I’m not open to speculation without evidence. You can posit all you like, but with out evidence all your wishy-washy pondering is meaningless.
Wow. This is what happens when someone is driven to an uncomfortable position. They insult rather than argue. You think that evolution can run without reference to anything but mechanistic principles? Explain then why the fruit fly Drosophila is able to replicate missing genetic information to overcome mutant recessive genes. Or why the European Timber Wolf and the marsupial wolf of Australia are basically anatomically identical (with the exception of how they bear young), but have little to no genetic relation. Or how genetic homeostasis can be overcome by subtle modifications in genetic structure. Or why the history of evolution in the fossil record shows no intermediate mutant species. If you say punctuated equilibrium, you are forced to locate the origin of life in the extra terrestrial as the conditions of the earth would not have been conducive to the basic leap to proteins and then have changed with enough time to spare for the odds to be in favor of more complex developments in time (as you know, the conditions for proteins and acids are different than for multicellular life; just the facts man). Punctuated equilibrium reduces the time for Monod’s random mutations to give rise to a successful model. Yet if you say gradual progression, giving yourself the most space possible in terms of time and random mutations, you are forced to dance about the question as to why there is no evidence in the fossil record for it. The list goes on. Genes alone cannot tell the story. There is something more.
What you call “wishy-washy” pondering is nothing other than the very arguments made by some of the greatest minds alive today and in the previous century. Take note of your company friend. It was Steven Hawking who reiterated Heidegger’s point about the question of being in his book “Brief History of Time,” someone I would hardly call “wishy-washy.” In other words, you don’t get it, and are lashing out instead of trying to expand your understanding.
Stop hiding behind this veil of objectivity as if everything which goes against your ideology is less than fact. It is about as intellectually rigorous, and suppressive, as the inquisition. The fact that you think “facts” are the only basis of truth shows a certain philosophical immaturity. By admitting facts as the only basis of truth or reality, you have essentially agreed to be a mere fact yourself. You have, in the language of the existentialists, sacrificed your subjectivity, your being a person, for a fundamentally derivative way of thinking. This not to mention that values language, consummate with religious conviction, pervades all human language and knowledge. Please read Hilary Putnam’s
Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy to overcome your inadequate view that truth has only to do with “facts.” In this, and many other ways you show yourself to be ignorant to the current developments in science and philosophy. In philosophy, for example, in the attempt to overcome the dichotomy between absolutism and relativism, represented by Jurgen Habermas at Frankfurt in Germany or Dr Berstein at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan, down the road from Columbia, where I attend graduate school at the Union Seminary. Or in science in the push towards more holistic ways of approaching observable phenomena, represented by Ken Wilber for example in psychology, as well as the gestaltists like Perls and Hefferline before him, etc.
Thomas Kuhn’s critique of scientific paradigms is also perfectly applicable here. Your so-called “facts” (at the end of the day not much more than bullets in the meta-narrative of your laissez-faire attitude toward life) are not able, even with the greatest inertia, to help you to see the possibility of other views or that the reason you are on these forums is not to explore these questions but refute what you have already decided in your mind must be the case, and confound us fools who believe otherwise. Why else would you be on a Catholic forum dealing with the question of God? Perhaps I have misread you terribly, in which case, why don’t you open up to the discussion instead of stone walling the entire discussion with your flat, scientistic refutations?
The problem with Darwinism is not its belief in a time table and process of life different than the fundamentalist’s view of Genesis, but that its basic view of life is not different from Calvin and Hobbes: in the state of nature, everything destroys everything else, and
the only way life can exist is by destroying other life. This demonic view of life, as well as the Hobbesian view of government as a police state, is at the basis of the current woes of our society. It never strikes the Hobbesian, or the Darwinist frankly, that government could be an arm of cooperation, and that life may have inherent value, not just the “fittest” (which really means, best suited to procreate). Perhaps my 23 year old cousin, stuck buying her own insulin every month for type-2 diabetes at $120 per bottle, rejected from Medicare, ought to simply come to terms with the “justice” of the market, right? Survival of the fittest after all. And you will say that I may as well blame God, as Darwin did, yet you fail to see, as Darwin also did, that an ability to affirm the meaning of life implies a belief in the victory of love in history. Love is the inexhaustible source of meaning. Such a belief is called providence, and implies the belief in a power which can make it happen. It is, to the frustration of many a Darwinist, those who suffer most who believe most strongly in God.
I hope this post does not suggest to you that I have any animosity towards you. Your language was offensive. My points are hardly “wishy-washy.” Do me the favor of some mutual respect.
Cheers. :tiphat:
GM
. Just kidding.