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buffalo
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or does He ever act to undo what humans do in a fallen world?
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Peter_Plato
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It is only a methodological constraint if the assumption is made that intelligence is in no way “detectible” or is and never can be inferentially warranted. That is an assumption, even given methodological constraints.It’s called methodological naturalism and it’s one of the prerequisites of doing science. An a priori assumption if you want, but only in a methodological, not ontological sense.
Assuming that “upholding creation” means “hands-off” after the fact.In my opinion, and I should highlight “opinion”, God upholds his creation at any moment in time, not just stepping in with a miracle when a new enzyme is needed. God created the world with a functional integrity, which means that there are no functional deficiencies, no gaps in its economy that would require God to act on a level that science would be qualified to detect.
To my mind, and in my opinion - since we are being candid - it is a vestige of the clockmaker perspective of creation as a mechanical process and, therefore, understood as a slight against the “perfect” clockmaker. That, in itself, would seem an unwarranted constraint imposed upon a perception or assumption about methodology rather than a necessary implication deriving from it.
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rossum
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I am not a hammer. Most of my purposes are self-generated, and they change from time to time. Other purposes are externally imposed: pay my taxes on time, for example.So all your purposes are thrust upon you?
rossum
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Hans_W
Guest
Science is in the business of finding natural explanations, natural cause-effect relationships. If science cannot find such a relationship scientists will carry on looking. There is the mind-body problem, abiogenesis, dark matter and and lots more. Every time science answers a question, three more are popping up. Looking at the track record, science has been pretty successful over the last few centuries.It is only a methodological constraint if the assumption is made that intelligence is in no way “detectible” or is and never can be inferentially warranted. That is an assumption, even given methodological constraints.
Do you suggest biologists should lock their labs and go home because life is just “intelligently designed”? - we’ll never find out how it could have started. The problem is that people want a hard-core proof for the existence of God. And science is supposed to provide us with such a proof.
Well, science is not in the business of proving the supernatural. Scientists can only say “we don’t have an answer yet”. Perhaps there is no answer, but we’ll keep looking. Once you come with “theistic” science - that’s what ID wants to bring in - then anything goes.
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edwest2
Guest
Thank you, very much, for posting that. Well done, and I agree.Having “no problems” with the theory of evolution is somewhat of a misstatement of the position of the Church. Neither does having “no problems” entail the Church fully endorses or proclaims it as the correct view.
What “accepting” means, in this instance, is the Church accepts that the theory of evolution COULD be correct given certain qualifications - the most important being that there can be no denial that God, ultimately, is and must be the Creator of the universe. As soon as the theory of evolution begins to be expressed as a “no God is necessary” proposition, that is when the Church will and must object. I suppose you missed the connection between Bradski being an atheist and his contention that the theory of evolution, at least on his view, means, precisely that no God is needed to bring about life.
Yes, I understand theistic evolution pushes the necessity for God a bit further back in time, and Bradski is quite happy to affirm that move BECAUSE he views it as another instance of the “god of the gaps” retreat. The bluff being played is that Darwinian evolution fully explains life, I would challenge that merely on the grounds that it neither logically nor sufficiently explains life as we know it. I don’t need to be an ID proponent to see that, nor to point it out.
Now, if you can find a statement by the Church that it views evolution - in the full Darwinian sense of blind and unguided - is sufficient to explain all forms of life on Earth, including human beings, then post it. Otherwise, stop making claims that the Church’s acceptance of evolution means it has categorically rejected all alternative explanations. It hasn’t.
What “acceptance” means in this instance is that the Church has NOT categorically denied that the theory of evolution could be correct, within certain parameters, but that is not a full and unmitigated rejection of ID that you seem to be claiming. Your view on this is not the Church’s view and you ought to be challenged on this point because it simply misrepresents the Church’s actual position.
Ed
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buffalo
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Admitting and then studying design could yield untold benefits.Science is in the business of finding natural explanations, natural cause-effect relationships. If science cannot find such a relationship scientists will carry on looking. There is the mind-body problem, abiogenesis, dark matter and and lots more. Every time science answers a question, three more are popping up. Looking at the track record, science has been pretty successful over the last few centuries.
