Conclusive evidence for Design!

[tonyrey]

The earth’s water cycle is a beautiful system of interlocking parts that, if one part were to be removed, might fail utterly. You, with your faith in god, might say god designed it. However, scientists feel no such compulsion to invoke the supernatural in this case, because the water cycle, given the basic processes of evaporation, condensation, precipitation, run-off, ground seep, and plant transpiration… Given these naturally occurring processes, the water cycle arises spontaneously without the need for divine intervention.

No doubt **all **your beliefs, thoughts, arguments, conclusions and decisions also arise from spontaneously naturally occurring processes - without any need for any intervention on your part and caused to a certain extent by genetic mutations…

 

[Doxus]

On the subject of genetic information and evolution:

The mechanism by which new genetic information is added to a genome has been known for decades. Duplication of gene sequences happens ALL THE TIME. You often end up with a whole duplicated gene. The original gene and the copy suffer different mutations over time, becoming different genes.

AUGGCGAUUUGACACCUGA

AUGGCGAUUUGACACCUGA|AUGGCGAUUUGACACCUGA

AUGGCGACUUGACACCUGA|AUGGCGAUUUGACACCUGA

AUGGCGACUUGCCACCUGA|AUGGCGAUUUGACACCUGC

AUGCCGACUUGCCACCUGA|AUGGCGACUUGACACCUGC

AUGCCGACUUGCCACCUGA|AUGGCGACUUGACGCCUGC

AUGCCGACUUGCCACCUGA|AUGACGACUUGACGCCUGC

There, you now have two different genes, coming from one. Genetic information was added. Happy now?

 

[Doxus]

No doubt **all **your beliefs, thoughts, arguments, conclusions and decisions also arise from spontaneously naturally occurring processes - without any need for any intervention on your part…

Of course. If it were otherwise I would be religious. Maybe not Christian, but some religion or spirituality of some sort.

But I have yet to see anything that cannot be explained by natural processes. There are areas where we can say, “We don’t know”, for instance what came before the Big Bang, but filling “We don’t know” in with magic or deities isn’t really answering the question, it’s just guesswork.

 

[tonyrey]

But I have yet to see anything that cannot be explained by natural processes.

How do you define and distinguish "natural"processes?

There are areas where we can say, “We don’t know”, for instance what came before the Big Bang, but filling “We don’t know” in with magic or deities isn’t really answering the question, it’s just guesswork.

But it’s not just guesswork to believe science will ultimately explain everyone’s thoughts, beliefs, choices and decisions?

 

[Julia_Mae]

Space that is continuous and invisible is much more than distension between dimensionless particles. Dimensionless particles supply no reality. It is the Space within the lattices that supplies Reality (mass, weight). Therefore, nothingness supplies some-thingness.

This is exactly right.

How does continuous, invisible Space within a lattice of dimensionless S-points “produce ‘animate’ objects, like complex organisms?” Evolution does not tell us how that can happen.

But evolution isn’t supposed to address that, it’s like saying the Theory of Aerodynamics doesn’t tell us how dimensionless S points produce metals that can be made into airplanes. Biological evolution only concerns itself with how changes in forms happen over time. These days, it would be defined as “changes in genetic frequencies of populations.”

There is nothing in evolutionary theory that rejects the reality of a Creator, just as there is nothing in the process of photosynthesis that does. They are just natural processes.

 

[Candide_West]

I showed you how it was set on an earlier post. It is quite conservative. Borel placed it around 10^70 or so if I remember.

And any outcome of shuffling two decks together again comes up as “designed”. In fact if you placed your UPB at that level you’re almost there with one deck of cards.

 

[Doxus]

How do you define and distinguish "natural"processes?

Things which derive, ultimately, from the interaction of fundamental particles through the four fundamental forces. All of nuclear physics can be understood through the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces. All of chemistry can be understood through the electromagnetic force. Macro-scale physics can be understood through the electromagnetic force and Einstein’s description of gravity. All of biology and geology can be understood through chemistry and physics. Cosmology can be understood through physics.

But it’s not just guesswork to believe science will ultimately explain everyone’s thoughts, beliefs, choices and decisions?

Misrepresentation. Come on, now, leave the hyperbole at home unless you’re being humorous.

Science does not seek to explain everyone’s thoughts, beliefs, choices, and decisions. The study of psychology does seek a better understanding of the why behind it all, and neurology seeks a better understanding of the how, but thinking the science wants to predict everything is wrong. It’s slander, essentially, ultimately coming out of attempts in the 1960s to equate science with mind control.

