E_muse

Cluth, many thanks for your questions. I'll try and do my best!

Dawkins obviously has a deep respect for Hume although he is less than impressed with Hume's lack of appreciation of nature.

Whilst Hume's attacks on the design arguement were logically sound they failed to explain anything about apparent design in nature. To simply attack an attempted explanation without offering an alternative, however logically sound, is not enough is what I think Dawkins is saying. It still wouldn't have been enough to make Dawkins an atheist. It would have required 'Origins' to do that. I think Dawkins would say that an inadequate explanation is better than no explanation at all, which, if you read my reply above, I clearly stated.

I also think that Dawkins' points out that Hume's position, whilst logically sound and tenable, rested upon a lack of appreciation of the physical world.

A unicorn is a logically sound concept but it doesn't exist, it must also correspond to something about the world in which we live if it is to satisfy the scientist.

I agree. I would also add, as above, that an inadequate explanation is better than no explanation at all.

Not once does Dawkins feel the need to say that the design arguement isn't an explanation. He simply suggests that it was logically flawed and inadequate.

Agreed. However, Dawkins explicitly states that he could not imagine being an atheist simply on the basis of Hume's critique. Perhaps this suggests that he would have worked to refine the arguement from design and remove the logical inconsistencies pointed out by Hume. I don't know. This is pure speculation.

This all stemmed from my point that evolution is not philosophically neutral and the coming together of methodological naturalism and metaphysical naturalism. I simply used Dawkins as an example of someone for whom the scientific method gives strong support for his atheism.

Dawkins boldly states (and I respect his integrity) that, had it not been for Darwin, he could not imagine himself being an atheist. Not even in the light of Hume's critique of the arguement from design. This was my point.

It would be wrong to overstate Hume's impact on Dawkins by saying that, for Dawkins, Hume had destroyed the arguement from design (as stated above) or disposed of it. He had questioned its logic and nothing more.

[ November 25, 2002: Message edited by: E_muse ]</p>

DNAunion

DNAunion: You're not talking about pz's actual words: you, like Nic before you, have added stuff that isn't in pz's statement.

PZ did NOT say (1) biologists don't argue that ALL evolution is direct, nor did he say (2) biologists don't argue that evolution IN GENERAL is direct; he said (3) biologists DON'T EVER argue that evolution is direct. See the dif?

To show (1) wrong, I'd have to show a biologist who claims that ALL evolution is direct. Fortunately, I don't have to do that because pz didn't say (1). Showing (2) wrong would be nearly impossible.

But to show that (3) is wrong, I have to show only that biologists claim ANY evolution is direct.

Now, remember one of those straight branches you mentioned? BINGO! You admitted yourself that SOME evolution is direct. That counters pz's actual statement: the one he has confirmed multiple times means precisely what it says - no hidden meanings, no other contexts, just those words taken literally.

Here are the exact words we are discussing:

DNAunion: I demonstrated that that statement is wrong.

[ November 25, 2002: Message edited by: DNAunion ]</p>

DNAunion

DNAunion: So this will be the third time I explain to you why you are wrong. Say it another dozen times, it won't make a difference: you'll just be wrong a dozen more times.

You seem to forget that pz explicitly emphasized, multiple times, that he meant precisely what his words said - no hidden meaning, no other contexts - just his words taken completely literally.

I even tried to accept blame for having missed some other context within which his words were framed, and therefore misinterpretting him - but PZ himself explicitly said no - he meant precisely what he said. And I even asked him again if he meant EXACTLY what his words themselves said, and he said yes.

DNAunion: No, that's not true. Nic, why do you keep adding things into PZ's statements when PZ himself has said multiple he meant precisely what he said?

Now show us all where PZ said anything about "in general" - in the statement of interest: you can't. Because nothing about "in general" is to be found in the words that PZ stated and confirmed multiple times to be precise.

DNAunion: Nic, this is now the third time that I've tried to explain this to you: he's wrong. You are adding stuff into his statements which he himself has stated was not in there.

DNAunion: Oh yes he was. He even confirmed it multiple times.

DNAunion

DNAunion: Let me remind everyone about some of the exchanges between pz and me about his statement.


[ November 25, 2002: Message edited by: DNAunion ]</p>

pz

Which does not mean that you then get to insert your own hidden meanings into my words.
Yes, I verified that I stand by my words, and I even explained it in considerable detail with examples that preclude your strained and persistently false interpretation.

