Conference on Evolution

[ricmat]

Not at all. Have you ever played a children’s game involving chance? Candyland, perhaps? Or an adult game like poker? ** What is the purpose of your playing the game? Is the purpose contradicted by chance being involved? Why or why not?**

Most people would say that the purpose is to have fun. (Actually, I don’t like card games myself, but I love some people that do )

The element of chance allows that everyone has an opportunity to win. And I suppose, that part of the fun is that somebody else loses. So for all involved, if there’s no possibility of everybody winning, then it’s no fun. The element of chance allows that the outcomes are not certain.

However. God is not multiple people. He is not intent on winning. He doesn’t need to experience the thrill of the unknown.

As Cardinal Schoenborn says in “Chance or Purpose” speaking of arch-evolutionist Fr. George Coyne: “When an astronomer, who is also a priest and a theologian, even has the presumption to say that God himself could not know for certain that man would be the product of evolution, then nonsense has taken over completely.”

 

[buffalo]

I came across this:

THE SKULLS THAT DEMOLISH DARWIN (PDF)
us2.fmanager.net/api_v1/images/download.png Download (7,585 KB)

What do you guys think of this? I know the author is a Muslim, so don’t attack him for this. Just look at the pictures and give me your thoughts.

 

[mpartyka]

That is the mass market concept of reality. Something came from nothing. RNA, then DNA invented itself and programmed itself.

So let’s say that the creation of the universe and the creation of RNA are both supernatural events. How many more miracles must science affirm to satisfy you that the Catholic faith isn’t being violated? What’s your minimum threshold?

–Mike

 

[mpartyka]

The element of chance allows that the outcomes are not certain…God…doesn’t need to experience the thrill of the unknown.

Aren’t you accidentally excluding the scenario in which God creates a universe according to fixed natural laws and then “tweaks” natural events along the way as necessary to produce the effects He wants.

Think of a Plinko board on The Price is Right. The chip starts at the top and could land anywhere, but in the case of a particular chip (which will lead to speech in humans if it lands right), God gives the chip whatever nudges it will need to land in the right spot. It’s a basic paradigm of “chance” which is overruled whenever necessary by “design”. What’s wrong with such a view?

–Mike

 

[mpartyka]

I came across this:

THE SKULLS THAT DEMOLISH DARWIN (PDF)
us2.fmanager.net/api_v1/images/download.png Download (7,585 KB)

What do you guys think of this? I know the author is a Muslim, so don’t attack him for this. Just look at the pictures and give me your thoughts.

I tried to read through this, but in addition to being horribly ignorant of modern fossil evidence, the guy is basically an idiot. I had to stop at page 29 – just look at the pictures and read this accompanying text:

Were Darwinists’ claims true, then the remains of a great many peculiar living things should be encountered in the fossil record, as shown in these illustrations: a large number of eye sockets, noses in different places, a jaw in both in the front and the back, an abnormally developed skull, etc. However, research conducted over the last 150 years has produced absolutely no such fossil remains. On the contrary, all the fossils unearthed so far show that all living things have been flawless…

This guy obviously has no clue. He’s basically saying that because one person in a million turns into the Elephant Man, the earth should be littered with Elephant Man skulls or skulls with similar deformities. In the REAL world, fossilization is a rare occurence, just as the survival or propogation of a grossly-deformed person in areas with little technology is a rare occurence, and when you combine the odds of these two things’ happening together, you get very, VERY long odds that you’ll ever find the kinds of skull he’s saying we should be able to find everywhere.

Also, by focusing only on skulls, I think the book is misleading overall because it ignores the rest of the bones attached to these skulls which may or may not serve to demonstrate evolution in action. Maybe the skull is the part of the skeleton that changes least over time? I don’t know, but I think that you’d get more out of studying fossil hands than fossil skulls, given the amount of selective “action” that hands see in comparison.

And then, of course, there’s the genetic evidence we now have that renders the skull-survey utterly moot – and here, the author manages to destroy whatever credibility he thinks he has by quoting Dr. Francis Collins to support his creationist position. Dr. Collins is the head of the Human Genome Project and, in spite of his fervent belief in Christ, is unabashedly evolutionist! Indeed, the very book by Collins the author cites, The Language of God, expounds theistic evolution!

–Mike

P.S.: And did you notice that he doesn’t even put skulls from the same species on successive pages? This guy is a charlatan and a fraud, nothing more.

 

[StAnastasia]

I tried to read through this, but in addition to being horribly ignorant of modern fossil evidence, the guy is basically an idiot. I had to stop at page 29 – just look at the pictures and read this accompanying text:…-Mike…S.: And did you notice that he doesn’t even put skulls from the same species on successive pages? This guy is a charlatan and a fraud, nothing more.

