Is Darwin's Theory of Evolution True? Part Three

[LeafByNiggle]

In a book you probably won’t read.

 

[benjamin1973]

It’s really an internal debate, methinks, since the Catholic church is no formally opposed to the idea of evolution. I have to say that overall, I feel I should be a google employee, because so many things have been said by the anti-evolutionists that can simply be responded to with a link.

As for emotion words: when you’ve pitted yourself against something you don’t really understand, then I’d say that’s enmity: opposition on oath.

 

[rossum]

A theory that cannot be tested

It can be tested, as with the Lederberg experiment and others. A lot of science cannot be tested, but is still science. For example the theory of star formation has not been tested. A lab big enough to hold an entire star would cost rather a lot.

Science tests where it can. Evolution has either passed the tests, or been modified where it didn’t. That is the way science works.

rossum

 

[rossum]

We know a creature survived because it’s still around?

No. We know that every single one of its ancestors survived long enough to reproduce. Every single one. Not one failure in all those ancestors. That is a very severe constraint on what genes pass into the next generation. How many acorns does an oak tree produce over its lifetime? How many of those acorns will go on to grow, mature and reproduce?

rossum

 

[Aloysium]

“The question of how the six days are to be interpreted should remain an active one in Catholic circles for some time to come.”

From my perspective, a day is a function of the human spirit, non-existant as such without a person to experience it. Days, months, years, seconds and minutes are aspects of our relationship with the flux of time. We base our measurements on the cyclic nature of many events in the world.

Both a six day and a thirteen billion year creation are descriptions of temporal events that took place when there were no human beings around. We project our understanding onto events that we imagine happened as epochs in time, which we could not experience. We construct a mental image of a universe, as if we had been there, in accordance with the capacities that define our relationship with it. These include various areas of mathematics, our ability for visualization and story telling, and reason in general.

How long did the first Planck time last from God’s eternal vision where nothing is hidden, but embraced by His infinite compassion? Only through our relationship with Him can we truly grasp what the symphony of creation is in itself. With this in mind, it seems clear that we utilize the story that best aligns us with the revelation of His glory to be found in creation. And, that would be a personal matter between oneself and God, growing and developing as our relationship with Him deepens.

 

[Aloysium]

the Catholic church is no formally opposed to the idea of evolution.

I do not see how your understanding of evolution is compatible with the teachings of the Church.
Evolution is not contrary to revealed truth as it is defined in its simplest and broadest sense of there having existed a universe for some thirteen billion years and that life on earth seems to have been here for a couple of billion, during which time, it has changed. Human beings are not animals but rather constitute a new creation.

 

[buffalo]

“The First Gene: The Birth of Programming, Messaging and Formal Control” is a peer-reviewed anthology of papers that focuses, for the first time, entirely on the following difficult scientific questions:…

Abstract: Could a composome, chemoton, or RNA vesicular protocell come to life in the absence of formal instructions, controls and regulation? Redundant, low-informational selfordering is not organization. Organization must be programmed. Intertwined circular constraints (e.g. complex hypercylces), even with negative and positive feedback, do not steer physicochemical reactions toward formal function or metabolic success. Complex hypercycles quickly and selfishly exhaust sequence and other phase spaces of potential metabolic resources.

“Chance and necessity are completely inadequate to describe the most important elements of what we repeatedly observe in intra-cellular life, especially. Science must acknowledge the reality and validity not only of a very indirect, post facto natural selection, but of purposeful selection for potential function as a fundamental category of reality. To disallow purposeful selection renders the practice of mathematics and science impossible.”

A new technical book, The First Gene, edited by Gene Emergence Project director David L. Abel, …" Materialists will not like this book because its arguments are 100% scientific, devoid of religious, political, or cultural concerns, and most importantly, compelling.

The First Gene

IDvolution - Where faith and reason intersect. - intelligent design Jim Serafin

idvolution.blogspot.com

 

[edwest211]

See the book Primordial Prescription by the same author.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

See the book “Why Evolution is True” by Jerry Coyne if you really want to understand.

 

[edwest211]

See the book “Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible” by Jerry Coyne if you want to read an attempt by an atheist to promote science and deny religion.

 

[Aloysium]

Dude, what is wrong with you!

