I voted yes without hesitation whatsoever. It is true that, on purely scientific and mathematical grounds, Darwinian evolution has difficulty explaining certain details, as everyone knows, and these are of course discussed in Prof. Michael Behe’s book which was cited by Matt in one of the threads, and in the works of many other authors. But that doesn’t disqualify it, by any means. Many scientific theories have such imperfections — in fact, I’d say all do. Until something better is found, Darwinian evolution is the best we have — nothing else even comes close. As far as evolution contradicting Scripture goes, I view it as an enormous mistake for devout Christians and, in more and more cases nowadays, devout Jews as well, to reject evolution as being incompatible with the Bible. It absolutely is not. Furthermore, the best way to weaken religion is to reject science in the name of religion, rather than showing how all science is one hundred percent compatible with religion.

I’m not sure if Unadorned has answered the question that was actually posed. He says he voted Yes because he believes Darwinian evolution is the best available explanation for the origin of species. But the question was whether Darwinian evolution is an ADEQUATE explanation for the origin of species. And to that question, I believe the answer is a resounding No. I have a feeling Unadorned would agree with me on that. If he doesn’t, I think I can demonstrate to his satisfaction that Darwinian evolution is both inadequate in itself and incompatible with the existence of God.

“Is mechanistic Darwinian evolution — random variation and natural selection — an adequate explanation for the origin of species?

One of the problems with discussing Darwinism in general is that it is a subject filled with equivocation. You never quite know what someone means, and they switch meaning mid-argument in order to “win” (as if truth were something that can be simply willed into existence).

If the poll question is asking specifically whether or not the neodarwinian synthesis of genetics with random mutation/natural selection, including for spice Stephen Jay Gould’s punctuated equilibrium (or “evolution by jerks” to detractors), adequately explains the fossil record and the biological machinery of life; if that is the question then the answer is a resounding and unequivocal “no!”.

If the question was “are God and Darwinism mutually exclusive beliefs?” then the answer would depend on what is meant by “Darwinism”. Survival of the fittest is a useless tautology, since the “fittest” are by definition those that survive. If Darwinism means that many of today’s creatures are descended from creatures that were different in the past then clearly that is true. If Darwinism means that Freemen Dyson’s notion that an adaptive mud matrix provided a substrate for later development of RNA and DNA and the origin of life, that is an interesting piece of science fiction (although it does align nicely with God making man from the dust of the earth). If Darwinism means that the origin and development of the DNA/RNA software of life and its adaptive mechanisms are explained at all by any current falsifiable physical theory then Darwinism is nonsense. This origin story is typically accepted simply because no other theory is available: in a sort of reverse Ockham’s Razor, the fact that we have only one story acceptable to religious naturalists means that it must be the true story despite its utter scientific implausibility.

If Darwinism means that a-priori everything must be explained comprehensively by mindless laws and randomness then it is certainly incompatible not only with belief in God, but also the human mind, consciousness, objective morality, the taste of the coffee I am drinking, and a whole host of other things. Naturalism as religion is for people who don’t have the guts to face the full reality with which we are all confronted.

Darwinism is a lot like cremation instead of burial for a Catholic. It isn’t harmful in itself, depending on how it is practiced and in what ways it is and is not taken seriously — specifically in what it is taken to _mean_. Cremation as a deliberate ritual to undermine belief in the resurrection of the body is harmful; for other reasons and interpreted in other ways it is innocuous and may even have value. Darwinism as a materialist ploy to rule out God by definition is not only objectively wrong rationally; it is also objectively evil.

I believe Matt is making the issue more complicated than it needs to be. Mr. Kalb adequately defined what he meant by evolution in the original question: “random variation and natural selection.” Thus Matt doesn’t need to worry; one cannot use weasel words and say that the evolution under discussion is just some general idea that newer forms of life have superceded other forms, or whatever.

On the incompatibility of evolution so defined with Christianity (an incompatibility that many Catholics have failed to understand), here is the link to Carol Iannone’s important article on this. Miss Iannone, a literary critic, saw an obvious fact that the scientists and theologians who have written about this subject (and who have wanted to believe in the possibility of a middle ground) have failed to see: It cannot be true that the changes which are naturally selected initially appeared by total randomness, AND be true that God is guiding the evolutionary process.

“Wm. Jennings Bryan was Right,” New York Press,

http://www.nypress.com/14/18/taki/perspectives.cfm

Partly my response was directed to Unadorned’s comment, partly it was in response to the “random variation and natural selection” (that is, original-Darwinian rather than neo-Darwinian) formulation, and partly it was just general observations about Darwin-speak that I thought in context. The fact is that people who debate evolution engage in quite a bit of equivocation; by “origin” sometimes they mean speciation and sometimes they mean a putative origin from inanimate matter, and sometimes theorists (e.g. Paul Davies) talk about causes prior to that, for example. I am not much of a compatibilist when it comes to evolution, since it is a crappy theory of mostly tautological claptrap that ignores the data; but I think the humanist critics of evolution like Philip Johnson have a rather integrist view that makes it easy to dismiss, since if the argument is taken seriously with respect to evolution it falsifies ALL of scientific knowledge. That obviously can’t be right, since atom bombs really do explode.

Mr. Auster says:
“It cannot be true that the changes which are naturally selected initially appeared by total randomness, AND be true that God is guiding the evolutionary process.”

Again, it depends on what you mean. If it is only certain changes (e.g. mutations along DNA chains) which are random in origin there is no inherent theological problem; God can make as many random number generators as He wants. It is only when randomness and natural selection are asserted to be COMPREHENSIVELY EXCLUSIVE causes that a theological problem arises, and that is true in all of science not merely the biological sciences. If a theory metaphysically allows for ONLY randomness and immutable laws it has excluded intelligence and agency by definition: its just turtles all the way down, as the saying goes. This is true in all sciences, though, not just biology, and naturalist religion infects cosmology and physics nearly as much as biology. Christians believe that God is the Aristotlean first cause of the fact that Quantum Electrodynamics can be relied upon to accurately predict some natural occurrences; it is only when a moron like Stephen Hawking asserts effectively that this physical description is itself an Aristotlean first cause that breathes fire into the universe that there is a problem.

So, it depends on what Mr. Kalb meant by “adequate”, and Unadorned was right to bring up other physical theories since the naturalist error can be (and often is) made with other physical theories. Evolution as currently understood fails out of the gate because it is bad science. But suppose there was a good naturalist origins theory. What makes that theory any more intrinsically theologically troubling than Newton’s laws of motion? Isn’t the issue really that the philosophy of science (in whatever discipline) sometimes manifests as naturalist religion by claiming to be epistemically and ontologically comprehensive?

I have personally designed systems that take random changes as input and adapt to the environment by selecting the ones that produce successful outputs, etc. It is obviously metaphysically self-contradictory to say that something is completely random in origin and willed into existence by an intelligence at the same time; and in that strong naturalist sense evolution as Aristotlean first cause is utterly incompatible with a teleological God. That is where the inherent theological problem stops. Beyond that neo-Darwinism is plagued by the fact that it is poorly executed, equivocal, and more of a religion than a falsifiable scientific theory; but if QED doesn’t imply turtles all the way down then I don’t know why some putative falsifiable theory explaining in naturalistic terms how life originated on Earth does.

