Thanks. It’s all rather confusing; I don’t know who or what to believe.
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Thanks, I appreciate that. The history of life on earth is a fascinating subject, so I guess that’s what keeps me coming back, and I can learn a lot a Biologos.
But now I’ve got an angry-sounding Steve Schaffner on another thread wanting a piece of me, so my time on this planet is probably at an end.
I accept that there must be a lot of solid evidence for evolution - as so many great scientific minds say so - but I seem to have a psychological barrier to accepting it as fact.
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Steve doesn’t bite. He usually doesn’t even bark much. He’s one of the a real deal scientists who chimes in on occasion, and gives really reliable answers to science questions.
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I appreciate your candidness, @Edgar. Human evolution has been one of my biggest hang-ups too, both for theological and scientific reasons (though the science part is harder to understand). I’m still not sure how/what to teach my children about it, but I try to emphasize “the image of God” more than anything else, because it seems that is one of the more important theological ideas we get about humans from the first chapters of Genesis.
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And yet the theory of evolution does make predictions which have been supported time and again. The theory of evolution predicts that fossils will fit into the same nested hierarchies that we have for living species, and that is exactly what we see.
If you are going to claim that these gaps are real then you also have to claim that we have found a fossil for every species that has existed. Finding new fossil species shows that you are wrong. As we continue to find new fossils it supports the claim that the gaps in our fossil records are due to gaps in our search, not real gaps in natural history.
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It’s a week later! It would be a lot of fun and take time to sit down together and learn from each other! Yet writing takes SO much longer! Still, this forum will have to do for now.
It looks like we need to have a philosophical discussion first. I may or may not need to spell this out in this much detail, but hope it’s helpful.
I don’t see Progressive Creation (PC) as a scientific “theory.” I see it as an inference to the best explanation based on what we have learned from science. As you know, science can only look at/for natural causes and effects, so divine intervention cannot be detected directly by the scientific method. However the search for intentionality goes on every day in Crime Scene Investigation (CSI), where the scientific clues may indicate intentionality or perhaps indicate something was an accident. And so intentionality can be inferred from the data, recognized indirectly. And since much of evolution is a historical study, it shares a lot in common in this regard with history, archaeology, and CSI.
In evolution, random mutation and natural selection (RM&NS) are the scientifically recognized natural processes. Microevolution is obvious, seen in geographic speciation and drift, and especially obvious in petri dishes where generation times are fast and populations are high.
The question is whether these processes are adequate to produce all the complexity we see in longer generation times and smaller populations, especially in massive changes such as the Cambrian explosion, or the supposed evolution (by these natural processes only) of a land mammal into a whale. In general the fossil record is kinda stair-step-like, and in some cases the steps are huge (the original topic of this thread). This issue is handled in both unguided evolution and in PC (and other views) not by science but by a narrative, stories that fit together the data and the world view of their holder.
I think “macro-evolution by micro-evolution only” is an inference to the best explanation based on naturalist assumptions and/or opinions. In this way it is a narrative just like PC. There are other narratives also, and without trying to offend, I think evolutionary creationism is one. We all have them. I think that unguided evolution is a narrative based on the unproven assumption that we know all the mechanisms of evolutionary change. It is not a scientific statement that “macro took place by micro only” because it cannot be tested.
The fact that unguided evolution is a naturalist narrative helps it align nicely with a scientific approach whether those overarching naturalist assumptions are proven or correct or not. I would love to have someone come up with a way to test whether macro-evolution was by micro-evolution alone! But ultimately the math of randomness is the problem for me – you can’t get RM to offer this much complexity to NS in the times available. It is a probability issue for me, and any way you look at it, the denominator is an unfathomably large number (and yes, lots of items go in the numerator also like 10^17 seconds and the volume of the oceans, but the denominator just utterly overwhelms those).
