s Theory) is a theory of random mutation or change (Variation) and non-random cumulative Natural Selection.
What I agree to is that Darwin understood evolution as a process that has both random and non-random aspects. Now I have argued that non-random Natural Selection as Ecology trumps random genetic Variation, but others have said that Variation drives evolution. I have never said that evolution does not contain an important random element.
Dawkins in your quote clearly refers to the Darwinian imperative which says that “natural selection is … scrutinizing … every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad and preserving and adding up that which is good, … at the improvement of organic being.”
I do not see a reference by Dawkins to natural selection in these terms. Instead I see selection based on DNA. “DNA just is. And we dance to its music.” Since DNA is not rational, it would seem that it is random.
Dawkins is clear. He says that life is without purpose or meaning. If natural selection were not random, then it would have meaning and purpose, but since it does not (according to him,) it must be random.
Darwin’s theory included both random and non-random elements. Maybe Dawkins includes in theory some sort of theoretical non-random element, but I don’t see it, because everything he says is about random change.
DNA is responsible for variation, in case you forgot. Have you forgotten that phenotype is derived from genotype?
Dawkins had a Netflix series called “Sex, Death, and the Meaning of LIfe”. I don’t know if it’s still on Netflix, but I wouldn’t be surprised if clips exist on YouTube or if the series is somewhere online. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Dawkins says that life has meaning and purpose. What do you think?
Towards the episode’s end, Dawkins interviews actor Ricky Gervais who is a known atheist of his ideals of what the meaning of life is. Gervais states that for life to be meaningful one must love what they do, and center their life around meaningful relationships.
I think that Dawkins says that life has no intrinsic meaning or value. We have to make for ourselves whatever meaning it has. I agree that love and relationships help give meaning to life, but that meaning is real, not a figment of our imaginations. Also loving what you do and having strong relationships are not in themselves enough to having a meaningful of life, if loving what you do includes doing things that are wrong.
The question is Does Life have spiritual meaning and social rules that help us to live ,just as science has natural laws which help us to life in the physical world? Dawkins answer seems to be no. Science is no help living in a world of people, as opposed to a world of things.
Of course DNA is responsible for variation and variation is random. So what per Dawkins is responsible for non-random natural selection?
Then Dawkins thinks life has meaning, whether you agree with his reasoning or not.
Imperfect replicators competing for limited resources. In those conditions, variations that allow an individual to outcompete others will become more common within the population.
He has made it abundantly clear that life does not have objective meaning. It means what we want it to mean. Nazism is just as valid as democracy from an objective point of view. People who are concerned about science and democracy cannot accept that definition of meaning.
One would think that this would be the approach of Dawkins based on the survival of the fittest. However I do not see where Dawkins uses this approach. If he did, he could well found, like E. O. Wilson, that cooperation and sociability are the keys to biological survival and thriving…
Looking through The Selfish Gene one more time it is clear to me that it is not really a book of science, but a treatise trying to justify his belief that life is not about helping others, but selfishness. He is entitled to that opinion, but he is not entitled to the claim that it is backed by science, when it is not.
Nazism isn’t just as valid from a subjective point of view. You seem to have missed that.
“In true natural selection, if a body has what it takes to survive, its genes automatically survive because they are inside it. So the genes that survive tend to be, automatically, those genes that confer on bodies the qualities that assist them to survive.”–Richard Dawkins
Just who defines “a subjective point of view” that says Nazism is not just as valid?
What is “true” natural selection as opposed to false natural selection.?
Again this passage is not about n s and how it selects genes, but about genes themselves and how they work.
A scientific definition of natural selection would indicate "what it takes for a body to survive,’ rather than basing it on non-falsifiable circular thinking, which does not say anything. .
I really do not know what Dawkins thinks. I only knows what Dawkins says. Dawkins allows Ricky Gervais to say to tell us his idea a meaningful life, which presumably agrees with his, the article say that is what Dawkins said. If that is what Dawkins thinks, that is what Dawkins should say instead of leaving room for deniability.
The main reason why it is clear that Dawkins thinks that life has no purpose or meaning is not what he might have said on the internet at onetime or another about the meaning of life, but because the basis of his thinking as expressed in the Selfish Gene is that genes/evolution/life is not friendly to life.
“Genes do not care” about us, or about anything including life and" we dance to their music."
Agree completely. I have avoided most websites discussing ID due to the vitriolic name-calling/insinuations. Still, I wanted to understand the distinctives of ID and evolutionary creation. This is exactly the kind of dialogue both BioLogos and the Discovery Institute together need to continue. Building scientific dialogue and explanations that involve different Christian hypotheses helps diffuse the mainstream message that any explanation that involves God or a creator or an intelligence is opposed to good science and is spurned by any and all “real” scientists. Would love to see this dialogue repeated as an annual event (with the transcript-BIG thanks) which would allow both groups to highlight new research and current issues brought up in mainstream media! Please!!
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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H. paleas! That’s 14 human species and sub species now!!
“What is the nature of evolution? Is it mechanistic, random, and unguided, as Dawkins says, or not?” The terms need to be carefully defined, and also the scope of the assessment (e.g, what type of guidance has been checked for?)
The basic mechanisms of evolution at a molecular level are well-understood. But there are myriad complexities in scaling that up to the organismal level. How much role do different factors and influences play? What emergent properties are there? Evolution is mechanistic in the sense that there are specific physical mechanisms that underlie all its changes. But it is not mechanistic in the sense that we can predict it with the same mathematical detail than we can predict what will happen if a ball of mass 100 g is launched with an initial speed of 10 m/s at an angle of pi/4 with a gravitational acceleration of 9.8 m/s^2 and no air friction. And none of either of those tells us whether anyone might be involved in guiding what is happening.
