John Galt, Jr.

Mageth,

The relevant literature on simplicity is full of attempts to (a) characterize simplicity in a non-subjective way, and (b) establish some relation between simplicity and truth. Neither of these enterprises has produced anything that enjoys any status amongst those who work in this area. Your claim about separating baloney from truth is empty.

John Galt, Jr.

John Galt, Jr.

beausoleil,

Join the discussion about the empirical evidence that discriminates between the two hypotheses. If you don't think that the empirical data does so discriminate, then you and I have no disagreement.

Please explain where you think I am telling anyone how to use the word 'fact'. and/or, Please explain how the sense of 'fact' that you suggest I am 'imposing' differs from the sense of 'fact' that scientists use. I have no idea what you are talking about here.

Mechanism for what?


John Galt, Jr.

[ July 01, 2002: Message edited by: John Galt, Jr. ]</p>

RufusAtticus

One example is enough to disprove your assertion. So far I count five. If you need to learn more about why evolution is a fact, read this.

<a href="http://books.nap.edu/books/0309063647/html/index.html" target="_blank">Nat'l Academy Press, Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science (1998)</a>

Pay attention to pages 4-6.

Now, would you please enlighten us to what makes you qualified to determine if evolution is supported by the evidence?

~~RvFvS~~

John Galt, Jr.

RufusAtticus,

Do you, indeed? Several of them haven't even claimed to have an elementary appreciation of
the relevant aspects of the epistemology. Either you are generous, or willing to assume that they do, but you can hardly expect me to do so) suggesting that you don't know what a counter-example to my claim would be either.

Do you understand that the issue is not whether evolution (the historical elements of the story) is supported the evidence, but whether or not the data discriminates between the two hypotheses? Do you understand the difference between the two issues? The fact that you ask this question strongly suggests that you, along with many others (those who think it is about 'certainty', for example), don't understand the issue here.

You really ought to 'get out more' intellectually. The Plantinga essay that has been linked provides an opportunity.

John Galt, Jr.

RufusAtticus

If you would actually bother to read Futuyma, Gould, and that NAS report, which have been references, you will see a detailed discussion of what "fact" means to science and how evolution satisfies that. Now, if you happen to have some alternate concept of how scientists should use "fact" feel free to share it.

Of course, but I suspect that you don't know enough about the nature of the fossil record to even determine if special creation fits the fossil record. Now would you happen to explain the nature of the fossil record as you know it.

Maybe you should learn more about science before you start complaing about diction. For instance, your special creation hypothesis is not scientific since "magic" can explain anything. Thus science can't consider it as an alternative explaination to evolution. Furthermore, your version of "special creation" has one glaring problem. Special creation requires that the creation occured once, and established all types of creatures. Your description does not include that.

This from the guy who has shown a serious lack of knowledge about the reasons why evolution is considered a fact and creationism not. Maybe you should lurk a little longer before you go head first into this board and accuse people of being narrow sighted.

~~RvFvS~~

[ July 01, 2002: Message edited by: RufusAtticus ]</p>

Vorkosigan

John,

it's a really dumb essay. Plantinga just doesn't understand evolution; or more likely, he does but is lying.

It's a long essay, and I am only going to review the relevant and highly erroneous sections here.

• The first thing to see is that a number of different large-scale claims fall under this general rubric of evolution. First, there is the claim that the earth is very old, perhaps some 4.5 billion years old: The Ancient Earth Thesis, as we may call it.

Note that while large amounts of time are needed, the particular age of the earth is irrevelant.

• Second, there is the claim that life has progressed from relatively simple to relatively complex forms of life. In the beginning there was relatively simple unicellular life, perhaps of the sort represented by bacteria and blue green algae, or perhaps still simpler unknown forms of life. (Although bacteria are simple compared to some other living beings, they are in fact enormously complex creatures.) Then more complex unicellular life, then relatively simple multicellular life such as seagoing worms, coral, and jelly fish, then fish, then amphibia, then reptiles, birds, mammals, and finally, as the culmination of the whole process, human beings: the Progress Thesis, as we humans may like to call it (jelly fish might have a different view as to where to whole process culminates).

This is wildly wrong. There is no progress in evolution. Life evolved; some forms are more complex. There is no great chain of being or ladder of creation, and humans are not the culmination of evolution. Plantinga simply does not understand evolution; or rather, understands it in terms of caricature.

[b] Third, there is the Common Ancestry Thesis: that life originated at only one place on earth,...[/list]
This is an error....nobody knows how many times life may have originated on earth, or where, or how. And this is not a requirement of evolution, it has to do with abiogenesis. Once again, Plantinga is in error. What a surprise.