So PC is held by those of us who 1) are skeptical that RM can accidentally provide enough useful information to NS in the time frames given, 2) see the bigger steps in the fossil record as probable indications of real “steps” in the history of life (the topic of this thread), and 3) probably already have other reasons to hold that there is a deity who is willing to take action in our realm. (Sidebar: the big three places I see divine action outside the Biblical include: 1) the fine tuning of the universe for life, 2) the absurdity of a naturalist origins of life on early earth (my favorite), and 3) the nature of humans. I’m here discussing evolution because that’s the topic of the thread, though I think those other three, especially origins of life, show stronger evidences of divine intervention).
Honestly, if I thought God had kicked off life and made a process (we call it evolution) that developed it to it’s current complexity without his involvement, I’d be OK with that. But I just don’t think he stayed out of it. That’s where the evidence takes me.
Regarding evolutionary software, somehow we are missing each other on this one. I’m not saying software evolves, but that snapshots of the software over time show similar characteristics to the fossil record. Hence the fossil record matches either narrative.
As regards Levin’s critique of Behe, a review with that much invective is never fair. It would be possible for Levin to comment on Behe’s actual arguments rather than demolish straw men, but he chose the latter. Behe is neither a scoundrel nor an idiot. Let’s not work with this agenda driven diatribe, but perhaps try to find someone who has critiqued the work fairly.
I’m gonna stop here cuz this has taken far too long. Hope it’s at least helpful!
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That isn’t entirely true. Science can only look at objectively measurable phenomenon and can only use testable and falsifiable hypotheses. Notice that I don’t use natural or supernatural anywhere in there. It just so happens that most people define the supernatural as something which is not measurable or testable.
This is what we would expect to see with evolution and an incomplete set of fossils. We would also expect the fossils we do have to fit into a nested hierarchy if evolution is true, and this is exactly what we see. ID/creationism can’t seem to explain why we see this pattern of shared derived features and not some other pattern.
It is the best inference based on observed natural mechanisms and observations, not assumptions. We observe that random mutation and natural selection produce noisy phylogenies in living populations. This is the same pattern observed in the fossil record and when we compare genomes across many species. The observations match what we observe in living populations that are evolving through random mutations, selection, neutral drift, speciation, and other evolutionary mechanisms. Again, this is not an assumption. This is observation.
What we can do is see if the data matches the theory, and that is exactly what Dr. Stephen Schaffner (@glipsnort) did in this Biologos essay:
https://biologos.org/blogs/guest/testing-common-ancestry-its-all-about-the-mutations
I would hope that you start to read up on the science that directly addresses your skeptical outlook.
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Can you elaborate on this? I’m not familiar with “noisy phylogenies.”
From what I’ve read, and just to save him the time in responding, @Marty doesn’t deny common ancestry / descent. What he questions is whether random mutations are enough, or if perhaps instead some of those mutations in the process of diversification-through-common-descent-with-modification may have been guided or directed by God in a way that is perhaps not detectable through science but nonetheless real. I personally think this is the most defensible progressive creationist position, which is why I recommended it to @Edgar above.
If you have a targeted, even-handed, accessible critique of this position, I think we would all benefit from hearing it.
Noise is produced by incomplete lineage sorting and homoplasies, as two examples.
An example of phylogenies being produced in modern populations can be found in a paper that studied lab mouse strains. Different companies and universities have established mouse colonies that haven’t outbred in decades which makes them a good example of how random mutations and selection can produce phylogenies:
I think this gets back to the claim that the supernatural is excluded from science. It isn’t science that is excluding supernatural claims. Instead, those who believe in the supernatural define it in such a way that it can’t be studied through the scientific method. At the same time, ontological truths are not established by the scientific method since science is methodological in nature. However, it is rather hollow to complain that the supernatural is not included in science when the supernatural is defined in such a way that it can’t be included in science.
