See, I think this is illustrative of why you need to have more education on the subject than you do to be asserting the kind of claims you are.
You're responding to a paragraph comprised of three questions, ending with "Am I understanding that right?" And you respond by attacking my education based on my "claims"? Do you respond accordingly when your students ask questions? You're a college professor, correct?
Yes, I have already admitted that I have no formal education in biology. I never took it in college and I don't recall evolution being a central focus in the courses I took in High School. Of course this was more than tweny years ago, so things may have changed.
Incidentally, I just returned from my twenty year High School reunion. Even though I didn't graduate with them, I was pleasantly surprised to receive an invitation. I moved to Atlanta at the end of my sophomore year. The school I previously attended was a tiny private school with only 25 people in its graduating class. One of my friends works for NASA and we had an interesting discussion about the anthropic principle. Anyway...
The quick and dirty of it is this: Genes do their "work" by being translated and transcribed into proteins. How the genetic material causes a cell to react to its environs is by changing what and how much proteins are being produced. The environment either has chemicals taken into the cell or triggers one or more steps where chemicals are made by the cell itself that make their way to the nucleus. Those chemicals either turn on or off certain genes or affect their rate of production of their various proteins.
Is this a hypothesis or an scientific fact, that genes react to the chemicals transmitted from the environment, thus resulting in their various beneficial adaptations? So for instance, when an organism like a butterfly mutates and forms what appears to be huge eye balls on its wings, for the purpose/benefit of scarying off predators. You're saying this came about from chemical transfers from the environment.
OK, so how does that really answer the question: "How did the genes know that by producing such an image, it would be beneficial for its survival?" That is the mystery that I don't see science explaining.
Can genes "know" anything without nano-brains? Or will you say genes didn't know anything at all? We've already seen Dawkins attribute anthropomorphic qualities to genes, calling them "selfish" for the purpose of explaining what they do. But they aren't really selfish, we have learned. So what's left in explaining their function if not selfishness? What's left in explaining their purpose if they do not "know" what to produce?
What is happening at the biochemical level is there are biopolymer complexes responsible for transcribing DNA and forcing protein production that have their shape oh so subtly shifted when they bond to certain chemicals. That change in shape affects how they are able to bond to certain DNA sequences, which in turn affects whether they will transcribe a gene and at what rate. That's how communication happens between genes and the outside world. Now, it's a lot more complex than this when the details are filled in. This is just a quick and simplified answer. I've had 3 college level classes dedicated to covering just different aspects of this. We still learn more each day.
I'm not doubting your education on the matter. This is the kind of questions I had been presenting from the beginning, and while your responses might be correct on a mechanistic level, they really don't answer the question in a way that I'm looking for. For example, and I think I have used this analogy before, if I ask you why the oven is at 400 degrees, you might respond with enough scientific data to fill a book, explaining how the knob triggers a current that sets off a chemical reaction with the propane creating blue flames that are fed by oxygen vents on the side, noting how the molecules rapidly speed up creating temperature change, etc. You could go on and on for an hour probably. But that wouldn't really answer the "why" question. The answer to the question could simply be: Mom wants to bake some cookies. Yes, this has purpose written all over it, and I don't consider it my "problem" as JSM suggested.
Now if you want to say there is no purpose, then this just increases the need for explanation. How did the butterfly's wings come to mimick giant eyeballs? It screams purpose, but evolution can't be purposeful, right? So it must be a random mutation that natural selection allowed to stay. Soooo.... how does that really explain anything?
Schmo made a comment:
Evolution doesn't have end goals any more than a river is conscious of its own destination. The river goes where nature (in this case, gravity and the path of least resistance) takes it.
Bad analogy, but I can understand why radical atheists would prefer to use it, the same way atheists would prefer to explain Natural Selection using simplistic examples of green beetles without using chameleons or certain species of birds. Once a simple, obvious example makes sense the more difficult examples that seem to defy typical evolutionary explanations, are to be taken on faith. After all, evolution refers to all life, not just beetles. The random universe applies to all natural phenomena, not just flowing rivers.