You are really getting rather tedious with your pointless obsession. Would you mind stepping back and actually explaining what point you are trying to make here? And no, "pz said X which really means Y which means he is a weaseling liar" is not a particularly interesting point.

[ November 25, 2002: Message edited by: pz ]</p>

DNAunion

DNAunion: Sure. You said something really stupid. I called you on it. After some bickering back and forth for several hours, I got burned out and offered a compromise, accepting some guilt in that I acquiesced to haven taken your words completely literally, missing whatever context there might have been. You said no, you meant precisely what you meant. I asked again to confirm. You confirmed.

So you made a stupid statement. I have demonstrated how stupid it is. You stick by it, except of course when you also try to rewrite the words that you confirmed multiple times you meant precisely what they said as literally written (that’s the weasel part).

So here, at your request, I will replay the last part of my point.

DNAunion: Topic 2 of 2.

DNAunion: Okay, so pz has plainly stated several times that he meant precisely: “pz: "biologists don't ever argue that evolution is linear, direct, or by ever-increasing complexity". Are we all straight on that?

In addition, we have pz saying:

DNAunion: So the question is, do biologists – or anyone except Behe or other IDists, for that matter - ever mention “direct evolution”?

I’m not about to read every paper ever written on evolution to find out! But I did spend about 5 minutes doing a Google search on “direct evolution”. Here are some of the hits (note: those that use the word DIRECT as a verb have not been quoted – only those that use it as an adjective have).
Here’s probably the best one. Why? Because it was published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, and it is by anti-IDists. So this isn’t just Behe writing in his own little book to the general public. Here’s the abstract and the link

DNAunion: Two out of four are methods of direct evolution.
That’s enough to prove my point. I win.

Nic Tamzek

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<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />
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RufusAtticus

No, just because he didn't put "in general" or "all" in there, does not mean that this is what he clearly means. You seem to think he said, "biologists don't ever argue that somtimes evolution is linear, direct, or by ever-increasing complexity." But that is not what he said, QED.

No it doesn't, since pz was not arguing that we shouldn't ever see some direct, linear path of evolution, but that the process of evolution is not a linear thing. It is branching process. Branching process can create transient linear paths, but linear processes can never create branching ones. That was his clarification. Maybe it didn't work out how he planned, but I don't think you have disproved him, since his statement doesn't imply what you are reading into it.

RufusAtticus

Ummm, DNAUnion, you still didn't clarify what "direct evolution" is, as you understand it. That is what pz asked you. Furthermore, although the abstract uses the term "direct evolution" you haven't shown that their usage is the same as yours and/or pz's. Thus you have a little more work to do before you get a victory lap.

pz

I gotta say that this issue seems to be one that really separates the people who understand evolution from those that don't.

Your facts are wrong. You apparently have this notion that evolution involves a beast with trait A evolving into a beast with trait B, and that you can portray this as a direct, linear transition from one time to another. This is not true. Evolution is all about properties of populations. While you can say that the relationship between one individual and its progeny are direct, linear, and even simple, that falls apart when you have to work with populations over greater periods of time. Then we have more of an amorphous web of interactions. No, not necessarily. You are again assuming a consistent trend.

Consider this: our immediate ancestors and cousins, Cro-Magnon and Neandertal, had on average larger brains than we do. Errm, no. It most definitely does not. Evolutionary theory is about mechanisms and principles. You are confusing historical observations with general rules.

No, the analogy holds up quite well. I make no assumption that human history is as well documented as a video tape; if it makes you happier, consider an observation of Brownian motion in which one particle is marked, so you can track it, and you come back to make observations only intermittently, every 5 or 10 minutes.

Now, if we look at the hominid fossil record, we see that it isn't so pretty and linear after all. It branches. Some lines evolve bigger brains, others get smaller or stay the same. Even when we see a trend in the particular lineage that ended up with us, there is tremendous variation, and we sometimes see periods (like the current one) when there is actually a trend of reduction in brain size.

Yet you would draw that straight line and say there has been a linear trend.

Another reason that the analogy is useful is that it illustrates the difference between a specific instance and a general rule. If you watch your particular particle (intermittently!) and it ends up moving generally to the right, you would be in error if you then claimed that Brownian motion is a process that relentlessly moves particles to the right...in fact, you would have completely missed the most important principle behind the process. Like Brownian motion, evolution is a chaotic process driven by random forces; any one population can only respond to immediate, local forces, and there is no larger driving force pushing everything in a particular direction. For every particle that moves right, there is one that moves left. For every lineage that evolves a larger CNS, there is one that reduces it, and many more that just plain leave it alone.