Albert Cipriani

Dear Alix and Baloo,
I’ll provisionally accept that I and the other Albert (Einstein) were wrong, that the core of reality is indeterminate. At first glance, this seems to refute the Christian omniscient God and seems to support evolution’s god of Chance.

If knowing all there is to know about an isotope cannot reveal how it will decay, then even an omniscient God must not know some things. Or so it would seem… if knowledge were strictly causal. But knowledge is not strictly causal.

We know most of what we know experientially, not causally. For example, we know that the sun will rise tomorrow through experience first, and through Newtonian physics second. Likewise, an eternal God has already experienced all of time. Ergo, His knowledge of isotopic decay is complete and His standing as an omniscient God is preserved by virtue of His having experienced all that there is to experience, not through His mastery of the inadequate law of causality.

In short, I’ll grant you your unknowable universe if you’ll grant me an omniscient God who knows the unknowable through experience rather than through causality. Deal? – Albert the Traditional Catholic

Happy Wonderer

I have to pick on one statement. Perhaps it was just a poetic metaphor, but evolution does not depend upon chance and is in fact completely the opposite of a random process. For some reason, "evolution = chance" seems to be a common misconception.

Mutations are probably random with respect to function, but it is not necessary for the theory for that to be true. The power of the theory is that chance mutations (and other factors) are sufficient for a species to evolve into another. It would be impressive if mutations came about when an organism needed to evolve (IOW, non-chance), but the theory shows how that is not a necessary assumption.

Mutations are only a tiny part of the theory. Selection is the important part, and that is definitely not chance. A mutation that causes a creature to be less fit than others (lame, for example) is quickly eliminated from the population. A mutation that causes greater fitness, however, slightly increases the odds that the carrier individual will survive to reproduction. A neutral mutation may become selective if conditions change (eg, thicker hair becomes positive if the habitiat gets colder.)

If survival was a completely random process, then evolution could not occur.

HW

Albert Cipriani

Dear Happy,
You assert:
Variations in the genome are random. Genes get shuffled like a deck of cards cum every conception. Thereafter, the decidedly un-random process of Natural Selection works its magic. So evolution is a two-step soft shuffle, the first dance step is random and the second dance step is not. Only a demented wallflower would insist upon the process being totally un-random. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Happy Wonderer

Aha, I like the poetry!

Riddle me this: I shuffle a deck fairly. Draw a card. If the card is not an ace or a Joker, I discard it and draw again. I continue until I have five cards.

Is that a random process, a non random process, or not a totally un-random process? Can I use that method of drawing cards to play poker with you?

HW

Albert Cipriani

Dear HW,
Alas, we’ll never be poker-playing buddies. You don’t cheat discretely enough.

But to answer your question, each time you pull a card from the deck, you’ve engaged in a random process (e.g., mitosis). The calculation whereby you reject the randomly drawn card is a non-random process (e.g., survival of the fittest).

Our problem is that you insist on conflating two distinct evolutionary processes into one. What works as a Certs breath mint jingle (“two mints, two mints in one”) does not serve our evolutionary context well. – Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Happy Wonderer

Nice foxtrot, but isn't the orchestra playing a tango?

Your claim was that evolution is a random process. Now you claim that it is two processes, one random and one not? So you would be happy to play cards with me, even though I win every time -- because part of the process is fair?


HW

Albert Cipriani

Come Come HW,
This is beneath you. The subject is whether or not evolution is a game of chance, not whether or not you or I want to take our chances with it. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

P.S. Alix and Baloo, do I have a deal or not?

Doubting Didymus

What the hell is going on? This conversation is merrily traipsing around strange and obscure lands. I demand that the universe begin making some kind of sense!

Happy Wonderer

Sorry? I don't get it what is beneath me (except my comfy chair...). (Sorry for the brevity of my last post, a domestic crisis involving the kitchen cut it short.)

I agree that we are talking about the process of evolution. You claim that "chance is the god of evolution." Perhaps you mean "chance is the god of random mutation?" Even that isn't exactly accurate, since any genome compatible with life is still going to be almost identical to the parent genome. (Leaving aside sexual reproduction for the moment -- unless the randomness of that combination is your point?)

My point -- which is a small one I'll admit -- is that natural selection undoes the randomness of the "random mutation". Just like discarding any cards that are not aces will not give you a random draw, neither does discarding any genome that is not fit for its environment.

HW

I can't seem to connect to the Catholic encyclopedia at the moment, but isn't the version of God that you propose perilously close to the error of Deism?

Albert Cipriani

Dear Doubting
I’ll spell it out for you:

A) HW thinks that the evolutionary engine runs on an exotic heretofore unknown fuel called "non-random processes." I say chance is the fuel cell for evolution.
B) Alix and Baloo assert that beyond evolutionary chance processes, matter itself changes by chance, that even an omniscient being cannot know what matter will do next. I argue that an omniscient eternal being could, as a function of His experience, not His omniscience, know what every subatomic particle will do next.

There, that wasn’t so hard now was it? – Growing Impatient and Bored, Albert the Traditional Catholic