CFO writes:
I have no idea what you are talking about. The above comment has no correspondence to anything said or implied. Mayr said the original Darwinists concluded evolution (not special creationists) was NOT THE WORK OF GOD.
I am talking about the very first sentence in the Mayr quote you provided.
Mayr writes:
There is indeed one belief that all true original Darwinians held in common, and that was their rejection of creationism, their rejection of special creation.
And there are numerous places in 'The origin of species' where Darwin is clearly directly addressing special creation.
Darwin writes:
Some few naturalists maintain that animals never present varieties; but then these same naturalists rank the slightest difference as of specific value; and when the same identical form is met with in two distant countries, or in two geological formations, they believe that two distinct species are hidden under the same dress. The term species thus comes to be a mere useless abstraction, implying and assuming a separate act of creation.
...
Natural selection acts only by the preservation and accumulation of small inherited modifications, each profitable to the preserved being; and as modern geology has almost banished such views as the excavation of a great valley by a single diluvial wave, so will natural selection banish the belief of the continued creation of new organic beings, or of any great and sudden modification in their structure.
...
On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, why should that part of the structure, which differs from the same part in other independently created species of the same genus, be more variable than those parts which are closely alike in the several species? I do not see that any explanation can be given.
Just a few case showing the specific form of 'Creation' which Darwin rebutted.
Our definition is based on the fact that all evolutionary biologists do not consider God as a possibility to explain data or evidence. You know this and have misrepresented the simple issue here from the outset.
You once again do exactly what I said, try and impose your own interpretations of peoples views onto not only 'all evolutionary biologists' but also on me myself. I certainly don't know it as it is complete nonsense. There is a world of difference between personally considering God an explanation for evolution and explicitly writing him up in a scientific paper as one. Do you really still not understand why some things just aren't suitable for scientific discussion because of their vague and imprecise nature. In the case where there are specific and precise conditions, such as for theories of special creation with whole new species being independently created
de novo then there is scope for study, and it was such which the early Darwinians, and their predecessors, saw as flawed and rejected.
There is no way to rule out such shifty deities as Randman's designer who lurks in the background shifting the probabilities of certain mutations occurring at the quantum level however.
Clearly they are addressing the issue of special creation not the whole metaphysical concept of God.
Its hard to believe an educated person wrote the above comment. Is it 4:00 AM in Scotland?
Well it's hard to believe an honest person would evade answering a question and just repeat the same empty claim, and yet you do.
Are you actually saying ToE does not rule out God? If so, where is God IN ToE and can you provide at least two references of known evolutionary scholars?
I like the way you just restated your strawman there as if it was some sort of counter argument. The lack of the explicit inclusion of a phenomenon does not 'rule it out'. What 'rules it out', if anything, is the scientific method, which as I have just pointed out relies on things which actually have some definable qualities that might be susceptible of detection and testing. What a scholar may believe as to the role of God in the process of evolution is immaterial to what he can demonstrate scientifically in a paper.
TTFN,
WK
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