There is also the possibility that what appears random to us is not in fact.

This is a very interesting discussion. The mechanism that makes possible Darwin’s theory of natural selection is dependent on the laws of biochemistry (animals produce a certain number of offspring which vary in various ways from their parents, etc) and certain features of the environment (the amount of food, drink, and space available). The laws of biochemistry in turn follow from the most fundamental laws of physics, which were given in the universe’s initial singularity 15 or so billion years ago. The laws of physics, plus time, matter and energy, were all created in the initial singularity. Since whatever begins requires a cause to account for its existence, and since the conditions present in the initial singularity require a timeless, uncaused, and beginningless (i.e. eternal) “Initiator” of immense power, I would argue that the only thing that fits that description is God (at least as Aquinas understood Him).

If this argument is sound, it provides an answer to the question of why the fundamental laws of physics are such as to give rise to laws of evolution. The answer, it seems to me, is that God did not DIRECTLY create humans and animals, but created them INDIRECTLY via the initial singularity, via laws of nature (physics, biochemistry, etc) via the law of natural selection. Sound farfetched?

Bubba writes:
“There is also the possibility that what appears random to us is not in fact.”

Yes, and the paradox of whether something can be “truly” random (whatever that means, or exercise free will for that matter) in the presence of an omniscient God, etc. Those are big issues that go far beyond just evolution as scientific explanation, though.

Evolution is a dumb theory that survives only because it has become the religion of the strong materialists who rule scientific institutions and culture; but it is a dumb theory because it is a dumb theory, not because of some intrinsic problem with properly humble scientific explanations of proximate origins and other phenomena in general.

“If this argument is sound, it provides an answer to the question of why the fundamental laws of physics are such as to give rise to laws of evolution. The answer, it seems to me, is that God did not DIRECTLY create humans and animals, but created them INDIRECTLY via the initial singularity, via laws of nature (physics, biochemistry, etc) via the law of natural selection. Sound farfetched?”

To the extent that the DIRECTLY and INDIRECTLY modifiers can properly apply to God, sure. That distinction often leads to Deism; but even a big bang doesn’t explain the existence of the universe ex nihilo from moment to moment (that is, it doesn’t answer the basic “why is there something rather than nothing” question).

Thank you for responding to my post so promptly Matt.

I’m not sure how the modifiers DIRECTLY and INDIRECTLY imply Deism, which, as I understand it, is the view that God exists, yet is incapable of performing miracles. Since I affirmed creation, which in a very real sense is the greatest miracle of all, I’m not sure how anything I wrote implies Deism; but perhaps there is something in my thinking I don’t see that you do.

{…tipping hat to Mr. Power…}

I don’t think the distinction between God directly causing something and indirectly causing it implies Deism as a necessity, just that it can lead people to think that way. The notion behind Deism is that God put the universe and its laws in motion and just left it to itself from there. Deism has often been, but does not have to be, paired with Laplacian clockwork determinism.

Anyway, this is all nice to speculate about, but the fact is that God didn’t make man indirectly. He made him directly.

The only thing physical science is competent to study is the development of the body. It can have nothing to say about the immaterial soul. Consequently, all evolution can explain, even on the supposition that it’s true, is how man’s body evolved from the body of an ape. It cannot explain how intellect arose in man. The fact is that it was still required that at some point God directly infuse an intellectual soul into the body of this creature that formerly possessed only a sensitive soul. There is no way for an intellectual soul to somehow develop from a sensitive soul, and evolution can provide no evidence to say otherwise. It can merely make bold and baseless claims, which it does with tiresome regularity.

Matt writes:

“If it is only certain changes (e.g. mutations along DNA chains) which are random in origin there is no inherent theological problem; God can make as many random number generators as He wants.”

I do not follow Matt here. For the changes to lead to a definite, God-planned end (e.g. the human form) they cannot have been random.

Matt then seems to be making further qualifications and backing away from the position I just criticized, but I wasn’t able to follow his argument.

Mr. Power writes:

“If this argument is sound, it provides an answer to the question of why the fundamental laws of physics are such as to give rise to laws of evolution. The answer, it seems to me, is that God did not DIRECTLY create humans and animals, but created them INDIRECTLY via the initial singularity, via laws of nature (physics, biochemistry, etc) via the law of natural selection. Sound farfetched?”

If I’m understanding correctly, he’s saying that since everything comes from God, even the random mutations that supposedly lead up the evolutionary ladder also come from God. But this is still missing the point. According to Darwinian evolution, the genetic mutations, which are the material of the later selected adapations that become new species, are themselves RANDOM. Random means random. If these random changes are actually all determined from the beginning of creation, then they are not random. It’s one of the other. (There may be random changes that lead to changes WITHIN a species, but random changes could not lead to NEW species.)

Bubba writes:

“The only thing physical science is competent to study is the development of the body. It can have nothing to say about the immaterial soul. Consequently, all evolution can explain, even on the supposition that it’s true, is how man’s body evolved from the body of an ape. It cannot explain how intellect arose in man. The fact is that it was still required that at some point God directly infuse an intellectual soul into the body of this creature that formerly possessed only a sensitive soul.”

This sounds like the Catholic view that makes a complete separation between the body, which evolves by natural selection, and the soul, which God then infuses into the body. But this picture evades the fundamental problem, which is the evolution of the human form itself, not the existence of the soul. Even in terms of the Catholic view, the physical human form must come into existence before the supposed infusion of the soul into it can occur. The human form is therefore the teleological end of the physical creation. Now for such a form to appear, it could not be through the natural selection of purely random changes. Rather, the changes themselves would have to be drawn into existence by God’s teleological purpose, which means they are not random.

Mr. Auster:

“I do not follow Matt here. For the changes to lead to a definite, God-planned end (e.g. the human form) they cannot have been random.”

Again, that is (counterintuitively) not true. I can build a stochastic system myself that takes random changes and uses them to produce definite results. Random changes can in fact lead to definite results, depending upon how you design your system; in some systems random noise is the BEST input to produce a desired result, and I have personally designed such systems. The teleological problem only arises when the entire system (in this case the entire universe and everything about it) is assumed to be comprehensively, metaphysically random.

Finally, if randomness itself were ipso facto a theological problem then the argument is not just with Darwinism, but also with all of quantum physics including the physics of the Bomb.

Some thoughts from a somewhat casual observer of the evolutionary debate, albeit one having some former scientific background:

1. As far as I am aware, there is no available precise scientific definition of the complexity of a “physical system” such as an organism. It would seem to follow from this that it is as yet impossible to say whether the theory of evolution is capable of accounting for the observed (subjectively judged) complexity in, say, a human being (which might, incidentally, be far less than the degree of complexity that is actually there). On the most basic level, then, the theory would appear to be a matter of materialistic faith rather than science.

(Stephen Jay Gould seems to have dealt with this problem by claiming that there is in fact no evolutionary progress from, say, a bacillus to a human being—that this is merely an anthropocentric illusion. So much for the credibility of this faith.)

