Creationism and life in general

[tonyrey]

Of course, the acceptance of evolution by the Church is not a reason for atheists to convert, but it certainly is a prerequisite to do so. The importance of this cannot be underestimated, and the whole promotion of ID (ID in the sense of irreducible biological complexity and interventionist design) by some Catholics (not the Church) just confuses, clouds and obfuscates the issue.

It is absurd to believe ID is incompatible with evolution - which is evidence of Design!

 

[tonyrey]

I’m happy to go on but don’t feel we’re communicating any more.

You mean that** you** aren’t communicating any more. There is certainly no point in going on after you have failed to answer any of the points in my previous post…

 

[Al_Moritz]

It is absurd to believe ID is incompatible with evolution - which is evidence of Design!

Please note that I specifically qualified:
“ID in the sense of irreducible biological complexity and interventionist design”

Obviously, since I believe that God created the world, I believe in design in creation.

 

[ricmat]

This was just to show that I personally know someone whose situation stands for the plainly obvious and universal.

A sample of one “stands for the plainly obvious and universal.”

Or do you think that an atheist who is thoroughly informed about evolution could convert if s/he thought that belief in biological ID was required for accceptance of the Catholic faith? Dream on.

I’m not dreaming, but perhaps you are. I have stated many times that [paraphrased] the Church allows belief in evolution so long as God is somehow involved. You interpret this as “must believe in ID?”

And the church also does not disallow belief in a 6 day creation cycle. I don’t believe this myself, but since you brought up the subject of “belief in…acceptance of the Catholic faith.”

One can believe in evolutionary theory, and ID. They are not mutually exclusive. As a former expert on ID, certainly you know this. Or maybe you were with the “other” ID group.

Ricmat said:

God intervenes. Certainly you get that. Creation is intervention. Miracles are intervention. LOVE requires intervention, it is not a hands-off process.

I’ll assume here that you agree that intervention (by God) happens outside the biological sphere of things…

With regard to biological intervention, it is a possibility if it seems the only way for things to happen fast enough. That’s why selective breeders “intervene” instead of just sitting back letting nature create the smaller dog or fatter cow.

You only say that because you haven’t followed my thoughts very well as I explained them on this board over time.

Well, I’m not very smart. Sorry. And I probably missed some of your posts.

The reason I brought that up is that there are 2 different aspects to ID. (Note: this is my own personal “model”).

1. Design as a verb.
2. Design as a noun.

The Designer God of the strawman anti-ID arguments is the “tinkerer” of item 1. The God that can’t get things right the first time, and constantly needs to intervene. (Evolution seems to me to be a “can’t get it right the first time” process also, but that’s another argument). And as another aside, why would God intervene in everything but evolution (as some seem to believe)? But again, that’s another post…

The aspect of ID that IMO most people don’t understand is the second aspect. Perhaps this is my bias as an engineer. Design as a noun most generally refers to “the end product.” The architect points to the skyscraper and says “That’s my design!” Ditto for e.g. Steve Jobs and the latest iPhone. The musical composer points to the score and says “That’s my composition (design).” The “Design” when well implemented can be perceived as a thing of beauty. Visually appealing, totally functional, elegant, organized, etc.
Our purpose in this creation is to give glory and praise to God. How do we do that? We do it by appreciating things of beauty. We do it by appreciating the order that came from chaos. Totally independently of whether or not we think God is “tinkering”, we can appreciate the beauty, function, form, and order of his “end product” - the universe.

The “design / end product” starts out as an idea / purpose / goal, and ends up as “the end product.” To deny that God “designed” things is to imply that his creation happened without purpose. Without a goal.

If God created the universe and his “end product” is the result of his goal / purpose / guidance, then there could well be evidence of it at deeper and deeper levels of nature. What is wrong with searching for it? The more I read about DNA, the more (to me) that “design” is evident and oh how glorious that design is!

 

[tonyrey]

Please note that I specifically qualified:
“ID in the sense of irreducible biological complexity and interventionist design”.
Obviously, since I believe that God created the world, I believe in design in creation.