 

[prodigalson2011]

Of course. If it were otherwise I would be religious. Maybe not Christian, but some religion or spirituality of some sort.

But I have yet to see anything that cannot be explained by natural processes. There are areas where we can say, “We don’t know”, for instance what came before the Big Bang, but filling “We don’t know” in with magic or deities isn’t really answering the question, it’s just guesswork.

There is one glaring omission in your naturalistic perspective. Indeed, I can think of an entire group of things that cannot be explained by natural processes: natural processes!

Gravity, for instance, may explain a great deal, but it doesn’t explain the existence of gravity. And so on down the line. With any natural process, the naturalist is committed to providing or, at the very least, presupposing another natural process to explain it, but this chain of causality cannot go on interminably and at the very bottom of this pile of extravagant mystery you are left with only one more of those things you have been explaining away, and you cannot turn to a thing of the same nature to explain it. In short, what lies at the root of the universe must necessarily be supernatural.

To reduce the intellectual rigors of millenia of philosophy and theology to a filling in of “guesswork” is altogether incredibly dismissive, naive and arrogant. The case for the existence of a governing mind behind the veil of our world has been meticulously and logically developed and still holds in the face of our every scientific discovery. Learning more about the printing press does nothing to explain away the author of the book, and learning more about the unfolding of nature does nothing to explain why it is there to unfold at all. And what it certainly does not do is explain why the laws it discovers should be “tuned”, so to speak, so as to draw together, to form, to cohere, to develop, to produce systems with functions and apparent purpose, culminating in the production of rational beings. Logic and observation tell us that, within our world, only intellects create novel rational structures–rocks do not build cities, and monkeys do not design computers–and what is our universe but a most unfathomably elaborate rational system?

 

[tonyrey]

How do you define and distinguish "natural"processes?

And psychology can be understood through biology?

But it’s not just guesswork to believe science will ultimately explain everyone’s thoughts, beliefs, choices and decisions?

Misrepresentation. Come on, now, leave the hyperbole at home unless you’re being humorous.

Not hyperbole but the inexorable consequence of a scientific explanation of reality.

Science does not seek to explain everyone’s thoughts, beliefs, choices, and decisions. The study of psychology does seek a better understanding of the why behind it all, and neurology seeks a better understanding of the how, but thinking the science wants to predict everything is wrong.

Why?

It’s slander, essentially, ultimately coming out of attempts in the 1960s to equate science with mind control.

Why should the mind be exempt from the laws of nature?

 

[Doxus]

And psychology can be understood through biology?

Through neurology, which can be understood through biology, yes.

Not hyperbole but the inexorable consequence of a scientific explanation of reality.

Why?

Why should the mind be exempt from the laws of nature?

Sigh. Remove the “every” from you initial statement. That removes the implication of excessive control or mind reading and it becomes close to correct.

 

[Doxus]

There is one glaring omission in your naturalistic perspective. Indeed, I can think of an entire group of things that cannot be explained by natural processes: natural processes!

Gravity, for instance, may explain a great deal, but it doesn’t explain the existence of gravity. And so on down the line. With any natural process, the naturalist is committed to providing or, at the very least, presupposing another natural process to explain it, but this chain of causality cannot go on interminably and at the very bottom of this pile of extravagant mystery you are left with only one more of those things you have been explaining away, and you cannot turn to a thing of the same nature to explain it. In short, what lies at the root of the universe must necessarily be supernatural.

To reduce the intellectual rigors of millenia of philosophy and theology to a filling in of “guesswork” is altogether incredibly dismissive, naive and arrogant. The case for the existence of a governing mind behind the veil of our world has been meticulously and logically developed and still holds in the face of our every scientific discovery. Learning more about the printing press does nothing to explain away the author of the book, and learning more about the unfolding of nature does nothing to explain why it is there to unfold at all. And what it certainly does not do is explain why the laws it discovers should be “tuned”, so to speak, so as to draw together, to form, to cohere, to develop, to produce systems with functions and apparent purpose, culminating in the production of rational beings. Logic and observation tell us that, within our world, only intellects create novel rational structures–rocks do not build cities, and monkeys do not design computers–and what is our universe but a most unfathomably elaborate rational system?

And this is the route of modern non-YEC Intelligent Design advocates. The completely backwards assumption that order and complexity imply design.