Do you suggest biologists should lock their labs and go home because life is just “intelligently designed”? - we’ll never find out how it could have started. The problem is that people want a hard-core proof for the existence of God. And science is supposed to provide us with such a proof.
Well, science is not in the business of proving the supernatural. Scientists can only say “we don’t have an answer yet”. Perhaps there is no answer, but we’ll keep looking. Once you come with “theistic” science - that’s what ID wants to bring in - then anything goes.
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rossum
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The purpose of the maker is similar to the purpose of the shopkeeper: to make a profit. The purpose of the owner is different. My point is that the purpose is not intrinsic to the hammer. It changes according to circumstances.But the hammer would not exist except for those intelligently designed purposes for which it was made.
No. We made ourselves as a result of the accumulated unexhausted karma of our previous lives. Our purpose should be to attain nirvana, though some of us do not realise this and follow other purposes. I am not Christian, so I do not share the usual Christian assumptions.We were made because God had a purpose for us.
rossum
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buffalo
Guest
Answering the why of your existence is something you cannot do.I am not a hammer. Most of my purposes are self-generated, and they change from time to time. Other purposes are externally imposed: pay my taxes on time, for example.
rossum
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buffalo
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Who told you this?No. We made ourselves as a result of the accumulated unexhausted karma of our previous lives. Our purpose should be to attain nirvana, though some of us do not realise this and follow other purposes. I am not Christian, so I do not share the usual Christian assumptions.
rossum
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edwest2
Guest
The driving purpose is to ignore or discard God. However, those who review Biology textbooks before publication allow speculation that is apparently going to lead the reader to believe that nothing made us. Evolutionary science has no purpose in terms of modern biology. Scientists can take anything apart and determine how it works but connecting it to events that supposedly happened millions of years ago is not repeatable.Nobody can miss the apparent and perceived connection between atheism and evolution, unless you have never heard of Richard Dawkins.
It is simply wrong and if scientists make such statements, then they are stepping outside the constrains of their profession and express their personal opinions. Otherwise how do you explain a long list of religious scientists, experts working on the forefront of evolutionary science?
This obvious bias is part of the problem:
“[E]volution works without either plan or purpose — Evolution is random and undirected.”
(Biology, by Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph S. Levine (1st ed., Prentice Hall, 1991), pg. 658; (3rd ed., Prentice Hall, 1995), pg. 658; (4th ed., Prentice Hall, 1998), pg. 658; emphasis in original.)
“Humans represent just one tiny, largely fortuitous, and late-arising twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life.”
(Stephen J Gould quoted in Biology, by Peter H Raven & George B Johnson (5th ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pg 15; (6th ed., McGraw Hill, 2000), pg. 16.)
“By coupling **undirected, purposeless **variation to the **blind, uncaring **process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”
(Evolutionary Biology, by Douglas J. Futuyma (3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc., 1998), p. 5.)
“Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that **matter is the stuff of all existence **and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless–a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit. Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us.”
(Biology: Discovering Life by Joseph S. Levine & Kenneth R. Miller (1st ed., D.C. Heath and Co., 1992), pg. 152; (2nd ed… D.C. Heath and Co., 1994), p. 161; emphases in original.)
“Adopting this view of the world means accepting not only the processes of evolution, but also the view that the living world is constantly evolving, and that evolutionary change occurs without any goals.’ The idea that **evolution is not directed **towards a final goal state has been more difficult for many people to accept than the process of evolution itself.”
(Life: The Science of Biology by William K. Purves, David Sadava, Gordon H. Orians, & H. Craig Keller, (6th ed., Sinauer; W.H. Freeman and Co., 2001), pg. 3.)
“The ‘blind’ watchmaker is natural selection. **Natural selection is totally blind **to the future. “**Humans are fundamentally not exceptional **because we came from the same evolutionary source as every other species. It is natural selection of selfish genes that has given us our bodies and brains “Natural selection is a bewilderingly simple idea. And yet what it explains is the whole of life, the diversity of life, the apparent design of life.”