Design in Creation entails irreducible biological complexity and divine intervention.
Otherwise there would be no guarantee of successful development given the element of chance in the outcome of events in the immensely complex system in which we live and the overwhelming odds against survival in an extremely dangerous universe.

 

[tonyrey]

The more I read about DNA, the more (to me) that “design” is evident and oh how glorious that design is!

It was DNA that compelled Antony Flew to renounce his lifelong atheism shortly before he died…

 

[Al_Moritz]

Design in Creation entails irreducible biological complexity and divine intervention.
Otherwise there would be no guarantee of successful development given the element of chance in the outcome of events in the immensely complex system in which we live and the overwhelming odds against survival in an extremely dangerous universe.

Your answer suggests that you do not understand the science of evolution.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

I agree with the above. However, scientists regularly opine about how “this or that” is a religious delusion because science says it can’t be so.

Scientists are also imperfect people with beliefs that go beyond the science labs. Does that mean the theory of evolution is false? No. If i get beat up and ridiculed by a Nazi who then tells me that 2 + 2 = 4, i am not going to deny the truth of that statement on the account of his abuse. Its better that i agree with him on that truth and then find a way of showing him to the best of my ability that his being correct about that equation is not a justification of his Nazi world view or an excuse to be abusive.

That human intelligence “emerged” via evolutionary processes.

In its proper context this is true. Our consciousnesses exist in correlation with the natural order of physical reality, and emerges within the physical worlds natural development. This is how God intended it. However, in this being true, that doesn’t mean that the essence of what it means to have human intelligence is ultimately and metaphysically caused in to being by physical processes, or that the mind is synonymous in nature or can be reduced to physical interactions alone. It merely means that the mind as well as being non-physical is also very much involved in the natural processes of the physical world. Physics has a real part to play in our being intelligent. We process our thoughts through the physical system of the brain. The nature of the brain allows us to think intelligently. This is evident, since if you damage the brain, a person will no-longer be intelligent. We cannot deny the pivotal role that the brain plays in processing intelligent information. However, nothing in science dictates that one must hold to the belief that our minds are nothing but physical processes. I can hold to the scientific understanding that the physical part of what allows us to think with intelligence evolved while at the same time believe that the mind which does the thinking (as opposed to processing) has essentially a non-physical nature.

You seem to have a difficult time in seeing the contextual differences between scientific statements and metaphysical statements. Science has never produced a theory of how thoughts emerge from non-rational objects alone.

That morality “emerged” via evolutionary processes.

This is not a scientific statement; and if it is, you are taking it out of context. It is your responsibility just as well as the scientists to differentiate between scientific statements and metaphysical statements. It is wrong to attack science on the account of other peoples deceptive agenda. Its beneficial to know that they achieve their agenda because of peoples willful ignorance and fear of what science is and what it teaches. We need to change that.

That there is no purpose to the universe.

Again this is taken out of context. In a scientific context this statement simply means that the universe operates according to natural rather than rational causes. If by this one means that we do not have a God that “tweaks” the universe; then i agree. I don’t see the point in creating a natural order with self governing laws and then setting out to tweak its processes; i don’t think thats the kind of God we have. In fact i think that idea is very limiting to Gods creative abilities and intelligence. It makes him sound like a weak pagan God.

That humans are merely advanced animals and nothing more.

It is true that we are advance animals, but the idea that we are “nothing more”, is an additional idea that has nothing to do with the scientific evidence.

Science says these things are True.

No. You and the atheists are saying that this is what science is saying, but what you are both doing is distorting and blowing out of context the nature of the scientific method. You are confusing somebodies extra curricular metaphysical beliefs with the actual theory of evolution.

The Church says they are “not True.”

The Catholic church does not reject the idea that our “physical bodies” originally evolved from another animal.

No doubt, you will define for your own arguments that “science is speaking beyond it’s capabilities.” So tell that to the scientists.

Its not speaking beyond its capabilities when it says that the world evolved and so did our physical bodies.

I don’t know any Catholics who reject “science” (generic). Should we reject embryonic stem cell research even though the scientific community is overwhelmingly for it? Of course.

You are now confusing what a scientific theory is with what we “ought” to do with scientific knowledge. The former is science, the latter is ethics.