2. There is said to be an entire “fringe” science of “epigenetics” dealing with the apparent inheritance of acquired characteristics, in contradiction to the Darwinian theory. The reason this science is “fringe” is quite likely to be merely that it violates the current narrow scientific orthodoxy. If there is anything to it, it should be of great interest to conservatives, as it corresponds to a common-sensical conservative view of (for example) racial differences, which would be neither genetically immutable nor on the other hand susceptible to ready modification through liberal social engineering projects. I don’t have any references at hand, but this fringe science seems to be related to such questions as why Dolly the Cloned Sheep developed premature arthritis(?) unlike her “genetically identical” parent, and the (I think) fairly well-accepted observation that it takes several generations of good nutrition for human beings to reach their full potential height. (I’ve also seen it claimed that experiments have been done on poorly fed cats which for a few generations did not show many ill effects but eventually became incapable of reproduction. This seems alarming considering the fact that large numbers of us live on massive quantities of refined sugar and so forth.)

“As far as I am aware, there is no available precise scientific definition of the complexity of a ‘physical system’ such as an organism.”

It depends on how precise one wants to get. As a practical matter it isn’t terribly difficult. Michael Behe defines complexity functionally when dealing with tiny biological machines made of individual molecules. Because the “parts” in the machine are individual molecules they are individually “irreducable”; change one atom and you have a fundamentally different part. Then:

1) Identify the function of the biochemical machine in question.

2) Identify the number of critical parts in the machine.

A critical part is a part that the machine requires in order to perform its function at all; the machine becomes completely nonfunctional if a critical part is removed.

So, in order to produce the biochemical machine in question all of the critical parts have to come into being at the same time, properly interconnected, in order to perform the identified function at all (and for natural selection to work the advantageous function must be performed). There is no performance of the function whatsoever without all of the critical parts properly interconnected, so the number of critical parts (molecules) gives us a numeric measure of the irreducable complexity of the biological machine. No doubt millions of these irreduceably complex biological machines exist; Behe talks about several of them specifically.

Behe’s approach has been attacked on two fronts, predictably. One front attacks the functional argument to begin with; that is, the claim is made that the proto-machine must have performed some other function that it no longer performs even if it was completely nonfunctional with respect to what it does now. The other front just denies the irreducability, claiming that we just don’t know how the machine performed its function more weakly without all of the critical parts, but that it must have. Both approaches notoriously lack specificity, because they are backed up in principle not in fact: if neo-Darwinism doesn’t explain this then some other materialist explanation MUST, so it will always be some form of Darwinism tautologically understood as random input to immutable natural laws. That sort of Darwinism must be true by definition, even though the data indicate that the truth of neo-Darwinism is about as likely (literally: science doesn’t exclude either possibility a priori) as the earth spontaneously turning into a giant turnip.

Of course many of these biological machines are constructed by precisely folding proteins. There are common protein-folding problems which cannot be solved by all the computers on earth calculating for the entire lifetime of the universe; just to solve one single protein folding problem among *billions*. That gets us to a SINGLE part in ONE complex machine of which there are BILLIONS.

To conclude from current data that we have any idea how this incredibly rich machinery and software came into being is beyond ludicrous. The closest thing we have as an objective comparison is the machines we have ourselves designed; and even that comparison stretches the limits of imagination. Darwinists accuse anti-Darwinists of having a lack of imagination in filling in the gaps; I agree that a truly prodigious amount of imagination is required. Francis Crick, Nobel prize winning co-discoverer of the DNA double-helix and an avowed atheist, has assessed the situation with neo-Darwinism and has concluded that life came to earth as a result of “directed transpermia” — that is, that aliens planted us here on purpose.

So Darwinism is really just a bunch of naturalism-as-religion silliness. Even if it were a plausible theory, though, it would be no threat to theism unless it claimed to be an Aristotlean first cause; and ANY science that makes such a claim is incompatible with theism.

Matt, I think I understand now how the two distinctions might lead one down the garden path to Deism. I would personally reject Deism as you define it out of hand, since I believe God intervenes in the world through miracles.

Mr Auster, my argument is essentially twofold: that natural selection depends on a marvelously complex set of environmental pre-conditions (the temperature of the atmosphere, the existence of water, the 23-degree tilt of earth’s axis, the right amount of food, drink and space and so on), the intricacy of which demands a Divine Watchmaker, and that the intricacy of the hereditary mechanism possessed by every living creature demands a similar explanation. The hereditary mechanism in natural selection that passes on the genetic makeup from parents to offspring must function in such a way as to create a happy medium between exact duplicates of the parents or stark deviations of the parents. The delicately-balanced nature of the hereditary mechanism suggests a Divine Mind behind the evolutionary process, contrary what naturalists like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould assert.

On a side note, I think the reason most scientists like Dawkins and Gould are metaphysical naturalists (the view that posits that nothing exists outside of nature) is that like most scientists, they go about their daily chores methodologically looking for naturalistic explanations for naturalistic phenomena. But just because that is what you are always looking for does not commit you to the position that that is all reality is ultimately composed of. There is no philosophical necessity for them to go the extra mile and conclude that nothing actually exists beyond nature.

There is no God, and Dawkins is His Prophet.

I think naturalism’s biggest flaw is that it’s neither verifiable nor falsifiable, since there is no possible empirical observation which would in principle contradict naturalism; hence, naturalism is unfalsifiable. It is also unverifable, since it implicitly asserts the conclusion that there is nothing that exists outside of nature. Such a universal negative is unverifiable. Ergo, naturalism is an article of pure faith.

Mr Power writes:
“I think naturalism’s biggest flaw is that it’s neither verifiable nor falsifiable, since there is no possible empirical observation which would in principle contradict naturalism; hence, naturalism is unfalsifiable.”

Falsifiability doesn’t work as a universal rule for knowledge, though. For one thing, people annoyed Popper for years by pointing out that the falsifiability principle is not itself falsifiable. Naturalism is metaphysics not science, so it can’t be held to scientific standards. The problem with naturalism isn’t that it is an unfalsifiable metaphysics; the problem is that it is a stupid metaphysics. Among other things it has to deny manifest realities such as conscience experience, morality, love, loyalty, the good, and the beautiful. Naturalism is also ultimately self-destructive; its been quite some time since Hume took naturalism to its natural conclusion and denied all universals, including cause and effect. This world view is called “empiricism” in order to hide how stupid it is behind a respectable-sounding name.

I suppose I should clarify my own view of Behe, since the above posting from February 4, 2003 06:53 PM doesn’t summarize my own conclusions well.

The only reasonable case against Behe I’ve seen is that his conclusions are unjustified specifically because we are too ignorant to reach them. But that admission - nay active assertion - of profound ignorance reveals the actual state of Darwinism as purported science. So either Behe is right, or we simply have no good broad theoretical explanations for the incredible hardware and software of life. I tend to think the latter is the case, though if FORCED to make an intelligent GUESS then Behe’s is the right one. We know all kinds of spot-facts about all kinds of little specific things, but there is no workable overall theory explaining life, its development, and/or its origins.

