H
If Adam and Eve were real people but existed hundreds of thousands of years ago, then what about Noah?
- Status
H
hecd2
Guest
T
Texas_Roofer
Guest
so which is closer 2, 2 million, 2 billion, or 2 trillion?
So being dumb and slow was their advantage? Does that really make sense?
G
grannymh
Guest
“As for palaeontological evidence, beyond fire-use and toolmaking, we turn to evidence of human art, music, ritual, decoration and innovative technology which appear fully fledged about 35,000 to 30,000 years ago.”-- Alec
That kind of evidence is amazing! It certainly fuels my imagination.
Wouldn’t art and music be indicative of imagination and creativity abilities beyond cognition? Especially when one considers the difference in degrees between us and animals. Compare the night music of alley cats with an opera sung in a hall in Italy. Compare the architecture in Paris with a prairie dog village.A question about the evidence you are referring to. What is it that says it is evidence of humans?
What I am driving at is that it is perfectly acceptable for a scientist to say that some of the “evidence” points to an intangible difference between humans and other species. There would be no need to declare intelligent design, etc. Whether or not “intangible” is within the scientist’s realm or without is not the point. I will be happy if the intangible difference is acknowledged by a de facto scientist.
Easter blessings,
granny
B
buffalo
Guest
The evolution myth cannot explain the ontological leap.“As for palaeontological evidence, beyond fire-use and toolmaking, we turn to evidence of human art, music, ritual, decoration and innovative technology which appear fully fledged about 35,000 to 30,000 years ago.”-- Alec
That kind of evidence is amazing! It certainly fuels my imagination.
A question about the evidence you are referring to. What is it that says it is evidence of humans?
What I am driving at is that it is perfectly acceptable for a scientist to say that some of the “evidence” points to an intangible difference between humans and other species. There would be no need to declare intelligent design, etc. Whether or not “intangible” is within the scientist’s realm or without is not the point. I will be happy if the intangible difference is acknowledged by a de facto scientist.
Easter blessings,
granny
H
hecd2
Guest
A continuous process of evolution over 3.5 billion years.
Humans aren’t known for their speed. Until relatively recently, and for most of our existence, humans represented a relatively insignificant species in terms of numbers. Even now, we are far from being the most biologically successful species in terms of numbers or biomass.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
G
grannymh
Guest
The only myths I personally know about are the Tlingit [sic] “myths” or ancient stories. As for the existence, essence and nature of God, I would not consider that any part of the current evolutionary theory could explain an ontological leap. So we are on the same page in that regard.
Easter blessings,
granny
B
buffalo
Guest
You know one more - a current myth.
“The doctrine of evolution has swept the world, not on the strength of its scientific merits, but precisely in its capacity as a Gnostic myth. It affirms, in effect, that living beings created themselves, which is, in essence, a metaphysical claim… . evolutionism is in truth a metaphysical doctrine decked out in scientific garb.” Wolfgang Smith, Teilhardism and the New Religion (Rockford, IL: TAN Books and Publishers, 1988), 242
The evolution myth is the thinking of today. Myths cannot be proven or disproven. Evolutionists have the strongest faith that life appeared spontaneously from non-life.
It is non-scientific because it cannot be falsified and no tests exist because it is based on unrepeatable, once-in-a-lifetime random occurrences. It is mythology masquerading as science. Its pronouncements are philosophical.
It is the "chance god"of the gaps atheists believe in.
T
Texas_Roofer
Guest
That would be a bit contradictory, only the continous string for 3.5 billion are considered are there no strings newer than 3.5 billion? What about the continuous processes greater than 3.5 billion do they exist? Why did the older processes not develop the superior species?
Is there a superior species to us, all factors counted? Why didn’t the others mimic us? Did we not build our flying machines with wings like a bird, our boats like a duck.
