Tuesday, June 15, 2010

ID: Origin of Species - Options

ID Options (Cornelius Hunter)


((Special Creation))

Ex nihilo and de novo creation meant the creator formed the species out of nothing, or out nonliving matters respectively. The species were not formed as derivatives from preexisting species. This is the most interventions of all approaches, and there has been substantial religious ((metaphysical)) feeling against it for this reasons. Many feel that God would not be so involved with the details of creation. The fact that the world in not always harmonious has served to increase the opposition. Despite its metaphysical opposition, I believe this approach continues to provide the best empirically based and parsimonious explanation for the origin of species.

((Descent with design))

And approach that requires slightly less intervention might be called descent with design. Here the evolutionary process is modified or guided along the with exterior inputs. Design is injected into the process. This idea is motivated, at least in part, by the paradigm of perfection. What we believe are suboptimal designs are viewed as designs that not been updated or replaced. For example, similarities in different species that do not seen optimal are viewed as unmodified by the design process.

((Kirk Note: At least one prospect of living in a fallen universe is the idea of biological degradation, or simple information loss leading to either variation of subsequent speciation.))

Front Load

An approach with even less intervention is the front-loaded creation idea. Here all the design in injected into the first living cell (or cells), and the evolutionary process takes over from there. The potential of all the species in implicit in the first organism, and it is realized by the action of natural law.

((Kirk Note – This sounds kind of like a variation on the stem cell….but with exponential potential. Only problem, it seems that we have never seen such a cell))



Secondary Causes:

Finally, there is design via secondary causes. Here there is no detectable injection of design. Design in not imputed at all at the beginning or the da discrete points along the way. Instead, the design is in the initial arrangement of matter and the action of natural laws. And we should not under-estimate the power of those natural laws, given quantum mechanics, chaos theory, and who knows what else that will be discovered in the future. Those laws may be able to control and manipulate creation in far more subtle ways that we have imaged. Indeed, some may argue the design via secondary causes in an interventionist approach every bit as much as ex nihilo creation is. … Natural laws and the systems they operate on are so complex that it could be that God can actively control the world without violating what we perceive to be the action of natural laws.

These are but a sampling of the metaphysical ideas that lie behind ID. Each idea can be said to be consistent with biblical creation, although different levels of symbolism may be required…



Kirk Addendum

Though inferred, ID does not operate with an either/or mentality. In addition to the scenarios described here, ID/Creationists are open to “melds.” For example, a genetically rich created “kind” might serve as a “fountainhead” for subsequent species, which in turn are the product of descent with modification. But unlike “mere” naturalistic evolution, mechanisms might include information loss, natural selection, directed selection, programmed mutation, or even secondary acts of special creation.


In God (A suprising way of thinking though implamentation)


Gpuccio (blog comment #14)

Indeed, while human beings certainly interact with the external world through their physical bodies, their personal consciousness certainly interacts with their body (and in particualr with their brain) in some other way. I beleieve that the best model for the direct interaction between consciousness and brain in human beings is based on QM principles, in the line of Eccles.


So, if consciousness can directly interact with matter in humans, there is no reason why another consciousness (let’s call it an immanent non physycal consciuosness of some other kind of conscious intelligent being) cannot do the same with biological matter. This is my favourite explanatory scenario.

The possible answers to 2) are many. I can just tell you my personal favourite. My personal favourite is that the design implementation is continuous in time, but with rather sudden “acute” implementations in special occasions (OOL, Cambrian explosion, and similar). That’s the scenario which better explains observed facts. And I do believe that the design implementation is nprobably realized starting form what has already been implemented (common descent).

But, certainly, there are important discontinuities both in time and space in the general implementation plan.
So, I am rather for a “Gould like” view of design implementation.

And I believe that no basic physical law needs to be violated for design implementation to occur.


What is Intelligent Evolution?:
http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/testable-hypothesis-id-1/

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