Admitting that sort of profound ignorance is unnaceptable to a naturalist, since everything BY DEFINITION has a naturalist, scientific triumphalist explanation. But when it comes to life, its development, and its origins, although we know millions of little facts and understand thousands of little bits and pieces, science is in general terms profoundly ignorant.

LA writes: “The human form is therefore the teleological end of the physical creation. Now for such a form to appear, it could not be through the natural selection of purely random changes. Rather, the changes themselves would have to be drawn into existence by God’s teleological purpose, which means they are not random.”

Absolutely. But since I had already said that in a previous post, I didn’t think I needed to say it again. I was only commenting on Matt and Max’s exchange about the direct vs. indirect creation of man: even if we assume, for the sake of the argument, that evolution of the body is possible, that explanation is still insufficient to account for the existence of man. There is no way for the soul to have evolved (indeed, there are no grounds for supposing that it *has* evolved in the first place), and it is impossible for the soul to be a mere epiphenomenon of the body, as materialists claim. Hence, the existence of the rational soul in man must have a cause other than the supposedly random mutations of evolution, and that cause is, as we know via revelation, God.

LA writes: “The human form is therefore the teleological end of the physical creation. Now for such a form to appear, it could not be through the natural selection of purely random changes. Rather, the changes themselves would have to be drawn into existence by God’s teleological purpose, which means they are not random.”

Absolutely. But since I had already said that in a previous post, I didn’t think I needed to say it again. I was only commenting on Matt and Max’s exchange about the direct vs. indirect creation of man: even if we assume, for the sake of the argument, that evolution of the body is possible, that explanation is still insufficient to account for the existence of man. There is no way for the soul to have evolved (indeed, there are no grounds for supposing that it *has* evolved in the first place), and it is impossible for the soul to be a mere epiphenomenon of the body, as materialists claim. Hence, the existence of the rational soul in man must have a cause other than the supposedly random mutations of evolution, and that cause is, as we know via revelation, God.

Bubba, that’s exactly the way I look at it: the body evolved; the soul is directly created by God and is that about us which was made in God’s image — not the body.

Bubba writes:
“…if we assume, for the sake of the argument, that evolution of the body is possible, that explanation is still insufficient to account for the existence of man.”

And again, that depends entirely on what is meant by “sufficiency”. NOT ONE of the explanations that we have for ANYTHING AT ALL is comprehensive (or, logically, is Godel-complete); so if the standard is that a sufficient explanation has to account for something comprehensively without any residual mystery then no explanations at all, of anything at all, are “sufficient”.

The problem with Darwinism as religion rather than science is quite similar to the problem with cosmology as religion rather than science. Legitimate knowledge NEVER pretends to offer more than partial explanations of things. A philosophically stunted scientist like Stephen Hawking will make assertions about “all that exists” as if it made any coherent sense to do so; but it does not. To the extent that ANY explanation — whether Darwinism, Hawking cosmology, or protestant sola scriptura — is asserted to be Godel-complete, it is rationally incoherent.

Every human explanation is ALWAYS incomplete. Everything that is known is *always* also mysterious (proof: I can always ask more questions to which legitimate answers in principle exist). Everything that is mysterious is *always* also known (proof: I know any given specific mystery enough to identify it). So the problem, again, is not that science purports to explain some things (that is, to make true assertions of fact, cause-effect, etc). The problem is that scientism-as-religion pretends to explain some things — like all that exists in the case of cosmology-scientism, or human origins in the case of evolution-scientism — completely.

Matt, what I was trying to say is that naturalism is unfalsifiable in the sense that no experience could possibly count as contradicting it, since any experience could be explained by some naturalistic explanation (e.g. hallucination or dreaming, as naturalistic accounts, could explain any experience). For example, it has been seriously posited (as one example) that reports of seeing a resurrected Christ were the result of some kind of mass religious hallucination.

I agree with you that naturalism is self-destructive. It leads to all kinds of absurdities, since it implies physicalism, which implies determinism — which is NOT avoided by appealing to indeterminism — and therefore makes a nonsense of moral responsibility and rational thought.

Hey Matt, I was trawling through Counterrevolution’s archives last night and I read some of your earlier posts. I get the impression that you have a solid background in philosophy. I was especially impressed by your argument linking nominalism to liberalism. Richard Weaver proposed a similar thesis in “Ideas Have Consequences.” Are you familar with Weaver’s writings, by chance?

Mr. Power says:
“Matt, what I was trying to say is that naturalism is unfalsifiable in the sense that no experience could possibly count as contradicting it, since any experience could be explained by some naturalistic explanation (e.g. hallucination or dreaming, as naturalistic accounts, could explain any experience). “

I agree completely that naturalism is not immanently falsifiable; I had no intention of disagreeing with that in my last post. If the implication is that falsifiability is a necessary criteria for valid knowledge then I think that position has problems, though. I am not saying that falsifiability as universal epistemic criteria was directly implied, just that it might be taken as indirectly implied.

“I get the impression that you have a solid background in philosophy.”

Thanks. I have no formal philosophy training whatsoever; my formal education is both technical and in business. I do spend way too much time in Barnes and Noble, at the library, and on the net though.

“Are you familar with Weaver’s writings, by chance?”

I’ve heard of him, but I don’t remember ever reading _Ideas Have Consequences_. I have a particularly poor memory for where specifically I’ve picked up this or that, but pretty much everything I know was swiped from somewhere.

I’m not sure whether Mr. Power is being responsive to my specific point that God and Darwinian evolution are incompatible. He says that the existence of life forms on earth including man required a divine intelligence. I of course agree. But then he starts speaking in the Darwinian language of natural selection. He doesn’t specifically say, WHAT IS IT that’s being selected. If you’re a Darwinian (whether of the secular type or the Catholic type), you believe that what is being selected is randomly appearing mutations. It’s not clear to me that that’s not also what Mr. Power still believes. If that is what he believes, then he is still supposing that God directed the whole plan of the evolution of life, AND that random mutations were the basis of that plan. As I’ve argued, that’s impossible, though I am starting to lose hope that I have convinced anyone here of that point. The cultural imperative to walk benignly out of that courtroom carrying both Darwin and the Bible under one’s arm is just too great.

As a reality check, does Mr. Power or anyone else in this discussion agree with me that Darwinian evolution (i.e. evolution of new life forms through random mutations and natural selection) is compatible with the existence of God?

Correction. Of course I meant to say:

Does Mr. Power or anyone else in this discussion agree with me that Darwinian evolution (i.e. evolution of new life forms through random mutations and natural selection) is incompatible with the existence of God?

Mr. Auster writes:
“If that is what he believes, then he is still supposing that God directed the whole plan of the evolution of life, AND that random mutations were the basis of that plan. As I’ve argued, that’s impossible, though I am starting to lose hope that I have convinced anyone here of that point.”

There may be an apparent contradiction, but no more so than with many other God-related issues, e.g. free will. I personally find the circle easier to square here, since I have personally designed systems with random inputs that produced deterministic outputs. Of course, I am also not a Darwinist; but that is because Darwinism is bad science.

