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Zmirak dismantles the Derb, revisited
(Note: at 10 p.m. April 30 a bunch of comments were posted in this thread.)
Worth a re-read: “Zmirak eviscerates Derbyshire,” from October 2008. In an exchange with John Derbyshire at Taki’s Magazine, John Zmirak, a paleocon Catholic writer of high intelligence who, unfortunately, generally prefers jokiness and personalism (and, on one occasion gross obscenity directed at Sarah Palin) over serious argumentation, becomes passionate and serious and destroys Derbyshire’s materialist, anti-Christian position. Zmirak shows, among other things, that if Derbyshire’s reductionist ideas about reality were true, there wouldn’t be any “John Derbyshire” to have those ideas. I wonder if Derbyshire had the slightest realization of the fact that Zmirak had turned him into the intellectual equivalent of a bombed out crater.
- end of initial entry -
Trevor H. writes:
You said:
“according to the consistent Darwinian view (i.e., the Darwinian view without the escape hatch of unprincipled exceptions), the only reason people believe or say or do anything is that the instinct to believe or say or do that thing was planted in them by chance genetic mutations that occurred in their distant ancestors and were then passed down to the present generation by natural selection.”
That’s setting up a straw man. My understanding of man’s evolution is that natural selection has increased our general intelligence in many ways, as well as given us certain genetically-based instincts. Sure, some of our tendencies were, therefore, planted in us by chance genetic mutations, but much of what we believe is not—it is the result of our sensory and logical faculties thinking and coming to a conclusion. Those general faculties were brought about by evolution as well. We have both innate predilections and a general capacity to think, analyze, and believe what we choose. All of it is the result of evolution.
Regarding reproduction, it’s clear that passing on all of your genes gives them the best chance to stick around the gene pool, but passing on some of your genes, or similar genes, is the next best thing. That is probably one reason we do have a tendency to help our kindred people to survive and procreate. Another reason is that an internally altruistic society is more productive and functional than one which must contend with much internal conflict. It helps that group of people survive as a society, vis-a-vis other less internally functional groups.
LA replies:
You write:
Those general faculties were brought about by evolution as well. We have both innate predilections and a general capacity to think, analyze, and believe what we choose. All of it is the result of evolution.
But this is what I don’t understand. How do random mutations in genes that are selected because they help their possessor have more offspring result in the ability to think and analyze? How does the mindless process of the survival of the fittest random mutations result in mind and consciousness? You are baldly asserting as a truth (“All of it is the result of evolution”) that which must be demonstrated, which Darwinian science has never demonstrated. All the Darwinians have is guesses, imaginative scenarios, wishful thinking, fairy tales.
Trevor H. writes:
Well, even if you disagree with the idea that our intelligence is the result of evolution, evolutionary theory does not require that the result of evolution is a rigid instinct, which was my point of rebuttal…
“How do random mutations in genes which are selected because they help their possessor have more offspring result in the ability to think and analyze?”
Intelligence clearly gives smart people an advantage over those less smart. It could mean we are better hunters, better at planning ahead for winter, better at figuring out how to protect ourselves from beasts or enemies, or a number of other things. General intelligence confers an advantage in survival and thereby in the ability to reproduce. So the smarter people reproduce more. So successive generations are smarter. If you are wondering exactly how the brain works to create our sense of self or consciousness, we are still investigating that. But it’s pretty clear from experimental observation that specific parts of the brain are doing specific types of mental tasks or playing specific mental roles.
Why do some of us believe that evolution is what happened? It’s a matter of looking for the most likely explanation for what we see today, based on all the evidence. We have seen selective pressures cause evolution in species with a very short lifetimes, such as fruit flies. We know we can evolve all sorts of novel and unexpected functions, algorithms, and structures through applying simulated evolution to computer programs and models. We know that there is a record of primates which shows only primates akin to chimps a long time ago, then as we approach the present, more and more modern ones, which become more and more like us.
