tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8483622.post113521017667993813..comments2024-02-29T20:00:59.902-08:00Comments on Cartago Delenda Est: With The Entrails Of The Last PriestMatteohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05393908406875742989noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8483622.post-1135287380425526882005-12-22T13:36:00.000-08:002005-12-22T13:36:00.000-08:00By "religiously motivated" I meant that an honest ...By "religiously motivated" I meant that an honest belief in ID generally aligns with a pre-existing belief in a creator deity, and is most often a way to buttress that belief.<BR/><BR/>Atheist (and, I suspect, non-Christian in general) ID advocates are curiously hard to find. If you look at the three people named as atheist evolution critics, none of them argue for ID. The closest is Denton's uptake of the strong anthropic principle (in his view, the universe's parameters are optimized to prefer life).<BR/><BR/>What will it take to honestly demonstrate evolution to you? I assume that what you object to is the idea that the action of natural selection on random variations can produce the complex and varied life we see within appropriate time scales.<BR/><BR/>If you want a theological treatment, John F. Haught is a professor of theology at Georgetown who specializes in reconciling evolution with religion (presumably with a strong emphasis on Catholicism). Wikipedia lists several books by him.<BR/><BR/>But let us take one analysis of the timescale of evolution; namely, that of Behe & Snoke, published 2004 in Protein Science. You can follow a longer analysis in Behe's cross examination during the Dover ID trial.<BR/><BR/>Behe & Snoke claim that the fixation via evolution of a particular feature would take 10**8 (one hundred million) generations in a population of 10**9 (one billion) individuals. Those more familiar with biology have done analyses that suggest these numbers are too conservative by orders of magnitude, but I will set that aside and work with Behe's and Snoke's assumptions.<BR/><BR/>Many bacterial generations are between 15 minutes and several hours; Behe cited 10,000 generations in two years, which would put 10**8 generations at 20,000 years. A pound of soil contains upwards of 10**12 single-celled organisms; other media are similar. Given these numbers and Behe's conservative assumptions, we can expect one thousand similar protein evolutions, due to that one mechanism, every 20,000 years. In each pound of soil. (A single person's skin also holds on the order of 10**12 bacteria.)<BR/><BR/>Rather than helping argue for ID, their analysis seems to support the position that evolution can produce a huge amount of variety on short time scales and in small environments.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8483622.post-1135273165813003052005-12-22T09:39:00.000-08:002005-12-22T09:39:00.000-08:00If by "religiously motivated" you mean "only relig...If by "religiously motivated" you mean "only religiously motivated", I acknowledge no such thing. I've already told you in other comments that the ID/evolution question had zero to do with my religious conversion. I like science. I happen to think that the theory of Darwinism (natural selection of random variation), is a scientific travesty, which is, in fact, mainly backed by (anti)religious motivation. If the theory could actually be demonstrated in an honest way that didn't require metaphysical naturalism to accept the wild extrapolations, I'd have no trouble accepting it, nor would it have an impact on my faith.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, I'm about to head out for Christmas travels, so I won't be able to debate any of this (not that such a debate would be very fruitful. In general, I know where you stand, you know where I stand, and neither of us is changing the other's mind about anything).<BR/><BR/>Merry Christmas!Matteohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05393908406875742989noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8483622.post-1135255197329742422005-12-22T04:39:00.000-08:002005-12-22T04:39:00.000-08:00Even if it is sardonic, at least you acknowledge t...Even if it is sardonic, at least you acknowledge that ID is religiously motivated. The argument that evolution requires or implies atheism is old, tired, and thoroughly discredited. Just ask the Pope.<BR/><BR/>Even that article's list of supposedly atheist evolution critics fails: Stanley Salthe's home page is full of social science ramblings about how Darwinian evolution is morally bankrupt (which seems to be his primary reason for rejecting it), which is closely related to the religious reasons to reject evolution. Michael Denton's more recent book (Nature's Destiny) is, depending on how you interpret his view of "fine-tuning" in the universe, either plain evolution or theism dressed up. David Berlinski does not profess any religious beliefs in his writings -- but this seems more due to dedicating his pen to unfounded insults, strawmen and ad hominem arguments than due to any belief in a non-theistic intelligent designer.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com