“The cultural imperative to walk benignly out of that courtroom carrying both Darwin and the Bible under one’s arm is just too great.”

With all due respect to Mr. Auster, this postmodern construction of disagreement with his thesis doesn’t do the actual disagreement justice.

Here are some ideas. Perhaps it would be useful to refrain from making God dependant upon the validity or invalidity of a scientific theory such as Darwin’s. Christians assume God is found through faith and lost through faithlessness. This might be the key that reveals the lack of dependence. God is not found or lost by using logical inferences to disprove Darwin’s theory, which might or might not make sense. Moreover, if God were to design a system that our limited intellect perceives as random, He could do so and we would be none the wiser. If one believes in God, one does so through faith and not logic. Man might never prove the origin of the species. Perhaps if we broke the intellectual connection between God and Darwin’s theory, we would realize we have been spending far too much research money on evolutionary biology relative to the other sciences.

Maybe an example will help.

Suppose I want to make an electronic music synthesizer that makes a perfect middle C that sounds just like a cathedral pipe organ. My music synthesizer has two components. One component is a random noise generator. The other is a filter. I pass the random noise signal — the best sort for this application — through the filter, and viola, I get a perfect pipe organ middle-C at the output.

If the ENTIRE SYSTEM were random (whatever it means for an entire system to be random) then even defining input and output wouldn’t make any sense. But a random INPUT can in fact produce a determined, and even musical, OUTPUT and often does. By design, even. And Darwinism, although it is bad science for other reasons, does not postulate that the entire system described is random (not to imply that the words “the entire system is random” mean anything coherent).

None of this implies that God plays dice; but if the dice are rolling that doesn’t imply that there is no God.

Maybe what Mr. Auster is saying is that because God is omniscient nothing is random to God. That may be, but it is a philosophical problem of the same order as “can God make a rock so heavy that He can’t pick it up”, and that sort of thing. It has nothing specifically to do with Darwinism.

“The Darwinian theory of evolution through random mutation and natural selection precludes Genesis and transcendent reality.” — Prof. Iannone  

1) Does it preclude Genesis if what God “made in his own image” was not man’s body but man’s soul?  Can’t God have taken the evolved body as he found it (evolved through random mutation and survival of the fittest) and breathed a soul into it?  When people talk about “life,” they’re not talking about the mortal husk — the physical thing wherein dwells the soul during our trajectory through time, between what are known as birth and death.  That husk — that thing — has no “life,” but only inanimate, non-sentient mechanical properties by means of which the soul is anchored to time for a certain span, departing thence foreverafter once the mortal husk is spent.  Can a brain think and feel?  Yes but it cannot “know” that it thinks and feels any more than a machine can — only the soul can “know” that.  When people talk about “life” they do not mean nuts-and-bolts like the chemical properties in solution of the molecules of cell microtubules and how those properties vary as a function of the pH of the surrounding cytoplasm, etc., etc..  They’re talking about the soul.  About the soul, biology, physics, chemistry, and Darwin’s theory of evolution have nothing to say because they all are one hundred percent clueless in regard to it and therefore utterly dumb before it. Only the world of faith dares to address its mysteries. 

2) Why should it preclude transcendent reality if the transcendent is perceived by the soul? 

“According to Provine, ‘If evolution is true, all these lofty desires’ – such as ‘the existence of a personal god, free will, life after death, immutable moral laws, and ultimate meaning in life’ – are ‘hopeless.’ ” — Prof. Iannone

I fail to see what any of these has to do with evolution.  Each of them is apprehended — is perceived — not thanks to what evolution has wrought, but thanks to what God has “created in his own image” — that is, our souls.

” ‘Instead,’ [Provine] declares, ‘we’re produced by a process that gives not one damn about us. It simply plops us here as humans on the earth the same way it does chimpanzees or gorillas or the AIDS virus or anything else.’ ” — Prof. Iannone 

We’re produced by *a* process?  More than one process is responsible for having produced us:  natural ones, and a divine one.  The natural ones do not, it is true, “give one damn about us.”  But the divine one does. 

” ‘[The process that made us] simply plops us here … the same way it does … the AIDS virus … “  — Prof. Iannone

Did God give the AIDS virus a soul? 

“Sociobiologists argue that social evolution is a direct outgrowth of biological evolution. In the drive to fulfill the evolutionary mandate to reproduce themselves and spread their genes, human beings have developed certain characteristics, dispositions and patterns of behavior that can be seen as ethical or moral and that are now hardwired into our species. For example, women, driven by the Darwinian mandate to pass on their genes, desire protection for their offspring and are therefore eager to form monogamous attachments. Driven by the same Darwinian mandate, a man wants to know that a woman’s children are definitely his own and he will therefore bind himself to her in a monogamous relationship despite his natural proclivity to roam. Pure biology thus produces what we think of as morality. Sociobiology can only work backwards from the moral order that we are already familiar with by virtue of tradition and/or revelation and then suggest some evolutionary hypothesis to explain it. As C.S. Lewis might put it, you can’t go from an ‘is’ to an ‘ought’ – that is, there is no way to derive moral strictures from the facts of biology. The laws of evolution cannot lead to morality, but inevitably lapse into mere adaptation and survival of the fittest.” — Prof. Iannone 

But that’s morality.  Not only CAN you go from an “is” to an “ought,” but there CAN’T be “oughts” without “ises” first:  “This is the way we are, therefore this is the way we ought to be.  Were we some other way, the way we ought to be in that case might be different.  How ought you to be?  I can answer that, because I know how you are.”  Morality doesn’t exist in a vacuum.  It doesn’t exist for bloodless, physically formless, spiritually featureless “things” which lack all biology and all sociobiology — which lack arms, legs, genital organs, faces, personalities, hearts, weaknesses, strengths, flaws.  It exists for flesh-and-blood beings who have desires, sex drives, selfishness, envy, sloth, happiness, interest in passing on their genes, etc.  Morality doesn’t exist for the already-perfect, the already-pure.  The Ten Commandments don’t apply to the world of angels, where they would be somehow superfluous, out of place, meaningless even.

“For [evolutionary] changes to lead to a definite, God-planned end (e.g. the human form) they cannot have been random.” — Lawrence Auster

Why can’t they have been random?  If you wait long enough, random changes will include the one you need.  Wait long enough again, and the next one you need will come up. Besides, what about the fact which a few in the thread (such as Matt and one or two others) have already alluded to, that what seems random to us may not be to God?

Unadorned asks:
“Does it preclude Genesis if what God ‘made in his own image’ was not man’s body but man’s soul?”

Lets assume that the human body IS specifically a teleological design of God’s. Lets go further and assume (as I think true) that Larry Auster, exactly as he is, is part of God’s teleological design. The use of randomness (of either the epistemic pseudo-random variety or the ontologically really-random variety) somewhere in the process DOES NOT MEAN that the end product (Mr. Auster) was not deliberately produced exactly as he is by design; any more than the use of the free will of Mr. Auster’s parents in the creation of Mr. Auster means that Mr. Auster is not specifically a part of the teleological design. If anything the problem with randomness is LESS of an intellectual problem to mere humans than free will, because we know how to construct determined outcomes (like music) using random inputs; whereas we humans do not know how to construct determined outcomes from free will.

