Dawkins on Evolution

Oh I don't know if I agree about Armstrong. I have just finished her 'Case for God' book and found it pretty good, really. I actually think she has had a major spiritual awakening somewhere along the line. This idea of the 'God beyond God' - I think what she is means is that when people use the word 'God', what they are generally thinking of something defined in scripture and tradition, or of some kind of construction or image or being or thing. They have all of these mental and verbal associations which constitutes their 'belief', for or against. This imade they have is the referent for the term. It is some kind of mental picture, a conventional reality and a projection which they either accept or reject. But in reality there is no thing which corresponds to the term. Being beyond things, it is also beyond thought.


Hence when Armstrong writes:



I know what she means. But it is not an easy thing to understand, I admit. The effort to understand it, is itself a spiritual discipline. In the Christian idiom, meditation awakens 'the eye of contemplation' by which this is understood.

Thanks for making these points.

Rich

[QUOTE=LWSleeth;90047]it has not been demonstrated that the laws of physicalness aren't violated with life because it has never been demonstrated that physicalness can self-organize in ways that would produce the quality of organization found in living systems.[/quote]What, pray tell, is a "law of physicalness"?

[QUOTE=LWSleeth;90047]the potentials of self-organizing chemistry seem highly limited[/quote]some self-organizing chemistry, like micelles and phospholipid bilayers, happens even without a catalyst. Other reactions and assemblies utilize catalysts, though the energetic conditions in the early earth could be enough to drive polymerization to a more chemically stable macromolecular state.

[QUOTE=LWSleeth;90047]and that randomness cannot be shown to be behind the series of genetic changes needed for organ systems[/quote]Good thing for us then that "randomness" is not a proposed mechanism -- the combinatorial effects of altered gene regulation at several loci has phenotypic end-effects FAR out of proportion to what would be predicted just by looking at a gene sequence.

Furthermore, embryologic development of an organ or an organ system is extraordinarily well-studied, and genetic sequence quite simply is barely able to let us predict early pattern formation in embryos, and it's wholesale insufficient to tell us about the endocrine and paracrine interactions of neighboring tissues by which organ systems develop during embryogenesis.

Interesting. I would appreciate some insights into what appears a problem for me, that is, the spontaneous generation of very complex organisms from very simple antecedents. If in fact new levels of organisation, or reality, or consciousness, gradually appear as living organisms become more and more complex, how can these kind of be bootstrapped into existence through the process of self-organisation? Seems kind of counter-intuitive to me.

JEven phrasing it this way is inconsistent with evolutionary theory. Very simple organisms came out of a very complex milieux of substrate. Things you regard as spontaneous were not so -- low activation energy reactions are were driven by substrate (i.e. take a lot of reagents, put them in a beaker together, and you get a lot of product), and high activation energy reactions were driven by catalysts (initially probably just thermal energy).

And even if generation of very simple organisms, say ones with unstable genetic material and no metabolism, was initially a low probability event, the fact that it took place over literally billions of years in a laboratory the size of the entire planet earth's surface makes it much more likely that low probability events would happen.

You're phrasing this teleologically, and that is just not how evolution works.

Paul,

What you are talking about are a chains of simple reactions. The reactions can begin with non-life and end in non-life. Fine. Or the reactions can begin with Life and end in Life. Fine.

What I am talking about is Life vs. Non-Life. How does one come into being if everything started with either Life or Non-Life at the point of the Big Bang? How, does Life enter into the picture all of a sudden or vice-versa, if everything started from the same point.

It's alright if biology doesn't have the answer. I can't imagine how itcan. But Dawkins has the answer. Evolution (Life) is the universe's greatest work. I want to note how carefully Dawkins avoids the word creation in this statement. And on top of this Biblical like edict, Dawkins has Life obeying the physical laws of the universe. Say what?

Let's not mix apples and oranges as Dawkins loves to do. He mixes a little of Life in with a little of physical laws with a bit of the universe spontaneously creating Life and POW! we have Genesis in palpable scientific form.

I don't think scientists quite get it yet. Somewhere they have to show the creation of Life out of nothing or assume that Life was in everything at the very beginning of the Big Bang and somehow evolved into Non-life. Both Life and Non-life exist now.

