Reconstructed discussion whether belief in literal Adam & Eve is warranted

[hecd2]

Your comments about the light experiment deserve consideration. Even using the same experimental arrangement, what occurs to me first is that we are dealing with photons, meaning they are only “indirectly” observable since they are invisible to the naked eye.

On the contrary, photons are the only things that are visible to the naked eye. It is photons which stimulate the individual light receptors of the eye. You couldn’t be more wrong here.

“Indirectly observable” means we must take observable data and from it make inferences – inferences in this case leading to the conclusion of contradictory properties within the wave-particle duality. You argue: “For if light consists of particles, which we clearly see by detecting individual photons at the image plane or in each arm, then it cannot be a wave; but we clearly see that wave interference occurs when we have clearly detected the fact that a photon passes through one or other arm of the interferometer, but not both simultaneously.” The apparent contradiction is commonly accepted today in physics, but I note it does not prevent some from attempting to resolve this paradox.

Your attempt to explain away the contradiction as an error of inference fails because the experimental systems are very easy to set up and provide results with no room for interpretation or inferential error. Although there are attempts to explain the paradox, or at least to provide a mathematical model that is consistent with what we observe, no remotely credible explanation exists that does not itself lead to equally contradictory paradoxes (such as discrete things being in many places at once), nor is any deterministic explanation credible. In 90 years of experimentation and thinking about this by the best minds in physics, the conclusion is that the way nature works at the quantum scale is paradoxical and contradictory, by the standards of classical logic.

What must be discerned here is not whether the observations occur in the same “arrangement,” but whether the inferences are drawn perfectly and from exactly the same perspective.If not, then no violation of non-contradiction ensues.

The joint wave and particle nature of light (properties which are, in classical logic, mutually exclusive) is clearly discernible in a single experiment. There is no doubt that according to the standards of non-contradiction (that something cannot simultaneously have mutually exclusive properties), this experiment violates it. And it is not alone - there are several other examples of quantum behaviour that are also logically contradictory, which we can also explore if you like.

I do not fear that eventual resolution will occur, since theoretical physics constantly makes progress precisely by overcoming such apparently “impossible” situations.

You are unreasonably confident about this, perhaps because you fail to grasp just how fundamental this and other contradictions are.

On the other hand, if genuine contradiction did exist here and elsewhere, then the entire matrix of reality collapses in a manner you fail to grasp, since non-contradiction is not based merely on local experience, but on a universal metaphysical insight into the meaning of any “being” whatever.

Well, you say this, but you give no warrant whatsoever for the assertion that if genuine contradiction exists then reality collapses. Here, as in so many places, so called “universal metaphysical insight” is no more than human intuition about the way things, that are evolutionarily important to us, are. 20th century physics has shown that human intuition leads to erroneous ideas when we look closely at the very small, the very big, the very fast, the very sparse and the very dense. Your claim that the matrix of reality would collapse if genuine contradictions exist is an unsupported claim based on unverified intuition.

Contradictions do exist on the quantum scale, but we also know that those contradictions are hidden at the normally observable macro scale by the stochastic properties of large ensembles of phenomena, so that the contradictions are veiled from us in normal day to day life. Reality to a pre 19th century person is exactly the same as if the contradictions do not exist, as is day to day reality for us; but we also know that reality contains these contradictions.

Other than experience, what else have we got to base our insights on? Your so called universal metaphysical insights are merely intuitive claims about reality, founded in experience and extrapolated without warrant to a claim about the universal nature of being.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

I didn’t say all species came into being separately – many are species of species.

Or kinds as the biblical literalists claim. But biblical literalists always have difficulty defining kinds, and I see you are going to also.

Science tends to gloss over the reality of general species like “horses” or “cats” in which each variety (or sub-species) is capable of interbreeding with another variety,but none can interbreed with another general species.

Really? Does science gloss over taxa higher than species? What evidence have you got for that bizarre assertion? But your definition won’t stand up: take cats - do you include all the cats (tigers, lions, leopards, jaguars, wild cats, ocelots, domestic cats) in your definition of cat general species. Well some can’t interbreed. Does that mean that they arose separately?

By ignoring the obvious reproductive boundaries between general species,science can speak of species as if they were all links in a fluid genetic chain in which no boundaries are permanent.

Unfortunately for you the boundaries are not as clear cut as you would have it. Some species can produce fertile hybrids but don’t in the wild, others produce hybrids with reduced fertility, or some fertile and some infertile hybrids, others produce totally infertile hybrids, some do hybridise but rarely produce viable offspring, some conceive but are unable to produce viable hybrids, and some are completely unable to conceive. Seems like a continuum after all.

Why is it improbable that the lines of humans and apes should have come into existence separately?

Because the shared syntenic non-functional sequences in the genomes such as broken genes, pseudogenes, tandem repeats, retroviral insertions, LINEs and SINEs have not been explained in any natural way other than common descent. When are you going to try to explain them?

Omphalism doesn’t necessarily follow from the Catholic doctrine of creation.

No, but the idea that the origin of species results from separate special creation while there is such overwhelming evidence for common descent is omphalism.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

The theory that humans and apes came into existence separately is not an impossible choice.

Living in the trenches as I do, I rarely subscribe to the “mutually exclusive or”. Therefore, my theory on Adam and Eve should be regarded as a possible choice among the many which both theists and non-theists can review. Challenges are beneficial.

From what I am learning, it is possible for humans and apes to come into existence separately once two things are recognized:

1. There are some very basic things which differ between major domains of life and there are things which are common within the domains.
2. DNA itself and the amino acids are common across all domains.