This is kinda like how Mormons use blase and superficial examples of Joseph Smith getting a few things right, and then asking us to accept the fact that he was a prophet of God. Logically speaking, this is a
non sequitur.
If the river were designed, it would be a straight path to the ocean, but it wasn't designed. Evolution goes where nature (ie. mutations, heredity, speciation, natural selection, etc.) takes it.
So when science hasn't provided an answer to a given question, we're supposed to assume scientism anyway, and just say it will be explained in time. Yet, we have to have a teleological explanation for every single natural phenomenon, or else there is no teleology in the universe? Pretty hyocritical if you ask me. And who can say a river winding away from an ocean serves no purpose?
I agree that this is really the heart of the matter. But it is wrong to say science can prove evolution has no goal or end, so why pretend it already has? As Medawar points out, these questions are beyond the realm of science, to assert it as fact is nothing short of "truth by assertion" which JAK is so fond of.
Frankly it boggles the mind how anyone could observe the world around us, see how things work together in harmony to serve millions of purposes, and yet insist it has no universal end or purpose.
Declaring the concept of "purpose" an illusion is typical of the Dennett types. But it is unclear if that is the route you want to go. I'm afraid you're looking at a teleological universe within the confines of a belief system of purposelessness and meaninglessness, dressed up in science. Evolution can be true, and yet teleological. For crying out loud, Dawkins' claim that genes are selfish and seek to do whatever it takes to ensure their survival, screams of purpose. Their purpose is to survive.
But it wasn't that long ago that this question wouldn't be answerable. We didn't even know what the heritable material in the cell was until the middle part of the last century. But the mere lack of explanation didn't mean that it couldn't be explained or was impossible. We had no reason to think that. Just because we can't think of how it is done, that does not mean a theory that treats it as a black box is wrong.
It isn't "wrong" per se, it is just answering a different kind of question. I can't help but grin when I read how eloquently you present your case explaning the mechanistic processes down to the molecular level. You get an A+ for effort, but I think we're attacking this from different angles so the answer doesn't really answer what I'm asking.
Science focuses on the hows and whats, and not so much with the whys. That is how you are answering it. To give you an idea where I am coming from, I'll post a little of Alister McGrath who references Max Bennett and Peter Hacker; philosophers of science who disagree with the Dawkinesque approach that "science can and will eventually explain everything."
Scientific theories cannot be said to explain the world - they can only explain the phenomena that are observed within the world.. Furthermore, they argue, scientific theories do not and are not intended to describe and explain "everything about the world" - such as its purpose. Law, economics and sociology can be cited as examples of disciplines which engage with domain-specific phenomena without in any way having to regard themselves as somehow being inferior to or dependent on the natural sciences.
Yet, most important, there are many questions that by their very nature must be recognized to lie beyond the legitimate scope of the scientific method, as this is normally understood. For example, is there purpose within nature? Dawkins regards this as a spurious nonquestion. Yet this is hardly an illegitimate question for human beings to ask or to hope to be answered. Bennette and hacker point out that the natural sciences are not in a position to comment on this if their methods are applied legitimately. The question cannot be dismissed as illegitimate or nonsensical; it is simply being declared to lie beyond the scope of the scientific method. If it can be answered, it must be answered on other grounds.
This point was made repeatedly by Peter Medawar, an Oxford immunologist who won the Nobel Prize for medicine for the discovery of acquired immunological tolerance. In a significant publication titled, The Limits of Science, Medawar explored the question of how science was limited by the nature of reality. Emphasizing that "science is incomparably the most successful enterprise human beings have ever engaged upon," he distinguishes between what he calls "transcendent" questions, which are better left to eligion and metaphysics, and questions about the organization and structure of the material universe. With regard to the latter, he argues, there are no limits to the possibilities of scientific achievement. So what of the other questions? Though a self-confessed rationalist, Medawar is clear on this matter:
"That there is indeed a limit upon science is made very likely by the existence of questions that science cannot answer, and that no conceivable advance of science would empower it to answer...I have in mind such questions as:
How did everything begin?
What are we all here for?
What is the point of living?
Doctrinaire positivism - now something of a period piece - dismissed all such questions as nonquestions or pseudoquestions such as only simpletons ask and only charlatans profess to be able to answer."