The theory also makes logical sense, because mutations do happen, and the genes of those who procreate should generally have been the genes of those who were most successful in handling the pressures of their time and place, while those least-well adapted should have been less successful in procreating…
Of course, it’s a theory pieced together from evidence and logical deduction and induction, like every other scientific theory. But the fact that evolution (limited by the time available) has been demonstrated in experiments, and all the other evidence appears to fit the theory, is quite convincing. I don’t think there’s any other explanation that makes sense or has the same degree of evidence to support it. That’s not believing in fairy tales or guesses.
LA replies:
Quick answer, I’ll try to reply at more length later:
I am not disputing or questioning the idea that once human intelligence has come into existence, natural selection could result in successive generations of people getting smarter. The increase of human IQ over the last 50,000 years as laid out by Michael Hart in “Understanding Human History” makes a lot of sense.
What I am questioning is the idea that mindless genetic mutations plus the mindless survival of the fittest mindless mutations could have produced human intelligence in the first place.
Trevor replies:
I see a continuous spectrum of intelligence down to very simple organisms, so I don’t think there is any point at which you can say that which came before could not have evolved one more step to be a bit smarter. It is the sum total of all those tiny steps (including physiological changes allowing language) which has led to our present intelligence. At each step, there was an individual or group that happened to be a bit better or smarter, and their progeny survived…
LA replies:
I just realized: these “tiny steps” are the all purpose but non-specific and non-demonstrated verbal formula on which the entire Darwinian edifice rests. Whatever the challenge to Darwinism may be, whatever logical or evidentiary obstacle to the Darwinian theory is presented, for example, the logical impossibility of the Darwinian evolution of copulation, or of consciousness, the answer is always: “Tiny steps could have done it”! But this “answer” says nothing. These “tiny steps” are just a placeholder containing no information. It is of approximately the same truth value as G.W. Bush saying, “Once the people of Iraq adopt freedom, the whole Mideast will adopt freedom.” It’s a phrase on which people place their hopes, a phrase they choose to believe, but it has no demonstrated connection with reality; or, rather, it is contradicted by reality.
Trevor H. replies:
Didn’t you agree that evolution can happen in tiny steps? If so, I’m just saying they can add up to big things, whereas you seem to stop short of that for some reason. Where do you draw the line, and why? The steps are non-specific because they are in response to different selective pressures throughout history.
The difficulty I think, in wrapping one’s head around evolution, is that we have a hard time understanding how a solution to a problem can be found by natural processes. However, it’s really just a numbers game. Enough variation and some individuals are better than others. Keep only those individuals around, and the population’s features start to change.
We do see this happen in the experiments we can do. We just can’t replicate evolution of, e.g., humans, because we don’t have millions of years for our experiments. But in computational models, we can evolve amazing structures which no one could have predicted just by simulating evolutionary pressures on populations.
We don’t have to understand the result (the brain/humans/intelligence) in order to understand the process. For example, we can train neural networks to recognize people’s faces. But we don’t understand how the neural network actually “works” because we didn’t “design” it per se. We just built it and trained it. We don’t understand how it actually does its processing because IT figured out how to change itself to get better, not us.
Kristor writes:
As to Trevor’s argument, I think he makes a strong case, which many other Darwinians do likewise, i.e., that happenstance has equipped us with reason does not entail that our reason is itself happenstantial, or that the conclusions we derive therefrom are therefore devoid of truth value. I think that this argument, so far as it goes, is correct. But it begs the question whether our reasoning is in fact happenstantial. Darwinism argues that there is nothing at work in biology except random variation and natural selection—than, i.e., happenstance. Dawkins famously argues that mental life is a special case of this procedure: what we call creative thought is the random deformation by neural structures of memes already coded in those neural structures, and the survival of those memes that happen to survive. If that is all there is to mental life, then reasoning is entirely happenstantial, and this would necessarily void its products of any truth value. I.e., if Dawkins is correct about mental life, then “correct” is really meaningless, so that if Dawkins is correct he is meaningless.