Well, let me review it. If your hypothesis is that humans and apes are both living things that share that which all living things share, but that the lineages leading to humans and apes either diverged near the root of the tree or that humans are biologically a recent emergence from scratch, I am afraid it won’t wash. The overwhelming evidence (that goes way beyond mere similarities in DNA as I have pointed out) is that humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor that lived relatively recently in evolutionary terms (about 6 - 7 million years ago). So, no, I don’t think it is reasonable to believe that humans and apes came into existence separately.

Of course, you might have meant something else entirely that I’m missing - in that case I hope you’ll point it out.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

True evolution requires “transformism,” moving across from one species to another. But the very notion of “species” has confused the discussion greatly. There are several “biological” species concepts, based on such notions as morphology, cladistics, reproductive isolation, and so forth. Traditional philosophers have a different notion of species: The natural philosophical species concept is directed to those properties of organisms which are not accidental, but essential.

And as I have pointed out, all species concepts based on essentialist foundations have been abandoned because essentialist ideas about species can easily be shown to be valueless in defining species. There is no serious extant biological or philosophical proposal for a species concept based on essentialist ideas.

And while I agree with your scepticism about claims that non-human primates can use syntactical and grammatical language, I disagree with your conclusion that humans therefore possess faculties that require something other than emergent properties of matter or that other species cannot and will not, in time, evolve similar or even superior cognitive abilities. I don’t believe that the ability to think in abstract terms or to use language are miracles or evolved in isolation from the compulsion to survive and reproduce to which all animals, including humans, are subject. Human cognition lies at an extreme of a continuum and is not different in kind but merely in degree from that of other animals.

I think the balanced position in this matter is, on the one hand, not to attempt to deny the very substantial differences in cognition between man and other animals and, on the other hand, not to try to resort to a magical immaterial infusion of a hypothetical spirit by a non-existent agent in an attempt to explain it. The most potentially useful approach is to look for explanations for the evolution of man’s cognitive powers that do not involve magical infusions of mental capacity. Your claim that logic demands a binary step to the first true man ignores the continuous nature of cognitive abilities, hypes long discredited essentialist notions of species and rests on the faith claim that the human intellect cannot be an emergent property of matter. There is no need for there to be a first individual man any more than there was first individual bird. The thinking abilities in the one and the flying abilities in the other are subject to gradual rather than saltational change.

Moreover, since it takes God’s direct intervention to create the human spiritual soul, there is no particular reason to believe that many true men had to appear simultaneously.

The particular reason is the overwhelming and disparate evidence, which you have consistently failed to engage with, despite it being the consideration most relevant to the topic of the thread, that the population in the lineage leading to extant humans cannot have been as few as two breeding individuals at least since the divergence of human and chimpanzee lineages.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

…let me point out that I have just had an article entitled “The Philosophical Impossibility of Darwinian Naturalistic Evolution” accepted for publication later this summer (hopefully). And, I note that the terms, “Darwinian” and “Naturalistic,” are redundant – but placed there to avoid any possible doubt that I am talking solely about the purely materialistic theory, and not about theistic evolution, which many genuine Catholics consider possible (but not necessarily necessary!).

You are very badly confused about the meaning of Darwinism and theistic evolution which you present as being mutually exclusive. In this you follow the dreadful mistake made by Schoenborn in his ill-advised and ill-informed attacks on evolutionary biology. And you continue the often discredited notion that philosophy can define what is and is not a possible natural explanation.

In spite of what you say, Darwinism (or, strictly speaking, neo-Darwinism, which synthesises natural selection and genetics) is the foundational scientific theory of modern biology. It is based solely on methodological naturalism as all good natural science is (and you yourself have defended the method). So what is your beef with neo-Darwinism? As for theistic evolutionists, they can be Darwinists too. Catholic biologists such as Miller are both neo-Darwinists and theistic evolutionists.

I do not personally accept a “naturalistic explanation of the origin of species,” but rather insist that God must directly intervene to introduce the next higher natural philosophical species

But you have defined these previously as a ladder moving from non-living matter to plants, animals and man. This is a hopelessly naive and misconceived view of nature, it is an inadequate scala naturae. Amongst many fundamental problems with this view is that no-one proposes that animals evolved from plants, two major domains of life (bacteria and archaea) are missing, some enormous taxa of eukaryotes (protists, algae and fungi) are missing, some animals are sessile, some plants are mobile, bacteria and archaea can be either mobile or immobile, almost all living organisms are sentient, there is a strong natural hypothesis for the natural evolution of eukaryotes and so on. Essentialist notions of species are useless to biology and your concept of a scala naturae is fundamentally flawed.

The texts from the International Theological Commission that you cite actually are speaking as if some sort of evolutionary theory is acceptible, but that Darwinian ones are not. That is what I am saying.

So what sort of evolutionary process, other than one based on mutational change and natural selection would you propose? I do not think for a moment that the Church is setting itself up in opposition to mainstream biology, anomalous and ill-conceived outbursts like those from Schoenborn not withstanding.

Alec
evolutionpages.com/Schoenborn_critique.htm

 

[hecd2]

Regarding the size of the ancestral population leading to living humans.

Regarding the references you gave me (post 328, page 23, apologetics thread “Evolution: A Catholic Solution?” now closed) -----having my head on a platter for not reading them is respectfully deserved.

However, when I went back to the post, I did end up in a bit of a jam trying to find some of the references. May I suggest a compromise. If you provide direct links, I will get back to reading the material.

I can’t do that I’m afraid, as many of the papers are not available on line. You’ll have to go to a library, I’m afraid.