There are many complex and orderly structures in nature which are not the result of human intervention. Take the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland, which was thought to be miraculous until we learned to understand geology and columnar jointing. People used to think rainbows were miraculous, or based on Aristotle’s deeply flawed work, until around Newton’s time (generalizing, of course). Crystals are among the most orderly structures in the entire universe, trillions of atoms arranged in neat crystal lattices with little deviation, reliably and consistently forming the same structures, often complex ones, governed solely by natural laws. Would you crack open a geode, and because of its order and complexity declare it designed? An array of large, extremely orderly crystals, arranged 3-dimensionally according to a complex mathematical relationship that leaves no empty space, on a base of complex crystal structures that follow the same patterns in all geodes, inside a crust of silicate minerals? Clearly this is a highly ordered and complex system, and yet it arose without the aid of a designer. Or does god create every geode specifically to give us something to look at? Or did he specifically alter the boundary conditions of the universe so as to give rise to geodes specifically?

And this is ignoring the most obvious examples of order and complexity and even moving parts: life itself and all its billions of species! Unless you reject evolution in its entirety (claiming that there is a divide between “micro” and “macro” evolution is pure ignorance; I can argue that if you really want to) then the fact that life evolved is clear evidence that complex, orderly, functional systems can arise without the aid of an intelligent designer. Evolution requires no designer. The mere presence of descent with variation and selective pressures gives rise to it, and to fine tuning. Our understanding of genetics and population genetics and molecular biology tell us how this happens, and our understanding of taxonomy and paleontology and genetics tell us that it did. It is so irrefutable, even your Catholic Church has accepted it.

And yes, I can dismiss much (but not all, and I do not intend to dismiss all) of thousands of years of theology and philosophy. When philosophy is shown to be wrong, it becomes irrelevant. Do we still ponder on the great import of Aristotle’s thoughts on the five elements? No. Because he was wrong. Aristotle, by the way, was wrong about almost everything; he inspired later thinkers who were, you know, less wrong, but he was not himself correct about many things.

 

[Doxus]

And it is God of the Gaps. Every debate with a Christian that involves science in any way inevitably leads to talk of one of the three “Great Holes” (unless they reject evolution, in which case I have to spend hours correcting all their misconceptions):

**Origin of the Universe – **The biggest one science has yet to solve. We do know how the universe started, by the way, the Big Bang. It doesn’t tell us why though. For now, we don’t know what. You say it’s god. I say, “I don’t know.”

**Origin of Life on Earth – **We’re actually closing in on this one pretty quick. Research into abiogenesis is making greater and greater strides and we know how organic chemicals assembled themselves into nucleotides, sugars, lipids, amino acids, and other pre-biotic chemicals, we know how those chemicals began to form proto-cells… We know how early cells became prokaryotic and began to use DNA instead of just RNA, we know how prokaryotic cells became ekuaryotes, and we know how multi-cellular life began, and we have a couple of pretty good ideas on how sexual reproduction got started. Only gap left is from proto-cells to actual primitive cells with metabolism. They’ve done a good job so far explaining the other steps, I’ll give them time to find the last one.

Nature of Consciousness – Falls in-between the other two in terms of how much it’s solved. We know a lot about neurology. More than you probably realize. Whatever consciousness is, it resides in the brain and is basically ruled by brain chemistry. This can be demonstrated in a laboratory. We’re still working out the system; we know where memory is stored, we aren’t 100% sure how yet. We know how signals are transferred, we don’t know how they are processed. Given 30-50 years we will likely be able to construct a cognitive model of the brain independent of just its biological structure. How that gives rise to me, to the person looking out from these eyes? I don’t know. Maybe we’ll know in 30-50 years, or maybe not. Invoking the supernatural doesn’t answer anything.

Interestingly, we can even invoke the “presence of god” by stimulating certain brain regions. God? Or dopamine?

You can prove anything with philosophy or theology. Its answers are not reliable. There are thousands of philosophies and thousands of religions and many of them are mutually exclusive. 90%+ of them must be wrong. It’s not a great leap to consider that the remainder may be as well.

 

[tonyrey]

And psychology can be understood through biology?

Which implies that all thoughts, beliefs, decisions and conclusions are determined by biological events.

Not hyperbole but the inexorable consequence of a scientific explanation of reality.

Why?

Why should the mind be exempt from the laws of nature?