H
hecd2
Guest
Before we get into a discussion of your last two posts, I’d like to point out a problem in your mode of discourse. You seemed anxious to determine what my worldview is for reasons that have become obvious. Rather than determining my worldview for the reasonable motive of setting a context for the discussion and better understanding my perspective, you use it again and again as an a priori argument against my position. In other words, your claim is that my worldview is the foundation and cause of my arguments and observations and that because my worldview is, in your eyes, a priori wrong and yours right, then it follows that my arguments must fail. But this mode of discourse is plainly fallacious. My observations and reasoning are the warrants for my worldview, not the other way round, so for you to combat them successfully, you need to focus your attention on my observations and reasoning rather than claiming that my worldview is itself an argument against me, and that yours is itself an argument in your favour. That might do for the pulpit, but not for the academy.
Leaving aside for the moment your question-begging characterisation of Catholic beliefs as “truths” and secular arguments as “errors”, can I remind you about what you said in the post that I was replying to:
In other words, it was your suggestion that we limit our discussion to determining whether the findings of natural science can be reconciled with a literal Adam and Eve - in your words everything else is irrelevant. I am perfectly happy to do that - the findings of studies of human molecular biology are totally incompatible with a literal Adam and Eve and I am quite prepared to demonstrate that that is the case. However, if you want a broader discussion that also examines the warrants we each have for our world views, I am also happy to engage in that way. What you must not do, however, if you wish to be credible, is to take your worldview as a given, and reject mine out of hand. If you call on your philosophy as evidence for your position, then you must show how it is more reasonably likely to be true than mine.
There you go - this is an example of how you erroneously claim that I argue from my worldview to a rejection of the evidence. This is a direct inversion of the reasoning that I actually follow, which is to argue from the evidence to my worldview. I ask you to have sufficient respect for me, not to misrepresent me in this way again.
There are several different severe problems which arise from a belief in miracles (if we define these as events in which God directly intervenes to procure an outcome, which would not have occurred in the normal course of events, by suspending or violating the laws of nature). First of all, since such events are, by definition, rare (if they were common they would undermine the epistemic principles of a well-behaved universe in which both folk science and sophisticated science are able to determine truth), then to claim that their occurrence can be empirically verifiable is contradictory. Secondly to claim that miracles are beyond explanation by science is to indulge in a species of God of the Gaps argument - it is no accident that the miracles of Lourdes were verified more frequently in the past, and that today, the verification of new miracles has all but dried up (the last in 2005 of a miracle claimed to have happened *53 *years ago - and only 67 have been verified by the Church in all the years since 1858, not thousands as you say). I refer you to Clarke’s law. At best, it is possible to say that a “miracle” is currently unexplained by present scientific knowledge. Thirdly, the class of miracles at Lourdes, for example, is indistinguishable from that class of illness which is known to be susceptible to spontaneous remission, misdiagnosis or conventional treatment, with the irrefutable class of illness such as recovery from amputation conspicuously absent. Fourth, there is a severe philosophical problem with miraculous cures: viz, if God is just how can he be prepared to suspend the laws of nature on behalf of one individual, when so many others are suffering? If God acted on behalf of Anna Santaniello, where was He during the Holocaust?
With regard to Fatima, I note that not all present witnessed the so-called dancing sun, nor was it witnessed at any distance away from Fatima, say in London or Paris. So the dancing sun was not a literal natural phenomenon as described, but a subjective or a natural local one, and moreover, one that not all present observed and that was reported with differences and inconsistencies by those who did observe it.
Claims of resurrection miracles have the same problems as cures at Lourdes, only more so.
To be continued
E
Earnest_Bunbury
Guest
Not a natural one but yes local, through the Holy Spirit to those present.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve
Jesus’ saying that His Kingdom is not of this world makes looking for physical evidence of God, Adam and Eve, or Noah a specious project, trying to convince one or even oneself what can only be known through faith. We that know through faith know it is much more that wishful belief, it is an actual relationship with the Person of God through Jesus.
