DARWIN VS. GENESIS

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I may be incorrect but my assumption is that rational reasoning is a process based on assembling available data and trying to discern some sort of coherent pattern out of the presented perceptions. From my point of view the religious conceptions of heaven and hell seem to be derived from human social patterns extended into the mechanisms of the universe. Daily events as I perceive them indicate no such correlation, whatever my fears and desires might be. The universe is so immense and totally beyond the minuscule domain of humanity that to assume human values influence cosmic events seems to me a distortion of perception so violent as to be both comic and tragic simultaneously.

elizabethhensley wrote:

I say

For whatever reason evolution IS evolving into more complex life. Fossil records prove this.

Doc_Daneeka Snowy Owl says

Of course, that assumes that "life" equals "multicellular life". Which it manifestly does not. Bacteria are probably more complex than they were, say, 2 billion years ago. But they certainly don't illustrate any drive towards greater and greater complexity. They do perfectly well as simple creatures, and they rule the earth.

I say.

But WE also exist! And fossil records prove we evolved so this proves evolution CAN evolve into more complex life forms even if it does not do it EVERY TIME. We are more complex than bacteria and will soon be much more complex as we are getting to the point where we can guide our own evolution, use computers to enhance it, and who knows what other future improvements! That 1500 hundred mile John mentioned in Revelation is actually TAME compared with what we are going to be able to do. I do not think bacteria rule the Earth, or if they do, they will never rule Space and Time. We will. We can go to the Moon! Define "rule."Laying around
in puddles and curdling milk is useful but does not constitute "ruling."


You are also assuming relativity doesn't work and future life won't be able to guide the past. It would be a fool not to. The Blind Watchmaker may have started out blind, but He evolved eyes right along with the rest of us and will do, (as all life does) what He
must to perpetrate His own species. He is the only member of His species, but He is a species and all the laws that apply to survival, apply to Him. I doubt Hoyle made a mistake with this calculation. The mutation rate is pretty well known, and even if it was higher in the past (unlikely) the amount of time it would take for us to evolve
without a tweeker/Vine-dressser guiding the process is much too long.


Doc_Daneeka Snowy Owl says


As for relativity, if you can demonstrate that time travel into the past is truly possible, you will probably earn a Nobel prize.


I say.

Relativity ALREADY demonstrates time travel to the past is possible. Study it. We already know as much about time travel as Leonardo Di Vinci knew about air travel. He had a working model but he had no power source and he had no materials strong enough. We are in the exact same situation. A black hole bends time but we have no material strong enough to survive the trip and we have no power source strong enough to avoid being sucked into it. I am quite sure in the next five to ten billion years we will solve those two problems. If we don't, the universe itself is bending time. That's the "slow boat to china"method but if we evolve into God who is immortal,
He can just take all the time it takes to get back to the past.

You wish to disbelieve Hoyle. Ok. He is not necessary anyway. However long or short the mutation rate is taking, there is absolutely NO PROOF Someone isn't tweaking it. Until science
disproves there is a Tweaker/Vine-dresser, it remains a viable theory, and adding that theory to all the other evidence, (the eco-niche hypothesis, the anthropic principle, Human desire, evolution +
relativity,) all the evidence stands in the favor of God's existence. In order to disprove God scientifically, we would have to go everywhere and every when in the universe and outside the
universe and look for Him with every possible kind of sense. By the time we can do that we will have evolved into God.


Doc_Daneeka Snowy Owl says

As for Hoyle, his argument regarding evolution has no merit whatsoever. He appears not to have understood the basic concept. That's not that strange. It's very commonly misunderstood. There is
this weird misconception that evolution means 'random chance assembled this complex structure.' That is nearly the opposite of what the theory claims.

_________________

Hell is just the eventual fate of the natural Universe. Jesus called it the garbage dump. When future Humans, billions and billions of years from now, built a better environment, the remains of the dying Universe will indeed be a Hell/garbage dump.


Scientists are part of the Body of Christ that build Heaven, just as we build the Nautilus, the moon-ship Columbia and communication satellites. Because we want to. No other reason is necessary. Wanting to live forever is a logical goal and one the next five to ten billion years of evolution will make possible. Every doctor trying to preserve life is working towards eternal lie. Every scientist working on improving computers is building Heaven. This tenacious species gets what it wants eventually. We wanted to fly, we learned to make machines that let us fly. We saw the Moon, we went there. We want to live forever, we will evove into God and build Heaven. We are nothing more than carbon based "meat" computers, but every computer must have an operating system. That is what we call the soul. Relativity will make the past reachable so every one is uploadable. Someone must run the place. Jesus the Carpenter wants to. Many Humans want Him too and we know from both their writings He wants to and Buddha doesn't so the Carpenter is the logical choice. To reach Heaven you must be debugged just as computer operating system must be debugged to keep it from spreading virus's and spy-ware to its network.

