If anyone wants an example of why some of us object strongly to the “accommodationist” strategy of downplaying the incompatibility of science and (many types of) religious belief, Jerry Coyne’s blog post will help you out. A bit too much, actually — the more you really think about it, the angrier it will make you feel. No wonder why these atheists are all so strident!
Apparently the National Association of Biology Teachers characterizes used to characterize the theory of evolution in the following way:
The diversity of life on earth is the result of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments.
That’s a good description, because it’s true. But some religious thinkers, along with their enablers within the scientific establishment, objected to the parts about “unsupervised” and “impersonal,” because they seemed to exclude the possibility that the process was designed or guided by God. Which they do! Because that’s what the theory of evolution says, and that theory is far and away our best understanding of the data. (Dysteleological physicalism.)
The shocking part of the story is that the objectors won. The National Association of Biology Teachers officially changed their description of evolution, to better accommodate the views of theologians.
This isn’t a brand new story, but I had never heard it before. Jerry seems a lot more calm about it than I am, so you should read his post for more. I’ll just quote one short paragraph from him:
In my classes, however, I still characterize evolution and selection as processes lacking mind, purpose, or supervision. Why? Because, as far as we can see, that’s the truth.
Sean (and most of the rest of the commenters),
I’ll go 50% of the way with you…it is accurate to describe the process itself as “impersonal”, just as any other natural process is (unless one adheres to pantheism, I suppose…). But “unsupervised” is definitely more of a philosophical/theological statement that simply goes beyond the available evidence. In the absence of positive evidence that the process includes no supervision (have you seen God *not* supervise it?), it is better to make no claim one way or the other. So while it seems that there is no need to invoke God’s direct involvement in the process of evolution, neither (as far as the science of evolution is concerned) is there a need to invoke God’s lack of involvement.
In short, the right question to ask in this case is “If there were a God supervising evolution, is it possible that the Universe could look the way it does now?” Only if we could categorically answer that in the negative would we be justified in saying that evolution is unsupervised. Also notice that this is a different question from “Is there independent evidence for the existence of God?”
I fear you’re letting your philosophical preconceptions lead to a conflation of one question with the other, and that is interfering with your analysis of the care with which the NABT is making its claims.
The theory of evolution does have some predictive capability (though albeit of a stochastic nature). So the unqualified use of ”unpredictable” may be inappropriate.
Also, although it does not require supervision or purpose, the theory of evolution makes no statement regarding their absence. So to include the word “unsupervised” in a definition of the theory is indeed just plain wrong.
Since I suspect I have been banned by Jerry from his blog for puking at Frank Sinatra, I will post here. I suspect I will also be regarded there as soft on accomodationism and peddling quantum woo.
As Jason Dick wisely pointed out about an earlier poster “The rest of your post is pure anti-science creationist claptrap. You could really stand to learn what actual mutations are”. The stochastic nature of mutations is very important for biology. Schrödinger pointed out in his book “What is life” (1944) that since gamma radiation causes mutation then mutation is a quantum mechanical process and the genetic material must be molecular not super-macromolecular as was thought at the time. His view was amply by the later discoveries about the genetic role of DNA.
On this basis the NABT description of evolution as unpredictable arises directly from mutation being caused by QM processes rather than deterministic chaos. Therefore if we take the Everett interpretation of QM then apply it to evolution all possible outcomes of evolution really exist at least in a modal realist sense. That is the interpretation I favour. However you can take “xian” interpretation of QM that a measurement does not just tell which branch of the wavefunction we are on or to stochastically collapse it as in the Von Neumann/Copenhagen interpretation, rather they can assert “God” chose it.
This allows for “God” to direct the course of evolution without violating the laws of physics. So I see no reason why theists can’t assert that evolution is directed as long as they do not claim it is necessary. Of course there is no evidence why this should be the case, but we cannot disprove it on the basis of evidence, unlike creationism and ID.
What religious fundamentalists object to is that evolution by natural selection makes “God” unnecessary. Jerry refers to the passage in his book :
“Laplace answered, famously and brusquely: “Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothese-la,” “I have had no need of that hypothesis.” And scientists have not needed it since.”
Laplace made consistent Deism possible, Darwin made consistent atheism possible and preferable.
The truth matters? Oh surely that can’t be right!
Jason Dick wrote,
“We are not at the “end” of evolution in any way, shape, or form. Evolution is an ongoing process that will still occur long after we are all dead and gone. We are just a single species among a great many species, and a single snapshot of that species. We are no more the “purpose” of evolution than snow in winter is the purpose of summer.
