Tim's comments on What if Evolution is Compatible with Design After All?

[Tim]

@Rope

You mention critique of the design argument’s logic (arguing that a designer would make any phenomenon more probable, and therefore explains nothing). But you do not mention that I discuss this same criticism in the book and respond to it. I suspect you would react quite critically if a book defending your own position was criticized in this same manner - repeating arguments that are actually responded to in the book, without even mentioning the responses. Regardless, such philosophical critique of design arguments is distinct from critiques based on evolution as such.

Kojonan, if you had read that thread with any degree of care whatsoever, you would have noticed that I made that comment before I gained access to your book (access which I noted here).

I make no apology for, at the time, addressing the material that I had been presented, rather than an expansion of it that, at the time, I was not even aware existed.

I have since read your exposition on the subject in the book. It did not strike me as particularly compelling. However, given your patronising tone, and your less-than-careful characterisation of my own comments, I have very little interest (or even stomach) for discussing the issue with you further.

@Rope

Similarly, you now point out that the idea of “laws of form” is linked to structuralism as if this was something I should be surprised by - but I actually discuss this same issue in the book, and even reference the critique of structuralism from the Edge symposium Moran discusses in your link. However, I do point to lots of non-structuralists who also argue for the role of constraints in influencing evolution - and one does not have to use the term “laws of form” to come close to the same idea. I also argue that the general thesis of the compatibility of evolution and design does not depend on structuralism, though structuralism would fit it very well, I think.

Let me first restore my full discussion of the topic:

@Tim

4. An impression that what you are referring to as “Laws of Form” may in fact be what is more commonly termed, in biology, as “Structuralism”. (Parenthetically, I would point out that idiosyncratic terminology is often a barrier to communication.)

I am by no means an expert on Structuralism, but my amateur impression is that it is viewed as a fringe viewpoint by the biological community, rather than as a dominant or growing view.

Commentary on it that has been brought to my attention includes this blog post by biochemist Larry Moran:

Sandwalk: What is "structuralism"?

1. When you refer to what “biologists increasingly talk of” but then use a term that biologists (generally) do not use, you cannot help but muddle the conversation.

2. For reasons I will elaborate on below, I have no confidence that your engagement with biology has either the breadth or depth to either (i) accurately characterise the general trend of what biologists are “talking about”, or (ii) accurately characterise individual biologists’ specific views.

@Rope

Since you have access to the book, why not make an effort to steel-man my position a bit, and only then criticize it? And why not browse through the articles in the Zygon symposium, as well as my response, and then develop critique that goes a bit deeper than the ones there? I think this would be more helpful for developing good objections than, say, criticizing my acknowledgements-section or the Carroll-quote, which I do not use to say more than what it says right there.

“Why not”? I can think of several reasons:

1. I have seen no evidence that your engagement with biology has gone beyond what ID advocates, and other Christian Apologists, have spoon fed you. This appears to have resulted in a very superficial and distorted understanding of Evolutionary Biology. In fact you give every appearance of viewing Evolutionary Biology as simply a set of concepts to be argued over by ID-advocates and their opponents, rather than a vast, robust and fecund field of scientific research in its own right. I have elsewhere suggested that your book would be more accurately be titled The Compatibility of What-ID-Has-Told-Me-About-Evolution and Design.

2. Your lack of independent engagement with biology and your credulous acceptance of ID arguments renders your book somewhat superfluous – if I wanted the ID line, I could simply read books by ID advocates.

3. This is not just my opinion. This was the reaction of one of our more experienced biologists to the idea of reading your book:

@Mercer

Alternatively, for a more pleasant experience, one can stick red-hot knitting needles into one’s own eyes.

I say that because I searched inside on Amazon for “Axe.” Total BS.

4. If Glass’s piece was any example, Zygon is no improvement on lack of meaningful engagement with biology. As Mercer said:

@Mercer

And the journal in which it was published needs to be renamed the Journal of Religion OR Science, not AND, as I did not see a speck of science in that monstrosity of a paper. It reminds me of the output of the Postmodernism Generator:

Communications From Elsewhere