If thought is not orderly, then all the thought of Darwinists is just noise. So most Darwinists would argue that reasoning is not happenstantial, but on the contrary is ordered and organized. Trevor seems to be in this camp. And thus he faces the problem common to any Darwinist who aspires to science—to knowledge—of explaining how order can have arisen from sheer disorder, from mere happenstance. If genetic evolution is entirely happenstantial, entirely chaotic, what can it even mean to call some aspect of it, or some product of it, “orderly”? There is just no way to square this circle. If there is order, it can only have arisen from order. This is just thermodynamics, no? I mean, you can’t verify Darwinism in a lab, but in order to verify the metaphysical doctrine that you can’t get something from nothing, all you need is a thermometer!
So, if human reason is orderly, as Trevor would wish to say, then it cannot possibly have arisen from mere chaos. And that’s the end of Darwinism. If the doctrine of Darwinism is even meaningful, let alone true or false, then there has to be more at work in biological phenomena than mere happenstance.
Kristor continues:
You write:
What I am questioning is the idea that mindless genetic mutations plus the mindless survival of the fittest mindless mutations could have produced intelligence in the first place.
Yes. Just replace “intelligence” in that sentence with “mind” and you’ll have made it bulletproof. I mean, it’s already bulletproof, because intelligence is an aspect of mindfulness, but you will make it obviously bulletproof. You just can’t get x from an initial situation that is totally devoid of x, no matter how many tiny steps you take with that situation. You can rearrange a bunch of billiard balls an infinite number of times and the arrangement will never ever wake up. In order for something to be mindful, you must rearrange mindfulness into the configuration of that particular thing. You must start out with mindfulness if you are ever to have it.
This is why Plantinga says that consciousness is a defeater for Darwinism. Alan Roebuck is correct to focus on the issue.
Kristor continues:
Wait, I misspoke. Plantinga says, not that consciousness is, not just a defeater for Darwinism, not just a defeater for materialism, but for atheism itself. [LA replies: This sentence is hard to understand.]
LA revises the sentence as per Kristor’s suggestion:
What I am questioning is the idea that mindless genetic mutations plus the mindless survival of the fittest mindless mutations could have produced mind in the first place.
Alan Levine writes:
I would comment that it seems to me that intelligence is discontinous in extent and possibly different in kind—that of, say, chimps, being quite different from what may pass for intelligence in rotifers. I doubt that this casts any doubt on evolution, however.
Roger D. writes:
Trevor clearly cannot mean that consciousness exists at the very lowest level of organism, at the level of a bacterium, say. I should think that a flatworm would be about the simplest organism to which one might plausibly ascribe some rudimentary sort of awareness. Would Trevor recognize the appearance of the power of awarenesss, when it does appear, as something categorically new? Or does he believe that there are “tiny steps” between non-awareness and awareness? Conversely, would you say that a flatworm had to possess some sort of mental substance in order to experience an awareness of external reality?
Gintas writes:
The Darwinists just don’t quit, do they? A poem:
Tiny steps, baby steps, What About Bob?
Here a change, there a change, and Voila!
Or, to be scientific:
10 googly gazillion tiny steps x 0 = 0.
Alan Roebuck writes:
Regarding the latest Darwinism discussion:
Begin by recalling that for liberals, it’s equality uber alles: Distinctions are to be rejected. Inequality is an illusion or an injustice. Ultimately, all things are equal.
Well, Darwinism justifies this idea. According to Darwinism, for example, life and non-life exist on a continuum, which means that there is no essential difference between life and non-life: If non-life can drift into life through a random Darwinian process, then we cannot, even in principle, identify an absolute distinction between life and non-life. Life is just a slightly modified version of non-life. Similar comments pertain to consciousness and non-consciousness, humanity and non-humanity, morality and non-morality, and so on. According to Darwinism, all of these distinctions are essentially illusions or conventions; they have no substance.
The vast series of “tiny steps” to which Darwinists appeal to explain the appearance of apparently new properties or entities are their way of expressing that nothing essential has changed through the Darwinian process. In terms of one’s intuitive picture of the process, a tiny physical change brought on by random mutation could not possibly represent a radically new nature, such as the transition from non-consciousness to consciousness. A tiny step is only a trivial modification that does not change the being of the thing modified. Regardless of any other reasons why Darwinists resort to them, the “tiny steps” express and reinforce the idea that all things are really equal.