Here are two examples from one of the links I subsequently discovered. Both quotes are taken out of context. The general subject matter pertains to 1. population bottlenecks which occur when a population’s size is reduced for at least one generation. 2. genetic drift. 3. founder effects.

First quote:
“One of the most important and controversial issues in population genetics is concerned with the relative importance of genetic drift and natural selection in determining evolutionary change.” (Harrison, G.A., Tanner, J.M., Pilbeam, D.R. and Baker, P.T. in Human Biology 3rd ed. Oxford University Press 1988 pp 214-215) www.evolution.berkeley.edu

Yes it is. And 20 years later the relative importance of genetic drift, natural selection and other mechanisms such as sexual selection, epigenetics, evo-devo are still controversial.

Second quote:
“If a population is finite in size (as all populations are) and if a given pair of parents have only a small number of offspring, then even in the absence of all selective forces, the frequency of a gene will not be exactly reproduced in the next generation because of sampling error.”(Suzuki, D.T., Griffiths, A.J.F., Miller, J.H. and Lewontin, R.C. in An Introduction to Genetic Analysis 4th ed. W.H. Freeman 1989 p.704) www.evolution.berkeley.edu

Yes that is so. But what point are you making?

One final note: even from my little reading including posts, it seems the genomic research is solid for the primates in general etc. But my gut says that a one-size evolutionary theory does not fit all. Even if primates are related to humans, I am not totally convinced that humans are related back to primates in the same way. Humans appear different from chimps, etc. in many intangible ways. Even if it is said that humans are different from animals in degrees, the extremely broad range of degrees leads me to believe that humans differ in kind. Perhaps one needs to make a choice as to how many “degrees” makes a “kind.”

Hmm. That’s like asking how many apples make a frog.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[grannymh]

Well, let me review it. If your hypothesis is that humans and apes are both living things that share that which all living things share, but that the lineages leading to humans and apes either diverged near the root of the tree or that humans are biologically a recent emergence from scratch, I am afraid it won’t wash. The overwhelming evidence (that goes way beyond mere similarities in DNA as I have pointed out) is that humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor that lived relatively recently in evolutionary terms (about 6 - 7 million years ago). So, no, I don’t think it is reasonable to believe that humans and apes came into existence separately.

Of course, you might have meant something else entirely that I’m missing - in that case I hope you’ll point it out.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

My basic hypothesis is that humans and apes are both living creatures that share that which all living things share, I definitely see a unity to creation in the natural sense. As far as humans being biologically a recent emergence from scratch, I have conflicting ideas. The idea of a god of the gaps does not appeal to me. On the other hand, my belief in a transcendent being would allow divine intervention. For now, I would like to put this conflict on hold.

I’m so glad that you clarified that 6-7 million years ago is recent in evolutionary terms.My apology for laughing. But I have a very hard time taking the very large time estimates seriously. Please understand that I am working on being serious…and have started looking at time frames for Adam and Eve.

It is my observation that what happened near the root of the tree is still being examined. Thus, real choices can be offered.

Blessings,
granny

All human life is sacred.

 

[anthony022071]

Your comments help me think some more about the people involved. How would you address this situation? One of my daughter-in-laws has a scientific education and admires the “work in biology” of Richard Dawkins. She is a stay- at-home Mom and wasn’t really aware of his latest book, The God Delusion. These are my questions. Is it theoretically possible to separate the “original work in biology” from the man?

Yes. A scientist’s work isn’t necessarily skewered by his personal beliefs. But it is not possible to separate the eory of evolution from its underlying naturalistic assumption.

Can we look at basic science itself as something good because it involves nature–that is nature which was created as good by God?

There’s nothing wrong with basic science (the experimental method),but methodological naturalism can’t be justified. No can can demonstrate that all natural phenomena can be adequately explained with natural causes alone. The theory of evolution attributes to natural causes capabilities that they do not have.

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To Hecd2 re posts 112, 113, 121:

Alec,

Rather than attempt point by point rebuttals, this time I shall try to fairly summarize your position, and then suggest another avenue to knowing reality. I am sure you will correct me if I misread your positions.

You write that *"…no substantial truth statement about reality is formally provable, and that includes the premise that I state above: “that which we can sense (see, hear, touch, feel, smell), either directly or indirectly, with or without the aid of instruments, is all that we can know exists”. It is an empirical statement, based on the observation that there is no other way for knowledge (even second hand knowledge) to enter our consciousness." *Here you grant that your starting point for all knowledge is simply sensation. That is a good Aristotelian-Thomistic statement, since both philosophers would agree that all knowledge comes through the senses. Still, they insist that there is another type of knowledge, intellective knowledge, which is had not by sensation but by the distinct, superior spiritual faculty, the intellect. Though all knowledge begins in sensation, this need not mean that it must end there. Saying that this is *“all that we can know exists” *sounds like our knowledge is limited to sense experience, yet the process of reasoning can lead the mind to realities which are not sensible – be they physical entities beyond the range of the senses, or immaterial realities which reason requires in order to explain adequately what the senses observe. Every proof for God’s existence begins in sense experience, but ends in a Cause which utterly transcends the sensible and even finite order of being.

You also say: “There is no such thing as an absolutely true and logically provable statement about reality.” If no such statements can exist, what is the basis for this statement itself? The claim itself is then neither absolutely true nor logically provable, leaving open the possibility that there might exist some absolutely true and logically provable statements.

You write,* “What I freely give up is the notion of formal proof of the truth of statements about reality, because the premises are always and necessarily unprovable. What I cling to however, are reasonable inferences about reality based on sense experience, which are warranted by their efficacy.”* Here we find an excellent summary of your position. Formally proven reality statements are impossible because the premises cannot be proven. You opt instead for a varient of the verification principle whose truth-value you measure by favorable outcomes. While I suspect a naturalistic presupposition may be operative here, you would counter that no evidence warrants supernatural claims.