Doing a “look up” on my smart phone of “Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne", gets me a youtube video that includes Richard Dawkins’ introduction of your esteemed scientist at the Atheist Alliance International 2009 conference, in which he is described as a Guru. If you want to present a work of science supporting your vision of creation, eliminate those that have the word “truth” in the title. All you have done is affirm the claim that Darwinism is a materialistic metaphysics going under the radar and included in biology class, where other belief systems are not, because it is about matter. In other words, that it is not science.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Dude, what is wrong with you!

Doing a “look up” on my smart phone of “Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne", gets me a youtube video that includes Richard Dawkins’ introduction of your esteemed scientist at the Atheist Alliance International 2009 conference, in which he is described as a Guru. If you want to present a work of science supporting your vision of creation, eliminate those that have the word “truth” in the title. All you have done is affirm the claim that Darwinism is a materialistic metaphysics going under the radar and included in biology class, where other belief systems are not, because it is about matter. In other words, that it is not science.

I recommended the book, not everyone who introduces it.

 

[Glark]

If you want to stick your head in the sand that’s find. The world will move on without you, and comfortably so. But if you want the Catholic religion to remain relevant, making yourself an enemy of science is probably not a good way to achieve that goal.

There is nothing “relevant” about the theory that the life we see today evolved from microbes. To science, it’s just a useless, worthless and irrelevant story. However, this story is very relevant to millions of atheists, who are psychologically addicted to it.

To call evo-infidels, “enemies of science”, is absurd - I, for one, love science … but I am offended by junk, fraudulent science, like evolution.

 

[Glark]

In a book you probably won’t read.

If a book on evolution is 300 pages long, and you removed all the baseless assumptions contained therein, you would be left with a book about 3 pages long.

 

[Glark]

Science tests where it can. Evolution has either passed the tests, or been modified where it didn’t. That is the way science works.

The trouble is, evolution science isn’t true science. It’s fake science invented by deluded charlatans. The scientific community allows this farce to continue because the scientific community is controlled by an army of atheists.

 

[Glark]

Thanks for alerting me to IDvolution. They publish some very interesting articles.

 

[rossum]

The trouble is, evolution science isn’t true science. It’s fake science invented by deluded charlatans. The scientific community allows this farce to continue because the scientific community is controlled by an army of atheists.

Erm… You need to include the Queen of England, the Freemasons and Area 42 if you are going to make a real conspiracy theory. For bonus points you can claim that the Queen is really an alien reptile ten feet tall.

Oh yes, for the Glark version, you can include the Pope for free.

rossum

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

In a book you probably won’t read.

If a book on evolution is 300 pages long, and you removed all the baseless assumptions contained therein, you would be left with a book about 3 pages long.

You can make all sorts of assumptions about a book you have never seen, I suppose. But since everyone else was touting books it seemed only fair to mention a book I thought might help.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

…For bonus points you can claim that the Queen is really an alien reptile ten feet tall.

Wasn’t that a Doctor Who episode?

 

[Glark]

“35. Michael Denton2 treats at length the consummate difference between the lung and respiratory system of a bird in contrast with the lung and respiratory systems of reptiles and all other vertebrates. In all other vertebrates, the air is drawn into the lungs by means of branching tubes that terminate in tiny air sacs, so that during respiration the air is moved in and out through the same passage. But in all birds the major bronchi break down into tiny tubes which permeate the lung tissue and later join up again to form a true circulatory system in which the air flows only in one direction through the lungs. This air system necessitates “a highly specialized and unique division of the body cavity of the bird into several compressible compartments,” making the avian lung quite unique. “Just how such an utterly different respiratory system could have evolved gradually from the standard vertebrate design is fantastically difficult to envisage, especially bearing in mind that the maintenance of respiratory function is absolutely vital to the life of an organism to the extent that the slightest malfunction leads to death within minutes.” Furthermore, “the avian lung is fixed rigidly in the body wall and cannot therefore expand in volume” and “the avian lung cannot be inflated out of a collapsed state as happens in all other vertebrates after birth.” Hence, “the suspicion inevitably arises that perhaps no functional intermediate exists between the dead-end and continuous through-put types of lungs” (Denton, pp.210-212). The point made here is that, according to Collins’ view, for a transition from reptile to bird, the non-functioning avian lung would have to grow in the reptile simultaneously with the functioning reptilian lung over a succession of generations lasting up to perhaps millions of years and as a purely random process, which is, as Denton says, “fantastically difficult to envisage.””

From “Francis S. Collins and The Language of God”, No. 125, Living Tradition, rtforum.org