Perhaps The God Delusion might have taken Sir Peter by surprise, on account
of its late flowering of precisely that "doctrinaire positivism" which he had
happily, yet apparently prematurely, believed to be dead.
It appears I might be dealing with a few logical positivists, at least to some degree.
For instance, in order for natural selection to work, traits have to be heritable. But you don't have to have to know exactly how inheritance works to know enough for it not to be a problem for natural selection. Something isn't possible or even unlikely merely because it is yet to be explained.
Except for God, right? Oh, how many times have I heard the objection that I cannot begin to postulate the existence of God unless I can first explain it with detailed attributes and characteristics. And yet you cannot even begin to explain what a species is without encountering your own set of difficulties.
Would you mind explaining to me how this isn't a double standard? What immediately comes to mind is your jaw-dropping concession that we don't even know how to define a "species," coupled with your dogmatic certitude that we know speciation occurs. So the process of becoming X is true, even if we can't say with absolute certainty what X really is! Well, I guess you just vindicated theosis.
Yet, that's precisely what arguments you make continually suggest. Further lack of a known natural explanation does not mean all unknown ones are wrong, and it doesn't make answers that amount to "it's magic" automatically good.
Well then you need to present your quibble to Oxford physiologist/biologist Denis Noble, since he is the one who used that word to describe the process: "Genes are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly,
as if by magic, function emerges."
I think it is pretty cool when scientists who don't have such a radical atheistic bent, use words like these to illustrate the mystery of what science can't explain. It can tells us what's going on at the molecular level, but it can only guess
why its happening.
The main problem here stems from your use of the word "information." It's too vague.
Well
genetic information, obviously. Mutation creates more information, natural selection reduces it by shaving off the excess genetic junk that isn't needed.
That said, natural selection affects the ratios of traits in a population.
As it reduces information, right?
It's just as accurate to say it increases the frequency of some as it is to say that it decreases the frequency of others. Natural selection can take a rare mutation and fix it in, say, 30% of the population because that mutation is beneficial to the individual to an extent.
Right, by reducing genetic information.
That would be a population diversity enhancer. Natural selection in that case would be preserving more varieties of traits than simple chance would likely result in. Natural selection isn't just about relatively detrimental traits decreasing. It's about relatively beneficial traits increasing. And traits aren't as simple as good or bad, gone or total dominance. (Look up sickle cell and malaria for the classic putative example of this). What is accurate to say is that natural selection can only operate on traits as they already exist in the population.
Right, so it doesn't create anything. It effects what is already there. To give an analogy, mutations produce hair over time whereas natural selection would determine a mullet or a mohawk. It shaves off genetic information, hence, reducing it.
It doesn't add new traits in a population, but it can transform how they are represented in that popualtion. Again, mutation is the source novelty.
So it seems we're on the same page. So what was all that business about telling me I was wrong about NS reducing genetic information?
Richard Dawkins has never (as far as I know, and certainly not in The God Delusion) claimed that "evolutionary biology in particular, proves in any way that there is no God."
You're right about that. But...
In fact, he devotes a large section in his book taking about why not being able to prove there's no god (which he completely acknowledges) is not a good argument for god's existence (wow, that was a lot of negatives for one sentence... forgive me).
The argument is being presented in a way so that scientific limitations are beyond the realm of discussion. You guys don't even want to talk about it because you think to do so makes you a creationist of some kind. Nonsense. That immediately screams insecurity in your position. Whenever someone points out how science cannot answer a particular set of questions, the response is generaly a knee-jerk, "Oh so you think that proves God then?" No, that isn't the argument. It isn't about presenting my belief so much as it is intended to undermine a belief in scientism. Saying science will eventually prove something is nothing short of faith.
This is a straw man that Dawkins indulges so often, and I see it happen frequently on this forum as well. I've never said an absence of scientific progress proves God and I don't know of anyone who has. It isn't that science hasn't answered some questions yet, it is that science can't answer them, ever. If you don't believe me, then just ask Peter Medawar.
Natural selection doesn't require life. It requires a population of replicators that have varied traits with different likelihoods of reproductive success and a means to inherit those traits.
