From: rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu (Mickey Rowe)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Why evolution is a BETTER theory (for Bob Bales)
Date: 8 Apr 92 05:25:46 GMT
Reply-To: rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu (Mickey Rowe)
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <4999@tekig7.PEN.TEK.COM> bobb@tekig1.PEN.TEK.COM 
    (Bob Bales) writes:

an incredibly long article that can be summarized with the basic
statement that Bob failed to appreciate the nature of the predictions
that Matt was talking about in a previous post, and couldn't come up
with creationist predictions anyways.

Matt claimed that evolution made specific testable predictions where
creation made none.  In a sense Bob tacitly reinforces the latter by
saying:

>The stated reason that creation is to be rejected is that it would be expected
>to give results other than what we see.  As I pointed out just above, there is
>no evidence that creation would be expected to give other results.  

For the simple reason that there is no evidence that creation would be
expected to give *any* particular results.  The "above" to which Bob
refers is (corrections welcome if there was anything more
pertinent...):

>3. This appears to be the key of all Matt's assumptions.  He translates the
>   number of selections directly into the probability of the selection,
>   apparently made on a random basis.  However, if we assume that the
>   Creator of living organisms would show the traits of the creators of other
>   objects, we have the following observation.  *Creation is not a ramdom act.
>   Creators do not make random choices.*  Matt is attempting to reject
>   creation based on an assumption about creation which is *known* to be
>   wrong.

Without "knowing" the mind of the creator, the creationist's "theory"
makes no specific predictions about anything, which is what Matt said.
Bob has thus failed to make a substantive criticism despite his
verbose "rebuttal".  What he says is that we have no expectation that
a creator would make a universe other than the way that this one
appears to be.  However, Bob has failed to explicitly realize that we
have no reason to expect that a creator *would* make the universe the
way that this one is.  Incidentally, Bob, would you mind addressing
David Hume's criticism of the analogy that you keep attempting to use
in this regard?

Now go back to the predictions that Matt was referring to.  The
predictions were not about the specific history of life (as Bob seemed
to think), but rather about the imprint that past events have put on
present conditions.  Evolution predicted a mechanism of inheritence
around which selection could act to increase (or decrease) the
expression of phenotypic traits.  That exists.  Evolution predicts a
specific type of similarity (not just *any* similarity) between
organisms--that there is a tree-like structure to ancestral
relationships--and the result of that, which is that organisms are not
made up of interchangeable parts like a Mr. Potato Head (a nuance Bob
has not picked up on even though I personally have been attempting to
convey the point to him off and on for about three years now...).
This too has been borne out quite well.  These alone make evolution a
better theory than anything we've been left to guess is meant by
"creationism", but they are just the tip of the iceberg Bob refuses to
see.  *WHAT* does creationism predict, Bob?

>   Bob Bales
>   Tektronix, Inc.

Mickey Rowe     (rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,talk.religion.misc