Creation vs Evolution

[hecd2]

SocaliCatholic:

Aha! So it really is more complex than most creationists give credit for. I think I can understand now why the evolutionists vs. creationists debate gets so heated now: Not enough credit is given for the amount of thinking and analysis by biologists that goes into producing theories such as evolution. And as hard your and hed2’s post are to read sometimes, that shouldn’t be taken as you guys are arrogant like some creationists post’s I’ve read, but in actuallity creaionists should be understanding to the amount of technical analysis that goes into developing these theories and it is not communicated easily which is why I can’t understand it.

Well it is more complex than most anti-evolutionists give it credit for.

But speaking purely for myself, anything that I say that you can’t understand can be put down to the fact that I’m a pompous arse who often can’t be bothered to take the care to write plain English and who lazily uses the jargon of the laboratory.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[buffalo]

wanerious:

I’m not following… what kinds of cosmological things are evidence of design?

We could start with the Big Bang.

 

[hecd2]

wanerious:

I’m not following… what kinds of cosmological things are evidence of design?

Apparently, the further we look the more evidence of design we see: increased evidence of design obviously follows this hierarchy back in time:

Fully formed galaxies at z = 1.5
Quasars up to z = 6.4
Reionisation of hydrogen at z = 20
Decoupling and the surface of last scattering at z = 1079
End of inflation
Inception of inflation
Big Bang?

Or perhaps we are missing the point?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

SocaliCatholic:

Have you read them and is there anything that should be added that you reccomend so when I disprove it you and Alec don’t get mad at me.

Dear Socali,

I was sure you still had an ambition to disprove evolution. Have a really fun time.

But remember, derived homologies are more reliable indicators of phylogenetic relations than are ancestral homologies

and

molecular phylogenetics uses three classes of technique:

• molecular distance
• parsimony
• maximum likelihood

and

• Bayesian techniques are becoming more prevalent in phylogenetics using Markov Chain Monte-Carlo methods to determine a consensus amongst all proposals for the distribution of the posterior probabilities.

I’m teasing, but you should still be aware that everything I’ve written is real (and totally elementary for professional phylogeneticists).

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

SocaliCatholic:

All things else being equal, and with respect to whatever means you believe something like evolution for example, if evidence for God was presented in by the same means would you believe in God?

Yes. If evidence for God in the same class as evidence for a natural phenomenon were presented, I would agree that the existence of God is a pretty good hypothesis. The difficulty is that if such evidence were to exist, then the phenomenon of God would be simply part of the natural order of things. The evidence would have consistently to explain observations and be able to make predictions. Maybe evidence of God which has some of these properties exists and I’m not quite sure what I would think about it without some specific examples. Have you any such examples?

YES. Then I will do my best to try to construct a way to arrive at the conclusion God from the same rational methodology that evolutionary biologists use.

I look forward to that.

YES part II Better yet could you save me years of strife and just tell me how you think by a formal description? Such as if fossil A is without a doubt creature ABC, then we can conclude that if the reasoning used to reason fossil A implies creature ABC then there must be some universiality to the truth of this type of thinking that can be applied elsewhere.

If by this you mean ‘can we always reliably assign a fossil to a particular species?’, the answer is ‘no’. If on the other hand you are asking whether there is a universal method by which we can reliably assign some fossils to particular taxa, then the answer is ‘yes’, and it is based on observation of anatomical characters. There are vanishinglyfew well preserved and more or less complete fossils with tetrapod characteristics that cannot be reliably assigned to the tetrapod clade and millions that can.

**YES part III **Let us assume that if God exists that he will make Himself known to all people who desire to know Him by whatever means of reason they have. That if God in fact did exist then he will allow a means to know Him using the reason [R,eb] [Reason, evolutionary biologist] and the circumstances of [A,hecd2] [Alec, hecd2] so that if we were to combine the universal [R,eb] and the circumstancial[A,hecd2] then God could be shown to exist if we could establish the link between the logical necessity of God being reachable by reason, with the reason of [R,eb] with respect to the circumstances of [A,hecd2]

Sorry, you’ve lost me.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[Vindex_Urvogel]

buffalo:

Maybe we could add some cosmological things here.

