I will post passages/thoughts on this tonight...

Chapter two of Darwinism and Its Discontents covers the reasons we consider evolution as fact. "...let us follow a customary and convenient practice of dividing the evolutionist's problem into three. First, there is establishing the very fact of evolution – proving that organisms came from other forms, perhaps just a few, perhaps even originally from nonorganic material, by a process that or processes that are entirely natural, that is to say, governed by and only by unguided regularities or laws. Second, there is the question of the path of evolution. Is it tree-like, for example? Does it show different patterns at different times? Can we put dates on events? Technically, this is known as a matter of 'phylogeny, ' as opposed to the development of the individual, 'ontogeny.' And finally, there is the puzzle of mechanics or causes. What make things happen? Darwin's answer was natural selection. We have to see how adequate this really was."

I have often heard theists say to me, "Evolution is JUST a theory." I have to admit, I'm getting kind of tired trying to explain what a scientific theory. "Sometimes, one does mean by 'theory' the same as 'iffy hypothesis.' If I say that I have a theory about the true identity of Jack the Ripper or about the Kennedy assassination, then you know that what I am going to propose is a hypothesis – a conjecture – that for the rest of us may or may not be true, but probably will never be decided definitively. But this is not the only sense of 'theory.' Sometimes one means 'theory' as in 'body of laws used to explain a range a phenomena.'" Personally, I've always liked the definition given by the National Center for Science Education..."a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences and tested hypotheses."

Ruse goes on to discuss how Darwin presented his argument for evolution AND natural selection in Origin of Species. He presents some direct evidence for evolution and then discusses the consilience of inductions. Change, human-caused or purely natural, does occur and this has been observed – repeatedly. But obviously not change of the reptile-into-bird, hippopotamus-into-whale, monkey-into-human kind. In the short time span of human observation, one should not and does not expect this. If the direct evidence were all one had to go on, the case for evolution would be suggestive but unproven. This means one must turn to indirect evidence, and at once it is important to scotch one objection. Again, a version of the theory-not-a-fact objection raises its ugly head. How can one be so sure on the basis of indirect evidence? It is bad enough that we have had to take on trust the claims about dogs and their domestication ten thousand years ago, but now the demand is that everything rest on indirect evidence. This can never be good enough...At a general level, let me point out at once that not only do we use indirect evidence, we rely greatly on it in everyday life, and there are times when we would prefer it to direct evidence...The kind of argumentation that we are considering is generally known today as the 'argument to the best explanation.' (Another name for the process comes from the American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce, who called it 'abduction.') One has a series of hypotheses to compare, and by thinning them according to their success and plausibility on various grounds, like consistency with other material or theories, one brings the number down to the best remaining explanation. A somewhat stronger version is where you bring in material from various areas under the same hypothesis, thus simplifying the explanation significantly. And perhaps the strongest version is where you start to make all sorts of predictions of phenomena that you did not know already and these predictions start to pan out. The last versions of the argument to the best explanation, those that stress unification, are sometimes known as 'consiliences, ' this being the terminology of the nineteenth-century historian and philosopher of science William Whewell. 'The Consilience of Inductions takes place when an Induction, obtained from one class of facts, coincides with an induction, obtained from another class. This Consilience is a test of the truth of the Theory in which it occurs.' The idea is that somehow, if a hypothesis is true – tells us about the real world – then various facts or other claims follow from it, and will keep doing so. And there is a kind of feedback process here. As the hypothesis leads to new information, so its derivations themselves confer a kind of probability upon the hypothesis. A false hypothesis would simply not keep working as well. At the least, you would have to keep adding to it, and thus lose the elegance or simplicity that scientists prize so much."

And that where it ends this evening. I'll see you again with more tomorrow. G'night. :)

Okay, so now we're on to the consilience of the Origin. "Turning to Darwin himself, we know that he set out deliberately to construct a consilience, and felt with some reason that he had succeeded...Given his success at using an evolutionary hypothesis to explain so many disparate factors, he felt that he had succeeded in showing evolution to be true - to be fact and not a theory, in the language of today's critics. In each area, we see him working toward an argument to the best explanation, and then rolling the whole system together in on consilience."

Darwin presents his case for evolution by natural selection by presenting deductions from various sectors - instinct, palentology, geographical distribution, classification, morphology, and embryology. He didn't have DNA back then! :) "Move on from a best explanation in one area and look at the whole consilience (feeling free to go beyond Darwin to later discoveries). We have the largest range of biological phenomena that is explained by the fact of evolution, and that in turn confirms the fact itself. Start with the fossil record. Not only is the record roughly progressive, which is what we would expect if evolution were true, but it also shows the kinds of sequences that we expect from evolution...The same is true of other areas. Take, most strikingly, morphology. The most arresting fact is that organisms of quite different species have isomorphisms – those already-mentioned 'homologies' – between the parts of their bodies, their limbs especially, even though the ends or functions of these parts are quite different. Most famous is the front limb of the vertebrate. Humans have arms and hands for lifting and grasping, horses legs for running, bats and birds wings for flying (although the ordering of bird and bat bones quite different), moles paws for digging, seals fins for swimming, and so forth. Why would this all be so? What Darwin called 'descent with modification' gives the answer...

Another area picked up by Darwin was embryology – it is an area still made much of today. Why do we find that the embryos of organisms very different as adults – humans and chickens and dogs, for instance – have embryos that are very similar? Simply because they are descended from common ancestors. There is no other good reason...