Sigh. Remove the “every” from you initial statement. That removes the implication of excessive control or mind reading and it becomes close to correct.

It is convenient to evade the full implications of materialism by making unexplained exceptions!

 

[Doxus]

Which implies that all thoughts, beliefs, decisions and conclusions are determined by biological events.

Sure.

It is convenient to evade the full implications of materialism by making unexplained exceptions!

It is convenient to make spurious claims about the implications of entire families of philosophy only tangentially related to the ones being discussed for the purposes of attempting to make them sound scary!

Cuts both ways, kid.

 

[tonyrey]

And it is God of the Gaps. Every debate with a Christian that involves science in any way inevitably leads to talk of one of the three “Great Holes” (unless they reject evolution, in which case I have to spend hours correcting all their misconceptions):

As though Science of the Gaps doesn’t exist!

BTW Christianity is irrelevant in a philosophical discussion of Design…

**Origin of the Universe – **The biggest one science has yet to solve. We do know how the universe started, by the way, the Big Bang. It doesn’t tell us why though. For now, we don’t know what. You say it’s god. I say, “I don’t know.”

A vice for the theist and a virtue for the atheist!

**Origin of Life on Earth – **We’re actually closing in on this one pretty quick. Research into abiogenesis is making greater and greater strides and we know how organic chemicals assembled themselves into nucleotides, sugars, lipids, amino acids, and other pre-biotic chemicals, we know how those chemicals began to form proto-cells…

Your faith in the power of science is hardly justified by the absence of one synthetic cell after decades of research and experimentation by teams of highly qualified scientists working worlwide with the most up-to-date equipment in the finest laboratories. If fortuitous combinations of molecules can create it so easily why should it prove such a formidable task for the inventors of atomic weapons of destruction?

…know how early cells became prokaryotic and began to use DNA instead of just RNA, we know how prokaryotic cells became ekuaryotes, and we know how multi-cellular life began, and we have a couple of pretty good ideas on how sexual reproduction got started. Only gap left is from proto-cells to actual primitive cells with metabolism. They’ve done a good job so far explaining the other steps, I’ll give them time to find the last one.

For how long? The rest of your life?

Nature of Consciousness – Falls in-between the other two in terms of how much it’s solved. We know a lot about neurology. More than you probably realize. Whatever consciousness is, it resides in the brain and is basically ruled by brain chemistry.

A dogmatic assertion for which there is not one jot of evidence in addition to the fact that it would undermine your status as a rational being by depriving you of your ability to think for yourself…

This can be demonstrated in a laboratory.

How? Have conscious robots already been created?

We’re still working out the system; we know where memory is stored, we aren’t 100% sure how yet. We know how signals are transferred, we don’t know how they are processed. Given 30-50 years we will likely be able to construct a cognitive model of the brain independent of just its biological structure. How that gives rise to me, to the person looking out from these eyes? I don’t know. Maybe we’ll know in 30-50 years, or maybe not. Invoking the supernatural doesn’t answer anything.

You seem to believe invoking chemistry and physics will answer virtually everything! On what do you base your immense faith?

Interestingly, we can even invoke the “presence of god” by stimulating certain brain regions. God? Or dopamine?

No doubt we can also invoke the absence of God. Matter? Or morphine?

You can prove anything with philosophy or theology.

An example?

Its answers are not reliable.

But yours are!

There are thousands of philosophies and thousands of religions and many of them are mutually exclusive. 90%+ of them must be wrong.

Therefore it follows that atheism must be true beyond all shadow of doubt!

It’s not a great leap to consider that the remainder may be as well.
You obviously haven’t read The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley.

On what do you base your moral values? Does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have a scientific foundation?

 

[tonyrey]

Which implies that all

Thereby depriving you of any claim to be rational!

It is convenient to evade the full implications of materialism by making unexplained exceptions!

It is convenient to make spurious claims about the implications of entire families of philosophy only tangentially related to the ones being discussed for the purposes of attempting to make them sound scary!

An unsubstantiated assertion that requires justification…

Cuts both ways, kid.

Precisely - given that most of your statements are philosophical rather than scientific!

 

[zro_x]

“spiritual rationality” doesn’t come into the discussion. We are concerned with rationality pure and simple. The issue is whether any type of computer, biological or not, can be rational in any valid sense of the term. Rationality presupposes insight and understanding. There is not one jot of evidence that computers know what they are doing or understand anything.

