Monday, September 04, 2006

Darwin's Grey Box

The title of this blog refers to the now (in)famous book by Michael Behe, who disputes the biological foundations of Evolution with his idea of Irreducible Complexity. It's a book I read many years ago, and one I fully agreed with at the time: the one thing I personally always fell back upon, the one thing I held to when I had doubts as to there being a Divine hand in our making was the improbability of life arising from non-life. I'm still not convinced that the improbable happened, but I'm less convinced that evolution itself, in some shape or form, has never happened on this planet: and once you admit that, where do you stop? If there is path from me back to an apelike ancestor, could there not also be, and just as astoundingly be, a path from the first "living" thing (who knows exactly what it was) back to - who knows what? It doesn't seem the brick wall that Behe makes it out to be any more, especially after reading The Language of God by Francis Collins, discussed in a previous blog.

I mentioned in that blog that there was some excellent biological evidence presented in favour of evolution, and in trying to summarize those points today I realized that no summary would do: I'll just let Mr Collins speak for himself. I've put together a PDF file which you can download here (if I'm online) or here.

Read it? Pretty good eh? There's more in the book, but I believe those were the best points presented, they were the one's that impressed me anyways: I don't think it's surprising that the author is most convincing when discussing his field of expertise, and considering how much of an expert Collins is, and how much he's contributed to the field of genetics, I also believe his words on these matters carry great authority (unlike his words on matters spiritual). I would like to believe though, although here it's just hope - I speak with no authority ;-) - that we have, when it comes to our knowledge of our own origins, an "incomplete map" - like the map of the world shown below. People once thought the Earth looked like that. Well, I think there may be a better explanation, a more complete explanation - or at least a unifying one - over the horizon.

2 Comments:

Blogger John Doran-Armstrong said...

I plan on devoting an entire series of blogs to that very question. The title of the first will be "Pup God deified dog pup". Which is what it is backwards too.

10:08 PM  
Blogger John Doran-Armstrong said...

Yes, perhaps my blows were striking the air somewhat there. Collins does address the arising of life from non-life (and attacks Behe's view) but I admit I didn't include that in the PDF. I think I mentioned the two together because from Behe's perspective - as I see it - it seems that there could be no genetic evidence for evolution, and that is not what we find. Evolution does seem to have left it's mark at that very level, at the foundation so to speak: that's not to say that Behe is wrong though, God knows Dog nose.

7:12 AM  

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