Mr. Murgos writes:
“Perhaps it would be useful to refrain from making God dependant upon the validity or invalidity of a scientific theory such as Darwin’s.”

The basic difficulty is that “scientific theory” is an equivocal term. ANY scientific theory treated as epistemically comprehensive religion/metaphysics is a problem, and people do that with physical theories all the time; especially people who have devoted their lives to them.

“If one believes in God, one does so through faith and not logic.”

That isn’t true for Catholics. Catholics believe that knowledge of God’s existence is available to reason. St. Thomas Acquinas’ five ways are perhaps the most famous actual examples. Faith is not belief in something without rational basis, it is trust in God Who Reveals; and even with perfect reason one can still lack trust. It is true that that trust can extend to the point where no rational existential knowledge is asked for, particularly for those who for whatever reasons haven’t jumped through the hoops of reasoning their way to God’s existence. It is also true that faith and reason reinforce each other: the more one trusts God the more one can know. But again, knowledge of God’s _existence_ is in fact available to human reason.

Matt (on Behe etc.): You say that as a practical matter it isn’t very difficult to estimate complexity. I am unfamiliar with Behe, but this sounds very doubtful to me. Given a picture of a Mandelbrot set, for instance—an apparently extremely, indeed infinitely, detailed geometrical structure which turns out to be fully describable by a simple mathematical algorithm—there would seem to be no way of correctly estimating its complexity without being informed of the simple “code” underlying it.

On a somewhat related topic, it strikes me as implausible that a physical organism such as a human one could, as in the scientific theory, be “generated” from the relatively simple DNA code (most of which is now thought to be “junk”, I think I read somewhere). Yet the above example seems to suggest that it is not inconceivable. The rate of Darwinian evolution of DNA codes is I think susceptible to precise theoretical treatment, though again I’m not familiar with the current state of research. Perhaps, then, the real question we should be asking is whether the present-day organism is explicable on the basis of its present-day genetic code. If it is, then Darwinian evolution seems to become quite plausible.

Ian Hare:
“You say that as a practical matter it isn’t very difficult to estimate complexity.”

Not in general, but in the specific context of Behe’s argument vis-a-vis a specific class of tiny biochemical machines, yes. Behe’s biochemical machines (cilium, the blood clotting chain, etc) are composed of individual molecules as parts, each of which is strictly necessary in order for the tiny machine to function at all; and without functioning that tiny machine cannot be selected by natural selection, since it provides no advantage to its host.

Concretely defining “complexity” in a general sense is of course another matter entirely.

Defining irreducable complexity for Behe is like defining the relevance of evidence in a specific court case; defining “relevance” as a universal concept is also another matter. Many of Behe’s critics conflate the specifically relevant notion of irreducable complexity in Behe’s thesis with some abstract and supposedly generally relevant straw-man concept of complexity.

“Perhaps, then, the real question we should be asking is whether the present-day organism is explicable on the basis of its present-day genetic code. If it is, then Darwinian evolution seems to become quite plausible.”

Sure. In the abstract there is no obvious reason why some terrifically sophisticated software, like that found in living DNA, can’t account for what goes on in biochemistry. Neo-Darwinism can mean any number of things, each of which is either tritely true (DNA along with its surrounding life processes is really sophisticated and adaptable), manifestly false (random mutation is the only mechanism of adaptive change in the DNA software and therefore ultimately explains all cause and effect within living things), or dogmatic tautological assertion (life must be comprehensively explicable by some combination of randomness and immutable laws). Behe establishes the manifest falsity of the middle one with actual data against actual test cases.

I have not succeeded in getting across my ideas on this topic, at least in this forum and at this time.

To sum up the responses:

Unadorned has not taken my points, and has not responded to my argument that for the body to be the vehicle of the soul it already had to have developed to a certain degree of complexity and refinement, and therefore the question arises HOW it developed to that point. Unadorned declines to engage the issue I raised, but instead repeats the position that random Darwinian evolution suffices.

Similarly, Mr. Murgos simply reiterates the God-and-Darwin position: “Moreover, if God were to design a system that our limited intellect perceives as random, He could do so and we would be none the wiser.”

As for Matt, I’m not sure exactly what he is saying. He quotes me: “The cultural imperative to walk benignly out of that courtroom carrying both Darwin and the Bible under one’s arm is just too great.” Then he comments: “With all due respect to Mr. Auster, this postmodern construction of disagreement with his thesis doesn’t do the actual disagreement justice.”

I’m not sure what Matt means by this, except that he doesn’t agree with what I said. As for the substance of what I said, I am referring to the fact that many people, especially Catholics, are culturally and emotionally committed to the idea that Darwin can be reconciled with the Jewish and Christian idea of God. This is of course separate from the question of whether the God-and-Darwin view is true. Nevertheless, I do believe that there is an orthodoxy that makes critical thought in this area particularly difficult, especially given the fact that (as Miss Iannone pointed out in her article) the orthodoxy is virtually never questioned.

As for Matt’s example of the organ and the random noise generator, it doesn’t seem quite apropos as it still seems to be suggesting an overall ordering force in the system, and therefore it’s not about true randomness (which suggests the possibility that Matt and I are not in disagreement after all). Also, Matt is understanding my discussion of randomness too rigidly. When I reject randomness, I am obviously not rejecting randomness in the case of say, the genetic mix that goes to create each individual organism. I’m speaking of randomness (to repeat myself) in the macro Darwinian sense of purely random mutations leading to wholly new organic forms that did not exist at one point in time and then did exist at a later point in time, such as fish, dinosaurs, whales, lions, and humans. (Once again, this raises the possibility that Matt, once he puts aside his qualifications, is actually in agreement with me.)

Mr Auster writes:
“Once again, this raises the possibility that Matt, once he puts aside his qualifications, is actually in agreement with me.”

That is possible, and I think Mr. Auster correctly zeroes in on randomness and its role in the described system. Randomness-as-sole-cause or randomness-as-sole-explanation isn’t what metaphysical Darwinism claims, though.

“I’m speaking of randomness (to repeat myself) in the macro Darwinian sense of purely random mutations leading to wholly new organic forms that did not exist at one point in time and then did exist at a later point in time, such as fish, dinosaurs, whales, lions, and humans.”

But again, random mutations even in the most dogmatic neo-Darwinism are just an input. This is exactly the bit that Richard Dawkins doesn’t understand, or more likely where he deliberately equivocates in order to argue for his religion. In Dawkins’ books (maybe _The Selfish Gene_, I don’t remember which one specifically and I don’t own them since I don’t want to contribute to him financially) he draws on computer simulations that produce the works of Shakespeare from random inputs. Philip Johnson’s (or maybe it was Gerald Schroeder’s) critique on this is dead on target: the inputs may be random, but the simulation was designed to produce the works of Shakespeare, so it did. One notices immediately that it did not produce Chaucer.

