Shmonovan<< I'm doing a project for school and i was wondering if anyone could help me in understanding how creationists and evolutionists feel/argue about the following topics...>>
You might want to consider a third option. Intelligent design. ID is a teleological perspective for generating testable hypotheses about the natural world. It is not creationism.
The dictionary defines teleology thusly: the use of design or purpose as an explanation of natural phenomena. Teleological processes are "goal directed" processes.
The creation/evolution debate at its core is best described as teleology versus non-teleology and it's 2500 years old. The arguments for intelligent design began with people like Socrates and Aristotle.
It is often said that science can't investigate the supernatural, I agree. However, the scientific method, the process of hypothesizing, predicting, and testing, can be used to investigate the possibility that life may be the product of advanced bioengineering.
ID does not involve "God did it" explanations nor does it posit miraculous, empirically undetectable processes. The ID perspective looks for traces of bioengineering and nanotechnology at the origin of life billions of years ago. This approach is naturalistic intelligent design, much like we see intelligent agency today building synthetic molecular motors, bioengineered proteins, etc. In my opinion, it is wrong to think that only a non-teleological approach can run an investigation based on observations, logic, and testing. The non-teleologists do not have exclusive rights to this type of thinking nor is one obligated to abandon observation, hypothesis-making, testing, etc. because they are skeptical of non-teleological origin explanations.
There is evidence that supports the suspicion that evolution itself was designed. As for neo-Darwinism, I think it will become clear as time goes on that these mechanisms play only a rather trivial role in the process of evolution.
My own personal view is that life itself was designed through intelligent intervention (although I hold this view provisionally). The question, for me, is whether design extends beyond this and in what form did it express itself? My teleological views allow me four possibilities when interpreting evolution:
1. Interventions in evolution (i.e., analogous to artificial selection).
2. Key events in evolution were the unfolding of front-loaded states.
3. Evolutionary mechanisms were designed to facilitate and exploit (1) and (2)
4. The standard non-teleological account of evolutionary mechanisms apply, but may be responsible mostly for minor change.
Nevertheless, I am not one who tries to explain biology, and its history, with only one basic form of explanation. In my opinion, there is an asymmetry between non-teleology and teleology that allows the latter view to be more immune from this blindness. Why? A teleological perspective does not have to be pure and absolute, as it can incorporate a non-teleological perspective. Take the automobile for example: one who accepts a teleological explanation for its origin is not obligated to accept teleological explanations for how it works (i.e. invoking spirits as the cause of the pistons going up and down). A non-teleological view, on the other hand, resists any form of teleological explanation (otherwise, it becomes teleological).
I think of ID as a parallel, alternative approach and not as a wholesale replacement of current evolutionary theory. The debate about ID often revolves around either/or thinking - either ID is true and should serve as the basis of science or it is not true and should continue to be excluded. But why can't we take a both/and approach? It's not a question of the teleological view replacing the mechanistic view, it's a question of using both perspectives in parallel. That is, just as light is best understood when viewed as both wave and particle, might not the origin of biological complexity involve both teleological and non-teleological explanations?
When the non-teleologist attempts to account for natural history, the explanations in his tool box amount to chance, natural selection, and notions of self-organization (the first two being primary). The teleologist can not only draw from the same set of explanations (as not everything requires a teleological origin), but can also draw from the following hypotheses: key events in evolution were the result of intelligent intervention; evolution was front-loaded at certain points; evolution was directed at certain points; and evolution was designed to evolve certain forms of complexities.
A both/and approach is less likely to be blinkered than an either/or approach.
Of course, another lesson to be drawn from investigating ambiguous topics such as this is the need to be tentative and provisional. Yet non-teleologists often come across as dogmatists.
[This message has been edited by Warren, 12-22-2003]
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