But if these tiny steps are trivial enough to be driven by random mutation coupled with natural selection, then they do not have enough substance to account for the vast changes that must be accounted for. Since his theory cannot actually account for the differences we see, the consistent Darwinist must deny these differences.
Of course, nobody can live as if this radical equality is true. Like leftists, Darwinist use their theory primarily to defend against ideas of which they disapprove
LA replies:
If the host of this website may be a sycophant for a moment, that is a great point by Mr. Roebuck. The very idea that everything that evolves evolves through “tiny steps” implies that nothing is essentially different from anything else. Meaning (1) that everything is on the same level as everything else (no higher and lower), and (2) that everything is essentially like everything else (no differences that matter between entries on the same level, such as persons, cultures, etc.).
In other words: modern liberalism.
I develop this idea in the opening section of my speech, “A Real Islam Policy for a Real America,” at the Preserving Western Civilization conference:
[The] world can be explained in terms of two dimensions, which I call the vertical axis and the horizontal axis. The vertical axis is the relationship between ourselves and that which is above us and below us, that which is better and worse, that which is more true and less true, the relation between God and man. The horizontal axis is the relationship between entities on the same level, between different people in the same society, or between different societies or different cultures.
On the horizontal axis, the question is: how similar are things to each other? How different are they from each other? How well do they get along? On the vertical axis, the question is, what are the standards by which we live? What is good behavior, what is bad behavior? To what extent are we following the good, to what extent are we falling short of it or turning away from it?…
What I’m saying here is nothing fancy or metaphysical, it’s something that all people know by common sense. We live within these two dimensions—the better and the worse, the more like and the less like—in everything we do.
That is, we did live within them, until modern liberalism came along and said that it’s wrong to discriminate between higher and lower, it’s wrong to discriminate between better and worse, it’s wrong to discriminate between like and unlike….
This is the ubiquitous yet unacknowledged horror of modern liberalism, that it takes the ordinary, differentiated nature of the world, which all human beings have always recognized, and makes it impossible for people to discuss it…
May 2
Trevor writes (sent 4-30):
“And thus he faces the problem common to any Darwinist who aspires to science—to knowledge—of explaining how order can have arisen from sheer disorder, from mere happenstance. If genetic evolution is entirely happenstantial, entirely chaotic, what can it even mean to call some aspect of it, or some product of it, “orderly”? There is just no way to square this circle. If there is order, it can only have arisen from order. This is just thermodynamics, no? I mean, you can’t verify Darwinism in a lab, but in order to verify the metaphysical doctrine that you can’t get something from nothing, all you need is a thermometer! “
Yes, I do think we have the capacity for rational thought, a capacity much atrophied in our society of late, yet still hanging in there. So it must be that something with the capacity for “orderly” thinking has arisen out of natural selection. This is one of the amazing aspects of evolution, and natural systems in general, that has been sort of rediscovered in recent years. Although the second law of thermodynamics is that entropy increases in the universe, it does not require that entropy increases everywhere. In some places it can decrease, and in others, increase more to compensate. [LA replies: Again, I feel that Trevor is non-responsive to the arguments that have been made here. He keeps assuming that which is to be demonstrated. If something exists, he says, it must have been created by natural selection.]
So in some parts of nature we do see self-assembling structures, molecules, etc. These processes are usually exothermic, so that the entropy in surrounding space in increased by the dissipation of heat, but a more complex structure is created as a result. You can see this in fusion (hydrogen to helium), and in many chemical reactions. You also see gravity bringing matter together into stars and planets, etc … Many crystal structures are amazingly “orderly,” but arose by happenstance. The total “order” or entropy in the universe is not increased, but it is increased locally. [LA replies: We don’t know how stars came into existence. And even if we did know it, it wouldn’t tell us that the Darwinian theory of how living things came into existence was true.]
When it comes to evolution, an amazing thing (IMHO) is that the selective pressures do create local order out of chaos. These random pressures act like a sieve—they allow certain successful traits to carry on while others die out, thus giving direction to the changes in a population.