When you say “premises are always and necessarily unprovable,” I infer you are pointing to the fact that conclusions always flow from prior premises. If those premises are the conclusion of yet prior premises, this process either goes to infinity or comes to a first unproven premise or premises. Since unlimited regression in prior premises is impossible, every argument must start with some unproven premise(s). That is where you take as your starting point sense-based reasonable inferences leading to positive results.

Still, consider this alternative: First premises are indeed unproven, but that does not mean they need be merely assumed, or “clung to,” merely because they produce good results. Knowledge may begin in certitude because it is either self-evident or immediately evident. Such is the case with the principle of non-contradiction, which you consistently tell us modern physics disproves as a universally valid principle. This principle is not formally proven by appeal to any prior principle, precisely because it is immediately self-evident. If you seriously deny the universal validity of this principle, then the intelligibility of all your immediate sense experience – indeed, the very structure of perception itself – is destroyed. That is because the structure of any sense experience depends on real differences between distinct portions of that experience. Thus, if one experiences a visual field of part red and part green, the red might not be red and the green might not be green. Indeed, the distinct portions might just as well be homogenized as in a blender. You could never affirm or deny any part of any content, since it is just as possible that each part is equally the color of the other part and not its own. If contradictions are possible, then even the most primary judgments about sense knowledge are impossible – meaning you cannot even begin the building blocks of inference from sensation which eventually lead to experiments in theoretical physics from which you infer that actual contradictions exist beyond the sense experience of ordinary life. That is the sense in which I mean that denial of non-contradiction collapses reality – epistemic reality. No, reality itself does not collapse – precisely because actual contradictions cannot exist at the same time and in the same respect.

 

[anthony022071]

Or kinds as the biblical literalists claim. But biblical literalists always have difficulty defining kinds, and I see you are going to also.

I don’t think the biblical literalists think that the biblical term “kind” refers to a sub-species. It more likely refers to what I call a “general species”.

Really? Does science gloss over taxa higher than species? What evidence have you got for that bizarre assertion? But your definition won’t stand up: take cats - do you include all the cats (tigers, lions, leopards, jaguars, wild cats, ocelots, domestic cats) in your definition of cat general species. Well some can’t interbreed. Does that mean that they arose separately?

The term “cats” traditionally refers to the common domestic animals which interbreed,not to tigers,lions,leopards and jaguars. It was only in modern times that scientists began to popularize the idea that the other animals were cats. Since cats do not interbreed with the other species,and have never been known to do so,I have no reason to doubt that they originated separately.

Unfortunately for you the boundaries are not as clear cut as you would have it. Some species can produce fertile hybrids but don’t in the wild, others produce hybrids with reduced fertility, or some fertile and some infertile hybrids, others produce totally infertile hybrids, some do hybridise but rarely produce viable offspring, some conceive but are unable to produce viable hybrids, and some are completely unable to conceive. Seems like a continuum after all.

Hybrids always lead to a reproductive dead end. It’s called hybrid breakdown.

Because the shared syntenic non-functional sequences in the genomes such as broken genes, pseudogenes, tandem repeats, retroviral insertions, LINEs and SINEs have not been explained in any natural way other than common descent. When are you going to try to explain them?

You’re looking at these shared traits as if they are a problem that needs to be solved,as if the similarities were amazing. I don’t see it that way. What ultimately matters is the reproductive linkage in the history of a species. You can’t demonstrate that there was a vertical reproductive connection thousands of years ago between different species by pointing out lateral genetic similarities. There is no law of nature which would prevent different species with similar genetic characteristics from originating separately from one another. It stands to reason that if one species can originate at all,other species with similar genetic material can originate separately from the one.

No, but the idea that the origin of species results from separate special creation while there is such overwhelming evidence for common descent is omphalism.

That’s not the definition of omphalism.

 

[grannymh]

I can’t do that I’m afraid, as many of the papers are not available on line. You’ll have to go to a library, I’m afraid.

There is a junior college in town. However, I may hold out for some kind of compromise on references.

Yes it is. And 20 years later the relative importance of genetic drift, natural selection and other mechanisms such as sexual selection, epigenetics, evo-devo are still controversial.

Yes that is so. But what point are you making?

This is my point. By using some of my old skills from my pre-historic work days, I can get a sense of the overall picture so that I can better present my opinions.

Speaking from writing and reviewing experience, I look for qualifications, or qualifying words such as “if” or “controversial.” The qualifying word “all” always makes me doubt if it is really all. I look for consistency. I check content based on the questions who? how? what? when? where? why? cost? I question validity. I look for real numbers such as 134 samples and 147 people (taken from references which I read) Percentages need to be translated into actual amounts. I especially like to figure out what information is missing. Is there a pattern? I check comparisons. In other words, I am a direct descendent of Thomas the doubting apostle. By the way, I personally like to use the word “if” because then my imagination is activated.

Hmm. That’s like asking how many apples make a frog.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

Hmm. You have hit the nail on the head. I am asking how many apples make a frog.
Seriously, I get the impression that evolutionary theory treats the amazing Homo sapien as a limited stone frog. Imagining a frog made up of delightful apples instead of cold, frigid, non-feeling and non-thinking, limited stone would certainly provide interesting choices.

I will be out of touch for awhile.

Blessings,
granny

Humanity is the apple of God’s eye.

 

[buffalo]

hecd, you are all wrapped up in physical pain and suffering of the body. The body will surely die. What we are concerned about is the soul which is immortal. Physical suffering is temporary. An unbelieving soul will live on forever and the pain and suffering of the soul will never end. Again, such a bankrupt view.