Mike, Harun Yahya is worse than an idiot and a charlatan. In fact, “Harun Yahya” is a Turkish creationist collective (more than one guy) headed by Adnan Oktar. It’s a lying, deceitful, shamelessly plagiarizing group, that sent henchman Oktar Babuna to Rome to cause a ruckus at the Gregorian University conference on evolution last March.

Yahya has “published” three volumes of the “Atlas of Creation,” which is nothing more than page after page of photographs ripped off from science sites, with fossil photos juxtaposed with modern animal pictures to show that no evolution has occurred. Yahya old earthers have no truck for Christian YECs – and assume we’re all going to Islamic hell anyway – but they happily plagiarize materials from YEC sites. They sent fifty thousand copies of the Atlas to schools in France and to biology department sin the US. My university was miffed that we didn’t get one, but a college at which I was guest lecturing last year happily gave me their copy as my honorarium! It has a priceless place on our shelves.

StAnastasia

 

[buffalo]

I tried to read through this, but in addition to being horribly ignorant of modern fossil evidence, the guy is basically an idiot. I had to stop at page 29 – just look at the pictures and read this accompanying text:

This guy obviously has no clue. He’s basically saying that because one person in a million turns into the Elephant Man, the earth should be littered with Elephant Man skulls or skulls with similar deformities. In the REAL world, fossilization is a rare occurence, just as the survival or propogation of a grossly-deformed person in areas with little technology is a rare occurence, and when you combine the odds of these two things’ happening together, you get very, VERY long odds that you’ll ever find the kinds of skull he’s saying we should be able to find everywhere.

Also, by focusing only on skulls, I think the book is misleading overall because it ignores the rest of the bones attached to these skulls which may or may not serve to demonstrate evolution in action. Maybe the skull is the part of the skeleton that changes least over time? I don’t know, but I think that you’d get more out of studying fossil hands than fossil skulls, given the amount of selective “action” that hands see in comparison.

And then, of course, there’s the genetic evidence we now have that renders the skull-survey utterly moot – and here, the author manages to destroy whatever credibility he thinks he has by quoting Dr. Francis Collins to support his creationist position. Dr. Collins is the head of the Human Genome Project and, in spite of his fervent belief in Christ, is unabashedly evolutionist! Indeed, the very book by Collins the author cites, The Language of God, expounds theistic evolution!

–Mike

P.S.: And did you notice that he doesn’t even put skulls from the same species on successive pages? This guy is a charlatan and a fraud, nothing more.

I didn’t like some things either. The examples were exagerrated.

But, there are many pages that show skulls the same 50 million years ago as they are today,

 

[mpartyka]

But, there are many pages that show skulls the same 50 million years ago as they are today

First, from StAnastania’s revelations concerning the “author,” I would be skeptical of the fossil evidence given. For all we know the “author” pasted the same skulls (or skulls from the same eras) on multiple pages.

Second:

mpartyka:

By focusing only on skulls, I think the book is misleading overall because it ignores the rest of the bones attached to these skulls which may or may not serve to demonstrate evolution in action. Maybe the skull is the part of the skeleton that changes least over time? I don’t know, but I think that you’d get more out of studying fossil hands than fossil skulls, given the amount of selective “action” that hands see in comparison.

Third:

mpartyka:

Of course, there’s the genetic evidence we now have that renders the skull-survey utterly moot.

–Mike

 

[ricmat]

Aren’t you accidentally excluding the scenario in which God creates a universe according to fixed natural laws and then “tweaks” natural events along the way as necessary to produce the effects He wants.

Could you elaborate on this? I’m not sure what you’re asking. But based on how I’m reading your comment, my answer is “no.”

 

[mpartyka]

Could you elaborate on this? I’m not sure what you’re asking. But based on how I’m reading your comment, my answer is “no.”

Are you not familiar with Plinko?

mpartyka:

Think of a Plinko board on The Price is Right. The chip starts at the top and could land anywhere, but in the case of a particular chip (which will lead to speech in humans if it lands right), God gives the chip whatever nudges it will need to land in the right spot. It’s a basic paradigm of “chance” which is overruled whenever necessary by “design”. What’s wrong with such a view?

Plinko Demonstration

Basically, I’m saying that in most cases, God lets the Plinko chips fall where they may, but in cases where He wants a particular outcome, he’ll nudge the chips as needed to get the outcome He wants. (Kind of like a “Gideon and the fleece” scenario – most days, both the fleece and the ground would be wet with dew, but because God’s proving a point with Gideon, he makes just the fleece wet one day, and just the ground wet the next.)

–Mike

 

[ricmat]

Are you not familiar with Plinko?