Or is evolution claiming that Life is just a mixture of non-life things that are self-organizing itself? :perplexed:

Rich

Well my questions may be inconsistent with evolutionary science however I have a personal interest in this process as I happen to be the output of it. I am interested in reconciling evolutionary science with philosophy if I can. Do you think there are any meeting points between this viewpoint and anything in the history of western philosophy? Or is it a strictly scientific perspective and not relevant to philosophy?

[QUOTE=jeeprs;90485]Hence when Armstrong writes: [/QUOTE]One could just refer to god as "ineffable mystery" or declare the divine to be transcendent beyond human conception, language or thought.
In some sense of course this is true and is understood at least by mystics and eastern monists.

I just do not think that concept can form the basis for religion in the western world. One has to make the divine accessible, understandable and relevant to the less intellectually inclined. Even intellectuals strive for more definable conceptions than "ineffable mystery" or "indescribable transcendence" in their speculative philosophies.

Although any human conception of the divine will be partial and incomplete just as our scientific world view gives us an inadequate and partial view of experience, some conceptions are more in keeping with experience than others.

A.N.Whitehead " religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as science" this requires "an unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account"

John B. Cobb, Jr. " The modern world has underestimated the wisdom about the inner life gained by human beings over the centuries and embodied in the enduring religious traditions. On the other side most of those who speak for religion have clung to ways of thought that do not fit our best knowledge about the objective world"

The task is to reformulate the conception of the divine in a manner that is compatible with current evidence. This will require one to engage in speculative philosophy or metaphysical assumption. God can not be simply "ineffable mystery" nor can God be the sole exception to fundamental metaphysical principles.

Speculative philosophy is not the abandonment of reason, logic, experience or evidence. One may need to question the primacy of empiricism and epistomology over ontology and the notion that all of human knowledge is derived solely from sensory experience.

A.N.Whitehead " Speculative philosophy is the endeavor to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of ideas in terms of which EVERY (emphasis mine)element of our experience can be interpreted".

---------- Post added 09-15-2009 at 10:27 PM ----------

[QUOTE=jeeprs;90505]Well my questions may be inconsistent with evolutionary science however I have a personal interest in this process as I happen to be the output of it. I am interested in reconciling evolutionary science with philosophy if I can. Do you think there are any meeting points between this viewpoint and anything in the history of western philosophy? Or is it a strictly scientific perspective and not relevant to philosophy?[/QUOTE]Evolution is a process. It appears to be a process based on genetic variation and natural selection. The process viewed in its entirety is anything but random or accidental.

In constructing any notion of the divine one does have to take the "facts" of the process into account.
-The long time frames involved.
-The multiple dead ends extinctions and deleterious mutations.
-The occurrence of mass extinctions where 90% of living species have vanished.
-the fact that "man" is a product of the same process

This makes the traditional notion of a supernatural omniscient, omnipotent deity who acts through miracles and communicates through angels and prophets highly questionable if not irrational. What conception of the divine then remains which is compatible with the evidence and useful as a religious symbol of transcendent value or purpose?

Actually I don't disagree, but my interests are different. I am more interested in the philosophical side of it.

I would also say that whatever description, concept or idea of 'the divine' is settled upon, it is ultimately provisional and conventional in its very nature. This is not to belittle or diminish it but to recognise the limits of ideas, and descriptions, as such. There are things that have to be left as mystery, not because mystery is dramatic or exciting or titillating, but because they really are beyond the scope of knowledge. But such conventional descriptions or understandings that are created must fulfil the role for which they are required and in which they are actually essential. As you say, different people have different types and levels of understanding and these are real requirements.

---------- Post added 09-16-2009 at 09:17 PM ----------

Actually, and right to the point, found this totally amazing paragraph by (of all people) Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury (in an essay on atheism)



Source

Don't know whether to say 'hallelujah' or 'ommmm':bigsmile:

---------- Post added 09-16-2009 at 10:01 PM ----------



Well observed, Rich. I think the key to this whole debate is that word - 'creation'. What is creation? How does anything come to be? Given that something exists, it is not hard to see how it can be changed. But how did it come to exist in the first place? Dawkins et al seem to think that we will know how this happened at the dawn of time, one day, but we really don't actually know how it happens even now. The only way humans can create life is actually by procreation, we are not even close to 'creating' a growing or living thing.