Basically that the further we look the more design we find.

Mmmhmm…except cosmology has this much to with evolutionary biology: ____________

SynapticSynapsid

 

[wanerious]

buffalo:

We could start with the Big Bang.

Ok. Is there any particular aspect about it that seems designed?

 

[Liberty]

***Long midnight flight. Been reading on the plane that phenotypes modify their local environments through ‘niche construction’. Each generation inherits both genes and a legacy of modified selection pressures (ecological inheritance) ****** from ancestral organisms. ***

The standard evolutionary perspective is that populations of organisms transmit genes from one generation to the next, under direction of natural selection.

Niche construction and natural selection are not regarded as parallel, interactive processes contributing to the synergic match between organisms and environments, but rather the former is treated as a product of the latter.

The arguement from what I understand is that niche construction is best regarded not only as an evolutionary product but also an evolutionary process. Niche-constructing traits are more than just adaptations, because they play the additional role of modifying natural selection pressures, frequently in a directed manner, and in doing so they change the evolutionary dynamic. According to the niche-construction perspective, the changes to the evolutionary process brought about by niche construction and ecological inheritance are sufficiently important and occur sufficiently frequently to warrant an overhaul in evolutionary thinking.

Feedback appreciated.
Liberty

 

[SocaliCatholic]

hecd2:

Sorry, you’ve lost me.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

Alec, when I wrote it I was getting a little carried away, but the point that I was trying to get across was that if God exists and is knowable, then would you agree with me that it is likely that God would speak in terms that you could understand and should make sense to you if your heart and mind was open to God? Basically the idea of a God is pretty important if He does in fact exist, so why wouldn’t you want to put in the effort to challenge your assumptions about God’s existence? If you already have done your best, that was the reason I asked you what were those important conclusions that you’ve reached already so I can be as relevant to you as possible, if I can be of any assitance to you God willing.

 

[buffalo]

wanerious:

Ok. Is there any particular aspect about it that seems designed?

It had a beginning, ask yourself why.

 

[wanerious]

buffalo:

It had a beginning, ask yourself why.

Well, I don’t know why. It is a question that we can just barely address scientifically, so “I don’t know” is the only honest answer.

The fact that it had a beginning doesn’t lead me to believe that the present Universe is designed as such, but since I choose to be Christian, I enjoy believing that it was designed with a beautiful set of natural laws guiding its future evolution. Amongst the fundamental constants of nature there are tantalizing mysteries that I suppose one could interpret to be part of the overall “design”, but I prefer to couch them in terms of our (still) ignorance of the complete set of “true” laws.

 

[buffalo]

wanerious:

Well, I don’t know why. It is a question that we can just barely address scientifically, so “I don’t know” is the only honest answer.

The fact that it had a beginning doesn’t lead me to believe that the present Universe is designed as such, but since I choose to be Christian, I enjoy believing that it was designed with a beautiful set of natural laws guiding its future evolution. Amongst the fundamental constants of nature there are tantalizing mysteries that I suppose one could interpret to be part of the overall “design”, but I prefer to couch them in terms of our (still) ignorance of the complete set of “true” laws.

The parameters for life are so tight that the chances of life happening randomly are very low. What we know about the universe is that it is precisely this universe that is needed to create life.

 

[wanerious]

buffalo:

The parameters for life are so tight that the chances of life happening randomly are very low. What we know about the universe is that it is precisely this universe that is needed to create life.

We may be talking about two different things. So far as we understand biology and evolution, it does appear as though there are relatively few planets and stars capable of supporting beings like ourselves. We may indeed be a rare jewel in the cosmic landscape.

I confess to not entirely understanding your second sentence. We simply don’t know enough about the basic physical rules to take a surefooted stand on what the Universe would be like if some of the parameters were different. Even with the known constants, scientists are constantly surprised and delighted by newly discovered phenomena.

