Notes on Evolution...

My good friend Joe and I fell into an interesting conversation last Tuesday night during our regular social get together. The discussion centered around the validity of scientific theories regarding the origin of human life, but really extend all the way back to the origin of the universe as we are capable of understanding it in its vastness. You can find Joe's comments on the subject here

I want to be clear from the start that while much of what I will posit in this post may seem to question my faith in the Biblical God by interjecting ambiguity into themes and ideas prevalent in Christianity, the purpose is only to demonstrate what we are capable of knowing, thereby establishing a basic foundation for my argument. The overriding tenor of this argument should be little more than espousing my position on theories of Origin based on our limited understanding God's created whole.

Many of my observations come from my educational roots that include healthy doses of all major areas of science and philosophy. From a scientific perspective, the theories of Intelligent Design and Evolution seem loosely based on the same data set. Each side looks at the construction of the genetic code, the fossil record, recent discoveries in biology and chemistry, and come to different conclusions based on little more then their own analysis of their observations. Scientific method usually requires some kind of repeatable experiment yielding repeatable results. Those results form the basis of a theory. Here, though, the just have theories predicated on observation without the benefit of repeatable experimentation. Don't get me wrong, there are strong examples of biological adaptation in the world. Recent developments with the bollworm moth are a good example. However, this doesn't necessarily lend credence to evolution over intelligent design because an intelligent design theorist will likely say that this kind of adaptation is programmed into biology, or a natural part of the execution of life's design through beneficial mutation.

The conclusion regarding the validity of either argument remains the same: at no point can the results of either theory be verified by standard scientific method. These kinds of theories, then should be relegated to an abstract part of metaphysics, and left for the likes of Peter van Inwagen and David Chalmers (check out David Chalmers's Blog). Theories of origin are just that, theories, with little more hard fact from the metaphysics of Rene Decartes. This is not meant to discount Descartes contribution to the world of thought by any means either. The point is simply is that theories of origin belong in the area of empirical metaphysics. However, it is unlikely that this idea will be adopted and that evolution will no longer grace the pages of science books.