Conference on Evolution

[StAnastasia]

This is not “morality” since nobody was commanded or required to do anything. Nature does not say that such a thing was good or bad. You’re imposing your Christian morals on unintelligent, blind, unguided, uncaring nature. It didn’t matter what this group of humans did or didn’t do. They are products of evolution – they can kill each other or heal each other. Nature and material processes do not care about such things, nor do they command or prohibit one or the opposite actions.

Of course it’s morality.

 

[reggieM]

My individual karma has very little effect on human evolution. I am human now, my next lifetime might be as a cow, the one after that as a semi-intelligent Thrull on planet Skyron. Evolution is a population phenomenon so it is averaged out over whole populations. What happens to an individual can be very different from what you would expect from a population.

You are assuming that that amount and kind of karma will stay the same tomorrow and in the future. If everyone committed many more evils, karma would change. If they avoided all evil actions – karma would be different. In both cases, the effect on evolution would be radically different. You cannot know how much or little effect this will be.

However if I put just one molecule of the gas into the room then it will only be present in a given half of the room 50% of the time. What is true of a single molecule is not true of a population of molecules.

But again, you’re confusing spiritual things with material/physical. Karma is not the product of unintelligent nature, but rather the result of human actions, mind and spiritual qualities. You can’t measure karma like it is gas molecules. Every individual carries it and the quantity can increase or decrease radically in unpredictable ways.

With karma the material effect may not be immediate and so difficult to investigate scientifically.

Exactly. It can affect nature in ways that you or I or any scientist does not know about. This clearly affects evolution.

The gods etc. probably can intervene, however if they do so it is a very rare event; given the number of prayers that are offered daily and the number of observed divine interventions I do not see prayer as useful for myself.

As above – you cannot measure the effect that gods have on nature by using scientific methods. They have an impact on evolution that is unaccounted for and science cannot even understand it.

We are in agreement, I have no scientific proof for any effect, or lack of effect, of karma on evolution.

Ok, it could be very great or very small. This is a major point.

Thanks for your reply.

 

[reggieM]

Of course it’s morality.

Nowhere in nature does it say that it is better to be altruistic than it is to be selfish. Nowhere does nature say that one thing is “better” than another. You’re imposing your own moral values (oriented to Christianity) on the situation. Again, nature just “is” – it does not command or forbid any human behaviors. It does not make judgements. The fact that people do or not do whatever things is meaningless. They do whatever natural laws have them do. That is atheistic-materalism.

 

[reggieM]

I am going to unsubscribe from this thread. Perhaps we can meet elsewhere. Thanks.

 

[StAnastasia]

Nowhere in nature does it say that it is better to be altruistic than it is to be selfish. Nowhere does nature say that one thing is “better” than another. You’re imposing your own moral values (oriented to Christianity) on the situation. Again, nature just “is” – it does not command or forbid any human behaviors. It does not make judgements. The fact that people do or not do whatever things is meaningless. They do whatever natural laws have them do. That is atheistic-materalism.

Reggie, I’m not imposing Christian values on a paleolithic culture that cared for one of their own who was crippled. I’m merely saying that when a group cares for one of its own for thirty-five years, this looks to me like morality. If you think there was no morality before Moses cobbled together a bunch of apodictic aphorisms, or before Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, that’s your prerogative. But pre-Mosaic behavior certainly looks like morality to me. If it walks like a duck it is a duck.

I can understand why you’re unsubscribing from this thread – it’s too hot in the kitchen! See you on another thread!

StAnastasia

 

[rossum]

Grannymh, evolution is not complete because no scientific theory is ever complete. Think of scientific truth as asymptotic: no matter how close you are to compelteless, there is always the possibility that new evidence will call the existing theorical structure into question. Sometimes this requires merely small adjustments of the theory to explain the new data. Sometimes it calls the entire theory into doubt and we end up with a paradigm shift.

Correct. Science is based on observing the material world. Since we have not yet observed everything there is to observe about the material world, every scientific result must be provisional. Hence no scientific theory is ever complete or proved. It is as if new books of the Bible appeared every so often; theology could never be declared final just in case a new text reinterpreted what went before.

Shortly before Einstein published his seminanl work, a physicist in the early twentieth century (whose name I’ll have to dig up) pronounced that we know just about everything there is to know about physics. This was in “completion” of Newtonian mechanics, which was, as you know, blown to smithereens and the pieces absorbed in the next few decades by Einsteinian relativity and quantum mechanics.

William Thompson, Lord Kelvin. He gave a lecture in 1900 where he said that physics was essentially complete except for two remaining problems: black body radiation and the negative result of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Unfortunately for him, the black body radiation problem led to quantum mechanics (Einstein 1905) and relativity (Einstein 1905). For obvious reasons 1905 is often called Einstein’s Wunderjahr.

So, in fine, by definition no theory ever could be “complete.”

Correct.

rossum

 

[buffalo]

Reggie, I’m not imposing Christian values on a paleolithic culture that cared for one of their own who was crippled. I’m merely saying that when a group cares for one of its own for thirty-five years, this looks to me like morality. If you think there was no morality before Moses cobbled together a bunch of apodictic aphorisms, or before Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, that’s your prerogative. But pre-Mosaic behavior certainly looks like morality to me. If it walks like a duck it is a duck.

I can understand why you’re unsubscribing from this thread – it’s too hot in the kitchen! See you on another thread!

StAnastasia

We see immediately that Cain murdered Abel. Cain was punished by God. God by His interaction taught morality right at the beginning.

