Genesis v Evolution

[freesoulhope]

This goes back to the God drop kicked the universe and the natural laws into existence and everything flowed from that. God is, has been and will be, a part of everyday human life.

I agree, but I don’t see how you can go from, “God making natural laws”, to, “God is not in are lives”?

God bringing the world in to being through a process of his choosing does not mean he is not in a personal relationship with us. I dont see where you make that connection from what i have said, i don’t think you are willing or ready to really get to grips with what i have written. Your fear of the evolutionary theory is not reasonable in my opinion, and is dangerous to yourself and others. Like i said, a natural process does not equal Gods none-existence. You haven’t shown me any logical arguements that would suggest this to be the case.

Not true

Your not very convincing.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

This goes back to the God drop kicked the universe and the natural laws into existence and everything flowed from that. Not true. God is, has been and will be, a part of everyday human life. All those who are anti-God want to do is say: religion is evil, God, any god, is like Santa Claus. It’s time to “grow up” and out of our primitive past and embrace whoever has the current hot book or philosophy, who will be replaced with the next current hot book or philosophy. Man and man’s knowledge (the god of Science) are greater than anybody’s god.

I’ve heard it all before.

God bless,
Ed

It’s so very sad to read your deep anger and us whom you call anti-God. We are no such thing my friend. We love God as much as you. We can’t imagine a God as you have us believe, who would give us these magnificent brains then test us by making the world appear one way, then punishing us for believing it.

In your drive to locate the answer to everything within the pages of a Book, you have argued yourself into this sad corner where you now find yourself. Arguing an utterly silly doctrine unsupported by any rational science organization in the world.

Do you not understand that you will never be given credibility in theology or biblical exegesis until you give up this irrational stand against the facts?

The question you should be asking is why you Need to retain this belief? There are dozens of books, websites, and articles on the psychology of fundamentalism. It’s dangerous my friend. We’ve all known that since 911.

 

[steveandersen]

I’m not sure why the thread is “Genesis v Evolution”

As far as I’m concerned it is Genesis & Evolution

 

[edwest2]

9/11. Yes, of course.

I’ve read that before too. My beliefs do not require me to harm other people.

God bless,
Ed

 

[SpiritMeadow]

9/11. Yes, of course.

I’ve read that before too. My beliefs do not require me to harm other people.

God bless,
Ed

And hopefully it never will, but it is the downside of fundamentalist ideas. It easily devolves into violence, witness our own homebred terrorists the KKK, Aryan Brotherhood, The bombers of abortion clinics. All fundamentalists regardless of faith are cut from the same psychological cloth. They each and everyone worship a book as the sole repository of truth which must be accepted literally (really personal opinion). There is no debate, you are right, everyone else is wrong. They each and everyone, have the desired end to create a theocracy wherein all must obey their determination of right and wrong according to their interpretation of the Book. Open up your eyes my friend, and just read what is out there. If you know why you need this kind of pretended assurance than you’ve figured it all out, you might find its worth a great deal.

 

[hecd2]

As far as science. What has been obscured has been the deep faith of various great scientists who became scientists partly because they believed that God created an orderly universe and that they, in turn, would find orderly processes in their investigations, not random, it just turned out that way processes.

Indeed the origins of science lie in the faith that the universe obeys orderly laws that are capable of discovery by observation and reason. But you commit the same mistakes about the nature of randomness as Cardinal Schönborn did in his attack on biology, although in a much less sophisticated way. Randomness is inherent in the natural world, but randomness is not the same as capricious behaviour. Rather than repeat the whole argument from scratch, I quote part of the section on randomness from hereSchönborn.

"Of course there are random elements in neo-Darwinism. Biologists say that mutations are random. They do not mean, when they say this, that mutations are uncaused, or that they occur with equal probability in all genes, or that all mutations at a given locus are equally probable. What they mean is that mutations are not biased to improve the fitness of the individual. …While there are many possible things that can lead to mutations, none of them have any ‘knowledge’ of the consequences for the organism of the changes they make. For example, the DNA polymerase that makes a copy of DNA each time a cell divides makes occasional mistakes, making approximately three errors every time it makes a copy of human DNA. Whilst scientists can determine the probability of any given mutation at a specific place during a specific molecular process, the precise location and type of mutation that occurs in each individual case is random and unpredictable. That appears to be a simple physical fact and no quantity of philosophical agonising can change that.