Is it random? There are aspects of evolution that are best described mathematically by a probabilistic function, or by functions that we cannot solve exactly, or that have no mathematical formula. There are also significantly non-random aspects. Which is more important? This is not a very objective question; you can assess “importance” in many ways.
Is it unguided? Evolution itself is a mere biological pattern; it does not guide. But that tells us nothing about whether God might use it to guide something happening; even humans can use evolution in the lab or in a computer to get to a desired goal.
Dawkins, like everyone else trying to claim that the scientific evidence of evolution supports a particular philosophical position or social agenda, is taking what he wants to be true philosophically and cherry-picking whatever aspects of evolution seem to possibly go along with it. [Of course, some philosophical positions and social agendas make specific scientific claims, and the science can be used to check that. But the science does not tell us what we ought to do, as Hume pointed out.]
I found the above to most interesting. I am uncertain why these must be correlated … I am uncertain why we even need an answer??? I am uncertain what Biologos itself holds - which I doubt is singular - but Biologos is not the issue. OEC and YEC do not themselves seem to correlate with random, unguided evolution per se.
There are some long-time participants here who drill into one specific issue that they see as the root of everything else - and they remain steadfastly dissatisfied with anything short of the entire forum world joining them to orbit around that one issue, and to address it in that one particular way.
You are correct, @GregLogan, that Biologos is far from singular - thanks for that observation. I think it is safe to say that some anti-theistic scientists do manage to push their philosophically materialist agenda far enough into the “Let’s make sure there’s no allowance for any Deity” territory, that of course most Christians (including Christians here at Biologos) are going to reject that. At the same time, we don’t think that this agenda has any warranted connection with valid evolutionary science. Nor does it preclude a variety of answers (from those with less hostile agendas) on just how much guidance from God there is, or what such guidance may or may not look like. Those are difficult (even intractable) questions, and the faithful may address them from many different angles without needing to feel locked out from certain approaches just because a militant materialist somewhere may have taken up residence from that angle. Guilt by association or guilt over who your philosophical neighbors may be is something to exercise care over - so your caution is well-warranted!
Thanks - I suspected as much - and makes perfect sense. Creedalism has to die - not only for its obvious defects but for it suffocating bondage.
The reality - with an infinite space and seemingly an infinite number of cosmological phenomenon - our ignorance is vastly greater than our knowledge - and great humility before man, God and space is the only place that I know we can safe and “assured”…
Of course we do not need to know how God works through nature. We can burn all our books, abandon the internet, forget our technology, and God would still be Sovereign Lord, YHWH, except that YHWH did not create humans out of the dirt of the earth for that. YHWH made us to be co-ruler with YHWH over God’s Creation.
There are three basic ways to look at the universe. One is Deism, that God and the universe are the same. Christians disagree. They say that God created the universe separate from Godself. Another is Atheism, which says that the universe just is, and has no Source. Both of these views are monistic, Reality is either divine or it is materialistic, neither of which is true.
The third is Theistic Christianity where God and the Creation are not the same and God created the universe for the benefit of humanity, which means in part that God shares governance over God’s Creation. Humans cannot share in the governance of God’s Creation unless we have knowledge about Creation and power over Creation
Gods does not force humans to do what is right and is good for them and the Creation, but we must accept the consequences of sin when we fail to do right and take advantage of God’s Goodness.
@Mervin_Bitikofer, I surely hope and pray that you are right about this. I do not think that there is one simple answer to the question of God’s guidance of evolution, but I do insist that there is an answer and Christians need to be involved in looking for it. If we don’t do it, who will? If I understood @GregLogan’s remarks, he does not think this is important to the faith and to the well being of the community.
“Apologetics” went too far, but when we bend over backwards to avoid controversy, we do too. After all it has been a longtime since the publishing of the Origin. Isn’t it about time that we resolve this serious issue that divides people of good will and move on to newer problems.
Any theology issue (and that’s what this is) that has already been a live debate for more than a dozen centuries is not something we should expect to be able to lay to rest suddenly in our short lifetimes now.
Christians are. We talk through such things with each other in our own respective ages, and come to terms with how it is we see God acting in our lives. That we haven’t done this in some scientific sense with an eye to compelling all toward one universally final conclusion is probably just not a great worry for most Christians. Thinkers can muse over it and bring clarity to how we parse out known things, but any sober reflection at all seems to point us to the intractability or impossibility of any such analysis. Whatever you’ve successfully captured in your understanding, even if it’s true, simply can’t be the entirety of God.
The first that I want to make is that the issue of evolution is Not a theological one. As far as I know Christians believe that that we live in one world and that world belongs to God. There is no argument that the Father created the universe using the Word/Logos/Savior.
It is the philosophers who make the distinction between mind and the body, the spiritual and the physical, faith and science, and the philosophers need to fix this. Some scientists try to deny the unity of the universe on philosophical grounds, not on scientific grounds.
The issue with evolution is not to compel others to accept one scientific solution. The issue is to heal the division, the wounds in the Body of Christ caused by this issue and the terrible theology which it has fostered. That is the professed reason for existence of BioLogos.
I am sure that you are aware of the “Great Priestly Prayer” of Jesus on the night that He was betrayed when He prayed for the unity of His disciples. Can there be any doubt in the importance of the unity of God’s people in God’s mind? This is nothing to slough off as an impossible dream.
Certainly evolution is not the only source of this division, but we need to work on the part of the solution that God has given us. I understand that God has given me this portion and I defy you to prove that God has not.
We need to do what God has given us to do. How can you say that what God has given me is not entirely from God when a) you don’t know me, and b] I don’t think you know the message that I have? That is at worst an argument against the power of the Holy Spirit…
