Well, I pursue peace but I also am inclined to war. Sorry about that. I did not mean it offensively. As always, I rely on the redeeming work of Jesus even in my flawed effort to pursue peace.
True, but Third Way is not controversial in science because they reject design. In this they are not at all critiquing Darwinism in the same way as ID. Far from it. They are more like Eugenie Scott than ID.
It is certainly alive and well in the public and New Atheism and ID. Agreeing with you also, it is alive and well as a motivating high-level description of evolution in the primary literature. It is also alive and well in education.
However, as far as the the best evolutionary though is concerned, the cartoon version of evolution in neo-Darwinism has been dead for a long long time.
Of course I am not asserting my authority. Rather I am pointing to well agreed upon historical and scientific information. That asserts:
Evolution is God-neutral, not God exclusionary.
There is much more to evolution than positive selection. In fact, netural theory is quantitatively more important.
The only historically consistent definition of evolution is “common descent,” and this definition is fundamentally agnostic regarding mechanism.
Universal common descent is also not germain to evolution, as many scientists believe there multiple origins of life.
Evolution does not explain the origin of life, which is a separate question altogether.
Within science, none of this is controversial. Frankly, it is obvious, and you probably even agree with me on most of these points (maybe all of them?). Moreover, many of these points even ID people agree with me on (e.g. Behe would endorse #3 and #5 wholeheartedly).
I certainly have the credibility to assert this definition as the correct definition. No one by ID and YEC people seem to be arguing with me about this.
@TedDavis, please back me up yet again about the history here before I’m accused of being ignorant?
Oh! I guess the “and View” part fooled me. I’m very familiar with the poorly named EvolutionNews, although for the sake of my high blood pressure problems, I only occasionally read it. I rank it nearly as highly as the AIG and ICR websites in terms of damage to the Kingdom and the Great Commission. Especially frustrating are the ENV claims that “evolutionists” are allegedly “afraid” and/or “embarrassed by” various nuggets proudly trumpeted by ENV.
I’m fine with ID as a philosophy topic, but the pseudo-scientific IDism of the Discovery Institute has done tremendous damage to the credibility of evangelicals in general. And just as many in the American South are still fighting the Civil War, the authors at ENV are still pretending that the Dover Trial wasn’t an embarrassing debunking of their nonsense and may even have been their grandest battle. (You’d never get the impression from ENV that Behe got destroyed on the witness stand and that their ignoble band of ID scholars couldn’t escape town fast enough before their scheduled testimonies. Strategic retreat, I guess?)
If you notice, I do not usually engage the details of their work in public, for exactly the reasons you raise.
I would consider public debate if and only if I could see value in it for the public. At the moment, I’ve seen no good reason. Honestly, I do not see the value of litigating non-intuitive science in public. This just gives license to rhetorically strong arguments that are mathematically false. Debates are about rhetorically strong arguments first, not scientific correctness. So I am not yet convinced this is the right venue. Perhaps you can change my mind @Eddie.
I will also add that I just participated in a lengthy blog debate with DI (Ann Gauger and more). Privately, in fact, several ID leaders agreed with me. Privately, several have been debating in private about it.
As you know, I do engage and debate with ID folk in private. I do this quite frequently. As private conversations though, I cannot detail them here. That would be quite rude. Let’s not pretend that I am afraid of engaging them on the science. I do it all the time.
My goodness! Their critiques of your statements about evolution—such as with the chimp-human genomic similarities—border on the comical and pathological lying. Even with my past experiences with the Discovery Institute, I was stunned.
Here’s one of my favorites:
First, the high chimp-human genomic similarity was not predicted by common ancestry. No such prediction was made and no such prediction is required by common ancestry. Common ancestry would be just fine with very different levels of similarity from 98-99 percent. In fact, this high similarity makes no sense under evolution, for several of the reasons given above. Swamidass’s claim that this evidence is a stunning confirmation of common ancestry is utterly at odds with the science. It is in stark contrast to the scientific facts."
I found lots of Arguments from Personal Incredulity and an apparent assumption that simply restating their denials with repetitive sentences would somehow add to the weight of their argument.
I only skimmed but in that entire diatribe I noticed no mention of phylogenetic trees, except for one claim that those genome-based phylogenetic trees totally contradicted the phylogenetic trees published prior to genomic maps were available for comparison. [Even as a layperson with no professional background in genomics, I know that to be a lie.]
Now you know why I have to watch my blood pressure when dealing with this brand of ID advocates.
The most remarkable part of the dialogue was when Vincent and I (and Glen Williamson) demonstrated objectively that VTG1 absolutely aligns to the syntenic region of chimps/humans with very very high statistical significance (e values of about 10^-70). Ann agrees with us now, I think, but if you only read ENV it would be very hard to pick this up.
