Intelligent Design, Edward Feser's views

[mVitus]

So scientists don’t have any supporting evidence, but they’re sure of their conclusions?

Wolves and dogs are separate species. I think dogs were domesticated by the behavioral adaptation of their species, not evolution (and were created for this purpose).

It’s possible to know something happened without knowing exactly when. If you see milk on your kitchen floor for example, you know it spilled from something even if you’re not sure if it spilled from a jug or glass or when it spilled. And by looking at genetics and the (I use this term loosely due to the geological recency) fossil record, they can know dogs and modern wolves had a common ancestor even if they’re not exactly sure when.

Kind of like putting together a puzzle. After a while you start to know what the picture is even if there are still missing gaps you don’t know about for sure because you haven’t found the pieces.

And with dogs, I’m illustrating a principle. The traits humans liked were the ones that got passed down. Those minor differences amplified over multiple generations and a paddle is different from a golden retriever which is different from a great dane.

In the wild, other pressures such as getting food or surviving climate cause only certain individuals to survive and pass down their genes.

 

[buffalo]

It’s not like one species pops out another species in its children. That’s not how speciation works.

When speciation is achieved it means a loss of function once had.

 

[Wesrock]

Wesrock:

It’s not like one species pops out another species in its children. That’s not how speciation works.

When speciation is achieved it means a loss of function once had.

Speciation typically just means reproductively isolated and an understanding that the categories we assign to things have some fluidity.

 

[MikeInVA]

they can know dogs and modern wolves had a common ancestor even if they’re not exactly sure when.

Science used to be about developing and proving/refuting hypotheses, now it seems to revolve around gaining consensus.
Scientists can hypothesize that dogs came from wolves, but there is no evidence to prove that one evolved from the other, or that they had a common ancestor. These are theories. No matter how many times they’re repeated or how fervently they’re believed, they are still just theories.

 

[Dan123]

Science used to be about developing and proving/refuting hypotheses, now it seems to revolve around gaining consensus.

Consensus of evidence not consensus of opinions. When DNA, embryology, the fossil record, study of analogous structures, and radiometric dating all point to one explanation you start to wonder if maybe just maybe there’s something to it.

 

[Wesrock]

As is germ theory and relativity and gravity. You can’t prove theories, you just establish models that fit the evidence, and if there is sufficient evidence there’s higher consensus around that model.

 

[mVitus]

Science used to be about developing and proving/refuting hypotheses, now it seems to revolve around gaining consensus.
Scientists can hypothesize that dogs came from wolves, but there is no evidence to prove that one evolved from the other, or that they had a common ancestor. These are theories. No matter how many times they’re repeated or how fervently they’re believed, they are still just theories.

For reference, what’s your explanation for the diversity of life on Earth?

 

[buffalo]

Speciation typically just means reproductively isolated and an understanding that the categories we assign to things have some fluidity.

It means a bit more. They can no longer reproduce with each other. That is a loss of function.

Excellent point. Species is a man made fluid construct.

 

[buffalo]

all point to one explanation you start to wonder if maybe just maybe there’s something to it.

are you coming to the design side?

 

[MikeInVA]

From the article, “Though researchers agree dogs are descended from wild wolves, they aren’t sure when and where domestication occurred.”

This appears to be consensus of opinion.

It’s probably an overused term, but there is no “missing link” that actually supports the specific point of the theory, that a wolf somehow mutated into a dog. Similar DNA is wonderful, but our understanding of DNA is also a theory.

 

[Dan123]

our understanding of DNA is also a theory.

As is our understanding of gravity.

Since you’ve proposed dogs and wolves don’t have a common ancestor and were created as separate species I’m curious how many species there were originally.

 

[MikeInVA]

Only God knows!

 

[Techno2000]

Environmental pressures trigger dna changes? Uh?

If a change in an organism’s dna allows a better fit into a changed environment then it will have adapted.

Evolution is much more than that, it’s one species morphing into a completely new species over and over again.

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii:

Environmental pressures trigger dna changes? Uh?

If a change in an organism’s dna allows a better fit into a changed environment then it will have adapted.

Evolution is much more than that, it’s one species morphing into a completely new species over and over again.

Techno, stop. For heaven’s sake. Please. At least Buffalo keeps me amused. But you are becoming an embarrassment. It’s not fair to keep any discussions going with you. You just haven’t got the wherewithall. I am going to do my best not to respond any further.

 

[Usagi]

All of them?

 

[Techno2000]

Techno2000:

Bradskii:

Environmental pressures trigger dna changes? Uh?

If a change in an organism’s dna allows a better fit into a changed environment then it will have adapted.

Evolution is much more than that, it’s one species morphing into a completely new species over and over again.

Techno, stop. For heaven’s sake. Please. At least Buffalo keeps me amused. But you are becoming an embarrassment. It’s not fair to keep any discussions going with you. You just haven’t got the wherewithall. I am going to do my best not to respond any further.

It doesn’t work like this ?

 

[Dan123]

Those don’t seem “completely new” to me, they seem closely related to the ones before and after them. Each of those represents gigantic steps as well with huge numbers of smaller variations occurring between them.

Another branch from that early animal takes you to hippopotamuses. And when you compare the DNA of whales and hippopotamuses you find a lot of overlap, to a point. That point is where the lines diverged.

 

[IWantGod]

Design is leaving evolution in the dust.

 

[Aloysium]

Aloysium:

A transitional stage of what exactly?

From the genetic make up of the parent to the genetic makeup of the child.

This suggests that there is nothing that is transitioning then, but an abstraction. Unless of course it is information that is being passed on - a blueprint of how molecules are to be brought together into the physical structure of a living being.

You and I come and go within the symphony of existence that includes all time.
That which determines our bodily make-up, as it interacts with other cellular processes and the external environment, is transmitted from parent to offspring.
As it does so, it is altered as a result of built-in influences that creatively bring about diversity and allow for adaptations to the environment of which the organism is a part.
As well there is the random activity of physical forces inherent in matter outside the control of the organizational structure of the cells that are passed on. This of course is a return to the chaos that is matter divorced from the principles that give it life - the soul of the living creature.

But, what we are doing here is more than just matter simply doing its thing. The Source of simple material properties is the same as that which shapes our being here and now, bringing the matter that is inside and outside our bodies together into the whole that is the person existing in relation to the world - this visual world, one with our thoughts and feelings and our actions as we contemplate reality, and actualizing our musings, type them out on the key board. That spirit had a beginning and existing in union with, indivisible except in death from the body that expresses its psychological nature, can only be passed on in the creation of a new person, through persons. It is primary and was created with the bringing into existence of Adam.

So what we have are transitions within kinds of creatures. If we put aside modern taxonomy as a being a description of illusions, how things look rather than what they are, we can understand that kinds of organisms do not transition into other kinds, but are expressions of different kinds of creation.

 

[Aloysium]

When DNA, embryology, the fossil record, study of analogous structures, and radiometric dating all point to one explanation you start to wonder if maybe just maybe there’s something to it.

The evidence points me in a different direction. That is so because the idea of random chemical activity and natural selection, while clearly at the foundations of a fallen world, do not explain creation.