That’s because conscious rationality falls out of the domain of science. There is also not one jot of evidence that other human beings besides yourself know what they are doing or understand anything.

No rational conclusion can be based solely on a negation! That is why the absence of a scientific explanation is a red herring which leads nowhere. The fact that science has explained some things doesn’t imply that it can explain everything. I don’t conclude that thoughts are designed **solely **because there is no scientific explanation but because there is a cogent explanation that corresponds to our personal experience and, ironically, to the success of science.

Not exactly. Science can be successful without a directive mind. Besides, that idea could be applied to everything. a couple ceturies ago, I could have said," I don’t conclude that snowflakes are designed solely because there is no scientific explanation but also because there is a different cogent explanation. (How exactly is this a case of mistaken identity?)

If you adopted that view about life you would never do anything!

only if any two pssibilities were exactly equally probable in any situation, which is what I believe to be the case here. The only way that Theism becomes more probable is by looking at miraculous and other explanations not generally attributed to science.

“may” has no scientific value. It is merely a supposition which confuses the issue.

This is not the case. We don’t know if robots will ever reach this state, but we can’t suppose that they won’t from our current knowledge. and if they do it would show that human behavior is possible without a mind.

If you believed things cause your choices and decisions you would never make any! Don’t you rely on yourself rather than inanimate objects?

That isn’t true. Atheists make choices and decisions all the time, and they don’t believe that they are freely making those decisions. And I don’t know whether I rely on myself rather than inanimate objects. I can’t.

“our” again presupposes** an indivisible entity**

, i.e. a person, whereas natural objects consist of parts. How can you regard the brain which consists of countless events as** one **being? In addition to all its other flaws materialism infringes the principle of economy.

My guess for how atheists explain this sort of thing is that the brain contains itself in closed electrochemical interactions. But I’m not an expert on this. Trurl, doxus, or candide west are probably better able to answer this question.

and anyway, you’ve come right back to your starting point. Not God of the Gaps, persay, but something like it. Here’s your basic idea, as I understand it:

We don’t know, and science can’t explain right now, how a series of atoms can give rise any single conscious experience and rationality. Religion provides a way to explain the penomena of the mind. We don’t really know whether or not science will be able to explain these phenomena with future discoveries, but we have to live right now as if either theism or naturalism is true, and since theism has an explanation, I’m going to go with them.

I agree that we have to live as if one or the other is true, but I don’t think we can determine from science which of the two are more probable, because science has provided explanations for things previously directly attributed to a deity in the past. We have to turn to other methods: philospophical proofs, miricles, etc.

The other problem is that religion *doesn’t * provide us with all the answers. It can’t explain how a mind can cause physical events, which is just as amazing and unexplainable as physical events causing a mind.

 

[Doxus]

I am being inundated with bad arguments.

As though Science of the Gaps doesn’t exist!

Not that I’m aware of, unless you count saying “Give science time to figure out what’s there or isn’t there” as being “Science of the Gaps”. In that case you’re missing the whole point of the God of the Gaps argument, which is not that religion tries to explain things that science doesn’t, but rather that religion relies on ignorance and lack of information to bolster itself, and is weakened when science illuminates facts about reality that contradict it.

A vice for the theist and a virtue for the atheist!
Your faith in the power of science is hardly justified by the absence of one synthetic cell after decades of research and experimentation by teams of highly qualified scientists working worlwide with the most up-to-date equipment in the finest laboratories. If fortuitous combinations of molecules can create it so easily why should it prove such a formidable task for the inventors of atomic weapons of destruction?

Heard of the phrase, “Moving the goalposts”?

We don’t have the technology to build a cell from scratch yet. Know what’s cool though? We have discovered alternatives to DNA, that is nucleic acid that can store and encode genetic information just like DNA, but uses different molecules. There are a number of different varieties, collectively called XNA. They are entirely synthetic, non-natural molecules which have had actual DNA genetic information transferred onto them, then transferred back to DNA, then back to XNA, then back to DNA…

Oh yeah, reminds me. We also have synthetic DNA, synthetic genes–Michelin tires is experimenting with using bacteria that have a synthetic gene that allows them to turn carbon into rubber, for the production of tires.

A synthetic cell is a ways off, but not as far as you might think.

For how long? The rest of your life?

Like with god, I don’t believe in seeing the future.

A dogmatic assertion for which there is not one jot of evidence in addition to the fact that it would undermine your status as a rational being by depriving you of your ability to think for yourself…

Dogma implies it cannot be questioned.

