Group

On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 12:33:43 +1000 (EST), Paul Martin wrote:

[...]

Reversing the order of my comments.

>SJ>I have an early tape of Johnson's where he tells an interviewer (or it might
>>have been a talk-back caller) that (from memory), "I find a universe of vast
>>ages to be more appealing". So why does not Johnson simply tell what
>>*must* be the truth, that he is in fact an Old-Earth Creationist, who
>>interprets the days of Genesis 1 as long periods of time, but wants to be
>>"allies" with YECs in the struggle against Materialistic-Naturalistic
>>Evolution? Because that is what I (and I am sure that the other OECs who
>>left the ID movement because of Johnson's lack of even-handedness towards
>>OEC) would *agreed* with him on.

PM>I think Johnson sees the OEC's as being more tolerant and scientific,
>so he feels he does not need to agree with them, but views the YEC's as more
>fundamental and dogmatic, so he wants their support.

Agreed. The problem is that Johnson has set the ID movement two
mutually exclusive goals: 1) to "follow the evidence wherever it leads"; and
2) be "a `big tent' drawing together Christians across a wide range of
disciplines and positions, from strict young-earth creationists to theistic
evolutionists":

"In a similar way, Johnson cut through the conflicting claims of a
vast variety of positions on origins by showing the crucial role
played by initial philosophical commitments: Either nature is all
that exists, and science is permitted to consider only naturalistic
theories-in which case science is little more than applied naturalism
- or there is something that transcends nature, and we must define
science in terms that allow it to follow the evidence wherever it
leads....One of the beauties of Johnsons approach is that it has the
potential to unite Christians across a broad spectrum. They might
disagree over such details as the age of the universe, but all
orthodox Christians can concur in rejecting a blind, mindless,
materialistic mechanism for the origin and development of life.
Johnsons approach is sometimes described as a middle ground or
compromise position, but thats a misunderstanding. In fact, what
he has proposed is not one more competing position at all; he has
offered a logical analysis of the foundational ideas that unite all
Christians, regardless of the details of their positions. Having united
on these defining principles, Christians may well discover a new
spirit of unity and charity for taking up the old contentious issues
once again. They can now treat the questions that once divided them
as the subjects of friendly in-house debates. They can engage in
amicable discussions over the interpretation of Genesis, the age of
the universe, the range and limits of microevolution and common
descent, and so on. Such lively debate is what science is all about.
Indeed, its not too much to say that the Intelligent Design
Movement has largely achieved this unity. It has become a "big
tent" drawing together Christians across a wide range of disciplines
and positions, from strict young-earth creationists to theistic
evolutionists (at least those among the latter who acknowledge a
role for divine direction)." (Pearcey N.R., "Foreword," in "The
Right Questions: Truth, Meaning & Public Debate," InterVarsity
Press: Downers Grove IL, 2002, pp.10-11)

But the problem is that YEC's within the ID movement made it quite clear
that they were *not* prepared to "follow the evidence *wherever* it leads",
but were only prepared to "follow the evidence wherever it leads", as long
as it did not contradict their 6 x 24 hour day fiat creation, ~10,000 year-old
Earth, no animal death before the sin of man, global flood, dogmas.

Personally I found that hypocritical for Christians to demand that non-
Christians be held to a higher standard of truth than Christians. The crunch
point was common ancestry. I myself back in 1995, long before Johnson
announced his "follow the evidence wherever it leads" wedge strategy, had
made a conscious decidsion that I was going to "follow the evidence
*wherever* it leads" in the C/E debate, but `unfortunately' that eventually
led me, *reluctantly*, to accept common ancestry
(http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199505-10/0391.html)! Now there
is no reason why generic ID should be against common ancestry, unless it
is, after all, under the controlling philosophy of Biblical literalism. See my
posts announcing I had been asked to leave the ID movement
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign/message/9116)
and responding to member's questions about it:
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign/message/9125 ,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign/message/9136
and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign/message/9138).

[...]

Steve

PS: Here is an updated part of subsection PE 4.3.2. "Evolution's historical
roots ... Pre-Darwinians ... Lamarck", of my book outline, "Problems of
Evolution" (http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/pe00cont.html):

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http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/pe04hst2.html#hstryrtsprdrwnlmrck
"PROBLEMS OF EVOLUTION": 4. HISTORY [...]
3. Pre-Darwinians [...]
2. Lamarck
"Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck, (1744-
1829), was a French natural historian" (Martin & Hine, 2000, p.338).
"In 1778 he published a flora of France, and later worked on the
classification of invertebrates, published in a seven-volume natural
history (1815-1822)" (Martin & Hine, 2000, p.338). Lamarck coined
the word "biology" and was the founder of modern invertebrate zoology
(Hale & Margham, 1988 p.312). "In 1809 he put forward a theory of
evolution that has become known as Lamarckism (later rejected in
favour of Darwinism)" (Martin & Hine, 2000, p.338). Lamarck was one
of the first true scientists to give real consideration to the evolutionary
development of life (Hale & Margham, 1988 p.312).