Jesus Christ we thank you for your sacrifice
Come live inside my busy, restless mind.
Forgive my faults and fix the flaws that sadden you.
Help me forgive the ones that did not treat me kind.

Can be sung to Danny Boy.


quote="Sand"]I may be incorrect but my assumption is that rational reasoning is a process based on assembling available data and trying to discern some sort of coherent pattern out of the presented perceptions. From my point of view the religious conceptions of heaven and hell seem to be derived from human social patterns extended into the mechanisms of the universe. Daily events as I perceive them indicate no such correlation, whatever my fears and desires might be. The universe is so immense and totally beyond the minuscule domain of humanity that to assume human values influence cosmic events seems to me a distortion of perception so violent as to be both comic and tragic simultaneously.[/quote]

There is no doubt that humanity's adventure into the very local space within our very tiny solar system is a major advance for our life form but our solar system and even our galaxy has very little significance in relationship to the total universe. One of the most odd assumptions of religious mankind's relationship to the universe is its total lack of humility. The distances to the local stars preclude in the near future any physical contact by our culture which, even after our small scientific advances in the last couple of centuries, is becoming frighteningly unstable. The few stars that might conceivably be eventually reached by robot probes represent an insignificant number considering the limitations of human lifespan and the lifespan of coherent cultures. The possibilities of approaching useful velocities and the huge number of stars even within our extremely insignificant galaxy put extreme limitations on human capabilities.

Another assumption of those religiously inclined which is immersed in hubris is the inclination to look upon humanity as a static creation.
This is a symptom allied to the religious lack of comprehension of the immensity of space. It is the misunderstanding of how ephemeral the human race may be. Genetic analysis has amply demonstrated that there are negligible differences between the various groups of Homo Sapiens but this in no way discourages the murderous impulses which motivates the daily torture and butchery that humans indulge in upon each other. One of the best financed creative activities in the most capable section of humanity is in the technology and manufacture of weapons which humans seem to delight in using on each other. Religion plays no small part in this enthusiasm. Advances in genetic capability which may increase the variations amongst humans seems most likely to make these destructive impulses even more vociferous. The species has existed for, at most, around a couple of million years and, extrapolating upon current inclinations, seems unlikely to make it through the next couple of centuries - at least in its current form. In comparison to the ant, the cockroach and even the somewhat less intellectually capable paramecium, humanity seems to be capable of only a very short existence.
This leads me to wonder if humanity's much prized intelligence has any real survival value. It may be an amusing effort in a wrong direction for biological temporal extension.

I myself am Christian and of the belief 1.God has a sense of Humor. 2. I am well aware much of the bible is Metaphor, and beilenve the bible or more precisely it's philosophy was corrupted the moment man organised Religion. As a result my view on the Religion vs. Science issue is this Religion is the why, Science is the how.

I appreciate that there is a desire to fit into a welcoming system that outlines desirable behavior of its inhabitants with benefits to all which I assume what "why" means. But the reality which I perceive indicates a continuously changing environment which is totally callous to the optimum conditions of whatever life forms within it may demand for sustenance. Those life forms must conform and flourish within whatever the environment presents or cease to exist. The basic stuff of life has been exceedingly ingenious in devising countermeasures to the happenstance of environment but life throughout its history has produced many forms that were very successful for a while and then vanished under the punishments meted out by forces that know neither good nor evil but merely exist.

elizabethhensley is making me dizzy. Someone please clarify.

I think she basically believes we will genetically and culturally evolve into God who will then travel back into time to create the Universe.

Then you need to read more evolutionary biology. The predictions are specific enough that they can be falsified by the kind of data biologists collect, and there is plenty of relevant data. Why do you see that as attempts only to verify and never to falsify? If you restrict your self to verification, you restrict yourself to collecting data which can be consistent with your hypothesis or theory and you avoid data which could be inconsistent with the hypothesis or theory. If biologists tried to restrict themselves to verification, they would have to stop almost all biological research.


No, because creationism is not the book of Genesis. Creationism is the attempt to show that the book of Genesis is a true and factual account of the origin of the universe, including the origin of species (or in the case of Hindu creationism, that their holy books provide that factual account). I did not say anything about the coherence of the book of Genesis (or Hindu scriptures). I say creationism is not coherent because it tries to force together things which simply do not match.