In neo-Darwinism the random input is, to simplify somewhat, that radioactivity sometimes randomly knocks loose a base pair on a DNA strand. That is a “mutation”, and it occurs in response to a random event. But so what? The theory in its benign form just says that the system takes that random input and uses it to catalyze and pace adaptive changes, which are locked in statistically if they get passed to offspring. (The notion that this is the ONLY adaptive catalyst/cause is ludicrously unlikely in the face of actual data, but that isn’t what we are stuck on at the moment). The issue is not the actual randomness in the actual theory; the issue is the deep metaphysical significance which is (falsely) ascribed to it.

“On a somewhat related topic, it strikes me as implausible that a physical organism such as a human one could, as in the scientific theory, be ‘generated’ from the relatively simple DNA code (most of which is now thought to be ‘junk,’ I think I read somewhere).” — Ian Hare

Ian, remember that the DNA doesn’t directly control the functioning of the organism (whether that organism be people, dinosaurs, viruses, or bacteria), telling everything in the body at every point what it must do. The organism’s proteins do what they must do entirely on their own, needing no instructions or guidance from anyone or anything. All the DNA does is provide the blueprints for the manufacture by the cells of their needed proteins. When these proteins, once manufactured, find themselves in their proper environments in the cells, they behave, entirely on their own and without anyone telling them how, in such a way as to carry on all life-processes of the organism. The DNA isn’t telling the proteins what to do. They do it automatically, as part of their purely chemical properties in solution, etc. The only trick is to get them manufactured. What everyone calls “life” is (apart from deep mysteries like the soul and, perhaps, self-consciousness) simply the properties of certain proteins in solutions, cytosols, etc.

My point here is simply that some may not understand this, and may therefore imagine that a level of complexity is required for DNA which is not in fact needed. “Life” comes from the built-in properties of proteins.

Unadorned writes:
“What everyone calls “life” is (apart from deep mysteries like the soul and, perhaps, self-consciousness) simply the properties of certain proteins in solutions, cytosols, etc.”

Well, I object to the term “simply”. Any one of those billions of proteins may fold in three dimensions into its functional shape in a matter of a minute or so, but all the computers on earth working together can’t simulate how that one protein does so in the entire lifetime of the universe. How the software of life “figures this out” is an utter mystery, but the one thing that is certain is that our universe is incredibly fine-tuned to make this all possible.

“My point here is simply that some may not understand this, and may therefore imagine that a level of complexity is required for DNA which is not in fact needed. ‘Life’ comes from the built-in properties of proteins.”

This is a good point and worth emphasizing. DNA and what it does is just a small part of a vast universe of interdependent things.

Perhaps what Mr. Auster is trying to do is steer us back to the scientific issue Mr. Kalb introduced rather than the theological issues. If that is the case, I have nothing to add because I have not studied the modern scientific objections to Darwinism. (I do agree that we should try to remain on point.)

I do not claim to grasp Matt’s discussion of how the neo-Darwinians understand the concept of randomness. It seems like they are playing with words in order to protect the scientistic orthodoxy from the sharp critical response which an honest presentation of their views would elicit—a game that has been going on now for 144 years. I am referring to the year of publication of Origin of Species, since Darwin played this game big time, actually believing in a totally materialistic cosmos, but clothing his theories in verbiage in which a religious-minded person could imagine he was seeing some religious content. In this connection, it is most ironic that the scientists cynically offer “boob bait for the bubbas” (i.e. for the believing Christians), while the “bubbas” sincerely assert their own agreement with the scientists.

In any case, if the randomness is within an organized system in which the randomness is likely to lead to a certain result, then clearly that is not randomness anymore in the sense in which any ordinary person would understand it. It means rather that there is an organized, teleological system in which certain forms—such as eagles, bulls, lions, and man—are programmed to appear (though the details of those forms and the evolutionary path toward their appearance may not be strictly determined). One might call such forms archetypes in the mind of God, waiting for the right physical and spiritual conditions to obtain before they appear in physical manifestation. Now, if we believe that anything like that is the case, then we have excluded Darwinian evolution as the explanation for the appearance of new life forms.

Is Matt in agreement with me?

Lacking knowledge of philosophy, such as a full understanding of what is meant by “teleological systems,” I’m making a complete fool of myself to jump in over my head, but here goes (and would someone kindly have the patience to educate me afterward?):

Mr. Auster writes,

“In any case, if the randomness is within an organized system in which the randomness is likely to lead to a certain result, then clearly that is not randomness anymore in the sense in which any ordinary person would understand it.”

Isn’t the “result” which randomness (i.e., random mutations) “leads to” simply the putting of a variety of slightly different characteristics into a population? Each of the individuals in that population, now no longer identical with all the others, is then tested — tested against the environment (is this one’s fur still warm enough?; are that one’s feathers still aerodynamic enough?; etc.), tested against each other (this one, his father’s or mother’s DNA having been mutated a bit, can now run slightly faster than that one, so in a pinch — a food dearth — he’ll get more food for himself and his young), etc. Those having the bad luck to get the disadvantageous traits will in the long run be able to have fewer offspring than those getting either the neutral ones or the advantageous ones: the more successful traits — meaning those conferring some environmental or direct competitive advantage — get selected for. Thus does Darwinian evolution move forward. No? What am I missing in the discussion? When there is mention, in discussion of Darwinian evolution, of “randomness [being] likely to lead to a certain result,” I don’t follow.

“It means rather that there is an organized, teleological system in which certain forms—such as eagles, bulls, lions, and man—are programmed to appear (though the details of those forms and the evolutionary path toward their appearance may not be strictly determined).”

Why must *these particular* forms have been pre-programmed to appear? Why couldn’t there have been an absence of constraints on what forms would appear (constraints other than the chemical, biological, geographical, meteorological, and so on, realities of the world itself: climate, availability of certain energy sources, the characteristics of predator and prey species, etc.)?

“One might call such forms archetypes in the mind of God …”

I don’t see how we could ever grasp whether or not God had particular species-archetypal forms in mind, which he was aiming at.

I’m missing something here, something embarrassingly simple. That’s obvious.

Mr. Auster writes:
“In any case, if the randomness is within an organized system in which the randomness is likely to lead to a certain result, then clearly that is not randomness anymore in the sense in which any ordinary person would understand it.”

That is the only sort of randomness that there is, though. Randomness free of context is just pure chaos; in any sort of context at all it is no longer pure randomness. I think that randomness and purposelessness often are conflated. Naturalism asserts that everything is comprehensively explicable as a combination of purposeless randomness and purposeless immutable laws, thereby assuming universal purposelessness. But the metaphysical assumption of purposelesness is unnecessary: even if all there is is immutable laws and randomness that does not necessitate purposelessness. God could still have put that exact combination of laws and randomness into place on purpose in order to achieve what it has in fact achieved.

“Now, if we believe that anything like that is the case, then we have excluded Darwinian evolution as the explanation for the appearance of new life forms.”

