Evolution v. Creationism

[ding]

I'm breeding dogs, so I'm destroying pups that don't make the grade ... can't do that with peoples ...

It did in China. Come to think of it I guess we do it everywhere. But China's one child policy is the best example of destroying people that don't make the grade.

 

[ding]

Why does what happened millions of years ago matter so much?

It doesn't. The Christian perception of a Creator God and biological evolution are perfectly consistent. It's not a coincidence that the universe popped into existence being hardwired to produce intelligence. It's the nature of intelligence to produce intelligence.

 

[ding]

Why do you think folks living in the Kingdom of Judah in the 9th Century BC should have believed the Earth was 4.6 billion years old? ... we didn't know the Earth was round until the 5th Century BC ...

Exact how many scientific truths should we expect from the oral tradition we received from antiquity? ... stories passed father to son for 45,000 years ... told around camp fires while the wimin folk tended the babies ...

Phaw ... a good argument can be made that the Bible is political spin ... we have evidence of Judah, but nothing of Israel ... much like Hitler invading Czechoslovakia, Putin invading The Ukraine, the United States invading Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras, Chile, Panama, Grenada, Guatemala, Cuba, Afghanistan, Iraq (twice), Guam, etc etc etc ... there's a narrative that allows for territorial conquest ... "It was ours from the beginning, the Bible says so" ...

Yes an argument can be made for that. In fact, the US did the exact same thing in the Declaration of Independence where we established our God given authority to secede from the king because we have inalienable rights for no other reason than we are God's creatures and you Brits violated them.

But the allegorical accounts of creation, the origin of man, the nature of man and allegorical descriptions of the historical events recorded in the first eleven chapters of Genesis were actually passed down orally for thousands of years before the need to establish a "political" authority existed. So there is a limit to that argument. There's also a counter argument to that argument.

 

[ding]

It matter because people can not agree and both sides have to be right…

People from the evolution side ( most not all ) believe it will prove a deity did not create this Universe while people on the Religious side want to prove that a deity gave us all this and I say it can be both if you really are open minded…

How does evolution prove God did not create the universe?

 

[Cardinal Carminative]

It doesn't. The Christian perception of a Creator God and biological evolution are perfectly consistent.

Agreed.

It's not a coincidence that the universe popped into existence being hardwired to produce intelligence.

Actually that is backwards logic. Everything we are and know developed to fit into the niches it currently inhabits. The puddle does not form to fit the shape of the water. The water conforms to the shape of the puddle.

It's the nature of intelligence to produce intelligence.

Do you not work with Microsoft products?

 

[Cardinal Carminative]

How does evolution prove God did not create the universe?

It does not. But that kind of "deistic evolution" is not appealing to Creationists either. In general that's a perfectly acceptable middle ground. There's no reason that God couldn't possibly use evolution as a means of running the "watch".

In fact it actually makes God a bit more interesting if he created a system that could self-regulate and self-evolve.

But, that being said, in any evolutionary system there is no need for a God or superior intelligence. But if one wishes to preserve both their faith in a supernatural being and an acceptance of evolution that's the exact way to go with it.

 

[Cardinal Carminative]

There are so many threads from religious fundamentalists trying to debunk the Theory of Evolution. And, I might add, failing.


My question is simple. Why? Why does what happened millions of years ago matter so much?

It isn't that important to most Christians. Those Christians for whom the Bible is required to be perfectly literal and perfectly accurate are the primary drivers of this movement. It's a relatively easy matter to note the failure of Genesis to match the real world and it's a relatively easy matter to technically show how Creationism fails in light of the real world.

But that's not the point and it never will be. For people who believe that their immortal soul's fate hangs in part on how they honor a literal Genesis/literal Bible OF COURSE they are going to fight tooth and nail against evolution. Who wouldn't?

It would be nice, however, if they didn't feel the need to force it on everyone else.

 

[ding]

Actually that is backwards logic. Everything we are and know developed to fit into the niches it currently inhabits. The puddle does not form to fit the shape of the water. The water conforms to the shape of the puddle.

I suspect you know less about the origin of existence than you do about the climate of the earth as your very analog points to intelligence being predestined by the laws of nature.

 

[ding]

Do you not work with Microsoft products?

We're obsessed with making smart things.

 

[surada]

“natural selection by the creationists”

Hilarious.

What does that mean? Creatures who adapt to environmental changes survive to reproduce.

 

[ding]

It does not. But that kind of "deistic evolution" is not appealing to Creationists either. In general that's a perfectly acceptable middle ground. There's no reason that God couldn't possibly use evolution as a means of running the "watch".

In fact it actually makes God a bit more interesting if he created a system that could self-regulate and self-evolve.

But, that being said, in any evolutionary system there is no need for a God or superior intelligence. But if one wishes to preserve both their faith in a supernatural being and an acceptance of evolution that's the exact way to go with it.

Unless of course, mind, rather than being a late outgrowth of the evolution of space and time has always existed as the source or matrix of physical reality. That everything is made up of mind stuff. Arthur Eddington in 1928 wrote, “the stuff of the world is mind‑stuff ... The mind‑stuff is not spread in space and time.... Arthur had good reason to write that and he wasn't wrong.

 

[Cardinal Carminative]

I suspect you know less about the origin of existence than you do about the climate of the earth

GIven that my background is organic geochemistry it stands to reason I probably have more insight into things like abiogenesis than climate.

