Perhaps the conversation has gotten “of the rails” - it seemed as if you were insistent on indicating I could not understand your point.
My interest in this thread started with the notion of mathematical probabilities and evolution - this struck me as a topic for mathematics - I also note a previous exchange that sought to show ToE was “similar” (whatever that means), to theories of physics and chemistry.
So if these discussions are meaningful, I for one would like to see some treatments, such as for example, stochastic methodology. You should not take this as a grouchy response, but instead one of interest.
I hope you can understand, and @Christy (and I do hope for useful exchanges) , why I seemed somewhat taken aback by your comments on mutations. If otoh, you wish to expand the discussion, and perhaps agree with the other posts, that ToE is not random, than I assume the other side of that is teleology and perhaps comments can be directed at that.
It seems to me that comments often go from one point to another in a (pun intended) randomised manner.
You believe that God has ordained chemistry, do you not? Do you not believe that God has ordained physics? If so, then why could a Christian not believe that God has also ordained biology?
If you would state that God has not ordained chemistry and physics, maybe we are having a terminology problem. Perhaps you think it best to talk about God having ordained the world and its laws, but not scientific endeavors like the study of chemistry, physics and biology, even though they seek to study that universe and its laws. That’s a very peculiar use of terminology that is bound to sow confusion among most audiences, but if that’s how you prefer to talk, then I personally am willing to go along.
In which case I would state that God has created all life in the universe and upholds its existence and its changes by His mighty, providential hand at all times and places. Thus when I study biology, my belief as a Christian is that I am studying what God has created and ordained in the realm of life. So when I say that God has ordained what I observe when I study biology, that is no different than saying that God has ordained the water cycle, plate tectonics, and ionic bonds, which are also processes that I observe.
Since what I observe when I study biology is evolution, I just use the short-hand: “God has ordained evolution.” Even if it’s not as precise and careful as the preceding paragraph, it’s a lot pithier. And the vast majority of people are not as concerned as you are with distinguishing between God’s ordination of a process (on the one hand) and the study of a process that God has ordained (on the other), so most folks do not have trouble with the short-hand phrase.
Does that help?
I suspect that most Christian biologists would agree with what I stated, but I would invite folks like @Swamidass, @benkirk, @Sy_Garte, @DennisVenema to correct, refine, qualify, etc. as they deem suitable.
I am beginning to understand how some US Christians use terms such as ordained, but I think it will take me some time to get used to it.
I understand phrases such as “a priest is ordained”, or “God has ordained that we are saved in Christ”, to signify something out of the ordinary, something particularly spiritual and often holy.
On chemistry, physics and biology, these are disciplines created by us - the theologically significant component is that God has created it all to testify to His Glory. Now, if this is what you mean by “ordained evolution”, than I must confess I find it clumsy and confusing, BUT I can now at least understand what you mean.
So perhaps we can arrive at a difference in terminology.
On the general question regarding understanding nature, I subscribe to the intelligibility of the creation and prefer to see this as God’s addition of the spirit of man to the human race.
To put some context here, you somehow connect all this to our prior conversation…
What is confusing about what I said?
And the only reason this came up was because you dismissed my point by saying that it was just an opinion because I used the word “explains.” I just do not get how this can be summarized the way you put it.
Moreover, your confusion is hard to follow.
First of, as far as I know, the only claim of ontological randomness in science is in quantum mechanics. Randomness in biology is very similar to that described by @sfmatheson…
Our failure to predict the exact impact points of every meteor does not somehow invalidate the law of gravity. We also might say that “meteor’s fall randomly” as a way of saying that we cannot predict this. Of course, this is not an ontological statement of randomness, nor is it a statement for or against teleology. In fact, absent God’s direct action, we think with perfect knowledge we can actually predict meteors falling. But absent perfect knowledge, they appear random to us.
That is what we mean when we say mutations are random. We make no statement in science about ontological randomness here, so there is no way to give “mathematical credence” to a notion we do not even hold to.
Moreover, your understanding of evolution is surprisingly week for having been on the forums for so long. You evolution thusly…
This is just false. This is not the most widely accepted theory of evolution today. Back in the 60’s this was falsified as the dominant mechanism of evolution by Kimura and Haldane. I turns out that neutral processes are much more important than positive selection.