 

[ricmat]

Scientists are also imperfect people with beliefs that go beyond the science labs. Does that mean the theory of evolution is false?

Did I say that the theory of evolution is false? Everything about it?

ID does not say evolution is false. It says that a better answer for the life we see today is that it was designed (goal / purpose / plan / guidance) rather than “random mutations + natural selection.”

Signature in the Cell is a good book about this subject, as well as abiogenesis.
MindOverMatter2;8009317:

You seem to have a difficult time in seeing the contextual differences between scientific statements and metaphysical statements. Science has never produced a theory of how thoughts emerge from non-rational objects alone.

You need to do some reading. I think the general category is called “evolutionary psychology”.

evolutionnews.org/2010/08/when_evolutionary_psychology_c037691.html

Another category is evolutionary ethics.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_ethics

There’s a LOT of this stuff floating around. All of it is called science (though perhaps you wouldn’t agree with that). But if enough people say it, and enough people believe it…

This is not a scientific statement; and if it is, you are taking it out of context. It is your responsibility just as well as the scientists to differentiate between scientific statements and metaphysical statements. It is wrong to attack science on the account of other peoples deceptive agenda. Its beneficial to know that they achieve their agenda because of peoples willful ignorance and fear of what science is and what it teaches. We need to change that.

It is wrong to attack ID on the account of other people’s agendas. Enough said?

Again this is taken out of context. In a scientific context this statement simply means that the universe operates according to natural rather than rational causes. If by this one means that we do not have a God that “tweaks” the universe; then i agree. I don’t see the point in creating a natural order with self governing laws and then setting out to tweak its processes; i don’t think thats the kind of God we have. In fact i think that idea is very limiting to Gods creative abilities and intelligence. It makes him sound like a weak pagan God.

And a God who can’t get things right the first time, and needs to keep trying with random mutations? Doesn’t sound very powerful to me.

Why do composers of music actually conduct orchestras playing their music? Why would they intervene when the score is there, laid out, and the orchestra could follow it without the composer doing the conducting?

It is true that we are advance animals, but the idea that we are "nothing more

", is an additional idea that has nothing to do with the scientific evidence.

Keep reading the literature. You’ll run across it. And it will be a scientist who is pushing the idea. When you see it, please give the guy a call and tell him he’s wrong, please (for both of us!).

No. You and the atheists are saying that this is what science is saying, but what you are both doing is distorting and blowing out of context the nature of the scientific method. You are confusing somebodies extra curricular metaphysical beliefs with the actual theory of evolution.

I’m telling you what many scientists believe, and push. And lots of people believe them. If enough scientists say it, and people believe it, it makes no difference whether you or I believe that it is really science.

You are so engrossed in interpreting everything I say as an attack on evolution that you are missing everything…

The Catholic church does not reject the idea that our “physical bodies” originally evolved from another animal.

Correct. I didn’t say otherwise. Are you trying to imply that I said this?

Its not speaking beyond its capabilities when it says that the world evolved and so did our physical bodies.

“…the world evolved…” Not sure what you mean here (rather than “it changed over time”), but if you mean that things just happened through random mutations (no guidance, no purpose), then I disagree with you.

The TOE says that everything about humans, intellect, emotions, moral values, etc. - it ALL is in the genes.

 

[grannymh]

Pope Benedict:

"In comments to students, published yesterday in German, the Pope – who took office in April 2005 – stopped short of endorsing intelligent design and said “faith alone” could not “explain the whole picture”.

"But, he said: “We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory.”

"He advised the students not to choose between creationism and evolutionary theory but to adopt “an interaction of various dimensions of reason”.

"He said: “I find it important to underline that the theory of evolution implies questions that must be assigned to philosophy and which themselves lead beyond the realms of science.”

“Benedict reflected on comments of his predecessor, John Paul II, who said that theories of evolution were sound as long as they took into account that creation was the work of God, and that Darwin’s theory of evolution was “more than a hypothesis.”

"He said: “The pope [John Paul] had his reasons for saying this. But it is also true that the theory of evolution is not a complete, scientifically proven theory.”

“Benedict added that the immense time span that evolution covers made it impossible to conduct experiments in a controlled environment to verify or disprove the theory.”

