No. What I said was that there are two broad ways in which evolution could be said to be unguided, and I explicitly reject one of those two ways: the one that weds it exclusively to metaphysical materialism (i.e. your way of seeing it).
There is another way it can be unguided in the sense that there are no controlling mechanisms we can identify that cause mutational changes to be anything other than mathematically (or apparently) random. That is what I get from Steve’s correction to me above.
Does anybody here actually advocate for “Darwinian processes” (or whatever Ashwin actually means by that)? I would want to hear from actual proponents willing to plant their flag with that label before I take your word on what “Biologos people” supposedly believe. [and my mere solicitation among forum participants here does not at all constitute any poll of actual Biologos officials.] But acknowledging at least the list of usual suspects lurking here, maybe some do. If accepting that common descent happened with mutation and natural selection being among the driving mechanisms (in all their random glory, and certainly not excluding or making any statements at all about God), then I guess folks here like myself might qualify. And since many of those folks here are professing Christians, your oxymoron just fell into a hole. And I don’t see anybody helping it get out.
On the other hand, I’m not willing to accept much any label from you (like “Darwinist”) because you have demonstrated a habit of packing into those labels all sort of extraneous baggage and then insisting that everybody sheltering in that tent must carry all your historical baggage around with the label.
Let me guess, you probably also think that “Darwinism” is also synonymous of “materialism”. By the way, I know no people in biology that actually call evolution “darwinism” (I.E I “work with Darwinism in my PhD!”) that is kind of a strawman created by ID.
Have you ever stopped to think that if you are wrong (I know you are adamantly certain that you are not, but lets do a thought experiment), you are just helping militant atheists like Dawkins, Harris, and the like to prove their points and making religious people look very bad? Imagine some guy going around insisting that the earth must be flat, because they just refuse to believe that it is not and that believing otherwise would mean you are a materialist, and he was explicitly motivated to believe in that because of his religion. That would make his religion look very bad, don’t you think?
Human beings are contrary creatures. People claiming tags that are oxymorons does not negate the claim. That’s one of the reasons the word exists!
That’s a strange comments from someone who believes in common ancestry. Don’t you realise that every idea is shaped by its history. You won’t be able to get rid of the baggage. The same applies for evolution too.
Scientists use Darwinian to differentiate from changes caused by environmental influences… that would be Lamarckism.
Random mutations would be Darwinian/neo Darwinian.
ERVs, epigenetics would be Lamarckian/neo Lamarckian.
So modern evolution is mainly Darwinian except at the fringes.
I see it from a different perspective. Things like insisting on a flat earth are relics of accepting earlier paradigms blindly and forming theology based on it.
It all depends on how real the science is. We are told evolution is proven to be a fact. I think it’s fair to ask what part of it is. When I ask this, people usually point to Common ancestry. I have invited @T_aquaticus to share a formal scientific statement of what common ancestry is and show that it has not been falsified. You are also welcome to try.
However in the public sphere, a bait and switch happens and every ridiculous claim of modern synthesis is declared undisputable fact why should my one accept. I reject it purely on secular grounds.
Yeah, but that discussion has been dead for decades, and the modern understanding of evolution far surpasses what we knew in the time of Darwin (molecular biology wasn’t a thing, for instance), so calling it “Darwinism” instead of “evolution” is really weird and nobody doest it today except ID people looking for strawman to beat.
With all the evidence we have for common ancestry, the only way I can see one making an argument that it is not been confirmed would be in the same lines of someone saying that “it has not been confirmed that the universe has not been created last thursday, but looking like it was not!”, well, technically that statement is true, we can’t be 100% sure of that, but come on…
It’s kinda being resurrected over recent years. And it’s true that evolution can be looked at and defined in a non-Darwinian manner. It’s an important distinction.
Evolution guided by God which involves God causing mutations and orchestrating natural selection wouldn’t be Darwinian. Christians should be aware of this. Otherwise they will go around making ridiculous claims and give a platform to people like Dawkins to belittle them.
Fair enough. Can you formally state what the theory of common ancestry is?
For example, Newtonian concept of gravity can be stated as "There exists an attractive force between two objects that is directly proportional to their mass and indirectly proportional tot he square of the distance between them. The conditions under which this law applies can be clearly defined.
I can tell you for a fact that the formal statement of common ancestry is not universally true for living organisms.(at least the one I could find)
I will invite any biologist here to share the formal definition of common ancestry with credible references so we can test this out. @glipsnort, @T_aquaticus
Not a scientist mind you but I wouldn’t mind taking a crack at this.
