“Maybe its just religion masquerading as science”
Mary Midgley, _Evolution as a Religion_
_Evolution as a Religion: Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears_, republished by Routledge in 2002, is a revised edition of a book by philosopher Mary Midgley which attempts to reveal the excesses and overbold prophecies of certain biologists (and other scientists) in their attempt to turn evolution into a religion.
Midgley begins by noting that
“I had been struck for some time by certain remarkable prophetic and metaphysical passages that appeared suddenly in science books about evolution, often in their last chapters.
Though these passages were detached from the official reasoning of the books, they seemed still to be presented as science.”
“Popper recanted that position”
What’s mistaken about “that position”?
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Karl Popper argued in 1974 that evolutionary theory contains no testable laws and is therefore a metaphysical research program.
Four years later, he said that he had changed his mind.
Here we seek to understand Popper’s initial position and his subsequent retraction.
We argue, contrary to Popper’s own assessment, that he did not change his mind at all about the substance of his original claim.
“everyone seems to be in agreement that Karl Popper is the definitive word on what counts a science”
Do you think “Popper is the definitive word on what counts a science”?
“everyone seems to be in agreement that Karl Popper is the definitive word on what counts a science”
“Do you think ‘Popper is the definitive word on what counts a science’?”
“No.”
Then it’s _not_ the case that “everyone seems to be in agreement that Karl Popper is the definitive word on what counts a science.”
“please get back to the actual science at hand”
“Are you aware of any potential discovery that would refute/ falsify the ‘continually evolving theory of evolution’?”
“Rabbit fossils in pre-Cambrian strata would certainly cause some problems”
Would rabbits in Cambrian strata refute/ falsify the “continually evolving theory of evolution”?
Would trilobites in Cambrian strata with a sophisticated visual apparatus refute/ falsify the “continually evolving theory of evolution”?
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First, and perhaps most important, is the first appearance of fossils.
This occurs at a time called the “Cambrian,” 600 million years ago by the fossil reckoning.
The fossils appear at that time in a pretty highly developed form.
They don’t start very low and evolve bit by bit over long periods of time.
In the lowest fossil-bearing strata of all, they are already there and are pretty complicated in more-or-less modern form.
One example of this is the little animal called the trilobite.
There are a great many fossils of the trilobite right there at the beginning with no build-up to it.
And, if you examine them closely, you will find that they are not simple animals.
They are small, but they have an eye that has been discussed a great deal in recent years– an eye that is simply incredible.
It is made up of dozens of little tubes which are all at slightly different angles so that it covers the entire field of vision, with a different tube pointing at each spot on the horizon.
But these tubes are all more complicated than that, by far.
They have a lens on them that is optically arranged in a very complicated way, and it is bound into another layer that has to be just exactly right for them to see anything….
But the more complicated it is, the less likely it is simply to have grown up out of nothing.
And this situation has troubled everybody from the beginning– to have everything at the very opening of the drama.
The curtain goes up and you have the players on the stage already, entirely in modern costumes.
The Creationists say, “That is abrupt appearance,” and they hammer away at that.
Instead of building up bit by bit, it appears suddenly, and that to them signifies creation.
I don’t want to argue that, but I admit it is very strange that there is no slow build-up.
The evolutionists have strained very hard to find earlier fossils and have had very meager results.
I find it odd that a leading evolutionist who is also a specialist in trilobites, Niles Eldredge of the American Museum in Natural History, never even mentions these problems of the eye.
He has a recent book directed at the Creationists called _The Monkey Business_.
He has several pages on the trilobite there, but he never mentions this eye which is really the hardest part of the problem.
Paul Davies, _The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin of Life_ (1998), on 6
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The crucial difference is that the chicken is made according to specific genetic instructions, whereas lamp blobs, snowflakes and eddies form willy-nilly.
There is no gene for a snowflake.
Biological complexity is instructed complexity or, to use modern parlance, it is information-based complexity.
In the coming chapters I shall argue that it is not enough to know how life’s immense structural complexity arose; we must also account for the origin of biological information.
As we shall see, scientists are still very far from solving this fundamental conceptual puzzle.
Some people rejoice in this ignorance, imagining that it leaves room for a miraculous creation.
However, it is the job of science to solve mysteries without recourse to divine intervention.
Just because scientists are still uncertain of how life began does not mean life cannot have had a natural origin.
“are not support for intelligent design by a god of the gaps”
In your view, what “gaps” are there presently?
Andreas Wagner, _Arrival of the Fittest: How Nature Innovates_ (2015)
“Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. Nature’s many innovations—some uncannily perfect—call for natural principles that accelerate life’s ability to innovate.”
Darwin’s theory of natural selection explains how useful adaptations are preserved over time.
But the biggest mystery about evolution eluded him.
As genetics pioneer Hugo de Vries put it,
“natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest, but it cannot explain the arrival of the fittest.”
Can random mutations over a mere 3.8 billion years really be responsible for wings, eyeballs, knees, camouflage, lactose digestion, photosynthesis, and the rest of nature’s creative marvels?
And if the answer is no, what is the mechanism that explains evolution’s speed and efficiency?