Trevor H. writes:
Mr. Auster said:
“If the host of this website may be a sycophant for a moment, that is a great point by Mr. Roebuck. The very idea that everything that evolves through ‘tiny steps’ implies that nothing is essentially different from anything else. Meaning (1) that everything is on the same level as everything else (no higher and lower), and (2) that everything is essentially like everything else (no differences that matter between entries on the same level, such as persons, cultures, etc.).”
I will have to pick this apart a bit. Firstly, you are right that the idea that everything evolves through tiny steps implies, a similarity and a relationship between all living things. Specifically, the similarity is that they have all evolved from simple organisms, and ultimately from chemicals. [LA replies: So now life “evolved” out of non-life. But Darwinians don’t claim to have any theory of how life began. Gradual accumulations of naturally selected random changes over eons could not have done it; the thousands of chemicals necessary to form living cells had to all come together at once; and even if that happened, it wouldn’t explain life itself. Science has no more knowledge of the origin of life than it has of the origin of the universe.] The relationships are those defined by evolution—some organisms have evolved from others, some have split from a common ancestor and may be considered related in that sense… But I do not think that this means “nothing is essentially different from anything else” at all. Clearly the characteristics of humans, animals, etc., are vastly variegated, and those differences are very significant. Those differences arose through the process I’m describing. [LA replies: the argument is not that there would be no differences at all, but that there would be no fundamental differences of kind.]
Secondly, in one sense I can agree that everything is “on the same level”—only in the sense that all organisms come from simple origins and got where they are through similar processes. However, they are not on the same level at all in terms of their abilities, their characteristics, etc. I could sum up my sense in saying that humans are unique and more capable than other animals in many profound ways, but are of the same humble origins as other animals. [LA replies: Again, Trevor answers a fundamental challenge to his position by repeating his position.]
Thirdly, it may be true to say that, according to this view, everything is “essentially like” everything else, if by that you mean we are built of the same matter and the same processes. Again, however, I do not think this implies that our differences do not “matter.” They matter a great deal! [LA replies: Indeed they do, and those differences lead to the conclusion that they could not have come about through the gradual accumulation of chance tiny changes. But, as always, we’re at a rather amusing loggerheads here. The anti-Darwinians in this discussion offer facts about life that they say are incompatible with Darwinian evolution, such as the existence of higher order, the existence of human reason, and the existence of differences in form that are too large and fundamental ot have been produced by tiny changes over time; and Trevor’s response is: “Well, since those facts exist, that only proves that Darwinian evolution must have produced them.”]
There are certainly hippies who make that fallacious leap though, thinking that because we are all part of nature, we shouldn’t prefer our own children over an owl. Those people fail to note the specific differences and specific similarities that exist. I do see a thread of commonality among all things in our universe, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t all very very different.
Trevor writes:
Mr. Roebuck said:
“But if these tiny steps are trivial enough to be driven by random mutation coupled with natural selection, then they do not have enough substance to account for the vast changes that must be accounted for.”
I think this is one of the key reasons why people don’t accept evolution. But I don’t think it’s a valid argument. You are simply positing that you can’t get from A to B by tiny steps because it seems too incredible. Sure, it may seem amazing to us, but we’re talking about spans of time we can’t really wrap our heads around, as well as a huge diversity of conditions and selective pressures. Truly, the lengths of time are staggering. [LA replies: Again, Darwinians never respond to the actual substance of the arguments against Darwinism, they just say that tiny changes plus eons of time can do anything. It reminds me of an article by a former Jersey City teacher telling how when he pointed out to his black pupils how impossible it would be for the Los Angeles police to have engineered the frame-up of O.J. Simpson which the students accused the police of, one boy replied, “Mr. Gerson, these are the police. they can do anything.” In the same way, when it’s pointed out that certain facts about living things could not have happened according to Darwinism, the Darwinians reply, “Mr. Auster, This is Darwinian evolution. With tiny changes and enough time, Darwinian evolution can do anything.”]
In any case, if you can accept the effect of natural selection in moulding features to some degree, I don’t see that there is any reason to doubt that the effects of natural selection over hundreds of millions of years would work profound changes.
