@gbrooks9 wrote asking if Dr. Gauger supported “… creation [as] a
series of special creations, with God periodically “poofing” a new
“kind” or “species” into existence without any attempt to guide
evolution itself.”
Dr. Gauger wrote this in reply: “That’s not my position.”
@gbrooks9 also wrote:
“How can you argue for an old earth but reject the idea of (or be
uninterested in) God designing with old earth processes like evolution
and its corollary, design through common descent?”
Dr. Gauger wrote this in reply:
“You still haven’t got my position straight. I am interested in the
possibilities you raise. I just don’t know the relative proportion
each played in life’s history.”
@gauger (@swamidass, @jongarvey, @eddie ),
please forgive my persistence, but for someone who hopes to be
understood clearly by other “camps”, you offer a pretty thin soup.
Dr. Behe doesn’t seem to have any lack of enthusiasm for God working
behind a veil of natural operations, all designed and guided by the
Divine.
In contrast, as seen in your written contributions to The Tome, one
wouldn’t even dare to imagine that you support any of the evolutionary
processes. Dare I propose that you and Dr. Behe represent the
opposite ends of the broad ID spectrum? But upon reflection, I can
see that I would be wrong. YECs are at the opposite end of the
spectrum from Dr. Behe. In contrast, you appear to be somewhere in
the middle, where you entertain ideas of the Biblical Adam and Eve
being from a time period well beyond 6000 years in the past.
In what is now a relatively famous exchange between you, Dr. Buggs and
Dr. Venema at BioLogos, your enthusiasm for a range in the timeline
anywhere from 100,000 years to even 700,000 years ago was particularly
striking. Ironically, this kind of hybrid position has a comfortable
place here in the House of PeacefulScience.Org. And the principle
that God could and did specially create de novo Adam and Eve is
treasured and defended here. But this position is based on the
context that what Science can and does say about human evolution
(before Adam) is clear, demonstrable and not to be overturned just
because God performs some crucial miracles here or there (like the
Miracle of Adam & Eve, in parallel to the Miracle of Jesus and the
Virgin Mary). These miracles don’t compromise the robust evidence
supporting the findings of the sciences and how the Cosmos fits into
God’s design and plan.
But it is only in the last few days that I have made a left turn and
banged right into the Riddle that your position represents! Is this
an “allergy” to Evolution as an unpleasant terminology? Why would a
scientist of your standing be troubled by speciation. I intentionally
avoid using the term Common Descent (and even more so, Universal
Common Descent) because the terms are becoming increasingly useless in
making distinctions between camps. We have the ‘young ones’ who
oppose “common descent” on sight … even if we are talking about
paternity testing. And we have the ‘old ones’ who think Common
Descent says it all (even though there is lots of evident common
descent that never leads to speciation) - - but you and I know (I
think) that ‘speciation’ is the term that says it all.
And so, for the sake of the readers here, I’ll spell it out, since you
are a little shy about doing so. When you say:
“…I am interested in the possibilities [for speciation] you raise. I
just don’t know the relative proportion each [miraculous-only
speciation vs. miraculous-but-natural speciation] played in life’s
history.” this is a proxy sentence for saying: “I believe God
miraculously (as opposed to miraculously-but-naturally) created
humanity, and most likely a lot of other species.”
This can be decoded because you are still looking for a single pair
bottleneck, which must also preclude the idea of Adam/Eve joining any
pre-existing human population. The pre-existing human population is
asserted in the “Geneal.Adam” scenarios because the evidence doesn’t
reveal any known 2-human bottleneck.
This is a denialism of the existing academic evidence equivalent to
the climate change deniers.
And if you believe that God miraculously (as opposed to
miraculously-but-naturally) created other life forms - - other
non-primate life forms - - then you are expanding this unnecessary
denialism well past anything that Dr. Behe has ever discussed or
implied.
For an academic of your standing to say there is an issue of “relative
proportion” of “the miraculous-only” vs. “the
miraculous-but-still-natural” in the Tree of Life should suggest to
any adult that are not comfortable in your skin as a scientist. I
don’t want to seem harsh or unfair, but what else are we to conclude?
In two posts, where I practically beg for insight into your position,
all you can offer is you haven’t made any important conclusions on
where you think science allows for a sequence of special creations, or
even a massive episode of special creation. And yet this topic
occupies a huge part of your life.
I once thought you would be the “bridge builder” between the ends of
the spectrum. But after that surprising video on Dr. Behe, it would
seem Dr. Swamidass and Dr. Behe are the logical leaders of the
bridge-building effort.
Note to @Eddie - archive this post! I never thought I would
write such a thing either!