• all subsequent life being related by descent to those original living creatures-the claim that, as Stephen Could puts it, there is a "tree of evolutionary descent linking all organisms by ties of genealogy."12 According to the Common Ancestry Thesis, we are literally cousins of all living things-horses, oak trees and even poison ivy-distant cousins, no doubt, but still cousins. (This is much easier to imagine for some of us than for others.)

Correct. All living organisms that share DNA are related. It's nice to seem him get one right after a while.

[b]Fourth, there is the claim that there is a (naturalistic) explanation of this development of fife from simple to complex forms; call this thesis Darwinism, because according to the most popular and well-known suggestions, the evolutionary mechanism would be natural selection operating on random genetic mutation (due to copy error or ultra violet radiation or other causes); and this is similar to Darwin's proposals.[/list]
Correct.

[b]Finally, there is the claim that life itself developed from non-living matter without any special creative activity of God but just by virtue of the ordinary laws of physics and chemistry: call this the Naturalistic Origins Thesis.[/list]
Nope. This is, again, abiogenesis, and is separate from evolution. Evolution only talks about what life does once it gets here; it has nothing to say about how it got here.

• These five theses are of course importantly different from each other. They are also logically independent in pairs, except for the third and fourth theses: the fourth entails the third, in that you can't sensibly propose a mechanism or an explanation for evolution without agreeing that evolution has indeed occurred.

Plantinga himself realizes that something is wrong, because he identifies the third and fourth items here as key, but fails to get a grasp of the real issue, that 1,2 and 5 are completely wrong. Completely. It's hard to take him seriously, he's so utterly clueless, although he certainly writes in a sympathetic and intelligent manner.

• The combination of all five of these theses is what I have been calling 'The Grand Evolutionary Story'; the Common Ancestry Thesis together with Darwinism (remember, Darwinism isn't the view that the mechanism driving evolution is just what Darwin says it is) is what one most naturally thinks of as the Theory of Evolution.

Totally incorrect again (at least he is consistent). The theory of evolution consists of two, and just two things. (1) the fact, confirmed by observation and by DNA work, that all life is related by common descent, a fact recognized in the 18th century, and; (2) the mechanism of selection acting on genetic change.

• So how shall we think of these five theses? First, let me remind you once more that I am no expert in this area.

He's got that right…..

• And second, let me say that, as I see it, the empirical or scientific evidence for these five different claims differs enormously in quality and quantity.

No kidding…

• There is excellent evidence for an ancient earth: a whole series of interlocking different kinds of evidence, some of which is marshaled by Howard van Till in The Fourth Day. Given the strength of this evidence, one would need powerful evidence on the other side-from Scriptural considerations, say in order to hold sensibly that the earth is young.

There is no evidence that the earth is young. Scripture is worthless as a guide to the state of the world.

• There is less evidence, but still good evidence in the fossil record for the Progress Thesis, the claim that there were bacteria before fish, fish before reptiles, reptiles before mammals, and mice before men (or wombats before women, for the feminists in the crowd).

The Progress Thesis is shit, so his comments here are irrelevant. In any case, some bacteria obviously evolved after fish, just as some fish evolved after reptiles. Plantinga, in vintage fashion, is confusing first appearance by groups in the fossil record with the appearance of individual species.

• The third and fourth theses, the Common Ancestry and Darwinian These, are what is commonly and popularly identified with evolution;

They are evolution! Plantinga believes his confusion is more correct than the common view.

• The fourth thesis, of course, is no more likely than the third, since it includes the third and proposes a mechanism to account for it.

Plantinga has completely addled things up again – the man is truly a marvel of consistency. Common descent and Darwinian Natural Selection are not related in the way that Plantinga claims. Common Descent was realized before Darwin – the word "evolution" in the modern sense dates from 1826 – and was a problem even as early as Linneaus working in the mid-18th century. In other words, even if Natural Selection is wrong, Common Descent is still a fact that has to be dealt with. The DNA is there. You can't, as Plantinga did here, blithely wave them away.

• Finally, there is the fifth thesis, the Naturalistic Origins Thesis, the claim that life arose by naturalistic means. This seems to me to be for the most part mere arrogant bluster; given our present state of knowledge, I believe it is vastly less probable, on our present evidence, than is its denial.

Imagine Plantinga believing that. Arrogance, of course, is believing that the Canaanite Sky God Ya is the sole god of creation, and everybody better worship him, or die forever. I don't see anything arrogant about being descended from chemicals combining in the mud.

• Darwin thought this claim very chancy; discoveries since Darwin and in particular recent discoveries in molecular biology make it much less likely than it was in Darwin's day. I can't summarize the evidence and the difficulties here.

This is because these difficulties have already been dealt with, and Plantinga either does not know, or does not care. He is either ignorant or malicious; the reader may take his pick.