That being said, to say ones worldview is based solely on arguments, observations, and reasoning is to miss the inherent bias of desire, unless we pick our mates on sound reason alone. There is an element of want in our “worldview”, I want to serve the first mover, the necessary being of the philosophical “proof” of God.
T
Texas_Roofer
Guest
I am sure you are unaware of how difficult it is to determine what Alec believes other than Adam and Eve existed in different times based on DNA. Yet that argument itself is illogic because for Adam to exist later Eve & her female descendents would have to breed with a breed of humans generated later, how this “bottle neck” theory is logic to you is beyond me, since ancestry is required for bottlenecks. But it is by no means an issue of intelligence; it is an issue of dissection of pronouns and accusations in these posts to try to uncover a logical belief. Can you please stop the pronouns and the references, and references to references, etc., etc., and simply say what you believe. After that we can discuss where is the spontaneous formation of life today? Or why did it stop? If it only occurred 3.5 billion years ago would that not require all life forms to generate from that and thus be directly related? On and on it goes…
If the universe is recycling on what reference can you base any aging.? on and on it goes
H
hecd2
Guest
Continuation
The findings of physics are deeply non-intuitive. Quantum mechanics undermines the necessity of causality and supports the concept of non-locality. Galilean relativity undermines the concept of absolute motion. Special and General relativity extends that caustic view to accelerating frames and simultaneity. It is no longer possible to subscribe to absolute time and space. Spontaneous symmetry breaking in the early universe undermines the concept of necessary physics. It has become possible to conceive of a past eternal universe. In post-Newtonian physics, the concept of infinite regress of per se causes cannot be formally excluded, because causes in the Aristotleian sense of X causes Y causes Z where X, Y nad Z are individual in action entities in a chain of efficient causes is no longer necessary. The concept of the universe as uncaused brute fact cannot be excluded.
Suffice it to say that Aquinas’s notions of causality, motion, contingency, perfection and teleology are hopelessly outmoded. The substances of the world are not as he and Aristotle (and you) suppose.
to be continued
I do indeed. You are a professional philosopher. You must know that Anselm’s ontological argument, the Five Ways and the Kalam argument are far from being accepted as valid proofs by the majority of professional philosophers. The truth or otherwise of Thomistic proofs for God hardly represent the core subjects of modern philosophical discourse.
That might well be so, but the teaching of the Catholic Church cannot be evidence for the truth of its own claims without further reason. The teaching of the Church is surely irrelevant to a philosophical debate.
The problem here is that you mix up different classes of denial. It is important to understand that the Five ways, for example, proceeds from what you call common sense or intuition about the way the world operates. That common sense and intuition is denied by modern findings of natural science. In other words, Aquinas’s concept of the natural world is outmoded, and since his axioms are based on his own outmoded observations or those of Aristotle, then his premises are flawed and his conclusions cannot fail to be flawed. It is not necessary to deny the ability to know the external world, in order to deny necessary causality, motion or contingency - one should not conflate the different classes of denial as you do here.
The findings of physics are deeply non-intuitive. Quantum mechanics undermines the necessity of causality and supports the concept of non-locality. Galilean relativity undermines the concept of absolute motion. Special and General relativity extends that caustic view to accelerating frames and simultaneity. It is no longer possible to subscribe to absolute time and space. Spontaneous symmetry breaking in the early universe undermines the concept of necessary physics. It has become possible to conceive of a past eternal universe. In post-Newtonian physics, the concept of infinite regress of per se causes cannot be formally excluded, because causes in the Aristotleian sense of X causes Y causes Z where X, Y nad Z are individual in action entities in a chain of efficient causes is no longer necessary. The concept of the universe as uncaused brute fact cannot be excluded.