Lamarck is best known for his theory of the inheritance of acquired
characters (Hale & Margham, 1988 p.312). This "Lamarckism" was
"one of the earliest superficially plausible theories of inheritance" and
was "proposed by Lamarck in 1809" (Martin & Hine, 2000, p.338).
Lamarckism, was the theory of inheritance of acquired characters,
which suggests that the structures developed during the lifetime of all
organism, through use, are passed on as inherited characters to the next
generation (Hale & Margham, 1988 p.312).

Lamarck suggested that changes in an individual are acquired during its
lifetime, chiefly by increased use or disuse of organs in response to "a
need that continues to make itself felt", and that these changes are
inherited by its offspring" (Martin & Hine, 2000, pp.338-339). "Thus
the long neck and limbs of a giraffe are explained as having evolved by
the animal stretching its neck to browse on the foliage of trees" (Martin
& Hine, 2000, p.339). "Evolutionary change might thus be achieved
through the transmission of these acquired characters" (Hale &
Margham, 1988 p.312). "This so-called inheritance of acquired
characteristics has never unquestionably been demonstrated to occur
and is now generally discredited, (Hale & Margham, 1988 p.312),
being largely displaced by the genetic theories of Mendel and his
successors" (Martin & Hine, 2000, p.339). "This theory ... is now
generally discounted in favour of Darwinism, where favoured
characters of use to a particular organism are maintained by selection,
whereas unfavourable characters are selected against (Hale &
Margham, 1988 p.312). "Thus, Lamarck might have claimed that
blacksmith's sons were brawny because of their father's profession,
whereas Darwin would say that the reason the father was a blacksmith
was because he was brawny and brawny men tend to have brawny
offspring (Hale & Margham, 1988 p.312).

It is part of evolutionist propaganda that the Russian agronomist T.D.
Lysenko (1898-1976) derived his disastrous agricultural policies based
on environmentally-induced inheritable changes in wheat from
Lamarck (Dawkins, 1986, p.292; Martin & Hine, 2000, p.339). That
"Lysenko attempted unsuccessfully to apply Lamarckian theory to the
development of crop plants in the USSR in the 1930s (Hale &
Margham, 1988 p.312). But in fact Lysenko himself claimed he derived
them from <I>Darwin</I> (Jukes, 1995, p.554)! As biologist and
historian Zhores Medvedev, in his biography of Lysenko, pointed out,
"Lysenko claimed to be a Darwinist" and the charge of his allies in the
"purging of Bukharin," a leading Soviet economist and agricultural
policy-maker, was that Bukharin held "erroneous and anti-Darwinian
theories" and "had annihilated instruction of students in Darwinism in
the Leningrad State University," and had "fought Darwinism" (Jukes,
1995, p.554; Medvedev, 1969). "Lysenko wrote a polemic `Of the
distorting mirror and some anti-Darwinians'" and said that "Darwinism
was part of [his] Marxism," and that "the roots of the work I am doing
lie in Darwin" (Jukes, 1995, p.554) [...]
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Again please note that this is just a rough first draft (if even that!),
and because of time constraints I am mainly just stringing quotes together
to help jog my memory for when I start writing my book proper, later
this year.

[...]

PPS: Here is the first of a number of quotes from science historian W.J.
Dempster's book on Patrick Matthew, a Scottish fruit breeder, who in 1831
was the first to mention the term "natural process of selection". As
Dempster points out, there is little doubt that Darwin was aware of
Matthew's work, and dishonestly plagiarised the term "natural ... selection"
from Matthew, without giving him credit. However, that will be under
"Darwin", in my section "Darwin's dishonesty"
(http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/pe04hst3.html#hstrydrwnscsfctrsdshnst).
This quote below about Darwin's treatment of Lamarck, I will probably
add, with a number of other referenced quotes, to near the end of this
Lamarck section, when I get to it.

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"Patrick Matthew was not the only individual to be treated by Darwin to
this double standard of deference in public statements and denigration in
his private letters. Lamarck, as one might perhaps expect, also received this
treatment. In the Origin, Lamarck is referred to as a justly-celebrated
naturalist' but in his private letters, as for instance in the letter to Hooker
(LLD Vol 2, 23, 1844), we can read about 'Lamarck nonsense' and several
misinterpretations. Through the medium of the widely-read Collected
Letters, succeeding generations were to meet the 'obscure writer on forest
trees' and 'Lamarck nonsense' more frequently than Darwin's public
statements. In the Origin, wherever possible, Darwin would omit names
such as Lamarck. In the course of reading the proofs of the Origin, Lyell
was astonished to read, '... the most eminent naturalists have rejected Se
view of mutability.' He wrote to Darwin, 'You do not mean to ignore G. St
Hilaire and Lamarck?' But this was certainly Darwin's intention since the
above sentence was altered to '... eminent living naturalists'! Even this was
wrong because the distinguished Robert Grant and associated radicals had
canvassed Lamarckian ideas since 1828." (Dempster W.J., "Natural
Selection and Patrick Matthew: Evolutionary Concepts in the Nineteenth
Century," Pentland Press: Edinburgh, 1996, pp.34-35)
Stephen E. Jones http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones
Moderator: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign
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