Skeletal Explanatory Frameworks Enable Spinning the Narrative…Revised

            At this point someone will logically suggest the Darwinian explanation that given millions of years for development, would not a series of trial-and-error failures and successes eventually lead to the perfected defense strategy of the Asian honeybee?

            This assumes that length of time is the beneficially determining factor.

            The skeletal explanatory framework upon which to connect the various factual data-points used in the standard methodology for all scientific research, is in scientific jargon called a theoretical hypothesis, but is always based upon the known factual evidence available at that time-period in human history.

            In defense of Charles Darwin in 1859, he was basing his theoretical hypothesis upon the idea that the physical universe was eternal, that he had unlimited time to work with to extrapolate microevolution into macroevolution.

            Darwin did not know that in 1929, an expanding universe would be discovered by Edwin Hubble peering through the massive telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory, that looking backwards in time would pinpoint a beginning of the physical universe that now limits the length of time for progressive development down to a finite amount. 

            But the issue isn’t length of time, but instead philosophical interpretations as selected by humans to create skeletal explanatory frameworks…being theoretical hypotheses. 

            One of the themes of this book is to say that the theorizing and conceptualization that is an essential part of science, is disconnected from the quite-different empiricism of the scientific method of research that follows sequential step-by-step protocols, that produce raw databases of fact-based evidence.

            The theorizing and conceptualization part of the scientific enterprise is philosophically analytical, and produces provisional conclusions that are not themselves empirical, fact-based, raw data. 

The theoretical hypothesis from a philosophically naturalistic viewpoint says that the only acceptable route for the Asian honeybee to achieve defensive survivability against the giant Asian hornet, over a long time-period is through the small steps of gradual, progressively continuous development.

            But length of time as the controlling factor in the equation unjustifiably assumes that change without aimed guidance will always go in a positive direction, leading eventually to function.  This is a reasonable philosophical projection based upon the factual evidence that change in the geological record of life on earth actually does go in a positive direction over time.

            But time cannot be the explanatory causation here, because change in a random and undirected process could go forwards, backwards, sideways, or in endlessly repetitive circles.

            An ever-increasing, upward incline of complexity in life-forms over time can best be explained through intelligent agency rather than genetic mutations acted upon by natural selection.

            This is because an overall program is needed that has the inherent foresight to connect the mutation/selection events from isolated occurrences into an integrated series from A to Z.

            The obvious problem that should shout-out to us here in this example is that given millions of years to work with, the Asian honeybees in route towards a functional defense strategy this brilliantly original and well-conceived, would be annihilated in the naturalistic process of gradual, incrementally progressive steps before ever reaching successful function.

            Time plus mutation/selection does not lead to function when the systems of information for survival are as complex as the defense strategy of the Asian honeybee.

            Time plus mutation/selection cannot reach a successful outcome when there is too much complexity, specificity, and coordination required to get there.

            The fundamental problem in looking at the myriad of diverse, instinctual lifestyle habits prolific in the natural living world, is that from a materialist worldview it presumes on philosophical grounds that these end-point maturities must be arrived at through the gradual process of small incremental steps…assuming that time plus mutation/selection equates to an unbroken chain of continuity in a positive direction to reach function.

            The skeletal explanatory framework (theoretical hypothesis) connecting the factual data-points is what is wrong here, when the philosophical worldview of scientific materialism is imposed.

This is an except from my book Pondering Our World: Christian Essays on Science and Faith.