(Richard Dawkins quoted in *Biology *by Neil A. Campbell, Jane B. Reese. & Lawrence G. Mitchell (5th ed., Addison Wesley Longman, 1999), pgs. 412-413.)
“Of course, no species has 'chosen’ a strategy. Rather, its ancestors ‘little by little, generation after generation’ merely wandered into a successful way of life through the action of random evolutionary forces. Once pointed in a certain direction, a line of evolution survives only if the cosmic dice continues to roll in its favor. “[J]ust by chance, a wonderful diversity of life has developed during the billions of years in which organisms have been evolving on earth.
(Biology by Burton S. Guttman (1st ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pgs. 36-37.)
“It is difficult to avoid the speculation that Darwin, as has been the case with others, found the implications of his theory difficult to confront. “The real difficulty in accepting Darwins theory has always been that it seems to diminish our significance. Earlier, astronomy had made it clear that the earth is not the center of the solar universe, or even of our own solar system. Now the new biology asked us to accept the proposition that, like all other organisms, we too are the products of a random process that, as far as science can show, we are not created for any special purpose or as part of any universal design.”
(Invitation to Biology, by Helena Curtis & N. Sue Barnes(3rd ed., Worth, 1981), pgs. 474-475.)
Ed
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rossum
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For bacteria, a generation can be as short as 30 minutes in very good conditions. Behe’s figure comes out at just under 2 hours per generation by my calculation.The important point is 100 million generations.
Bwahahahaha! Do you realise just how large a clade “bacteria” is? The equivalent level for humans is “eukaryote”. Everything from a single celled amoeba, through all plants, all fungi and all animals are eukaryotes – basically anything with mitochondria… What you are saying is that you can see no problem in a primitive eukaryote fish evolving into a eukaryote human. You really really need to learn more biology if you want to discuss this subject sensibly.Lenski’s experiment shows bacteria still bacteria, but adapted bacteria.
You are not the first creationist to make this mistake. Others have made it before you, and no doubt others will make it in future. Every living thing on earth falls into one of four clades: eubacteria, arche, eukaryotes or viruses. If you didn’t realise that, then you need to learn it, and a great deal more abut taxonomy. This is science, and you are expected to have the relevant knowledge. Gaps in your knowledge will lead you into errors, such as the one you made here.
I strongly suggest that you learn about the eubacteria and eukaryotes at the very least.
rossum
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rossum
Guest
You are incorrect. I exist because I failed to attain enlightenment in my previous life. You will no doubt have a different answer, but your answer will be derived from your religion just as my answer id derived from mine.Answering the why of your existence is something you cannot do.
I suspect we will have to agree to differ.
rossum
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rossum
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I read it in scripture and heard it from my religious instructors.Who told you this?
rossum
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tonyrey
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A few examples:Sorry, I am a bit behind here, living on the other side of the planet.
Could you please expand on these “scandals in the Scientific Establishment…”
the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/31519/title/Top-Science-Scandals-of-2011/
books.google.co.uk/books?id=mVMJzt_B0xsC&pg=PA206&lpg=PA206&dq=scandals+in+the+Scientific+Establishment&source=bl&ots=pXIszV_Iwh&sig=h-Tz5BKt7_sIh3QhX93aPqIiYXk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-0CLVKeaKIW6UYz1guAB&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=scandals%20in%20the%20Scientific%20Establishment&f=false
theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/09/nobel-winner-boycott-science-journals
huffingtonpost.com/elaine-mckewon/why-this-is-a-dark-time-for-the-field-of-climate-science_b_5174083.html
books.google.co.uk/books?id=83XpGQO6w5cC&pg=PA157&lpg=PA157&dq=journal+Nature+scandals&source=bl&ots=TEOUK7m5lw&sig=23EPaXxDOhYmsXhdN51WSjEod84&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hWGLVJSPBYLpaJD4gagD&ved=0CCAQ6AEwADge#v=onepage&q=journal%20Nature%20scandals&f=false
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Peter_Plato
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Why would anyone assume that to be an implication? It certainly isn’t a logical one unless one assumes an unbridgeable gap between naturalism and intelligence as if one or the other can only exist exclusive of each other.Do you suggest biologists should lock their labs and go home because life is just “intelligently designed”?