 

[mpartyka]

…I think it is nonsense to suggest that prior to the Bhagavad Gita, or the Popol Vuh, or Siddhartha Gautama, or Moses, or Jesus, or Muhammad, the people in their respective parts of the world had no morality. The fact is that these religious founders built up, even universalized, a preexisting morality. The Hebrew scriptures clearly codified an existing – if inchoate – morality that had evolved with the species’ broader evolution into conscious awareness.

I think we’re mainly in agreement. I’m only saying that the morality need not, as reggieM insists, be required to preexist humanity, nor need it require external compulsion to be truly called “morality”.

–Mike

 

[StAnastasia]

We see immediately that Cain murdered Abel. Cain was punished by God. God by His interaction taught morality right at the beginning.

Actually, God taught morality long before Cain and Abel. If the Flood was 4,000 years ago, and Cain and Abel lived two thousand years before that, that’s still tens of thousands of years after the example I raised of paleolithic morality.

StAnastasia

 

[buffalo]

Actually, God taught morality long before Cain and Abel. If the Flood was 4,000 years ago, and Cain and Abel lived two thousand years before that, that’s still tens of thousands of years after the example I raised of paleolithic morality.

StAnastasia

So exactly when was this ontological leap? Who did He teach it to?

 

[grannymh]

Grannymh, evolution is not complete because no scientific theory is ever complete. Think of scientific truth as asymptotic: no matter how close you are to compelteless, there is always the possibility that new evidence will call the existing theorical structure into question. Sometimes this requires merely small adjustments of the theory to explain the new data. Sometimes it calls the entire theory into doubt and we end up with a paradigm shift.

William Paley’s Natural Theology expressed confidence that the theory of biological origins from one initial creation was complete. But his thinking was already out of date, because geologists, biologists and others had been thinking evolutionary thoughts for a generation prior to Darwin’s bombshell.

Shortly before Einstein published his seminanl work, a physicist in the early twentieth century (whose name I’ll have to dig up) pronounced that we know just about everything there is to know about physics. This was in “completion” of Newtonian mechanics, which was, as you know, blown to smithereens and the pieces absorbed in the next few decades by Einsteinian relativity and quantum mechanics.

So, in fine, by definition no theory ever could be “complete.”
StAnastasia

In that case, would you like to contribute to the incomplete theory of a
“Parallel Lineage for Homo sapiens”? All it requires is some small adjustments as data is revisited.

 

[StAnastasia]

In that case, would you like to contribute to the incomplete theory of a
“Parallel Lineage for Homo sapiens”? All it requires is some small adjustments as data is revisited.

Thanks, Grannymh. What do you mean by “Parallel Lineage for Homo sapiens”? Parallel to what? In any case, as a theologian rather than a scientist, I would have little credibility in this venture.

StAnastasia

 

[StAnastasia]

So exactly when was this ontological leap? Who did He teach it to?

That’s an excellent question, Buffalo. Rafael Vicuna of the Pontifical Academy of Science postulated in 2003 that God inserted souls into a population of suitably prepared hominids about 70,000 years ago. However other paleontologists and anthropologists – including those in my department – argue that full Homo sapiens emerged about 150,000 years ago.

Whatever the date, I assume God began leading humans into moral awareness as soon as they were neurologically prepared for it. In the fulness of time, God built upon this moral awareness with the progressive revelation of moral codes (Hammurabic, Mosaic, Greek), and brought this to moral perfection in the Incarnation. Matthew articulates beautifully in chapter 5, including the the Sermon on the Mount, a universal ethic.

StAnastasia

 

[ricmat]

OK, ricmat, but I’m not convinced that mind, consciousness, morality, and spiritual awareness are entirely independent of body.

It seems to work for God, and the angels. They have no bodies. Or do you disagree?

 

[buffalo]

That’s an excellent question, Buffalo. Rafael Vicuna of the Pontifical Academy of Science postulated in 2003 that God inserted souls into a population of suitably prepared hominids about 70,000 years ago. However other paleontologists and anthropologists – including those in my department – argue that full Homo sapiens emerged about 150,000 years ago.

Whatever the date, I assume God began leading humans into moral awareness as soon as they were neurologically prepared for it. In the fulness of time, God built upon this moral awareness with the progressive revelation of moral codes (Hammurabic, Mosaic, Greek), and brought this to moral perfection in the Incarnation. Matthew articulates beautifully in chapter 5, including the the Sermon on the Mount, a universal ethic.

StAnastasia

The PAS? The Pontifical Academy of Evolutionists and Atheists? Oh My!

Emerged? Which two of those who emerged are our parents?

 

[StAnastasia]

It seems to work for God, and the angels. They have no bodies. Or do you disagree?

God’s a unique case, since we have no idea in what divine “consciousness” consists. our own consciousness being analogous. I’ve never met or conversed with an angel, and I’ve never conversed with a human being who wasn’t an embodied mind. So I remain agnostic on that matter.

StAnastasia

 

[StAnastasia]

Emerged? Which two of those who emerged are our parents?

No two. 3,000-10,000 breeding pairs.

 

[buffalo]

No two. 3,000-10,000 breeding pairs.

So which two the breeding pairs are the cause of original sin?

 

[ricmat]

I’ve never met or conversed with an angel, and I’ve never conversed with a human being who wasn’t an embodied mind. So I remain agnostic on that matter.

StAnastasia

So you need to talk with an angel to actually figure out if they have “mind, consciousness, morality, and spiritual awareness”?

I thought it was pretty much a “done deal” from the theology perspective that angels have the above qualities. And a done deal that they don’t have bodies.

 

[StAnastasia]

And a done deal that they don’t have bodies.

Luke 1:26-38 suggests otherwise. Being sent to Nazareth involves physical location, as does “departing from her.” Speaking requires lungs, larynx, tongue, etc. Unless, of course, we are not meant to read this passage literally.