This board software is too smart by half. It's freaking out on the url because it has % signs in it. Whatever.

I made a TinyUrl for it: http://tinyurl.com/yeq4c7q

Kind of interesting if you think about us as logoi.

from the article:

How all of this modularity, complexity, and integration arose and

changed during the history of life on earth is a central

evolutionary question. Localized random mutation, selection

operating "one gene at a time" (John Maynard Smith's

formulation), and gradual modification of individual functions

are unable to provide satisfactory explanations for the molecular

data, no matter how much time for change is assumed. There are

simply too many potential degrees of freedom for random

variability and too many interconnections to account for.

This has been the standard criticism of the mathematically knaive view of random change ever since it was understood that DNA plays a profound role in phenotypic expression. He's writing as though new findings have brought this to light. On the contrary, new findings have shown that much functional/adaptive variation is NOT random. But that is just another way of saying that for all we know, such change is directed in the same way that what a robot does is directed. And that's just another way of saying that, for all we know, teleology applies to biological origins at some level. The burden of proof is on those making the grand claims about the potency of chance in limited time-frames. Teleologists don't have to claim macroevolution is impossible. They only need to argue that, insomuch as teleology is non-falsifiable, final causes can be held as tentative explanations for some of those aspects of our current understanding characterized by FINALITY. We're open to falsification of our ideas WHEN there are appropriate tests that DO falsify them. Until then, the difference of inference has to do with differences in metaphysics, not aposteriori science. Thus, even Greg's teleological views about angelic roles is on the inductive table until we have a bona-fide causal theory of macroevolution that is not mostly assumption.

Post Edited (Similtude) : 1/7/2010 6:48:37 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Similtude) : 1/11/2010 6:23:22 AM (GMT-6)

"... Some of the other questions to be addressed by the FQEB initiative include:

• What are the limits of evolvability, and how are these transcended?
• Why does evolution (sometimes) lead to increasing complexity?
• Are there different kinds of evolution, and is there evolution in the context of evolution itself?
• What are the natural laws of evolutionary change, and can we derive a complete mathematical theory of evolutionary laws?"

Note, to admit that it is a question as to whether there is "evolution in the context of evolution itself" is an admission that they can't explain the whole macroevolutionary hypothetical history with what is currently known about genetics. You have all these DNA-conditioned functions that have to be accounted for by chance mutations unless you just want to say these sequences which currently condition these functions just happily existed as soon as abiogenesis supposedly occurred (which is assuming what needs to be accounted for). Given the number of DNA sequence possibilities that exist at a given time, we can't even calculate the odds of such sequences coming about by chance. For all we know, it is prohibitively small. And there is no scientific reason to believe the odds is GOOD.

That's the problem. A-plausible claims that are untestable are not what we usually expect from scientific researchers. They are non-explanatory and are utterly void of utility. This is why even Karl Popper didn't think evolutionary research was scientific at first. According to Berlinski and others, he was pressured by his peers until he caved. Many macroevolutionists today don't even agree with the kinds of examples he finally imagined might falisfy the hypothesis.

I've been thinking more about the theodicy approach of Miller, Collins, Ayala, etc. They say God couldn't have intelligently designed critters because it implies that God is the author of natural evil in an intentional way. To get around this, Miller (I'm not sure how Collins, Ayala, etc. get around it) says there is true non-volitional contingency in the unfolding of cosmic history. Hence, the natural evils entailed in predator-prey relationships, e.g., are not intended by God.

The first obvious problem with that approach is that it doesn't really solve what most people are trying to solve in theodical thought. If God intentionally risked this natural evil Miller is so troubled by (not natural evil resulting from volitional abuse or negligence, but just raw indeterminism) it is not clear how God is not yet responsible for it in the first place. Regardless, He is, and has, clearly done nothing to alleviate the damage that resulted BECAUSE of that risk.

So in the first place, it's hard to see how this theodicy explains anything comforting. If I throw a rock randomly while blind-folded, not intending to knock anyone's eye out, but nevertheless with the knowledge that there is the possibility that I MIGHT knock someone's eye out, why am I benevolent MERELY because I didn't INTEND that SOFA? On the other hand, if I literally had NO idea what might happen, in which case the subsequent unforeseen SOFA's are not my intention in any sense, how is my refusal to intervene after the damage is done (or just prior to the worst of it) anything but a clear indication of a lack of sympathy on my part?