Precisely jeeprs.

The whole point of the Dawkins essay was that there is that Evolution leaves nothing for God to do!

So, he has to get to creation quickly and equally quickly get out of it. So he comes up with this cleverly worded phrase:

"Evolution is the universe's greatest work."

This is how Dawkins explains the creation of life. It is mere word substitution. Cleverly so. And it is acceptable to the scientific community because the sentence does not contain the word God, Dao, Diety, or creation. Instead, it contains the scientifically acceptable word substitutions for these concepts. It is doublespeak.

Yes, we can create life by procreation. That is the difference between Life and Non-Life.

Now, when evolutionary biologists can show how you can take substance as it existed at the time of the Big Bang (whatever was there), and turn it into Life, then we know how Life began.

Or alternatively, we can assume that Life was always there at the time of the Big Bang, and we have to take Life and turn it into Non-Life.

But first, we have to know exactly what was at the beginning of time - Life or Non-Life.

Until then, Dawkins is all smoke and mirrors.

Rich

Lighten up. I write extensively on physics and biology, so I tend to get informal, especially at this website where it seems informalness (there you go, that's not a word either) is encouraged.

One of the most interesting threads I've ever participated in was one where I posed a challenge at a physics site . . . "Define Physical." You'd think at a forum full of science professionals that agreement could have been expected, but far from it. I submitted my definition as part of the thread theme, and defended it pretty well I thought. It was: physicalness is the behaviors, effects, and measurement potentials∗ of amassing dynamics and mass entities. (∗ "Measurement potential" is obviously not an intrinsic physical property. It is an intellectual invention we impose on physical situations to assist us while we work with and study physicalness. I list it to include the degree science depends on calculation.)

"Amassing dynamics" refers mainly to what happens (or has happened) mass-wise on a large scale, and is derived from cosmologists' belief that the Big Bang was preceded by an immeasurable amassing, and how since then the universe has taken shape due to unrelenting un-amassing; these accepted ideas make it evident that mass dynamics at least birthed, and very well may determine, all physical events.

"Mass entities" refers to all the types and combinations of basic particles that mass exists as (e.g., protons, electrons, etc.), oscillation and radiation are types of "behaviors" of mass (i.e., particles vibrate, radiate, etc.), gravity is an example of an "effect" of mass (gravity only manifests when mass is present), and time and energy are examples of measurement potentials of mass (i.e., of change behaviors). In other words, no mass, no physical; or we might say, if it's physical then mass is or was present.

So, I accept, as most science thinkers do, that there are fundamental/general conditions of the universe which decide specific physical circumstances, and that is what I meant by a "law of physicalness."




Yes, but that cannot be shown to be the quality of self-organization needed to result in a living system. Here's my analogy of the "quality" of the examples physicalists regularly give: you find a fully functional car and claim it self-organized itself into existence; I ask for evidence it can self-organize; you throw a bunch of car parts in a big pile, shake them up, and then pull out those parts which managed to hook up.

Yes, there are a great many examples of self-organization, but nobody can get chemistry to keep going AND build evolving and functional systems, what I call progressive organization. All examples either end after a relative few steps, or turn repetitive; and without conscious intervention, you get even poorer results. That's why more than half a century after Miller-Urey, all you have is the same sort of limited self-organization offered up as proof that chemistry can self-organize itself into life; look now at that collection of chemicals they got amino acids to form in, and it has progressed no further toward a living system.

In one way or another, that is all physical self-organization has ever been shown capable of, yet physicalist scientists keep telling the world the first life "most likely" is the result of self-organizing chemistry. Is that an objective scientific opinion, based on actual observation of chemical behaviors? Or is it a biased interpretation, distorted by an a priori belief in physicalism?




That is an outright deception propagated by the likes of Dawkins. Believe me, I have read him at length, so my judgments aren't off the cuff. I almost detest the man, not because he is a religion-hating propagandist for scientism (I don't care for religion myself), but because he does great damage to the ideal of objectivity in science (which I do love).

