Creation

[BioCatholic]

im my opinion, if the bible were a book of HOW and WHAT HAPPENED, then the first book of the bible would be the mathematical derivations of all the Laws of Physics and Chemistry.

All the physics and chemistry would be outlined, and then the reader would understand HOW God created the world and created animals and then humans. Then it would be a matter of telling the story of WHAT happend, being that the reader already knew WHY everything was the way it is.

essentially, the first book of the bible would be a “proof” setting up how things are to be done is this universe. but the Bible isnt such a book, and it is up to us humans to discover the laws of physics and make out best guess.

i think God wrote the laws of physics and such to that things would turn out EXACTLY like they are now. pretty much like writing a computer program (using the rules of a computer language) where you know EXACTLY what the final product will be. God just did it with matter and energy.

 

[Steve_Andersen]

I Leatherman:

Thanks,
What if, you were measuring a fixed signal which had, say, 1 beat every second.
Say you measured the signal for 60 seconds and recorded 60 beats at your start point, then you find that you are accelerating from the signal at a very large, exponential, rate, at which point you took a second reading from the fixed signal.
If your time, as far as the signal is concerned, has somehow shrunk, would your second reading of the signal have fewer beats per (your) 60 seconds than your first reading?

well, it has been 20 (or so) years since physics class but IIRC if you take your clock with you it will still beat once a second regardless of your speed

but if your clock is moving relative to you then there will be a difference. It will appear to speed up as you accelerate away from it.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Steve Andersen:

as I understand it that is a subset of ID

AFI am aware, it shouldn’t be ​

 

[Steve_Andersen]

aridite:

An order of magnitude of 3 is not relevant to the point

it’s called humor

aridite:

that the original organism from which all life on earth derived has not been observed. You claimed in post #67

While it is obvious that no one was around all those billions of years ago to look upon it with their own eyes. That is not what is needed for observation. The original organisms have been observed from the evidence they left behind i.e us.

For example you don’t actually have to have walked the shores of some ancient ocean to know that it was there. The rocks it leaves behind are sufficient.

I can’t directly observe the various electron shifts when you heat a bit of metal but I do know the photoelectric effect exists when I turn on a light bulb.

 Many many things in science are not directly observed.  But that does not mean that they don’t exist.

Now when it comes to the earliest organisms (and that term is very misleading since the most primitive proto-life forms probably didn’t look a lot like what we would call an organism) we may not yet know which of the possible candidates or pathways was THE one but it obviously had to exist….we’re just working out the minor details.

………Not that I have ever encountered such a person, but if they are doubting the truth of gravity, they must be doubting the reports of their senses, or that the future will be like the past.

Ah,…,but we don’t know how the mechanism of gravity works and we weren’t there in the past. We are just drawing a conclusion from observable data

……. It does no good to simply appeal to scientific observation, and repeatedly push objects off table.

exactly! At some point we must say ok, we have enough info to make a definitive statement about X within some degree of certainty. You and I just appear to disagree that we’ve reached that point yet when it comes to early organisms and/or what degree of certainty is OK.

aridite:

With evolution, if someone doubts the veracity of scientist, it does no good to produce more scientific papers. One has to address the non-scientific beliefs that lie at the basis of both the acceptance and denial of science.

why?
We don’t do that for fluid dynamics, germ theory, or any other scientific pursuit.

aridite:

Here is a real evolutionary biologist who thinks the distinciton is important……………………I don’t endorse his conclusions, but he is one who accepts micro/macro distinction.

But the distinction is specious at best. Those draw a micro/macro line say that changes occur within a species but that speciation never occurs but we have observed speciation both in nature and in the lab so the distinction falls apart.

aridite:

It isn’t at all obvious as it has never been observed.

yes it has

…… No amount of physical variations in non-rational animals will allow rationality to just “emerge.”

And you base this on what?

aridite:

Rationality cannot be accounted for physically, so neither can it be accounted for biologically.

So you’re saying that people who loose brain function due to illness or injury are just faking it?
There is obviously a biological component to rationality

……100% – what does complete mean to you?