That is not so, as we have seen. It is necessary to acknowledge that some aspects of the natural world are knowable in order to do science; it is not necessary to acknowledge strict causality or non-contradiction in all circumstances. Anyone who claims that there is no contradiction in Nature has not considered wave-particle duality, or non-locality or the many paradoxes of QM and GR. Even Newton’s description of gravity (action at a distance, where the material and efficient cause of the acceleration is a force and not some specific other moving body) is a problem for Aquinas’s arguments, particularly the First Way (as the philosophical debate between Newtonian and Cartesian views of planetary mechanics - resolved in favour of Newton - demonstrates).
Suffice it to say that Aquinas’s notions of causality, motion, contingency, perfection and teleology are hopelessly outmoded. The substances of the world are not as he and Aristotle (and you) suppose.
Here again, you are arguing from my conclusion rather than from my reasons. A nominalistic interpretation of universal concepts is a perfectly valid one, and not one that you are entitled to deny a priori. The claim that universal concepts are actual entities which exist in a spiritual domain is evidence of a fundamental confusion between symbols and their referents. We have covered this ground before - I do not reject the realist interpretation of universals because I am a materialist; rather, I am a materialist because this, and other putative “proofs” for the existence of a real spiritual domain, independent of material grounding, are so unsatisfactory.
There you go, begging the question again by describing philosophical materialism as illicit. There is no philosophical sense in which you can legitimately and non-prejudicially describe philosophical naturalism as “illicit”. And we have seen what, in good reason, we should make of the “sophisticated common sense of classical philosophy”. It seems bizarre that a professional philosopher can reject wholesale the findings of modern philosophy as a blundering into error.
to be continued
H
hecd2
Guest
Continuation
But thats not what the evidence supports. The evidence is that human intellect is *intrinsically *dependent on the sentient faculties and organs, primarily the brain. I can demonstrate with a shadow of a doubt that human faculties are dependent on a material brain. We can demonstrate that what you call the human spiritual soul has a proximate material cause, the material brain - there is no evidence of any human intellectual activity or soul or spirit in its absence. The material brain is necessary - no valid consideration denies its sufficiency.
To be continued
The genomic and palaeontological considerations that conclude the divergence of human and chimp lineages 7 million years ago are not identical to the genomic considerations that exclude the possibility of a literal Adam and Eve.
I didn’t say that it precluded it - but the evidence does not support the instantaneous appearance of humans with modern cognitive abilities.
Well either we are both right to use material evidence to assess the emergence of human abilities or we are both wrong. You cannot legitimately use material evidence to determine a timing for the emergence of fully human individuals and deny me the use of similar evidence to demonstrate that human cognition appears gradually over time. What Catholic faith claims is irrelevant to the epistemic case - it is its claims which are in question, so they cannot be advanced as evidence - and to claim that “philosophical reasoning” shows that “spiritual intellective soul is strictly immaterial and cannot arise gradually from mere matter” is to be selective as to what brand of philosophical reasoning you admit - perhaps your brand of philosophical reasoning concludes that, but we have seen that a) that is not generally shared amongst philosophers, and b) that you have given no convincing warrant for that belief other than the disputed realist interpretation of universals.
How do you propose that we tell the difference between the imitation of intellective activity of which sentient animals are capable and true intellective capability of man?
.
But thats not what the evidence supports. The evidence is that human intellect is *intrinsically *dependent on the sentient faculties and organs, primarily the brain. I can demonstrate with a shadow of a doubt that human faculties are dependent on a material brain. We can demonstrate that what you call the human spiritual soul has a proximate material cause, the material brain - there is no evidence of any human intellectual activity or soul or spirit in its absence. The material brain is necessary - no valid consideration denies its sufficiency.
You have never addressed my scenario of a human born so brain damaged that no uniquely human activity is possible - such a person deserves to be treated with the dignity of a human not because of operative potencies, of which they have none, but because of species identity.
Here, you are merely restating your religious preference which you have been unable to support by philosophical or scientific argument.