Ann, by the way, is a very nice person. I do not think she is intentionally deceptive. For some reason, it is hard for many in the ID movement to separate the design argument from their suspicion of common descent. And, as it is for everyone, it is hard to admit in public when they are wrong (same here for me).
The reason I shy away from public debate, however, is that their argument is actually rhetorically quite strong. I’m much more concerned with the science than the rhetoric, which is why I usually avoid debate.
…I thought specifically of the published prediction concerning about chromosome fusion accounting for the fewer number of chromosomes in the human genome versus chimpanzee genome. Wasn’t that published around seven years prior to the mapping of the genomes and discovery of the fused chromosome #2? They SURELY have to know that. Right?
And to leave the article as is on their website and to fail to correct the misstatement (even if it was inadvertent), how is that not a lie in result if not by original intent?
I don’t understand how anyone can say with a straight face that “no such prediction is required by common ancestry.” Moreover, I’m bothered by the obsession with exact percentage when the greater issue is the phylogenetic tree relationships and the fact that they confirm the relative genetic distances one would expect with common dissent.
In this matter, I’m reminded of my own experience coming out of the Young Earth Creationist world. I thought it impossible that the Christian men I respected could be misrepresenting or even lying about the basic facts in evidence. I see that same presupposition stated in a lot of YEC defenses of their positions. I can empathize: Who would think it possible that Christian leaders could take an ends-justifies-the-means approach to honesty and accuracy? I was willing to believe that the “evil atheist scientists” were lying about the facts but I thought it impossible that God would even allow my Christian heroes of creation science to hold to wrong beliefs. (Yes. I was very naive.)
In a public setting, do you know how Discovery Institute people would justify the obviously erroneous claims made in the example I cited? (Of course, I can give leeway for “innocent human error” versus deliberate dishonesty. But errors of any sort require correction after the fact—or else they become deliberate dishonesty.)
If there are any defenders or fans of the Discovery Institute reading this thread, I would greatly appreciate an explanation or defense concerning the example from EvolutionNews I quoted above. I don’t at all enjoy seeing such misrepresentations of the science and I so want to attribute such errors to carelessness or bureaucratic disorganization. But is it not easy to see why critics of the Discovery Institute like to call them “The Dishonesty Institute”?
And that is why I would be greatly relieved to see a reasonable explanation if not actual defense of the error.
West argues that ID is being more open-minded and committed to open dialogue by including dissenting voices like Hunter and Gauger. They officially distance themselves from any specific statements by Hunter and Gauger, so as to keep their hands clean of their mistakes. Still, they embrace them as members of the community, to demonstrate how close minded us mainstream scientists are. Once again, say what you will, this is very strong rhetorically. I admire them for their political savvy here.
I think, honestly, that my decision to argue exclusively for common descent (and avoiding the term evolution and the argument against ID) was very difficult for them. It brought them into public conflict with VJ Torley at Uncommon Descent. Because I refused to argue against design (which I agree with any ways), common descent became a very difficult wedge issue for them to manage. Or so it seems to me.
The way I summarize my position remains inconvenient for them:
“I believe God created us; He designed us all. However, whether evolution is true or false, He created us to look like we share a common ancestor with apes. And, unfortunately, none of the scientific arguments for design are convincing using the rules of mainstream science.”
The Urim and Thummim certainly appear to have that function.
And even though scientists don’t know which radioisotope atom is going to decay next, for a radioisotope sample, the half-life can be expected to be very predictable. So whenever people complain about “randomness”, I point out that randomness is often extremely predictable.
Of course, we could go into issues of stochastic phenomena and distinguishing what is truly random from that which is simple unknown by the observer.
Yes. Good observations. It is amazing how much fear surrounds the issue. It is as if some people think that any element of randomness in something makes it evil and therefore not something that God would create.
This matter termed “random” continues to cause argument/discussion. We need to accept that “random” is constantly used when discussing evolution. The “three-pronged”, approach cannot be valid in such discussions - it is easy and obvious to see that “random” as used in discussions on evolution is related to physical observations in bio-systems. Thus it is the meaning (undirected, unpredictable) as found in such discussions.
If anyone wants to argue for God, I suggest he/she tell us of their personal revelation from God who has given another meaning to that purpose - we know that the Apostles used a throw of the dice because they had gone through every step in making a decision, and found themselves unable to decide between two candidate - then they prayed that God would show them who should be an Apostle. This an appeal to God and an act of faith, not a definition of “not random to God”.
If someone feels they should ask God what is and is not random, they are welcomed to do this and we may listen to their “message from God” - until then, random is a term used to discuss ToE and people who use this term are very clear what they mean.