A and B share a common ancestor if the set of A’s parents, grandparents, great grandparents and … great^N grandparents shares at least one member in common with the corresponding set of B’s forebears.
That would be ancestors…
It has nothing to do with common ancestry.In the species level, it would be the opposite as it would claim that each species had many ancestries and species are formed by the hybridisation of different species.
Such a scenario would falsify common ancestry.
Try looking for a formal definition of the concept.
I think the idea of common ancestry is precisely that every creature shares a common ancestor with every other if you go back far enough. On this planet at least all life forms seem to be carbon based and DNA driven. Perhaps back when life was first forming life could have arisen in two or more different places. Only in that case could it be that not every life form shares a common ancestor, unless you want to assume that something whipped them all up at once, each distinct from the other.
Mark, if I asked you to tell me Newton’s law of Gravity… what would you do? Would you tell me your opinion or look for how it is formally stated and tell me that?
Give biology the same respect.
Your opinion on common ancestry is not the theory as it is formally stated.
Sure we can — and do. We drop baggage all over the place, and you do too. We still take astronomy seriously, but we (and I’m betting you too) have dropped astrology straight off the back of the wagon. A lot of history there … now gone from educated consideration. Poof!
Yes. And I also get that ‘guided’ has at least a couple different senses or meanings. Do you get that? I pulled several things together from other places above in order to painstakingly explain that to you. Did you read any of it?
But going back to something earlier, you responded to @MarkD that his example involves ancestors, which you distinguish from common ancestry. As I recall you said somewhere else that even in the realm of family trees and genealogies you don’t come from a common ancestor – you insisted instead that you come from two (your mom and your dad). So do you visualize human genealogies as an inverted tree where your grand parents and great grandparents all keep multiplying out into billions in the distant past – all culminating down to the present person: you? Presumably that’s not how you really see it; but if not, then how do you see human family trees? Do you not think we all came from an original couple?
[with edits]
Common ancestry is not a theory as such in the same way as the theory of gravity, which also is not a static law, having been refined and defined by relativity and will likely be further modified as we learn more. Such is science. Unlike God, it is not unchanging, and the attempt to make it so is to try to mold science into the image of God.
While I have not followed this post very closely, my question would be, what does it matter? Many scientists as well as lay people have no problem with multiple origins of life throughout the universe, so why would multiple origins on earth be a concern? I might add YEC interpretation of course specifies multiple originations. While current evolutionary thought is that life comes from a common ancestor, little or nothing would change if it could be shown there were multiple origins. Might win a Nobel prize also.
Yes that happens overtime after reaching a consensus and often involves a paradigm shift.
Right now the consensus is that the unguided part also means not guided by God. It’s how the majority of people including scientists interpret it.
I was pointing out that common ancestry in evolution is interpreted in terms of species. If scientists believed as Mark did, then every species would have atleast two ancestral species… If you cladograms, you will not find that, its always one species leading to another or one common ancestor bifurcating into related species.
Ancestry within a species and from species to species is a totally different thing.
I believe in an original couple for mankind.However that was not the point I was making with Mark.
I have seen this and quoted this before. It stands falsified because of the following-
Prokaryotes do not show much evidence for having a common ancestor.Their genes are so humbled up its more likely they are from. Community of species as opposed to one single common ancestor.
In terms of local common ancestry, we know that a lot of the novelty in organisms arose through the joining of two or more species.
For exanple,the first eukaryote is believed to have been formed by the combination of a eubacteria and a Archaebacterium. (Two separate species joining to form a new species).
The primitive plant is supposed to have gained photosynthesis by HGT from a eukaryote which hd swapped a cyanobacteria… that’s three species joining to form a new species.
Mammals are thought to have gained the placenta through an ERV. That involves a virous species and an animal.
Wherever, testable hypothesis have been put forward for novelty, it turns out to have nothing to do with CA. All proposals for CA are statistical arguments made based on a comparison with separate ancestry as a null hypothesis.i.e no direct empirical data.
At best it’s a weakly supported theory with proven examples of contradiction/falsification.
Even if ID was true and God micromanaged every single mutation, common ancestry would still be true, every living organism would have a common ancestor from which God shaped it. I’m not saying that is the case, but your attacks to evolution seem to be all over the place and not consistent. It would be helfpul for you to describe precisely what you believe happened in earth’s natural history and life.
Hybridization is still vertical inheritance and would qualify as common ancestry. A population that was the result hybridization would share genes that were passed down vertically from shared ancestors, even if those ancestors were the common ancestors of the two species that interbred.