As to the "origin of existence", well no one knows anything about that. All we have is conjecture.

as your very analog points to intelligence being predestined by the laws of nature.

Define intelligence and tell us how it cannot arise by natural processes.

 

[Cardinal Carminative]

Unless of course, mind, rather than being a late outgrowth of the evolution of space and time has always existed as the source or matrix of physical reality. That everything is made up of mind stuff. Arthur Eddington in 1928 wrote, “the stuff of the world is mind‑stuff ... The mind‑stuff is not spread in space and time.... Arthur had good reason to write that and he wasn't wrong.

That sounds like 100% Grade A glossolalia.

 

[ding]

Define intelligence and tell us how it cannot arise by natural processes.

Intelligence is incorporeal; it is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and form abstract thoughts. In the context of this discussion it would be be beings that know and create. In other words conscious beings who were aware they were conscious.

My point is that intelligence did arise through natural processes and was preordained to arise before space and time were created from nothing.

GIven that my background is organic geochemistry it stands to reason I probably have more insight into things like abiogenesis than climate.

As to the "origin of existence", well no one knows anything about that. All we have is conjecture.

Logic and the laws of nature - which existed before space and time - say otherwise.

 

[ding]

That sounds like 100% Grade A glossolalia.

From a scientific view everything is made manifest by mind. George Wald said, "The physical world is entirely abstract and without ‘actuality’ apart from its linkage to consciousness. It is primarily physicists who have expressed most clearly and forthrightly this pervasive relationship between mind and matter, and indeed at times the primacy of mind." Arthur Eddington wrote, “the stuff of the world is mind‑stuff. The mind‑stuff is not spread in space and time." Von Weizsacker stated what he called his “Identity Hypothesis; that consciousness and matter are different aspects of the same reality. In 1952 Wolfgang Pauli said, "the only acceptable point of view appears to be the one that recognizes both sides of reality -- the quantitative and the qualitative, the physical and the psychical -- as compatible with each other, and can embrace them simultaneously . . . It would be most satisfactory of all if physis and psyche (i.e., matter and mind) could be seen as complementary aspects of the same reality.”

So no... it isn't 100% Grade A glossolalia.

 

[Cardinal Carminative]

My point is that intelligence did arise through natural processes

Any evidence for that?

Logic and the laws of nature - which existed before space and time - say otherwise.

Not necessarily. Logic and laws of nature are essentially just mathematical constructs. Arguably, math is little more than explicit statement of tautologies. Y=MX+B is nothing more than describing the relationship between Y and X. IF all P = Q And all Q = X then P=X is essentially self-evident.

Our "appreciation" of these laws does not make them in any way more special than anything else around us.

I am unsure of how a universe could exist in which a thing is not what it is. If the tautologies don't hold then nothing holds.

 

[Cardinal Carminative]

From a scientific view everything is made manifest by mind.

That's not valuable information.

George Wald said, "The physical world is entirely abstract and without ‘actuality’ apart from its linkage to consciousness. It is primarily physicists who have expressed most clearly and forthrightly this pervasive relationship between mind and matter, and indeed at times the primacy of mind." Arthur Eddington wrote, “the stuff of the world is mind‑stuff. The mind‑stuff is not spread in space and time." Von Weizsacker stated what he called his “Identity Hypothesis; that consciousness and matter are different aspects of the same reality. In 1952 Wolfgang Pauli said, "the only acceptable point of view appears to be the one that recognizes both sides of reality -- the quantitative and the qualitative, the physical and the psychical -- as compatible with each other, and can embrace them simultaneously . . . It would be most satisfactory of all if physis and psyche (i.e., matter and mind) could be seen as complementary aspects of the same reality.”

So no... it isn't 100% Grade A glossolalia.

But it isn't anything more than people musing on stuff. Sounds like the thoughts one has after a couple of edibles.

Don't get me wrong, one of my closest friends from high school is a philosophy prof and obviously there's a lot of such musings. But speaking as a philosophical realist (with the full understanding that our perception of reality is filtered and processed by our brains) I lack a belief that reality is just "entirely abstract". I think of science as an attempt to get at the truth knowing it will only ever be an approximation, but that approximation belies an actual independent reality.

 

[Woodznutz]

Because if evolution is proven one hundred percent factual then people of religious beliefs believe it will prove there is no deity or god and I say it isn’t that simple either.

Even in the Christian Bible you can see evolution being taught in the story of how their deity took it days to create everything, so even though humans might have evolved it does not mean there is no God or God’s it just mean the story could be more complex…

Does that even make sense at all?

Interdependence requires spontaneous creation.

 

[ding]

Any evidence for that?

You agree that life and intelligence arose naturally according to the laws of nature, do you not? I win right there.

Life - and thus intelligence - couldn't have arisen if any number things were slightly different. Such as the charge of electrons being exactly opposite the charge of protons or the mass of the electron relative to the mass of the nucleus or the distance of the electron to the nucleus were different or if water acted like everything else and continued contracting as it froze. If any number of things were slightly different the universe could have been created in exactly the same way yet the universe would be devoid of life.

 

[ding]

Not necessarily. Logic and laws of nature are essentially just mathematical constructs. Arguably, math is little more than explicit statement of tautologies. Y=MX+B is nothing more than describing the relationship between Y and X. IF all P = Q And all Q = X then P=X is essentially self-evident.

What is mathematics if not mind stuff? You lose again.