Other random phenomena occur in evolution – for example, the random assortment of paternally and maternally acquired genetic material during the recombination and disjunction phases of sperm and egg production, which provides entirely novel and randomly selected combinations of genetic material from one generation to the next. The cellular processes that achieve this are entirely naturalistic, depending on spindles and other cellular mechanisms, and yet the gene pool of each population is contingent on these random processes. Another example of randomness occurs in sperm selection – the fittest sperm are the ones most likely to fertilise an egg, but there is no correlation between the genetic cargo of the sperm and its fitness (except in that small number of genes that directly regulate sperm production and sperm motility).

In fact randomness in both gamete production and sperm competition is not a condition just of evolutionary biology, but also of reproduction. Random processes are fundamental in the determination of the genotype and the phenotype of individual human beings. It is essential to understand that whatever definition of ‘randomness’ one chooses to describe cell-line mutations, random sorting in meiosis and sperm selection, then that definition applies equally to the mechanism of evolution and to the creation of individual human beings. These random processes neither mandate nor eliminate God from the creation of a human being. I wonder if Schönborn [and edwest2] resists the idea that random elements exist in human procreation, or whether he reconciles these elements by accepting that the randomness is part of divine providence and by the belief that each individual is willed by God. There is, in fact, no difference in kind between the randomness that determines the genetic makeup and hence fundamental physical and mental properties of an individual human being, and the randomness that is the foundation for evolution.If Schönborn [and edwest2] can reconcile one with divine providence, there is no reason why he should not reconcile the other."

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[cpayne]

The idea of randomness in itself does not negate the idea of creation. Sequences of first letters going from page to page in a book are completely random and cannot be predicted at all, no matter how many pages one looks at whether consecutively or globally. However, the book is created and has a creator. Indeed, it has a plot. Providence, as I understand it, means that God predisposes the plot, even if the book itself contains random elements.

 

[drpmjhess]

Based on this foundational premise, once those here and elsewhere convince you that evolution is a fact (although NO American scientific web site calls it anything other than a theory), then they will guide you by the light of “reason” to accept that there is no God. Get it?

Edwest, I suspect you are confusing “fact” with “theory” (a common young earth creationist mistake). Facts are low-level things in the philosophy of science, whereas theories stand at a higher explanatory level. Gravity is not observable — it is a theory to explain the observable fact that things fall down, and it’s a better theory than the Aristotelian one, namely that heavy things seek their “natural places,” or the theory that things fall simply because God wills them to fall.

Evolution is a theory to explain the observable fact that populations change over time; the change in the fossil record over millions of years is a fact. Other theories for why populations change might include the divine will, or magic, but evolution is a more coherent theory. There was an interesting article recently about change observed in a in New Zealand butterfly species: “Butterflies fast forward evolution to evade death: Within 10 generations, males developed immunity to deadly parasite
msnbc.msn.com/id/19733274/

Creationism as a theory has provided no new discoveries at all – not in medicine, or geology, or biology, or genetics. It is a fruitless theory from a scientific point of view. Evolution can explain why bacteria become multi-drug resistant; creationism cannot, unless you say it is because God wills to punish humans for our sinfulness. That would be a theory, but it is not testable, nor wold it lead to future theoretical coherence.
Best wishes, Petrus

 

[drpmjhess]

I’m not sure why the thread is “Genesis v Evolution”

As far as I’m concerned it is Genesis & Evolution

Steve, I quite agree – I wonder why the thread was started with such a tendentious title. It would be like “Genesis v. Gravity,” or “Genesis v. Terrestrial Sphericity.”
Petrus

 

[buffalo]

All seem to agree on the following:

Infinity - atheists need an infinite amount of universes. Evolution needs infinity as well.

