[Apologetics] Pope's commission on evolution

[Stephen Korsman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stuart D. Gathman" <stuart at bmsi.com>
To: <apologetics at gathman.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2006 5:38 PM
Subject: [Apologetics] Pope's commission on evolution


> On Sat, 12 Aug 2006, Jonathan Gathman wrote:
>
> >   How are you?  Looks like the Pope has approved a commission on
> > Creation/Evolution... Would like to hear your comments. :) :)
> >
> > http://www.beliefnet.com/story/197/story_19764_1.html
>
> The article misrepresents all sides at a fundamental level.
>
> For example,
>
>   The seminar, titled "Creation and Evolution," is sure to attract the
>   attention of supporters of "intelligent design" -- the idea that the
world is
>   too complex to have been created by natural events alone -- and Vatican
>   scientists who do not consider it valid science.
>
> "intelligent design" is *not* the "too complex" idea described.  The "too
> complex" argument was abandonded in the 19th century.  Michael
> Behe has updated it by postulating "irreducible complexity", but that
> is still not "intelligent design".  Intelligent design is about
> "specified complexity".  "Intelligent" is a latin derived word
> meaning literally "to chose between".  Any random arrangement of
> Boggle cubes is equally complex.  But if an intelligence choses the
> arrangement, then it is "specified complexity".
>
> And again,
>
>   But in January, an editorial published in L'Osservatore Romano, the
Vatican's
>   official newspaper, questioned the validity of intelligent design,
>   reaffirming Roman Catholicism's support for evolution.
>
> The Catholic Church has *never* "supported evolution".  They have refused
> to take sides in the scientific aspects of the debate (remembering the
> Galileo fiasco).  Instead, the Church has dogmatically declared that
> whatever form it took, God was the initiator and ultimate cause
> of creation.  This has been wrongly regarded as "supporting" evolution
> because thoughtless people seem to think this dogma is "compatible"
> with evolution.  In truth, however, it directly contradicts the
fundamental
> dogma of atheistic evolution at the beginning of any course in
> evolutionary biology - that mutation and selection are *unguided*.

That depends on how you interpret the word "unguided."  Science cannot
observe God, so it cannot comment on whether or not God guides a process.
My understanding is that on a basic molecular level, there is no mechanism
defined within the natural laws of physics that determines how mutations
occur.  (There is a mechanism that determines the likelihood of each type of
mutation - in the genome, A is replaced by T more easily than by G or C ...
and there are factors that influence the rate of mutation.  And once a
mutation occurs, there are many factors that determine its viability.)

HIV and influenza are my reference points, as I'm a virologist, and they
provide excellent examples of how random mutations can result in totally
different forms of evolution.  HIV mutates rapidly - an average of 1
mutation per 1700 nucleotides copied, and up to 1 mutation per 70
nucleotides in some parts of the genome.  So each new genome produced can
have about 5 mutations.  Where those mutations are determine whether the
virus will be able to produce proteins that work faster or slower or at the
same rate as, or more or less effectively than, those produced by the parent
virus, or they could result in proteins that are different enough from those
of the parent virus so that the new virus won't be neutralised by antibodies
that would neutralise the parent virus.  After several months of infection,
an infected person has a large variety of different forms (quasispecies) of
HIV in their body.  Some are more easily transmitted to other people than
others.  In the end, analysis of these changes shows a continuously growing
diversity of virus.  And if you do it well, you can track those mutations
from one person to another down a chain of people who infect more people.

Flu is quite different - it mutates more slowly, and doesn't persist in a
person, as the immune system can eliminate it.  As it mutates within a
person and moves between people, the mutations appear as random as with HIV,
but escaping from one person's immune system is not necessary, and it needs
to escape from an entire population rather than the immune system of one
individual.  At the end of the annual flu epidemic, one strain survives till
the next year to cause the next year's epidemic ... usually the strain most
different to other circulating strains in areas of the virus that attract an
immune response.  Most of the other circulating strains are too similar to
what we have been infected with before, so they get neutralised if they try
to infect someone with that immune memory, and don't spread from person to
person any more.  Only those with significant differences can continue to do
that.  So there seems to be a direction in which the mutations move if we
watch circulating strains of flu, unlike with HIV, which just accumulates
diversity over time.

So we have two common viruses that use the same apparently random mechanism
to achieve two completely different patterns of spread and survival.