“But the more important point to make is simply that the future does not affect the past.
“The rest of your post is pure anti-science creationist claptrap. You could really stand to learn what actual mutations are.”
This is from Shapiro, 2009, Annals of N.Y. Academy of Science, “Revisiting the Central Dogma in the 21st Century”, p. 23:
“If we are to give up the outmoded atomistic vocabulary of 20th-century genetics, we need to develop a new lexicon of terms based on a view of the cell as an active and sentient entity, particularly as it deals with its genome. The emphasis has to be on what the cell does with and to its genome, not what the genome directs the cell to execute. In some ways, the change in thinking reverses the instructional relationship postulated by the central dogma. The two basic ideas here are:
“1. Sensing, computation, and decisionmaking are central features of cellular functions; and
“2. The cell is an active agent utilizing and modifying the information stored in its genome.”
You might benefit by reading the entire paper. Ignore it and you are at the risk of spouting anti-science claptrap yourself. I am not “creationist” and I don’t think this is claptrap. But I see a lot of claptrap as I read these threads. Do you think I presume we humans are the end of evolution? Of course it is a process, the process of growth of complexity and consciousness. There is no “end” to it; the process is the purpose. Do you have difficulty understanding that concept?
As for the future affecting the past, I suppose that depends on how you perceive time. Sequentially, if you put the cause in the future, the effect in the past, then the future does indeed affect the past. If you want to argue the point, I can say that we live in the past relative to our own sensations, since it takes a finite length of time for our brain to register what we sense. Our senses are always a moment “ahead” of us. Now are they “ahead” in the future, or in the past? I think it is a matter of opinion.
Someone should point out that this NABT dispute happened back in the 1990s, and that there haven’t been any issues with the new definition at NABT since then, excepting carping from those who really do think it’s scientific to say that evolution disproves God.
“If we are to give up the outmoded atomistic vocabulary of 20th-century genetics, we need to develop a new lexicon of terms based on a view of the cell as an active and sentient entity, particularly as it deals with its genome. The emphasis has to be on what the cell does with and to its genome, not what the genome directs the cell to execute. In some ways, the change in thinking reverses the instructional relationship postulated by the central dogma. The two basic ideas here are:
“1. Sensing, computation, and decisionmaking are central features of cellular functions; and
“2. The cell is an active agent utilizing and modifying the information stored in its genome.”
Er, this has no connection to your previous argument about some teleological component to evolution. Refer above to the point I made vis-a-vis cetaceans; they had legs then lost them.
You might benefit by reading the entire paper. Ignore it and you are at the risk of spouting anti-science claptrap yourself. I am not “creationist” and I don’t think this is claptrap. But I see a lot of claptrap as I read these threads. Do you think I presume we humans are the end of evolution? Of course it is a process, the process of growth of complexity and consciousness. There is no “end” to it; the process is the purpose. Do you have difficulty understanding that concept?
Don’t confuse evolution with extropy. If it turns out that our mental and behavioral complexity and the degree of human consciousness is ultimately beneficial for us as a species in the long run, it will persist and probably increase. If not, we will probably get dumber as a species.
Our species’ mental and behavioral complexity tends to serve those with more of it better than those with less of it. (A whole different topic is how medicine and social norms have affected the species and its evolution; it adds a cultural and mental layer to the biological.)
It’s funny that a consistent feature of many religious/teleological arguments is some notion that humans are separate from animals and that our mental and behavioral complexity is given some sort of special separation from other animals’ adaptations.
Granted, humans’ brains, I would say, are a fairly special adaptation as far as we know, because we have added whole new facets of existence to our lives as a species – we are able to manipulate our own genes and we have an astronomically higher grasp of technology and science and cultural development (I can’t say for definite, but let’s just say I’d put a big sum of money on this) than any other species on the planet.
This does not make our brains and what we can do with them any less of a property that can be affected by evolution.
We are still animals, albeit the ones who as far as we know broke the barrier of sapience and civilization first.
Have we asked these religious weirdos to prove their deity exists yet?
“The diversity of life on earth is the result of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments.”
Is it only the two words “unsupervised” and “impersonal” that were removed? I think if there had not been any previous controversy, that is creationists had not objected to evolution in the first place, no one in the scientific community would have even thought of putting in the words unsupervised and impersonal. They are just two extraneous non scientific words added because of the creationist pushback. Don’t get so overwrought and reactive because then you end up playing in the creationists’ ballpark. I really think if creationists didn’t exist those two words wouldn’t have been put in simply because they have a pejorative tone to them. It may not be so hard to accept their redaction in that light.