You are spending too much energy with climbing a ladder that is leaning on the wrong wall.

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To hecd2 re post 120 (partially):

Alec,

I am truly impressed with your awareness of the concepts found in Aristotle’s Physics. I don’t want to move too far from our topic, and so will just point out one thing.

Whatever the merits of Aristotle’s concepts about physical nature (and I am not conceding that they are as outmoded as you claim), the arguments for God’s existence taken from motion by St. Thomas are not based on those physical categories. His primary argument in the Prima Via is based on the Bk III definition I gave earlier: the act of a being in motion insofar as it is in motion. (See St. Thomas Aquinas, In III Physics, 2, n. 3.) He is talking in terms of act and potency, terms proper both to the philosophy of nature (physics in Aristotelian terms) and, especially, metaphysics. The principle that “whatever is in motion is here and now being moved by another” must also be understood in terms of the actualization of being, not some specific species of motion. If you can find it in a library, take a look at my Aquinas’ Proofs for God’s Existence (Martinus-Nijhoff, 1972), esp, pp. 80-84. See also, the very existential development of this proof in my “A Variation on the First Way of St. Thomas Aquinas,” Faith & Reason, 8:1 (Spring, 1982).

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To hecd2: re posts 120, 124, and 125:

Alec,

You write: *“As I have pointed out before, the essentialist approach to species definition has had to be completely abandoned in the light of modern biology, (no credible species concepts remain that rely on essentialist concepts). Mayr himself was very clear about the biological facts that invalidate the essentialist approach, but, in truth, essentialism as a foundation for defining species died with Darwin.”
*
I have no problem with that. You are writing about modern biology. I am writing as a philosopher. Yes, classical philosophers ARE essentialistic in their thinking because things are intelligible in terms of their natures or essences. Without natures, what would even natural scientists be investigating as they study Nature? You reject the natural philosophical species concept because it does not conform to the biological species concept. You are comparing apples and oranges.

You also write: “And as I have pointed out, all species concepts based on essentialist foundations have been abandoned because essentialist ideas about species can easily be shown to be valueless in defining species. There is no serious extant biological or philosophical proposal for a species concept based on essentialist ideas.”

Again, the philosopher is not trying to do the work of the biologist. It is proper to biology to try to determine possible relationships between living things. If biologists wish to use biological species concepts based on various accidental characteristics, such as population isolation, that is quite proper to them. But you are wrong in saying that philosophers cannot have their own species concept based on essentialistic principles of presence or absence of various powers. They have and they do. Moreover, philosophers are within their proper role when they challenge metaphysical assumptions inherent in claims about purely materialistic explanations of how living species can “evolve” from one natural philosophical species to another more perfect one.

You also write:* “The particular reason [not to believe that many true men had to appear simultaneously] is the overwhelming and disparate evidence, which you have consistently failed to engage with, despite it being the consideration most relevant to the topic of the thread, that the population in the lineage leading to extant humans cannot have been as few as two breeding individuals at least since the divergence of human and chimpanzee lineages.”*

I am not a biologist. And I have said before that theological and philosophical reasons support my acceptance of Adam’s actual existence. You are a good scientist, and perhaps you can help me with the following citation I have encountered:

“Unlike genetic data derived from living humans, fossils can be used to test predictions of theories about the past without relying on a long list of assumptions about the neutrality of genetic markers, mutational rates, or other requirements necessary to retrodict the past from current genetic variation … genetic information, at best, provides a theory of how modern human origins might have happened if the assumptions used in interpreting the genetic data are correct.” (Frayer, David W., Wolpoff, Milford H., Thorne, Alan G., Smith, Fred H. and Pope, Geofrrey G. (1993) Theories of Modern Human Origins: The Paleontological Test. American Anthropologist, 95 (1):14-50. p. 19.)

While this citation may be claimed to be outdated (1993), nonetheless epistemic and methodological limitations tend to retain validity over time more so than do concrete findings derived from the described investigational methodologies. To me, such a warning about “a long list of assumptions” underlying the kind of studies to which you refer, makes me a bit uneasy about accepting their final conclusions with the same certitude to which I affirm Catholic dogma. You can explain why this statement should in no manner weaken our confidence in your absolute claims about the findings of the Human Genome Project. Again, I am not a biologist and do not wish to exceed the competence of my own discipline. Still, I hope you will forgive my hesitancy to rule out Adam’s existence when I can see philosophically that the first true human being needs God’s intervention for the creation of his spiritual, intellective soul – and, as a Catholic, I accept the Church’s revealed teachings about Original Sin.

 

[anthony022071]

(To Dr. Bonnette) So what is your beef with neo-Darwinism? As for theistic evolutionists, they can be Darwinists too. Catholic biologists such as Miller are both neo-Darwinists and theistic evolutionists.

Neo-Darwinism is naturalistic and materialistic,which means it does not allow for a Creator to be creating species. Theistic evolutionists aren’t aware of the contradiction between a naturalistic explanation of the origins of species and the doctrines of continuous creation and divine providence.

 

[hecd2]

Before addressing your points below, I’d like to say how much I am enjoying our discussion, despite the fact that our points of view seeming so far apart might make it appear otherwise.

You write that *"…no substantial truth statement about reality is formally provable… " *Here you grant that your starting point for all knowledge is simply sensation. That is a good Aristotelian-Thomistic statement, since both philosophers would agree that all knowledge comes through the senses. Still, they insist that there is another type of knowledge, intellective knowledge, which is had not by sensation but by the distinct, superior spiritual faculty, the intellect. Though all knowledge begins in sensation, this need not mean that it must end there. Saying that this is *“all that we can know exists” *sounds like our knowledge is limited to sense experience, yet the process of reasoning can lead the mind to realities which are not sensible – be they physical entities beyond the range of the senses, or immaterial realities which reason requires in order to explain adequately what the senses observe.