That's news to me. I've yet to come across a piece on NS that would suggest it doesn't require life. So let's make this simple. Could you please provide an example of non-living replicators engaged in natural selection?
Natural selection is just the name given to the process where heritable traits that make it more likely for a thing to successfully reproduce increase in frequency over successive generations of a population.
A "thing" that reproduces? I'm at the edge of my seat here. This ought to be good.
There are programs that operate on natural selection. Take Avida
Um, you do realize that computer programs are
intelligently designed, right? I was hoping you were going to provide something from the natural world that arose naturally; something that would actually bolster your argument here. Computer programs, as intelligently designed "things," actually undermines the point you're trying to make.
With respect to the RNA-World hypothesis, RNA doesn't self-replicate, which is what you said is required for NS to take place.
Kevin's problem is that he's emotionally wedded to teleology -- he is a priori opposed to any explanation that doesn't appeal to "purpose".
Its comments like these that make me refer to atheists on this forum as generally boring and anti-philosophical. I suppose I could have interesting discussions on these matters with just about anyone I meet outside the forum, without the slightest hint of contempt. But you guys make it sound like some kind of intellectual deficiency to even ask such questions. If science hasn't answered the question, then it shouldn't be a real question! Anyone who asks it must be an idiot. Good grief. Schmo once laughed at the notion that philosophy could provide us with any kinds of truths. Who else agrees with this?
I could easily respond by calling JSM's problem a blind devotion to a random universe and a dogmatic loyalty to atheistic assumptions. He is
a priori opposed to any explanation that appeals to purpose. But that wouldn't really help the discussion now would it?
I've got to hand it to you, EA. You write as though you actually think you can get through to him.
EA hasn't presented any empirical facts that I have disagreed with, so I guess you can only be referring to his inability to convert me to your brand of atheism. At least be upfront and honest about it, and stop pretending this is a matter of EA presenting hard facts while I'm rejecting them and asking how come there's no sex in your violence.
When I first read this, I had another fit of uncontrolled laughter. Again, we see an obvious demonstration of fundamental misunderstanding. he whole point in highlighting that the eye is poorly designed is to demonstrate that it wasn't designed! In other words, if the eye were designed, it could have been done a lot better! Some designer.
Um, that's what I said. In the post you were citing I said: "anti-creationists have argued that the eye is really inefficient and if designed, then designed poorly."
"Fundamental misunderstanding" indeed. And while you're gut is splitting with laughter, EA just posted a response noting how this isn't really a good argument in the first place.
Michael Shermer points out that if you're going to refer to it as "designed" then you have to specify that it's a bottom-up design, not a top-down one
Shermer is wrong, and this illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of teleological reasoning. It has its origins with Aristotle who argued that the end provides the explanation, not the beginning. This is how science used to approach questions about the natural world. But now we are dealing with a different kind of science that is hamstringed by a specific method, extremely limited in its capacity to explain much of anything that has meaning.
Just look at how science has miserably tried to explain the origin of life by going back, back,back back to the origin of the universe. It hits one dead end after another, coming up with no explanation at all.
That's the beauty of teleology. When you understand that the universe is governed by numerous constants that have to be exactly as they are for life to exist on earth, it screams teleology. Their only common value is that they are as they are so life can exist. Thus, this universe exists as it does, so life can exist.
When you understand that the precise age of the universe, along with the age of the earth, correspond to the time it would be required for life to evolve, then it screams teleology.
If you understood that the mysterious, inexplicable force of gravity has to be precisely what it is for life to exist, then you might better understand the power of the teleological explanation. The random/mechanistic universe theory is rapdily losing its teeth.
But these are discussions and questions and answers that are necessarily outside the realm of the scientific method. I can understand why scientists have a hard time accepting this (that's all they know), but for people who are not scientists, it should be a rather easy concept to grasp. Unless of course one is already devoted to an opposing belief system - usually radical atheism on these forums. But they should at least be honest and stop pretending to reject it on scientific grounds. People like Schmo reject it on philsophical grounds, which is pretty ironic considering his stated contempt for philosophy.