Sorry, David, but understanding more about the complex interrelationship between the genome and the cell in no way, shape, or form undermines the randomness of mutation.
The statement that mutations are random with respect to selection, by the way, is just a statement that the physical processes that underly mutation have nothing whatsoever to do with the processes that drive selection. Now, there are certain forms of plasticity which allow a degree of adaptation without any change in the genome, but in general these are evolved responses to various environments, and are extremely limited in scope. Cells also have control over the rate of mutations (as evidenced by somatic hypermutation in our own white blood cells). But the idea that cells can actually initiate specific mutations is extraordinarily implausible.
What’s more, it has been demonstrated in the lab that the way in which evolution most frequently works is not by any sort of “on the fly” mutation, but rather by selecting pre-existing variants within the genetic pool. So even in the extremely unlikely event that any organism out there has the evolved ability to modify its own genome in a very specific manner, the evidence is absolutely conclusive that this is a strongly subdominant process in biology.
Katharine wrote,
“Don’t confuse evolution with extropy. If it turns out that our mental and behavioral complexity and the degree of human consciousness is ultimately beneficial for us as a species in the long run, it will persist and probably increase. If not, we will probably get dumber as a species.”
I do not presume humans to be the end of universal evolution. Who plans to quantify “dumbness”? Is a virus “dumb”? I am only saying that the path of evolution appears to be one of inexorable increase of complexity and consciousness: from atoms, to molecules, to catalyzed reactions, RNA, etc. to cellular organisms, to multi-cellular organisms, to — what? Is it somehow a requirement of science to ignore what is staring you in the face? I do not argue that there is some “final cause” (see below) embodied in humans — the universe has no final cause in my book, it simply grows, and there is a harmonic principle at work. I am simply saying, look at the historical path of natural growth. I am not going to argue with someone purporting to understand a word like “extropy”.
From Wikipedia: ‘Extropy, as coined by Tom Bell (T.O. Morrow) and defined by Max More in 1988, is “the extent of a living or organizational system’s intelligence, functional order, vitality, energy, life, experience, and capacity and drive for improvement and growth.” Extropy is not a rigorously defined technical term in philosophy or science; in a metaphorical sense, it simply expresses the opposite of entropy.’
And for that matter, I never realized my argument was “teleological”:
(Wikipedia) “A teleology is any philosophical account which holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature. . . .
Final cause, or telos, is defined as the purpose, end, aim, or goal of something.”
(Then gives an example, that final cause of seed is grown plant.) Regarding that “philosophy”, I would say that it may be an error to equate “purpose” with some specific “end, aim or goal”. Maybe the philosophers should think in terms of process. A never-ending process could not be said to have any end, aim or goal, but the path reveals a purposeful process. Is that too hard to figure?
Jason Dick wrote,
“The statement that mutations are random with respect to selection. . . is just a statement that the physical processes that underly mutation have nothing whatsoever to do with the processes that drive selection. Now, there are certain forms of plasticity which allow a degree of adaptation without any change in the genome, but in general these are evolved responses to various environments, and are extremely limited in scope. Cells also have control over the rate of mutations (as evidenced by somatic hypermutation in our own white blood cells). But the idea that cells can actually initiate specific mutations is extraordinarily implausible.”
I disagree entirely. Processes underlying mutation have nothing to do with processes driving selection? It seems to me they are intimately connected. A temperature change forces a cell system to change — to adapt. Is that not a process driving selection? The temperature change may be unpredictable by the cell, but it responds to it. Unpredictability does not require “randomness” (indeed, you might have a problem defining “randomness”, since mathematically “pure” randomness does not exist). The cell systems then initiate specific mutations to their DNA to respond. But again I don’t believe you could call the change “random”. With regard to mutation “by selecting pre-existing variants within the genetic pool”, in what way would such mutation be “random”? It sounds just the opposite. That is the entire point: the central dogma, that a cell is simply a “dumb” animal following its DNA instructions, is false! Again I recommend the Shapiro paper. What may be “extraordinarly implausible” to you appears to be at work. Maybe it is just a matter of overcoming preconceptions.
