Responding to Ilona on Evolution

Ilona from the True Grit blog has left a rather long and detailed comment on a previous post of mine. I thought it would be better to answer it in its own post since that one has slid down the page. You can view her comment at the bottom. The disagreement began when she said, in a previous comment,

Just a short comment to say that while you make a good point on the eye argument and its weakness, you stepped into the evolutionists great weakness: the "they probably" part of your reasoning. Both arguments in the "they probably" sort of premises are mainly in the realm of opinion and not in that of factual science.

To which I responded:

But this simply isn't true, and it betrays a logical fallacy called a false dichotomy. It assumes that there are only two possible types of explanations, those that are absolutely certain and those that are "opinion". In reality, certainty is a continuum and nothing in science is ever considered to reach the "absolute certainty" stage. The statement that the eye and the brain probably evolved together, both within the same lineage and within the natural history of life on earth in general, is neither a "fact" nor a "mere opinion", it is a logical inference drawn from several lines of evidence.

Studies in cognitive neuroscience have shown that the amount and variety of visual input that an infant receives has an enormous impact on the development of the brain. An infant who gets consistent and varied visual inputs develops a brain with more neural connections than one who gets less and the result is a more efficent brain and a higher IQ.

Ilona then returned with a longer comment, which begins:

Again, the argument relies on the "probably", not in the mathematical sense, but in the conjecture of opinion sense.

Still false. When I say that the eye and the brain probably evolved together, I mean that there is solid evidence and sound reasoning to reach that conclusion. And there is. I stated one line of evidence for it, the many neurological studies of brain development that show that the greater the amount and variety of visual stimuli an infant gets, the more neural connections are built in the brain - it literally does correspond with an increase in the complexity of the hardwiring of the brain. I could also cite many other lines of evidence for this argument from comparative anatomy and paleontology, but I fear they will still be shoved into this false dichotomy that Ilona offers, whereby she seems to think that something either has a mathematical certainty attached to it or it is a mere opinion which can be equated to any other opinion and dismissed just as easily. Certainty is rated on a continuum, not on a simple yes/no scale.

She continues:

Logical inference is only so good as the truth of the premises. And many of the ideas such as this:

"In fact, the hallmark of evolution is the modification of pre-existing structures. An evolved organism, in short, should show the tell-tale signs of this modification. A designed organism should not. Which is it?"

are not grounded in factual truth.

But she doesn't explain why that premise is false. It's true that evolution can only proceed by the modification of pre-existing structures, isn't it? It's entirely logical that if life on earth evolved by modification of pre-existing structures, then we should see evidence of such modifications, isn't it? It's also true that designed organisms, since the designer lacks the constraints that are obviously present if life evolved, should not show such evidence. Which part of the statement is not "grounded in factual truth" (I'm tempted to say "as opposed to 'non-factual truth' or 'factual falsehoods'")?

Logical inference is the same type of reasoning that coroners use to determine the cause of death, the same sort of reasoning that doctors use to diagnose disease, and the same sort of reasoning upon which we send people to the electric chair or life in prison in this country all the time.

This was a logical fallacy in itself..... using two different definitions of evolution interchangeably.

There is the idea of evolution within a species such as is found in the changes of genetic material or viruses.... and there is the evolution as proposed in the theory of different species evolving into others.

They are not interchangeable or identical.

This is a very odd statement. Does Ilona believe that genetic change is limited only to the species level, that there is some barrier that prevents speciation? No one claims that, not even the Institute for Creation Research and their YEC ilk. No one claims that because we have observed speciation in the lab and in nature many, many times. We have observed new species splitting off from older ones. This is accepted universally even by creationists, who have pushed the goalposts back from species to "kind", a vague term with no real meaning in science. At what taxonomic level is the limit of change? Certainly not at the species level. Genus? Family? Order? And what is it that prevents the genetic processes that we know are capable of producing new species because we've seen it, from producing new species that would then be placed in a different higher level taxa?

And for the record, when I use the term "evolution" I always use it to mean the following: the theory that modern life forms on earth are derived from a common ancestor through descent with modification.