Vestigial organs are another piece of evidence for the evolutionary case. Many, if not all, organisms carry functionally useless features that seem to have functioning counterparts in other (more or less similar) organisms. Famous examples are the wings of flightless birds, the limb remnants of 'limbless' vertebrates like snakes and whales, the eye sockets of eyeless fish, and in humans such things as the appendix and the coccyx, that bit of tail at the bottom of our backbones. Why do these exist? On any theory that makes adaptation totally ubiquitous, they would not have been created. But on a theory of evolution, they follow naturally as relicts and evidence of the past – of past ancestors, that is, shared with organisms that still (as did the ancestors) use these features for their own adaptive ends..."

So we have all these arguments from nature that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that evolution occurs. "We have many different areas of biology putting up phenomena that are explained by the fact of evolution, and for which other rival explanations – especially that organisms were created somehow entire, on the spot where they are now found – are simply inadequate. In each case, we have inferences to the best explanation; combined, they make a consilience that points strongly to the truth of the fact of evolution. More than this, the explanation fits well with the rest of science as we know it. In fact, in this respect, one surely has one of the marks of a truly great consilience, namely, that one is finding and explaining things unknown at the time of the consilience, or even things that were or would be considered difficult or contrary...

Judged against the kinds of criteria and practices that we normally apply and use when making inferences, the evidence for the fact of evolution is very, very solid. But is it enough? Is it really enough to allow us to speak of evolution as fact?"

I, of course, say HELL YES.

"I suppose that logically it is possible that this world of ours is an artificial laboratory set up by Andromedans, who are checking on questions of deception and the functioning of an artificial organisms and so forth. It is logically possible that we humans were created and are programmed to think as we do, even though in fact we are going through motions in a world created (let us say) 6, 000 years ago. Finally, it is logically possible that junior Andromedans are getting Ph.D.s for studying how we humans function in various situations. ('Let us manipulate them into a world war and see how they behave.') But there is absolutely no reason to think that this is so, and much to think that at best it is a philosophical (or Holywood) fancy. For a start, we know how difficult it is to create any kind of artificial life, let alone a whole world teeming with it. And how are the Andromedans checking on us and communicating their results back home? And so forth. So the answer is that if you insist that evolution be logically, absolutely proven so that there is no possibility of any kind of fantasy being the alternative, then you cannot have it. But the second part of the same answer is that never in real life do normally people demand this kind of proof – we can never have it, and we never feel the need of it. So if you are satisfied that John Fitzgerald Kennedy really was a human being, a male, who became president and was assassinated in 1963 – that he was not a transvestite for whom a substitute was killed in Dallas, and that the real Kennedy doesn't live in Texas or Moscow (your choice) with his/her husband or wife (your choice again) – then you really ought to accept evolution as fact."

I found his ending conclusion rather humorous. :) Ah, what people will believe nowadays. Okay, so on we go to the whole cause thing. We've accepted evolution as fact..."But what about the simple claim that we ought to take seriously the bare possibility of some kind of non-natural (miraculous) intervention that made things as they are? The idea that we ought to take seriously something like the Andromedans, but out of the regular course of nature? Of course, this requires some kind of leap of faith, but have we not already conceded that some kind of leap of faith is needed to get to the fact of evolution, even in the natural world? You cannot rule out, logically, the possibility of an alternative scenario."

Let's look at that before we move on to Ruse's next words. For me, "leaps of faith" come in varying degrees. After reading God: The Failed Hypothesis, we are armed with a consilience that the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God does not exist. We are armed with the consilience that evolution DOES exist. With these two consiliences at hand, I am logically going to assume that evolution exists and that the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God did not start it. Does that rule out the possibility that some god that we can't describe put it in motion? No. But what is the point in believing that one did? Why make the leap of faith for something that has no evidence? We can make a SMALL leap of faith for evolution, because there is evidence leading to the fact of evolution. There is not the same kind of evidence leading us to the fact that there was a higher power behind it. Now, back to Ruse...

"An immediate response here is that science is precisely that against which one defines faith – what faith requires is what science refuses to give, so by definition evolution cannot be a matter of faith. But this is too quick a response. The real issue is why it is reasonable to go with the scientific position, and to reject the miracle-invoking position, however you label the two. Why should we – even the religious person – think that blind law is the way to explain this world? Why should the scientific person be committed to what we might call 'methodological naturalism' – the working assumption that all physical events can and must be explained by laws – even if, as a person, one is not committed to ontological or (what we might call) 'metaphysical naturalism' – the philosophical or religious belief that there is something more than material nature. In other words, why insist on explaining the world through blind law when you might as well believe that something else might stand behind something?"

Why is a scientific position more appropriate to the origin than a religious one? Because IF a God were responsible for creating this universe, and WANTED to have a relationship with us, wouldn't he/she/it make itself apparent through objective evidence in some way? And if there is no evidence, then there is no reason to make the assumption that what we don't know is ordained by some higher power. I'll bring up a point Stenger made in his book that if scientists could find evidence for God, they would be happy to go down that line of scientific inquiry - a new field of science would open up and they would get plenty of funding. I don't think that scientists are necessarily "committed" to the 'methodological naturalism' POV - they are "committed" to the evidence. And the evidence says that we don't NEED a source outside of nature. There are plausible explanations for our world to be completely natural.

"Evolution is at the center of a powerful consilience. By any normal understanding of the terms, evolution is a well-established fact. It is logically possible that evolution is not true, but it is not reasonable to believe this. And questioning this on theological grounds does less than justice to science, and most probably to religion also."