[CS-FSLUG] Intelligent design...

[Timothy Butler]

>
> I don't like these confusing terms. It's Biological Evolution being  
> acted on by Natural Selection  vs. Creation of Kinds and Natural  
> Selection. Evolution is genetic change over time. Natural selection  
> is really only a reduction of genetic diversity or a specification  
> of genetic traits.

     What I mean, is that while there are theories of evolution  
outside of natural selection (i.e. Grecian theories of evolution from  
long ago or Hume's naturalism), the process of natural selection is  
what we call evolution. Note that what people call Darwinian  
Evolution is just natural selection. I think when we try to say that  
natural selection is happening in accord with God, we are merely  
supporting theistic evolution (which need not go to the extreme of  
what ID suggests).

     I don't think you are using the terminology in the same way I  
normally hear it applied.

     The best definition I have found of microevolution is that of  
changes within a species. That is, much like the artificial selection  
we do with domesticated animals. Microevolution is, by every  
definition I've ever heard, evolution without speciation. That is, if  
a bird with a longer beak survives more often than a bird with a  
short beak (to use Darwin's example), and so if we have natural  
selection of the bird with the longer beak -- within the same  
species, mind you! -- then we have had microevolution.

     As soon as you have species changes, you start moving into  
macroevolution. From my friends at the Oxford American English  
Dictionary:

     "Microevolution: evolutionary change within a species or small  
group of organisms, esp. over a short period."

     "Macroevolution: major evolutionary change. The term applies  
mainly to the evolution of whole taxonomic groups over long periods  
of time."

     Personally, neither of these are terribly troubling, I think,  
and I'd be inclined to suggest both have/will occurred, albeit to a  
much smaller extent than Darwinians would advocate (that is, I think  
mutations could negatively cause speciation, but that would only  
explain some variation, not the gaining of higher forms from lesser  
forms). The troubling issues, I think, go back much further, as I  
said before:

     1.) Abiogenesis -- life from non-life is very unscientific, but  
necessary for a non-intelligent creation of life. Note the  
mathematical impossibility of this and the related complexity of DNA  
has led life-long atheist, and probably the clearest contemporary  
atheist philosopher, Antony Flew, to recently become a theist.

     2.) A big bang without cause -- this suggests the big bang  
itself is the uncaused cause, which seems to defy what people want to  
suggest it is. This is a moot issue, though, since it is, by  
definition, impossible to see what caused a big bang, since we cannot  
see outside of our reality. But, logic rules the day here: there must  
be a cause that was not within the present laws that require  
causation... something eternal. Something that is non-contingent,  
since something that is contingent must both have had a time that it  
didn't exist and a time that it will not exist. Without a non- 
contingency, nothing can exist, for nothing existed. A non-contingent  
thing is, of course, God. To say it better than I ever could:

     "But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which  
is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything  
is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing  
in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing  
in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist  
by something already existing."

     Once you set life in motion at some point, be it 4,004 years ago  
or 4.5 byo, I think you will have some evolution, possibly of both  
types, but most certainly intraspecies (micro).

> Microevolution, small genetic changes over time, can't work. There  
> is no history of it happening. It's untenable and just plain crazy.  
> There are small genetic changes (mutations) but life is designed to  
> reject such changes. Never has there been an example of an increase  
> in genetic information observed anywhere at any time.
> No animal has ever created a novel feature from mutations acted on  
> by natural selection. Mutations kill things not make them better  
> (95% of the time) ... the other 5% are bad, neutral or even  
> helpful. However, even the helpful ones (like ciklecell anemia)  
> have their price in blood. Genetic information is being affected by  
> the curse. All genetic material is breaking down (viruses, cancers)  
> and falling into chaos.


     Nor does microevolution require such, macroevolution would seem  
to, however. But not really. ID proponents would suggest the genetic  
material already exists, and is revealed by the processes of  
macroevolution.

     Just my $0.06 (adjusted for inflation).

     -Tim

---
Timothy R. Butler | "Now  that  I am a  Christian  I  do have moods
Editor, OfB.biz   | in which the whole thing looks very improbable:
tbutler at ofb.biz   | but when I was an  atheist I had moods in which
timothybutler.us  | Christianity looked terribly probable."
                                                       -- C.S. Lewis