That is, by the way, precisely the underlying assumption that isn’t required and doesn’t make sense, in any case.
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Hans_W
Guest
Well, I take up the challenge. It was in 1950 that Pope Pius XII stated that there is no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of faith about man and his vocation. The Church was not thought of as actually endorsing evolution. That was 64 years ago.What “acceptance” means in this instance is that the Church has NOT categorically denied that the theory of evolution could be correct, within certain parameters, but that is not a full and unmitigated rejection of ID that you seem to be claiming. Your view on this is not the Church’s view and you ought to be challenged on this point because it simply misrepresents the Church’s actual position.
John Paul II said the following in 1996: “[the 1950 Encyclical] considered the doctrine of ‘evolutionism’ a serious hypothesis worthy of investigation” but that “this opinion should not be adopted as though it were certain, proven doctrine.”
John Paul II then went on to say “Today, almost half a century after publication of the Encyclical, fresh knowledge has let to the recognition that evolution is more than a hypothesis,” and he acknowledged the “series of discoveries” that have led to progressive acceptance “by researchers.”
Then there was the episode in 2006 with Cardinal Schönborn, but he has been corrected.
There is lots I can fill in here, but let’s fast forward to 2014 when Pope Francis had the following to say: “When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so, …[God] created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfillment.”
Pope Francis also said “God is not a demigod or a magician, but the Creator who brought everything to life. Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”
Unlike much of evangelical Protestantism in the U.S. Catholic teaching traditionally is not at odds with evolution.
The Church doesn’t force you to accept evolution. You are free to belief that God needs to step in from time to time to create a new molecule, if this makes you feel more comfortable.
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tonyrey
Guest
Anyone who diverges from the prevailing secularist mentality is vilified as a Creationist or Fundamentalist.The driving purpose is to ignore or discard God. However, those who review Biology textbooks before publication allow speculation that is apparently going to lead the reader to believe that nothing made us. Evolutionary science has no purpose in terms of modern biology. Scientists can take anything apart and determine how it works but connecting it to events that supposedly happened millions of years ago is not repeatable.
This obvious bias is part of the problem:
“[E]volution works without either plan or purpose — Evolution is random and undirected.”
(Biology, by Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph S. Levine (1st ed., Prentice Hall, 1991), pg. 658; (3rd ed., Prentice Hall, 1995), pg. 658; (4th ed., Prentice Hall, 1998), pg. 658; emphasis in original.)
“Humans represent just one tiny, largely fortuitous, and late-arising twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life.”
(Stephen J Gould quoted in Biology, by Peter H Raven & George B Johnson (5th ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pg 15; (6th ed., McGraw Hill, 2000), pg. 16.)
“By coupling **undirected, purposeless **variation to the **blind, uncaring **process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”
(Evolutionary Biology, by Douglas J. Futuyma (3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc., 1998), p. 5.)
“Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that **matter is the stuff of all existence **and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless–a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit. Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us.”
(Biology: Discovering Life by Joseph S. Levine & Kenneth R. Miller (1st ed., D.C. Heath and Co., 1992), pg. 152; (2nd ed… D.C. Heath and Co., 1994), p. 161; emphases in original.)
“Adopting this view of the world means accepting not only the processes of evolution, but also the view that the living world is constantly evolving, and that evolutionary change occurs without any goals.’ The idea that **evolution is not directed **towards a final goal state has been more difficult for many people to accept than the process of evolution itself.”
(Life: The Science of Biology by William K. Purves, David Sadava, Gordon H. Orians, & H. Craig Keller, (6th ed., Sinauer; W.H. Freeman and Co., 2001), pg. 3.)
“The ‘blind’ watchmaker is natural selection. **Natural selection is totally blind **to the future. “**Humans are fundamentally not exceptional **because we came from the same evolutionary source as every other species. It is natural selection of selfish genes that has given us our bodies and brains “Natural selection is a bewilderingly simple idea. And yet what it explains is the whole of life, the diversity of life, the apparent design of life.”
