XDA

nice try, but I think the view that evolution by natural selection and supernatural design are compatible shows a lack of understanding of the full impact of the theory. Darwin "started in the middle" showing how organisms adapt to their environment through natural selection (which i think is a deliberate oxymoron, by the way), but it's possible to extend the theory backwards to the very beginning of replicators on earth, some 4 billion years ago. More to the point though, evolution is the quintessential design process, the process that, as it happens, ended up producing a being that can design "intelligently" - "intelligent design" is thus an outcome of natural selection, not a first cause! For the best exegesis of modern darwinism and its implications, i strongly recommend "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" by Dan Dennet (which I am half way through). it's going to be hard to find a toe-hold for God after this!
 

Nice try? and yes, 'selection' could imply something super-natural doing the selecting (which is why I prefer the term differential reporduction), but all Darwin ever said was given the overarching rule for life, have children who have children, this is what happens over time. The fit of the design of the species to the ecological niche the species occupies is clearly a result of evolution over time and not God causing it to happen (supernautrally). You talk about going back 4 billion years to the very beginning of replicators (the first life) but are only talking about what happens after life begins and the rule applies. What was the rule for chemicals that weren't life, some of those chemicals can replicate (simple chemical formula crystals grow)? Was it the same rule? I doubt it. But for life to begin, to make the leap from inanimate chemicals to simple life form--something Darwin never talked about to my knowledge--that's where we reach an area of dispute that is different from merely denying the obvious truth of evolutionaly theory and face the origin of life, about which we have to say, we don't know (and regarding areas where we necessarily have to say we don't know--like what happens to us after death-- faith has to substitute for knowledge). I feel my grasp of modern evolutionary theory is pretty sound based on my extensive reading of the late Steven Jay Gould, but I'll give Dennet a try (nice or not) after you're finished. Especially if he has more 'facts' about what happened 4 billion years ago to turn mere chemicals into a cell. Thanks for the intellectual challenge, ya' pagan.
 

well, perhaps we don't know, but it's not the case that we necessarily don't know. Dennet has a chapter called "Priming Darwin's Pump" that goes into the theory of how the pump got started, but for one with a science-starved education, like me, it's going to take 2 or 3 reads to get it, and even the author admits he can only acquaint us with the ideas, rather than fully explain them (he refers us to a book by Eiger - Steps Towards Life. But it's clear that even if these theories are controversial, untestable perhaps, it shows that we don't have to abandon this area to "faith" - explanation is possible, and in fact preferable, because it is the one way we have to get to the truth. Fighting words from Dennett: "we're seriously trying to get to the truth here and if you think this common but unspoken understanding about faith [use it a an alternative to reason] is anything better than socially useful obfuscation to avoid mutual embarassment and loss of face, you have either seen much more deeply into this issue than any philosopher ever has...or you are kidding yourself"!! When there is a truth to be sought in the realm of the physical, science/reason will always win out over faith for me, even in areas where we don't know (yet).

Dennett also has a chapter where he weighs in against the famous Gould/Lewontin paper about the Spandrels of San Marcos - riveting stuff! A motto of recent sociobiology seems to be don't believe everything you read in Gould!
 

One of my favorite Wittgenstein quotes: "is some riddle solved by my surviving forever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time". I don't think the riddle is how space and time (and matter) came about, it's about how we should live our lives. No riddle is solved by postulating a supernatural world primer - after all, He could not possibly have predicted the outcome would be us (cf. Gould on replaying the tape of Life). If there's a meaning in religion it's outside the world - it would be about how we should live *given* we are Darwinianly (?) created beings. That indeed is not a riddle for evolution theory to solve (which is why we detest Spencer's socila darwinism).
 

