Elliott Sober Quotes About Conflict
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This is not to deny that there are versions of theism that do conflict with evolutionary biology. Young Earth Creationism is an example; it claims that God created life on earth within the past 10,000 to 50,000 years. But other types of theism are different.
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Group selection and individual selection are just two of the selection processes that have played important roles in evolution. There also is selection within individual organisms (intragenomic conflict), and selection among multi-species communities (an idea that now is getting attention in work on the human microbiome). All four of these levels of selection find a place in multi-level selection theory.
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Evolutionary theory, properly understood, does not conflict with the idea that God occasionally intervenes in nature - for example, by once or twice causing a beneficial mutation to occur. Biologists have not detected any such interventions despite the data and theory they have assembled about mutation. However, I think it is a mistake to expect biological experiments to be able to detect such one-off acts of divine intervention, especially if those acts occurred in the distant past. Science isn't in that line of work.
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Related Authors
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Michael Ghiselin Evolutionary Biologist -
Richard Lewontin Evolutionary Biologist -
Ernst Mayr Biologist -
John Maynard Smith Geneticist -
Jerry Fodor Philosopher -
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Michael Ruse Philosopher -
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Bas van Fraassen Philosopher -
Hans Reichenbach Philosopher -
E. O. Wilson Biologist -
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David Sloan Wilson Professor