This was discovered 50 years ago. It might be time to catch up to a modern understanding of evolution. Disagree with it if you must, but why misrepresent it?
This also is false on many levels.
Most mutations are neutral, not harmful. In fact, on average every healthy child has 100 point mutations and about 1000 bases deleted or duplicated compared to their parents.
You say mutations do not increase order, but duplications are an obvious case that increase the order in systems. So clearly your claim is false. Many mutations actually can increase order. Though it is true that most mutations will decrease order, and thereby introduce new information in DNA (remember entropy = information).
I have already done this. You ignored it. Maybe try rereading those posts.
Joshua,
My definition of evolution has been obtained from Rosenberg A., Phylosophy of Science, 2013, Taylor and Francis (publishers). I am surprised that you think this is out of date.
He also has some interesting comments on explanations based on causal relations when these are based on statistical terms.
It seems to me that there is an unwarranted tendency to make comments that are anything but gracious. I feel this thread has run its course.
@GJDS I’m sorry this has been hard for you. I’m honestly confused by your position, and do not understand why you seem to ignore the answers I’ve given to your questions.
Yes. it is out of date, by about 50 years. To understand the science of evolution, perhaps start with the biologists, not the philosophers.
This not hard on me, but I am disappointed by the direction of these comments.
I cannot believe that a thorough work published in 2013 is regarded by you as irrelevant and out of date. To set your mind at ease, I have downloaded many, many papers dealing with various aspects of ToE, and the bulk of these are from biologists. I cannot recall any who isolate common descent and neutral drift from the general ToE, but I do acknowledge a variety of views.
I am disappointed that you did not read what I wrote, but instead attributed to me, one of three “googled” entries, and even accused me of “this is false”. The section was, quote one of three, and my own comments were separate.:
According to the most-widely accepted theory of evolution today, the sole mechanism for producing evolution is that of random mutation combined with natural selection. Mutations are random changes in genetic systems. Natural selection is considered by evolutionists to be a sort of sieve, which retains the “good” mutations and allows the others to pass away.
I will be blunt - I am finding this back and forth tiresome and will cease on this thread with this post.
Well, now I’m thoroughly confused. When I last visited the site I was inclined to agree that there is no specific mathematical formula that we can come up with (a bit like the Drake Equation for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), that we could use to compute a specific probability for evolutionary events. I thought that was GJDS’s point. However, the fact that we cannot define some kind of randomness does not mean that the events under consideration are not random. Then the discussion seemed to drift into teleology, and there seemed to be a suggestion that if evolution isn’t random, then it must be purposeful. But than isn’t true either - inevitability does not automatically imply purpose.
I do not have Rosenberg’s “Philosophy of Evolution”, but an article called “Philosophy of Biology” by him and Daniel McShae is online. In it the authors say: "If objective chance plays an indispensable role in natural selection, then Darwinism is arguably irreconcilable with the theology of the Abrahamic religions: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. This is an important matter in light of the persistence of creationist thinking about human origins and its latter-day guise, “intelligent design.” " (Emphasis mine) I think here that Rosenberg’s ‘argument’ is thus more directed towards the theology of Creationists of the AnswersInGenesis or ReasonsToBelieve variety, and would probably not be irreconcilable with the theology of Biologos.
What gives you the idea that this is the most widely accepted theory of evolution today? It doesn’t even mention genetic drift, a topic included in introductory biology courses.
Since @GJDS seems to have bowed out, and since @sfmatheson and @Swamidass have already answered most of the objections that George raised about “randomness” in ToE, I will simply say that I agree with @Chris_Falter’s point concerning God and biology. But, I would like to address the OP.
We dont know exactly what sort of mathematical argument will be made at @DarkX_Studios school, but there is one kind of statistical argument I have often seen against evolution that is very wrong, and that most creationists have never heard about. This relates to the very long odds of getting a protein with just the right sequence as the protein we actually have. The reason this is a false argument is that we in fact do NOT need to have just the right sequence in that protein in order for it to work.
To use @Chris_Falter’s example of license plates. Suppose the question was not “what are the odds of finding a particular series of 3 letters and 3 numbers on a plate?” but “what are the odds that we find a legal license plate, one with 3 letters and 3 numbers?” Then the odds would be very high, indeed, close to 1.0. Andreas Wagner and others have found that the same idea works in biology. Its called robustness, and it tells us that for every specific genotype (meaning a protein sequence, regulatory network or metabolic pathway) there are a large number of similar genotypes that do the same thing.