I don’t disagree with the idea that knowledge requires more than sense experience. I agree with the Aristotlean/Thomistic starting point for knowledge (it is refreshing to talk to someone who teaches this; I’m not sure whether you realise how many people who claim to be students of Aquinas insist that his work is based on pure logic, like some great edifice miraculously suspended in mid-air on sky-hooks), and I also agree that knowledge acquisition as we practise it requires more than sensation - it requires reasonable inferences to be made from the evidence. Nevertheless - there are a couple of things that I cannot see any way round. First, *all *the evidence comes to us through our senses (we can build reasoned steps to get to a conclusion that is more or further than the evidence, but the *evidence *is all sensory). Second, whilst this reasoning can lead to hypotheses about entities for which we currently have no sensory evidence, those hypotheses cannot be confirmed or become knowledge without further sensory evidence. Examples abound in physics - let’s take just one. If inflation occurred in the early universe, as the Gaussian and adiabatic CMB anisotropy suggests, then we should expect to see a phenomenon called gravity waves that can be detected by polarisation in the CMB or by direct distortion of space-time. The effects are extremely small and the required measurements are very sensitive and subtle. So far we haven’t managed to design experiments that are sufficiently sensitive. So we can’t (yet) say that gravity waves form part of our knowledge about the universe, but at some point we will have the required sensitivity in the tests and we will either know that gravity waves exist or that they do not, and this knowledge will come from sense evidence. The same is true of the Higgs boson, and many other hypotheses - we cannot know they exist until we have sensory evidence for them.

Now contrast this with your claim: “yet the process of reasoning can lead the mind to realities which are not sensible – be they physical entities beyond the range of the senses, or immaterial realities which reason requires in order to explain adequately what the senses observe”. In the latter case, we do not have sensory evidence for the immaterial entities, and, as I have argued before, there is no case that I am aware of where immaterial explanations are *necessary *to explain what we sense.

By the way, it is essential to recognise (and if you do it will save us from significant time down a rabbit-hole) that it is not necessary for sensory evidence to be presented immediately to our senses - we don’t have to touch with our fingers, or observe the phenomenon with our unaided eye, so long as the phenomenon in question gives rise to effects that we sense.

Every proof for God’s existence begins in sense experience, but ends in a Cause which utterly transcends the sensible and even finite order of being.

And every single one that I am aware of is flawed with regard to its premises, or its argument, or remains, in the best case, a reasonable but untested hypothesis.

You also say: “There is no such thing as an absolutely true and logically provable statement about reality.” If no such statements can exist, what is the basis for this statement itself? The claim itself is then neither absolutely true nor logically provable, leaving open the possibility that there might exist some absolutely true and logically provable statements.

Well, you have caught me in a self-refuting statement . Well spotted. Let’s draw a veil over that particular statement and let me try again.

There is no such thing as a logically provable statement about reality (and, no, I can’t prove it) and *Evidence tells us that absolutely true non-trivial statements about reality are rare and impossible to discern from partially true ones".

You write,* “What I freely give up is the notion of formal proof of the truth of statements about reality, because the premises are always and necessarily unprovable. What I cling to however, are reasonable inferences about reality based on sense experience, which are warranted by their efficacy.”* Here we find an excellent summary of your position. Formally proven reality statements are impossible because the premises cannot be proven. You opt instead for a varient of the verification principle whose truth-value you measure by favorable outcomes. While I suspect a naturalistic presupposition may be operative here, you would counter that no evidence warrants supernatural claims.

All of this is correct, although, if we were to explore it further, we’d have define what I mean by “efficacy” and you mean by “favourable outcomes”

To be continued

 

[hecd2]

Continuation

When you say “premises are always and necessarily unprovable,” I infer you are pointing to the fact that conclusions always flow from prior premises. If those premises are the conclusion of yet prior premises, this process either goes to infinity or comes to a first unproven premise or premises. Since unlimited regression in prior premises is impossible, every argument must start with some unproven premise(s). That is where you take as your starting point sense-based reasonable inferences leading to positive results.

Yes. (Note that the constraint not to have unlimited regression is a practical, not an in-principle one).

Still, consider this alternative: First premises are indeed unproven, but that does not mean they need be merely assumed, or “clung to,” merely because they produce good results. Knowledge may begin in certitude because it is either self-evident or immediately evident. Such is the case with the principle of non-contradiction, which you consistently tell us modern physics disproves as a universally valid principle. This principle is not formally proven by appeal to any prior principle, precisely because it is immediately self-evident

But this merely goes to show how dangerous it is to use what appear to us to be self-evident or immediately evident premises. Now that is not to say that we shouldn’t use first premises that are formally unprovable but appear to be warranted. I have already said that I accept the premise that reality is not capricious or unknowable, and (more technically) that the laws of physics are the same throughout the observable universe in space and time. However, these first premises do not constitute absolute and unassailable truth in themselves, because although we might call them self-evident, they are evident only insofar as they appear to us through our senses. We have to be cautious, first because some people assert self evident truths without warrant in order to make a case (in that case, one man’s self evident truth is another man’s anathema), secondly, because they are primitive (in the order of reasoning) they necessarily come to us through intuitive rather than reflective thought, but most critically, because they are fallible. It might be that in some circumstances, the laws of nature are different in different places or times, and if we use our principle of uniformity of physics, we’ll be misled. So while it is reasonable to use these first principles, it is also wise to test them. We do this, for example, in physics by applying formal tests to objects that we observe from the early universe (which are also a long way away) to see whether the physics was the same then and there (it seems to be).