I put no credence in those specific tenets of traditional philosophy that we have discussed, because I find arguments in support of them to be badly flawed. I put no credence in Christian teaching because I see no warrant for the entire Christian worldview. I have already told you that my perspective arises from considerations in addition to my science and I have never claimed that evidence from natural science is the only source of my judgement about the probability of God’s existence. Arguments from natural science are however the only source of my conclusions about human origins. I cannot see what other valid source of evidence there can possibly be. The conclusion about the size of the human and pre-human population is a biological one that depends only on considerations of natural science.
To be continued
H
hecd2
Guest
Of course they are not. It is not the duty or the place of natural scientists to accomodate Christian philosophising.
The concept of confidence intervals is valid here. Nothing in science is known to infinite precision and accuracy. That does not mean that we cannot exclude certain conclusions. For example we know that gravity operates with an inverse square law. There is some uncertainty about whether the power law is precisely and identically two in all circumstances. Nevertheless, we know enough to completely reject the notion that gravity operates linearly or according to a cube law. Similarly, although we cannot know the exact minimum bottleneck in the ancestry of extant humans, we know enough to exclude the possibility that extant humans arise from a population that passed through a bottleneck of two. Don’t you want to know how we know, or have you decided to reject whatever evidence I can produce out of hand?
What unjustified “assumptions” or “postulations” (postulates?) are you referring to?
I can inundate you if you wish, but the most important point here is that there is no other universally admissible evidence, outside natural science, for the biological ancestry of humans - we have seen enough of the relative efficacy of competing epistemologies to know that, given a choice between natural science, philosophy and ancient texts in determining the truth with regard to natural phenomena, we should choose natural science every time. Even if we leave aside the question of the emergence of fully human faculties, and whether that was manifested gradually or instantaneously, we can say without doubt that human ancestry never passed through a biological bottleneck of two, either in pre-human, newly human or human era.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
T
Texas_Roofer
Guest
And yet what could theses sources be? What sources outside of science can exist to one who worships to science alone?
H
hecd2
Guest
I don’t think so - I think art and music and poetry and other creative abilities arise from human cognition - they are all one with our intellectual ability.That kind of evidence is amazing! It certainly fuels my imagination.
Sure - I agree that humans are very different in degree with regard to their abilities. (I would however prefer to use the example of songbirds rather than alley cats. Song birds use homologous brain areas compared with human music making and speech, they are inventive, they create musical phrases, they learn from others, they have a musical culture; and they produce music which is exquisitely beautiful. Give the choice between spending a summer evening in my garden listening to a songthrush as the sun goes down, or a night in La Scala at a performance of La Boheme, I choose … both.
Interesting question, and not that easy to answer. The fact that the art is found in conjunction with human deposits; and because in some cases the human artists used their own hands as stencils; and the fact that all the evidence indicates that humans are the only animals to have achieved that level of sophistication, I suppose.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
H
hecd2
Guest
The Garlands wither on your brow,
then boast no more your mighty deeds,
Upon Death’s purple altar now,
See where the Victor-victim bleeds,
Your heads must cone,
To the cold Tomb,
Onely the actions of the just
Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust.
I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.
What is precious is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.
Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are feted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.
Born of the sun they travelled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.
Surprised by joy - impatient as the wind
I turned to share the transport - Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind -
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss? - That thought’s return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn,
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.
That time of yeeare thou maist in me behold,
When yellow leaues, or none, or few doe hange
Vpon those boughes which shake against the could,
Bare rn’wd quiers, where late the sweet birds ſang.
In me thou seest the twi-light of such day,
As after Sun-set fadeth in the West,
Which by and by blacke night doth take away,
Deaths second selfe that seals vp all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lye,
As the death bed, whereon it must expire,
Consum’d with that which it was nurrisht by.
This thou perceu’st, which makes thy loue more strong,
To loue that well, which thou must leaue ere long.
M
Michael_Francis
Guest
Thread closed for departure from topic.
- Status