Peace,
Ed

Link please.

 

[edwest2]

Sorry granny,

timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article1645453.ece

Peace,
Ed

 

[inocente]

There are many people who “believe in ID” but have no idea what it is.

There are even more people who “don’t believe in ID”, but have no idea what it is.

Should you condemn ID because of the people who have no idea what it is?

Hey, I “know all about” Baptists. Those are the folks who go to military funerals and have placards saying that the deceased are going to hell. Right? Here’s the true story of Baptists. It must be right, it’s on Wikipedia.

The majority of people are not involved in the life sciences and so knowledge of evolution or ID is of no practical benefit. It doesn’t pay the bills, doesn’t put a roof over their head, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the gospel. Yet there are those who drag it center stage, they insist it’s important to Christianity, that we must all take sides, and usually it’s that no True Christian™ can entertain the ToE without a trip to hell.

Very, very, very, very few of them could get a pass mark in Evolution 101 or ID 101, they have no real understanding or even a desire for understanding, they “believe” in one or the other because someone told them we’re all supposed to “believe” in one or the other.

The entire debate about ToE, ID and YEC would get no air time at all if they weren’t so worried by science, why would it when it doesn’t pay any bills or have anything to do with the gospel?

It serves only to divide Christians, as neatly confirmed by your comment about me being a Baptist - QED, why else would you pick that out when it’s got nothing at all to do with anything on this thread? Eh?

But if we look beyond all that and try to treat the ID hypothesis seriously, it fails all over the shop. For instance, here’s an engineering criticism:

Furthermore, if we assume that Behe is correct, and that humans can discern design, then I submit that they can also discern poor design (we sue companies for this all the time!). In Darwin’s Black Box, Behe refers to design as the “purposeful arrangement of parts.” What about when the “parts” aren’t purposeful, by any standard engineering criteria? When confronted with the “All-Thumbs Designer” - whoever designed the spine, the birth canal, the prostate gland, the back of the throat, etc., Behe and the ID people retreat into theology. At Lincoln, Behe rebuffed one of his critics, Russell Doolittle, who pointed out (referring to biochemical systems) that “…no Creator would have designed such a circuitous and contrived system” (Doolittle 1998). Behe accused Doolittle of defending evolution on theological grounds, (also saying that God could do whatever God wanted) but in fact, Doolittle was asking nothing but that an “intelligent designer” design intelligently! This is a big problem for ID proponents, as they admit elsewhere: “Charles Darwin … saw the existence of what he regarded as poor biological engineering (suboptimality) … as prima facie evidence that God could have not directly created the world. This viewpoint continues to undergird much evolutionary reasoning in our own day, and poses a difficult challenge to theories of intelligent design.” (O & D, Winter 1999) - Karen Bartelt, reall.org/newsletter/v07/n12/index.html

btw, anyone who says quoting the penultimate sentence means I can’t be a True Christian™ proves my point.

 

[grannymh]

Repetition and argument from exclamation marks.

Evidence for God is within us and all around us, there’s no need for an ISTE (Invented Supernatural Thingamajig Excuse ).

Somehow I knew you’d confuse evidence with explanation. MRI evidence is enough by itself to show that the mind is in the brain. You have no contrary evidence and your theory has no explanatory power, all you can do is criticize. But the problem with arguing against science is that every day a bit more knowledge is gained, the explanation becomes more tangible, and all you can do is retreat.

The evidence is it’s the brain does the thinking. You not being able to explain it isn’t a cue to give up and plea for ISTEs .

They show that fewer and fewer people are satisfied by ISTEs.

Yes it does, a lot of scientists are interested in self-perception, e.g. an old favorite:

scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=real-outof-body-experiences

BIG philosophical question bro. According to I think therefore I am the self is the thing doing the thinking, i.e. the brain. But when reading a novel the thing doing the thinking extends our self to the hero and when playing a video game it extends it to our avatar, we become our avatar. So the concept of self is squidgy, perhaps even it’s an illusion. Jesus asks us to be selfless, perhaps He knows the ego is an illusion.

I’ll ask you the same question in the hope you’ll do more than mumble about ISTEs.

