I’m sorry your family is sick. That’s always a bummer especially when kids are involved.

I don’t know how the ID guys discuss your statement about harmful viruses but from the Christian perspective they came about because sin came into the world and caused creation to decay.

I know that isn’t scientific and I don’t claim that it is. However, it does fit what we see pretty well. I’m also not an ID guy so please don’t put my statements on them.

Again, I am sorry you guys are sick and pray you get better soon.

Peter, below is Darwin by Darwin:

C. Darwin’s letter to J. D. Hooker.
Down [March 29, 1863].

… Many thanks for Athenæum, received this morning, and to be returned to-morrow morning. Who would have ever thought of the old stupid Athenæum taking to Oken-like transcendental philosophy written in Owenian style!…
[page] 18
http://darwin-online.org.uk/co.....pageseq=30
…But I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant “appeared” by some wholly unknown process.

QED: Darwin confesses to Hooker his pragmatic doublespeak in this letter.

if memory serves me well, in a letter to Joseph Hooker (correct me if I am wrong) he gave his pragmatic reasons for using these words, but deplored having used the Pentateuchal language.

This sounds like doublespeak to me.

I quoted the inestimable tomb of science and you supply a vague recollection. i think I will stick with my original opinion until i see evidence to the contrary.

I want to have a long talk with the “intelligent designer” of this particular “agent”…

1. By Darwinist and neo-Darwinist I mean those evolutionary theorists who hold to the views of Darwin or of the neo-Darwinian school (broadly defined to include internal critics like Gould). Classic neo-Darwinists are Mayr, Gaylord Simpson, Sagan, Dennett, Dawkins, Coyne, Gross, Orr, etc. Virtually all evolutionary biologists for the last 70 or 80 years have been some variety of neo-Darwinist, and, following Darwin, have denied any teleology to the evolutionary process.

In theory, one could be an evolutionary biologist and not be a neo-Darwinist. One could be a Lamarckian, for example. Or a Bergsonian. Or a follower of Michael Denton. Or a follower of Richard Sternberg. But no such evolutionary biologist would be hired in any mainstream university today.

You say that you don’t dogmatically maintain that evolution is not teleological. Well, by that you either mean that you accept teleological evolution as an interesting intellectual possibility belonging to the sphere of philosophy and theology, but not relevant to science, or you mean that you accept teleological evolution as a genuinely possible “best explanation” for the design in nature that you’ve spoken of, and as a hypothesis capable of generating useful new research. In the latter case you would be open to hiring Richard Sternberg or Michael Denton or Michael Behe or someone like them in your own biology department, and you would support, or at least not automatically oppose, doctoral research work in your department that was to be conducted within a teleological paradigm. If this is the case, I applaud you, but I bet that you are the only life sciences faculty member at Cornell with this healthy attitude.

2. I don’t assume that the evolution of biological information is teleological. I don’t assume anything. I look for the best explanation of the data, no holds barred. If the best explanation of a rock that looks like an arrowhead is that it was carved by a Stone Age warrior, that’s fine with me. If the best explanation of its triangular shape is a series of accidental encounters with running water, that’s fine with me too. And if the best explanation of the giraffe is that it evolved by a series of random mutations, selected for environmentally, from something like an okapi, that’s fine with me. But if the best explanation is that the giraffe’s neck requires some special engineering that random mutations and selection can’t account for, that’s fine with me, too. The difference between myself and a neo-Darwinist is that the neo-Darwinist rules out the latter explanation a priori.

3. Referring to naturalistic explanations for gravity and so on, you ask: “Why should biological processes be any different?” In your examples, you are confusing the everyday operations of nature with the question of the *origin* of those everyday operations. No ID proponent has said that biological processes happen due to angels or ghosts or leprechauns. All ID proponents accept that there are lawlike patterns in living things, as there are in inanimate matter. But just as physics cannot explain the *origin* of gravity, but can only explain how it works in terms of impersonal mathematical generalizations, it may well be that biology will one day be able to explicate every detail of genetics and development in terms of natural regularities, but never be able to explain, e.g., the origin of life, or the origin of the Cambrian explosion. It may be that intelligence was somehow input into living nature in ways that we cannot discover. In short, the search for origins may sometimes lay upon science obligations that it is unable to fulfill with its current bag of mechanistic intellectual tools.