Then it comes down to how we judge evidence and claims. With almost every other facet of life, if there is a natural explanation for a phenomenon we don’t throw that explanation out in favor of an unevidenced and untestable supernatural explanation. When we find a fingerprint at a crime scene we don’t doubt its value as evidence of the natural phenomenon of a finger leaving a print and replace it with the idea that God plants fingerprints at crime scenes. With genomes, we have the fingerprint of random mutations. We have the evidence for a natural process producing those fingerprints. Therefore, it is not defensible to say that random mutations are incapable of producing those differences when there is ample evidence demonstrating random mutations were the cause.
If someone believes that God is somehow involved in those natural processes, then all the more power to them. However, I don’t see how someone can claim that the supernatural must be involved because there is no evidence for natural mechanisms, or they doubt the ability of natural mechanisms. More importantly, it is completely false to claim that scientists are just assuming random mutations were active in the past given the positive evidence we have for their activity.
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Sorry, but it’s from a study of the science that I became skeptical. Many others have walked the same path.
@AMWolfe You represented my position well. Thanks!
I’m sorry, T, but you lost me here. Can you give a definition of supernatural that allows it to be studied by science?
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Wasn’t sure who to respond to but came across another nice ‘transitional’ form earlier today:
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Can you cite examples?
If you can’t come up with a definition of supernatural that would allow it to be studied by science it kind of proves my point.
Hi Marty,
I think you’re a bit confused on the relative roles of selection and drift given the way you wrote that.
Have you looked at all of the whale fossils that have been unearthed in the last 20 years?
Unless you can define the difference between macro and micro mechanistically, I’m not sure you’re saying anything there. Those are not helpful terms IMO.
I’d say that he is neither, but suffers from a severe case of confirmation bias and is not very diligent about digging down to the data.
To be fair to Levin, perhaps you should simply look at Behe’s references to see for yourself how shallow or deep he went. It seems to me as though you are reluctant and want to keep the data at several arms’ length.
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No, you have not proven your point until you can define supernatural in a way that it can be studied by science. C’mon. Let’s hear it.
Hi Marty,
Wow. I don’t think I could!
I tell this story so often that I probably am boring, but in college, I received a challenge to my faith from an atheist/agnostic professor. I thought there were enough instances of miracles that at least some of them proved God existed. I brought that idea to my dad, a dedicated, well educated Christian missionary (a surgeon in West Africa). He said no; we can’t prove anything is directly from God. God just doesn’t seem to do thigns that way.
My professor was impressed. I actually was relieved because I no longer had to stretch the realm of believability by trying to prove intelligence.
Can you define supernatural in a way that can be studied by science?
Good to discuss. Thanks.
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No, it’s not that I’m confused. It’s that I don’t care. I actually threw that in there to see if you would bite. You did. Thanks! That was fun. But we are wrestling with whether God intervened in the history of life, not with definitions which, even if I had them wrong, have no implications in the discussion. Now can we let it go?
So you can ask me some random question, and if I say “no”, you win? Well, honestly I don’t know if I have looked at all of them. Have you looked at mitochondrial protein transport?
Of what possible use is it to write this? You want to start trading accusations of who is ignoring the data? How do you know it’s not you?
@T_aquaticus Is this a burden of proof disagreement? I think whoever has the positive claim is the one who needs to support it?
My point is proven until you can come up with a definition of supernatural that would allow it to be studied by science. Remember, you are the one complaining that the supernatural should be included in science so it is up to you to demonstrate how it can be included. Could you describe an experiment that would allow us to test whether God creates mutations?
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Let me clear: I am not advocating that the supernatural be included in science. I’m advocating that the results of science may indicate the supernatural. Let me ask you: can the results of science indicate intentionality?
And I will illustrate for clarity: someone finds an excellent geometric star pattern scraped in black on a wall in an old cave. Science is used to determine that the markings are carbon from about 20,000 years ago. Was this marking intentional or an accident?
Would you be able to unpack your thinking here a little bit more? You don’t just get to find some pattern that you don’t think ‘can be an accident’ and then claim that only a Divine Intelligent Designer, who is really just the God of the Bible, could have done it.