Good stuff, my friend, I assume that you are not working today. I just got back from some partial catching up at the office. OK. Sociobiology is the comming thing and has been for the last 30 years. Is there a time in the near future that we declare that it's not going to come after all? I vaguely remember a controversy involving Steven Jay and the left handed spiral version of what he was studying. Give me more. Gould's primary function (beyond co-inventor of the theory of punctuated equibilibrium) was as a simplifier and popularizer of evolutionary theory for the masses (like me). Enough of my defense of him. Let's start out with the Big Bang what 15 billion years ago (as everything is supposed to have done). There's nothing and then suddenly there's a great deal and the whole universe (all that matters) is created in nanoseconds. Why is this not theology? How is this explanation for an unknowable any different than a creation myth? How is saying it all just suddenly appears explosively any explanation at all? Now let's go to the origin of life. Unless we recreate it (and we haven't) in a lab, it was so long ago that I think it is for all practical purposes unknowable (and I'll hold that belief until the scientists do create life in a lab). So if science is no closer today to answering the question of how did mere chemicals become life than the scientists were 150 years ago, why are you hoping for a definitive answer soon? I guess if they could reanimate dead people, or capture a soul (assuming such a thing exist) there could be an answer to what happens after death, but you didn't quibble about my saying that knowledge was consigned to faith. Anyway, facts are indeed preferable to faith, but don't but too much faith in scientific facts. We have seen in the past that scientific facts and theories, proved at the time and universally accepted have been proved over time to be false. Sun around the Earth, for example. In our own life times, we have seen the idea of plate tectonics and continental drift go from stupid wrong theory to absolutely correct fact. And didn't Werner Heisenberg pretty clearly prove that there are limits to our knowledge arising from the very size or speed of matter and energy and their component parts? Just asking.
I think there are four types of people--those who don't know who Witbenstein is; those who know the name but will never read him; those who think if they read him it would be really cool and they would get it; and, those who have actually read him. I know to which group you belong. Where do you think I am? I think the value of religion is that it does seek to limit behavior in generally good ways using the hard won widsom of the ages. Philosophy can come independently to codes of conduct that are remarkably similar to religious codes of conduct, or the teachings of philosophers can be the jumping off place for guys like Hitler. Social Darwinism can lead to Hitler, did lead to Meg Sanger. I'm losing the thread now, but in short is just seems to me that philosophy is a similar study to religion but instead of God there's reason. As for no solution found in religion. Why do you think all the solutions are the result of facts or reason. There is more to Heaven and Earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy. Thanks again for the thoughtful comments.
 

Late reply due wedding anniversary Friday! I got halfway through a book called The Triumph of Sociobiology, which was partly enlightening but mostly pouring boiling oil on Gould, Lewontin and those who would pour water on its inventor, EO Wilson (as some students once did). So I'll take sociobiology to have triumphed (except for the name - i believe it's called Evolitionary Biology or Evolutionary Psychology, when applied to humans, and chief proponents include Tooby, Cosmides and Steven Pinker of Harvard, who is also a neo-Chomskyist). Of Gould, the thought is he's an excellent exponent of "evolution for dummies" but his "revolutionary" ideas aren't, because they are false.

The Big Bang theory is not theology because it's a theory. Theology doesn't deal in theory, it deals in "higher" things - meaning, worth, values, etc. For example, I don't think genesis is trying to give us a theory about the genesis of the physical world - it's trying to tell us that the world is "good" and it is a gift from God, that man has "dominion" over the fish and fowl and therefore has a responsibility to keep it good. you won't get that from gould, Dennett or newton! (I think it's also trying to explain why we take it easy on Sundays!). the Big Bang is merely a theory about how a unified force divided into force seperate ones. Intersting if you're a physicist, but no moral implications!

I'm one of those who think there is a world out there that works in certain ways and that our theories are getting closer and closer to understanding how it works. the heliocentric theory superceded the geocentric becaue it is a better theory, same with plate techtonics - we're not going to back on those theories, nor relativity, quantum mechanics or evolution by natural selection. What we will do is expand on them.

I'm guessing you've no intention of reading Wittgenstein! But you forget the group that has read Wittgenstein and professes that most who read him don't understand him. My college had plenty of those, and i didn't like them! the point of philosophy is to do things like Dennett is doing - explaining what the science is about and where it fits in the scheme of things - non-understandable philosophers are missing the point - they should be the clearest of all!

Okay, got to put the Saturnalia lights up!