Are you saying it’s better to stagnate?

I searched the link for a citation. All I found was this: “But two studies published this week in Science show how the self and body can be disconnected, using video cameras.” Did I miss the citation for the actual research?

And what is meant by “we become our avatar.” please.

 

[grannymh]

The majority of people are not involved in the life sciences and so knowledge of evolution or ID is of no practical benefit. It doesn’t pay the bills, doesn’t put a roof over their head, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the gospel. Yet there are those who drag it center stage, they insist it’s important to Christianity, that we must all take sides, and usually it’s that no True Christian™ can entertain the ToE without a trip to hell.

This is a good example why Catholic apologetics needs to be updated beyond ID.
There is a major difference between the Catholic teaching regarding Adam and Eve and many of the Christian religions which participate in faith/science projects such as Intelligent Design.

 

[inocente]

You mean that** you** aren’t communicating any more. There is certainly no point in going on after you have failed to answer any of the points in my previous post…

I was pretty sure I already answered them all previously.

Someone PM’d me today for links about mind and brain, I’m no specialist but cobbled some together as a start point into a field where loads of work put to bed the correlation between brain and mind many years ago:

Imaging overview - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroimaging

Brain atlas - med.harvard.edu/AANLIB/home.html

See for yourself at UC Berkeley - learningandthebrain.com/Event/iGeneration/UC-Berkeley-Brain-Scan-Tours

Berkeley can tell you what you’re looking at - wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/03/mri_vision

Brain as a network - cam.ac.uk/research/features/neuro-tweets-hashtagging-the-brain

Journal - asnweb.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3317

Tools - loni.ucla.edu/

Susan Greenfield made an interesting BBC series about the state of the art as of 2000, which includes a round-up of many pieces of work.

YouTube playlist - youtube.com/view_play_list?feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_42494&p=18D1C6A6672EE0D0

From memory most of the series is on evidence but she theorizes about free will and consciousness in the last episode.

 

[inocente]

I searched the link for a citation. All I found was this: “But two studies published this week in Science show how the self and body can be disconnected, using video cameras.” Did I miss the citation for the actual research?

Henrik Ehrsson was done a lot of work in this area. The particular experiment is here:

citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.140.1926&rep=rep1&type=pdf (or for rich folk, the full monty at sciencemag.org/content/317/5841/1048.short)

For more of his work see scholar.google.es/scholar?q=Henrik+Ehrsson&hl=es&btnG=Buscar&lr=

And what is meant by “we become our avatar.” please.

That we lose our self in our alter ego within the game.

 

[inocente]

There is a major difference between the Catholic teaching regarding Adam and Eve and many of the Christian religions which participate in faith/science projects such as Intelligent Design.

I’d have thought the same before joining CAF.

 

[ricmat]

The majority of people are not involved in the life sciences and so knowledge of evolution or ID is of no practical benefit. It doesn’t pay the bills, doesn’t put a roof over their head, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the gospel.

Agree!!

Yet there are those who drag it center stage, they insist it’s important to Christianity, that we must all take sides, and usually it’s that no True Christian™ can entertain the ToE without a trip to hell.

There are such people probably. I haven’t seen any here. Have you?

Very, very, very, very few of them could get a pass mark in Evolution 101 or ID 101, they have no real understanding or even a desire for understanding, they “believe” in one or the other because someone told them we’re all supposed to “believe” in one or the other.

No doubt that is true too. But there are many people who understand Evolution very well, and still have doubts that it can do everything claimed by its supporters.

The entire debate about ToE, ID and YEC would get no air time at all if they weren’t so worried by science, why would it when it doesn’t pay any bills or have anything to do with the gospel?

It serves only to divide Christians, as neatly confirmed by your comment about me being a Baptist - QED, why else would you pick that out when it’s got nothing at all to do with anything on this thread? Eh?

I’m sorry, I thought the reference was obvious. If I offended you (or “Baptists”) that was not my point. My point was that many people point at the “crazy fringe of ID”, the YECs who want ID in, and evolution out. They point at them and say “That, everyone, is what ID is all about.” My point about Westboro is that there are crazy fringes all over the place. I assume that Westboro is not representative of all or even many Baptists. So it is unfair to judge all Baptists based on Westboro. Just as it is unfair to characterize all ID proponents as part of the YEC movement.