When we talk about the risk of sin, by definition, risk means that which is not inevitable. If it's inevitable, it wasn't a risk at all. But then if outcomes aren't due to God's causal activity, we at least know that sin, if it is indeed non-necessary, is due to volitional agents--agents that, per original design specifications at least, had or would have had the intellectual and volitional wherewithal to act NON-sinfully. But once we talk about risk in terms of INDETERMINISTIC (even to God) events that have nothing to do with intellectual/sentient conditions, we are talking about events for which we can not conceive ANY conditions for their occurrence, necessary or sufficient. But that is just to say that the event, per our understanding of it, is literally un-caused.

But if events can be uncaused, we don't need God to account for anything in the first place. It is the belief that events ARE caused that grounds the intelligible conception of a final causER we recognize as a deity/creator. IOW, if events can be uncaused, we need a more fundamental and intuitive criteria to know when an event is caused and when it is not, otherwise, we couldn't know what we or God is actually responsible for. I know of no one that has ever claimed there was such an intuitive criteria. And it seems logically impossible to generate one aposteriori. For all aposteriori arguments are discursive ways of moving from GROUNDS (which are species of causes) to INFERENCES (which are conditioned/caused by their grounds).

Thus, the whole non-causal indeterminism approach is, by definition, NON-explanatory, and therefore provides NO explanation for anything, theological or otherwise. Explanations just ARE causal accounts. So that's a second problem with that approach.

Third, once you say God risked all this undetermined but unchosen suffering that He Himself finds troubling supposedly, you are falling into to the same knowledge-problem that the atheist has that Plantinga has written about. IOW, the only reason why it is important to believe that we apprehend is because we can not conceive of how we could attain any sentient satisfaction or avoid sentient dissatisfaction UNLESS we apprehend. If we truly believed that by apprehending we would be miserable but by having illusions we would be blissed out, we would prefer the illusions every time.

But Miller doesn't think God is in the business of setting up an orderly, predictable world where sentient beings could, by original design specifications, competently avoid vain, unintended misery in the first place. So there is no reason to believe, given his views, that he can get around the very knowledge problem of the atheist. As Plantinga argues, God must be benevolent in such a way that we can intelligibly account for human knowledge. Which is to say, that to claim we are apprehending sufficiently well to make VALID and WARRANTED arguments about REALITY, God must be competent AND benevolent in such a way that our apprehensive capacities must have been INTENDED and intended precisely to attain sentient satisfaction. Otherwise, we have no way to account for whether we are apprehending at all.

In short, it seems to me that the Miller/Collins/Ayala theodicy buys us nothing worth having from a purely theodical point of view, it is non-explanatory to the extent that it involves causeless events, and it creates the very knowledge problem that atheists already have. In short, if there is a God, and that God is benevolent, that fact is not entailed in the metaphysics of Miller in any sense, because his metaphysic literally implies (assuming that he is at least right about the LNC) that his own categories and conceptions, including those about God, may have nothing to do with reality in the first place. Thus he is, as atheists say of all of us, believing in the existence of a God and specific attributes of a God for reasons that can not be accounted for by his own metaphysic (we call such beliefs superstition for a reason).

And yet, all that we say about God, thus, is intelligible EVEN to the atheists. Thus, the epistemological elements that render those conceptions intelligible must be somehow entailed in our categorical understanding of reality. Which is just to say that Miller etal seem to be making a category mistake. Any time we have to just assert a-plausible claims to render our view coherent, we have just said that we aren't GIVEN enough to get to where we need to get. But where nothing is given, nothing is required. And if a thing is not given/required, epistemologically, we couldn't possibly know it in the first place. This is why Lewis says if nothing is obvious, nothing can be proved. It is just to say that discursive reasoning is worthless unless the relations that ground it are, in some sense, obvious--i.e., GIVEN.

What this means is that there are no intelligible solutions to theological philosophy that imply similarly intelligible SCIENTIFIC solutions to all scientific questions. But that's OK. Having coherent theology that is grounded in intuitions that account for knowlege and HOPE for humanity is much more important than having solutions, or plausible ones, to all scientific questions. Science is tentative, and there is plenty about science we will die not knowing--it is a slow train of progress characterized by revolutions of thought, and many scientists want to explain too much before we have all the data to render explanations plausible in terms of true inductive thought. Answering all scientific questions plausibly is impossible, and therefore it is the least of our concerns to do so if, by knaively pretending we can, we get the philosophical underpinnings of the very inductive thought that conditions human, scientific progress doable wrong.

Post Edited (Similtude) : 1/12/2010 10:08:12 AM (GMT-6)