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From: gordon@uw-june (Gordon Davisson)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Out-of-Context Quote-of-the-Month.  July 1985.
Message-ID: <97@uw-june>
Date: Wed, 24-Jul-85 07:24:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-june.97
Posted: Wed Jul 24 07:24:30 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Jul-85 06:37:44 EDT
References: <1296@uwmacc.UUCP> <1310@uwmacc.UUCP>
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 87

>[Paul DuBois]
>
>Mike Huybensz suggested that I follow up on the items in this series
>by posting the quotations *within* their contexts.  I think that that
>is a fine idea, and plan to do so.  Here is the context from the last
>entry.

Good idea.  I've been enjoying these postings, but wishing I knew how
they occured.  (Well, wish no longer... :-)  Keep it up, Paul.

Anyway, I have some comments (mostly questions, really) on your comments
on Dobzhansky's comments.

> [Paul quotes Dobzhansky on recent-creationism being inconsistent with
> the number and variety of species on earth, and the possibility of
> creation by evolution (theistic evolution).]
>
>Comment:
>
>Dobzhansky falls into the error of supposing that he knows what a
>creator would do, in asking what the good of having 2 or 3 million
>species is.  How does he know?  We cannot say one way or the other,
>without some form of revelation, which, I think, Dobzhansky would not
>claim to be party to.

This is a common problem with theories involving omnipotent beings.
Some time ago, I described 3 ways a scientific theory could deal with
supernatural beings:
   1) By assuming the being is not omnipotent, and placing limits on
      its powers.
   2) By assuming some sort of psychological model for the being, thus
      placing limits on its behavior.
   3) By assuming that the being didn't interfere with the area under
      study.
with #3 being by far the most commonly used.  #3, however, clearly does
not apply in this case, and #1 is possible, but highly improbable.
Thus, #2 is the only way (that I can think of) of dealing with a creator
scientifically.  It is used, to some extent, by creationists (recall
descriptions of 'why God did this-and-such', e.g. light from distant
stars being visible because God wanted us to be able to navigate).
Every use of this that I have ever seen was highly intuitive, and
therefore unreliable.

In other words, I agree with you that Dobzhansky is skating on thin ice,
but doesn't one have to to deal with creation scientifically?

>                     [...]  Secondly, Dobzhansky comes very close to
>identifying creationists with the "creation of invariant organisms"
>hypothesis in saying, "pretty much as we find them today".  It is
>difficult to say just how close he means to come to "no variation" with
>this statement, but no creationist believes that there is no variation
>of organisms over time.

The reason for this is that creationists seem to reject the mechanisms
of evolution -- beneficial mutations and natural selection -- without
putting forth any other explanations for the microevolution we observe
today.  Actually, this isn't true.  Although many creationists attack
natural selection, they also seem to include it in their theories.  In
his discussion of natural selection, Henry Morris goes so far as to say

     The shift from predominant light coloration to predominant dark
     coloration in the peppered moth, with the increasingly smoky
     atmosphere and darkening of the tree trunks during the industrial
     revolution, likewise is a striking confirmation of the creation model.
		-- "The Troubled Waters of Evolution", H. M. Morris, pp 87

But without at least neutral mutations, there won't be enough genetic
variation within a population for natural selection to do very much.
Since there were only 2 animals of each kind on the ark, there should
be minimal variation (except for the genetic load, but in the creationist
theory, that's uniformly harmful, and therefore selected against).  So
my question is, how does this variation arise?

>                                               [...]  But that does not
>mean that there is any acceptance by creationists of the idea that the
>variation extends across all classificatory boundaries, as
>evolutionists maintain.

This raises yet another question: why should there be limits to variation?
This question is hard to answer without knowing the mechanism of
variation, but since creationists are so insistent on the existance of
these limits, I think it's appropriate to ask it anyway.

--
Human:    Gordon Davisson
ARPA:     gordon@uw-june.ARPA
UUCP:     {ihnp4,decvax,tektronix}!uw-beaver!uw-june!gordon