But if we look beyond all that and try to treat the ID hypothesis seriously, it fails all over the shop. For instance, here’s an engineering criticism:

Furthermore, if we assume that Behe is correct, and that humans can discern design, then I submit that they can also discern poor design (we sue companies for this all the time!). In Darwin’s Black Box, Behe refers to design as the “purposeful arrangement of parts.” What about when the “parts” aren’t purposeful, by any standard engineering criteria? When confronted with the “All-Thumbs Designer” - whoever designed the spine, the birth canal, the prostate gland, the back of the throat, etc., Behe and the ID people retreat into theology. At Lincoln, Behe rebuffed one of his critics, Russell Doolittle, who pointed out (referring to biochemical systems) that “…no Creator would have designed such a circuitous and contrived system” (Doolittle 1998). Behe accused Doolittle of defending evolution on theological grounds, (also saying that God could do whatever God wanted) but in fact, Doolittle was asking nothing but that an “intelligent designer” design intelligently! This is a big problem for ID proponents, as they admit elsewhere: “Charles Darwin … saw the existence of what he regarded as poor biological engineering (suboptimality) … as prima facie evidence that God could have not directly created the world. This viewpoint continues to undergird much evolutionary reasoning in our own day, and poses a difficult challenge to theories of intelligent design.” (O & D, Winter 1999) - Karen Bartelt, reall.org/newsletter/v07/n12/index.html

btw, anyone who says quoting the penultimate sentence means I can’t be a True Christian™ proves my point.

There are theological implications to ID, just as there are for Evolution. And just as there are to the Big Bang. What you quote above is not science / engineering, it is theology. Which is fine if that’s what we want to discuss. What God has done can be discerned by science. Why he did it, or whether it is “good intelligent design” or not - who are we to judge? In both the ID case and the random evolution case, God is responsible for the outcome. To insist that God must have used evolution because it is inherently sloppier than intelligent design (and what we see - all that "junk DNA and all is sloppy - seems to diminish God IMO. With intelligent design, we can say that we might not yet realize how good the design actually is. With evolution, the assumption is from the start that God is sloppy, and/or needs to try over and over until finally man pops out.

I would like to state that the whole idea that we know if ID is true or evolution is true based on the “sloppy factor” is not a good way to look at things. But it seems to come up a lot even though its a red herring.

 

[ricmat]

This is a good example why Catholic apologetics needs to be updated beyond ID.

I have no idea what you are talking about here granny. ID is a scientific research project (IMO). There may be theological implications to it for the religiously inclined, just like there were to the big bang. What do you mean Catholic apologetics needs to be “updated beyond ID?” So far as I know, Catholic apologetics is not based on science at all, or on ID particularly. Could you clarify what you are thinking here.

There is a major difference between the Catholic teaching regarding Adam and Eve and many of the Christian religions which participate in faith/science projects such as Intelligent Design.

There are major differences between Catholic teaching re Adam and Eve and other Christian religions. Got it.

I’m pretty dense, so I’m not sure what you’re getting at here.

 

[grannymh]

Originally Posted by inocente forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_khaki/viewpost.gif
Yet there are those who drag it center stage, they insist it’s important to Christianity, that we must all take sides, and usually it’s that no True Christian™ can entertain the ToE without a trip to hell.

There are such people probably. I haven’t seen any here. Have you?

Not only have I seen such people, it is because of those and similar people, that I removed “Catholic” from my religious listing. Granted that “no True Christian™ can entertain the ToE without a trip to hell” may not have been said in those exact words, but the implication was loud and clear. The implication which really got to me was the one that put forth the idea that an evolutionist poster was already in hell or at least was some kind of subhuman. Of course that was said charitably.

As you may know, I often post that I respect the current bans in this forum.
http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/misc_khaki/sticky.gif Sticky: Temporary Ban on Evolution/Atheism Threads

Even with the ban, I have picked up implications that certain people may not be all that Christian. Debates should be between equals instead of being between the just and unjust.

Blessings,
granny

Each human person is worthy of profound respect.