Intelligent Design, Edward Feser's views

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Thanks, Philipl, I have done just that. I found Eric Metaxas on “Does Science Argue for or against God?”. Although the blurb states that science “says that the chance life exists at all is less than zero,” which is mathematically rather unsound, the talk itself is quite reasonable. However, it does claim that there are 50 parameters for life to appear on a planet, without quantifying more than 3. Still, I pursued the idea, and find that ‘Godandscience.org’ lists 68, which seems quite impressive. Unfortunately, however, very few of these constitute independent factors - most of them follow inevitably from others, and so cannot be ‘multiplied in’ to the equation. Some of the factors are absurd: for example, although the list purports to be the factors for the emergence of life at all, one of the factors is “frequency and extent of forest and grass fires”. So life cannot appear on a planet at all unless it already has forest fires? This kind of thing does not do the alleged ‘science’ behind all this many favours.

The end result of all this is that there is a finite probability for life to have appeared on other planets, but, obviously not very often, and not sufficiently close for us to be able to detect it.

However, your greater point, I think, is that all this points towards some kind of God as being the prime mover, and there I couldn’t agree with you more. The question, I think, should have gone beyond “Does Science suggests that God exists?”, and started working on “Can Science tell us anything about God?” apart from the fact that he exists. I think it can, and I think it points more towards Evolution than Creationism as his Modus Operandi as it applies to life.
 
I neither said nor meant that, so we’re good. The Emmerich vision, on the other hand, draws on a notion (the “Curse of Ham” being on the ancestors of black people) that is racist as heck.

The idea of “less evolved” is a misunderstanding of evolution. Modern apes are just as “evolved” from our common ancestor as humans are, just in a different direction.

You claimed that adaptation to the environment in real life never goes further than furry animals shedding in the warmer parts of the year. Thus I asked where the different human “races” come from, since the Bible and current science agree that there weren’t multiple distinct original populations of humans in different parts of the world. We evolved or were created once, in one spot, and spread out from there. If hereditary adaptations to different environments don’t really happen, what’s with the differences in skin melanin content and other differences in different climates? I asked specifically about white people because, again, both the Bible and current scientific thinking indicate that the origin point for humans was not Europe, where we tend to find white people, but Africa or Mesopotamia or someplace where the local humans tend to be darker in complexion.
 
Usagi said:
I asked specifically about white people because, again, both the Bible and current scientific thinking indicate that the origin point for humans was not Europe, where we tend to find white people, but Africa or Mesopotamia or someplace where the local humans tend to be darker in complexion.
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White people live in Africa perfectly fine. If I have sexual relations with a black woman the baby will be brown, if down the line that baby has sexual relations with another white person, that baby will be almost white and the reverse is true also. That’s not evolution, because evolution takes millions of years.
 
The key is that they have skin and other traits adapted to their environment.

Epigenetics is an interesting area of study and I don’t know nearly enough about it. That some changes might occur for different reasons than outright gene mutation (or even genetic difference) does not disprove evolution, though it might require adding to the definition and explanation of it. Remember, the general idea was devised before we knew about genes or mutations (though of course we knew that offspring take traits from their parents but are not identical to them, which is the key element in natural selection).
 
All of evolution so far has taken millions (nay, billions) of years. An individual adaptation or set of adaptations doesn’t need nearly that long. Heck, we study genetics by making such changes happen to fast-breeding species. That’s not natural selection, obviously, but if we can make chihuahuas and Great Danes out of the same species by controlling their reproduction to encourage certain traits, why can’t natural differences in who survives and reproduces do the same?

You’re right that any given white person can generally survive in Africa, and vice versa for black people in Europe (or anybody but native Americans in the Americas or Asians in Asia). Likewise, the results of a generation or two of mixing “racial” traits are not the same thing as whatever happened to give us those different appearances in the first place.

But clearly, something gave us what we call the different races of humans (which, though biologically meaningless, do show traits that cluster together on the spectrum of human phenotypes when compared to other groups). If it wasn’t environmental adaptation over time, what was it? The Curse of Ham again?
 
Usagi said:
If it wasn’t environmental adaptation over time, what was it? The Curse of Ham again?
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Black skin is not necessary to survive in Africa. Do you believe the Arabs are the descendants of Ishmael ?
 
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Necessary, no. Helpful, yes.

As has been explained to you before, the survival advantage of a trait can be something less than “everyone who lacks this trait just plain dies.”

I am fine with believing that Arabs in general are descended from the Biblical Ishmael, yes.
 
Here is the post again:

Someone else gets the prize:

Are the evo’s ready to concede? 😀

What I have been saying right along:

Sweeping gene survey reveals new facets of evolution

It is textbook biology, for example, that species with large, far-flung populations—think ants, rats, humans—will become more genetically diverse over time.
But is that true?
“The answer is no,” said Stoeckle, lead author of the study, published in the journal Human Evolution.
For the planet’s 7.6 billion people, 500 million house sparrows, or 100,000 sandpipers, genetic diversity “is about the same,” he told AFP.

The study’s most startling result, perhaps, is that nine out of 10 species on Earth today, including humans, came into being 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.

“This conclusion is very surprising, and I fought against it as hard as I could,” Thaler told AFP.

That reaction is understandable: How does one explain the fact that 90 percent of animal life, genetically speaking, is roughly the same age? ( we know the answer here at CAF)

In analysing the barcodes across 100,000 species, the researchers found a telltale sign showing that almost all the animals emerged about the same time as humans.

And yet—another unexpected finding from the study—species have very clear genetic boundaries, and there’s nothing much in between.

“If individuals are stars, then species are galaxies,” said Thaler. “They are compact clusters in the vastness of empty sequence space.”

The absence of “in-between” species is something that also perplexed Darwin, he said.

 
buffalo said:
The study’s most startling result, perhaps, is that nine out of 10 species on Earth today, including humans, came into being 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.

“This conclusion is very surprising, and I fought against it as hard as I could,” Thaler told AFP
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That’s not enough time for evolution to work 🤔
 
Techno2000 said:
That’s not enough time for evolution to work 🤔
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MEN HAVEN’T CHANGED IN 270,000 YEARS

“However, evidence now is coming in from other parts of the human genome besides the mitochondria pointing to a recent origin for modern humans. In addition, molecular clocks appear to be ticking at various speeds in different genes that together can help us measure human evolution with greater accuracy. We must remember, however, that we are reconstructing the history of molecules here. While that history is not independent of the history of the organisms in which they are found, molecules have agendas of their own,” Dorit said.

http://www.cccbiotechnology.com/WN/SUA05/ychrom.php
 
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buffalo said:
In analysing the barcodes across 100,000 species, the researchers found a telltale sign showing that almost all the animals emerged about the same time as humans.
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Somebody’s got their dates wrong, if nature and man only came into being two hundred thousand years ago, what was the earth doing for 4.5 billion years, just spinning around ?
 
After reading Leisola and Witt’s book, it is clear that a paradigm shift is needed in order to explain the origin and diversity of life, from chemical and Darwinian evolution towards a design explanation. This raises the question of whether the research community is willing to follow the evidence and allow such a shift to take place. If not, there is a great risk that the judgement of future generations will be hard. However, such a change will not come easily, since ultimately our worldview is at stake. – Ola Hössjer, Professor of Mathematical Statistics at Stockholm University

There you have it…
 
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