Many physicists have been interested in the problem phrased as, “Did God have any choice in creating the Universe?” In other words, does the selection of a few principles and constants lead to the wonderfully complex cosmos we see? This is a problem I’ve been interested in also, and work on whenever I get some spare time. The rich set of laws of mechanics (including Newton’s Laws and many aspects of quantum behavior) can be derived from the Principle of Least Action, that everywhere along a particle’s path the difference between its kinetic and potential energies is a minimum (or maximum). Optical phenomena, including reflection and refraction of light, can be derived from Fermat’s Principle, asserting that light takes the path of least time. How many such beautiful principles are there? We don’t know. Are there some more fundamental, such that the ones we know can be derived from it? We don’t know. I suppose my implicit belief in the existence of beautiful principles to be ultimately discovered is an indication that I believe in some kind of “design”, but I don’t know that the search ever ends — I’m pretty confident that any argument from design is specious simply because we’ll never know the ultimate design. Any evidence for it will finally be shown to be only evidence of our prior ignorance and inaccuracy.

 

[buffalo]

Anthropic coincidences will be right up your alley.

Anthropic Coincidences

Now, you will get many responses about natural causes for this.

 

[hecd2]

SocaliCatholic:

Alec, when I wrote it I was getting a little carried away, but the point that I was trying to get across was that if God exists and is knowable, then would you agree with me that it is likely that God would speak in terms that you could understand and should make sense to you if your heart and mind was open to God?

Not necessarily.

Basically the idea of a God is pretty important if He does in fact exist, so why wouldn’t you want to put in the effort to challenge your assumptions about God’s existence?

I have been challenging my beliefs for 40 years, with as much honesty and integrity as I can. These are not ‘assumptions’ that I’ve arrived at lightly.

If you already have done your best, that was the reason I asked you what were those important conclusions that you’ve reached already so I can be as relevant to you as possible, if I can be of any assitance to you God willing.

I can see that you hope to bring me back to the Church, and I respect your motivation for doing so. My mind is not closed, so it’s not impossible, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. I respect your way of going about it and thanks for trying.

Here is a portion of my belief. If God, the after-life and Judgement exist (I don’t believe they do, but IF they do), then we will be judged completely on acts and goodwill and NOT AT ALL on faith. Where is the merit in faith and belief per se? I know too many unbelievers who live lives of great value and shining charity. to let me accede to the idea that they could be cast out when the self-righteous self-labelled believers are saved

Alec
homepage.ntlworld.com/macandrew/Grenada_disaster/Grenada_disaster.htm

I felt a shadow passing over me
That could stay forever more
Like a wave I’m breaking far at sea
There’s no-one to hear the roar
The days are drifting into seasons
They’re the hardest I have known
A million spaces in the earth to fill
But no going home - there’s no going home.

When it thunders from the empty sky
I shall be there
No one to hold you when the stormbirds fly
Is there no-one left to care?

I’m searching rumours with my hollow plans
Whan all I want is what’s mine.
Lost and lonely in a foreign land
I’m left too far behind the lines
I want to tear down the walls between us
But I can’t do it all alone
A million spaces in the earth to fill
Here’s a generation waiting still
We’ve got year after year to kill
But no going home,
There’s no going home.

Steve Knightley’s paean to Exile

 

[SocaliCatholic]

hecd2:

Not necessarily.
I have been challenging my beliefs for 40 years, with as much honesty and integrity as I can. These are not ‘assumptions’ that I’ve arrived at lightly.
I can see that you hope to bring me back to the Church, and I respect your motivation for doing so. My mind is not closed, so it’s not impossible, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. I respect your way of going about it and thanks for trying.

Here is a portion of my belief. If God, the after-life and Judgement exist (I don’t believe they do, but IF they do), then we will be judged completely on acts and goodwill and NOT AT ALL on faith. Where is the merit in faith and belief per se? I know too many unbelievers who live lives of great value and shining charity. to let me accede to the idea that they could be cast out when the self-righteous self-labelled believers are saved

Alec
homepage.ntlworld.com/macandrew/Grenada_disaster/Grenada_disaster.htm

I felt a shadow passing over me
That could stay forever more
Like a wave I’m breaking far at sea
There’s no-one to hear the roar
The days are drifting into seasons
They’re the hardest I have known
A million spaces in the earth to fill
But no going home - there’s no going home.

