Subject: Re: Ross's evidence
Date: 23 Jan 1999 03:11:15 GMT
From:  (Andrew Bromage)
Newsgroups: nz.soc.religion,aus.religion.christian

G'day all.

"Hugh Young" <> writes:

>I suppose a theist can believe that G*d started the thing rolling, knowing
>omnisciently that it would turn out the way it has, but if evolution is the
>process we think it is, it might very well not have given rise to humans or
>any other kind of intelligent life at all. Evolution is not evolution if
>G*d is "directing" it.

Completely untrue.  Evolution is all about _change_.  At its basic
level, the theory of evolution states that change happened, not how
it happened.

I think it's fair to say that most scientists believe that there are a
combination of mechanisms involved.  The most common is, of course, a
more modern version of Darwin's original proposed mechanism (mutation
and natural selection), but this is only one out of many.  Some proposed
mechanisms are quite exotic, such as those based on cellular automata.

Whatever way you cut it, though, the theory of evolution does not
depend on _how_ change happened, only that it _did_ happen.  Naturally,
scientists would like to know all of the mechanisms involved.  This is
important research in its own right.  But it's not important to the
central idea of evolution, if you like.

If you're a theist, you can always postulate that God worked in there
somewhere.  There's nothing stopping you.  Or you can postulate that God
used whatever natural evolution produced and used them for his purposes.
Lots of possibilities.

>Evolution provides less comfort to theists than we used to think.

I think it provides as much comfort as electricity, i.e. it's completely
independent of theism.

>It is not
>about "progress" and was not working towards evolving clever Us.

>Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkin spell this out very clearly in their
>recent books.

Well, these people are hardly unbiassed observers when it comes to
matters of religion.  If their peer-reviewed scientific papers covered
certain material covered in their popular science books, they wouldn't
get published, and quite rightly.

This is not to say that they are not good scientists.  Far from it.
It's just not correct to classify their views on religion as science,
unless you count their work against certain religious groups who try
to "religionise" science or "sciencise" religion.

Basically, not everything that a typical good scientist believes is
science.  Nor should it, if you want the scientist to be a real
person...

Cheers,
Andrew Bromage