There is no such thing as 100% in scince and enginering
Things are complete when you can say X within some degree of certainty. it is then that you can stop pushing items off the table

aridite:

It becomes less certain with diminishing completeness.

of course, but we can quantify those and determine if we can live with some uncertainty or not.

aridite:

Have you read my prior posts? If you had you would realize that my comments are not a concession.

once again it’s called humor

 

[buffalo]

BioCatholic:

im my opinion, if the bible were a book of HOW and WHAT HAPPENED, then the first book of the bible would be the mathematical derivations of all the Laws of Physics and Chemistry.

.

Not really. You and I can observe something, write it down and there will be a bunch of science packed away in this observation. The key is to unpack and analyze within the framework of the observation.

 

[aridite]

Steve Andersen:

So you’re saying that people who loose brain function due to illness or injury are just faking it?
There is obviously a biological component to rationality

Look, this has become tedious and humorless. It seems obvious that scientific conclusions are different kinds of knowledge than direct observations, and as such are less certain than the observations. That does not mean they are not true, but that we should be careful about how much we rely on them. We should certainly acknowledge them for what they are, conclusions and not call them data or observations, and call them “facts” in only a qualified sense.

Moreover, it seems obvious to me that in order to accept scientific conclusions, one has to accept the truthfulness of scientific method, including what counts as data. As prior to science, such assumptions are not scientific in character, but philosophical. That doesn’t make them less true – in fact it makes them more true than scientific conclusions. I would not call the acceptance of such assumptions “faith”, but it certainly is not “obvious” or beyond question and discussion. And the truth of such assumptions is not established by conducting more scientific experiments or pointing to more scientific data. Understood correctly, certain versions of evolution are completely reasonable, and compatible with Intelligent Design. Certain versions, however, are not.

The fact that you seem to equate a biological component to human cognition with it being a completely biological process seems to indicate that you could do with some philosophical study. I suggest reading Aristotle’s De Anima, or Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on this, or even a contemporary Thomist, Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Mind, to understand how rationality may depend on biology but not be equated with, or strictly speaking, realized in brain functions. As I said, this is based on philosophical reasoning, which is not easily argued. Certainly not in this format. Quantum mechanics is not easily understood, but I don’t think you would find that grounds for doubting it. I realize this is not really an argument in favor of a non-physicalist account of rationality; it is just intended to convince you not to discount what you don’t understand.

[A very brief, incomplete argument against physicalism: if humans are completely physical, all processes are determined by necessary physical laws. If all human processes are determined, none are free, none of them have any meaning. But humans are free and human actions do have meaning. Therefore, humans are not completely physical.]

 

[wanerious]

[A very brief, incomplete argument against physicalism: if humans are completely physical, all processes are determined by necessary physical laws. If all human processes are determined, none are free, none of them have any meaning. But humans are free and human actions do have meaning. Therefore, humans are not completely physical.]

I suppose it is incomplete in the sense that there may certainly be non-deterministic physical theories. The mind could be both free and entirely subject to natural processes, though a thorough understanding of these processes is at present inaccessible to us.

 

[Steve_Andersen]

aridite:

…[A very brief, incomplete argument against physicalism: if humans are completely physical, all processes are determined by necessary physical laws. If all human processes are determined, none are free,

that doesn’t follow.
On the macroscopic level, chaos theory indicates that that there would be a range of outcomes from a given set of starting conditions (e.g. the weather follows clear physical laws but we can’t make precise predictions)
while at the other end of the scale there is a great deal of uncertainty from quantum theory
So while physical systems are deterministic…they aren’t that deterministic

aridite:

none of them have any meaning.

Ah, meaning. Well, for that we have poets and priests (and philosophers, I suppose)
I’m just a humble applied scientist
I can build a bridge for the chicken to cross the road with but as to why he wants to do that…that’s out of my pay grade.

aridite:

But humans are free and human actions do have meaning. Therefore, humans are not completely physical.]

I believe that we have meaning……I just can’t prove it.
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