Yep.
And therefore, having read and understood the strong genetic evidence that demonstrates the common ancestry of human and chimps, you are now abandoning the idea of God having created Adam and Eve separately from all other organisms while planting a smoking gun in their genes to deceive us into thinking we share a common ancestor with chimps?
I am pleased for you.
Science demonstrates intelligent manufacture of artifacts all the time. Science can tell the difference between a triangular piece of rock that looks like an arrowhead and an actual man-made arrowhead found in the dirt even though its maker died hundreds of years ago. So, if an archaeologist finds a hard bit of clay with some random coloration, then that’s what it is, but if he finds a hard piece of clay with a regular pattern or a depiction, then he has found a shard of pottery.
The choice is not between “God is deceptive” and genetics (actually, it’s genomics). The choice is between “God is deceptive” and the specific overwhelming evidence that shows the common ancestry of humans and chimps.
Of course not. Science has been extremely adventurous these last 100 years, opening vistas at the largest scale of the cosmos and the smallest scale of matter, elucidating the vast complexity of life, that we had no idea about 100 years ago. Science, not religion, has opened our eyes to grandeur in the Universe. The job of science, however, is not to obfuscate but to illuminate. Your complaint is like that of Keats that Newton spoiled rainbows by understanding how they work. That was not so, and the understanding of genomics does not spoil the beauty or wonder of life. Being adventurous does not mean that we cannot settle some things and move on. The common ancestry of chimps and humans is one of those settled matters.
The Discovery Institute and William Dembski have been promising us evidence of this for some time now. When do you think they will deliver something concrete on this promise?
The archaeologist example was not clear? It is very clear that only intelligent agency can make artifacts, complex artifacts. To me, it is a fantasy to believe you and I are just complex snowflakes - randomly mutated and naturally selected to our present biological configuration. Do you believe that?
I know that you are saying that Adam and Eve were a special creation. I am not challenging God’s ability to do this - after all God is omnipotent. Neither am I talking about the functional genome, but errors and other detritus in the genome. I have pointed out that there are things like broken genes and viral insertions in humans that are identical in chimps and humans but not in other creatures. Then others that are shared by humans, chimps and gorillas, but not others humans, chimps, gorillas, orangutans and so on. The pattern of shared broken genes etc, exactly supports the evolutionary human lineage, diverging most recently from chimps, then from gorilla, orangutan, other Old World monkeys, then other primates. If Adam and Eve were a special creation then God would have had to specially create them with all this insurmountable genomic fossil evidence for common ancestry, and that would be deceptive. To deny the common ancestry is to admit deception by God.
Why do you deliberately misrepresent what others say? No-one wrote those words: the adventure is far from over for humans and chimps and science is not all done
If it’s so obvious, how come Dembski has utterly failed to find a reliable way to define, never mind to detect “complex, specified” information. His entire program is a tangled bank of failed propositions.
Of course not, because we can usually recognise the results of conscious human activity (although mistakes are more common than you think), because, amongst other things, there are no non-human processes that usually result in the same effects. Are you suggesting that life on earth was designed by humans? Or are you making the argument from incredulity - that it could not be the result of natural processes?
Incredulity? I wish more people were incredulous about some evolutionary nonsense. Are you just a more complex snowflake? A biological robot that constructed itself?
So it’s the old chestnut - the argument from personal incredulity. That carries no weight when set against evidence.
Something that you never engage in of course. At least I try to put forward evidence and reasons for my views and engage in the views of others. You provide the commercial breaks - all exhortation and no content.
That’s a dangerous philosophy, that potentially leads to a demented view of the world. You can show any capricious proposition by claiming that God did it, and justify any act as God’s command. I wouldn’t go there if I were you.
Thank you for sharing in the good which has happened to me by your comment of being pleased.
Looking at practical life, more and more “morals” are based on relativism. Thus, the only thing that would happen without God would be that the difference between morality and immorality would cease to exist.
To me, the first two sentences sound pretty close to an oxymoron. If you are not claiming that the Church is an evil institution, then what is your first sentence claiming?
I will attempt to catch up later.Dear Alec,
Well. then maybe it’s not in a position to discover and publish proof of speciifed complexity. But there must be some graduate students, doctoral candidates, post-docs, new PhDs, tenured faculty or emeriti eager to work on and demonstrate what you claim. The fact that we have yet to see a single shred of proof of ID suggest there is in fact none. But I’m happy to keep waiting for it, while biologists keep on quietly discovering exciting new things about the evolution of life on earth.
Yes, I’m fully aware of that. I asked you a question and you did not provide an answer. But that is an answer in itself – you turned the conversation back to my beliefs. So, I know what you’re doing and I know you well enough to know why you’re doing it. That’s enough of an answer for me. You could simply provide your views or you could engage in an attack on my position. You chose to attack and that answers the question.
I would say that natural laws alone do not produce “obligations”.
Atheistic communist systems sought to remove that obligation by surrendering children to the state. In the U.S. it is believed to be better for parents to kill their children through abortion, or to give them up for adoption if they are “not fit” parents. But beyond that, the “universal recognition” of an obligation means nothing in terms of evolutionary-materialism. The “obligation” is an illusion since organisms do not have a choice about how natural laws work on them.
Morality is fulfilled through reward in the afterlife. Without that, there is no hope. Atheism can provide no hope, but only despair.
As above, I asked for where you find sources and meaning for morality and you attack the Catholic Faith. Atheistic-materialism cannot declare that any actions by Catholics through history are “evil” since those actions are merely the result of evolutionary processes acting on unintelligent matter. So, your outrage about actions in the past (aside from the lack of perspective) is pointless because your view cannot provide any way to evaluate actions as either good or evil. Atheism does not provide a goal or purpose to life beyond biological death, where human beings turn into decaying biological matter in the grave.
The Church continues to condemn evils of this age which are accepted by the majority.
The highest and ultimate reason for which we should or shouldn’t do things is to serve the will of God, the source of all good and perfection, our Creator. That is the highest and most perfect reason for doing everything since it is oriented at the highest and most perfect good – namely, God Himself. Any other motive for moral behavior is aimed at lesser, transient values. Those can still be good actions to a greater or lesser degree, but the motive is not the highest.