Evolution depends on the laws of physics, especially as expressed in chemistry. How does biological evolution explain how the the laws of physics arose?
Biological Processes are emergent from Chemical Reactions which is emergent from Physics. For the first 380,000 years after the Big Bang, there was no chemical reactions nor biological processes in the universe. Just nuclear physics according to the laws of quantum mechanics. The first hydrogen atom at 380,000 years after big bang released the cosmic background radiation. First stars and galaxy at 100 million years after Big Bang. In the gas outside of stars first chemical reactions emerge, so just physics and chemistry at 100 million years. In the solar system it took 4.1 billion years for biological processes to emerge on Earth from the chemical reactions.
Biological evolution doesn’t need to explain how the laws of physics arose because Biological Process emerged from Chemical reactions which emerged from physics.
That means evolutionary theory is not sufficient and needs additional theories to give a complete account of the diversity of life.
To explain evolutionary biology well enough to understand it, use it, teach it, learn more about it, you can make use of the underlying physics and chemistry, but you don’t need to know the quantum states of each atoms to continue researching a tiny aspect of evolutionary science. So for all practical purposes, our present knowledge is sufficient to continue working on gaining new knowledge. If you want to prove evolution like you would a mathematical proof well you with never have sufficient information to prove it. That’s why is will always be called the Theory of Evolution. But at this point in history, with all we know about the world, it makes no sense invoking God into the natural world. It is unnecessary and divisive as everyone’s God only exists as thoughts in their brains as sequences of synaptic firings.
There may be deeper fine-tuning of chemistry and biology as well. These are things im starting to work on. Swinburne states it well when he says evolution only works because there is a certain type of biochemistry. But why these laws instead of other laws?
Providence… vs. The Human perception of Chance or Randomness…
Completely beyond anyone’s ability to distinguish.
You appear to be agreeing with me in this quote. When I say that evolutionary mechanisms are sufficient I am saying that the evidence is consistent with the actions of those mechanisms within the confines how species evolved since life emerged. I suspect that you would agree that the known physical laws and mechanisms are sufficient to explain how clouds form and weather works. That isn’t to say that God isn’t involved in weather, only that if God does act that it is indistinguishable from the physical laws that we know about.
That is all I meant by “sufficient”. I am not saying that God is not involved. What I am saying is that if God is involved that it is indistinguishable from the known processes that we already know of. Where we may differ is if you think a specific mutation or specific event could not have occurred through natural processes.
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We do agree but the word “sufficient” is that to which I’m objecting.
What we agree on is what I mean by “sufficient”. Another way to put it is that evolution is the most parsimonious explanation. As you well know, parsimony is only a rule of thumb and not an axiom or ontological statement. To use another example, when we see a difference in sequence between two species we assume that the differences is due to one mutation (i.e. parsimony rule). However, this doesn’t rule out the possibility of multiple indels or substitution mutations producing that difference.
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I agree with this, though the word has a different meaning in philosophy, and that is creating confusion.
Would “parsimony” cause less confusion?
As you qualified it above, yes. Some people take parsimony as a strong rule of truth finding, and we need to disabuse them.
I say “we can explain with natural processes the vast majority of patterns we see in the data, and we are discovering more patterns all the time. It is not even clear what pattern we would expect to find for Gods action. Even if we found that hypothetical pattern, natural processes and common descent would still explain the bulk of the patterns we see.”
The distinction between patterns and data is important. There is a gap between our knowledge and the data, and we do not know how to apportion that gap between undiscovered patterns, Gods choice, and other sorts of noise.
I totally agree. Parsimony is used as a guide or rule of thumb in science, and it certainly isn’t understood to be the Truth, with a capital T. Even in the original formulation of Occam’s Razor it was understood that the explanation with the fewest assumptions was usually the best explanation.
I agree. The oft cited saying is “the map is not the territory”. Our models should never be confused with reality. There will always be data that doesn’t perfectly fit our models, and no one believes that any of our scientific models are 100% accurate. At the same time, when the data fits the models really, really well we tentatively accept the models as being accurate (again, with the usual hedging inherent in science).
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