(Richard Dawkins quoted in *Biology *by Neil A. Campbell, Jane B. Reese. & Lawrence G. Mitchell (5th ed., Addison Wesley Longman, 1999), pgs. 412-413.)
“Of course, no species has 'chosen’ a strategy. Rather, its ancestors ‘little by little, generation after generation’ merely wandered into a successful way of life through the action of random evolutionary forces. Once pointed in a certain direction, a line of evolution survives only if the cosmic dice continues to roll in its favor. “[J]ust by chance, a wonderful diversity of life has developed during the billions of years in which organisms have been evolving on earth.
(Biology by Burton S. Guttman (1st ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pgs. 36-37.)
“It is difficult to avoid the speculation that Darwin, as has been the case with others, found the implications of his theory difficult to confront. “The real difficulty in accepting Darwins theory has always been that it seems to diminish our significance. Earlier, astronomy had made it clear that the earth is not the center of the solar universe, or even of our own solar system. Now the new biology asked us to accept the proposition that, like all other organisms, we too are the products of a random process that, as far as science can show, we are not created for any special purpose or as part of any universal design.”
(Invitation to Biology, by Helena Curtis & N. Sue Barnes(3rd ed., Worth, 1981), pgs. 474-475.)
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Hans_W
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That’s called quote mining.Anyone who diverges from the prevailing secularist mentality is vilified as a Creationist or Fundamentalist.
All the quotes that edwest 2 has copied and repeated once again on this thread have been addressed and answered.
And I do object of being associated with “secularist mentality”
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Peter_Plato
Guest
In none of those encyclicals or writings is there even a hint that the evolution of life had to be unguided or without reference to an intelligence superintending the process.Well, I take up the challenge. It was in 1950 that Pope Pius XII stated that there is no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of faith about man and his vocation. The Church was not thought of as actually endorsing evolution. That was 64 years ago.
John Paul II said the following in 1996: “[the 1950 Encyclical] considered the doctrine of ‘evolutionism’ a serious hypothesis worthy of investigation” but that “this opinion should not be adopted as though it were certain, proven doctrine.”
John Paul II then went on to say “Today, almost half a century after publication of the Encyclical, fresh knowledge has let to the recognition that evolution is more than a hypothesis,” and he acknowledged the “series of discoveries” that have led to progressive acceptance “by researchers.”
Then there was the episode in 2006 with Cardinal Schönborn, but he has been corrected.
There is lots I can fill in here, but let’s fast forward to 2014 when Pope Francis had the following to say “When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so,” Francis said “[God] created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfillment.”
“God is not a demigod or a magician, but the Creator who brought everything to life,” the pope said. “Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”
Unlike much of evangelical Protestantism in the U.S., Catholic teaching traditionally is not at odds with evolution.
The issue isn’t whether evolution (defined as the gradual development of life) occurred or not, but, rather, it is the mechanisms behind that evolution that are being contended.
Why is there a necessary inference from "gradual development” to “therefore, unguided and mechanical?” Certainly, that is not implied in any of the above writings.
It is only when one accepts the rather dubious relationship between intelligence and magic that the questionable inferences make their appearance. And only that when a decidedly ambiguous notion of “evolution" is defended as if all the mechanistic attributions must necessarily be accepted as soon as one accepts that change has occurred.
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Hans_W
Guest
You still don’t get it!In none of those encyclicals or writings is there even a hint that the evolution of life had to be unguided or without reference to an intelligence superintending the process.
The issue isn’t whether evolution (defined as the gradual development of life) occurred or not, but, rather, it is the mechanisms behind that evolution that are being contended.
Why is there a necessary inference from "gradual development” to “therefore, unguided and mechanical?” Certainly, that is not implied in any of the above writings.
It is only when one accepts the rather dubious relationship between intelligence and magic that the questionable inferences make their appearance. And only that when a decidedly ambiguous notion of “evolution" is defended as if all the mechanistic attributions must necessarily be accepted as soon as one accepts that change has occurred.
Science doesn’t make any statement on any supernatural guidance. That’s outside of science. You can either believe that evolution is guided by God (Ken Miller, Francis Collins, Denis Lamoureux, John Haught, etc.) or not guided (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, etc.)
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