When it thunders from the empty sky
I shall be there
No one to hold you when the stormbirds fly
Is there no-one left to care?

I’m searching rumours with my hollow plans
Whan all I want is what’s mine.
Lost and lonely in a foreign land
I’m left too far behind the lines
I want to tear down the walls between us
But I can’t do it all alone
A million spaces in the earth to fill
Here’s a generation waiting still
We’ve got year after year to kill
But no going home,
There’s no going home.

Steve Knightley’s paean to Exile

Alec, you are correct.

Please understand that I don’t agree with with Once-Saved-Always-Saved types preaching Hell for those that aren’t “saved”. That is not what the Catholic Church teaches.

I am actually participating in another thread in a debate with protestants and faith-only types

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=15872&page=5

that specifically refutes the idea that one can be saved by faith alone and without good works of charity and love.

I can assure you of three things in the Bible and from Catholic teaching.

1. God Loves You.
2. God says love Him.
3. God says love your neighbor as you would love yourself.

The greatest commandment Jesus gave man was to love God.

Grace (God’s Love for you) is the starting point, and from that Grace we can have faith to believe in God (we know how to love God and our neighbor because we believe the Word of God) But, the greatest commandment, Love, implies action (faith + works)

Faith alone is not enough. Faith alone is dead. James 2:24 in the Bible. We NEED Love!

 

[hecd2]

SocaliCatholic:

Alec, you are correct.

Please understand that I don’t agree with with Once-Saved-Always-Saved types preaching Hell for those that aren’t “saved”. That is not what the Catholic Church teaches.

I am actually participating in another thread in a debate with protestants and faith-only types

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=15872&page=5

that specifically refutes the idea that one can be saved by faith alone and without good works of charity and love.

I can assure you of three things in the Bible and from Catholic teaching.

1. God Loves You.
2. God says love Him.
3. God says love your neighbor as you would love yourself.

The greatest commandment Jesus gave man was to love God.

Grace (God’s Love for you) is the starting point, and from that Grace we can have faith to believe in God (we know how to love God and our neighbor because we believe the Word of God) But, the greatest commandment, Love, implies action (faith + works)

Faith alone is not enough. Faith alone is dead. James 2:24 in the Bible. We NEED Love!

Dear Socali,

Thank you for this. All I can say is that in agreeing that Faith alone is not enough we are closer than are believing Christians who disagree about the sufficiency of Faith.

There is a great merit in the beliefs in which we agree, viz that good will, charity and care are critical to give meaning to our lives. But we shouldn’t overestimate our agreement - I go to the other extreme from your once saved friends - for me Faith means little or nothing. I hold a caring unbeliever in much higher regard than the Catholic who knows his or her faith inside out, who is a frequent communicant, but who cares little or nothing about others.

I am also sorry to say that in the hierarchy of commandments as you present them, I demur - in particular - on the requirement to love God, a being whose existence I doubt. I think the entire cosmos, the physical universe, the earth, and life on earth are achingly beautiful, and I am sad that I will not be able to see the unfolding of even the next 50 years, in a history that although 14 billion years old has barely begun. Do you think that counts?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[SocaliCatholic]

hecd2:

Dear Socali,

Thank you for this. All I can say is that in agreeing that Faith alone is not enough we are closer than are believing Christians who disagree about the sufficiency of Faith.

And it is easy for me to agree and respect your view, becuase it is very honest and rational, but I would like to go a step further.

There is a great merit in the beliefs in which we agree, viz that good will, charity and care are critical to give meaning to our lives. But we shouldn’t overestimate our agreement - I go to the other extreme from your once saved friends - for me Faith means little or nothing.

I’m gonna argue that it is impossible to not have faith in something (gift from God to everyone) The only thing that matters is WHAT we have faith in. Was it C.S. Lewis that said:

“I believe in God like I do the sun: not becuase I see Him, but by Him I see everything else.”