I was in Japan on 12 separate occasions. I’m not familiar with the price is right version, but yes, I am familiar with it. Although they call it pachinko.

Basically, I’m saying that in most cases, God lets the Plinko chips fall where they may, but in cases where He wants a particular outcome, he’ll nudge the chips as needed to get the outcome He wants. (Kind of like a “Gideon and the fleece” scenario – most days, both the fleece and the ground would be wet with dew, but because God’s proving a point with Gideon, he makes just the fleece wet one day, and just the ground wet the next.)

–Mike

Yes, I understand that also. As well as your previous post.

I’m not of the opinion that God directly causes every mutation. I’ve stated this several times in the past. What you describe above is very similar to what I’ve described as my own views.

I’m not excluding the view where God directly nudges things around.

 

[mpartyka]

I’m not of the opinion that God directly causes every mutation. I’ve stated this several times in the past. What you describe above is very similar to what I’ve described as my own views. I’m not excluding the view where God directly nudges things around.

See, that’s why I think it’s time I bowed out and started a new thread. Hard to figure out what I should really be arguing against.

–Mike

 

[edwest2]

So let’s say that the creation of the universe and the creation of RNA are both supernatural events. How many more miracles must science affirm to satisfy you that the Catholic faith isn’t being violated? What’s your minimum threshold?

–Mike

My minimum is the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Communion and Stewardship, parts 64, 68 and 69:

vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html

Peace,
Ed

 

[mpartyka]

My minimum is the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Communion and Stewardship, parts 64, 68 and 69:

vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html

Doesn’t part 69 actually dismantle your main argument?

Many neo-Darwinian scientists, as well as some of their critics, have concluded that, if evolution is a radically contingent materialistic process driven by natural selection and random genetic variation, then there can be no place in it for divine providential causality…But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence…even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation.

And what about sections 43 and 63?

Every individual human being as well as the whole human community are created in the image of God. In its original unity – of which Adam is the symbol – the human race is made in the image of the divine Trinity…While the story of human origins is complex and subject to revision, physical anthropology and molecular biology combine to make a convincing case for the origin of the human species in Africa about 150,000 years ago in a humanoid population of common genetic lineage.

I see no arguments against either “true contingency” or polygenism in this document.

–Mike

 

[edwest2]

You are simply cutting out the parts you like and leaving out the rest.

“An unguided evolutionary process - one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence - simply cannot exist…”

The fact is that the anti-theist hopes that ‘it all happened by itself,’ but the Church is saying such a process simply cannot exist.

Peace,
Ed

 

[StAnastasia]

Doesn’t part 69 actually dismantle your main argument? And what about sections 43 and 63? I see no arguments against either “true contingency” or polygenism in this document.–Mike

Mike, you’re right about paragraph 63. And you know what: in fifty years polygenism won’t even be an issue. Holy Mother Church in her wisdom is a stabilizing force, and slower than the advance troops to absorb new ideas (e.g., heliocentrism) but she gets there eventually.

Prophetic voices like those of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Karl Rahner are being echoed all the time in contemporary Catholic theology (in the work of Ilia Delio, Jack Haught, Celia Deane Drummond, Frank Budenholzer, Denis Edwards). Eventually evolution will become as mainstream as gravity, relativity, and the expanding universe.
Anti-evolutionism will be espoused mainly in places like Ruby Ridge, Idaho, where (as an Idahoan told me) people go when Alabama starts to look too liberal!

More astonishing is that after all this lively discussion we’ve not yet been shut down. You would think that Post 1049 is way over the 1,000 post limit!

StAnastasia

 

[edwest2]

Adam and Eve were our first parents. Through one man, sin entered the world. That’s in the Bible.

Peace,
Ed

 

[StAnastasia]

Adam and Eve were our first parents. Through one man, sin entered the world. That’s in the Bible.Peace,Ed

A lot of things are in the Bible, some good, some not so good. Hermeneutics teaches us how to read the Bible.

 

[ricmat]

Anti-evolutionism will be espoused mainly in places like Ruby Ridge, Idaho, where (as an Idahoan told me) people go when Alabama starts to look too liberal!

So if conservative Alabaman’s go to Ruby Ridge, Idaho, when Alabama starts to look too liberal, where do blind guides who think the Church is too conservative go? And no, I’m not thinking of conferences in Rome.

 

[mpartyka]

You are simply cutting out the parts you like and leaving out the rest.

“An unguided evolutionary process - one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence - simply cannot exist…”

The fact is that the anti-theist hopes that ‘it all happened by itself,’ but the Church is saying such a process simply cannot exist.

Exactly right, because nothing falls outside of one of these two categories:

1. Divine causality (e.g., a miracle).
2. Created causality (e.g., a contingent natural process).

“Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation.”

–Mike