It's a bit like me measuring a bookshelf to see whether it would fit where I want to put it. I use Euclidean geometry to measure both the shelf and the room. Non-Euclidean geometries are internally coherent, but if I tried to measure the bookshelf and my room using different geometrical systems, the shelf may not fit. In the same manner Genesis or Hindu scriptures may be internally perfectly coherent, but that does not mean that when you try to treat them as factual descriptions of the history of the universe, when you try to develop a creationist account, that you get something coherent.


Quoting Dobzhansky: "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution". I also claim cosmology is a science, for the same reason that evolutionary biology is: you make observations, you spot patterns, you come up with a possible explanation, you test that against new observations.


Tell me what you would count as observing cause and effect, and how you think the situation in evolutionary biology differs from the situation in physics or chemistry. And please tell me how you observe cause and effect in mathematics.

I have argued that evolutionary biology meets all the criteria of the scientific process you previously listed. Have we come to agree on that? Is the observation of cause and effect an additional requirement?


That is not how I would interpret this:



This sounds a lot like Goedel's Incompleteness theorem to me, which states that any system as strong as arithmetic contains statements which can't be proven to be true or false within that sytem. But that says only that there are some statements whose truth can't be determined. That is very different from claiming that truth can't be defined. Are you sure the statement you quoted is correct?

I also get the impression that you are trying to treat explanatory systems limiting themselves to naturalistic explanations or including supernatural explanations as mathematical systems, the first less powerful than the second. Is that what you are trying to do? If that is it, are you sure this is valid? If you think it is valid, don't you end up with everything as a mathematical system, including religion? Where would that leave your distinction between science and religion, if you consider mathematics a science?


That is not at all the manner of "making sense" I had in mind. When I said creationism doesn't make sense, I meant it is not logically coherent. That is very different from discussing the emotional satisfaction someone may get from creationism or baseball.


You have not yet convinced me that this is a valid criticism. If it is, it will also apply to physics and chemistry, which also limit themselves to naturalistic explanations of observations. And if incompleteness disqualifies something from being a science and makes it a religion, that even applies to mathematics, which by that criterion has proven itself to be a religion.


Thank you for making that clear.



You said twice that evolution has an agenda, and in between those two statements you inserted the observation of a correlation between acceptance of evolution and atheism:

If you did not intend to say that evolution has an atheist agenda, then the way you expressed yourself was extremely misleading.


That is a much weaker claim than that evolutionary biology has an atheist agenda or that it is quite involved in theological questions. I would like to be quite clear whether you abandon one or both of these claims.

You are welcome to think about it for a while. This is too time consuming to get back to it before the weekend.

I'm a former believer in Evolution.
Only thing that I have learned in school was evolution.



Things that are object of researches in Evolution may be falsifiable within this theory.But theory as such can never be falsifiable,since this theory is framework of interpretation of these same events.
Some things within Evolutionary theory may be rejected,but general picture of interpretation can never be rejected,since then you don't have methodological framework through which you can interpret evidences.

And since you already have framework of interpretation,you would interpret any evidence through this framework,and then you would mostly get answers that you already anticipated,although some things may disturb this interpretation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability



But can we falsify entire theory of Evolution as such?
No.
Just some parts of it.
And since one thing may be interpreted in many ways,Evolutionists would always find one that is suitable to evolution theory.
Darwin himself was Evolutionist even before he founded 'evidence' for it.
But he found 'evidences' simply because he interpreted them with accordance with his belief that he had before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin



So,basically evidences didn't convinced them about theory of Evolution,but his belief in theory of Evolution interpreted evidences to support of Evolution theory.

As Karl Popper once said:


Evolutionary theory is circular reasoning, in that evidence is interpreted as supporting evolution, but evolution is required to interpret the evidence.



Biology is scientific discipline,while Evolution is metaphysical view about origins of organisms.
Biology is indeed science,and besides that is practical.
Speculations about origins of organisms are not practical,and have only value in creating coherent ideology about order of things.



From Creationist point of view those things match.
For example in sediment rocks,they claim that they were created during catastrophic event,a.k.a flood...and sediments can indeed be created during short time.

Their theoretical presumption is Bible,while Evolutionist is naturalism.
Both natural and supernatural theoretic stances are not rational as such,since before you can create rational interpretation you must have 'metaphysical' opinion through which you can use reason.
While naturalists claim that system can be interpreted through that system (tautological approach),supernaturalists claim that a system can be interpreted through something outside this system (meta-system).
Naturalist system is tautological and circular,ergo logically pointless,while supernaturalist cannot define its meta-system,that need another meta-system through which it can be defined..in infinity.




