November 1, 2003
RESPECTING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION
Easterblogg (Gregg Easterbrook, TNR.com, 10/31/03)
Before people began interfering with forests in the arid Western United States by "managing" them--and research shows that indigenous Americans were engaged in significant forest management long before Europeans arrived--a natural cycle of forest fire and regrowth was standard. Douglas fir, the grand tree of the Pacific Northwest, has been specialized by evolution to rise rapidly in open fields where there is no shade. A tree can't spring up in an open field naturally unless nature has just cleared the field, by fire. (Most tree species of the humid Eastern United States are "shade-tolerant" and evolved to grow slowly amidst other trees, because forest-leveling fires are rare east of the Mississippi.) California's lodgepole pine makes cones sealed in hard resin. Toss a lodgepole pinecone on the ground and nothing will ever happen. Toss one of the cones into a fire, however, and heat melts the resin, releasing seeds. Natural selection conditioned this tree's seeds to survive wildfires and then repopulate the forest.How are "evolution" and "natural selection", presented here as willful actors, functionally any different from "G-d" in this paragraph? Posted by David Cohen at November 1, 2003 6:07 AM
Too true, especially as he asserts that indigenous Americans were engaged in something called "forest management".
Just like Noah was a trained expert in flood control.
Posted by: Peter B at November 1, 2003 6:41 AMIf I say that the Colorado River has shaped the Grand Canyon and given us beautiful canyon walls to admire, is that presenting it as a willful actor? It's just anthropomorphism, which is a common habit.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at November 1, 2003 8:47 AMAOG
But if the thrust of your argument is that the Grand Canyon is not a one-off, but rather a regular and predictable phenomenon that helps the earth or us survive and renews life, you are into purpose, no?
Posted by: Peter B at November 1, 2003 8:58 AMNo. Darwinism doesn't predict specific events.
And the Grand Canyon (nor the fir) helps the earth survive and renew life. Firs renew only firs, unless there is a speciation event, in which case, most of the time, the firs continue along with something new.
If they were not around, something else would be. You cannot say what, just as you cannot tell the hour of your death.
The inability to do that is not held, by Orrin or any other Christian I know, to invalidate the truths of that faith.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 1, 2003 4:10 PMHarry:
What in nature does not help the world survive in the sense you mean here?
Posted by: Peter B at November 1, 2003 8:00 PMAOG --
What do you mean, "just" anthropomorphism. Don't make too much of this, but most religion is anthropomorphism. You might think this shows that religion is simply a psychological response to our fear of a powerful, untamed nature and is surplanted by science. I think it shows our innate longing for G-d and the communion that G-d has with each one of us in the manner to which we are best suited. When evolution is described as supposedly "designing" natural processes to fit into some niche - and all evolutionists adopt this language, though many know that it is wrong - "evolution" is being set up as a god. Perhaps, it is being used by G-d to plant a seed in particularly infertile ground.
Posted by: David Cohen at November 1, 2003 11:30 PMDavid:
Evolutionists tend to adopt that language because it is a convenient short hand for the shared assumption: that of all the variations that occurred, and the environment within which they occurred, this is what is left over.
After awhile, that just gets hard to type.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at November 2, 2003 8:05 AMSo, Jeff, G-d is inherent in the very structure of the language? Hmm, good point.
You say potato, I say Solanum tuberosum L..
Posted by: David Cohen at November 2, 2003 8:45 AMDavid:
No. Except for those who prefer using a great many words when a few will do, conveying meaning contextually seems to work pretty well.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at November 2, 2003 8:25 PMThe theory is explicitly antiteleological. That people slip into teleological similes is not surprising, given the culture they were raised in.
Hitler used to invoke God all the time. By Orrin's reasoning, that puts God on his side.
Presumably God would be displeased.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 3, 2003 6:47 PM