"Why Evolution Does Not Make the Problem of Evil Worse"

[Tim]

@misterme987: I notice you are carefully avoiding my main point – that @Rope’s argument was (again) blatantly fallacious.

@misterme987

You keep claiming or insinuating that @Rope is an apologist, but is that correct?

I have not “claimed” that he is an apologist. I have said things about apologists on this thread. Whether you think that I was “insinuating” that Rope is one with these comments would depend on whether you think “the shoe fits” – in that the comments about apologists also describes Rope.

I would however note that the video he linked to above is to an apologetics ministry, whose apologetic efforts he himself was aiding.

@misterme987

Isn’t he just a theologian?

Bluntly, no. Neither the ‘Problem of Evil’ nor the relationship between Design and Evolution are ‘just theology’. Both are issues closely related to apologetics – the former via theodicy (a major topic for apologetics), the latter via Intelligent Design Creationist apologetics.

@misterme987

I don’t think any lay people are reading The Compatibility of Evolution and Design to reinforce their beliefs in Christianity, it’s mostly a philosophical debate between theologians

No it is not “mostly a philosophical debate between theologians”.

This should be obvious from the title. Evolutionary Biology is Science not Theology. Design, both in context of evolution, and as it is used within this book, overlaps fairly heavily with “Intelligent Design” – a pseudoscientific apologetic effort to discredit Evolutionary Biology. Little, if anything in this book is ‘just theology’ or ‘just philosophy’.

His Chapter 4 is the most blatant example – it is chock full of IDC claptrap. This reaches its zenith in 4.3 with him claiming:

As biologists increasingly talk of “laws of form” underlying evolutionary development, the role of natural selection and mutation in explaining biological form seems comparatively less all-encompassing.

It turns out that it was not “biologists” talking about this at all – but just Michael Denton, a biochemist and ID proponent, with little prominence outside the ID echo chamber. Beyond Denton, "the phrase “laws of form” seems to be used exclusively in the context of G. Spencer-Brown’s book of the same name about mathematics and philosophy.

Apologetics need not be aimed at “any lay people” – it may be aimed at providing other apologists with material and/or intellectual cover.

If you are interested in the forum’s views on this book, there were four threads on the topic:

What if Evolution is Compatible with Design After All?

E. V. R. Kojonen is a philosopher that affirms evolutionary science, and uses it as an argument for divine design. He is making a philosophical/theological argument that is engaged with science, but (Unlike ID proponents) he is not claiming this argument is “science” proper. The timing is fortunate for coinciding with some work by @NLENTS: Nathan Lents: The Night Begins to Shine. I think Rope’s ideas are worth considering, along with their interactions with the IDM and with the bad-design argument.

"Laws of forms"?

@swamidass has asked “anonymous/non-academic participants [to] step out of this conversation”, so I’m taking the liberty of creating this side-conversation to address an issue raised on the original thread, that of @Rope’s claim that: A claim that he cites, in part, to Sean Carroll’s article: Chance and necessity: the evolution of morphological complexity and diversity Given that neither Kojonen nor I are biologists, I’d like to address three questions to the biologists on this forum: Are you and/or your colleague increasingly talking of “laws of form”? @Mercer, at least seems to be unaware of this. Do you think Carroll’s article supports this claim? Does this indeed mean that “the role of natural selection and mutation in explaining biological form seems comparatively less all-encompassing”? (I must admit that I find this statement rather puzzling, as I had previously thought that Neutral Theory had been around for several decades, meaning that NS+M had been known to be c…

Side/Comments on What if Design is Compatible with Evolution

Unfortunately, in my opinion you are mistaken. Perhaps you could try explaining briefly what the substance of this compatibility is. What does God add to evolutionary biology that evolutionary biology needs? That’s not the important question, which is rather whether the quote is being used to say something that Carroll, in context, didn’t mean. I and others would say that it is. I’m afraid not. You have focused on peripheral issues without getting into the substance. I for one still don’t understand what you mean by the compatibility of evolution and design and whether it means anything beyond the ideas of Behe and Denton. Where, again, does God fit into evolution? Beyond that, how would we tell?

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

The following was originally posted here. [ Addendum: in an a further attempt to air-brush-by-moderation, the position-of-the-original-post has been moved here. Which (i) makes things more than a little confusing, and (ii) is further evidence of how dysfunctionally stultifying the moderation of that thread is – I’m glad to be out of there. ] Welcome Dr Kojonen. This impression was formed by the combination of an over-familiarity on this forum with Creationist abuse of secondary-sourced quotes and by the fact that you proceeded thereafter to engage with the secondary source rather than Carroll himself. I apologise for the misapprehension. Here, I cannot agree with you. The tentative wording (a mere “possibility”) of the passage you quote, combined with the immediately-following passage, gives the strong impression that Carroll is merely positing an open question that he intends to address, rather than that he is offering any firm conclusion. It is the conclusion of this article th…

@misterme987

Likewise with this article.

The problem being that while ‘The Problem of Evil’ may be a problem for theists, and thus for theologians too, it is a problem that has its basis in a factual issue – animal suffering, not a theological or philosophical issue. “Philosophical debate”, lacking an informed opinion on this factual issue, is just so much idle speculation and hearsay.