Substitute “God” for “natural laws” and you have faith in what natural laws can see.
Substitute “God” for “myself” and you have faith in everything that your abilities can see.

But if we have faith in God, we put our trust into the Creator who is omniescent and sees everything.

I hold a caring unbeliever in much higher regard than the Catholic who knows his or her faith inside out, who is a frequent communicant, but who cares little or nothing about others.

TOTALLY agree, up to a point.

If by unbeliever you mean someone like in a jungle who has never heard the Gospel, then yes i agree becuase they are doing they best they can with what they know.

If by unbeliever you mean someone who has fallen away, then I don’t agree becuase an unbeliever who used to TRULY believe God’s Love and should know better.

I am also sorry to say that in the hierarchy of commandments as you present them, I demur - in particular - on the requirement to love God, a being whose existence I doubt. I think the entire cosmos, the physical universe, the earth, and life on earth are achingly beautiful, and I am sad that I will not be able to see the unfolding of even the next 50 years, in a history that although 14 billion years old has barely begun. Do you think that counts?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

Yes it definitely counts, just pray at least once that God help you believe in Him somehow and just realize the tremendous gift that you can still be in AWE of God’s creation as a scientist AND as a Catholic believe evolution occured(with respect to God), AND worship the Creator at the same time. Who knows maybe when we get to heaven we will know how next million years unfold?

 

[SCTA-1]

Alec, I have been reading all your post’s for sometime now and I am mesmerized by your brilliancy.I can only absorb a small percent of what you are saying but I enjoy it nevertheless.Just by reading your post’s gives me proof of God because he has given such knowledge to Men ( this is a generic term which mean’s women also) which no other animal can come close.Your intelligence and knowledge shows the Divine Spark which is in the image and likeness of God.Apes,chimps and gorillas are looking for bananas, we look for truth.Thanks for your (name removed by moderator)ut and sharp mind.

 

[hecd2]

SocaliCatholic:

Why I am really confused is even if there are distinct animals rebuilt from fossils, what is the critical data like DNA that archaeologists or whoever does it, builds or reconstructs the family tree?

Um, in other words how do people know that becuase things look the same (I think its phenotype right) that they are related by evolution just becuase we look the same or share some simmilar DNA. Can’t it be possible that we just have things in common becuase of the chemical makeup of life? Does it have to imply that we evovled from the same source?

Thanks for helping me I am trying to make sense of all this and not knowledgeable in this area.

Dear Socali, this is a post that goes back a few days and I didn’t answer it then becasue I ran out of time.

First of all, there are two sorts of phylogeny that are commonly constructed. The first compares many characters between the anatomy of living species and/or extinct fossil species to construct the phylogenetic tree.

The second compares characteristics in the DNA of organisms. This latter technique is limited to living things or organisms that have died relatively recently (say in the last few thousand years) and been preserved. Mitochondrial DNA (because it exists in hundreds or thousands of copies in each cell, is easier to amplify and sequence than nuclear DNA which apperas only in two copies per cell), and there has been some success in recovering and sequencing mtDNA from, say, Neanderthal fossils.

Although no-one uses formal phylogenetics or cladistics to prove common ancestry (common ancestry is taken as a starting point in these sciences), the nested hierarchy of species, and the detailed nature of the homologies (the scientific word for things that look the same) is massive evidence for common ancestry. It’s not just that things are similar, but that they are similar in such a way that any explanation other than common ancestry is unreasonable.

Take molecular homology - not only do we find many homologues of genes across all livings things (and more homologues and closer homologues the more recent the common ancestor), but, at least within animals, we find series of homologues that appear in the same order on the genome - they are, as scientists say, syntenic. But there’s more, because there are all sorts of non-functional bits of debris in the genome and echoes of past events and we find these conserved across genomes of related species - these are not things that any designer would put into the genome but are the marks of various mutational rearrangements: insertions, pseudogenes, duplications, interchromosomal and intrachromosomal rearrangements.

to be continued