Evolution theorists or materialists cannot logically conclude anything on origin. They have to construct their own model of explanation for that and what is here, now. It is opinion. Without replicable science to substantiate it.

Another very odd statement. The equation of "evolution theorists" with "materialists" is very common among creationists, primarily because they are so used to equating evolution with atheism that they use the terms interchangably. But this is simply false on many levels. First, because an enormous number of evolutionary biologists are not materialists or atheists. In fact, a good many of them are Christian. I know or have worked with many of them personally and I can tell you that their faith is as profound and sincere as yours undoubtedly is. The fact that some scientists are atheists and use evolutionary theory to support their philosophical positions does not mean that evolutionary theory itself is inherently atheistic. It is important to distinguish scientific theories from the philosophical inferences that some draw from them.

Second, because it confuses methodological naturalism (MN) with philosophical naturalism (PN). Science requires MN, for the simple reason that explanations that lie outside of nature are untestable and unfalsifiable; thus there is no means of distinguishing between valid non-natural explanations and patently absurd ones. But while requiring MN, science does not demand PN. Some scientists are materialists and some are not. But whether they are or aren't, they all operate on the basis of MN because they must. If they don't, they lose the ability to distinguish valid explanations from ridiculous ones.

As far as origin of life or abiogenesis research goes, she is right to point out that we have no confirmed explanation for it as of yet. There are many promising avenues of research and our knowledge in this area has increased enormously, but it's still awfully new. But that has little to do with the validity of evolutionary theory, which I defined above. Even if you presume that the first self-replicating life form on earth was placed here by god (or aliens...or whatever), the evidence for common ancestry is solid and compelling.

It is rather "false dichotomy" to have stated that intelligent design should not allow for change.["An evolved organism, in short, should show the tell-tale signs of this modification. A designed organism should not."]

It depends on what kind of change you are talking about. Changes that we see could well have been built into the system. It makes sense for them to have been built in, given the great variations of creation.

But earlier, you said that there is some enormous difference between evolution within a species and evolution that results in a new species. The obvious implication was that evolutionary theory could account for the former but not the latter and that you would assign the latter only to a Creator. But we've seen speciation take place. If the designer built in the ability to create new species, then where is the limitation on change that doesn't require a specific new creation? And why would an unconstrained designer create in such a way that it makes it look as though evolution took place by leaving behind a traceable ancestry of pseudogenes and endogenous retroviruses, or the telltale signs of modification of existing structures in the form of sub-optimal design?

This implies that we are the highest form of designer... and that we understand the eye and visual matters completely. We don't. It might have been intelligent conjecture to think that - but just why would the eye need to perform in the manner that we superficially theorize? And how does that negate intelligent design?

It doesn't imply any such thing. We KNOW that there are better designs for the eye because they are found in nature. An unconstrained designer does not need to tinker with pre-existing structures and adapt a sub-optimal design. This isn't a "superficial theory", it's a very compelling argument and you didn't even attempt to show that it is false, you just declared, in essence, "well that doesn't prove anything". Ken Miller made a very compelling argument for why the eye was a sub-optimal design. If he's wrong, it shouldn't be difficult to show why.

the greater difficulty is that it cannot produce order either. So how does one get order from chaos? Why is there a return to order? And how is it that everything works toward homoestasis?

This is accidental? This is chance? what are the mathematical models on this? And doesn't that boggle your mind?

This goes back to the earlier confusion of equating evolution with atheism. Evolution deals with the common ancestry of life on earth. That's it. It doesn't involve the "origin of order", it doesn't deal with the question of order vs chaos or the question of ultimate origins. Those things are left to cosmology and, ultimately, to philosophy. Scientific theories are discrete, meaning they don't explain everything they explain a specific set of data in a specific field of study. Evolutionary theory is about as broad as any theory could be, but it still doesn't attempt to explain any of the things you just listed, which don't even fall into the same category. Ilona's problem, it seems to me, is with atheism or materialism, not evolution. She just uses the terms interchangably, so she imagines that if she defeats materialism she shows that evolution is false. But that's simply not logical.