Plantinga then goes through a highly slanted presentation of evolutionists stating that evolution is a fact. It is a fact – called common descent, with a demonstrated mechanism to support it. After that he argues that the great Fairy Sky God could have made the world in any one of several ways…..

• How shall we decide which of these is initially the more likely? That is not an easy question.

Especially when you have neither evidence nor logic nor a mechanism to back you up.

• It is important to remember, however, that the Lord has not merely left the Cosmos to develop according to an initial creation and an initial set of physical laws.

Plantinga knows this how?

• According to Scripture, he has often intervened in the working of his cosmos. This isn't a good way of putting the matter (because of its deistic suggestions); it is better to say that he has often treated what he has created in a way different from the way in which he ordinarily treats it.

Scripture may claim all it wants, but in the realm of science, we need evidence.

• There are miracles reported in Scripture, for example; and, towering above all, there is the unthinkable gift of salvation for humankind by way of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, his son.

This is not an argument; it is simply pure faith statement, without any force. Why should anyone pay any attention to something as puerile as this?

• In fact it looks to me as if there is an initial probability on the other side; it is a bit more probable, before we look at the scientific evidence, that the Lord created life and some of its forms-in particular, human life-specially.

Hogwash, of course. No evidence for god's existence, no know mechanism by which it operates, no evidence for its ability to intervene in the world, no idea of what rules it plays by, etc, etc, etc. Nothing going on here by fantasizing.

• From this perspective, then, how shall we evaluate the evidence for evolution?

Well, if you declare evolution wrong, there's not much evaluation going on, is there?

• Despite the claims of Ayala, Dawkins, Gould, Simpson and the other experts, I think the evidence here has to be rated as ambiguous and inconclusive.

I am sure, that if DNA evidence showed that Plantinga's children were actually fathered by another man, he would not regard that as "ambiguous and inconclusive."

• The two hypotheses to be compared are (1) the claim that God has created us in such a way that (a) all of contemporary plants and animals are related by common ancestry, and (b) the mechanism driving evolution is natural selection working on random genetic variation and (2) the claim that God created mankind as well as many kinds of plants and animals separately and specially, in such a way that the thesis of common ancestry is false.

The third possibility is the correct one: there are no gods.

• Which of these is the more probable, given the empirical evidence and the theistic context?

Plantinga again argues from faith. His argument runs: I don't believe it, so it isn't true. Same as Kent Hovind's, just nicer language.

• I think the second, the special creation thesis, is somewhat more probable with respect to the evidence (given theism) than the first.

No kidding. Really? Again, only a faith statement, no argument here.

Plantinga then picks four arguments and short quotes. After a slanted presentation, he then says:

• Suppose we briefly consider the last four first. The arguments from vestigial organs, geographical distribution and embryology are suggestive, but of course nowhere near conclusive. As for the similarity in biochemistry of all life, this is reasonably probably on the hypothesis of special creation, hence not much by way of evidence against it, hence not much by way of evidence for evolution.

This is just stupid. He simply dismisses all the arguments, then claims that DNA similarity is evidence for special creation. ROTFL. In order to save his absurd religion, Plantinga falls into Last Thursdayism: whatever the world is, it is because god created it that way. This here is why creationism cannot be regarded as a scientific theory – there is no way to test it.

Plantinga simply ignores all the evidence – the observations of evolution actually occurring, the ability of separately created animals across wide areas to interbreed (all the camelids, for example, are interfertile), the truly stupid designs, the use of evolutionary mechanisms in the lab and in industry, DNA and morphology yielding basically the same picture of the evolution of life, and so on. This is, pure and simple, academic fraud. But what do you expect from a Christian apologist – an actual attempt to grapple with the reality of evolution?

He goes on to say:

• There is some experiential reason to think not; there seems to be a sort of envelope of limited variability surrounding a species and its near relatives. Artificial selection can produce several different kinds of fruit flies and several different kinds of dogs, but, starting with fruit flies, what it produces is only more fruit flies. As plants or animals are bred in certain direction, a sort of barrier is encountered; further selective breeding brings about sterility or a reversion to earlier forms. Partisans of evolution suggest that, in nature, genetic mutation of one sort or another can appropriately augment the reservoir of genetic variation.

Plantinga's claim that species are immutable is shit, of course. No such barrier is known, nor is it possible. How does he explain the close genetic relationships between living organisms? Humans and bananas share 50% of their genes! And yet, we have no common ancestor? Using Plantinga's ideas, there is no way to prove that my parents and I are not separate creations…..

• Next, there is the argument from the fossil record; but as Gould himself points out, the fossil record shows very few transitional forms. "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record," he says, "persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils."21 Nearly all species appear for the first time in the fossil record fully formed, without the vast chains of intermediary forms evolution would suggest.