Turning now to this question of non-contradiction, it is a first premise that is based, as most are, on reality as it appears to us at our scale. What does it actually mean? It means, for example, that entities cannot have properties that are mutually exclusive, that they cannot occupy two contradictory states at once (such as dead and alive), that finite entities cannot be in two or more places at once, that a well evidenced physical principle about the upper limit of speed of transmitting information cannot be true and not true at the same time, that the world is local, that measuring one thing doesn’t affect some other unconnected thing on the other side of the galaxy and that things don’t occupy an indeterminate state until they are observed.

And indeed at the normal scales (size, time and gravitational field) normally experienced by human beings these contradictions rarely occur. The world performs in a regular non-contradictory way, and so our sense experience is not logically violated. At the scale and the speed of humans, things are not contradictory, there is a degree of regularity that we can rely on. But if we lift the veil and peep underneath, we find a bizarre world where all of these contradictory thongs happen as a matter of course.

If you seriously deny the universal validity of this principle, then the intelligibility of all your immediate sense experience – indeed, the very structure of perception itself – is destroyed.

I seriously deny the universal validity of the non-contradiction principle AND I deny that the intelligibility of my immediate sense experience is destroyed. In order to understand this, you should stop repeating your claim (which is erroneous) and try hard to engage in what I am explaining: the world is ordinarily non-contradictory at our scale, and thus we base our principle on the intuitive data that we ordinarily have access to; but the non-contradiction is underpinned by an Alice in Wonderland world of contradiction and weirdness that seethes below our normal perception, but which we have recently learned to observe. Stochastically, it normally adds up to provide non-contradictory data, but we know that the contradictions exist at the quantum scale.

In other words your conclusion about what would happen if contradictions existed is based on intuition - and it’s wrong. The world can have contradictions, at the same time and in the same respect, and yet we can still come to know it. If you disagree, it’s no good talking about red and green visual fields. You have to take what I claim to be contradictory phenomena, and show how, if they are contradictory in the way that I describe, then that entails a collapse of reality.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To hecd2 re posts 121, 136, and 137:

Alec,

You write in post 121: *"Contradictions do exist on the quantum scale, but we also know that those contradictions are hidden at the normally observable macro scale by the stochastic properties of large ensembles of phenomena, so that the contradictions are veiled from us in normal day to day life. Reality to a pre 19th century person is exactly the same as if the contradictions do not exist, as is day to day reality for us; but we also know that reality contains these contradictions.

Other than experience, what else have we got to base our insights on? Your so called universal metaphysical insights are merely intuitive claims about reality, founded in experience and extrapolated without warrant to a claim about the universal nature of being."*

In post 137, you write: “…the world is ordinarily non-contradictory at our scale, and thus we base our principle on the intuitive data that we ordinarily have access to; but the non-contradiction is underpinned by an Alice in Wonderland world of contradiction and weirdness that seethes below our normal perception, but which we have recently learned to observe. Stochastically, it normally adds up to provide non-contradictory data, but we know that the contradictions exist at the quantum scale.”

You here point to a most radical difference in the way we look at reality. Yes, metaphysical insights are founded in experience, but they are not limited to experience, because once the intellect encounters being, it understands its universal applicability. If someone encountered a rabbit for the first time, he would immediately grasp something about the rabbit’s nature. Now, if I told that person that there is something in the next room, but told him nothing of its nature, then he would doubtless say he knew nothing about it. But were I to assure him that it is a rabbit, he could then say, “Yes, I know something about it because I have already encountered a rabbit.” That is to say, to paraphrase Kant, his knowledge of “rabbitness” now holds good for all possible rabbits – provided he is assured that what he is to encounter is a rabbit, and not something else.

When we first encounter anything, what we encounter presents two aspects to our mind. One aspect is the nature of whatever we are experiencing, be it a rabbit, a brilliant insight, or just a sharp pain. That is the “essential” aspect of the experience, its structural content. What we learn there will hold good for all possible experiences of the same nature, provided that something can be guaranteed to be of that same nature. But the other aspect of even the most primitive experiential encounter is the mind’s awareness of the “being, existence, reality” of what is encountered. Even you concede that at the level of immediate human experience, the laws of being are known – but you deny their transcendental value. What we know in the “concept of being” is simply “something there.” Again, the intelligibility of perception itself requires that the content obey the rules of being: Something there is not not-there. That is what we immediately know when we form the concept of being – not the essential nature of the object known – but its very “being there” at all. That is to say, we know what being or existence is. It is not “what” is known, but the very act by which what is known is present in our knowledge at all. And that is the basis for us forming the first principles of being.