Well guess what - Catholics believe God is infinite.

Pretty cool.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

All seem to agree on the following:

Infinity - atheists need an infinite amount of universes. Evolution needs infinity as well.

Well guess what - Catholics believe God is infinite.

Pretty cool.

I’m not sure what your post is supposed to mean. Was anyone talking about atheism? Evolution needs infinity? Huh?

 

[Nepenthe]

Evolution just needs lots of time, like most everything else that’s vast and weird that we can observe.

Atheists don’t ‘need’ infinity anymore than theists do. What in the world did that even mean? It sure helps with mathematics, and so forth…but what are you even talking about, buffalo?

 

[buffalo]

Evolution just needs lots of time, like most everything else that’s vast and weird that we can observe.

Atheists don’t ‘need’ infinity anymore than theists do. What in the world did that even mean? It sure helps with mathematics, and so forth…but what are you even talking about, buffalo?

Ever heard of the infinite number of universes (multiverse theory) to disprove God?

 

[drpmjhess]

Ever heard of the infinite number of universes (multiverse theory) to disprove God?

Of course. How is that relevant to whether or not evolutionary theory is compatible with the Genesis creation myth?

 

[buffalo]

Of course. How is that relevant to whether or not evolutionary theory is compatible with the Genesis creation myth?

I was musing more than anything else. Sorry.

 

[drpmjhess]

I was musing more than anything else. Sorry.

Thanks, Buffalo. If what you were implying was that atheists who retreat to hypothetical infinite and unobservable multiverses to avoid the creator question are dishonest intellectual cowards, I agree. If you were not implying that, I am declaring it now.
Petrus.

 

[buffalo]

Thanks, Buffalo. If what you were implying was that atheists who retreat to hypothetical infinite and unobservable multiverses to avoid the creator question are dishonest intellectual cowards, I agree. If you were not implying that, I am declaring it now.
Petrus.

OK. In my musing I was observing that atheistic evolution does retreat to the infinite, which we Catholics know as God.

IOW, we have common ground, perhaps without even knowing it.

 

[edwest2]

And hopefully it never will, but it is the downside of fundamentalist ideas. It easily devolves into violence, witness our own homebred terrorists the KKK, Aryan Brotherhood, The bombers of abortion clinics. All fundamentalists regardless of faith are cut from the same psychological cloth. They each and everyone worship a book as the sole repository of truth which must be accepted literally (really personal opinion). There is no debate, you are right, everyone else is wrong. They each and everyone, have the desired end to create a theocracy wherein all must obey their determination of right and wrong according to their interpretation of the Book. Open up your eyes my friend, and just read what is out there. If you know why you need this kind of pretended assurance than you’ve figured it all out, you might find its worth a great deal.

Yes, the new Conspiracy theory.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, this is just the constantly to be repeated complaint about religion. I recommend ignoring it.

God bless,
Ed

 

[Nepenthe]

buffalo:

Ever heard of the infinite number of universes (multiverse theory) to disprove God?

Wha…? Of course I have heard of the probabilistic infinite-reality concept! But I have never heard of it as being used to ‘disprove God’. What in the world are you even talking about? Why would anyone be concerned about ‘disproving God’?!? Nobody has even gotten close to ‘proving God’ nor will they unless and until such an inexorable being manifests itself directly and demonstrably. If anyone is using such things to ‘disprove’ the supernatural, then they are full of manure, though the ideas they’re riffing from may not be. Pseudoscience may concern itself with such nonsense, but actual science does not.

 

[buffalo]

Wha…? Of course I have heard of the probabilistic infinite-reality concept! But I have never heard of it as being used to ‘disprove God’. What in the world are you even talking about? Why would anyone be concerned about ‘disproving God’?!? Nobody has even gotten close to ‘proving God’ nor will they unless and until such an inexorable being manifests itself directly and demonstrably. If anyone is using such things to ‘disprove’ the supernatural, then they are full of manure, though the ideas they’re riffing from may not be. Pseudoscience may concern itself with such nonsense, but actual science does not.

**The God Delusion **