Next comes the inevitable out-of-context quote from Gould, then a claim that looks OK until you think about it. It's perfectly true we don't have transitions in any great detail for most species, but between the higher taxa transitions are extremely clear, and for many species, including humans, and recently, whales, transitions are also very clear. In short, Plantinga's claim is – can you believe it? – shit. And he ends, of course, with the –inevitable – appeal to Last Thursdayism:

• And secondly, God created several different kinds of animals; what would prevent him from using similar structures?

Totally unscientific. Again, no matter what we see, it conforms to Plantinga's bizarre religious beliefs.

Plantinga goes on to display his ignorance:

• Many different organs and suborgans have to be developed together, and it is hard to envisage a series of mutations which is such that each member of the series has adaptive value, is also a step on the way to the eye, and is such that the last member is an animal with such an eye.

This has been dealt with in the literature, the evolution of the eye is well understood. For once I would like to see a Creationist making new claims…

I don't feel like dealing with this trash anymore; Plantinga is simply silly. Let him start by demonstrating that the Sky god of ancient Canaanite sheepherders actually exists, and we'll go on from there.

• The first thing to see, as I said before, is that Christianity is indeed engaged in a conflict, a battle. There is indeed a battle between the Christian community and the forces of unbelief.

Here is a sick man; the world is a conspiracy. I feel sorry for him, raging against reality.

Vorkosigan

Quetzal

John Galt: Having observed but not having engaged in this thread to this point, I can perhaps take a look at the forest that seems to be obscured by various trees. In the most recent restatement of your question, I begin to catch perhaps a glimmer of the problem. And:
The question as posed appears to me to be fundamentally unanswerable. Without knowledge or prediction of what the evidence for your alien seeding hypothesis would look like (i.e., without some idea of what WOULD or WOULD NOT constitute positive evidence for or against an alien seeding), I submit it is impossible to evaluate the existing evidence one way or the other.

What I would ask (although I hate answering a question with a question, perhaps you can consider it a request for clarification), therefore is:

1. What are the predictions made by the alien seeding hypothesis (henceforth ASH)?

2. What, in your view, would constitute positive evidence that ASH occurred if it could be found?

3. How would biodiversity as observed today be different if ASH were false (i.e., what is the possible falsification of the ASH theory)?

Those are three to go on. To help clarify your hypothetical situation, please be as specific in your answers as possible.

Oolon Colluphid

I propose a different acronym. It's the Covert Redistribution by Aliens Proposal.

Oolon

beausoleil

Memo - must not post on return from the pub. However...

Mechanism for whatever theory you say explains the evidence as well as evolution does, and between which and evolution we cannot in principle decide based on the fossil record (or whatever other evidence you are discussing).

We do in fact see mutation followed by competitive elimination going on. This mechanism can explain the fossil record. Unless you know better, we have no evidence of new species being seeded by aliens going on at the the moment, even though it could explain the fossil record. As a scientist , I have no difficulty discarding a theory which is not needed and relying on a mechanism for which there is no evidence. That's the way science works.

Epistemologists are worried about whether they can justify this approach, but that is a problem for epistemologists, not for scientists. In a scientific world view, if epistemologists' models fail to account for the way science has made what progress it has, their models need to be improved or discarded. It seems to me to be evidence that their approach is based on one or more false premises. Thus I would argue that epistemological criticism of how scientists decide what to treat as 'facts' is irrelevant.

Clutch

JG, Jr, Actually, John, my allusion to Descartes' Evil Demon Hypothesis was carefully considered.

I assumed you would be familiar with the relevant passages from Descartes. If not, perhaps reading them (Med. 1&2) would be a wiser choice than hurling insults out of ignorance. The parallel is obvious to anyone who has read Descartes, but I suppose that means I'll have to explain it:

Please give me the "empirical evidence" that discriminates between the hypotheses that (i) your cognitive faculties are generally reliable, and that (ii) you are being systematically deceived by a powerful demon.

See, the point is that there is no empirical evidence that can distinguish the hypotheses. That's sorta the point of posing the sceptical one. In general, raising the possibility of advanced beings who create misleading evidence is a way of posing a completely general scepticism. In particular, this applies to the prospect of advanced beings who repeatedly tweak life on Earth in just such a way as to make all the evidence *appear* to support mutation-selection-speciation. To ask what empirical evidence rules this out is to add nothing to Descartes' methodological scepticsm about *all* propositions -- including those of mathematics.

As a challenge to any empirical theory, including evolutionary theory, the possibility of powerful agents -- demons, aliens, you name it -- who create systematically deceptive evidence is utterly sophomoric. It amounts to the observation that evolutionary theory is no more proof against radical scepticism than is any other claim.

[ July 02, 2002: Message edited by: Clutch ]</p>