Of Baramins and Baloney 11

Mark,

You sent me three emails in one
day in reply to my last email to you. I will reply to the first and last, and I
will post them to the blog as one email. The middle one was certainly germane to
our conversation, but it was a post of a friend of yours in response to a
conversation to which I am not privy. I do not feel compelled to reply to
statements of others, nor will I ask you to reply to statements that I might
find somewhere. If you wish to summarize or restate the arguments as your own,
we’ll go from there. (Besides, that conversation seems peppered with a level of
ridicule toward the opposition, which we have so far managed to avoid.)

“God of the Gaps” logic is
pretty common. I see it on both sides of the argument, except in the case of
evolution it’s “Darwin of the Gaps.” I hope you see the parallel between saying,
“There are no fossils, therefore God did it,” and saying, “There is a
difference, therefore evolution did it.” The “objective evidence” for the first
statement is equal to the “objective evidence” for the second. You say I have
provided no mechanism, but to the same degree evolution provides no mechanism.
The mechanism in the argument I presented is an intelligent designer, in that
the designer is the logical explanation for the difference. The mechanism in
your argument is random mutation + natural selection, in that evolution is your
logical explanation for the difference. (Correct me if I’m wrong here about your
definition of evolution, because as yet you have not actually stated your
mechanism.) In either case the mechanism is used to explain the gap, and in both
cases, the mechanism cannot be proven. The designer is not at my beck and call
to do it again, and random mutation has never been demonstrated in a lab to
generate upgrades in life. As far as the “of the Gaps” position, we are both
empty-handed. Remember that I am not trying to disprove evolution, merely argue
that other arguments have an equal right to be on the table.

There is more however: In
Darwin’s day it was legitimate to say that the fossil evidence was so incomplete
that the gap might be leaped by evolution. Today and with every burial site that
yields thousands of fossils, including now fossil bacteria and dinosaur organs,
that position is less tenable. The fact that there are no fossils now IS
evidence.

I must call back now to your
quick dismissal of forensic science: Forensics is not a “strawman” for origins;
it is not even an analogy. Forensics is about history; origins science is about
history. Forensics is therefore about non-repeatable events; origins is about
non-repeatable events. Forensics uses currently known laws of physics,
chemistry, biology, etc. to investigate the probabilities of past events.
Origins science should do the same. Origins science is forensic science, if it
is science at all. Forensic science does not limit the causes of events to
chance; and to the extent that origins science does, it is not the total picture
of science. If there appears to be a leap in logic to this argument, then I
suggest that we are still on “Square One:” You have not allowed me the premise
that there just might be a Creator who has, could, or would intervene in the
affairs of the universe. To disallow this is a religious position. If we need to
take our argument back there, we can.

As for the book you have by now
reviewed: The promoters of the book show the same blinders I was writing about
in one of our earlier communications, and it will inadvertently cut into sales
and widen the gap of decent discussion. Tell me that the book is not religious,
having a cover that takes Michael Angelo’s painting of the human hand reaching
toward God and leaving out the image of God’s hand reaching back. Before I get
to the first page I am confronted with (not that there is no design but with)
there is no God. The image, taken from the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and obviously meant to recall it, is not even
a part of Michael Angelo’s creation sequence. It depicts the striving of man and
God to reach each other. I call that religion. Then let’s look at the language
of the web advertisement. Here you have a real straw man: “Is the Teaching of
Evolution to Be Banned in U.S. Public Schools?” Apparently some evolutionists
consider competition equivalent to banning. That would be the case if there is
nothing with which to compete. “Is Science Once More to be Burned on the Cross?”
I don’t recall that ever happening or even being proposed. And has the author
not dug deeply enough to discover the difference between Creationism and
Intelligent Design? And if the book is indeed “a critique of religious dogma,”
as the ad claims, then I have no use for the book. I’m interested in science. I
have enough books on religion. The book is obviously written as (please pardon
the expression) “preaching to the choir,” because no one would read the book who
does not already agree with it. It reminds me of another book,
Moral Darwinism: How we became hedonists. It too, was written for the
choir (the other choir), and it too, begins with Epicurus, except I know it
argues that Epicurus organized his writings by first trying to find a way to
justify his lifestyle and view of life (epistemology in The Canon), and
from there his observations On Nature. This is
easily documented, and is what creationists are condemned for (Canon of
Scripture to nature). The book you mention may well be a response to this one,
not the concepts of scientific creationism or intelligent design. Personally,
I’m more interested in dialog than alienation.

I commented on the books
because you brought that one to my attention. I’m more interested in your reply
to the fossil gap, the forensics argument, and if you wish to draw from your
friend’s comments.

Don Mc

This entry was posted on January 5, 2009 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Culture & society, Science and faith. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.