If you have no way to tell, then the proposition is observationally indistinguishable from the evolutionary process truly being blind and unguided. Occam’s razor it is, then.
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It is in the experimental data.
https://www.genetics.org/content/28/6/491
Then please show us which differences between humans and chimps are due to random mutations and which are due to intelligent design, and your reasoning behind those claims.
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The question of whether or not God uses/used evolutionary processes seems simple. Our observation of the natural world shows us that evolutionary processes have been and are at work. I’m a Jesus follower and believe that God created and sustains the universe. That God uses evolutionary processes is the conclusion that follows the first two statements.
Regarding "blind and unguided: Is “blind and unguided” in textbooks?
I listened to the Axe/Swamidass discussion and an exchange about “blind and unguided” was included in the discussion and the “blind and unguided” tag was a major pillar of Doug’s argument.
I don’t have a textbook laying around but I’d welcome other input on whether “blind and unguided” is used by scientists.
Whether it’s in textbooks or not the phrase strikes me as unscientific and it seems to be a pillar of ID’s argument. I think the question of whether “blind and unguided” is indeed the claim of evolutinary science is important. It seems to me that if ID doesn’t have “blind and unguided” to fight against then they are just beating the air.
Look what you did there. Your statement needed “blind and unguided”. How would you make this statement if “blind and unguided” isn’t a scientific claim?
If we (Christians) believe that the God of the Bible created and sustains all things, and then observe the processes by which the universe operates, we then conclude that God uses those processes, and we enjoy exploring and describing those processes. If you truly believe this and its implications then it sets you free to observe the natural world without the need to tag one of those observable processes as some kind of enemy.
Reading ID proponents here at Peaceful Science and listening to Doug Axe (and others) makes me think that ID’s pursuits are primarily worldview motivated. In other words, it is about the Culture Wars. And I think observing and describing the natural world with a culture war as a motivator and driver is folly. It binds the observer in ways that forces conclusions that don’t follow directly from research/observation/experimentation.
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A lot of scientists now agree with you on blind and unguided being a faulty claim.
As far as “blind and unguided” to fight against that has little to do with ID in general. ID is the conclusion that a mind is behind the observation.
If I take a prokaryotic cell and divide it, merge with other prokaryotic cells and do this for billions of years am I likely to end up with a completely different gene structure and a large macro machine that allows that new gene structure to properly function?
Rational people can conclude that this is very unlikely without “blind and unguided” entering the conversation.
Good point. I would say natural variation.
There is no question that ID has an ideological group pushing it. As evolution has an ideological group pushing it. This is a fair observation.
On the other hand this in itself does not mean that either claims are not valuable to science or general reasoning and should be dismissed.
It isn’t, not among scientists.
Correct. That is an incisive observation.
Correct again.
Chad, it would be interesting if you could tell more about how you went from not seeing this to seeing it so clearly. Was it entirely internal, or were there specific external things that helped you to understand?
Dead on theologically. ID diminishes God to a nonomniscient tinkerer who has to tweak things constantly.
This is a good explanation of why no ID promoter is willing to test an ID hypothesis–lack of faith.
I’d take issue with “primarily,” and substitute “entirely.” 
It depends on the goal for doing so. It does bring in the Benjamins!
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Gotta keep my word and circle back to this one! Except that I don’t completely understand how the A and B discussion is related to the question. On a high level, I see evidence for evolutinoary processes in what I read about the fossil record and in genetics research.
“Random with respect to fitness” is usually how mutations are described. I really don’t have anything against “blind and unguided” as long as it is understood in the scientific sense.
ID seems to be making an ontological claim while science is making a methodological claim. In science, there is a statistical model for blind and unguided and the data fits that model. ID supporters seem to be saying that God may be influencing mutations in a way that is indistinguishable from the scientific model for blind and unguided. The scientific model is falsifiable, but the ID model is not.
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Can you clarify the question a bit? What is the “this” that I now see more clearly? Are you asking how I came to affirm evolutionary science in general, or something more specific about evolution, or something about the nature of the ID movement?
That is not entirely clear. Some of what Behe says, including in this interview, is consistent with his idea of the “cosmic billiard shot” that he once mentioned to @colewd. It’s hard to tell, because he really never clearly spells out what he thinks happens. Maybe he really has no idea to spell out.
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From what I’ve seen, this definition doesn’t fit ID. I personally think a mind is behind the processes, but I haven’t been compelled at all by ID. ID seems to exist to challenge evolutionary science, not to just claim that God is behind it.
From a non-scientific perspective the universe, the planet, life all seem highly unlikely! Yet, here we are. From the perspecive of having studied and taught math, I find ID’s use of math to be not compelling at all.
