Darwinian Evolution vs Theistic Evolution (Punctuated Equilibrium?)?

Question

Often in Yahoo Answers the question has been posed - Evolution vs Creationism. This is of course absurd because the traditional "6000 years - 6 days" just doesn't play out with the facts and evidences.

What is, I believe, a more worthy "conversation" is that of Darwinian Evolution vs Theistic Evolution.

Stephen Jay Gould's punctuated equilibrium furthers Darwin by saying if we went back in time several hundred million years and then go forward to the present, the species would not be the same as they are now, and there wouldn't be human beings.

The undirected process of Evolution, or the hand of God being involved directing and leading to the human being.

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Does my idea of where the debate lies, does this make sense? Should the future of the Evolution debate be centered around, Darwinian Evolution vs Theistic Evolution, rather than the "6th day vs australopithecus"

Answer 1

It should, but it will not happen for two reasons.

1. You will always have fundamentalist that cannot look at things rationally and logically.

2. Its impossible to prove or disprove random natural selection V directed natural selection.

Science can only explain how evolution works. It cannot say if their is meaning behind it.

Answer 2

You're right - there is no question that evolution WITHIN a species does in fact happen. Anyone who ever took Biology 101 surely understands that. Concrete and absolute proof abounds.

There is very little room for the debate about whether one species can envolve into another, but there is SOME room remaining. Absolute proof does not exist, though considerable evidence supports this notion. Is this what you want to debate? Would the Creationist theory then be that at various points God chose to intervene to create new species, including humanity? That would presently be impossible to prove or disprove. Even without such intervention, it is certainly possible to maintain that God chose to work through the evolutionary process, unless you don't believe that God can do anything He chooses.

Answer 3

Strictly speaking, Gould's argument doesn't really invalidate the theistic proposal. While we can, with good reason, speculate that it MIGHT have gone another route, the fact is it didn't. So in one sense, this is fine with theists; they can say that the Old Guy gave it a nudge in the "right" direction.

On this level of the argument, any 2 proponents of the opposing views will find little to quarrel about. Thus it is a wise thing for many main-stream religions to have adopted "theistic" evolution - in which Darwin's narrative becomes a sub-text.

Answer 4

Sure the question makes sense, and is the better question among many alternatives.

I am not sure of the force of Gould's argument. That the world *could* be different doesn't count, it seems to me, as an argument for why it is one way rather than another. I am slyly sneaking in the anthropic principle, here. Whatever probabilities one assigns to the factors that give rise to intelligent life in the universe, those probabilities cannot sum up too far away from p = 1 since if the probability is too low there is as much explaining to do about why we are here from a probabilistic view as a divine intervention one. Low probability encourages theism it doesn't discount it.

More importantly, however, is the question that gets begged in all of these discussions: do we need a teleology in nature to have a teleological human nature. That is, do we need a directed evolution to have humans who have direction in their lives?

For me, the answer to that last question is "No."

HTH

Charles

Answer 5

Gould and Eldrige did not attribute any of what is also dubbed the "hopeful monster" theory to a divine creator.

Darwin has already, for the most part, been discredited - within the scientific community. He was observing what he saw in his day, with limited scientific capability and technology.

I suggest the debate has moved on to Punctuated Equilibrium vs. Intelligent Design. Both of which are still unprovable beliefs, each with enough evidence to keep it alive.

Answer 6

What on earth is Theistic Evolution? Is that Darwinian Evolution + God? See.... what's the point of that? Why cram God in there when you don't need to? Evolution is just fine all on it's own, but sticking a deity into the theory because it would satisfy some obsessive need to center everything around God no matter how unnecessary that may be, that's just... well... unnecessary!

Answer 7

The church has never denied that the moral virtues of prudence, moderation, fortitude, and justice (the so-called "cardinal virtues") were a product of human rationality, adopting the teachings of Greek philosophy that influenced early church doctrine, at least from the early 2nd Century. Also, I don't know of any moral theologian who has argued that all people who are not Christians are somehow destined to rape, pillage and murder (although the barbarians who invaded the Roman Empire were pretty good at doing just that). Actually the ability to live together, without generally going around slitting each other's throats, seems to be the result of the move from a dyadic to a triadic system of justice. This happens when some form of government claims a monopoly on the use of legal force and provides a means of adjudicating quarrels without resorting to feud, which is a dyadic system of justice. This is seen to support the point made by Thomas Hobbes that, without strong government, life is "nasty, brutish, and short." This idea that morality (or, at least, the ability to live in society) doesn't depend on Christianity is a red herring, since no reputable theologian has ever made that argument. Grace be unto and peace.

Answer 8

The Bible is not evidence for a debate in the scientific world. You can't say the "hand of God" possibly guided human evolution until you provide some evidence for it. Serious science isn't about guesses, so Theistic Evolution would not hold up in a peer reviewed scientific journal, and there would be no debate.

Answer 9

This question is a dishonor to Stephen J Gould, a brilliant biologist. His punctuated equilibrium theory has nothing to do with thesitic evolution. Punctuated equilibria is just a different mechanism than continual gradual change (theory supported by Dawkins) in which species remain similar for large periods of time before a series of rapid evolutioary changes occur.

It has nothing to do with God

Answer 10

You've worded this rather awkwardly, what are you trying to say?

Should the debate be over atheistic or theistic evolution? That wouldn't be a debate as there is no evidence to swing it either way. The debate there would still be over whether the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god had a hand in our existence.

This would be still be a debate over the accuracy of the Bible.