Now, when people are told that something just might exist on the other side of the cosmos, but that is all they will be told about it, most of them will think initially that they know nothing at all about it. But if prompted, they immediately realize that there is a lot they can truly say about this hypothetical entity. For they know with certitude that either that entity is there or not; that if it is there, it is what it is; that it cannot both be there and not be there, and so forth. What is possibly there might not be anything of a nature previously encountered – and thus they know nothing of its nature. But they DO know what being means, since you have already encountered a “being” before in their very first encounter with anything at all, regardless of its nature. That is why laws of being are inherently transcendental, and held with such certitude – because the mind immediately forms a concept of being (of being’s “nature,” if you will) the moment we encounter anything at all in experience. Henceforth, we are absolutely certain that the principle of non-contradiction applies to anything at all. You say that this universality is “extrapolated without warrant to a claim about the universal nature of being.” But the “warrant” is precisely this, that in the very first encounter with any being in any form, we henceforth know the “nature” of being itself. Whatever then may exist in any domain whatever must conform to that concept of being, because we have already experienced that act by which anything is differentiated from non-being – and any and all beings must “be” by that same act. Should it be the case that something does not exist at all, then our knowledge of “being” need not apply, since there is simply nothing to be known. We can still say though, with Parmenides, that non-being is not.

continued…

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To hecd2:

continued

Most importantly, these laws of being are laws of existence, not of essence. Size pertains to essence, not existence. Hence, the fact that something is or occurs at the submicroscopic level of being does not exempt it from the laws of being, since such existential principles pertain to anything that exists at all – whether it be macroscopic or microscopic in size, and whether it obeys Newtonian physics or quantum mechanics. That is because quantum mechanics pertains, not just to the size, but also to the laws of quantum physics, which are essential in nature – whereas conformity of beings at the submicroscopic level to the laws of being arises precisely insofar as they are beings at all, not beings of a certain size or type.

That is why the human mind is so scandalized by phenomena which appear to violate the non-contradiction principle, and why physicists have for 90 years sought to overcome the paradoxes you describe. For if true contradictions can occur at that level, they can then occur at even the macroscopic level – even though we do not experience them because of the “stochastic properties of large ensembles of phenomena.” If the principle of non-contradiction is genuinely not universal in nature, then perhaps the molecular biological evidence studied in the Human Genome Project, from which inferences are made that exclude a literal Adam and Eve, simultaneously do not exclude Adam and Eve (since being can be self-contradictory), and thus Adam and Eve can exist in literal history!

Because the human mind is a spiritual, intellective faculty, it can penetrate beyond sensible appearances to understand the intrinsic nature of things through essential properties, and to grasp the act of existence itself – so as to realize the first, universal metaphysical principles of being as transcendentally valid, even on the submicroscopic scale. What you and others are saying is that contradictions do not appear to occur at the macroscopic level, when theoretical physics visits the submicroscopic level, they do occur. But, in so saying, you also to affirm that (1) a certain physical phenomena really does occur at the micro level (that is, it is not the case that it does not), for example, light energy really does take the form of waves, (2) a certain physical phenomena which excludes the first really does exist at the micro level (that is, it is not the case that it does not), for example light energy really does take the form of particles, not waves, and (3), contradictions really do exist at the micro level (that is, you deny that they do not exist), In all three instances, you are implicitly applying the principle of non-contradiction, and doing so at the submicroscopic level where you say that contradictions can and do exist. The intellectual scandal entailed in this existentially schizoid state of affairs understandably has caused physicists to struggle for 90 years to resolve the issue. The fact that it is generally thought that they have failed to do so thus far does not argue to the need for intellectual suicide, by abandoning the transcendental application of first principles of reason and being. Rather, either modern physicists ought to come to the realization that the phenomena is not really contradictory if you look at it from precisely the same respect simultaneously, or else, that theoretical physics needs to make yet another progressive leap as it did in moving beyond the Newtonian worldview. While I cannot adjudge the merits of his claims, it is interesting to note that physicist and astronomer Milo Wolff maintains that the “wave structure of matter” can explain wave-particle duality. He claims that spherical waves necessarily form a ‘particle’ effect at their wave-center, thus solving the 90 year old paradox of the particle-wave duality of matter. See Wolff’s Schroedinger’s Universe and the Origin of the Natural Laws (Outskirts Press, 2008).

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To hecd2 re posts 136 and 137:

Alec,

You write:* “whilst this reasoning can lead to hypotheses about entities for which we currently have no sensory evidence, those hypotheses cannot be confirmed or become knowledge without further sensory evidence.”
*
On the contrary, what you say applies in the field of natural science, but does not apply to philosophical reasoning – any more than it would apply to a formal demonstration in mathematics for which we have no corresponding physical evidence. Reasoning can lead to conclusions which the mind can properly assent to. I can understand that you have encountered no metaphysical proofs which have thus far convinced you, say, about God’s existence. Still, you can hardly expect direct physical evidence of God’s presence to you in this life, even were you sufficiently convinced of the validity of such a demonstration for His existence. You will get your evidence after you leave this life. Your statement above would appear merely to suggest a naturalistic proclivity.

You write: “By the way, it is essential to recognise (and if you do it will save us from significant time down a rabbit-hole) that it is not necessary for sensory evidence to be presented immediately to our senses - we don’t have to touch with our fingers, or observe the phenomenon with our unaided eye, so long as the phenomenon in question gives rise to effects that we sense.”

I have no desire for unnecessary rabbit-holes. In fact, I quite agree with reasoning from observable effects to causes, even ones we might not be able to observe. Most of the physical phenomena which theoretical physics deals with (subatomic entities) are known through this process of reasoning. That is also precisely what we do in proving God’s existence, namely, begin with observable phenomena and reason to a sole adequate Cause which transcends the finite order. But I do not insist that all explanations and causes must remain in the sensory or physical order. The point of contention here, I am sure you will concur, is the adequacy of the demonstrations.

Regarding impossiblity of infinite regress in the premises of a demonstration, you write: *"(Note that the constraint not to have unlimited regression is a practical, not an in-principle one)."
*
Partly right. The obvious problem is that you don’t have enough time to regress infinitely through prior premises. Still, Aristotle and St. Thomas point out in the On Interpretation, that to form a conclusion of a scientific syllogism you have to join the subject and predicate taken from the major and minor terms. If the number of middle terms were infinite, the subject and predicate could never be joined, and thus, no conclusion could be reached.