Others have said it better already: Evolution has nothing to say about the very presence or absence of supervisory persons or otherwise. The theory provides no obvious role for such, but it is simply beyond the scope of the theory to exclude all possible explanations for the origin of species. Instead it advances the most plausible explanation we have, which is plenty good enough. I haven’t got a spiritual bone in by body, and I object to that definition on the simple grounds that it oversteps its mandate as a definition of a scientific theory.
It’s true that our sundry creation myths are excluded, most certainly in a literal sense, and in seemingly all but the most contorted metaphorical senses. It’s true that if there is a designer, it’s not at all obvious. It’s true that we don’t need a designer to explain what we see, and hence it’s more parsimonious to assume there isn’t one. But it is NOT true that evolution tells us there is no designer. Period. We don’t know, probably can’t know, and in any event likely never will know. End of story.
@David George
DNA is a molecule. The structure of molecules are determined by quantum mechanics. Changes in single molecules (i.e. a DNA strand) occur at the quantum level. The only truly random processes that occur are quantum mechanical. QM only predicts probabilities of events. The evolution of the wavefunction is deterministic, the outcome of observables are probabilistic.
Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) are one of the most common types of genetic variation and they arise from QM effects. Typically radiation or the presence of reactive molecular species. Evolution by natural selection operates on genetic variation. As has been mentioned much of this operates on an existing pool of genetic variation. The mathematical description of this is what the original evolutionary “modern synthesis” is about. However the source of new SNP’s and other mutations, that is new genetic variation, are quantum mechanical and thus are random.
Ultimately even when dealing informatics approaches, horizontal gene transfer and epigenetics, evolution is operating on genetic variability produced by random mutation.
chemicalscum:
That sounds right. Random mutation is at the heart of genetic transitions. And, the evolution of the wave function is, as far as we can measure, deterministic.
Mike 2
I have to agree with Low Math, Meekly Interacting on this one: I found the original statement to be just purposely obnoxious and apparently designed just to piss off the religious among us. (to make things clear, I’m not one of those). Occam’s Razor clearly cuts to removing the words “unsupervised” and “impersonal”. There’s nothing anti-science or anti natural selection in the statement without those words. It’s easy to see examples of evolution around us where neither of those words can be considered at all accurate. Take a look at a dog or horse some time. As the saying goes, absense of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Apparently, the bulk of the membership of the NABT thinks similarly, as I don’t remember any great hubbub over this in the last decade.
Finally, saying “theologians” in the title is every bit as ignorant as saying “scientists” and then adding some phrase denigrating ALL scientists as a monolithic block. Frankly, I expect better than that here.
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chemicalscum wrote,
“The only truly random processes that occur are quantum mechanical. QM only predicts probabilities of events. The evolution of the wavefunction is deterministic, the outcome of observables are probabilistic.”
QM predicts probabilities because QM cannot predict the outcome of a measurement – although it appears to me that sometimes QM does predict an outcome, with 100% certainty. If an entangled pair of electrons is measured on the same axis, and electron A is spin up on that axis, electron B will be spin down on that axis with 100% certainty.
But unpredictability does not require randomness. It seems to me that the word “randomness” is charged with a property that it does not have. The property in question is unpredictability.
Wikipedia again: “In probability theory, a stochastic process, or sometimes random process, is the counterpart to a deterministic process (or deterministic system). Instead of dealing with only one possible reality of how the process might evolve under time (as is the case, for example, for solutions of an ordinary differential equation), in a stochastic or random process there is some indeterminacy in its future evolution described by probability distributions. This means that even if the initial condition (or starting point) is known, there are many possibilities the process might go to, but some paths may be more probable and others less so.”
If that is the “truly random” process you are talking about, I suggest it is simply unpredictability. And QM, an incomplete description of physical reality, does not know the machinery behind a process that appears “probabilistic”. So you know where I am coming from. And yes, I believe I could describe a hidden variable by which Alice and Bob would find the probabilities they do. And I believe it would agree with the QM prediction. That does not mean that the wavefunction becomes obsolete. If you wish to follow this to its conclusion, feel free. But I do not believe that your assumption that quantum mechanical processes are “truly random” is true. It is an assumption.
I’m with LM, MI as well. Yeah, I totally believe that the evidence points to a stochastic development of evolution. There’s no way to take the sum total of development of species over time and derive any sort of reasonable purpose from them other than, “Oh, hey, we’re here now!” But that truth is contained in the definition without the offending language in there. Once you’ve stated that it’s unpredictable, natural and directed by chance, why do you need to add “impersonal” other than to piss off the religious?
Adding those words (even though I personally agree with them) is just rubbing their face in their wrongness.
