ciphergoth comments on Jerry Coyne's "Seeing and Believing" and convergent evolution

Comment on Jerry Coyne's "Seeing and Believing" and convergent evolution by Liz W

2010-01-08T13:45:34+01:00

Ah, the <a> tag doesn’t work? I’ll need to take a closer look at this Markdown business. Also not sure why that comment hasn’t threaded correctly.

Comment on Jerry Coyne's "Seeing and Believing" and convergent evolution by Liz W

2010-01-08T13:43:19+01:00

Doug: I agree with you that God has to be defined out of the scientific frame of reference (and don’t worry, I appreciate the mischievous tone!) Omphalism is certainly one of the odder consequences of creationism, but surely doesn’t follow just from holding a transcendent view of God? As for the Invisible Gardener, I’m with those who think Flew’s philosophy of language was too restrictive; I go with a more Wittgensteinian theory of meaning.

All this reminds me that I have a book of essays in honour of John Wisdom sitting on my to-read pile. Really must get round to that Very Soon Now… right after the other things that I also need to read VSN…

(For those who don’t know, it was Wisdom who originally came up with the Invisible Gardener parable, which Flew then developed further; helpfully, Flew’s (1968) article is available in the <a href=”http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/flew_falsification.html”>unofficial Stephen Jay Gould archive</a>.)

Comment on Jerry Coyne's "Seeing and Believing" and convergent evolution by Paul Crowley

2010-01-08T13:11:34+01:00

I am quite sure that almost all theists who hold a Transcendent view of God are doing so out of genuine conviction, not because they think it’s the strategically clever way to conceptualise God to ward off potential atheist critiques

Well, this is one reason I like the theory of memes. Religious thought has all sorts of features which seem designed to make it invulnerable to criticism, and I don’t think very many of them are deliberately designed by someone with that express intent — it’s just that a belief system with that feature is better at propagating.

Comment on Jerry Coyne's "Seeing and Believing" and convergent evolution by Doug

2010-01-08T12:23:27+01:00

There’s a huge difference between “had to evolve X” and “very likely to evolve X”. Most biologists would agree there exist many X which would be likely to crop up if you — to use Stephen Jay Gould’s phrase — re-ran the tape of evolution. Eyes are a very good example.

But to get to where Giberson and Miller seem to want to be, you need to have a determinism about evolution which I really don’t think is tenable. And certainly not where X=humans as we understand them.

It seems so unnecessary to me as well — it’s very ‘God-of-the-gaps’, trying to squeeze God in to spaces in the existing science. I reckon this is always a Bad Plan because science shifts over time, and it weakens your argument (rhetorically, at least, if not formally) if you have to keep moving your conception of God to fit the gaps in the latest theories.

Much better strategically to define your God well outside that frame of reference and have Him properly Transcendent and Omnipotent — which I think is the sort of thing Liz is doing, and others. It leaves you open to other challenges (e.g. Invisible Gardener, Omphalism) but at least avoids the embarrassing possibility of being incontrovertibly proved wrong about God.

(Just to be clear, I’m being slightly mischievous here. I am quite sure that almost all theists who hold a Transcendent view of God are doing so out of genuine conviction, not because they think it’s the strategically clever way to conceptualise God to ward off potential atheist critiques.)

Comment on Jerry Coyne's "Seeing and Believing" and convergent evolution by Liz W

2010-01-07T12:19:21+01:00

Is he saying that all attempts to reconcile Christianity [1] and evolution fail if our evolution was not inevitable, or only that these specific ones do? He may be right on the latter — I haven’t read either book — but I’d disagree with the former. I probably don’t have time to unpack the reasons fully right now (but will happily do so over the beverage of your choice at some point). The short version is that I don’t think “inevitability” is a valid concept in the first place when it comes to God’s interaction with creation; it looks valid superficially, but only because we find it difficult to conceive of a God outside time and tend to speak of him as though he were inside it, even if we know perfectly well that classical Christianity teaches otherwise.

Comment on Jerry Coyne's "Seeing and Believing" and convergent evolution by Alison Rowan

2010-01-06T21:56:48+01:00

I’m not sure you can prove much from the success of an invasive species. Invasive species tend to succeed because they don’t ‘fit in the eco-system they’re introduced to. Research has shown that they’re healthier because they leave their parasites and diseases behind (http://www.instadv.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=761) and rabbits, in particular, had few predators in Australia in part because the giant birds that might have had them for lunch were already extinct (plausibly because of people).

In contrast, in an island ecology, new settlers (it’s usually birds as they can get there easier) will evolve incredibly rapidly to fill every available niche: Galapagos finches are the canonical example. But filling niches just means learning to eat all the available food (and not get eaten in the process), it doesn’t have to mean convergent evolution. There’s more than one way to crack a nut.