Trevor writes:
You have misunderstood me, so let’s try to simplify things.
Firstly, please give me some credit. ;) You say that I argue “if any biological fact exists, that only proves that Darwinian evolution must have created it.” That wouldn’t be any argument at all, would it? [LA replies: Well, that was my point. I think you have not presented an argument, I think you’ve presented various ideas and phrases that you think add up to an argument, but I don’t think they do. But as seen below, you say the same about me.]
So, obviously, that is not my argument. My fundamental argument is what I originally stated:
Why do some of us believe that evolution is what happened? It’s a matter of looking for the most likely explanation for what we see today, based on all the evidence. We have seen selective pressures cause evolution in species with a very short lifetimes, such as fruit flies. [LA replies: not correct. Scientists, notwithstanding producing all sorts of weird mutations in fruit flies, have never produced new species; and the mutated fruitflies ultimately revert back to being regular fruitflies.] We know we can evolve all sorts of novel and unexpected functions, algorithms, and structures through applying simulated evolution to computer programs and models. [LA replies: The proves nothing about the evolution of species.] We know that there is a record of primates which shows only primates akin to chimps a long time ago, then as we approach the present, more and more modern ones, which become more and more like us. [LA replies: That fact shows the unfolding, i.e., the generic evolution, of different life forms; it tells us zero about HOW the different life forms evolved. It is essential to coherent discussion that the gradual appearance of new forms is distinguished from the question of how these new forms appeared.]
The theory also makes logical sense, because mutations do happen, and the genes of those who procreate should generally have been the genes of those who were most successful in handling the pressures of their time and place, while those least-well adapted should have been less successful in procreating… [LA replies: this does not address at all the fundamental assertion of Darwinism, that new species and life forms, not just variations within a species, arose through mutation and selection.]
Of course, it’s a theory pieced together from evidence and logical deduction and induction, like every other scientific theory. But the fact that evolution (limited by the time available) has been demonstrated in experiments, and all the other evidence appears to fit the theory, is quite convincing. I don’t think there’s any other explanation that makes sense or has the same degree of evidence to support it. That’s not believing in fairy tales or guesses. [LA replies: I disagree. It certainly is believing in fairy tales and guesses. As I’ve shown, your evidence for the Darwinian theory of evolution of species amounts to zilch.]
Now, you and some other commenters raised objections, which I tried to answer. Here are my answers again, whittled down:
“Order can’t arise from disorder.”
Yes, it can. I gave some examples in which this has been observed. Lots of orderly structures occur naturally in nature, and many simple structures that are the building blocks of primitive life have been observed to self-assemble. [LA replies: but those orderly structures in nature provoke the same question as higher order, including the order of consciousness, in animals. The presence of such order indicates that nature and life came out of order, not out of random mutations and survival, in which case the Darwinian theory fails.]
“If everything evolves from tiny steps, nothing is essentially different from anything else.”
Yes and no. It would mean that there is a level of commonality, but evolutionary theory doesn’t imply that there can’t be large qualitative differences between organisms. This leads into the next issue.
“Big differences can’t arise from tiny steps”
My understanding of nature is that, yes, they can.
We have evidence that this happens, for example, in experiments with fruit flies, breeding dogs, human races, the fossil record between chimps and man, etc. [LA replies: No new species in fruit flies; no new species in dogs, despite the wondrous variety of dogs; no new species in man, despite the variety of the human races; and the gap between chimp and man is vast; or, if you prefer, the respective gaps between chimp and Australopithecine, and between Australopithecine and Homo, are vast.] That’s enough to convince me, at least until it’s disproved. Generally in science, we choose the best explanation of the evidence as a theory, then try to disprove the theory.