I might add that I think it’s a mistake to confuse QM unpredictability with the simpler, chaos-theory-style “We can’t figure out any pattern to the elements that went into this phenomenon.” When that happens, even a completely deterministic event (say, flipping a coin) is effectively random for our purposes.
Seems to me you are being overly sensitive. Removing “unsupervised” and “impersonal” does no obvious harm. The back story may suggest a problem, but the definition without those words seems no different from the definition with them. Even without those words it says that evolution is a natural process. So what’s the big deal? Actually, I don’t like the word “descent” and would prefer something less directional. But that’s not the main point here.
Oh, balls.
In particular, eyeballs and, well, balls. Testicles.
The sheer idiocy of the ‘design’ for these two common items (humans average just below 2 for the first and slightly below 1 for the second) is staggering. No point in listing all of the problems here since it is so easy to work them out. Any supposed deity that manipulated an evolutionary process with the said items as a result is pretty much by definition a failure at basic biology. So much for omnipotence and omniscience. And omnibenevolent, come to that.
We should also be clear about the god in question; even when being all waffly about it pretty much all the writers you will see on the English speaking parts of the net are assuming that there is only one possible god involved. Simple logic and science are all you need in order to rule out that one.
The only god thing about the religionists constant attempts to fudge things is the implication that science has in fact won, since the efforts are to try to persuade people that somehow some aspect of goddiness can be squeezed into place without looking immediately insane.
It’ll all end in tears.
Hello everyone I was able to get God himself as my guest tomorrow on the Multiversal News here in seattle. I will interview him streaming live on the internet location listed below. We are going to be talking about evolution so this should settle the matter once and for all. So tune in at 6pm pacific time and go ahead and ask your questions in the chat room and God will answer them.
http://www.ustream.tv/ITVNW
I wonder what your views are on the work of Professors Rushton and Lynn, Cochran and Harpending, all of whom have applied standard evolutionary thinking to human cognition – and have been widely demonised for it. You correctly argue that sometimes science goes against strongly-held populist views (and wasn’t it always so)? But don’t we have to defend work which is important, in the right paradigm but deeply unpopular?
There’s also no evidence that God didn’t predict how evolution would go – we’ll have to get rid of ‘unpredictable’ as well. I don’t know how we can call the process ‘natural’ if we suspect God had some small hand in it – that will have to go too. You’re left with:
The diversity of life on earth is the result of evolution: a process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments, and supernatural agents.
There. That should do it.
Wow. The amount of rudeness thrown at me is amazing. It’s no wonder that many people in the United States are so antiscience. With that lack of tact and maturity, I wouldn’t want to listen to many of you either.
I would like to explain my statement that, “I believe in science, I believe in religion and I believe in evolution.”
I believe in science because I believe that science is a valid and useful way to discover things about the world. It’s been astoundingly successful at doing so. I don’t feel I can reject it, nor do I want to. I benefit from it every day.
I believe in religion because I believe that religion is a valid and useful way to discover things about the world. I believe that spiritual experiences are real and I can reconcile them with the things I learn from science. It may not be in the way that some scientists may think I should, but I do it all the same.
I believe in evolution because science has shown that there’s little chance that it happened any other way. I’m not going to reject the evidence that is clear as day. However, just like a scientist cannot reject “uncomfortable” evidence when it contradicts a pet theory, I cannot reject my spiritual experiences. They are as real to me as any evidence that science can provide. Are they perhaps nothing more than my brain being affected by too much dopamine? Perhaps. And I may reject them if sufficient evidence is presented to me. But sufficient evidence has not been presented to me. So, until that time, I must reconcile the evidence with which I am presented.
Just because I see some conflicts between science and religion doesn’t mean that I reject either one. General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have conflicts. I don’t just blindly throw one out. They both have some of the truth. One day, we’ll understand how they fit together. I’m okay with some conflicts. I know they’ll be resolved eventually.
When I have a scientific discussion, I don’t bring my religion into it since it’s irrelevant to everyone else. Some scientists are atheists and they should do the same. Scientific statements should be scientific. There’s no place for statements that God doesn’t exist when there’s no evidence for that statement. If we want the world to accept evolution, then please stop overstating the case for it. The evidence is convincing enough without saying things we don’t really know.
“Is there any conflict between science and religion? There is no conflict in the mind of God, but often there is conflict in the minds of men.” — Henry Eyring, developer of the Transition State Theory of Chemical Reactions