How is it a deception to claim randomness is not a proposed mechanism? Because randomness most definitely is a factor in E-theory, a huge factor, it's just that Dawkins and other E-theory believers try to obscure it with a red herring maneuver. First Dawkins says, "We can safely conclude that living bodies are billions of times too complicated - too statistically improbable - to have come into being by sheer chance. How, then, did they come into being? The answer is that chance enters into the story, but not a single, monolithic act of chance. Instead, a whole series of tiny chance steps, each one small enough to be a believable product of its predecessor, occurred one after the other in sequence."

Now, that is admitting randomness/chance plays a key role isn't it? Furthermore, let's take a fully formed early life form, say a suspected chordate of the Cambrian period, "Myllokunmingia." Here we have a swimming form, with a gut and gills and cranium (and therefore digestive-breathing organs and brain), eyes, etc. In other words, a set of organs that apparently evolved in a relative short time.

Each organ has a DNA programming behind it, making the total genomic story very complex (what has been compared to a book, a billion words long). Each bit of DNA information, according to E-theory (and as Dawkins clearly states above) came about by chance. So yes, according to E-theory, fitness advantages decided what was preserved, but that doesn't relieve the need for one hell of a run of happy accidents in the realm of genetic change; i.e., beneficial genetic changes still had to occur -- millions and millions of them - in order to be selected.

So to try to assuage the incredulity of doubters of physicalist theory by attempting to get us to ignore the amazing luck required for organism-building genetic changes, is a red herring tactic. You might get a bigger bird beak or darker moth color that way, but that sort of minor adjustment to environmental conditions doesn't tell us that's how an entire bird beak or moth wing was evolved in the first place. It is assumed, not from the facts, but ahead of the facts because it is what E-theorists already believe.




So what? That tells us absolutely nothing about what caused the genetic sequence that brings about a living form, and that is all we are disputing isn't it?

Just so you know what I object to, it isn't people having a theory, or even believing a theory before it is sufficiently demonstrated to be true. My objection is people like Dawkins who are trusted as a scientist telling the world E-theory is a "fact" when it is far from it. That, and that alone, is my objection; every argument I make is to show why E-theory, especially one specific part of it, is a long way from being established as a fact.

The truth is, that part of E-theory which depends on the blind-watchmaker elements of random mutation and natural selection are physicalist, atheistic elements of the theory now vehemently maintained in the theory by physicalist, atheistic thinkers. The evidence supporting randomness and natural selection's purported creativity is hugely exaggerated, and even non-existent; far-reaching extrapolations from the slightest show of self-organization and from mere simple adaption of extant organs, stands in for this part of E-theory. It is an outright deception to tell the public E-theory is a "fact" (as Dawkins and other believers do), and then to try to stick to fossil and genetic evidence as proof of evolution (when that isn't the issue anyway).

If I were to synopsize my experience with the typical distorted path that evolution theory believers have taken in debates I've had, I'd say it is for believers to start by citing evidence evolution happened (fossil, genetic, etc. evidence). If I respond by agreeing in all honesty that fossil and genetic evidence supports believing life evolved, but add that the evidence does not show us what did the evolving, the next wave of arguments are examples of how life's traits are adapted to past/current conditions.

Of course I understand they are arguing that simple adaption is strong evidence of evolution theory, so when I point out their logic proves little since being adapted is necessary for something purposely designed to exist as well (such as the components of shelves I built are adapted to the force of gravity, to hold certain items, to resist termites, etc.), I am predictably offered another hundred instances of adaption. If I try to explain how their argument is circular if it relies on adapted-ness as proof that natural selection is the "designer" of the life's structures when adapted-ness is the very subject in question, I am informed how much evidence there is for speciation. If I answer speciation merely supports simple adaption, not the evolution of entire organisms, they will come up with a million instances of speciation. If I answer they are essentially committing a composition fallacy by listing endless examples of adaptive designs and speciation when the issue is really whether simple adaption can be so creative as to devise organs, debaters let me know they are ready to name a further thousand instances of adaption and speciation.

