Is Darwin's Theory of Evolution True? Part Three

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benjamin1973 said:
There’s no way of knowing, at any step, if the “random” outcome is actually predetermined or influenced by God in some way.
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Then you are actually arguing for intelligent design.

Either the word random is actually random, or it is guided by God, and we have intelligent design.

I am uncertain there are any alternatives here.
 
I’ve never argued against Intelligent Design. I’ve argued that it is not incompatible with evolution, and that evolution is not incompatible with religious ideas. If God has an influence on all things in all moments, then evolution is still ID, but it is just incomprehensible to us. Trying to adhere to a kindergarten account of creation, when the Universe, the Earth, and the progress of life are so extremely complex.

In science “random” can’t mean truly random-- that is a philosophical issue that is beyond the realm of science. It means “so complex that it can’t be calculated.” Now, there may be a good physical reason for a particular mutation-- the bombardment of the DNA by a radioactive particle, for example. But obviously, we cannot track all radioactive particles in the Universe, so while we can know statistically how many mutations are likely to occur in a given individual at a given time, exactly what mutations occur are practically random.

What I would say, though, is this: if you are going to avoid learning about evolution because you don’t think it fits in with Intelligent Design, then 1) you underestimate the ways in which God’s designs might come to fruition; 2) you and those like you are going to experience what it feels like for the educated population to discard your ideas and move on without you.
 
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vz71 said:
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benjamin1973:
There’s no way of knowing, at any step, if the “random” outcome is actually predetermined or influenced by God in some way.
Click to expand...
Then you are actually arguing for intelligent design.

Either the word random is actually random, or it is guided by God, and we have intelligent design.

I am uncertain there are any alternatives here.
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The implication of what benjamin was saying is that even if events we call random are actually guided by God, unless there is physical evidence for that guidance, there is no point in science considering it as a possibility. Science, by definition, is only about what we can establish by evidence. The difference between the “Intelligent Design” movement and simply saying that God is the source of all creation is that the former posits that there is physical evidence for their claim. They are wrong in that.

Even if randomness is a total fiction, and God is pulling all the strings in the background, it is still appropriate to develop theories based on how things appear, rather than posit truths that cannot be verified with evidence because those theories work.
 
Yes, this is the thing that some Christians don’t seem to understand. It’s not that science is trying to replace religious ideas: it is operating in a world in which religious ideas are mostly irrelevant. It really doesn’t matter what you think about God if you are studying the effects of some plant derivative on cancer cells or whatever. If you discover something, and you want to shout out “Glory to God,” that’s fine-- but you still need to get in the lab and figure out how stuff really works in the Universe.

The same goes for evolution. If you want to know why species across time and geography end up having certain similarities or differences, it doesn’t really matter if God made them that way-- you will still need to dig up as many details as you can to understand in what way God related those species. And that digging points to evolution.
 
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This is a common creationist quotemine, which is about as convincing as quoting the Bible as saying, “There is no God”. The creationists carefully separate the quote from what Darwin said immediately afterwards.
To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real.

– Origin, chapter 6
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Your creationist source is lying to you by omission. By omitting the greater part of the paragraph it gives a false impression of what Darwin was saying. Why do you believe sources that lie to you?

rossum
 
Everyone’s got an agenda I suppose. Thank you for expanding on the context.

Science has merit but I’m much more a philosophy theology myth guy.

There is a lot of stuff out there but we really only know what we learn on our own to an extent through personal experience.
 
Who knows? I don’t think scientists claim they can predict when these things will happen or what the result will be Try speaking to an expert about why some creatures don’t change much over a period of time.
 
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Life is devolving since the fall. Makes one wonder about the beauty of God’s original prototypes. They must have been awesome.
 
Amazing your blind faith in science telling the truth. Only creationists lie. Yet, your evolutionary formed brain cannot detect truth.
 
Young Earth creationists lie because they have to, there is no scientific support for their ludicrous ideas. Their lying by omission, i.e. quotemining, is very common and not confined to Darwin. Their lies are so common, and so often repeated, that there is a webpage devoted to listing them. See Claim CA113.1 for the Darwin eye quote and Index to Creationist Claims for the full list.

Some scientists do lie, but professional YEC proponents lie more.

rossum
 
Why are “professional YEC proponents” lying? Surely, all scientists go to their jobs and do their work every day, YEC comments or not. This appears to be inapplicable.
 
Are you all seriously still going on about this thread, haven’t you reached a definitive conclusion yet? 😛

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
Of course not. This will continue for years, decades even.

Ed

Or longer…
 
They are lying because they have nothing else. They have one, among many, interpretations of Genesis and masses of scientific evidence that contradicts them.

For example, where is the evidence of a genetic bottleneck down to two individuals in almost all land tetrapod species? If the YEC flood story was correct then that evidence should be obvious. There is no evidence seen because there was no global YEC-style flood.

Because the evidence is against them they have to rely on lies.

rossum
 
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