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So how do the theists here handle evolution? I have a feeling that most of you have a liberal view on the subject, even the somewhat orthodox Mormons among you.

Buffalo wrote:So how do the theists here handle evolution? I have a feeling that most of you have a liberal view on the subject, even the somewhat orthodox Mormons among you.

I put evolution on this enormously huge broken shelf that is filled with so much stuff.

by the way, I have zero background in formally studying evolution, except the basics we were all taught in public schools and early level bio courses.

Being theist but long left Mormon my thought on evolution starts this way. I see huge evidence that the world is very old, that life forms have changed and diversified over time,changing at least broadly from simpler to more complicated. It seems clear that life forms are interrelated and changes in what we call different species are begotten through reproduction. It seems clear humans are related to other primates and other animals.

On the other hand I am unconvinced that this all happens randomly. I can see it happening with many variations interrating with the systems of cause and effect in some survival of the fittest fashion. I just do not think that within cause and effect any action can qualify as random. Perhaps random relative to human expections of a design, but not random in relation to the basic order of things or the will of God.

huckelberry wrote:Being theist but long left Mormon my thought on evolution starts this way. I see huge evidence that the world is very old, that life forms have changed and diversified over time,changing at least broadly from simpler to more complicated. It seems clear that life forms are interrelated and changes in what we call different species are begotten through reproduction. It seems clear humans are related to other primates and other animals.

On the other hand I am unconvinced that this all happens randomly. I can see it happening with many variations interrating with the systems of cause and effect in some survival of the fittest fashion. I just do not think that within cause and effect any action can qualify as random. Perhaps random relative to human expections of a design, but not random in relation to the basic order of things or the will of God.

The mutations/derivations are random, but natural selection isn't. Those organisms who are best equipped to survive will reproduce, thus selecting for that mutation.

huckelberry wrote:On the other hand I am unconvinced that this all happens randomly. I can see it happening with many variations interrating with the systems of cause and effect in some survival of the fittest fashion. I just do not think that within cause and effect any action can qualify as random. Perhaps random relative to human expections of a design, but not random in relation to the basic order of things or the will of God.

A really interesting model related to this is "Robby", as described in Complexity: A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell. "Robby" is a computer program designed to pick up trash in a computer game (think the movie WALL-E). The game is set up with certain parameters, most notably that the robot can only see the cells immediately adjacent to where he stands, and he has no memory of what cells he's visited or what he's done in the past--all he can do is notice what is in the cells adjacent, and decide to either pick up a piece of trash in the current cell, or move to another cell.

Melanie describes how, by way of direct intelligent design, she programmed Robbie to pick up transh and navigate the game in a way that would seem to be very good to a human.

She then created a process where a thousand Robbies would navigate the course using a totally random strategy, and then the Robbies that had the most success would "mate" by blending their strategies and creating a new generation of Robbies. For good measure, she caused the strategy to randomly mutate every once in a while. She'd then rerun the model, the most successful would mate again, etc.

After a thousand generations of computer simulation, the system developed an extremely brilliant, complicated strategy for collecting the cans, much better than the one that was actually designed.

It's a great example of how natural selection, driven by randomness, can in fact create complex systems that would seem to be designed.

Analytics wrote:A really interesting model related to this is "Robby", as described in Complexity: A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell. "Robby" is a computer program designed to pick up trash in a computer game (think the movie WALL-E). The game is set up with certain parameters, most notably that the robot can only see the cells immediately adjacent to where he stands, and he has no memory of what cells he's visited or what he's done in the past--all he can do is notice what is in the cells adjacent, and decide to either pick up a piece of trash in the current cell, or move to another cell.

Melanie describes how, by way of direct intelligent design, she programmed Robbie to pick up transh and navigate the game in a way that would seem to be very good to a human.

She then created a process where a thousand Robbies would navigate the course using a totally random strategy, and then the Robbies that had the most success would "mate" by blending their strategies and creating a new generation of Robbies. For good measure, she caused the strategy to randomly mutate every once in a while. She'd then rerun the model, the most successful would mate again, etc.

After a thousand generations of computer simulation, the system developed an extremely brilliant, complicated strategy for collecting the cans, much better than the one that was actually designed.

It's a great example of how natural selection, driven by randomness, can in fact create complex systems that would seem to be designed.

But........Robby was created!

Sorry I could not resist.

I am done with this thread. I have to much on my plate to even think about such a heavy topic. Carry on without my interuptions.

"She then created a process where a thousand Robbies would navigate the course"

Analytics, I enjoyed your picture of God using evolution in creation.

Buffalo, I think whether a person calls variation in reproduction random or not depends upon whether they believe in God as director of creation or they believe no such director exists. There are mountains of decisive evidence that the world is very old, that life forms have evolved through that time ,that breeding populations, species, change over time. I think evidence for randomness is limited.The idea of calling the changes random is,in what I see, a working hypothesis which is useful for studying the effect of the survival of the most successful.

I can see that the fact that understanding change as random can help understand actual events is an evidence for random be actual. But a limited form of random such as occurs in Analytics image fits that evidence as well as a relatively purer random seen by non theists.