If I give up on attempting to expose the fallacies in their natural selection rationalizations and go on to say the most important issue, after all, is what caused the genetic changes that built organs/organisms, I will be given figures that indicate randomness is perfectly indicated statistically. When I point out that those statistics only show simple adaption is plausible, but that no one has created a causal link between simple adaption and the evolution of entire organisms, that's usually when ad hominem barbs start heading my way. The first relatively gentle insinuations that I lack a proper science education and/or understanding of evolution theory may soon, if that fails to shut me up, turn into very nasty personal attacks. However, if I ever do get anyone to directly answer my genetic change challenges, I am offered only grand theories and hopes E-theory believers have for mechanisms (e.g., homeobox genes) that might solve the problems, but certainly no tangible evidence which would justify the unconstrained confidence E-theory believers exhibit in believing physicalist/mechanistic forces are behind organism-building genetic change.

No, it is not objective, clean, detached science Dawkins and others like him offer us, it is physicalistic, atheistic, scientism propaganda. He already thinks he knows the truth, and he is using a special selection of facts (while ignoring any fact that even slightly brings his theory into question) to convince the world he is right. If I sound disgusted at his tactics, it's because I am, the same way I am disgusted at people who use God as an excuse to push their personal agendas.

I think he is just an ordinary person who figured out an easy way to make some money selling a book to the faithful by leveraging his alleged credentials in biology. No different than the Billy Graham doing his thing. As long as the readers are simply looking for confirmation of their own beliefs, it is a good money maker. But he is doing nothing that much different than P&G selling deodorant. In this regard, the essay was a great marketing piece for his books.

Rich

I don't think for a moment Prof. Dawkins is motivated by money. It is an ideological issue. He hates religion and wants to rid the world of it.

---------- Post added 09-17-2009 at 07:16 AM ----------

the other philosophical-theological error that should be mentioned is the idea Dawkins repeats in this piece and The God Delusion that 'an intelligence must be more complex that what it designs, and therefore God must be almost infintely complex'. It is telling that this is nowhere supported in any traditional theology. In Thomas Acquinas, for example, God is always described as 'utterly simple'. In all Platonist, Neoplatonist and derived philosophies, the One is always understood likewise. It is self-existent, not coming into being, nor passing away, unlike all contingent forms. So 'God' is understood as an entirely different kind and type of being to anything in the world of sensory experience and ordinary phenomena. God does not exist, being beyond any form of existence, but is that from which existence is derived. (These are not my personal beliefs but are standard interpretations).

So as Eagleton said in that great critique I referred to above 'Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching', Dawkins really does not know what he is talking about in all this. He has a complete misconception of Deity and is unlikely to ever form a correct idea of what he is, in fact, criticizing, because he is so convinced that it does not exist he would never really study it. His attitude to religion is purely an expression of prejudice.

It is a logic error too, similar to what he says in this quote:

Richard Dawkins: "For a long time it seemed clear to just about everybody that the beauty and elegance of the world seemed to be prima facie evidence for a divine creator. But the philosopher David Hume already realized three centuries ago that this was a bad argument. It leads to an infinite regression. You can't statistically explain improbable things like living creatures by saying that they must have been designed because you're still left to explain the designer, who must be, if anything, an even more statistically improbable and elegant thing. Design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate explanation."

This statement seems to sum up Mr. Dawkins' rationale for anti-design attitudes, though he overstates the worth of Hume's refutation. David Hume was only able to point out that the design argument is not a proof that God exists. That isn't because the appearance of elaborate design cannot suggest a designer, but because there is no purely rational, non-tautological argument which alone will satisfy empirical standards for a proof.

Neither can any science belief, by argument alone (i.e., without observation of what is hypothesized), prove anything no matter how intelligent the argument is, or how convenient an idea is to one's theory. That would include Mr. Dawkins' conclusion that a designer of life must necessarily be more statistically improbable than what it's said to have designed; his argument seems easily shattered since aren't we, as designers of space shuttles, cities, art, fine cuisine, music, etc., more statistically improbable and elegant than our creations?