Notice that I have used the subjunctive. I have said that origins may not be explicable by normal scientific procedures. I have not said that they are not explicable. I have an open mind on the subject. Darwinists do not. They are certain that origins are just as explicable as the everyday operations of nature. I think that certainty is dogmatic and metaphysical, not scientific.

4. I don’t like the word “purpose”. “Purpose” is not a clear enough term for scientific work. “Purpose” can mean something like “the meaning of life” as in: “Why are we here?” Or it can pertain to some particular moral problem, as in: “Why would a loving God create rabies?” ID does not claim to detect “purpose” in that sense. ID is completely agnostic about the existence of any “purpose” in the universe, or any “purpose” for the existence of any particular creature in it – including man. ID is concerned only with detecting design. ID wants to know whether rabies is designed, not why God (or the devil, or whoever) designed it. ID wants to know whether the Cambrian explosion could have occurred without the input of intelligence (either on-site or remotely, through front-loading). ID does not even try to address the question why God (or aliens from Aldebaran, if you think they are the designers) would have wanted to produce a Cambrian explosion. ID is methodologically incapable of answering questions of purpose, motive, meaning, etc. It can only describe biological arrangements and assess the probability (from 0 to 1) that those arrangements are designed. At least, that is what it aspires to be able to assess.

5. As for your last question, exactly the same question can be addressed to Darwinists. What experiment could unambiguously eliminate the Darwinian hypothesis (macroevolution caused by mutations plus natural selection etc.)? If one hypothetical evolutionary pathway from land mammals to whales is falsified, the Darwinists just come up with another one. And they hang on to that one until fossil evidence or genetic evidence or radioactive dating evidence or whatnot makes that one impossible. Then they come up with another one. A while ago it was a hippo-like animal that was the supposed ancestor of the whale; now it’s a wolf-like one. Five years from now it may be a rodent-like one. Never do Darwinists entertain for a moment the possibility that whales *could not* have evolved by entirely naturalistic means from land mammals. For to entertain that possibility would mean to entertain the possibility that whales may have been specially engineered, and that conclusion, even if it is derived entirely from biological data and not at all from any religious teaching, the Darwinists will simply not allow.

Or am I wrong? Can you give me an example of a “killer observation” or “killer experiment” that would falsify Darwinism completely? And please don’t use “the Cambrian rabbit ploy”. That tired old Cambrian rabbit, whose ears are getting sore from being pulled out of the hat so many times by Darwinists, would indeed falsify common descent. But many ID proponents accept common descent, e.g., Behe, Denton, and they do not expect to find a Cambrian rabbit. Common descent is not the point in debate between ID proper and Darwinism. The issue is, within the working assumption of common descent, what would falsify the Darwinian hypothesis once and for all? What would force a Darwinian to admit that evolution could not have been entirely unguided? I have asked this question over and over again, and never have I spoken to or read a Darwinist who has an answer for it. And being somewhat of a Popperian in philosophy of science (unfashionable, I know, but I was never much for fashion), I would argue that any hypothesis for which this question cannot be answered is not really a scientific hypothesis, but a vague, airy speculation. So, is Darwinian evolution a falsifiable hypothesis, or not? If so, how could it be falsified? If not, why should it be regarded as science?

T.

Right. When I refer to “Darwinism,” I mean Darwin’s “general theory, or any of is latter formulations.

Whatever was set up was limited. That is what the evidence says.

One of my main points in this discussion is that Darwinian principles work but to a limited degree. And I can find good reasons for why it should both work and why it should be limited. The evidence supports both these contentions.

By denying this limited scope for Darwinian principles, we end up looking like anti science luddites. By affirming this limited scope for Darwinian principles we look sharper than our opponents who then have no science on which to fall back on. They must fall back on ideology.

I have read and I still read The Origin of Species. Darwin inserted those words on the 2nd edition. Right now I am away from my research files on Darwin, but if memory serves me well, in a letter to Joseph Hooker (correct me if I am wrong) he gave his pragmatic reasons for using these words, but deplored having used the Pentateuchal language.

This sounds like doublespeak to me.

My only problem is with those who, on the one hand, posit Darwnism, which forbids a “set up,” while telling me that Darwinism could have been “set up.”

It reminds me of the old Dragnet series where a recently apprehended miscreant was rounded up by Joe Friday. Offended by the rigorous interrogation to which he had been subjected, he cried out, “You’re crazy.” Friday responded, “one thing sure, somebody is.”