You can overturn current thinking on neurology just by demonstrating with one well-constructed experiment that there is some aspect of consciousness that cannot not reside in the brain.

As is, we have a great deal of evidence demonstrating that it is based in the brain:

Brain damage can cause memory loss, change of personality, loss of the ability to speak, and completely vegetative states.
A blow to the head or too much of a psychoactive compound can cause one to loose consciousness
Researchers have found that they can roughly reconstruct what you “see” in your head when envisioning, say, a movie trailer, by using an fMRI scanner
Stimulating various regions of the brain can cause emotions, can invoke the feeling of being in god’s presence, can cause you to recall various memories, even specific ones like the scent of apple pie at your grandmother’s house.
People with various psychoses demonstrate varied brain chemistry from those who are “normal”; also, taking chemical drugs can alter your state of mind, whether it be LSD or Adderall.

All of those things seem to point to consciousness being based in the brain, don’t you think?

 

[Doxus]

You seem to believe invoking chemistry and physics will answer virtually everything! On what do you base your immense faith?

Faith is belief in things without evidence and in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

I have tentative acceptance of the ability of science and physical evidence and reasoned logic to determine facts about our world because it has shown a remarkable ability to do so thus far. After all, it wasn’t theologians who created the transistor or the car or the air conditioner or the computer or the phone or the Haber process that feeds 2 billion people or the method by which high quality glass or plastic or can be mass produced or aspirin or penicillin or morphine or sanitation or modern plumbing or rockets to the moon or radio or the internal combustion engine or electric windmills or solar cells or blood transfusions or organ transplants or affordable, durable clothing made of synthetic materials or the modern chemical industry that allows the manufacturing of virtually any substance given time, or the modern manufacturing industry that allows almost any thing to be created, or don’t forget cameras and headphones and cellphones and microphones and cheap electrical power and batteries, or magnets or MRI scans or knowledge of how to treat, and in some cases cure cancer, oh and the eradication of smallpox…

And bad things as well, before you call me biased. Explosives for war and poisonous gases and nuclear bombs and pollution are results of science as well.

Science concerns itself with what is true. Unlike religion, it tests its predictions to FIND OUT if they ARE true. If they aren’t true, it looks for the truth, rather than dogmatically denying the evidence.

The religious will assert that science does deny evidence, because they don’t understand what evidence is. There are standards that have to be met. Something as unreliable as a fuzzy feeling you get in church, or seeing a ghost out of the corner of your eye, or a crowd of people whipping themselves into a religious frenzy and all claiming to see Jesus at once… That’s not reliable enough to be evidence. Evidence must be repeatable. It must be substantiated. Preferably it should be measurable. Religious claims have yet to meet those criteria. I’m sorry. Maybe try praying really hard for Jesus to come down without killing everyone.

On what do you base your moral values? Does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have a scientific foundation?

Yes, actually. Indirectly, in the case of the UDHR which was somewhat politically motivated by the US. But yes, there is a scientific basis for ethics. Humans have a shared sense of empathy, and a sense of justice. Ethics is the balancing of those two things to come up with solutions to problems to the greater good of all.

Just because you’re made of star stuff does not mean you aren’t a person, with emotions and opinions and senses and thoughts. It doesn’t mean you lack free will. It doesn’t mean you aren’t entitled to dignity and the same rights and responsibilities as anyone else. And that is what secular ethics are based on.

The confusion of atheism with nihilism is something I addressed in my “Misconceptions about Atheism” thread, which was unfortunately deleted due to the rather inane rule that atheism is not allowed in that section.

But suffice to say, atheism and nihilism are not the same thing, and if you cannot grasp that then I cannot help you.

 

[JDaniel]

But evolution isn’t supposed to address that,

JM: Then what is supposed to address that? In the absence of design, i.e., a creator, causer, manipulator, whatever, it is always attributed to some sort of evolution. Evolution is not a univocal word.

Biological evolution only concerns itself with how changes in forms happen over time. These days, it would be defined as “changes in genetic frequencies of populations.”

Why limit “evolution” to the biological? Abiogenesis is evolution to the scientists.

There is nothing in evolutionary theory that rejects the reality of a Creator, just as there is nothing in the process of photosynthesis that does. They are just natural processes.

No, they’re not. Think it through. The only natural process is sin, in the usual sense of that word to those wedded to biology.

God bless,
jd