In every instance except where for some personal reason one wants to dispense with a designer's existence, we think a situation is designed if it's organized beyond the few steps we know for certain physicalness is capable of. When we find something even as simple as a 10,000 year old finely-shaped arrowhead, our first inclination is not to say it was created by a series of fortuitous accidents. But with life the concept of non-physically directed processes is a scientific abhorrence to be avoided at all costs. Why should it make the slightest difference to objective truth seekers if life was consciously designed or if it wasn't?

What it seems like is that Mr. Dawkins is not against improbabilities, he simply favors mechanistic improbabilities. But is reality determined by the limits of Mr. Dawkins' understanding or imagination, what his aversions cause him to ignore, or what his inclinations are for study? This and his indictment of a "proximate explanation" are yet more fallacious arguments based on personal interest. If we are attempting to describe reality, and there are aspects of it we cannot discover or understand, it makes no difference to the truth if it disturbs our subjective need to have a satisfactory explanation, and it certainly doesn't justify filling in the gap with our preferred speculation and calling it "fact."

The complaint about approximation is also another fallacy, that of special pleading since scientism models, including physicalistic evolution, are packed with proximate explanations. As Richard Feynman more openly admitted, "Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth . . . In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation, because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again or, more likely, to be corrected."




I agree, but he makes a serious logic error (again) by equating religion and the possibility the universe is somehow conscious, that some sensitive human beings have picked up on that (some even "merging" with it), and that the general term for this consciousness has come to be "God."

Dawkins says, "The achievements of religion in past history - bloody crusades, torturing inquisitions, mass-murdering conquistadors, culture-destroying missionaries, legally enforced resistance to each new piece of scientific truth until the last possible moment . . . And what has it all been in aid of? I believe it is becoming increasingly clear that the answer is absolutely nothing at all."


In fallacy Mr. Dawkins equates correlation with causation. If an earthquake occurs while I'm sleeping, should I conclude sleeping caused the earthquake? Mr. Dawkins finds religion insufferable, but if humanity weren't religious would we be any less violent or selfish, or is it that humans are already like that and it shows up in religion just like it shows up in politics and business and everything else we do?

Bloody crusades, torture, mass murder and culture destroying are not proven caused by religion simply because some people do them in the name of religion. Human beings have been doing such things since our beginnings in the "name of" glory, political ideology, moral grounds, revenge, racial superiority, and, yes, even science. The Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele collected about 1,500 sets of twins for scientific research where one twin served as a control while the other endured some horrible experiment, and that was followed up by lethal injections of chloroform into their hearts to ready them for post-mortem dissection. Was science the evil in that instance?

I don't really pay much attention to these people who try to convince us of something by using the wrong methodology for the subject they are speaking of.

It could be a preacher referencing Genesis to prove that evolution is not taking place. Or it could be a scientist like Dawkins referencing evidence of observed evolution to attempt to prove that God does not exist, or did not play some role in the existence of life.

In both cases, the logic does not follow. The methodology behind religious thought can tell us little, if anything about science, and the methodology behind science can tell us little, if anything about God.

Think of working car versus not working car. It's all the same material -- but you put enough of it together the right way and it begins to work

Dawkins is annoying, he's not representative of science or of evolutionary biologists, and I am a bit puzzled by his overemphasis. But you must be deliberately misreading him to take "greatest work" as some stand-in for creation, as opposed to him just expressing the sublimity of this complex and fascinating process.

And as to the laws of physics, he's talking indirectly to people who have protested (completely ignorantly) about evolution on the grounds that it violates thermodynamic law.

This statement makes no sense. Think of ALL the possible phenomena in the universe and apply your criterion. There are planets and there are non-planets -- so scientists must now show the creation of planets out of nonplanets or assume that "planet" was in everything at the beginning? How about the development of language? How about the development of sedimentary rock?

By non-life things there are indeed nonliving constituents that are required parts of living things. You have a lot of sodium ions in your blood -- you'd be dead without them -- and sodium ions are nonliving... But there are regulatory mechanisms to keep them at an acceptable level.

