Happy New Year!

[evangelicalhumanist]

To what extent is evolution not a theory of genes (don't tell me about religious genes, and how you are missing that gene ... that is an unproven supposition) and just a way to sweep all the dirt under the rug? Which is to say, to what extent is your understanding of evolution more than just Heraclitos (all is change) vs actual genetics ... and to what extent are you engaged in a circular argument with yourself?

Don't have to tell you about "religious genes," because I don't subscribe to that particular theory. Vastly more of what we "do" as a consequence of evolution has to do with gene expression in response to (well, everything, including how other genes have already expressed, and how that expression changed us, and oh-the-loopiness-of-it!).

I don't actually suppose I can ever know to what extent my arguments are either with myself or circular. Everything I think affects my thinking. (Truly, I think Douglas Hofstadter is onto something!)

In my own view -- evolution happens, and we are a part of it. But what contributes to evolution is, to me and me alone, unquestionably more than mere genes. I cannot tell you how, because I don't have the academic or science background, but I am certain right down to my very chromosomes that the endless sort of feedback loops available to living creatures capable of reacting to them means that we'll never get it all -- not completely.

And yet, I'll still say, "it happens."

[Baruch]

Thanks for being clear with both of us. Thanks for admitting that you have a faith, even if only in a process And Hofstadter has a clearest definition of it. Definitely change happens ... with many feedback loops ... there is becoming. But what is it that changes ... can't all be change, every verb has to have a subject and an object noun. Parmenides was as extreme as Heraclitos, in claiming that there was no "real" change, hence no "real" motion. For Parmenides, there are only nouns, and no verbs. For Heraclitos, there are only verbs, and no nouns. Both would have flunked grammar

Shalom

[evangelicalhumanist]

You know, on further reflection, I'm not convinced you've really caught the magnitude of what I meant by "feedback loops" fuelling change. This takes us to the heart of Chaos theory -- sensitive dependence on initial conditions. If a system (be it mathematical or biological) responds in any way at all, and that response is fed back through the response mechanism itself, then the result becomes unfathomably complex. Thus, if the result of some gene expression is "fed back" and impacts on how other genes express later, then -- at least within the limits of what is possible given the genes possessed and the ability of the organism to survive the response -- there's a very broad range possible. That we don't see such enormous variety is very likely due to the beautiful (and survival-contributing) stability of it all!

Frankly, it's no wonder that those with religious beliefs but without much science see it as "miraculous" and only achievable by God.

[Baruch]

Well Chaos isn't entirely random, it is organized randomness, pseudorandom (like any computer algorithm). See the book Chaos by Gleick (sp). It was only proven later that the chaos was not just an artifact of the human algorithm used to compute it (approximate it) ... it is actually in the mathematics itself, and thus actually reasonable that it would show up in nature (per Pythagoras). But again, I don't see how a butterfly in China can result in the Encyclopedia Britannica in addition to a storm in N America. There has to be some archetypical limits to what turbulent gases and liquids can accomplish ... they remain gases and liquids for instance.

Your appeal to complexity was quaint however, exactly like a theologian sweeping the dirt under the carpet, when trying to interpret mutually contradictory scriptures ... I am not smart enough to understand how it is consistent, but G-d is! Sure ....

Shalom

[evangelicalhumanist]

Pish-posh! Rhetorical exaggeration gone mad! Where did I suggest that the "butterfly effect" could accomplish so much? My appeal to complexity was not meant to sweep anything under the carpet -- it was meant to suggest that we may well have much to learn, and that ignoring all that and opting for the "God of the Gaps" is probably just laziness.

You and I have a very fundamentally different viewpoint -- you see the very idea of God as an eminently simple (or "necessary") thing. I see God as wildly improbable - simply because of what I perceive as the complexity of "organized" or "coherent" being. I can (in a very limited fashion), understand the growth of organization and coherence from a few simple, natural physical properties of matter/energy, plus time. For that reason, a natural universe is easier, simpler (in the sense of Occam's Razor), to believe than God. For whatever reason, the opposite seems true of you. I'd actually love to see your own reasoning on that.

[Baruch]

"G-d of the Gaps" is a rhetorical gambit, and advertising for divine young women's fashions I am completely immune to it. You have seen my reasoning on this many times before. I find a gap in your reasoning (one held by many educated folk), and so I can't accept reductionistic thinking as ultimate (though it is useful in limited ways certainly). It is often necessary in science that we have to simplify the situation being analyzed, and sometimes we can even get away with it. For example with the cow-catapult of Monty Python's Holy Grail ... one wouldn't have to exhaustively calculate the center of mass of the cow with a super-computer ... it is relatively easy to approximately determine it ... for all practical purposes ... but it would be wrong to conclude therefore that our approximation scheme is rigorous! Just because mathematics is useful at times, doesn't prove that the world is made of numbers. Nor does the fact that logic is useful at times, doesn't prove that the world is rational. They only prove that the world isn't completely innumerate nor is it completely irrational. And given the invention of x+iy ... I know that the world is at least partly complex and imaginary )

I see my position is more humanist than yours ... even if it seems naively anthropomorphic to you. Your position is more analytical ... but then again mine is more synthetic (as in synthesis). You tend to see the thesis/anti-thesis and I see the synthesis ... but unlike Hegel and Marx, I work it backward compared to them ... I see synthesis as ultimate (naive empiricism) and the division into thesis/anti-thesis as sometimes useful gambits ... see the sometimes usefulness of over-simplification in the first paragraph.

Shalom