Trying to sort out what this means. I think @Puck_Mendelssohn could have some good fun with it. Surely you don’t mean that a natural process is pushed along by a group of ideologues.
I’ll assume you mean that evolutionsary science is pushed along. But, is this true? I’d say that some folks engage in applying the output of evolutionary science in philisophical ways. And some folks intereact in the culture war through the vehicle of philosophy of science. But do you really think that scientists are observing, researching and experimenting, and then reporting results because ideologues are pushing them to do so?
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Futuyma is spot on there. If our evolution wasn’t blind and unguided, then it beats me as to why we have broken a GULO gene.
I think it is, but depends on how you define blind and unguided.
Probably. There is something humorous in the false-equivalence claim being made there. When a scientific theory is opposed on purely ideological grounds by a bunch of pseudoscientists whose principal mission is to placate the primitive beliefs of a crowd of halfwits, it is only natural that, from the point of view of the halfwits, the scientific side of the argument will falsely appear to be ideologically motivated. And if we define “ideology” broadly enough – to encompass, for example, the view that we should evaluate scientific propositions using evidence and sound reasoning – then it is, but the word “ideology” then loses all real meaning. That’s great from the ID Creationist point of view, because if you have a toxic ideological position and you’d like to advance it in opposition to civilized values and modes of thought, it’s handy to be able to say that civilized values and modes of thought are merely an ideology.
The hideous clown show of ID really is hard to stomach. But if a person did not have to live on the same planet with its proponents, it would probably be rip-roaring funny.
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Your incredulity is not evidence of anything here. Science does not tell us if evolution is guided or not.
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The greater problem is that we do not have a satisfactory definition of “guided” that can be used here. So we end up with people talking past one another.
There are definitions that would satisfy me. Going back to the Luria and Delbruck experiment, if mutations conferring phage resistance were caused by the presence of phage then that would be a guided mutation. If 50% of bacteria produced the same mutation conferring antibiotic resistance only when exposed to that specific antibiotic then I would be convinced of guided mutations in that case.
Science can most definitely tell us if mutations are guided. It just so happens that the evidence isn’t there. Of course, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but if ID supporters claim to have a positive claim about design then they should be able to pony up positive evidence for guided mutations. The alternative is to admit that the positive evidence just isn’t there for guided mutations, but they believe in them anyway, in essence giving up their claim to a scientific argument.
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Yes Futuyma is right both to give that historical context, and to point out that the kinds of “purpose” evolution really does explain, without having to invoke any sort of guidance or foresight, is adaptive purpose. Functions that contribute to reproductive fitness. It simply does not make any sense to say that certain things in biology have to be deliberately created for their adaptive “purpose”, when their being adaptive is the very thing the theory of evolution relies on to explain them.
Now, it’s important to understand here that no more space has been devoted to that topic than what we are seeing here in a biology textbook. It is not a philosophical treatise on the concept of purpose in biology, that is not the purpose(heh) of the book. Futuyma goes on to state that evolution - as conceived of above - is not intrinsically incompatible with religion, even if one can find contradictions with certain literal interpretations of scripture.
He also points out in a section devoted to “Ethics, Religion, and Evolution” that there are many sincere and genuine religious biologists who do not find the described, purely mechanistic process of evolution, to conflict with their religious views:
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So let’s focus here as we have common Ground that a mind is behind the universe. Here is Mike’s discussion with @swamidass where he argues for both the weakness in the evolutionary explanations of complex adaptions and proposes a method of design detection. His part is less than 20 minutes.
It’s true that what he can’t imagine is not evidence of anything, but if there really is an outside influence on evolution, with foresight, that is continuously and actively manipulating evolutionary history(as opposed to having set up the initial conditions of the universe to result in life’s eventual origin and evolution on at least one planet), it really does raise the question why we find things that can reasonably be described as buggy, wasteful, junk-DNA, blind spots, proliferation of heritable neurodegenerative diseases, cancers, and similar types of strange sub-optimal designs in biology. You’d think a guider that has the capacity to cause specific mutations, or select among them, also has the capacity to get rid of or totally prevent certain things.
Now you can of course just postulate that these various biological entities and processes are not the sorts of things the guiding influence is concerned with. That things are guided for some sort of ultimate purpose that has nothing to do with how optimal, adaptive, or ingeniously-designed-appearing biological organisms are.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me the sort of purpose with which religious people are concerned has much more to do with the emotional and ethical lives of sentient creatures. Why they exist(not how they came to), and their relationship with each other and God. Not the physical mechanics or degree of adaptive perfection with which their sentience is manifested, or their bodies consist of. In this sense the evolutionary process progressing in a truly blind and unguided fashion can still be viewed as being compatible with the existence of God, and this God having some ultimate goal in mind for the existence of human life.
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