---------- Post added 09-17-2009 at 01:26 AM ----------

I spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard doing evolutionary parasitology research in one of the premier labs of its kind in the world -- when I was an undergrad I did my thesis research on regulation of homeobox genes in organogenesis during early embryonic development. So I've got a little bit of experience doing research in this field and I'm not susceptible to deceptions by the likes of Dawkins (of whom I might add I've never read a single word).

For all the "extensive" writing you do on biology, I'm shocked that you think that combinatorial gene regulation, including the enormous science of epigenetics, is just some rhetorical game.

I guess that is the whole thing isn't it. Where does the living thing come into the picture. At what point, after the Big Bang, did the singularity become alive? Would you care to speculate on this point? Or should we just leave the question to metaphysical philosophers?

Dawkins is not quite clear on how the Universe created life from the Big Bang singularity. He just says it did. Sort of like Genesis. Personally, I like where he his going. The first poem of the Dao De Jing says pretty much the same thing as does Genesis. Great mystical thoughts, but does it belong in a science class?

And the Universe said let there me light, and there was.
And the Universe thought this was good and it made man in its own image.

Rich

For the big questions like this, there is a scientific perspective, a religious perspective, and a philosophical perspective. They have some things in common, but in many respects ask different questions and therefore arrive at different answers.

I presume that Aedes orientation seems mainly drawn from the specifics of evolutionary biology. From what I understand, a considerable amount of information can be inferred on the basis of examining the structures of cells, RNA and the like, as many of the older features are preserved in the newer species. Again,, I have no wish to dispute the specifics of that account as I am sure that it is both objectively true, and something that wasn't known before being discovered by current science (and it is a dead certainty that most scientists will know a lot more about it than I do).

But I still don't think that the idea that life 'just evolved' amounts to an hypothesis. It is more a case that science deals with the specifics of what happened, as far as it can. But as soon as you ask 'why did life evolve' then you are in a completely different arena of enquiry. This by nature is a philosophical question. Furthermore the specifics of how life came to exist in the first place must surely be conjectural for the forseeable future. The idea that was not an act of God is surely as much a statement of faith as that was.

Some might say that this question in itself (why did life evolve) cannot be answered or is a meaningless question. I suppose the argument is 'well, we didn't actually know how it happened before, so we made up stories to explain it. But now we have discovered how it actually happened, so the stories are no longer required'. But the inference always seems to be, 'now that we know how it happened, it is obvious that there is no purpose to it'. I don't think I agree with that - it is very much an extra-scientific statement that is appended to the whole effort because of the historical argument between Christianity and Science. But it is very much the way evolutionary theory has been interpreted by most secular philosophies (e.g. existentialism).

I think the idea of there being no purpose is again because purpose was assumed to be given by God, by the religious establishment. As a major part of the naturalist argument was 'defensive atheism' (i.e. 'no supernatural agency') then it must be also shown that there is no purpose, because 'purpose' could be used to support the idea of such an agency. The problem is, purpose does indeed seem apparent right from the very earliest moment. Even by evolutionary theory, a purpose is presumed. And that purpose is: to survive. Survival is, after all, the main agency of selection. So again you come right back to that question - from whence the urge to survive? it sounds awfully like Bergson's Elan Vital or Schopenhaur's Will, wether you are theistic or not.

This was actually realised by biologists that purpose is obviously displayed at every level of evolutionary development, to which end they invented a new word, namely teleonomy which was supposed to distinguish it from the Aristotlean 'teleology'. Whether it does is a moot point, in my view.

Having said that, I love the idea of this book - Your Inner Fish:



This kind of book doesn't undermine my religious sense in the least. It just makes me feel a sense of kinship with life, the earth and everything on it. (After all, it shows we have been around for quite a while, in one form or another.)

I believe everything evolves, but the intelligence underneath it, or within it, is not an uber-designer or great architect or another anthropomorphic projection. It is manifested as the form of any thing, the ratio of any thing, the inherent intelligibility of any particular, without which nothing could exist. We can never know what that intelligence is, but we can see its manifestations. ('We can never know the essence, only the energies'.) And to abandon this understanding - this faith - is actually to abandon the very tradition behind science itself. It is to actually declare that the universe is unintelligible, and indeed the overall picture we have been given by materialist science is indeed unintelligible.

Not really.

In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal though...