So the chances of having a working catalase enzyme, (for example) are not given by the specific sequence of human catalase divided by the total number of possible protein sequences (which is infinitesmal). The numerator is not 1, but a very large number of possible sequences that would actually be able to catalyse the degradation of hydrogen peroxide.
A tornado cannot assemble a 747 from a junkyard of random parts. Because that is not how 747s are built. They are built from 727s using a lot of trial and error. That is how evolution works as well.
I have explained repeatedly why your question about “randomness,” which I have reposted repeatedly, could only have been about one or two subtopics within “ToE”. If you were “taken aback” by it, then you have a surprisingly rudimentary understanding of evolution.
I see you have exited the discussion. I think that’s good, because I think your comments were bluster. IMO, the only way for you to have profitable discussions here about evolutionary theory will be for you to progress in your understanding of what it is. If you simply read what your knowledgeable discussion partners right here on this forum have written, you would be far better informed.
In the meantime, I recommend that you stop posting challenges about “a clear stochastic methodology that would give mathematical credence to randomness in ToE.” Until you have read even just the basics about “randomness in ToE,” which you can find in this very thread, this comment of yours will remain incoherent.
And finally, as long as you give the strong impression that you ignore what people write, dismiss the work of professional biologists, misquote fellow discussion partners, and aggressively attack other people’s beliefs, you should be the last – not the first – to raise complaints about tone.
@GJDS I’m sorry for that misunderstanding. I did read your entry, but even now it is very difficult to separate your comments for your quotes. It is also appeared like you were endorsing (or writing) the text I quoted. It was not an intentional misreading.
Anyone who claims that NS + RM is the sole mechanism of biology does not know modern evolutionary theory or is obfuscating it. This work published in 2013 is very relevant, because it demonstrates how wrong many philosophers are about evolution.
There are 10s of thousands of papers that do this. Maybe 100s of thousands This includes any paper that constructs a phylogeny from genetic data or computes a Kd/Ks ratio, any paper that uses a molecular clock. None of these approaches work without the baseline model of common descent and predominantly neutral theory. This is such a fundamental feature of biology, like algebra, that it hardly ever explained even though all this work relies on it.
I think it really would help to use quotation marks when you are quoting something.
To everyone else in this thread, I am surprised the false opposition of randomness vs. God has gone unremarked this long. What is the quote about God ruling over the casting of lots? Even if evolution ran on ‘true’ randomness, wouldn’t that just glorify God even more?
Or is God too limited to rule over that which humans cannot predict?
I guess I must make a last comment in view of the large number of posts against me.
Let us assume that I am some ignorant scientist who will not be educated by the self-professed experts on science/theology, and that everything I have said on ToE is plain wrong.
Just how would any of you justify changes in Christian theology? And to avoid bringing the cabal down on me, I will specifically use a clear example that has been debated on this site many times, that Adam and Eve is either a myth, or that it stems from some persons who somehow made a great leap.
Please, if you wish to engage with me constructively, do not turn this into pro-, against-, ToE. Just stick to your understanding of the theology.
Without seeking anything for or against, I found the following (I note that almost every hit was either pro-creationism or anti-creationism, an unhealthy position for a major branch of the natural sciences! – perhaps you may add your personal theological insights to this discussion?)
The number may be very large but in order to work it must be almost the same as the total possible sequences and the available data says this depends on the function of the protein. While this story may work for bacteria it is certainly not going to work for nuclear proteins that have to bind to many specific proteins and not bind to others in order to control transcription.
I don’t believe anyone can create a detailed account of how random mutation and natural selection can turn an animal that lives in the water to an animal that lives on land. This requires a highly specific change to DNA.
I do agree with you that making a detailed probability of the transition, assuming random mutation and natural selection, is also difficult. There is, however, a real probability problem that has never been completely quantified or solved. I applaud the school for allowing multiple opinions to allow critical thinking to be explored.
The problem needs to be set up as follows imo. What is the probability that reproduction along with random mutation, neutral mutation, natural selection and genetic drift were able to transition a water animal to a land animal.