Quoting Popper (again):
“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve”




Causality or causation denotes the relationship between one event (called cause) and another event (called effect) which is the consequence (result) of the first
Observing cause and effect is when (in your empirical experience) you can experience that one thing influence another.
However you don't have right to project causal relation where you know just effect.
Assumption that a phenomena may have cause,without direct observation is speculation.

As for another question...
Chemistry and (most of) Physics makes practical results,that may benefit development of new technologies,through experiments and implementation of these discoveries and theories in technology.
Evolution,on other hand is metaphysical theory,that have no practical use..except to support naturalist conception of world.
Chemistry and Physics do not make such presumptions,their job is discover the 'laws' of nature,through direct experience and not to presume these 'laws' before they discover it.
Therefore job of Chemistry and Physics is not presumption,but discovery,while Evolution discover what has already presumed.

An example of this is the claim that geological strata are dated through the fossils they hold, but that fossils are in turn dated by the strata they are in.



You can define truth,but there are many possible interpretations.
Forcing one interpretation as 'right one' is not scientific.



No.I'm saying that even religion follows similar logic as mathematics.
While in logic you must have meta-language to interpret object-language,religion tries to define existence through meta-existence (or 'God').

However,science has to do with empirical,observable facts and should not speculate about 'origins' or 'order of things',since to determine this you have to be outside temporary experience,and that is not possible.
Mathematic is science since their observable facts are symbols that are used in it,their meaning and relationship(Semantics and Syntax).And demonstration of its use,through operation of calculation.
But to claim that numbers have,or not have specific real existence different from pure symbolism of number,you then go in realm of metaphysics.


Can you tell me what exactly is 'logically incoherent' about Creationism?
And what in Evolution logically coherent?



Physics and Chemistry are 'naturalistic',since their job is to research nature.However Physics and Chemistry do not try to explain something that goes beyond their current empirical observation.
Chemistry,for example does not speculate about state of compounds in distant past,or about ontological origin of elements.


I didn't say that incompleteness disqualifies something from being science,since there is no system that is complete as such.
In logic,a system cannot be interpreted through itself,but through another system.
So,naturalism makes this logical mistake.
On other hand,religion use meta-interpretation of reality(God),but does not make any real connection between this entity,and nature..besides dogma.
However,God is just one form of meta-interpretation.

Science has job to research various aspects of nature,not nature as totality.
If you do that,then you cannot interpret nature through nature only.
So while Evolution goes beyond job of Biology(researching contemporary organisms),Cosmology goes beyond job of Physics(researching contemporary physical phenomena).

But human nature have tendency to create explanations that goes beyond possible experience.



Since Evolution try to interpret nature in naturalist terms,thus eliminating possibility of supernatural...this means that Evolution is implicitly Atheistic world-view,although not explicitly.
Main agenda of Evolution is naturalism,that is implicitly Atheist world-view.
And I said that lots of Evolutionists are radical Atheists (like Richard Dawkins) but not all (like Tillard De Chardin).



Evolution as atheist agenda in terms that eliminates possibility of supernatural origin of natural things.
But in reality we can never really know if nature have or not have supernatural origin,and theoretic presumption that there is no necessity of supernatural cannot be really proven or disproved since this is presumption that exist before the beginning of research.

So you may believe in naturalistic approach,but I don;t think you have right to deny other approaches as well.

P.S

Since both Evolution and Creation are irrelevant to the science of biology,I think its fair to eliminate them both from school curriculum.
Belief systems and interpretations are private things,and as such belongs to sphere of personal beliefs,and not public education.

Last edited by Witt on 02 Oct 2007, 5:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I take this to mean that most aspies are atheist?

I actually have the belief that not only does evolution exist, evolution is only occurring to those humans that believe in it because the rest of the human race is failing to evolve by failing to breed intelligently, but instead is just breeding recklessly. If you want to save the world take yourself out of it. If you want to see proof of evolution wait until the bird flu wipes out a good chunk of the world population and then we will see things evolve and change, slowly, but evolve and change.

I am personally hoping that the bird flu takes out 90%, then the world might have a chance to survive humanity.

One can logically approve of the bulk of contentious and irrational humanity being wiped off the face of the Earth to provide space for the development of a more sensible breed but when one's own mother or father or spouse or children are eliminated by this sensible re-ordering of the world the process takes on a somewhat different aspect.

A few problems with your statement.

1. Those who believe in evolution cannot evolve as only populations evolve, organisms do not.

2. Bird flu will affect the smart and dumb equally. While there'll be 10 times less dumb people, there will also be 10 times less smart people. Ideally you would want a virus that would somehow kill people if they can't solve a riddle or figure out some SAT problems.

The world is perhaps simply fuzzy by nature... Ironically, probabilities seem to be safer than certainties.