On Mon, 05-9-05 7:31 am
I am but a layman in matters of intelligent design v. Darwinian naturalism, but I will ask my question nonetheless (and perhaps so display my ignorance):
Doesn’t “natural selection” imply intelligence? If “natural selection” somehow knows that one mutation is superior to another, how does that knowledge originate?
As I warned, I may be demonstrating my ignorance and am perhaps involving “myself in great matters, or in things too difficult for me,” but I’m curious.
Help?
2 Cor 1:13
I grew up in an Episcopal church in Oak Ridge, where I was taught by our physicist/priest that God used evolution as a way to bring about his will in creating humanity. I never could understand the so-called dichotomy between “biblical” creation and “godless” evolution.
When I studied Christian ethics in seminary I was taught that the modern scientific method rejects the very notion of a telos (end or purpose) in physical phenomena. I still have a hard time understanding or accepting this limitation in the empirical approach. It seems to me that the evidence of life action in individuals and species points toward a telos in all living things toward expanding and perpetuating life in both the individual and species. Thus, the evidence for intelligence in life processes would seem to carry more weight than the agreed-upon limitations of the method itself.
I don’t necessarily believe God created human life by natural selection, but I don’t disbelieve it, either. As best I can tell, Genesis 1-2 doesn’t concern itself with the “how” at all. It’s all about the who and, to a degree, the “why.” That should be our focus too, it seems to me.
‘Natural selection’, as far as I remember, refers to the process by which organisms which are better suited to surviving in their environment tend to survive at a greater rate and pass on their genetic characteristics to their offspring at a greater rate, thus increasing the share of their genes in their specie’s gene pool. No intelligence is supposedly necessary in this process.
As to the molecules-to-man hypothesis (i.e., what most people refer to when they say ‘evolution’), I am not a paleontologist, a geologist, an ‘evolutionary zoologist’ (or whatever they call themselves), or even a Ph.D. biologist. I suspect few of those commenting on this issue are, either. I have a bachelor’s in biology and an M.D., but these do not qualify me to critique the research involved.
There are people with degrees in the relevant fields, however, who deeply question the theory of evolution, and even declare that it should not properly be considered a theory, as it lacks some of the crucial qualifications of one. Many also maintain that the scientific data corresponds nicely with the text of Scripture, and not with evolutionary theory.
Meanwhile, a cursory examination of the tenets of evolutionary theory, and of the book of Genesis, reveals some glaring conflicts.
Absent a compelling reason to do otherwise, I will maintain the truth of a ‘plain face’ reading of the text of Scripture. Compelling reasons to do otherwise generally will fall into only a few categories. Rarely, but occasionally, non-Scriptural sources may inform textual interpretation, usually when reasonable considerations of the form of the text allow or encourage an alternative interpretation. A good example is in Psalms, where the sun is described as moving across the sky. Strong, easily reproducible non-Scriptural evidence indicates that this is not really the case, rather the earth revolves on its axis, producing the appearance of the sun moving. Psalms are generally poetic, and involve poetic descriptions. It is unreasonable to expect them always to be literally true. This is not the case of most of Scripture (e.g., Genesis), however, which is historic in nature, and where therefore the presumption should be that the plain face reading of the text is true.
Since there are those with Ph.D.’s in the relevant fields who disagree with standard evolutionary theory, and since it contradicts a plain face reading of Scripture, I see no reason to grant it any credence. This is particularly so when it is clear to me, from a cursory reading of the writings of evolutionists, that many of them start with philosophically naturalistic assumptions, which I know to be false from the outset. Also, it is clear that a logical outworking of evolutionary theory as it is commonly presented is the conclusion that morality is meaningless. Since I know that morality is meaningful, I am justified in rejecting evolutionary theory.
Jonathan Witt of Wittingshire and Intelligent Design The Future provided the following via email:
Natural selection, as described by Darwin and neo-Darwinists, merely describes the mutations that did in fact survive and more effectively propagate. If a baby Cheetah has a genetic mutation that makes him a bit faster, he may do a better job catching gazelles, growing strong, mating, and passing on his mutation. The term “selection” implies purposiveness, but Darwin meant to correct this with the term “natural.”
The evidence for microevolution is strong, so strong that it was accepted before Darwin. The evidence for the origin of radically new animals forms and organs (macroevolution) by natural selection is stunningly weak. Geneticist Michael Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis remains a seminal work on this matter. Briefer treatments can be found at http://www.discovery.org/csc .
Here are some informative quotes regarding natural selection from an article at TrueOrigin Archive by Bert Thompson, Ph.D. and Brad Harrub, Ph.D. (http://www.trueorigin.org/ng_ap01.asp):
1. Some well-known evolutionists have been trying for years to get their own colleagues to concede that natural selection is a tautology. Somehow, natural selection is supposed to ensure the “survival of the fittest,†but the only pragmatic way to define the “fittest†is (you guessed it!) “those that survive.â€
2. The problem for natural selection, however, does not end there. In fact, it gets even more serious. As Stephen J. Gould observed: “The essence of Darwinism lies in a single phrase: natural selection is the creative force of evolutionary change. No one denies that selection will play a negative role in eliminating the unfit. Darwinian theories require that it create the fit as well†(1977b, p. 28). Unfortunately, creating the fit is the one thing natural selection cannot do. As the famous Dutch botanist Hugo deVries put it: “Natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest, but it cannot explain the arrival of the fittest†(1905, pp. 825-826).
3. The fact that an organism is adapted to its environment tells us absolutely nothing about how it came to be adapted. Any organisms not so adapted would not have survived, but this constitutes no proof that those organisms that did survive possessed adaptations produced by evolution.
4. Creationists never have objected to the idea of natural selection as a mechanism for eliminating the unfit, non-adapted organisms. As a matter of fact, creationists long before Darwin were advocating natural selection as a conservation principle. Few people are aware, apparently, that natural selection was not Charles Darwin’s discovery. A creationist zoologist/chemist by the name of Edward Blyth (1810-1873) wrote about it in the years between 1835 and 1837, well before Darwin. Some evolutionists, like the late Loren Eiseley (Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania), even have gone so far as to question the incredible similarity between Blyth’s essays and those of Charles Darwin (1959), hinting at plagiarism on Darwin’s part. Eiseley wrote that “the leading tenets of Darwin’s work—the struggle for existence, variation, natural selection, and sexual selection—are all fully expressed in a paper written by Blyth in 1835†(1979, p. 55).
I’m commenting late on your May 9th post. The phrase, “natural selection” may imply intelligence, but, for example, selection for strains of bacteria resistant to antibiotics is usually (and satisfactorily, to most people) explained as an automatic and non-directed process. As far as I know, Witt (comment 3) is quite correct.