No, we haven’t excluded Darwinism unless Darwinism entails the assumption of universal purposelessness. An assumption of randomness within the machine is not the same thing as an assumption of universal purposelessness, and universal purposelessness can apply (or not) to deterministic laws as much as to randomness. Aristotle’s God can still have created exactly this world by creating immutable laws and randomness (of course Aristotle’s God isn’t necessarily personal, but any God with that sort of power could be personal if He wanted to :-).

One thing that is certain is that this world exists uniquely for us. Tweak it just the most mind-numbingly tiniest bit and all of us who are here wouldn’t exist at all.

I think Unadorned has stated accurately the Darwinian view of randomness. The problem is that there is no plausible scenario by which discrete, tiny, random mutations selected for their survivability can lead to the appearance of vastly complex organs (the eye is the classic example), or of whole new life forms. So the Darwinian theory of evolution is unsustainable even on its own terms. However, the specific issue we’ve been exploring here is not the truth of Darwinian evolution in itself, but whether Darwinian evolution is reconcilable with the existence of a loving God who created the universe and created the human race as his (potential) sons.

Teleology means that something is directed toward a particular end. In the present context, it means in part that the appearance of new organs and organisms is directed toward higher and higher forms, and ultimately toward man, the one being who is capable of knowing God. Teleological is the opposite of random.

Here’s an example of teleological thinking. The phenomenon of winged flight has appeared independently in several unrelated evolutionary lines—insects, birds, mammals. Even the structure of the wing in these unrelated species has fundamental similarities. The Darwinian view would be that this all happened by chance. A teleological (or, if you like, wholistic) view is that the very nature of a planet with a pressurized atmosphere tends to bring forth the capacity of winged flight—that’s why flight appears over and over in unrelated species. In other words, there is some property in the system as a whole which tends to draw some of the individual components of that system into a certain form that corresponds with that property. The whole is the end that draws the parts to it.

In the same way, God is the whole of existence, he draws forth out of existence a being who will correspond most closely with God’s own qualities, a being who can know and love God and become, in his limited sphere, like him. God is the end of man. God is the reason, the purpose, why man came into existence. And if that is true, then God, in some manner we can only speculate on, guided the evolution of life so as to lead to the human form, because only in the human form can God be consciously known and loved.

However, my own sense of it is not that God “guided” evolution, which is a very anthropomorphic way of understanding it, but that, since all things come from God, evolution is an unfolding of higher potentialities that are within life from the beginning.

The specific answer to Unadorned’s question, “What am I missing in the discussion?” is that the random mutations he’s talking about could only explain changes within an already existing species. Thus (the argument goes) a giraffe with a longer neck will survive longer and have more offspring than a giraffe with a shorter neck, and soon all giraffes have longer necks. But such random mutations, even if they can explain the appearance of a longer neck in a giraffe, cannot explain the appearance of ENTIRELY NEW LIFE FORMS. They cannot explain, for example, the appearance of a human brain with vastly more capacities than are actually used. In Darwinism, each new addition to the organism is there only because it serves the immediate purpose of survivability leading to more offspring. Any change that is not immediately advantageous is instantly weeded out. So the appearance of an organ that has more capacities than are actually used is impossible in Darwinian terms.

Darwin himself started the confusion between micro changes within a species and macro changes leading to new species. He talks about variations within a species as resulting from selective pressures or deliberate breeding, phenomena that everyone understands. Then he extrapolates from that to the entirely different question of the evolution of new organs and new species that never existed before. His readers, accepting natural selection in the micro instance, were fooled into accepting it in the macro instance. The Darwinians have continued the deceit ever since then, and why shouldn’t they, since the technique is still successful?

Mr Auster writes:
“However, the specific issue we’ve been exploring here is not the truth of Darwinian evolution in itself, but whether Darwinian evolution is reconcilable with the existence of a loving God who created the universe and created the human race as his (potential) sons.”

An excellent problem statement.

“Teleological is the opposite of random.”

Here is where we disagree. Teleological is the opposite of metaphysically purposeless, not mathematically random. Immutable laws as efficient causes can be metaphysically just as purposeless or as purposeful as randomness (I know this because I have used both for my own purposes). Randomness is a mathematical property, not an eschatological property. But I do think that conflation of “random” with “purposeless” is the root philosophical problem. They are not the same thing.

“In other words, there is some property in the system as a whole which tends to draw some of the individual components of that system into a certain form that corresponds with that property. The whole is the end that draws the parts to it.”

That (and what preceded it) is a very clear exposition of teleological thinking. It isn’t incompatible with Darwinism as scientific theory, though; it is only incompatible with Darwinism as naturalist religion. Furthermore, the incompatibility doesn’t arise from the mechanisms in the theory, one of which is mathematically random mutation, but with the metaphysical assumption of purposelessness. Further-furthermore, the randomness in quantum physics suffers from the same exact duality. If the randomness in neo-Darwinism implies incompatibility with God then an exploding atomic bomb is just as incompatible with God.

I once again must admit to failure to reach satisfactory closure with my interlocutors on the logical point I have doggedly pursued through this whole thread. I thought I saw the possibility of agreement in the case of Matt, but—no doubt as a result of my own thickheadedness—I have been unable to understand his ideas about randomness and purposelessness or to see how they relate to the point I’ve been trying to make.

I would vote no, because the Holocaust is a hoax. Although the Germans did imprison the Jews, they did not make any attempt to exterminate them. The lie that “six million” Jews died in a “Holocaust” was first printed in 1919 in an issue of American Hebrew magazine, in an attempt to generate sympathy for Zionism. It didn’t work then, so they tried it again successfully after WWII.

See here:

http://www.newsturmer.com/Andre%20artikler/holocaust.htm

Here’s the text:

From across the sea SIX MILLION men and women call to us for help, and eight hundred thousand little children cry for bread.

[…] These children, these men and women are our FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE HUMAN FAMILY, with the same claim on life as we, the same susceptibility to the winter’s cold, the same PROPENSITY TO DEATH before the fangs of hunger. Within them reside the illimitable possibilities for the advancement of the human race as naturally would reside in SIX MILLION human beings. WE MAY NOT BE THEIR KEEPERS BUT WE OUGHT TO BE THEIR HELPERS.

[…]

IN THE FACE OF DEATH, IN THE THROES OF STARVATION there is no place for mental distinctions of creed, no place for physical differences of race. In this catastrophy, when SIX MILLION HUMAN BEINGS are being WHIRLED TOWARD THE GRAVE by a CRUEL AND RELENTLESS FATE, only the most idealistic promptings of human nature should sway the heart and move the hand.

SIX MILLION MEN AND WOMEN ARE DYING from lack of the necessaries of life; eight hundred thousand children cry for bread. And THIS FATE is upon them through NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN, through no transgression of the laws of God or man; but through the awful tyranny of war and a BIGOTED LUST FOR JEWISH BLOOD.

In this THREATENED HOLOCAUST OF HUMAN LIFE, forgotten are the niceties of philosophical distinction, forgotten are the differences of historical interpretation; and the determination to help the helpless, to shelter the homeless, to clothe the naked and to feed the hungry becomes a religion at whose altar men of every race can worship and women of every creed can kneel…