So can you disprove the theory the evidence points to? [Your “best explanation” proves nothing, therefore it’s not up to me to disprove it. You’re doing the usual Darwinian thing of saying, “Darwinism does not claim to be the truth, it’s just the most likely explanation we have,” and then suddenly switching to “Darwinism has been proved, and it’s up to its critics to disprove it!”] You take the position that some differences are “small”, and therefore can be evolved, but some are “large” and therefore can’t be evolved. But you can’t say why this should be so. [LA replies: First, I again request that you not use “evolve” without defining it. If you mean “evolve according to Darwinian processes,” then say that, because otherwise the word “evolve” to me simply means that new life forms have appeared over time, and no one except young earth creationists denies that that is the case. Second, of course I’ve said why small changes could occur by Darwinian processes, and why large changes could not. For example, as humans moved north, and needed more sunlight to get Vitamin D, it’s possible (not established as fact, but possible and a reasonable hypothesis) that random variations in amount of melanin within the population resulted in individuals with less melanin having a reproductive advantage and so people with less melanin spreading through the population. But changes leading to entirely new organs and organ systems and life forms could not occur by the accumulation of tiny changes.] Why should a line be drawn, and where? [LA replies: I’ve just given an example. Simple, one dimensional changes, such as a mutation resulting in less melanin which is then selected and spreads, could occur. Complex innovations, such as the pelvis (amphibians have it, fish don’t), such as copulation and internal fertilization, such as the internal systems of the bombardier beetle, and an infinite number of other things, could not have occurred by Darwinian processes. It’s inherently impossible, and it’s never been demonstrated.] If you have some reason for drawing a line, it might convince me there’s something lacking in the theory, but I haven’t seen that. I just see people saying “well, that’s just too different to have evolved.” [I feel that you have not really taken in the arguments in my many articles on this subject. Far from just throwing around a phrase, “that’s just too different to have evolved by Darwinian process,” I’ve repeatedly shown in detail the inherent impossibility of Darwinian evolution in various instances. If you’ve read my articles, and all you’ve gotten out of them is that I’m repeating a phrase, “that’s too complicated,” then you’re not understanding me.] Let me set this out clearly:
If you think some features could have evolved, but some could not have, then my question is “Why?” How can you draw a line, and where would you draw it, in a way that is not arbitrary or subjective?
I appreciate the discussion :)
Alan Roebuck writes:
A question for Trevor H:
Your position, in essence, is that any two states can be connected by a series of tiny, randomly-generated changes.
Question: could God be generated in this way? If no, then we have established that at least one thing cannot arise by Darwinian evolution, in which case there may be others. And if yes, then perhaps the creator God of the Bible really does exist.
The point is: I think the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that life, consciousness, etc. can arise via Darwinism. Either literally anything is possible, or it is not. And if not, then we have to investigate whether object X really can arise via Darwinism, and give detailed, rational arguments, rather than simply say “since I can visualize it, why not?”
And this is a good place to remind everyone that the real reason the committed Darwinists believe in Darwinism is that they are atheists, in which case Darwinism is the only possible way that any living thing can arise. For them, the only two explanations are either Darwinism or “I don’t know.”
Mark P. writes:
It’s really amazing that Trevor does not see the problem with his argument that Darwinism is true. So let’s boil down the essentials of what Darwinism is so that we can make sure we are talking about the same thing.
The elements of Darwinism are the following three ideas.
1) That life moves from the simple to the complex. That is, that life moves from the simple single-celled organism (like an amoeba) to a multi-cellular organism (like the human.)
2) That this movement from the simple to the complex is regulated by natural selection through random mutation. That is, we can observe the incredible variety of creatures created in nature through this process and we can simulate this process in artificial environments.
3) That this complexity eventually creates entirely new species, “new” in the sense that they cannot interbreed with each other.
What Trevor has demonstrated is Auster’s ordinary case of simple evolution, where “evolution” merely means change. This is, in fact, all Darwinism has ever demonstrated, whether it’s Birmingham moths, Galapagos finches, or computer programs.
Trevor, then, inappropriately extends this model of simple evolution to explain how a simple organism comes to be in the first place or how a complex organism becomes a new species or how “consciousness” or “intelligence” come to exist. But these explanations are not demonstrations. They are not proof. Trevor is not seeing this and he is simply reasserting as true that which we are trying to prove to be true.
In fact, Trevor’s argument appears to be a mirror image of the young earth creationist argument with different verbal transpositions.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 30, 2009 09:38 AM | Send
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