In _Arrival of the Fittest_, renowned evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner draws on over fifteen years of research to present the missing piece in Darwin’s theory.
Alan Hayward, _Creation and Evolution: Rethinking the Evidence from Science and the Bible_ (1995)
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For reasons like these Grasse – who, remember, has been acknowledged as one of Europe’s greatest zoologists – rejects Darwinism as demonstrably false.
He calls it a ‘pseudoscience’ (p. 6) depending on frequent miracles (p. 103), and says that Darwinists only look at those facts that fit their theory (p. 50).
They look upon chance as ‘a sort of providence’, which they do not name but ‘secretly worship’ (p. 107).
Pierre-Paul Grassé, _Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation_ (1977)
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Page 103
The opportune appearance of mutations permitting animals and plants to meet their needs seems hard to believe.
Yet the Darwinian theory is even more demanding: A single plant, a single animal would require thousands and thousands of lucky, appropriate events.
Thus, miracles would become the rule: events with an infinitesimal probability could not fail to occur.
Much as in _The Swiss Family Robinson_, which I used to read in my childhood, rescue would always occur at the right moment, and this would have had to have happened throughout the ages.
One could admit that one bacterium out of billions and billions can be the “lucky preadapted” one, but the number of reptiles evolving into mammals or of primates evolving into men, did not exceed a few tens of thousands and often fewer; the chances of the appearance of “useful” mutations therefore decrease in the same ratio and become almost nonexistent.
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Page 107
Directed by all-powerful selection, chance becomes a sort of providence, which, under the cover of atheism, is not named but which is secretly worshipped.
I suspect Robert’s point is that it is disingenuous to cite someone as an authority supportive of your conclusion, if that authority in fact rejects your conclusion–without noting the discrepancy.
I remember getting POed when Nancy Pelosi cited Aquinas on delayed animation as an argument in favor of abortion, without ever acknowledging that Aquinas unequivocally condemned abortion.
You can’t point to an authority and say, “hey this authority says you are wrong” (full stop) when that authority equally says you are yourself wrong.
Of course, one can make an argument like, “even John Doe acknowledges that I’m right on this point” but the very way that is phrased indicate that any agreement is limited to a very specific point. Insofar as the person has any authority, you will need to address why that person drew the wrong conclusion even though he got the particular point right.
_The Waning of Materialism_ (2010)
Twenty-three philosophers examine the doctrine of materialism find it wanting.
The case against materialism comprises arguments from conscious experience, from the unity and identity of the person, from intentionality, mental causation, and knowledge.
The contributors include leaders in the fields of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, who respond ably to the most recent versions and defenses of materialism.
The modal arguments of Kripke and Chalmers, Jackson’s knowledge argument, Kim’s exclusion problem, and Burge’s anti-individualism all play a part in the building of a powerful cumulative case against the materialist research program.
Several papers address the implications of contemporary brain and cognitive research (the psychophysics of color perception, blindsight, and the effects of commissurotomies), adding a posteriori arguments to the classical a priori critique of reductionism.
All of the current versions of materialism– reductive and non-reductive, functionalist, eliminativist, and new wave materialism– come under sustained and trenchant attack.
“to cite someone as an authority supportive of your conclusion”
I conclude that Darwin’s theory of natural selection is garbage.
In support of my conclusion, I cite Grasse as an authority.
Essay “Problems with the Theory of Natural Selection”
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David Stove, _Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity and Other Fables of Evolution_ (2007)
Whatever your opinion of ‘Intelligent Design,’ you’ll find Stove’s criticism of what he calls ‘Darwinism’ difficult to stop reading.
Stove’s blistering attack on Richard Dawkins’ ‘selfish genes’ and ‘memes’ is unparalleled and unrelenting.
A discussion of spiders who mimic bird droppings is alone worth the price of the book.
_Darwinian Fairytales_ should be read and pondered by anyone interested in sociobiology, the origin of altruism, and the awesome process of evolution.
–Martin Gardner, author of _Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?: Debunking Pseudoscience_
From the first paragraph of the introduction:
“By saying that materialism is on the wane, we do not mean that materialism is in the process of being eclipsed–nor do we mean that materialism is likely to be eclipsed at any point in the foreseeable future.”
Look, I know Koons; he had some truly insane theories about the 2020 election (he asserted that violations of Benford’s law proved fraud had occurred–which any student of stats will tell you Benford’s law cannot do: it is only strong enough to serve as a flag for potential fraud that may warrant investigation. And it doesn’t even apply unless the data span several orders of magnitude).
I am comfortable with the literature. There are respectable arguments against materialism–Chalmers is a great example; but Chalmers is still an atheist.
The fact that twenty-some philosophers penned essays challenging materialism (and got it published by OUP) doesn’t prove there is a god.
Most folks who argue against evolution are unable to critique it on a scientific level. They argue against it as an idea, because it offends their sensibilities in some way. Of course nature don’t care a whit about our sensibilities. That’s one reason why we know our observations are accurate. One of science’s superpowers is the ability to tell us that which we do not wish to hear. To confound our expectations. Any system of thought that comforts us and assure us that we were right all along is immediately suspect.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert